For Laughing Out Loud: My Life and Good Times

Johnny Carson's well-known sidekick on The Tonight Show presents a humorous, anedoctal, in-the-know look at his career, from the beginning of television to today, and pays tribute to some of the medium's greatest stars. 200,000 first printing.

McMahon is known to the televiewing public for having excelled in two roles: as second banana to Carson on the Tonight Show for three decades and as the pitchman par excellence for dozens of products, especially magazines for American Family Publishers. Indeed, he has been so visible on TV for 50 years, i.e., from the very start of the medium, that it has been difficult to avoid him. In his time he has hosted Snap Judgment and Star Search, been the permanent spokesman for Budweiser Beer, worked with Jerry Lewis on the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon for 30 years and sold everything from kitchen appliances to Jenny Craig diet programs. There is no doubt he was a born salesman: on his first day peddling magazine subscriptions as a kid he sold three, and he financed his college career by selling, with a little help from the G.I. Bill, since he was a Marine Corps aviator in both WWII and the Korean War. In between pitches and punch lines (many cribbed from on-the-air performances), we see him give time and money to various charities, get married three times and raise five kids. The relentlessly upbeat tone falters only in discussions of his two divorces ("Imagine, me, hiring a private investigator to follow my wife" ). While it is difficult to imagine a true fan of McMahon, readers with a high tolerance for the ever-unctuous announcer will find this memoir every bit as lively as its subject. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Carson sidekick McMahon looks back on 50 years in television.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Celebrity biographies invariably draw readers, but frankly, it's hard to imagine too many people eager to know the entire life story of professional sidekick Ed McMahon. Those who manage to immerse themselves in the McMahon saga will find that his book almost miraculously manages to hit the same emotional note that Ed himself has sustained for decades: amiable at best, mildly annoying at worst. McMahon tries to make the point that he is an everyman, and in some ways he's right. He started with nothing and experienced his share of life's tragedies (two divorces, one troubled child who died). But he's also had the most amazing good fortune of being in the right place at the right time and being befriended by all the right people, mainly Johnny Carson and Dick Clark. Though McMahon is not one to tell tales out of school (What is a sidekick if not loyal?), he does offer plenty of amusing anecdotes about life on the sets of The Tonight Show and Star Search. The book is at its best when McMahon talks honestly about how much he has loved his career and how difficult that career was on his first wife and his children. Yet just when the man behind the huckster begins to emerge, McMahon backs off, devoting the last pages to an infomercial for his patented fryer ("Delivering the great taste of fried foods without the added oil and grease"). Do the many sides of Ed McMahon add up to a best-seller? Before you say, "No way," remember that Ed is a very lucky guy. Ilene Cooper