Word: mcmahon
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...private and distant to most, always approachable, rarely approached. Carson was in danger last week of posthumous teddy-bearization, with eulogists praising him as "calm" and "gentle." That wasn't even true of his TV persona--he laced his humor with sarcasm and sexual danger, and he batted Ed McMahon about like a piņata. In private Carson was standoffish and in his marriages admittedly no saint. His jokes about his serial monogamy endeared him to viewers, but you don't rack up three divorces by being a harmless sweetie...
...elderly woman in Columbus, Neb., turned on her color TV set, tuned in the Tonight show, and settled back to watch Johnny Carson. "And now--here's Johnny!" called Announcer Ed McMahon as the star skipped onstage--fetchingly handsome, slat-thin, loose-limbed, and wrapped in a Continental-cut suit. "My name is Shirley Hoffnagel," he began with eyes laughing, "and I'm here to talk tonight about the wonderful progress that medical science has made in sex-change operations." The studio audience rollicked to that line, but the lady in Nebraska rose from her chair, muttering, "That...
...good with 10 million people, lousy with 10. -Ed McMahon, to Jay Leno on Monday's edition of The Tonight Show...
...pads were too high"); and the sharp, brittle laugh, which was less an expression of mirth than a cue to the audience that his current guest had passed the test. This ha-ha bark was humanized by proximity to the warmer, manly, practiced guffaw of his announcer, Ed McMahon. But that was Ed's job: the designated laugher, his boss' exemplary yes man. (Literally, since he would add a Yes! to the laugh...
...Carson was easy to imitate (by Rich Little in the 60s, Dana Carvey in the 90s, with Phil Hartman superb as Ed), difficult to know. As McMahon once said, in a remark I find both delphic and profound, John packs a tight suitcase. Even those closest to him had trouble figuring out if they had pleased him, and some of them suffered when, without realizing it, they fell short. He fired his brother Dick from directing the show (Dick then directed Merv Griffin's daytime schmoozathon). He summarily canned Art Stark, who had produced Who Do You Trust...