No link yet, just heard it on the news.
Goodnight, funnyman.
From cnn.com.
RIP Ed.
But… But… He was supposed to give me a giant novelty check! :eek: 
I thought Ed was already dead. In fact, he would have been a top contender for the People You Would Have Sworn Were Already Dead list.
Oh well. No matter what some say, I didn’t find him especially offensive.
Well there you go I thought that he may already be dead or something.
I smile as I image the reunion he and Johnny are having in heaven.
RIP Ed.
Except didn’t they not speak with each other after the show ended? I imagine that could carry over to the afterlife.
Another icon of my youth slips this mortal coil. Alas.
I was talking with my wife about this, and pardon me if I get a little philosophical.
I’m 35 and I think to myself, “Wow, how did that happen? I still have vivid memories of events in my childhood.” Time seems to be moving faster as I get older (I think most people feel this way), but then I find out Ed McMahon died and I thought, “Well, time must not be moving as quickly as I thought: Ed was probably in his mid-50s before I even knew who he was.” He was always an elderly guy to me. 30 years of being elderly, almost my whole life.
How dead is he?
As dead as he will ever be. Check back in a week or two and I bet you he is no deader.
You are correct, sir!
I was surprised to learn that he was a colonel in the Marines and served as a fighter pilot in the 40’s and 50’s. Wow.
One of my favorite skits was when Johnny was reading curious and interesting true facts and one was about dead bodies. “Hair and nails continue to grow for several days after death, though phone calls taper off after the first day.” (Note to nitpickers: I know the hair and nails don’t grow- Johnny said it not me.)
Such a pity that he had to endure the humiliation of his financial problems being made public. Of course I still can’t figure out how in the world an octogenarian who’d made as much damned money as he made was having financial problems, but, well, for him at least they’re over now.
Joan Rivers was interviewed on some call in show today and said “Ed wasn’t a funny guy, he was class, and solid”, which I thought was a cool eulogy (coology?) and she told a story to demonstrate that made me think “that was classy”.
When the host remarked to Rivers that “I know you had somewhat of a falling out with Johnny when you got your own show…” she broke in with
“Somewhat? SOMEWHAT!? That’s an understatement. That @&#@ing &@@#$@ [I’m not censoring- she was bleeped] asshole (that wasn’t bleeped) never talked to me again, took every chance he good to make a crack about me or take a shot at me, wouldn’t have anyone on his show if they’d been on mine if he could avoid it, when my husband killed himself Johnny who’d been friends with me and played tennis with Edgar never called, he was a cold hearted bastard and people from The Tonight Show who’d fallen all over me when I was the guest host on his show would pass me by in the street. BUT whenever I’d be having lunch or at any function where Ed was, Ed would always go out of his way to come say hello to me, kiss me on the cheek, ask how everything was going, he called me when Edgar died, and we’d never even been friends offstage! He was just a gentleman who understood I’d taken a job with Fox because they were paying me more than I’d make at Tonight Show in 20 years and it was business.”
Anyway, I’ll miss him. His voice is up there with James Earl Jones and Orson Welles in the iconic American announcer voices, and he always seemed like “the retired military uncle who drank a bit too much but you enjoyed seeing at holidays”. In fact for people of my decade (I’m 42) he was probably one of the most avuncular virtual presences there was since he was on every night.
Well, there you have it. I’ll bet you that this one short post contains EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD YOU COULD EVER POSSIBLY WANT TO KNOW about Ed MacMahon.
I remember one night on the Tonight Show when the monologue was especially bad, every joke failed. After that, they did a Carnac that was so bad, when the audience applauded after McMahon announced the last envelope, Carson didn’t curse the audience, he agreed with them. They came back from that commercial break with yet another comedy bit whose sole purpose was to make the monologue and the Carnac look like high comedy. So here we are, a half-hour into the show with nothing more than polite laughter, they lead in to another commercial break, Carson says “Don’t go away . . .” and McMahon comes back with “What makes you think they’re still there?”
Don’t even try to tell me that man was not funny.
There was more to it than that she got her own show. She and her husband tried to recruit Carson’s executive producer Fred de Cordova and several other of his production crew for their own program. Carson was initially supportive of Rivers’ new show until they did that. IIRC, de Cordova himself touched upon it in his bio Johnny Came Lately.
No, they were friends and saw each other occasionally for lunch and so forth. When Carson died Ed said that he had seen Johnny just a few weeks before and that Carson seemed fine and that he had been shocked to find out that Carson had actually been so ill (with emphesema). This was on a celeb news magazine show…Entertainment Tonight, I think.
Sigh…the mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnalls’ porch goes unopened.
He also ruined Johnny’s sketch with an ad lib once. Apparently Ed and Johnny didn’t rehearse together unless they had to and Ed was hearing most of Johnny’s material for the first time along with the audience. One night Johnny was reading a news report to the effect of “a scientific study has found that men who are more sexually active and that women find especially attractive are several times more likely to be bitten by mosquitoes than regular men”. McMahon did his “Wow, I did not know that” schtick- then calmly slapped the back of his hand with an “excuse me, damned mosquitoes”. The audience erupted.
He had no idea that Carson had read it as a set up for the same joke for himself and McMahon had just stolen the thunder.