One memorable evening on The Tonight Show the great comedian "Lonesome" George Gobel began reminiscing about his career as a pilot during World War II. "I fought the whole war in Oklahoma," he explained, causing the audience to laugh. "I don't know why you laugh. That's evidently where they needed me or they wouldn't have sent me there." But then he added proudly, "We were pretty effective too. Not one Japanese plane got past Tulsa."
I certainly do not want to take anything away from George Gobel, but while he was busy defending the skies of Oklahoma, somebody had to protect Florida. As a United States Marine Corps fighter pilot, that was my job.
Like George, I did not fly in combat in World War II. Instead, I taught aircraft-carrier landings on land. But the government wanted a return on its investment in my training, so just as my career in television was starting to blossom, I was recalled for duty in the Korean conflict. I flew eighty-five missions over enemy lines in Korea. People who had never even seen any of my TV shows were shooting at me.
I don't know why I so desperately wanted to be a marine fighter pilot. Maybe because my distant relative Joe Kennedy was a naval aviator. Maybe because my father made flying seem so exciting. Whatever the reason, while I was a student at Lowell High School I joined the Civilian Military Training Corps, which was the military version of President Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps. For several weeks during two summers I went to a military training camp on Diamond Island in Maine, where I was taught how to march and shoot and follow orders. It was in the CMTC that instructors first recognized my natural leadership qualities and promoted me to sergeant. Those qualities consisted primarily of the fact that I was the tallest person in my squad and had the loudest voice. If I had chosen to enlist in the real man's army, I qualified for a commission as a second lieutenant. But I didn't want to be a soldier, I wanted to be a marine—and not simply a marine but a marine aviator.
In preparation for the war that seemed inevitable, the navy had created the V-5 program. By completing two years of college, a participant could qualify to be an aviation cadet, the first step toward becoming a marine aviator. I wanted to go to the University of Notre Dame, but I couldn't afford the tuition. So one afternoon I drove the large bingo rig with MULCAHEY & DEAN painted brightly on its sides right up toney Chestnut Hill to Boston College and enrolled. It was a colorful and auspicious debut.
My freshman year I did well in all of my courses— physics, calculus, chemistry, biology, and poetry—all except German. As an electrical engineering major I was required to take German because so many of the great mathematicians had written in German. But German was Greek to me. I flunked it my first semester—the only course I've ever failed—and just barely passed it second semester.
Besides keeping up with my studies and holding down several jobs, I ran for freshman class president. My campaign strategy consisted of handing out ink blotters proclaiming, "Everybody's Sayin' We Want McMahon." Truthfully, no one was really saying it—especially not the coeds—but everyone wanted the free blotter. I won the election.
In the middle of my sophomore year the navy reduced the entrance requirements for its cadet program; I immediately dropped out of Boston College and enlisted. It was then that I heard the four words that since the founding of this republic have become synonymous with our great military heritage: hurry up and wait. I had to wait several months to be inducted. Doing has always been easy for me; I get up, I go, I do. I like the phone to start ringing early and continue ringing till late at night, I like every minute of my day to be filled; waiting is tough for me. The most difficult thing for me to do is nothing.
While waiting to be called I got my first real job in broadcasting. I was hired to be the night announcer on WLLH, the Synchronized Voice of the Merrimack Valley. WLLH was a three-hundred-fifty-watt station that, if the winds were blowing just right, could be heard all the way from Lowell to Lawrence. During the day I worked on a surveyor's crew, starting as a rod boy and eventually becoming assistant crew chief. I had no idea what a rod boy was when I accepted the job, but whatever it was, I knew I could learn how to do it. I've always been a positive person. When I was offered the job as Carson's announcer on The Tonight Show, for example, no one had any idea exactly what form the job would take. But I knew from experience that I would figure out how to do it, whatever it turned out to be.
Christmas 1942 was a sad time for my family. America was at war, my father was too sick to work, and I was about to leave for military training. My mother was very upset that I was leaving. Like all mothers, she knew the dangers of sending her son off to fight a war. One night I overheard her on the telephone telling one of her bridge partners, "We're not going to have a Christmas this year. Edward is going off to the navy right after the New Year and I just . . . Ijust can't handle it."
Christmas had always been a special occasion in my family. Even when my father was struggling, there were always neatly wrapped presents under a brightly decorated tree. As long ago as I can remember, on Christmas Eve, after all the shopping was done, after all the presents were wrapped, my father allowed everyone to choose one present to open. Then we would share a bottle of wine. Later that night we would have homemade chicken soup and chicken sandwiches with beer. It was a warm and wonderful tradition. I knew this was going to be my last Christmas at home for a long time, and as my father had done for me, I wanted to make it special.
The day before Christmas I was working with my surveying crew just outside Bedford, Massachusetts, extending the runway on an army base. As I peered through my transit—my "gun," as surveyors call it—I saw the most beautiful blue spruce I had ever seen directly in my line of sight. It was about seven feet tall with wide, full branches. It was right in our path; it was going to have to be cut down. I must have smiled as I told an assistant, "That one's mine."
I cut it down myself and gently put it in the back of my Hudson Terraplane. As I drove home that night I stopped at a small convenience store and bought their last set of lightbulbs and remaining decorations. It was as dark as a New England night can be by the time I got home, and very cold, and in my memory it was snowing but that might be apocryphal. I put the tree over my shoulder and rang the doorbell. I had a key but I wanted my mother to answer the door. When she opened the door, I told her, "Muth, we're having our Christmas."
And so we did, and of all the Christmases of my life, that's the one I remember most of all.
Six weeks later I reported as ordered to the Fargo Building in Boston to begin a military career that would end almost five decades later. I was one of 150 naval cadets who had passed a series of rigorous tests and physical examinations. Technically a cadet was barely in the navy—"cadet" wasn't a rank, and we were treated with all the respect due that rank. As we stumbled into long lines that first morning, the sergeant called out my name. "McMahon," he screamed at me, "from this minute on you are in charge of this group. You will take them by train to Texarkana, Texas. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," I said in my deepest radio voice.
"And McMahon," he added, "you will not lose any of 'em."
I never learned why I was placed in command. Probably those same natural leadership qualities I had displayed on Diamond Island: height and voice. I'd traveled with my parents my entire childhood, I'd traveled with carnivals and circuses, but I'd never before traveled with 149 teenagers, most of whom had never been more than a day from home. For four days I herded this group to Texas. I made sure they got on the right trains and got all their meals; I taught them how to release the lock in the bathrooms and make long-distance telephone calls home. Some of these young people did not even know how to buy toothpaste. Many years later the incredible Jonathan Winters spent a weekend at my home. He climbed all over the furniture, made the most bizarre sounds, and did just about anything possible to entertain my children, but nothing he did even fazed me: I had once been in charge of 149 teenagers for four days and survived.
There wasn't even a military base in Texarkana. We learned to fly at a civilian field, wearing civilian clothes, living in private homes. The closest thing we had to a military uniform was a long white scarf that we wore while flying, the same type of scarf we imagined the heroic pilots of World War I had worn. In Texarkana I flew an airplane by myself for the first time in my life. People who have flown alone have experienced this incredible sense of freedom, and no words can adequately describe it to those who have not. I learned to fly in a lumbering Piper Cub, just about the most basic of all airplanes. From Texarkana, we went to naval training centers at Denton, Texas; Athens, Georgia; and finally to an "E-base"—the "E" standing for "elimination"—just outside Dallas, still as cadets attempting to qualify for the navy flight school at Pensacola, Florida.
In Athens we went through a three-month version of basic training. We spent those months being tested mentally and physically. On The Tonight Show we often had demonstrations of unusual physical prowess—people breaking plywood boards with their forehead, jumping off platforms, or performing complicated calisthenics. After one guest had completed his amazing display of calisthenics, Johnny asked me if I ever did that kind of workout. "No," I replied, "I have a man who does that for me."
Not in Athens, Georgia, though. One of those tests consisted of stepping on and off a bench twenty-two inches high for five minutes while carrying a pack one-third your weight—for me that was sixty pounds—to test your endurance and ability to recover quickly. Please, ladies and gentlemen readers, do not try this at home. The publisher cannot be responsible for the results. Now, what stepping on and off a bench while wearing a sixty-pound knapsack had to do with flying a sophisticated flying machine, I had not the slightest idea. But those people who could not do it for five minutes did not get to fly.
At the E-base we flew the Stearman biplane, one of those old-fashioned airplanes with two open cockpits and two wings that are still used in air shows, which we affectionately called the Yellow Peril. We called it that because it was painted bright yellow and the way we flew it put the pilot in great peril. It was used to teach us aerobatics—rolls, loops, spins, turns, steep climbs and dives—because its two wings gave it tremendous maneuverability. The maneuvers we learned to perform in the Yellow Peril would help us survive in combat. All we had to do was survive learning them. Some people did not.
But probably the most important thing I learned from the Yellow Peril was confidence, confidence in myself and my airplane. As an entertainer, each time I did something new—a movie, my nightclub act, a television sitcom—people would ask me if I was nervous. The answer was that, almost without exception, I was not. Flying an airplane to the top of a loop and then reducing air speed until the engine stalls and the plane starts dropping like a leaf makes me nervous; facing an audience does not. The ground is much harder than any audience. The confidence I gained doing Immelmann loops and chandelles and lazy 8s and wingovers extended through the rest of my life.
I had the first of several close calls in the Yellow Peril. During a training flight the plane suddenly seemed sluggish; it just didn't feel right. Pilots trust those feelings. I decided to land in a large field. As I stepped out of my airplane I looked down and there was a single die. It became my lucky charm. I put it in my pocket and carried it with me throughout World War II. It did its job.
One of every three candidates washed out at the E-base. The navy was finally satisfied that those of us who had made it to Pensacola could fly an airplane, and there they turned us into combat pilots. We flew the AT-6, a two-seat trainer in which we learned gunnery and bombing. At Pensacola we also took a battery of psychological tests that would determine the type of aircraft to which we eventually would be assigned. I wanted to fly the Corsair, a carrier-based fighter and just about the hottest piece of machinery in the air. But as I read some of the questions, I knew that if I answered them honestly I probably would not get the Corsair. Among these questions were "Would you strafe women and children in the street?" "Would you shoot an enemy pilot as he parachuted out of a plane?"
I answered them honestly. No, and no. As a result I was assigned to the B-25, a land-based bomber. The navy had decided that if I wouldn't strafe women and children, I'd have to bomb them. A lot of pilots loved the B-25; not me, I wanted fighters. So I requested an opportunity to plead my case before the psychological board.
When I appeared before the board I used every sales technique I knew. "I knew what answers you wanted," I told them, "and if I'd been dishonest and answered the questions that way, I'd be a fighter pilot. But I can't believe the marines want officers like that. I don't believe they want people who are willing to shoot innocent women and children. And as for enemy pilots, why should I shoot down a man in a parachute?"
To make sure he won't fly again, replied one of the board members, and maybe shoot me down.
"Well maybe he might extend the same courtesy to me if I ever have to jump out of a plane," I argued. "I think we all know about the great tradition of honor among pilots."
I got my Corsair. In 1938 the navy had decided to mount the most powerful aircraft engine being manufactured onto the smallest possible airframe. The result was the F4U Corsair, one of the finest airplanes ever made. I was six feet three inches tall and weighed about 180, big for a fighter jock, but that airplane fit me as though it had been cut by a fine tailor. When I slipped into the cockpit I felt like I was home. The Corsair was a gull-winged plane—the wings folded to save space aboard carriers—and it had a maximum speed of 425 miles per hour at twenty thousand feet and a range of fifteen hundred miles. Anyone who ever flew it can probably still tell you all its specs. I loved that airplane.
Of 150 young naval cadets with whom I entered the program, I was one of only two who eventually earned the gold wings of a U.S. Marine pilot. It took me almost two years to earn my wings, and it was worth every minute of it. But I think my training was as tough on my mother as on me. She knew I was stationed in Florida, but if a plane crashed anywhere in America, she was sure I was in it. "I'm in Florida, Muth," I tried to explain. "That plane crashed in Chicago."
"So then you're all right?"
After graduating from Pensacola I was assigned to Lee Field, which was about thirty miles outside Jacksonville, for further training in the Corsair, but first I got to go home. I wanted to surprise my mother. My parents were living in Hartford, Connecticut, where my father had taken a job at the Pratt and Whitney plant in East Hartford. When the war began, the carnival business had pretty much closed down for the duration, so he ended up as a supervisor at Pratt and Whitney—where the Corsair engine was built! My father and I worked out a great plan: I was going to hide at a neighbor's house and he was going to send my mother over there for some reason. When she knocked on the door, I would answer it.
Somehow, she sensed I was there. And she immediately decided that the reason I was hiding across the street was that I had been injured in an accident. "He's hurt, isn't he?" she demanded of my father. He insisted I was fine. "It's his legs; they're gone, aren't they?" She ran across the street in tears, convinced I had been wounded, crippled, or disfigured. Even after a full inspection, she persisted, "You're sure you're all right?"
Of course she had reason to worry. Believe me, flying the Corsair was a dangerous job. The Corsair earned the nickname the Killer because a lot of fine pilots died in that airplane. As was often said, any landing from which you walked away was considered a good landing. At Lee Field we learned how to land on an aircraft carrier. There is only one way to land on a carrier: very, very carefully. There is almost no margin for error. Life and death are a matter of inches. One morning I was practicing carrier landings at a satellite field near St. Augustine. The field was perfect for this job because it was surrounded by water. As I made my approach I kept my eyes squarely on the landing officer, who used flag signals to visually direct pilots onto a carrier. As I decreased my air speed to just about the minimum needed to keep the plane in the air, my engine suddenly started sputtering and I lost altitude much too quickly. I started choking the engine, just as I would have choked the engine on my old Hudson on a cold December morning in Lowell, desperately trying to squeeze a few more feet of air out of that plane. Somehow, I'll never know how, I made it to the very edge of the runway.
When I saw the landing officer a few minutes later, he said, "You know your wheels hit the water?"
I shook my head. I knew how lucky I had been. My approach had been so low that my landing gear had touched water. If my wheels had gone even a few inches deeper, the nose of my airplane would have pitched into the water and the plane would have flipped over. That's fate, that's all it is. If my wheels had been six inches lower, just imagine all the Alpo that never would have been sold.
I qualified as a carrier pilot by making eight landings on the USS Guadalcanal. There are two moments that every carrier pilot will remember his entire lifetime: his first takeoff from a carrier and his first landing. The takeoff is easier. You rev that engine about as high as it'll go, then release the brakes—and pray. Seconds later the deck suddenly falls out from beneath your wheels, the wings catch the wind, the plane begins to lift, and you're airborne. And very happy about it.
Landing is much more complicated. Very few things in my life will ever be as small as the aircraft carrier on which I had to land. When I was standing on the deck of a carrier, it seemed huge, miles long, like a small city. But it was amazing how fast that deck shrank when I got into the air. I had been flying for more than two years when I attempted my first carrier landing. I had flown several different types of aircraft in various situations. I had spent hundreds of hours in cockpits and thousands of hours in classrooms. I knew every nut and bolt on my airplane, I had studied the physics of flying, I understood aerodynamics. And yet, even with all that training, as I looked down upon the Guadalcanal from about thirty-five hundred feet, I thought, are they out of their minds? This is impossible. I remember thinking, Holy God, I gotta get back on that?
If I had spent time thinking about doing it, it probably would have made it more difficult. Instead, I just did it, exactly as I had been taught. My alternatives were limited: I either landed my airplane on that carrier or I found out how good a swimmer I really was. That is called motivation.
While waiting for the first all-marine carrier to be launched, I was assigned to Lee Field as an instructor and a test pilot. Mostly I checked out airplanes that had been repaired to ensure that they were flightworthy. One afternoon my roommate was showing off a bit for his "chicklets," his new class of trainees. He came in very low over the field and started to do a roll, but he didn't have enough power. He mushed in, his wing hit, and his plane cart-wheeled down the runway before exploding. They found his body almost two miles from the point of impact. I had to inventory his effects. That was pretty tough. I was ordered to take over his class. "I promise you," I told them, "you're all gonna live through this. Flight safety is going to be the first thing we think about in the morning and the last thing at night."
On our third training mission we flew to the satellite base at St. Augustine. Unfortunately, one of my trainees did a ground loop, meaning that his wingtip brushed the runway as he landed, causing the plane to start spinning. He was not hurt, but his plane was damaged. Mechanics had to take off the wing and repair the operating mechanism. When it was done, they suggested I take it up for a test flight. I had a lot of confidence in these mechanics, they were topflight, and I wanted to get my class into the air as quickly as possible. I tested the plane.
As soon as I got into the air I knew I was in trouble. That plane would not fly level. I couldn't get my left wing up higher than my wheels. It was down at about a forty-five-degree angle. If I tried to land, that wing would hit first, and someone else would have to inventory my effects. I held the stick with both hands and pulled it as far as I could to the side, but the plane would not respond. I made a couple of passes at the field, hoping that miraculously the operating mechanism would suddenly start functioning and I'd land safely. It didn't happen. The flight manual solution to this problem is pretty explicit: jump out of the airplane. The marines had a lot more invested in me than a piece of machinery. I told the tower that I was going to abandon my airplane. I climbed to the proper altitude, set a course for the everglades where the plane could crash without endangering other people, checked my parachute straps to make sure they were good and tight, opened up my canopy, released my safety belt, and got ready to jump.
Then the wind hit my face. Well, I thought, this is a really bad idea. I sat down in the cockpit, closed the canopy, and radioed the tower that I was going to attempt a landing. I made several passes over the field as I tried to figure out what to do. Below me I could see the fire engines and the meat wagons, the ambulances, lining up near the runway for my crash landing.
I probably made a dozen passes over the field as I tried to figure out what to do. Then I had an idea. The Corsair had a plate in front of the wheels that acted as a dive break. When a pilot was making a bomb run, just before he released his bombs he would pop his wheels, which slowed the plane and increased accuracy. I reasoned that the sudden change in airflow might also lift the wing just enough for me to sneak in. I tested it in the air a few times and it seemed to work. It really didn't matter if it was a good idea; it was the only idea I had. Marines never use the word "scared." Instead we say "apprehensive." I think it's accurate to say that I was extremely apprehensive. In fact, I would say I was about as apprehensive as it is possible to be.
I was coming in on the proverbial wing and a prayer. I made my approach with my wheels up. When I was just above the runway, I took a deep breath and popped my wheels. The wing came up and I hit the tarmac safely. Seconds after I hit the ground, the wing dropped again and I lost control of the plane. It swerved wildly across the field before I finally was able to brake. The first sound I heard was the fire-engine sirens racing toward me.
I scrambled out of that cockpit. Someone handed me a big mug of hot coffee, but I was shaking so badly that I sloshed it all over my hand. I may be the only plane-crash victim treated for burns from scalding coffee. When I calmed down I decided against flying back to Lee Field. Instead I rode back to the base in the bus with my students. It was a moment of ignominy—instructors never rode the bus with students—but I didn't care. I was thrilled to be on that bus.
Later in my career I occasionally heard claims that I laughed too easily and too often. Let me ask you, can you blame me?
While I was stationed in Jacksonville, I did something truly daring. Testing airplanes was one thing; getting married took a lot more courage. My years in the Marine Corps had changed me. I wasn't just a pilot; I was a Corsair pilot, a marine fighter pilot. As far as I was concerned, there wasn't anything better. I was very proud and I suspect I showed it. I was confident, cocky, and I knew how good I looked in my pressed uniform. In high school I never had much luck with girls. I told myself I was too busy with my schoolwork and jobs; the truth was that I was too shy. At Boston College I discovered the pleasures of romance, but I was there for less than two years. I tried to make up for that lost time in the service.
There were thousands of single women, the legendary Rosie the Riveters, working in defense plants in the Jacksonville area. Since I was a marine fighter pilot, basically all I had to do to attract some of them was survive. I was an officer and a gentleman and as such I was completely faithful to every one of the women I dated, at least while I was with them.
We were young and single, many of us were living on our own for the first time in our lives, and we were in the middle of the most devastating war in history. We really did not know what was going to happen the next day. So we worked hard during the day and partied hard at night. Admittedly there were times when I might have partied a little too hard. I remember I once found myself dating two women who lived in the same building. However, my problem was not that I was dating two women; no, my real problem was that I met someone else I really liked, and she lived in the same building as the other two girls.
Alyce Ferrell was adorable. She was working at the St. John's Shipyards as a secretary. We had met at the Officers' Club, where she was serving as a Junior Chamber of Commerce volunteer hostess, but since she knew both of the women I was dating—in fact one of them was her roommate—I did not pursue her. At least not immediately.
But one night I called for her roommate, who wasn't home, and Alyce answered the phone and we got into a long conversation. One thing led to another and the next thing I knew we had been married twenty-six years and had had four children. Not right away, of course—it took us almost a year before we were married.
We couldn't have been any more different. I was tall; she was small. I was raised in big cities like New York and Boston; she had grown up outside Dade City, Florida. I was a churchgoing Catholic; she was a Protestant. Somehow, though, it worked. There was a sweetness about her that I found irresistible.
I don't think I understood how truly different we were until I visited Alyce's home in Lacoochee. The town was so small that if you put it in a corner of the skating rink at Rockefeller Center, you probably wouldn't notice it right away. It probably hadn't changed too much since the turn of the century. The main road through town had a wooden sidewalk—only on one side. But what I saw there shocked me.
Maybe because I'd grown up around carnivals, where my family had lived and worked with people of different origins, races, and religions, or maybe because I knew all about the signs reading IRISH NEED NOT APPLY, I'd learned to judge people as individuals. In fact, when we lived in Bayonne, several of my friends were Japanese and I spent a lot of time with their families in their homes. That caused me some difficulty during the war. For example, I just couldn't use the word "Jap." I knew it was a derogatory term and I refused to use it. And I couldn't believe that our government would intern American citizens of Japanese ancestry in camps and take away their property. I ended up in a lot of pretty heated discussions with some of my fellow marines. On occasion I was called a "Jap lover," but that didn't bother me. I used to give a speech to each new class I taught, telling them, "This war started when several men went into a room and decided they wanted a war. It's not the Japanese people, it's their leaders. And it's going to end the same way, a few men going into a room and deciding to end the war. Your job is to stay alive until that happens . . ."
Prejudice of any kind has always been difficult for me to deal with. At Catholic University my senior thesis was titled "Against Restrictive Covenants in Housing." In any event, I drove into this town in which my future wife had been raised and just about the first thing I saw was a very small grocery store—the entire store couldn't have been more than fifteen feet by fifteen feet—but it had two doors, one marked WHITES, the other COLORED. It barely had room for a counter, yet it had two doors. Outside was a drinking fountain with a single pipe branching into two spigots, again marked WHITE ONLY and COLORED ONLY. Yet somehow Alyce had managed to break out of this environment, out of this lifestyle. And our four kids grew up completely without prejudice.
We were married on July 5, 1945, in Atlantic City. I was twenty-two years old. I wanted to be married by a priest in a church, but we were not permitted to do so because Alyce wasn't Catholic. Fortunately, we found a loophole in the rules. There was a brand-new Catholic church on a naval base near Atlantic City, so new that it hadn't been consecrated. So it looked just like a church, it felt like a church, but technically it wasn't a church. Because it wasn't a Catholic church, a priest was allowed to marry us in it.
Our first daughter was born the following April in what had once been the dining room of a lovely old home in Dade City. I wanted Alyce to be in the new hospital on the marine base at Cherry Point, but she insisted that her first child was going to be delivered by her family doctor. He had converted a home into a hospital. I stayed in the room with Alyce as long as I could, but after a while I couldn't handle it and waited outside. There was a book made into a movie that greatly affected me titled Claudia . Dorothy McGuire played the title role in the movie. It was about a lovely, innocent girl. And so our first daughter was named Claudia.
When Alyce and I decided to get married we knew that as soon as the new marine carrier was ready to be launched, I would be shipping out. A month later my orders to report to the West Coast were issued. Ironically, I received those orders the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Days later the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. My orders were rescinded; the war was over.
I was prepared to go to war, not to peace. I had always been honest with Alyce; I had told her that when the war ended I was going back into radio. But while I was in the service I had started hearing about television. No one knew too much about it—it was still basically considered radio with pictures—but everyone knew it was coming. I had a big decision to make: I could either get back into radio or return to college to prepare myself for television. I really didn't know what to do.
Right after the war ended, NBC hosted a series of welcome-home auditions to try to discover new talent for their vast radio network. The auditions were held on the mezzanine at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the same building in which we would later do The Tonight Show. I remember so well that when the elevator doors opened I saw the beautiful art deco carvings on the wall. I was nervous; when I did this audition I actually heard my knees knocking. I was given a B+ rating and my acetate, a large record, was distributed to all NBC affiliates. I received offers from two radio stations, one in Springfield, Massachusetts, the other in Montgomery, Alabama.
I wasn't used to turning down jobs of any kind, especially jobs on radio. But the prospect of working in television appealed to me. I knew it was a real gamble. I wasn't sure I could make it as a performer on television; I knew my voice was fine for radio, but I had no idea how I would look to TV viewers. Because there was no TV industry, no one knew how to prepare for a career in television. It seemed to me that learning how to act might be helpful. So, I decided to turn down the radio offers and enrolled in a university drama department.
My attitude hadn't changed at all: if I couldn't be a performer, I would be a writer; if I couldn't be a writer, I'd be a producer. But somehow, somewhere, whether it was radio or television or whatever else was invented, I was going to be in broadcasting.
I will now reveal a secret known to very few people. I coulda been a bulldog. I scored very high on the military version of the college entrance boards and was accepted to Yale University. Just imagine, if I had decided to go there, William Buckley's famous book could have been titled God and McMahon at Yale. It was not Yale's Ivy League reputation that impressed me but the fact that it was one of the few universities with a full drama department. In fact, I would have returned happily to Boston College if it had had a drama school. Alyce and I visited New Haven and I loved the Yale campus, but I was concerned about finding the kind of work that would enable me to support my wife and child there.
I was also accepted to Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Washington was the kind of big city in which I felt comfortable. It didn't have a boardwalk, but since it was the center of American politics, I knew people there would appreciate a good sales pitch. Catholic University was the seat of Catholic education in America, the only college in the country that offered a degree in canon law. Because the presidents of all the other Catholic universities studied there, it had tremendous power to influence the Church. At various times the leading philosophers of most of the Catholic orders taught there. It was a very serious place, which is why it was so unusual that it also had such a fine drama department.
The drama department was the creation of an extraordinary man, the Reverend Gilbert Hartke. Hartke somehow managed to convince the good fathers of this august university that drama should be an academic subject equal to philosophy or history, a task no more unlikely than giving a contribution to Jerry Lewis for muscular dystrophy and getting back change. Hartke proceeded to establish one of the premier drama departments in the world. He made it an exciting place to be. Helen Hayes gave her farewell performance in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night on his stage. Walter Kerr, who later became the New York Times theater critic, taught my playwriting class—and married one of my fellow students, Jean Kerr.
At Catholic University I learned that the hardest part of acting is being able to act as if you weren't acting. Besides carrying a full course load and working my usual four jobs, I performed in several productions. I played a lawyer in Aristophanes' comedy The Birds. I looked like Mercury—I was costumed in tights and a jerkin and my hair was powdered white and combed into a point. In order to make the curtain I had to leave the vegetable gadget stand I was operating in a store in Silver Springs, Maryland, at precisely the right moment. So as I was doing my spiel, "Yes, madam, I certainly will get to the onion slicer, thank you for reminding me," I was constantly glancing at my watch. At the last second I raced to the university, got into my costume and makeup, and walked calmly onstage to deliver my big line: "I 'm an attorney."
Let me try that reading another way for you; "I'm an attorney! "
I played a singing Polonius in a series of Shakespeareantype vignettes Walter and Jean Kerr wrote titled Thank You, Just Looking. I made a little extra money during that run by working as an usher. I'd seat the audience, then run backstage to get into costume.
The play was a big success. I'm sure my fine ushering played no part in that, but eventually the title was changed to Touch and Go and the play went to Broadway. Some of the performers went with it, but not me. I'm not sure I was offered my part, but even if I had been, I couldn't have accepted it. At most the part paid seventy-five dollars a week, and I couldn't have afforded to give up my dry-cleaning business just to be a Broadway actor.
I appeared on television for the first time while studying at Catholic University. An original play in which I had a small role was so successful that it was chosen to be used in an experimental broadcast. By 1947 many cities had their own television stations, but since these stations were not connected, there was no such thing as a network. I'm not even sure kinescopes, the very rudimentary videotapes, existed. Finally, several stations from Washington to New York were strung together by something called a coaxial cable. As far as I know, this play was to be the first show broadcast on the coaxial cable.
I played an officer in a play about the military. I suspect I got the part because of my strong audition and the fact that I had my own uniform. We transformed the basement banquet room of the Wardman Park Hotel into our studio and broadcast live on this makeshift network. When I look back on how we had to jury-rig lights and create our own sets, how our director and cameraman were inventing television as they went along, it seems impossible to believe that little more than two decades later technology had advanced so quickly that every person in America was able to watch Ed Ames toss a hatchet right between the legs of a human silhouette.
Officially I was enrolled in the Department of Speech and Drama, but I minored in scholastic philosophy. I was pretty good at figuring out how, but I wanted to try to understand why. The course I most wanted to take at the university was metaphysics, taught by Father Hart. Father Hart was a brilliant philosopher who had taught Fulton Sheen, and he accepted a limited number of students. I took three philosophy courses in summer school in preparation for this course and finally I was accepted. If I had stayed at Catholic University one more year, I would have taken Father Hart's legendary course, "God and Beauty." Isn't that a beautiful name for a course?
Father Hart was a very demanding teacher and his courses were difficult. At times he would give us the answers to his questions and I was so lost I still couldn't answer them. But I loved being in a classroom listening to him. I just loved it. Father Hart forced his students to wonder about the world. Unfortunately, it convened at ten o'clock in the morning, and on occasion I was so busy collecting dry cleaning that I had to cut it. Twice I was dropped from the class because of excessive absences, but each time I appealed to Monsignor Smith, the head of the philosophy department, and was reinstated.
One morning, just after I'd been put back in the class, Father Hart walked into the classroom, reached up and pulled the string to turn on the overhead lights, and continued to bless himself. "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost . . . ," he intoned, concluding, "and will Mr. McMahon see me after class today." I didn't know what he wanted, but at least I was in good company.
After class he asked me to walk with him. I was astonished; Father Hart was not known to commune with students. To me, this was sort of like taking a stroll with God. Finally, he sighed and asked, "Why are you doing this to me, Mr. McMahon? Why do you keep cutting my class?"
"I don't want to cut your class," I explained, "but I've got a wife and a child and to pay the bills I sell pots and pans and vegetable gadgets and I have this dry-cleaning business. Sometimes when I go to pick up the cleaning my customers make me wait while they take the hooks out of the curtains . . ." After listening to my explanation, he raised his hand to stop me. "Okay, all right, I understand. You can stay in my class, so long as you keep up your grades and hand in all your required papers. However, Mr. McMahon, let me point something out to you . . ." With that, he stopped and faced me. "Mr. McMahon, philosophy is for the idle man."
Philosophy is for the idle man. Isn't that beautiful? It was precisely the kind of observation that I would have loved to have been able to contemplate; unfortunately, I was too busy.
Father Hart was a large man, big and stocky, not fat, and although he often seemed distracted, he missed nothing that went on around him. One day Alyce was very sick so I had to bring Claudia with me to metaphysics class. She was almost three years old. As we got to the class, I warned her, "Sweetheart, Daddy loves you very much, but if you make one sound in that class, I'm gonna kill you. This is very important to me; I want you to sit on my lap and not make one peep."
I waited until Father Hart was right in the middle of his opening prayer. While everyone was standing and his eyes were closed in devotion, I snuck into the room. One of my classmates was a nun who had been in China for forty years. She was a big woman and I slipped in right behind her. I figured I could hide behind her without being seen. After the class sat down, Father Hart began his lecture. "Babes in arms and suckling babes," he said softly, "none are too young to learn metaphysics."
My grades at Catholic University were very good. In fact, the only reason I did not graduate cum laude is that I flunked one course: German. I took it to fulfill my language requirement, feeling quite confident that since I'd already taken two semesters of German at Boston College I certainly would be able to pass it. Well, I fooled myself right there. Even today German remains a foreign language to me.
I moved to Philadelphia after graduating from Catholic University and immediately—I mean the day I got there— I had my own show on WCAU, the local television station. Television was so new at that time that the television set was the star. It didn't matter what program was on, as long as the TV set was on. So I grew up along with television.
Within two years I was a television star. I was Philadelphia's Mr. Television. I was on the first cover of TV Digest, which eventually evolved into TV Guide. And perhaps when I returned to Catholic University to visit my old friends, I did walk with a bit of a swagger. As I walked into the office, the girl I'd paid to type my homework papers was operating the switchboard. Big star that I was, I naturally gave her a little kiss. "Guess what?" she said. "I'm working for Father Hart now. Hey, let me call him and tell him you're here."
I didn't want to bother Father Hart, but before I could stop her she had called him and he'd invited me to his quarters. This was really something special, like being invited to the White House—only more exclusive. I didn't know anyone who had ever been in his apartment. I walked into his living room and I couldn't believe it; the room was filled with piles of books, papers, reports, pamphlets, and brochures, tall piles of knowledge. As we sat down, he told me, "I'm glad you're here, Mr. McMahon. There is something I would like to ask you about . . ."
I had no idea what that could possibly be. Father Hart was a respected philosopher, an explorer in the wilderness of ideas. Even those times in class when I couldn't quite follow him, I knew I was being forced to learn how to think. He was someone I admired and respected tremendously. I couldn't imagine what he possibly could want to ask me.
"Mr. McMahon," he finally asked, "what's it like being on television?"
He had been asked to appear on local television shows several times, he explained, and had refused. But eventually he was going to have to do it. So he wanted to know as much as possible about it: how hot the lights were, where the cameras were situated, whether it was always necessary to use makeup. I ended up spending an hour with this great teacher, teaching him about television.
I certainly was qualified to do it. Just as I had been when my daughter Claudia was born, I was standing outside the door at the birth of commercial television. When I started in Philadelphia, we were doing only a few hours of programming every day, inventing television as we went along. I cohosted the first television program I ever saw. I had the advantage of being able to make my mistakes while almost no one was watching. Our programs were budgeted at somewhere between "Ed, you got any change in your pocket?" to "That's way more than we can afford." Our ratings weren't in numbers, but rather by name: "Jesse Stevens over at O'Reilly's Grill saw your show the other night," or "I heard that a friend of my girlfriend's friend watched it." I did talk shows, quiz shows, and cooking shows; I introduced movies; I hosted variety shows and documentaries; I did commercials; I even did a brief humor piece on the evening news. Television was so new that there were no rules, so we didn't have to worry about breaking any of them. We did some wonderfully creative things. On one of my shows, I interviewed a tree trimmer as we sat on the branch he was cutting. No one, I guarantee you, no one turned off that interview.
I was one of the first television personalities in Philadelphia, so as the popularity of television grew, so did my own. And with practice and experience, my work got better and better. By 1952 I was working on several programs, among them a daily morning chat show called Strictly for the Girls — that might have been the first morning show on television—and a Saturday morning circus program called The Big Top. But I wasn't satisfied just being the biggest clown in Philadelphia—I was determined that someday I would be the biggest clown on network television.
It almost happened. WCAU was part of the brand-new CBS television network, and CBS executives in New York liked my work. They thought I had a comfortable presence on the air, a high "likability." At a meeting in Philadelphia, they suggested broadcasting my morning show regionally and the circus show nationally. This was the opportunity I had been working for since my days in Katie's parlor. I was thrilled. And as it turned out, there was only thing that could keep me from accepting their offer. The Korean War.
At times people mistakenly refer to me as an ex-marine. I politely correct them, explaining that there is no such thing as an ex-marine. "Once a marine," I tell them, "always a marine." I love the United States Marine Corps and I'm extremely proud to be a marine. But, gee, sometimes the Marine Corps does have a terrible sense of timing.
Officially, the Korean War was not a war; it was a "police action." But if the North Koreans knew the difference, they certainly didn't show it. None of us who fought in Korea thought that the North Koreans had invaded South Korea just to screw up our lives, but it was hard not to take it personally. Many of us were World War II veterans and when we received our discharge papers in 1946 we sort of thought the government meant it. Many of us were just beginning to get established when we were recalled. Certainly no one would have objected if we felt our national security was clearly in danger, but Korea was more complicated than that. We tried to keep things in perspective, but there was a lot of bitterness. It was often said sarcastically, "This might not be the best war in the world, but it's the only one we've got."
Being recalled came as a great shock. I was on vacation in Florida with Alyce, Claudia, and our new baby, Michael, relaxing poolside for the first time in years, when I saw the chilling headline TED WILLIAMS CALLED BACK INTO MARINE CORPS. Ted Williams! Ted Williams, arguably the greatest baseball player of that time, was also a marine pilot who had served in World War II. We'd entered the service about the same time, gone through training about the same time, and gotten our gold wings at the same time. The military did everything by the numbers: if they were going to recall Williams at the height of his baseball career, I knew I would soon be packing my bright red circus nose, the nose that lit up and proclaimed HELLO!
The letter arrived several weeks later: "You are ordered to report to the Willow Grove Naval Air Station . . . for duty involving flying. Have all civilian affairs in order. Be in uniform. Bring no civilian clothing and be prepared to transfer."
The person I most worried about was my mother. She had never been a very strong woman, and her health was not good. I was afraid what this news might do to her. My father and I did everything possible to hide it from her until the last possible moment. We hid newspapers, we didn't tell anyone. But after six weeks' training in the Philadelphia area, I was ordered to report to the Third Marine Air Wing being formed in Miami, Florida. She cried for a weekend when we finally told her.
It took me three days to drive Alyce and the kids to Lacoochee. When we arrived, a Red Cross representative was waiting there to tell me my mother had died. Her fears for me had been too much for her heart to bear.
The morale among the troops was awful. Nobody understood what we were doing there—and we were still in Miami. While waiting, and wondering if I was going to be shipped to Korea, I was made the Air Wing's public information officer because of my media background. My job was to keep a lot of bored and bitter people happy. This was a hard job. I organized dances, parties, and concerts. I had my own radio show. I also started a theatrical group and we toured with a play called Kiss and Tell that I had produced, directed, and cast. I even started a talent show on Miami television, sort of a military version of Star Search. I picked the talent from the base: the singing mess sergeant, the dancing clerical corporal, the bad ventriloquist. I managed a basketball team that won a league championship. I did everything I could think of to keep these people occupied and entertained. But the waiting was devastating, and worse, none of us had the slightest idea what we were waiting for.
After several months I finally got my orders to Korea, by way of the El Toro Marine Air Station in California. This was the first time in my adult life I'd been to southern California, and I wanted to see Hollywood. A friend of a friend was the assistant musical director at 20th Century Fox and he invited me onto the lot. We spent a brief time together and then he asked, calmly, as I remember it—much the same way he might have asked if I wanted a cool drink— "Captain McMahon, would you like to meet Marilyn Monroe?"
Calmly, as I remember it—as casually as I might have acted if he had asked me if I would like to be king of England—I said, "Yeah. That'd be great." Meet Marilyn Monroe? Not a difficult question. I probably could even have answered that one in German. I mean, that's like asking someone if they would like to take their next breath.
Marilyn Monroe was shooting How to Marry a Millionaire. When she finished her scene, they brought me to her trailer. They explained to her that I was a TV star from Philadelphia who had been recalled and was on his way to Korea. Her face lit up. As soon as she finished the picture, she told me, she was going to go to Korea to entertain the troops. And then she invited me inside her trailer.
It was just the two of us in her trailer, just Marilyn Monroe and Ed McMahon. We spent a half hour together. Marilyn Monroe in person was as beautiful as she was in the fantasies of every American male. She was dressed casually in a pair of slacks and a loose blouse, but she was radiant. She was also sweet. I don't remember what we spoke about, but as I prepared to leave, she said, "It's so nice to meet you. Now I'll know somebody when I get to Korea. How can I find you when I get there?"
The Marine Corps would know where I was stationed, I replied, then said, "I've got to ask you a favor. If I could have a picture of you I could show the guys in the squadron, I'd be the hero of heroes. They'd go wacko!" Actually, looking back, "wacko" was probably a poor word choice.
"I've got a better idea," she said. "Why don't we take a picture? Let me just fix my hair and I'll be right out."
I waited outside for her. When she finally came out, she was dressed in a gorgeous fur coat. She kind of snuggled in next to me and, as the photographer got ready to take our picture, whispered to me, "You know, Ed, I don't have anything on under this."
So that's why I'm smiling so broadly in that photograph.
A few days later I met Montgomery Clift. Eventually I would meet just about every major celebrity in America, and I'd become close friends with several of them. But at this time the most famous people I had ever met were the host of a local dance show named Dick Clark and a local Philadelphia newscaster named Jack Whittaker. Nice guys, but hardly international movie stars. Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift were major movie stars. I met Montgomery Clift in the Cine Grill of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel my last night in the States. I was in uniform and he kept sending me drinks, so naturally I kept sending him drinks. Then he sent me more drinks and I . . . well, eventually we started drinking together and I can't remember a single thing we talked about. Maybe drinking, which would be the reason I can't remember what we talked about.
That was some first week in Hollywood. I can't imagine what Alyce thought about all of this. Supposedly I was leaving for Korea to fight Communism, but then I called and told her that I'd just spent a half hour alone in a trailer with Marilyn Monroe. Now, if she found that difficult to believe, a day later I called to tell her I'd spent much of the previous night drinking with Montgomery Clift. I'm sure she must have wondered what exactly I was drinking.
I arrived in Korea in February 1953. Finally, I was going to do what I had been trained to do ten years earlier: fly in combat. But when I got there I was assigned to a new airplane. The hottest planes in Korea were the brand-new Sabre jets. I hadn't piloted any type of aircraft in eight years and I wasn't qualified to fly jets, so they put me in a small plane, a very small plane, a very small plane with fabric wings, a Cessna. Think of the kind of safe, slow plane people fly out of local airports on Saturday afternoons. That was the Cessna. Now think of that same airplane flying low over North Korean lines with absolutely no armament. That was me piloting the Cessna in Korea.
I would be piloting artillery spotters. We were stationed at a makeshift base about two miles behind our front lines. It was like M*A*S*H, but without the great writers. Korea was cold and wet and very dangerous. The Cessna was not much more elaborate than a kite with wings. We often flew through enemy fire, everything from antiaircraft fire to shots from small arms. Sometimes we got bounced around pretty good by the flak. At those times I just couldn't help but think how crazy this whole thing was: only months earlier I'd been hosting television programs in one of the great cities of the world; now I was living in a tent with a mud floor, and complete strangers were trying to kill me. Critics of my work in Philadelphia were tough, but at least they weren't armed.
Avoiding enemy fire required skill, luck, and intuition. Skill meant never repeating a flight pattern. By continually changing altitude and direction, we prevented the North Koreans from getting a bead on us with their radar. They never knew how high we would be flying or when we would turn. The worst thing a pilot could do was get complacent and forget to take evasive maneuvers. Luck was . . . just luck. Intuition—that was interesting. I would be flying a particular pattern and suddenly I'd get a feeling that would cause me to alter my course. There was no reason for the feeling, but I always respected it. We always flew with an artillery spotter, and these men liked to follow a certain pattern because it made their job easier. So we were torn between helping these guys do their job and being cautious. We never knew when we would be fired on. One lovely afternoon, I was flying a relatively straight pattern and suddenly, I'll never know why, I made a sharp turn to my right. "What the . . . ," my observer started complaining. A split second later—poomp, poomp, poomp, poomp, poomp —five bursts of flak exploded directly in our former flight path. If I hadn't turned, I would've flown right into them. There's no doubt in my mind that we would have been shot down.
We would fly for six weeks, then have a six-day leave in Japan. Six weeks of danger, six days of pleasure. Near the end of this nonwar, my close friend Chuck Marino, the pilot with whom I flew in rotation, and I took a leave together. We spent six wonderful days in Tokyo, then returned to base.
Our first day back I flew an ordinary two-hour hop over the front lines, then he relieved me. Normally, the transfer of this responsibility was conducted in strict military fashion: the relief pilot would salute and report, "Captain McMahon, you are relieved. I'm up on station now." But a popular song of that time asked the question "What did I do to make you mad at me this time, baby?" to which there was some sort of response, "Well, baby . . ." So instead of the official "You are relieved . . . ," he would salute and ask me, "Captain McMahon, what did I say to make you mad at me this time, baby?" and I would respond with the appropriate lyric.
Two hours later I returned to the station to relieve him. He never came back. He had been shot down. We spotted the wreckage of his plane in no-man's-land, but there was no sign of life. For a time there was some hope he had survived. There were reports that one person had parachuted out of the plane and been captured. That turned out to be his observer.
It didn't seem possible. This was my best friend in Korea. We'd just spent six days together in Japan raising hell. One mistake, one bit of bad luck, and he was dead. Just like that. It didn't take very long for the initial shock to disappear, to be replaced by the terrifying, selfish knowledge that it could have just as easily been me. With his death I lost all my bravado; I lost my belief that it couldn't happen to me. The next few days I flew with white-knuckled concentration. But gradually the routine of daily life in the middle of a war took over, the parties continued, and we fell back into our old habits as we did our jobs.
Unlike in World War II, during which we knew that the entire country was mobilized for the war, the feeling in Korea was that life back home was moving forward without us. In Philadelphia, three people had taken over my programs, and within months all the shows were off the air. In our situation the only way to maintain our sanity was to create our own unique world. Which is why, soon after I arrived in Korea, I decided to build the most beautiful bar ever seen in that war.
When I arrived in Tungaree, as this area was called, the so-called officers' club was in a filthy old hospital tent with dirt floors. It was lit by a single two-hundred-watt bulb, which was the best thing about it, because it made it impossible to see how awful this place really was. I sat there one night, looked around, and decided, "I'm gonna build a great club right here." If I built it, I knew, boy, would they come. Talk about a captive audience.
Everybody thought I was crazy, so I fit right in. With six hundred dollars I had raised from fellow officers, I built a lovely club. The bar was made out of Philippine mahogany; we cut ammunition crates in half, then roped them together to make bar stools, cleaned up the tent, added tables, chairs, and a little jukebox, and covered the floor with the squadron emblem. I paid the Korean kids in gum to collect fresh flowers every day for the tables and installed some subdued lighting. It wasn't the Copacabana, but it was a lot more appealing than a dirty old hospital tent. And if you stayed there long enough, it began to look a little like the Copacabana.
The night we opened for business we had a special treat: nurses! The Red Cross had arranged an exchange of prisoners, and the nurses were there to treat wounded soldiers. As a surprise to my fellow officers, I imported six, count 'em, six lovely nurses for the dedication of this club. And indeed, my fellow officers were dedicated to these nurses. I got the nurses there for the opening. For what happened after that, I bear no responsibility. But I never saw them again.
Because we were so close to the front lines, we were not permitted to sell drinks by the glass, although officers were permitted to keep bottles of liquor. So you could buy a bottle of vodka, but you couldn't order a single martini. I beat that system by cutting out paper chits for individual drinks in the shape of a gin bottle. My customers would buy one of these "bottles," a piece of paper, and trade it for a single drink.
The world-famous "Mactini," famous at least in that little part of the world, was invented in my club. I am a martini drinker; however, I drink martinis only when there is something to celebrate. Often what I am celebrating is the fact that I have a martini to drink. We got our liquor from Tokyo, where it was very cheap. One morning, as a pilot got ready to take off on a whiskey run, I told him to bring back some Noilly Prat vermouth. He returned with six cases. Six cases is enough vermouth to make, I estimate, one hundred thousand martinis. And we made a beautiful martini: we poured vermouth into a shaker filled with ice, then emptied the shaker, and used only the vermouth that clung to the ice to make a martini. Or Mactini, as it became known. We sold them for fifteen cents.
By any name, a martini is a very strong drink. As the great Dorothy Parker once wrote, "I like to have a martini, Two at the very most. After three I'm under the table, After four I'm under my host!" I held the squadron record for Mactinis. Ten. After that I rested on my laurels. Actually, I gently went to sleep on my laurels.
My officers' club was so successful that the NCOs, the noncommissioned officers, asked me to build one for them. After that was completed I built a beer hall for the enlisted men. As mess officer I instituted a system in which soldiers could order breakfast prepared the way they wanted it, instead of having to take whatever the cook piled up. Now, that might not sound like a very important contribution to the war effort, but anyone who has ever had to look at a mountain of cold fried eggs at six o'clock on a freezing cold morning in Korea will appreciate the magnitude of that particular change.
Bob Hope never showed up. Marilyn Monroe came to Korea, but never called. We didn't exactly get the top-name entertainers. We got . . . an accordion player. A famous accordion player who had been a conscientious objector during World War II was trying to make amends by touring the frontline camps in Korea. I was asked to serve as master of ceremonies for the evening. After the accordion player had concluded his concert, somebody suggested, "A lot of people aren't aware of this, but Captain McMahon sings the blues. Let's get him to sing for us."
I don't think anybody wanted to hear me sing the blues. But this was a great opportunity for me; this was my chance to fulfill the dream of every entertainer who has ever set foot on a stage. I was following the accordion player!
It didn't really matter how good or bad I was; I was following the accordion player.
Let me brag a little bit. I can sing the ad-lib blues. I can get up on a stage with a band that knows how to play the blues and make up lyrics that make sense and rhyme. I have no idea where this talent comes from, but I've always been able to do it. I discovered I had this ability as a teenager in Boston. When I would take a date out to the Totem Pole, a dance club, I would make up my own lyrics to whatever music the big band was playing. My girl and I would be dancing close, the band would be playing, and I'd sing my song softly just to her. I remember one song in particular. So why don't you just settle back and let me do it for you? It goes a little something like this:
Come on up to my house, baby,
I'll show you my purple room;
That's right, come up to my house,
I'll show you my purple room.
Be careful not to rub against the walls,
They've been painted with perfume.
Maybe it isn't Doc Severinsen and the NBC Orchestra, but as an ad-lib lyric in the Totem Pole it was very effective.
The song I created that night in Korea was not quite as romantic. At the time, there was a type of infection being spread mostly between American soldiers and Korean women that was called a "nonspecific infection." It was spread by close contact, very close contact. So I titled this song "The Nonspecific Blues."
If you're just now coming over, I've got info for you, dad. Take the saki and the hot bath, but please avoid the pad. They'll serve you steak and saki, and wicky-wacky woo, When she threw that hot bath at me, what else could I do? I've got the nonspecific blues, those mean old, nonspecific blues. I was greeted at the doorway by a girl named Lotus Face, She wore a loose kimono, this must be the place . . . Well, I flew my hundred missions, I got my DFC, I'm s'posed to go home Thursday, my wife's expecting me. She'll be most unhappy when she hears my tour ain't ending, But since I got that other discharge, lover boy's extending. I've got the nonspecific blues, oh yeah, those mean old,
nonspecific blues.
Thank you, thank you very much. Now let's hear the accordion player squeeze a few bars in his book!
After I'd flown sixty-three missions, I took R and R in Japan. While in Tokyo, I met the major who was running the Armed Forces Radio and TV Network in the Far East. My timing was almost perfect. He had been offered the chance to run the operation from Hawaii if he could find a qualified replacement to take over Tokyo. He offered the job to me.
It was a really plush job. You got to live in a nice apartment in Tokyo instead of a tent, you spent your time with broadcasters, and no one was shooting at you. The major submitted a formal request through channels that I be transferred to Tokyo upon completion of my flight duty, while I went back to Korea to complete my missions. A complete tour of duty consisted of one hundred missions; I had thirty-seven more to fly. I wanted to get finished as quickly as possible so I started volunteering to fly several times a day. One day I flew five missions and spent ten hours over enemy lines. I flew eighty-five missions. I was on the runway getting ready to take off on my eighty-sixth mission when the fighting stopped. The war that wasn't a war ended without an ending. The fighting just stopped. There was no peace treaty, no armistice, but a cease-fire was declared.
I immediately requested a transfer to Japan. During a meeting with my commanding general, he asked me why I hadn't requested this transfer sooner. "If I had," I explained, "you would've thought I was trying to get out of flying my missions."
He paused to consider that. "You're absolutely right, marine," he said, "but I'm still going to turn you down. This thing is ending; you won't be there long enough to make any difference."
I was terribly disappointed. Head of the Far East Network– Tokyo was a big job. It would've really looked impressive on my résumé. Imagine if I had gotten that job; I could have returned to the States and really been successful in TV.
Instead, he put me in charge of a radio station at a large base. I made myself the all-night disc jockey. I did music with commentary, using my stories to introduce the songs I loved. "It was a long trip on that train taking us from Boston to Texarkana," I'd say softly, "and late at night, when most of the men around me were sleeping, I'd keep changing stations on my radio until I heard the soothing tones of Miss Peggy Lee, singing this great song, 'Why Don't You Do Right?' Ladies and gentlemen . . . Miss Peggy Lee."
I worked all night and during the day floated on a raft on the Yellow Sea.
We were all homesick. While we were fighting the war, staying alive occupied most of our attention, but once the cease-fire began, all we wanted to do was get home and get back to our lives. I had an additional concern. Just before I'd left the States, Alyce had gotten pregnant. As her due date approached and I didn't hear anything from the Red Cross, I got more and more anxious. Finally I got special permission to fly to Tokyo to call the hospital. This was only a few years after the end of World War II, so the international telephone system was only a little better than a tin can and an eight-thousand-mile-long string. There was a long waiting list to call the States; I had to sign up and wait my turn. I waited almost a full day, most of it in the bar at the Imperial Hotel. And as I waited I got more and more nervous. Why hadn't I heard? Something must have gone wrong. Was my wife all right? What about the baby? I worked myself into a state of pure anxiety.
Finally, finally, my number was called. It was about two o'clock in the morning in Florida when I got through to the hospital. It was a bad connection and I was screaming into the phone. The switchboard transferred me to the maternity floor. When the night nurse answered the phone, I yelled, "I'm calling about Alyce McMahon. She's there having a baby. I need to find out . . ."
"I'm sorry," the nurse said, "she's sleeping now. They're both sleeping now." And before I could explain that I was calling from Japan, that I'd been trying to get through for a day, she hung up. No good-bye, no explanation; she just hung up. I had to go back to the rear of the line and work my way back up to the phone. Another day later I learned that Alyce was fine and that our daughter Linda had been born.
I flew eighty-five missions, but it was with my pen that I became a hero in Korea. I was scheduled to be discharged in December, but I wrote a letter to the commandant requesting early release, explaining that the new TV season began in September and that in order to get a job I had to be home by then. Otherwise I might have to wait a whole year. My request was rejected right up the entire chain of command. It was rejected in Korea, rejected in Tokyo, rejected in Hawaii, rejected at Treasure Island in San Francisco, but amazingly, when it got to Washington, it was approved. I received a letter from the Commandant, United States Marine Corps, ordering "that this officer must be in the continental limits of the United States no later than September 10, 1953 . . ."
When other marines heard that I had been successful, they asked me to write similar letters for them. I wrote a letter for Jerry Coleman, the New York Yankees infielder, enabling him to get back to New York in time for the World Series. I wrote letters for businessmen explaining that they had to be home to prepare for the Christmas season, for advertising executives who needed to pitch new accounts, even for lawyers asking to be home in time for the holiday lawsuits.
My career in the marines did not end when I returned home. Although I never flew again as a marine pilot, I stayed active in the Marine Corps Reserve. I completed twenty-three years in the marines and retired as a full colonel. My pride in the Marine Corps has never diminished. The corps taught me to be on time, to have everything I need with me wherever I go, and to leave each place I go as it was when I got there. I've learned that in life, as in the marines, the job is to finish what you start and if you get lucky, as I have, to give something back. I've been asked often how I felt about my career in the Marine Corps. And my answer is that it just pleased the hell out of me.
Including all ten Mactinis.