When I was creating my own radio programs in Katie's parlor, I would insert a commercial between each song. At ten years old I knew that an important part of every radio announcer's job was to make the sponsor's product sound so good that every listener would immediately want to run out and buy it. So even at that young age I not only knew which side the bread was buttered on, I wanted to be the spokesperson for the dairy that sold the butter.
Of all the things I am, most of all I'm a salesman. I've always said with great pride, if I can hold it up or point to it, I can sell it. In my career I've done more than sixty thousand television and radio commercials for products ranging from pants stretchers to coin collection equipment, from carpet manufacturers to banks. I've done beer commercials with Sinatra and Wayne, a gasoline commercial with Barbara Walters; I did the very first spot for People magazine, and I've fed Alpo to more than four thousand different dogs. In fact, when NBC decided to honor the best commercials, I was selected to host several specials titled Television's Greatest Commercials.
Advertising has always fascinated me. The first ad I ever paid attention to was a calendar my grandfather had nailed to the wall in the office of his plumbing company. Some calendars have pinups; this one was a nailup. It was from a tool company that made "the tools you swear by—but never at!" Isn't that a great line? I'm sure I used it in my parlor shows.
I've always loved selling. From my first day hawking the Saturday Evening Post, it came easily to me. Although in the other areas of my life I was shy, I was never even slightly reticent when I had something worth selling. Working as a pitchman on the Atlantic City boardwalk and selling pots and pans door-to-door were as much a part of my formal education as the years I spent at Boston College and Catholic University. I gained experience and confidence, I learned the business of selling. I believe I can sell almost anything—but I don't. Before I agree to do a commercial I either use the product myself or investigate it thoroughly to make sure it is absolutely legitimate. I've turned down many, many offers. Not necessarily because there was anything wrong with those products, but just because I didn't feel comfortable selling them. Among the products I've turned down were a spray that supposedly covered a bald spot, a roach trap, rose bushes guaranteed to bloom in six weeks, even the Playboy Channel.
In my early days of television in Philadelphia I not only produced my shows, I also did my own commercials. On those shows we didn't even pause or cut away to a commercial. There were no commercial breaks. I'd finish my interview or my song or whatever I was doing and just hold up the product and do the commercial. The transition wasn't always very smooth. I mean, seconds after I'd finished singing a beautiful love song, I'd have to pick up a rubber duck, a baby toy that would quack like a duck when squeezed—and sell it. I didn't mind at all, I was on television. I knew that without that duck and the pants stretcher and the pineapple juice and Mrs. Paul's frozen foods and everything else we sold, I would have been singing a very different song.
Even newscasters had to interrupt their broadcast to read commercials. "North Korean troops are preparing for war . . . but if you're having trouble washing away dirt, maybe you should try new improved Babbo . . ."
I think the first commercial I ever filmed was for McCafferty Ford, a local car dealership. It was a two-minute spot that took us ten hours to film. We were learning how to make commercials as we made them. The expert was the person who'd made one a week earlier. Fortunately, there were no union problems to worry about because there wasn't a union; we just did whatever we had to do. Wardrobe was whatever I was wearing, I did my own makeup, and when I needed children to model, I used Claudia and Michael.
By the time I got back from Korea everything had changed. Television commercials had become a sophisticated and very profitable business. And although local commercials were still being filmed in Philadelphia, New York City had become the center of the television advertising industry. That's where all the national commercials—the commercials that paid the best—were cast and filmed. Much like the introduction of talking movies had ended the careers of silent movie actors with high voices, many well-known radio announcers couldn't make it on TV because their appearance didn't match their voice. That created a lot of opportunity for people like me.
I was still doing very well in Philadelphia, I had my late-night show and I was getting a lot of the local commercials, but I wanted to be in New York. So I began commuting to New York every day to make the rounds of the advertising agencies and audition for commercials.
The fare was four dollars round trip, eight dollars if you wanted a reserved seat in the parlor car. I paid the four dollars, but the porters got to know me, so they'd let me take my coffee and donuts and sit in the front car with all the wealthy guys from the garment district. If I sat in the back, people would recognize me and want to talk about my show the night before or what's it like to be on television and I'd get nothing done. The front car would be filled with cigar smoke, which I didn't care for because I didn't smoke, but I'd tolerate it because nobody would talk to me. On the way to New York I'd read my three newspapers and plan my day.
My office was my briefcase. I carried a stack of index cards on which I'd made notes about every audition I'd had and everybody I'd met, and five dollars in dimes. When I got to New York I'd settle into a comfortable telephone booth—the booths in the Pennsylvania Hotel, across Seventh Avenue from Penn Station, were the most comfortable—and begin calling the advertising agencies to try to get auditions. I learned all the little tricks: I knew how to get an operator to place calls for me to make it sound as if I had a secretary, and I was on a first-name basis with all the secretaries at the ad agencies.
But there were days when I couldn't get anything going. On the trains in those days the backs of the seats could be moved from one side of the seat to the other so passengers could face forward no matter which direction the train was traveling. I'll never forget the day I got off the train and made at least two dozen calls from the lower level of Penn Station and couldn't get a single appointment. No one wanted to see me, no one had any auditions, nothing was happening. So I got right back on the same train—although they'd changed the direction of the seats—and went back to Philadelphia. I never even made it to the upper level of Penn Station.
Normally though, I'd get at least one appointment with an account exec or a casting director, or an audition, sometimes several. After spending the day in New York—this was when I started hanging out in Michael's Pub or wandering the floors at Abercrombie and Fitch—I'd catch the afternoon Congressional back to Philadelphia at four-thirty. The problem with that train was that it had a great club car. The trip to Philly, I learned, was about three martinis long, which made it rough for me to do my show that night. So instead of going into the bar car I'd find the person most unlikely to want to talk to me—a rabbi was a real find—and sit next to him. About that time I discovered something called the Five-Foot Shelf of Books, a collection of all the classics of literature, and I started reading them on the trip home. After spending the entire day trying to get an audition for a detergent commercial, I'd relax by reading a chapter of War and Peace. By the time I met Johnny Carson, I was almost four feet smarter. I commuted between Philadelphia and New York five days a week for eight years. I guess it was the contemporary version of a tale of two cities.
Five-minute auditions usually lasted about a minute. Sometimes as many as two hundred men would be auditioned for a spot, and that almost always included the regulars who hung out at Michael's Pub. We never knew what the agency was looking for, so there was no way to prepare for an audition. The competition was really intense; one good account could pay the bills for a year. Everybody was good, there were only minor differences between us—so no one knew why certain people got jobs and others didn't. On my way to the train in Philadelphia I used to stop at church for morning Mass. Hey, I wanted all the help I could get.
We went in, read the lines, and waited for a phone call. Sometimes all they wanted was the right sound. They wanted the proper "Ho, ho, ho," or a candy company wanted a perfect "Mmmmmm . . ." Believe me, there is no definition of a perfect "Mmmmmm." I have to admit, my "Ho!" was better than my "Mmmmmm." My friend Bob Delaney got the "Ho, ho, ho" job and remembers spending much of the day in a studio while agency executives sat in the control room debating whether his "Ho" was too happy.
The first national commercial I ever got was for New Blue Cheer. One of the premier announcers of early television was the great Jay Jackson. He was the announcer for Philco Playhouse as well as many commercials. But rather than seeing me as a threat, he helped me. He told me, "Ed, you're good and New York needs you." New York needed me? That was a pretty startling thing for me to hear. New York needs Ed McMahon! Boy, New York had a strange way of showing it. Jay Jackson introduced me to Michael's Pub and all the top people in the business. And he got me the audition for New Blue Cheer.
Now, this story may be apocryphal, but this is the way I heard it: at that time Procter and Gamble made Tide, the number-one-selling washing detergent. One of the major components of soap is nitroglycerin, which is also used to make munitions. During World War II Procter and Gamble had purchased huge supplies of nitroglycerin, and when the war ended they had to find something to do with it. So they created Cheer soap. The ad agency, Young & Rubicam, wanted a spokesman with a "casual, believable, warm and fuzzy" voice. One hundred fifty people auditioned, they weeded it down to twenty, then to eight, then finally to me and Fred Collins. Fred and I went out for a cup of coffee while waiting for the decision. As we sat in a coffee shop on Madison and Thirty-ninth, he said to me, "I want this, but since you're just starting out, I hope you get it." Now, that is a nice human being. The account exec called us at the coffee shop and said I'd gotten the job.
I felt like I'd just won the Olympics. All of the Olympics. In Philadelphia I'd been the king, I'd won almost every audition, but to win a major audition in New York on one of my very first attempts was a very big deal. Maybe Jay Jackson had been right, maybe New York did need me. I became the spokesman for "New Blue Cheer, for whiter whites and brighter colors." The thing I remember most about it was that my father was so proud of me. The agency would give me a typed schedule of when the commercial would be aired and my father would watch it every time. If it was on at two in the morning, he would set his alarm clock to see my commercial. For my father, television shows were just long pauses between his son's Cheer commercials.
New Blue Cheer financed my trips to New York for several months. After winning that account I figured I'd get them all. Instead, I won exactly none of them. I'd make it to the final selection, but I wouldn't get the jobs. One day, a day I will never forget, several appointments in a row were canceled, an audition went badly, and I learned that I hadn't gotten some big national account. Now, I don't get discouraged easily, but boy, after not getting a single job in several months, that was a lot of bad news. All my confidence was gone. I sat down by the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel and had the only migraine headache of my life. I began to wonder if I'd picked the wrong business. I thought, maybe I'm not good enough for this business, maybe I should think about doing something else. There was an architectural school near the Lambs Club, so I walked down there and picked up an application. I read it on the train back to Philly. Even the application was too complicated for me. To become an architect I'd have to go back to school for at least four more years. With three children to support, that wasn't possible. I left the application on the train.
For almost a year I paid my dues. Then, slowly, my career began to pick up. I got on-camera jobs for Redbook magazine and White Owl cigars. I got the General Motors corporate account for radio. I auditioned for several cigarette accounts, which were very desirable, and I came within a few blocks of becoming the spokesperson for Old Gold. The fact that I didn't smoke and had never smoked did not deter me; I didn't do laundry either but that hadn't stopped me from doing commercials for New Blue Cheer. When I heard Old Gold was looking for a new spokesman, I began practicing my smoking technique on the train. I tried to look suave and manly. The fact is that people who don't smoke just don't look comfortable smoking. But after several auditions it looked as though I was going to win the Old Gold account. All that was left was meeting the president of the company to get his approval. As I was being driven to the meeting, the agency account executive, a lovely woman, noticed my technique and asked, "How long have you been smoking, Ed?"
What was I going to tell her, two weeks? Well, yes. "I gotta confess something to you," I said. "I'm not really a smoker. I've just been practicing."
She appreciated my honesty. "Turn the car around," she told the driver. She continued, "Ed, I think you're great, but you really have to be a smoker to get this account."
When I got The Tonight Show, the first sponsor to sign me to do their commercials was Alpo. The second sponsor who approached me was L&M cigarettes. I told them from the first day that I didn't smoke, but they didn't care. They wanted me to be their spokesman and they were going to pay me about fifty thousand dollars a year. It was a great deal, I didn't even have to smoke, all I had to do was hold up the pack. But before we signed a contract, an executive from Liggett and Myers got very nervous; he was afraid that one of the major newspaper columnists would find out I didn't smoke and reveal that the spokesman for L&M didn't even smoke them. I lost that account.
I was only upset about that for, oh, maybe twenty years. Then all the information about the effects of tobacco began coming out. Believe me, I am very happy I never did a cigarette commercial. As far as I know, there has never been any scientific evidence that Cheer was bad for anyone. And it did make whites whiter!
My briefcase was my office, but Michael's Pub was my headquarters. Everybody in the business hung out there between auditions. That's where we learned what was going on, who had gotten which jobs, what products were being cast, and what was happening at the various advertising agencies. Most of us used the same answering service, Radio Registry, and when we received an important message, their operators knew that if we weren't at Michael's Pub, somebody there would know where to find us. That was where we celebrated our victories and drowned our defeats.
One of the people who hung out there was Jonathan Winters, the most brilliant ad-libber I've ever known. He could do twelve minutes of brilliant comedy on a lamp. There were some smart, talented men in that group, but Jonathan Winters would hold court there for hours. That's where we became good friends.
Most people don't know this, but I was one of the founders of the Liberty Bowl, which has become one of the premier college football bowl games. It's now played in Memphis, but for the first two years it was played in Philadelphia. In retrospect, the concept of playing a college football game in Philadelphia in midwinter may not seem too intelligent, but at the time it seemed like a very good idea. And that time was probably very late at night. I produced a great show for our sponsors and special guests. Among the stars of that show were Johnny Carson and Winters. By that time I knew Winters well enough to know that if I wanted to be sure he would show up, I'd have to bring him there myself. So I drove to New York to pick him up, turned around, and drove right back to Philly. The whole drive back I said three words, "How you doing?" He spent the rest of the trip telling me.
He entertained me for the whole day and late into the night. About four o'clock in the morning, after the bowl game and the show, a group of us were in my suite at the hotel. We ordered sandwiches from room service. A half hour later, waiters wheeled in three large carts containing mounds of sandwiches covered completely by white table-cloths. As the waiters pushed the carts into the room, Winters took one look and said fiercely, "Oh my God, we're going to be busy in surgery tonight!"
I was such a regular at Michael's Pub that Gil Weiss, the owner, put the McMahon salad on the menu. It consisted of the heart of a romaine lettuce, carefully diced up, covered with blue cheese dressing and bacon bits. But the McMahon salad was not the only thing I did for that place. For years Gil Weiss resisted any change, he liked his saloon just the way it was. It was a big event when he finally allowed us to bring in a television set to watch the World Series. I wanted more, I wanted music to drink by. In fact, there was a girl singer performing at the Waldorf who I thought was terrific, and after a lot of pleading, Gil finally allowed her to perform there. She was a big hit; she drew a crowd. After she finished her run, Gil started booking jazz groups, and Michael's Pub became known as one of the few really good jazz clubs in New York.
When The Tonight Show moved to California my friends threw a surprise going-away party for me there. Purely coincidentally, during my party Woody Allen stopped by to see if it might be the right place for him to sit in with a jazz group. I left, Woody Allen came in. Seeing Woody Allen playing clarinet at Michael's Pub on Monday nights became a New York tradition for which I was indirectly responsible.
Probably my greatest skill in reading my lines in commercials was . . . the pause. I had learned from experience the value of the . . . pause in attracting attention. The longer you can sustain a . . . pause, the more . . . attention you get. When you need to emphasize something, just precede it with a . . . pause. I remember, in the Broadway show Top Banana, Phil Silvers has to figure out how to decorate a room. He can't figure out how to do it, until a buxom blond walks right in front of him. He just watches her chest go by without saying a word. Of course, everybody knows what he's looking at. Finally, after a long, long pause, he says, "I got it . . . We'll use balloons!"
The pause is like a . . . string. If you pause in the middle of . . . a sentence, the listener will focus on what you're saying. For example, just think about this for one split second
. . . you may have already won . . . ten million dollars. The pause is effective even when I write it.
But I had a great big . . . pause. It made my delivery of my lines distinctive and effective. And it had one tremendously important effect: it helped me win a lot of accounts. Once I proved my ability, I started winning them. When City Service decided to change its name to Citgo and its color scheme from green and white to bright red and blue, Barbara Walters and I were hired to be their spokespeople. We did several commercials together.
One of the commercials Barbara and I did was filmed in the ski resort of Stratton Mountain, Vermont. We flew to Vermont and took a limousine to the lodge. I remember it was a long trip and our driver didn't seem to know where he was going. Every so often he stopped for directions. Barbara and I were in the backseat and she stretched out, put her head on my . . . leg and went to sleep. But I noticed that every time the driver stopped for directions he was having a quick drink. He was getting drunk. Pretty soon the car was weaving back and forth. Finally I told him to stop the car; I got in front and drove the limo. So I can always say I was a limo driver for Barbara Walters. I can, but I don't. But I remember the looks on the faces of the ad agency execs when our limo pulled up to the lodge, the driver's door opened, and I got out.
When it was announced that I was going to be Johnny Carson's announcer on The Tonight Show, the third phone call I got was from a man named Jack Macheca of the D'Arcy McManus advertising agency. I had dinner with him and D'Arcy chairman Harry Chesley at the great restaurant 21, and they asked me if I was interested in doing commercials for Budweiser beer. I told them that I hadn't gotten the L&M cigarette account because I didn't smoke, then added, "However, gentlemen, I'm pleased to be able to tell you that will not be a problem in this case. I've spent years researching your product."
The agency and the brewery were both very pleased with the first few commercials we did. We filmed the second set of commercials at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis. It was there I met the great Gussie Busch for the first time. Gussie was one of the most unusual men I've ever known. At lunch the day we met, he shouted across the room to me in this deep, gruff voice, "Hey Ed, when are you gonna finish these damn commercials?"
Bob Johnson, the director, told me we'd be done late that afternoon.
"All right then," Gussie continued. "I'm gonna take you coaching."
"Great," I agreed, having absolutely no idea what coaching was.
When we finished shooting that day, they drove me out to Mr. Busch's home, 280 spectacular acres known as Grant's Farm, because it was once owned and farmed by Ulysses S. Grant. In addition to the cabin that Grant built by hand, Gussie Busch kept every animal indigenous to North America. Deer, raccoons, foxes—they all ran free on the property. One night he had a cocktail party and I turned around and an entire herd of buffalo was standing a few feet away from the house. In an enclosed area he kept very exotic animals. It was quite a place. And he took me coaching to show it to me.
Coaching means going for a ride in a carriage pulled by eight horses. Each horse is individually controlled by a thin rein attached to one finger. Mr. Busch played them like a harp; he controlled them with a slight tug of his finger. So off we went. We started slowly, but picked up speed rapidly, and just raced over the property. At one point he said casually, "Duck down, Ed," and as I did, a thick branch went right over my head. If I had hesitated or stopped to question him, that branch would have hit me in the head. Maybe that ride was some sort of test for me.
The house itself was extraordinary. I used to describe it to people by explaining, "The living room has two grand pianos, but you don't notice them right away."
"Okay, Ed," he said when we settled down in front of one of the fireplaces. "I think we earned a little drink."
"I think that's right, Mr. Busch," I agreed.
"Call me Gussie," he told me, and for the next thirty years it was Gussie. "What are you drinking?"
I had a split second to make a decision. Did I want to suck up to the boss and tell him, I'll have a good, cold Budweiser? I decided I wasn't going to do that. "I'd like some Canadian whiskey," I said.
"How do you want it?"
"Just the way it comes out of the bottle."
He smiled at me and said, "You're gonna be with us for a long time."
On the drive back to the airport Macheca and Chesley told me I had passed the big test. What I had not known was that a well-known actor had been hired to be the spokesman for Budweiser before me. His image was that of a sophisticated man of the world, perfect for an upscale beer. But before he made his first commercial, Confidential magazine printed an article claiming that this actor and his wife would pick up men in bars and bring them home for sex. Well, that was not exactly the image that the agency wanted for Budweiser. Chesley flew to St. Louis in a panic to meet with Gussie Busch to figure out what to do. He wanted to buy out the actor's contract.
Gussie disagreed. "There's nothing as dead as yesterday's news," he said. "Let's stick with him. By Thursday they'll be wrapping fish in this." Then he threw the magazine on the floor.
I loved that, by Thursday they'll be wrapping fish with this. Years later when I started having problems with the tabloids I tried to keep that in mind. But the problem was getting to Thursday.
But Gussie invited the actor to the farm, just as I had been invited. And, just as he had asked me, Gussie asked him, "What are you drinking?"
Faced with that difficult decision, just how much do you please the boss, the actor said firmly, "I don't drink."
Later that day Gussie told Harry Chesley, "Unload the SOB. He doesn't drink and he's proud of it." The next day they bought out his contract.
So Gussie Busch and I got along from that very first day. My association with Anheuser-Busch lasted thirty years. Over the years I did more than a thousand commercials for them, I marched in parades, I hosted events, I attended all the wholesaler and distributor meetings. In corporate surveys it turned out that many people thought I was at least equal in importance to the image of the brewery as the Clydesdales!
I spent many evenings with Gussie at Grant's Farm. One year, I remember, they held the exclusive Hunt Ball in a barn on the property. Before the ball started, we were in the house and Gussie looked at me and said, "Ed, we're going to martinis."
I said, "I'm with you, Gussie."
Gussie loved his martinis. In a restaurant he insisted that there be a silver bowl filled with cold Bud on the table for everybody to see, but he was also drinking his martinis.
Gussie loved his martinis. At his home martinis were served in silver shakers and poured into old-fashioned glasses. So before going to the ball we each had a couple of martinis. Then we got into his car and started driving over to the barn, but about halfway there we stopped at one of the many houses on the property. We went inside and there was a bartender waiting for us with martinis. Gussie loved his martinis.
I think I realized how closely I had become identified with Budweiser the year I served as grand marshal of the Indianapolis 500. When I rode around the track in the pace car, somebody threw me a Bud. So as we rode past the crowd of five hundred thousand people I held it up, as if to toast them. In response, everyone held up their own beer— and if they weren't drinking Bud, they covered the label with their hand.
Of all the commercials I did for Budweiser, my favorite one was a spot I did with the Clydesdale horses. These beautiful animals lived in complete luxury, they traveled in air-conditioned vans, they were washed every day, a magnificent crystal chandelier hung in their immaculate quarters at the St. Louis brewery. Gussie Busch believed that if you treated the animals as if they were special, they would act that way. I rode behind them in many parades. Years ago the town of Lowell honored me with a day. In the parade, Massachusetts governor Frank Sargeant and I rode on the Budweiser wagon pulled by eight Clydesdales. And as these horses clomped down the avenue, Governor Sargeant said to me, "You know, Ed, I feel right at home here. I've been in politics all my life, and here I am again, riding behind eight horses' asses."
The horses responded to their names. If they jumped out of line, the teamster would order, "Patrick!" and Patrick would jump back in place. Because I worked with them so often, I got to know them pretty well and I think they might have recognized me. In one of the commercials I was standing right next to Captain, I mean right next to him. These horses weigh more than a ton; if Captain had moved two inches and stepped on my foot I would have been crippled. In this commercial I was holding a microphone in one hand and a paper cup filled with Bud in my other hand. As I finished the commercial I was supposed to say, "That's why Budweiser is the largest-selling beer in the world. Right, Captain?" and he was trained to look as if he was nodding in agreement. But while we were filming, when I looked at him and said, "Right, Captain?" he not only nodded, he stuck his snout in my cup and took a sip of the beer. The horse drank the beer!
Well, on camera it was gorgeous. Just perfect. When the director cut the commercial, he finished with a close-up of Captain drinking the beer. Everybody loved it, everybody except the ASPCA. They complained so loudly that we had to stop using it.
Besides working with the Clydesdales, I also did several commercials with both Frank Sinatra and John Wayne. In addition to commercials, Frank Sinatra did five television shows for Budweiser. He didn't have to pass the same test I did to get his deal. He had dinner at Chasen's with Jack Macheca, Harry Chesley, and Gussie Busch. After the terms of the deal had been agreed upon, Frank turned to Gussie and said, "What can I do for you?"
Gussie told him, "Just sing 'The Girl from Ipanema.' " That clinched the deal.
Sinatra and I had a terrific time doing the commercials together. A man named Johnny Delgadio would stand in for him during rehearsals and then Frank would arrive and do the actual shooting in one take. He hated doing retakes, and fortunately they weren't usually necessary. But once, I remember, we were doing a spot in which we were dressed as cavalrymen. Supposedly we had been captured by Indians and tied to a wagon wheel. There were arrows stuck in the wagon. My line was, "What do you think made those Indians so upset?" and then Frank was supposed to respond, "Telling all those Indians the gold they found was unredeemable quartz." Then the commercial ended with Frank saying, "Don't worry, we're going to be okay. Yonder lies Custer's last stand." At which point the camera cut to a big wagon with a sign reading CUSTER'S BUDWEISER STAND.
That day he just couldn't get his lines right. We did it three times, four times, this wasn't like him at all, five times. He couldn't remember the word "unredeemable." Each time he blew the line he got just a little angrier. Everybody on the set was absolutely still. No one said a word. Talk about tension. So just as we were about to do it a sixth time, I reached my arm around and pretended to look at a watch and said, "You know, Frank, I haven't got all day."
He laughed so hard he had to leave the set. In another commercial we were in a bar and he was supposed to slide a bottle of Bud the entire length of the bar. I was supposed to stop it, pick it up, and pour a glass of beer with a perfect head. We had to get it just right. Just as we were about to start shooting, I looked over at him and said seriously, "You know, Frank, I'm only going to do this once." The only time Frank Sinatra wanted to do retakes was when there was a problem with the music. On one show he sang the beautiful song "It Was a Very Good Year" with Nelson Riddle's full thirty-five-piece orchestra. After he finished the song, he asked Riddle, "Didn't I hear the violins come in early?" Riddle nodded, explaining he'd brought them in a few bars early. Imagine that, a thirty-five-piece orchestra and he hears the violins coming in early?
I did help Anheuser-Busch convince John Wayne to do a television special for them. Until that time John Wayne had turned down every offer to do TV. Tony Amendola was meeting him at the Polo Lounge and asked me to join them. We sat down and started drinking scotch. When John Wayne realized he couldn't drink us under that table, he started ordering doubles. That started a long evening and a longer friendship. When we were introduced, I said, "It's an honor to meet you, Mr. Wayne."
"You call me Duke," he said.
"Okay, Mr. Wayne," I told him, " . . . uh, Duke."
At that meeting he agreed to do the show. "Give me a million dollars," he said, "and I'll do the show for you. I won't guarantee who'll be on it. I won't tell you I'm going to have all these people, but you can take my word for it that they'll be there." Anheuser-Busch gave him a million dollars and he produced and starred in a ninety-minute variety show celebrating the history of America titled Swing out Sweet Land. As he promised, stars like Dean Martin, Bob Hope, the cast from Bonanza, and the Smothers Brothers appeared on the show. It was the most expensive TV show ever produced—but it was the highest-rated variety special in history.
The afternoon before we were to begin taping the special we met with the director in the Polo Lounge. When the meeting was finished, Duke suggested that we have dinner that night. "I'd love to," I said. "The problem is that I'm entertaining a whole bunch of people at Sneaky Pete's tonight."
"Well, what the hell is a Sneaky Pete's?"
It was a great restaurant, I explained, good food, good people, good music. After doing The Tonight Show that evening, I met my friends there. Several hours later a hush suddenly came over the entire restaurant. I looked up and there was John Wayne standing in the doorway. He always looked bigger in person than on the movie screen. And on the screen he was about fifty feet tall. I like to tell people he was wearing Sneaky Pete's. And with perfect timing, he roared, "Where is that goddamn McMahon?"
"Over here, Mr. Wayne . . . Duke," I said. We closed the place that night. The last thing I remembered was putting him in his car about four o'clock in the morning.
We were filming a commercial for the special the next morning. I was playing a bartender in an old western town. I had to be there at eight to rehearse; Duke didn't have to be there for several hours. But at eight-thirty, once again, I heard that unmistakable voice booming from behind the set. "Where is that goddamn McMahon? He kept me out till five goddamn o'clock in the morning . . ."
I grabbed two cans of cold Budweiser and popped them open. When he came around the side of the set, I handed one of them to him. He took it and said, "Well, that's the best goddamn idea you've ever had, McMahon."
We became great friends. When The Tonight Show was still in New York, I hosted the NBC weekly radio program Monitor. It was a general-interest show and I loved doing it. When we moved to California I wanted to continue doing it, but NBC wanted it based in New York. So instead of hosting it, I became a contributor. I finally convinced Duke to do an interview with me for that show. We did it at his house in Newport. He opened the door and said, "The beer is waiting for you, pilgrim." He wasn't wearing his hairpiece and he asked me if they were going to take any pictures.
"They'd like to take some stills for publicity," I said.
He sighed deeply—and no one sighed more deeply than Duke Wayne. "All right," he said. "I'll go put on my goddamn hair." It wasn't that he was vain, he didn't care, but he knew what people expected from him. So when he appeared in public he always wore his toupee. He used to make fun of it, he used to say, "Goddamn right, this is real hair. It's just that it belongs to somebody else!"
When we finished recording the interview and posing for photographs, his face lit up and he said happily, "Now, shall we hit that tap?" And he began pouring cold Budweisers for everyone.
For thirty years I traveled across the nation for Budweiser. We filmed commercials in the snows of New Hampshire and in the swamps of Louisiana. We did them in the air, in cars, in hot-air balloons, and in carriages. My association with the Busch family and the people at the brewery and at D'Arcy Advertising was one of the nicest things that has happened to me in my life. But as much as I liked these people, that didn't mean I wanted to die for Budweiser.
Who knew doing commercials could be so dangerous? Once, I remember, we were on a plane going to a meeting and the pilot wasn't sure the wheels were down and locked. We circled for an hour—while all of us in the back were reassuring each other the wheels were down—until he was convinced they were down and landed without incident.
Somehow I let them convince me to fly in Budweiser's hot-air balloon. Going up was fine, it was coming down that was the problem. Until that day I never knew hot-air balloons could bounce so high.
The most dangerous commercial I ever did for Budweiser was shot in Crowley, Louisiana. One of the many things that made Budweiser taste so good—and remember, I'm not on the payroll anymore, I don't have to say this—was that it was beechwood-aged. The bottom of the copper tanks in which the beer ferments are filled with beechwood chips. I flew to Louisiana on a private plane to serve as king of the Rice Festival parade as well as shoot a commercial. During the trip I started talking flying with the pilot and we hit it off, so I invited him to come watch the commercial being filmed.
We had to go pretty deep into the woods to find beechwood trees. It was a terrible day, about 120 degrees, 100 percent humidity, and no chance of rain. The sweat was just pouring off our bodies. In the commercial I was supposed to walk through the forest to a beechwood tree and explain that this was where Anheuser-Busch got the beechwood chips that gave Budweiser the unique taste that made it the biggest-selling beer in the world. But just as we were ready to start filming, I spotted a black snake about six feet away—and maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed to be staring at me.
In addition to all the people from the agency, we had two forest rangers with us. I said, "I don't want to alarm anybody, but there's a big snake right over there and he looks hungry."
One of the rangers laughed. "Oh, don't worry about him," he said confidently. "That's just a tree snake. It won't hurt you."
I wasn't so sure about that. "Does the snake know that?" I asked. "I mean, he's a snake, right? I don't want to take any chances, I'm sorry."
The pilot, who had tagged along because he had nothing else to do, whispered in my ear, "Don't go near that snake, Ed. That's no tree snake." With that, he broke a branch off a tree and got the snake's attention. The snake snapped at the branch. That was the first time I had ever smelled snake venom. It smells like death. Only worse. That "tree snake" turned out to be a cottonmouth, one of the most deadly of all snakes. If it had bitten me, I would not have survived long enough to get to the hospital. The ranger killed it.
By now the temperature had gone up a few more degrees, we had two very embarrassed rangers, we had the pilot who just might have saved my life, and we had got one other thing—somewhere in the area there was another cottonmouth snake. As the ranger informed me, they live in pairs, and apparently we had killed the female. That meant the male, the big snake, was still around. And he wasn't happy. There is such a thing as dying for your art, but I'd never heard of anybody dying for their sponsor. Being the first was not something that appealed to me.
We shot that commercial in one take. One very, very fast take. It was one of the finest acting jobs of my career. I had to act calm. Eventually we finished the commercial—and found the second snake.
A phrase I often used in Anheuser-Busch commercials was "Someone still cares about quality." In the thirty years I spent working for Gussie and the brewery, that was always the truth. And in all that time there wasn't a single day when I had difficulty using that product. In fact, only once in my career have I lost a sales job because I didn't use the product. And it was not Alpo—my dogs asked for Alpo by name! At least that's what it sounded like to me. The sponsor I lost because I failed to use the product was Jenny Craig's diet meals.
I was overweight. I needed to go on a diet but I needed some kind of incentive. My assistant at that the time, the wonderful Madeline Kelly, provided the incentive. She negotiated an agreement with the Jenny Craig people that paid me quite a bit of money to become their spokesperson—but only if I lost a certain amount of weight by following a Jenny Craig diet plan. If I kept the weight off an additional six months, the deal was automatically renewed.
I faithfully followed their diet plan. I ate their frozen dinners. And I lost thirty-two pounds. Now, what could be better than being paid to lose weight? The commercials were very successful. I was very happy with their products and I think the Jenny Craig people were very happy with our relationship. All I had to do was keep the weight off for six months.
Unfortunately, it was just after I lost all that weight that my marriage to Victoria broke up. I was very unhappy and when I'm unhappy I eat. Of course, I also eat when I'm happy, which is why I needed to diet in the first place. But this was a difficult time for me and I regained most of the weight I'd lost. Now, this was completely my fault; the meals did exactly what they were supposed to do. I believed if I could just get through a couple of bad months I'd go back on the diet and lose the weight again. So we told the Jenny Craig people that I wasn't gaining weight, I was just wearing bigger suits. We blamed my weight on my suits. Was I over the weight stipulated in my contract?
Weigh-oooo!
Eventually I had to admit to the Jenny Craig people that I had regained the weight, and they did not pick up my option.
Now, what, you ask, what could possibly be better than being paid to lose weight? Being paid to give away somebody else's money. Talk about an offer I couldn't refuse. Years ago American Family Publishers, the fine company that uses a national sweepstakes to attract attention to its magazine subscriptions, wanted me to be their spokesperson.
Before I accepted their offer I had to make sure they really had the money to give away. I did some research and discovered the company was partly owned by Time Inc. Okay, I figured, they got the money. And that's how I came to be the guy who says, "You may have already won ten million dollars."
When I started working on this campaign I had no idea how much a part of American pop culture it would become. American Family Publishers sends out about two hundred million pieces of mail every year. Just about every household in the country has received an entry form and stickers to order magazine subscriptions. The Tom Snyder Show got one addressed "Dear Mr. Show . . ." When my daughter Katherine Mary was only six months old she received a letter informing her, "Katherine Mary McMahon, you may have already won two million dollars and Ed McMahon will award this giant prize to you on The Tonight Show . . ." And when then senator Bob Dole received his entry form, he wrote back to me, explaining, "As I am seriously considering running for President, I am prohibited by federal law from accepting contributions which exceed $1,000 per person. . . . However, Ed, I might suggest that you and your wife each contribute $1,000 and, to make up the additional $9,998,000, ask 9,998 of your friends . . ."
The prospect that Ed McMahon might unexpectedly show up at your front door with a big check has become the subject of numerous cartoons and greeting cards, even the punch line of jokes. Hallmark did a greeting card with a forlorn figure on the front, and inside it asked, "If Ed McMahon has time to write me, how come you don't?" Even a small rug-cleaning company sent around a flyer listing ten reasons people should have their carpets cleaned. The tenth reason: when Ed McMahon rings your doorbell, you don't want to be embarrassed.
"You may have already won ten million dollars" has become one of the best-known lines in the history of advertising. Once, when I walked down a street, people would greet me with either "Hi-oooo!" or "Heeeeere's Ed!" No more. Now it's always, "Hey Ed, where's my ten million dollars?"
"I was over at your house this morning," I sometimes reply, "and you weren't home. So I gave it to your neighbor." Or, "I've been looking all over for you. What time are you going to be home tonight?" Dick Clark responds to that question by telling people, "Ed's home counting it out in singles. He's going to be at your house in ten minutes. What are you doing here?"
I have become so well known as the man who gives away tens of millions of dollars in prizes that when I make a phone call I often begin by saying, "Hi, this is Ed McMahon. You didn't win yet, but . . ."
Now, how could I possibly go wrong by giving away money? I thought, if there is one sure thing in life, it's that people are going to love me for doing this. And generally that has been true. But in 1998 American Family Publishers, as well as myself and Dick Clark, received a great deal of publicity after American Family Publishers signed an agreement with thirty-two state attorneys general around the country. As part of the agreement, American Family Publishers agreed to make certain changes in its mailings to make it even more clear that the mailings were entry forms, not notifications that the recipient had won. In much of the publicity, the point that was often lost was that American Family, along with Dick Clark and myself, had over the years helped to give away more than seventy-seven million dollars.
This sweepstakes has changed lives. It's sort of like Star Search —without the talent portion of the show. I called one winner to inform him that he had won two million dollars on the day the bank was going to repossess his house. Literally. They had already taken his car and by the end of that day he was going to be homeless. Talk about good luck. When Dick Clark handed a check for ten million dollars to a struggling musician, he asked, "What are you going to do with the money?"
"Go out and buy a new set of drums," the musician told him.
The only people ineligible for the prize money were employees of American Family Publishers—which includes me—and their relatives. I guess I didn't realize the impact of that restriction until Pam professed her love for me by pointing out, "Look what I gave up to marry you."
When the giant Colonial Penn Insurance Company wanted to market a whole-life insurance product, they asked me to be their spokesperson. The difficulty Colonial Penn had in selling this insurance was that it seemed too good to be true. This is a life insurance policy aimed at buyers more than fifty years old, the people who need the insurance most and often can't afford it or pass the physical. The point that Colonial Penn wanted me to emphasize was that there was no physical examination required, everybody qualifies, no one who wanted to buy this insurance could be turned down. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is hard to believe, but you cannot be turned down for this insurance. Let me repeat that sentence, you cannot be turned down for this insurance.
Now, these are not large policies. The benefits are not substantial. They are usually supplemental policies or replacements for life insurance policies that were lost at retirement. They generally pay in the twenty-thousand-dollar range, enough to cover the expenses involved with death and burial; the idea is that your family should not have to go into debt. The benefits are restricted for the first two years, but after that period these policies pay the full amount.
Admittedly, life insurance isn't as much fun to sell as beer or as exciting as the sweepstakes; I mean, when friends drop over to the house I don't get to offer them a life insurance policy, and I won't be coming to your house to surprise you with the benefits. But believe me, many people have come up to me and told me how vitally important this money was to them at a time when it was really needed.
My contract with The Tonight Show made it difficult for me to work for companies that might compete with our national advertisers. But that didn't stop me from representing local businesses. My business manager and I realized that local businesses could benefit by being represented by someone with national recognition. Banks, for example. There are no national banks, so I could represent as many noncompeting local banks as wanted to hire me. And I was perfect for the job. Who could possibly be a better representative for financial institutions than a person known for giving away money?
Eventually I ended up becoming the spokesperson for thirty-eight banks and financial institutions in eighteen states. Basically, I was selling a sense of confidence. I was telling viewers that I was willing to put my name and reputation behind these banks. Imagine that, banks needed me to tell people they were honest. That's a long way from selling slicers on the boardwalk. And before I agreed to represent a bank, we did do a lot of research to make sure the bank had a good reputation in the community and was financially in good condition.
It was a good program for the banks. For only slightly more than they would have paid to produce local commercials, they got network-quality commercials and me as their spokesperson. So when a viewer in Oklahoma City was watching me with Johnny Carson, he was, I hope, reminded about the Liberty National Bank. One Chicago bank told me that they'd decided to hire me after doing extensive research "to determine who would be the least offensive spokesman and carry our message the strongest." It turned out I was considered to be one of the least offensive people in Chicago! How about that!
The concept was a very good one and for several years this was a very successful program for both me and the banks. Several of the banks I represented became the leading financial institutions in their local market. For a while I thought that this was going to be something I would be doing for a long, long time, like Alpo. Banks didn't go out of business, banks put other people . . . But then there was this thing that happened called the savings-and-loan scandal.
Kay-oooooooooo . . .
At least dogs always have to eat.
I've been in television fifty years now, and in that time I've seen numerous innovations once thought impossible.
I've seen that tiny little box showing grainy black-and-white pictures broadcast only locally grow into giant screens on the sides of buildings broadcasting in sharp color from anywhere in the world. I've seen two-hundred-pound cameras reduced to cameras light enough to be carried easily by one person. I've seen historic events as they happened. I've seen pictures broadcast live from the moon. I've even seen Tiny Tim get married. But maybe more than anything else, I've seen the creation of one thing I never dreamed possible: the cable shopping networks. All selling all the time. A channel that exists only to sell. A channel on which all the performers are pitchmen. The channel I've been waiting for my entire career!
Selling on cable television is very similar to standing up on the block and selling on the boardwalk; you have a limited amount of time to capture the attention of your audience, pitch your product, and finally close the sale. The difference is that you have a much bigger audience—we call them "eyes," as in "there are a lot of eyes out there." Instead of selling inexpensive items, we can sell very expensive merchandise, and although on the boardwalk a rainy day is terrible, bad weather is the best possible thing for selling on television.
And I found the perfect product to sell to home shoppers. Something every household needs. A unique product. Le Dome cookware. Cookware made by the largest French manufacturer. Cookware made especially to ensure that nothing, absolutely nothing, will stick to the bottom. Cookware with the handles on the corners making it easier to balance and thus safer to carry. It's the kind of cookware that no household should be without. Now, I know a lady in Bayonne, New Jersey, who bought a set of this cookware and . . .
My first day on the channel I sold almost two hundred thousand dollars' worth of this wonderful product. And, I didn't even have to throw in the juicer.
After fifty years in the business, after becoming one of the most recognized personalities on television, after hosting or cohosting tens of thousands of hours of television programs, I was right back where I started: selling pots and pans.
I loved it, I absolutely loved it.