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Good Night, Ed
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Life is a conveyor belt. You don't know that when you're younger. You think everyone has defined roles that they've had forever and will keep forever. You are young, your parents are older, and your grandparents are just old. That is the universe.
As you begin traversing the 30's, though, you begin to realize you're on a conveyor belt. You realize it because you start seeing people falling off the other end as others come up behind you. You expect it when your grandparents fall off, because grandparents die. But then you begin to see people who were fixtures in your life going off, such as Ed McMahon.
Do you realize there are people in this country who are of age to drive cars and get married who have no idea what Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon once meant to America? I find it inconceivable. Johnny and Ed were as important as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in my mind when I was growing up. My granddad liked Johnny and Ed, my dad liked Johnny and Ed, and I liked Johnny and Ed. Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton? They all liked Johnny and Ed, too. Flip Wilson, Buddy Hackett, Rodney Dangerfield? All Johnny and Ed lovers!
Watching The Tonight Show in the `70's was an event. My parents and I would sit up on Friday nights and watch the whole hour-and-a-half show. It was like Carson and McMahon lived in this parallel world of glamour excitement, yet they were accessible and friendly enough that they would welcome us into it and we fit right in. The guests had lived interesting lives and had stories to tell. We could reflect on things people had said and done on the Tonight Show and enjoy them equally with things we remembered from our own family.
Ed McMahon was Carson's support but a character in his own right. Ed McMahon is linked with the Budweiser Clydesdales in my mind because of his pitches for the beer during the commercials (why don't any late night shows do live commercials anymore?). When I think of Purina** I think of that classic moment when Ed couldn't get the dog to come to the bowl so Johnny stepped in. McMahon also offered to make us winners in the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes before he made a few real winners on his Star Search TV show. Did you know he was also a Navy* pilot and flew missions in both World War II and Korea? How can one man do so much and still be considered a "sidekick?"
So now Ed is gone just like Johnny, and we have only to wait to hear the news on Doc Severinsen and Tommy Newsom. They'll fall off the end of the conveyor belt, and we'll know we've moved a few feet closer.
On the up side, we won't have to watch Conan O'Brien defiling the Tonight Show throne, or suffer Jimmy Fallon sending Late Night nose first into the ground.
* EDIT: McMahon flew for the Marines, not the Navy.
** EDIT: That may have been Alpo, not Purina.
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Posted by Art | 12:33 AM EST |
3 comments
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Johnny and Ed were together longer than any of their marriages (seven between 'em) and worked together under the administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush41. That's amazing to me.
I had forgotten that Dick Clark and Ed McMahon were next door neighbors in Philly long before "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes." Interesting how the careers of Johnny, Ed and Dick intertwined in later years.
Like you, I miss the good old days of the 1970s. I look back on the stuff we watched with a greater sense of nostalgia, when show business was more about the show than the business (or at least it seemed that way anyhow).
"The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" was at once a nightly habit but yet always a television event. I hope that Conan can restore some of that sparkle to the program.
Conan recently told USA Today that Jerry Seinfeld told him, "'The Tonight Show should look like the center of the show business universe.'" I agree, and I don't think the show's history and pedigree is lost on Conan. He will improve and mature given time. He's a bright guy and I think he'll figure out his way soon enough.
I am glad the ever-boring Leno years are over and still think Letterman should have gotten that gig in 1992.
Movie stars aren't what they were, either. I saw Matt Damon on there talking about a trip to the White House, and I thought, "Wow, he's actually made a trip to the White House sound dull!" How is it
I guess I'm really old now because my first choice for TV these days is Larry King and Anderson Cooper.
Conan O'Brien went to Harvard and edited the National Lampoon before becoming a writer on The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live, then was handed The Tonight Show on a platter. Rough times like that really shape a person.