One night we had a five-year-old spelling champion on The Tonight Show and Johnny was showing him some simple sleight of hand. He made a quarter disappear, then produced it from the little boy's ear. The young man tried to do it himself, then asked Johnny, "How do you make it really disappear?"
Without hesitation, Johnny told him, "You get married."
Our personal lives were always topics of discussion on the show, particularly our marriages and divorces. One night, for example, Doc complained, "I was out Christmas shopping for Johnny today. It's hard to buy for him because what can you buy for a man whose ex-wives have everything?"
One of the classic moments on the show took place the night before Thanksgiving, when Johnny asked Doc if he was going to help his wife stuff their turkey. "Noooo," Doc told him, "there is no Mrs. Severinsen."
"Oh, that's right," Johnny said. "I didn't mean to do that."
"The fact that I never helped her stuff her bird was one of our big problems," Doc explained.
"I thought that was your problem," Johnny laughed, then admitted, "You know, I forget all about that. We've been together so long that I forget sometimes where we are . . ."
"She's still stuffing the turkey," Doc added a little bit later, "but now it's with money."
"Well, it's nice to know you have no bitterness . . ."
There were many times when I wished my personal life wasn't so publicly known. It wasn't fun having my personal failures exposed on national TV. But Johnny and Doc and I knew that every person in our audience had problems of their own; they were watching us to be entertained, maybe to forget their problems, so whatever we were feeling inside, there was nothing we could do about it except bite the bullet and keep smiling. It was a lot easier to joke about these things than it was to live through them.
During the time we did the show I went through two very painful and very public divorces. Those were the kinds of things that made the newspapers, so we couldn't avoid talking about them, we couldn't pretend they didn't happen. At times my life was very glamorous—I did get to go to wonderful places and among my friends are some of the most talented people in the world. I know how fortunate I am, but no matter how exciting my life might have seemed to viewers, most of the time the things that concerned me on a daily basis were the same things that they were dealing with: trying to make my marriages work, raising my four kids—including my son Michael, who was very troubled— and earning enough money to pay the rent and make alimony payments.
As W. C. Fields might have said, "Ahh yes, my good friends, I believe very strongly in the sanctity of marriage." In fact, I believe in it so strongly that I got married three times! That was certainly never my intention. When I married Alyce Ferrell, I was twenty-two years old and I thought I was marrying her for better or worse, but definitely forever. I was raised a Catholic, for a long time I was a daily communicant, and I believed that you married for life. My parents did not have a good marriage, they separated several times; that had been tough on me. I didn't want my kids to have to live through that.
Alyce was a lovely person and a very attractive woman. She was petite, charming, very innocent, I thought, and vibrant. She had a lovely southern accent and traditional southern values. For a long time we were very good together: she made a beautiful home for our family, my friends loved her, and she was a wonderful mother to our children.
We started with nothing. For a time we lived on whatever I made that week on the boardwalk or in my dry-cleaning business. One of my proudest moments was when I was finally able to buy her a car for her birthday. I had it well planned. I had cut footprints out of paper and when she was sleeping I laid a path from the bed to the window. I had covered the window with paper and written HAPPY BIRTHDAY on it, but I had cut a hole out for the dot over the i. When Alyce followed the footprints to the window and looked through that hole, there was her car parked in the street. It had taken me days to get that parking spot. The car was used, it was all I could afford, but we were both thrilled.
The first house we owned was in Hialeah, Florida. I was on my way to Korea, she was pregnant with our third child, and I didn't want to leave her in an apartment, so we bought a house for eleven thousand dollars in Hialeah. Since my Marine Corps pay was only nine thousand dollars a year, that was a lot of money. When I came home we returned to Philadelphia, and eventually moved from the Drexelbrook apartments to a beautiful house in the suburb of Gulph Mills. Days after we moved in I got the call from Dick Clark's producer telling me to come to New York to audition for Who Do You Trust? , and my life changed forever.
I commuted to New York every day for eight years. When it looked as though The Tonight Show was going to last, we moved to Bronxville, just outside the city, into a larger house. We lived there until we separated and I moved with The Tonight Show to California.
I was much more a qualitative father than a quantitative one. There were a lot of nights, a lot of family dinners I missed. I don't just mean that I wasn't there; I mean that I really missed being there.
I tried to make up for it as much as I could by making the time we spent together special. When I was with my kids I tried to make life as much of a party as possible. A long time ago I started something I called "the sky's the limit." That meant when we were out for dinner they could order absolutely anything they wanted and as much of it as they wanted. To the kids it meant they could have the chocolate cake—and the ice cream sundae, or six ice cream cones—if that's what they wanted. I mean, you would die before you could eat all that, but just knowing for that one time in your life you could have as much of anything as you wanted made it special. You could have your cake and eat it too, and then have another cake if you wanted it. I did it with my four children with Alyce, I do it with my grandchildren, and now I'm doing it again with my beautiful adopted daughter, Katherine Mary.
We had several family traditions. On Christmas, for example, all their presents would be spread out around the living room—except their big present. That would be in another room. I was big on spoiling my kids. I tried to get them whatever it was they wanted, a bicycle or skis or a classical guitar; the sky was the limit on presents too. Once, I remember, more than anything else Linda wanted to get her ears pierced and Alyce didn't think it was a good idea. Linda wanted it so badly, she would buy pierced earrings, break off the stems, and glue them to her ears. Well, I talked Alyce into it and one Christmas her big present was in a tiny box. It was a pair of pierced earrings. I told her that the next day I was going to take her to have her ears pierced. So the next day we went to the doctor's office and as I was waiting outside she started screaming. I couldn't resist. "Sorry, Linda," I yelled to her, "but that's the price one must pay for beauty."
One of the best of our family traditions was spending the summers at our house in Avalon on the Jersey shore. A lot of our friends from Philadelphia bought property there, so it was like one large family gathering. At night we'd take long walks on the rickety old boardwalk or go to the ancient movie theater—I think we saw The Dirty Dozen a dozen times—and once each summer all the men would pile the kids and their friends into three big station wagons and the whole raucous mob would go to the amusement park in Wildwood. That was a big event; the kids would start talking about it in June. It seems to me that the main object that night was to see exactly how much junk food—popcorn, candy, ice cream, pizza—we could eat while going on every ride that turned your stomach in a new direction. Let me pause here to say one thing: if I never again, not even once more, ride on the Hell Hole, a ride that spins so fast that gravity pins you against the wall and reminds you never to combine ice cream and popcorn, that will be too soon. Sure, I sometimes missed events in the kids' lives, but we'll always have the Hell Hole.
The biggest tradition was our Fourth of July weekend gala. Our wedding anniversary was July 5, so to celebrate that we staged a big horseshoe tournament on the beach right in front of our house, pitting the bayers, the people who lived on the bay, against the beachers, the fine, upstanding human beings, the wonderfully giving, generous people who lived on the beach. We were beachers. We'd close off the block for the day, kids would get dressed in costume, people would mount floats on cars, I'd serve hot dogs, and my son Jeff would be the bartender. And the next day we'd hang a banner on our house announcing the winning team.
Another of the great Avalon traditions was my having problems with my boat. I like to think of myself as a skilled yachtsman. I like to think of myself that way, even if it isn't true. I always had a boat and at least once each season there would be some sort of minor boating disaster. I'd run aground, I'd run out of gas, I'd crash into something small. The truth is, as anyone who has ever owned a boat will tell you, it wasn't always my fault. One summer, for example, I got a beautiful Donzi, one of the greatest speedboats ever built, and my friend Bob Gillin and I were going to drive it from a New York yacht club to Avalon. We had a big party at the yacht club—Carson, Skitch Henderson, a lot of people from the show were there—and they piped us aboard my new boat and we were ready to cast off. Then Gillin had the audacity to ask me, "You did remember to get the charts, didn't you, Ed?"
Of course I did. I was prepared. I'd stopped at the local Gulf station and gotten their best road maps. I don't know what Gillin was complaining about that day; if that boat had gotten lost on any highway in New York state we would have been able to get back safely. And there was certainly a lot of water pictured on them.
At night, water looks pretty much the same. One evening Alyce and I and the Gillins took my boat to a waterside restaurant. We were all nicely dressed. During dinner the Gillins had an emergency at their home, and someone offered to drive them. Alyce went with them and I took the boat by myself. When I hadn't returned by two in the morning everybody got scared. They thought I had gotten lost and taken the boat out into the ocean. In the middle of the night several of my friends got into their boats and started searching for me. At sunrise they alerted the Wildwood police. Now there was a full-scale search going on for me.
Meanwhile, the mosquitoes had found me. I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and had gotten lost, then I'd run aground. There was nothing I could do but go to sleep until the morning and then hail a passing boat for help. At seven o'clock an elderly couple in a small boat were puttering by when I stood up in my boat and asked for assistance. Now, imagine this nice elderly couple just out for a nice morning on the water, when suddenly Ed McMahon stands up in a boat and asks for help. I guess it could have been worse; they could have found me standing in their living room.
So as half of Avalon and the Wildwood Police Department searched for me, I was towed into the bay by this lovely couple in their tiny boat.
So much for tradition.
There were many nights when the kids were asleep by the time I got home. I often left messages for them to find in the morning. I had this little label maker; I would press letters into a plastic strip with an adhesive back and stick it to their mirror. So Michael would walk into his bathroom and see my reminder, SHAPE UP OR SHIP OUT, and Claudia, who used to stoop, would find my message telling her, KEEP YOUR SHOULDERS BACK, and Linda, who spoke like a baby when she wanted attention, would find DON'T TALK BABY-TALK on her mirror.
But more than big presents or trips or ice cream, what I tried to give to my kids was a reasonable set of values. I tried to teach them to respect other people. I've always believed that we're here on earth for a purpose, and that is to do as much as we can with what we're given. It's my modification of the biblical credo, where much is given, much is expected. To me that means both working hard in whatever it is that brings you financial support as well as using whatever you have to benefit the people around you as much as possible.
It means being thoughtful and courteous, being supportive of other people, caring for them when they need it, and giving back to others as much as possible. I'm so fortunate to have had a talent with which I've been able to make a fine living, but I also always felt I had an obligation to use my success to help other people. I know that sounds altruistic and I don't mean it that way. I mean it as I said it: it's an obligation and I don't think you really have a choice in the matter.
I didn't try to tell these things to my children as much as try to set an example for them. I've always tried to be courteous and respectful to everyone, whether it's a waiter in a restaurant or the CEO of a big corporation. I've been active in hundreds of charities, especially the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Horatio Alger Association, which offers support to deserving young people who need help with college payments, and St. Jude's Ranch for Children, which provides a loving environment for kids who have been mistreated. And as a person who remembers seeing those despicable signs—IRISH NEED NOT APPLY— I've always fought bigotry when confronted with it. My kids had to listen to all my stories about growing up with Japanese kids and then having to defend them in many heated discussions during World War II. They've always seen me with friends of absolutely every race and color. Years ago we belonged to a country club in Westchester County. One weekend Claudia came home from college with her roommate, who was Chinese. This country club refused to let them in. Well, I liked that club, and many people who belonged to it were nice people, but my family didn't belong there. I went over there that day and resigned. I may have even raised my voice while doing so. Believe me, no McMahon ever set foot in that club again.
Alyce and I also tried to teach our children the value of money. That can be a difficult thing to do when kids are raised in an affluent environment like Bronxville. But we tried. The kids all had chores and responsibilities around the house and they worked in the summers. In Avalon Michael worked at a gas station, Linda worked at a bakery, and Claudia was a waitress. When we were in the car, driving from New York to Bronxville, for example, I'd intentionally drive through some of the worst neighborhoods. I wanted my kids to see how less-fortunate people lived, I wanted them to see the drug addicts nodding out on the street, I didn't want them to be blind to real life.
If the kids needed something, Alyce and I would get it for them. But if they wanted something, we often made them work for it. One year Claudia became enamored of figure skating. It became her passion and she wanted to go to a skating camp in Hershey, Pennsylvania. When we said no, she decided to earn enough money to pay for it herself. So she put a box in her closet with a Hershey bar wrapped in it to remind her of her goal and started saving her money. She saved her lunch money, her milk money; she charged me fifteen cents to iron my shirts, which was a bargain compared to the ten cents she charged for handkerchiefs. She worked so hard and saved so much money that eventually she had saved enough to convince Alyce and me to help her pay for it.
The kids also spent time with Alyce's family in Lacoochee, Florida. Alyce didn't like to fly, so they would take a sleeper train down to another world. For two weeks they lived on the farm with their grandparents and cousins. They got to ride horses down the main street in town, they had chores, they experienced a lifestyle that didn't revolve around money, clothes, and cars. Believe me, no one in Bronxville kept pigs in their backyard. At their grandparents', they were exposed to things that they would never have to deal with in New York. For example, the only chickens Jeffrey had ever seen in Bronxville were on his plate. So for him, the animals on the farm—the pigs, horses, and chickens—were pets. Jeffrey didn't believe his grandfather when he told him he was going to slaughter the chickens for food. And he was devastated when his grandfather did just that.
Bronxville was so small and exclusive that at times it was easy to forget that there was a big and sometimes rough world outside. The time the kids spent in Lacoochee reminded them that most people didn't live in big houses in fancy communities.
We raised the kids in the Catholic religion. In fact, when we were living in Bronxville, Alyce took lessons from Monsignor Kaneely, a wonderful man and teacher, and was eventually baptized herself. The kids always went to early Mass on Sundays, even if on occasion Alyce and I didn't get there until much later, since early Sunday morning always followed late Saturday night. I've always believed that an understanding and appreciation of religion, any religion, is very important for children. A religious education teaches children to appreciate so many of the things that will really matter in their lives. And I have been fortunate enough to meet some extraordinary people in the Church. But when the kids were growing up, parochial schools enforced discipline much more harshly than today. And sometimes, I felt, the things done to my children had to be addressed.
When Claudia was in second grade, for example, rehearsing for her confirmation, a nun put a wreath on her head and said, "You have such beautiful hair. Where did you get it?"
"The sun," Claudia told her.
The nun slapped her in the face. "No you didn't," she corrected her. "You got it from God."
When Claudia told me that story at dinner, I threw down my napkin, got up, and went to the convent. I don't believe hitting a child is an effective teaching tool.
And when Claudia was in sixth grade she got caught reading a comic book during a break in an exam. The nun warned Claudia that the next time she got caught reading a comic book, she was going to have to stay after class. And when it was pitch black, the nun was going to make her walk down the hallway and then press a button that would cause the floor to open up and drop Claudia into an alligator pit, and then the nun would close the floor and leave her there.
That's not education, that's terrorism.
I wanted my children to learn how to think for themselves. I wanted them to feel free to ask questions and find their own answers. The last thing I wanted them to do was accept any stereotype without at least examining the issue. So dinners at our house were very important; we'd sit at the table for a long time talking and often arguing about things. In my professional career I've always tried to keep my personal politics private. People guessed, but nobody ever knew how I voted or how I felt about national issues. For example, as a proud marine, I supported the troops fighting in Vietnam, but in fact I did not support the war itself. For several years my kids and I all wore POW bracelets to remind us that Americans were suffering in North Vietnamese prisons, and I helped raise a lot of money for this campaign, but in 1972 I think I might have been the only person in Bronxville who voted for George McGovern.
Being the oldest, Claudia, I think, was a lot like me. Of all the kids, she was the most rebellious. Unlike most of the other young women in Bronxville, she had absolutely no interest in being a debutante, although her mother would have liked it. She refused to participate in the traditional "coming out" activities, she wouldn't even join a sorority. At the end of her sophomore year, when everyone else was sunning at the pool, she went with a friend to Berkeley, where she painted apartments for eight dollars an hour, took courses at the university, and spent time with the Black Panthers. It was obvious even then that she just was not the kind of person who was going to get married right away, have children, and settle down. That wasn't Claudia.
When she graduated from Syracuse University we gave her a round-trip ticket to Greece with an open return and a Eurailpass and let her go. She was very nervous about going to Europe by herself—she didn't know anybody—and we agreed that if she wanted to, she would come home in a few weeks. I asked her to do one thing for me. I have always been fascinated by the golden age of Greece; I had dreamed about seeing the Parthenon and the Acropolis and had never been able to do so. "I want you to go there for me," I said. "I just want you to stand there and tell me everything you see."
Claudia was the first of my kids to leave the house and I was probably more nervous about this trip than she was. You really never know how successful you are as a parent until your kids go off on their own. I took the night off from The Tonight Show to watch her go. I actually missed a night of work, so you can imagine how important this was to me. None of us really knew what to expect, most of all Claudia. She really did think she'd be back in a few weeks.
Thirteen months later she came home. From Greece she went to Afghanistan and Turkey, then India, England, Ireland, and Scotland. India was not quite as spiritual as she had anticipated—when she woke up her first morning, the owner of the hostel in which she was staying was trying to sell her to one of his friends. She went hiking for several days, ending up in a small Tibetan village, where she met the Dalai Lama standing outside a temple, and he invited her in for tea. This was the daughter I was so worried about. I think this trip might have been the first time in her life when being my daughter had absolutely no value. As Claudia pointed out, the Dalai Lama was one of the few people in her life who didn't say, "How 'bout that Budweiser commercial?" I'm quite sure the Dalai Lama had never seen The Tonight Show. Although you have to wonder how he might have interpreted Tiny Tim.
Like me, Claudia had been inspired by President Kennedy. She had intended to join the Peace Corps when she returned, but after spending a year traveling around Europe—in which she earned almost all of the money she needed working as an English tutor or a housekeeper—she decided that there was very little a twenty-two-year-old woman could teach people in a Third World country. So she joined the Vista program and worked with black families in a tiny town in Kentucky. There, for the first time, she was exposed to racial hatred; crosses were burned on her front lawn. She lived with five other girls in a house with no hot water and a coal stove, trying to establish a food co-op for the poor people in that town. Not only did they fail, they had to leave when grocery store owners who were overcharging these people threatened them.
At the time she didn't tell me about these things. I think we had reached the delicate stage in our lives where the child has to protect the parent. But if she had, I think I would have handled it well. I would have gotten right up off the floor where I'd collapsed, and handled it well. After Vista Claudia worked with emotionally disturbed children for eleven years, then became a social worker in Philadelphia. She worked in a last-chance program for kids who had drug and alcohol problems, or who were abused by their parents. These were all high school dropouts ordered by the courts to participate in this program or live in a juvenile detention center. Ironically, she worked in some of the same buildings I had pointed out years earlier when I wanted my children to see that not everybody was as fortunate as we were. Her office was in a condemned building with no heat, and she would begin just about every day by taking guns away from these kids.
Finally, when funding for that program ran out, she decided it was time to earn a real living for herself. After sleeping on her sister's couch for several weeks, she got a job at Star Search through her family connections. Although initially she did have to deal with resentment from a few people who thought her talent consisted of being my daughter, she eventually became a senior talent coordinator—where she discovered Rosie O'Donnell, Drew Carey, and Martin Lawrence for the show. After Star Search went off the air, she moved into the news division at ABC, where I have no pull, and she has become a senior producer.
When the kids were growing up I was never much of a disciplinarian. I was a much better threatener. When I got really angry at one of them I would tell one of the others, "Go upstairs and get the black belt." I assure you, no one ever got hit with that belt. And chances are that a half hour after I'd lost my temper I would be knocking on the door of their room apologizing.
So most of the punishment was left up to Alyce. When she got mad she'd use southern threats; she'd warn the kids that she was going to go outside to the tree and get a switch. She did that just about as often as I used my belt. Most punishments consisted of their being confined to their room or not being allowed to watch their favorite TV shows.
That worked fine with Claudia, Linda, and Jeffrey, but not with Michael. My son Michael was difficult. I think my celebrity affected him much more than his brothers and sisters. Being the son or daughter of a celebrity can be the toughest thing in the world. How do you find your own identity when your name is Frank Sinatra Jr. or Jean Paul Getty III? Or when your father is on TV every night? We named him Michael Edward McMahon—I wanted him to have a name all his own—but if he ever wanted to be Ed McMahon he had that option. But he was definitely a Michael McMahon, a big, handsome, charming Irish kid.
He was the only one of my children who ever made me lose my temper. That's one of the things at which he was very good. From the time he was a little boy he was always getting into trouble. Always. There was an embankment behind our house in Philadelphia, and just about every night when I came home from the studio I'd have to climb down that steep embankment in the dark to retrieve toys and bicycles he had thrown down there, return them to our neighbors' children, and apologize for him. When we got a new gray couch, it was Michael who spilled an entire bottle of Mercurochrome over it.
I loved to work with my hands and I built a beautiful bar out of Philippine mahogany, equipped it with a complete set of professional bar glasses, brandy snifters, beer glasses, martini glasses, and Alyce placed philodendrons growing out of bottles filled with colored water on either side. I was proud of my carpentry work. Linda was christened the day after it was finally finished, and we had invited all of our friends to come back to the house for a party. While we were gone, Michael climbed up on a stool and pulled over the entire bar. Every glass broke, the colored water spilled out and destroyed the carpet, liquor bottles broke. When we got home, my first reaction was fear—I was afraid he had killed himself. But when I saw he was all right, my second reaction was also fear—I was afraid I was going to kill him.
As he got older he didn't change at all. I once gave him a pellet gun and we'd go out in back of the house and shoot cans. The next thing I knew the police were at the house reporting that he was shooting out the back windows of passing cars. I bought him a motorcycle and he drove it across the neighbors' lawns and almost drove through the plate-glass window of a car dealership. No matter how much Alyce and I tried, we couldn't seem to get through to him.
He didn't respond to discipline. He spent a lot of his childhood restricted to his bedroom. Or so we thought. He had an extension ladder hidden in his room and he'd sneak out when we were asleep. I found out when someone told me they had seen him downtown in Bronxville when I had personally locked him in his room. As I discovered, he had been sneaking out that way for years. He always danced to his own music. Once, I remember, we left him to baby-sit Jeffrey. Now that was our mistake. He took seven-year-old Jeffrey to a big party where they both had a good time.
He was such a charming kid that it was hard to stay mad at him for very long, but he helped me. This was the most frustrating thing I've ever had to deal with. He was my oldest son, I loved him about as much as was possible, and yet I couldn't get through to him. I didn't know what to do. After he died someone gave me a videotape of him doing wonderful impersonations. Now, I knew he did those imitations, I'd heard that he did a very funny Carson, Sammy Davis, Howard Cosell, Steve Martin, . . . and particularly me, but he would never do any of them for me. I don't know why; maybe he was worried I would be disappointed in him.
He was strong and handsome. All the girls in the neighborhood were crazy about him. When he was in eighth grade a senior at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville gave him the key to her dorm room. Claudia and Linda were just crazy about him. To Linda he was the big brother every girl should have; her only problem with him was that she never knew if her friends were nice to her because they liked her or because they wanted to be around Michael. The girls were always covering for him, always protecting him. Once, I remember, he was on restriction, confined to his room, and he slipped out and ran away. He enlisted Linda to "find" his note a few hours after he'd left and give it to us, and he went up to Syracuse to stay with Claudia. We were on the phone with Claudia, who was in the infirmary with strep throat, telling her Michael had run away again and might be on his way to see her, when he walked into the infirmary with his big smile. As she looked right at him, Claudia told us, "He isn't here, but if he does show up I'll call right away."
There was one night I completely lost control. My children had heard all my stories about being a marine, but they had never seen me really lose my temper. With them I had always been a pushover, "mush," as Linda described me. But when Claudia turned eighteen we bought her a sports car for Christmas. A little MG. We were going to give it to her when she came home from school, so we put it in the garage and wrapped a big ribbon around it. Michael and his friends went into the garage and took it out for a drive. They were drinking and they had an accident. I don't know what happened, but Michael smashed in the side of the car. I was away when Alyce realized Michael and the car were gone. She was petrified something had happened to him. About one o'clock in the morning she was standing on the sunporch, which overlooked a long driveway, when suddenly Michael and his friends appeared, pushing this dented car up the hill, backward, the long celebratory ribbon dragging behind.
I don't know what I would have done to him if I had been home at that moment. As it was, when I found out, Alyce had to hold me back. All the anger, frustration, and, I guess, disappointment I had felt for years finally exploded. It was a terrible night, a terrible moment.
And yet, at times he was such a wonderful person and I was so proud of him. There was one day, one Saturday afternoon, that I will never forget. Michael was never a great student—when I look back on it now I think it's possible he had a learning disability—but he excelled on the football field. His senior year he made the all-county team. In his life, that was one place where being Ed McMahon's son was of absolutely no consequence. He was a running back and in the biggest game of the year, against Bronxville's archrival, Tuckahoe, Bronxville was losing by a touchdown. They scored to tie the game. Under the rules of football, when a team kicks off to the other team following a touchdown, either team can recover the ball after it goes ten yards. It's called an onside kick, and it very rarely works in the kicking team's favor. But with only minutes left in the game, Michael kicked the ball the required ten yards, then recovered it himself. On the very next play he broke through the line and ran for the winning touchdown. I think that might have been the happiest day of his life. I can just close my eyes and see him that day, the big smile on his face, so proud of himself.
I was the commencement speaker at Michael's high school graduation. "I would like to properly introduce myself," I said. "In these quarters I'm known as Michael McMahon's father . . . Michael's success on the football field has made me known around here, and that's nice . . ."
And it was nice for me—but especially for Michael.
It's amazing how a man and a woman can have four children, raise them in the same environment, and have them turn out so differently. Linda was my little angel. She was the typical teenage girl, very much into boys and her music. Of all the presents I ever gave her, the one she valued most was a used bedsheet. Not just any used bedsheet of course; this was a sheet from the Warwick Hotel in New York City, a sheet that one of the Beatles had slept on! She still has it, neatly folded in her linen closet and never used again.
I almost had a problem with Linda in school too. Her class was being taught the religious version of the story of creation, starring Adam and Eve, and Linda raised her hand and repeated the scientific version of evolution as I had told it to her. The sister apparently got very angry with Linda and told her that the story of evolution was heresy, to which Linda replied defiantly, "I know it's true because my father told it to me!"
When my daughter told me this story, I asked her the same question I occasionally find myself asking my young daughter, Katherine Mary, today: "What color would you like that Porsche to be?"
Linda has three children of her own now. She was the first of my kids to get married. She had a beautiful wedding, she looked radiant, she was marrying a wonderful man named Peter Schmerge, everything was absolutely perfect— except that when I was making my toast I mispronounced her new last name.
Is there a Dr. Freud in the house?
When Alyce and I separated, Jeffrey was the only one of our children still living at home. Our marriage ended in so many ways long before it was over. Maybe if I had been satisfied to stay in Philadelphia our marriage would have survived. But I wasn't. When I was offered opportunities I took them, and that meant leaving Philadelphia and, eventually, leaving New York. Besides The Tonight Show I was doing commercials and quiz shows, hosting events, and trying to run several different side businesses—I had a stationery company and a game company. Often after working all day, then doing the show, I'd have to meet with my business partners or investors, or Johnny Carson would want me to have dinner with him, or I simply wanted to go out with friends for a night on the town. I don't think I was overwhelmed by my success, but I wanted to enjoy it. And there was a time when being married became a burden. I just wasn't being married very well. I wasn't running around, I wasn't having affairs, but it seemed as though I was always traveling or always busy. I began to feel guilty. Very guilty. After a while I felt so guilty that our marriage wasn't working and that I wasn't helping it work that I asked Alyce for a separation.
That was some night. What I remember about it was that she said to me, "Go up and tell your son." Jeffrey was twelve years old at that time. And I think with his brother and sisters gone, the house must have felt empty to him. On those nights when I came home after the show he'd be waiting for me behind the front door. We'd watch television together for an hour while I ate my dinner. The night I told Alyce I wanted a separation I asked her if she wanted me to stay the night or leave, and she asked Jeff that same question. "If he's gonna leave," Jeff said, "he should go."
What made a painful situation even more difficult were some of the nasty and untrue stories written by a columnist named Jack O'Brien. O'Brien wrote that when The Tonight Show moved to California I went with my whole family in a limousine to the airport, got out of the car, held up one ticket, and said, "I'm going to California and you're not." Of course, there wasn't one shred of truth to that story, but it was printed.
The separation and eventual divorce were very difficult for Alyce and me and the older kids, but it was most difficult for Jeff. He was the child whose life was changed most drastically. I tried to be there for him as much as I could; on several occasions, after doing the show on Friday night I got on the red-eye, the late-night flight from Los Angeles to New York, to be there Saturday morning for a football or basketball game or other event, and on occasion he'd go with me on trips. I was always trying to find ways to compensate. When I was involved in a real estate development, for example, I had a lovely house in Florida right next to a lake. Well, a Florida development kind of lake. An if-you-left-the-water-running-for-the-weekend kind of lake. But it did have an alligator that would come up on shore at night and the fishing was good. One day I brought Jeff out back to show him the sign I'd made naming this great body of water Lake Jeffrey, making him the only kid in his class with a lake named after him. When I couldn't be there physically I always made my presence known with a telegram or phone calls or some sort of contact, but for a time I was out of his life.
In fact, for a time I was out of all my children's lives. They were so angry that they refused to have any contact with me. They were supportive of their mother. If you've ever wondered when it was hard to do The Tonight Show and appear to be just old happy Ed with the booming laugh, that was the time. That was the time when professionalism counted. At some time in their life, every performer has to work when their personal life is falling apart. I knew that—I saw Johnny Carson go through some rough times in his personal life without letting it affect his performance—but knowing it didn't make it easier to do. As it turned out, though, it was good practice for what was eventually going to happen.
At times like this Johnny Carson and I actually became closer. We had become close friends on Who Do You Trust? because we liked going out together to party and drink, but we became better friends on The Tonight Show because we commiserated with each other. Each of us knew when the other one had personal difficulties he was trying to work through.
Finally Bob and Marti Gillin took it upon themselves to arrange for me and the kids to meet with a counselor. Talk about caring friends; I've been blessed with a multitude of them. I flew in from California. It took several sessions, and eventually we started speaking again. Several years earlier I had read a story about the Kennedy family on a rafting trip and I had decided that someday I wanted to do that with my family. I couldn't imagine there would ever be a better someday.
Claudia couldn't go, but Michael, Linda, Jeffrey, and I sailed on a raft down the Colorado River. It was a healing trip for all of us. We camped under the stars, had water fights all day long, drank the pristine waters of the river. We sailed past the cabin where Butch Cassidy and the Sun-dance Kid had hidden from the Pinkertons, past caves where Indians had lived before the birth of Christ; we sailed right past our problems.
At the end of the trip we flew directly from Lake Powell to Las Vegas and checked into Caesar's Palace. The difference between the peace along the Colorado River and the glitz of Las Vegas could not have been more pronounced, but after sleeping on the sand for five days, we all appreciated the satin sheets of the hotel. Sammy Davis Jr. was performing and we all went to see him, we gambled, and when we left, the rift between us had been healed. Things weren't perfect; a twenty-six-year marriage had broken up—and the pieces would never be put back together. I accepted the fact that some of the feelings could never be resolved, but my kids and I had found a way to communicate.
I had always thought that divorce was something that happened to other people, so I wasn't prepared for all the emotional and the financial complications. For a young couple who had started out with seventy-five cents, Alyce and I had done very well. How do you split up the assets of twenty-six years? Legally. Lawyers do it. And unfortunately in our case, publicly. A lot of things were written about me that weren't true. In that situation, I learned, there wasn't too much I could do except show up on time ready to work and laugh at Johnny's jokes. Boy, laughter helps.
After our divorce was final Alyce moved out to California so Jeff would be closer to me. Alyce was devoted to all of her children. We did make a brief attempt at a reconciliation, but it was too late, too much damage had been done. It was time for all of us to move on with our lives.
While Claudia, Linda, and Jeffrey moved forward in the world, Michael floundered. He was often "between engagements," as he described it. He tried a lot of different things: he had a handyman business, a private car business; I helped him get jobs at ESPN and Anheuser-Busch; he was always planning the next business—he was going to open a cheese store and a landscaping business—but he just was never able to find a place to be content. And I think every time he failed, he thought he had failed in my eyes, which made it even more difficult for him.
For a time he moved out to California and shared an apartment with my assistant, Corrine Madden. Like just about everybody else who spent time with him, she adored him. Michael always had a twinkle in his eye. And maybe a little like his grandfather and his father, he had just a bit of the fanciful in him. Corrine told me a story that was just typical of Michael. One afternoon she came back to the apartment after work and the sink was filled with Michael's dishes. She washed them and put them away, but the next day, and the day after that, the same thing happened. Finally, she said, "You know, Michael, when I come home from work I've been finding your dirty dishes in the sink and you're here all day . . ."
Michael calmly explained that he was intentionally allowing his dirty dishes to pile up in the sink because by cleaning all of them at one time he was saving soap and water. That was so typically Michael. Corrine told me that story at Michael's funeral.
The ironic thing about Michael's death is that it came just after he'd spent a year working with abused children at St. Jude's Ranch, which may have been the most satisfying time of his life. I started working with St. Jude's in the late 1960s. One night I was doing my nightclub act at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas when Charlie Vanda, one of the first people to give me an opportunity in Philadelphia, introduced me to an Episcopal priest named Father Herbert Ward. As I quickly learned, Father Ward was small of stature but very large of heart. He'd started a ranch for abused children in Boulder City, Nevada, near Lake Mead, and Charlie and Shirley Vanda wanted me to see it. On Saturday morning, as we drove out there, Father Ward told me about St. Jude's.
This was long before people realized that many American kids were being brutalized by their parents. Almost no one had even heard the term "child abuse." But Father Ward had created St. Jude's to be a safe place for badly abused children, children who had been taken away from their parents by the county or state. These were kids who had been slammed repeatedly against a wall until bones were broken, or kids who had been burned with cigarettes or scalded with boiling water, or had their clothes set on fire. I couldn't believe the stories he was telling me. His plan was to create a supportive environment in which small groups of children could live together safely with volunteer "parents." By the time we got out to Boulder City, Father Ward had me hooked—and then I saw St. Jude's Ranch.
It consisted of a few little shacks. It didn't look as if it could last the summer. But Father Ward is some terrific salesman—the man could have sold boardwalk meat slicers to a chef—and with the help of a lot of people he built St. Jude's into a modern forty-acre facility overlooking Lake Mead. He's changed the lives of hundreds and hundreds of kids. Of all the charities for which I've done work, St. Jude's has my heart. Maybe because it's so small that every little thing you do really does make a difference, maybe because it saves lives on a daily basis, and maybe just because I love seeing these children safe and smiling, I serve on the board of directors and have long been active in fund-raising. In fact, right on the campus there is a beautiful building known as the Ed McMahon Child Care Center.
Father Ward and I have become so close that when I remarried he performed the ceremony. Twice. But the one thing I never expected was that St. Jude's would be so valuable to one of my own children. When Michael finally ran out of options I suggested he try living on the ranch. Father Ward was glad to have him, and Michael seemed to blossom there. Children had always taken easily to Michael and he worked well with them. He used sports to help them regain confidence in themselves. Maybe because he got so deeply involved with their problems he didn't have time to concentrate on his own, and for the first time in so many years he appeared to be happy. But after a year he got restless again, he needed some time for himself, and went to Florida.
It was while he was in Florida that he first started feeling ill. I told him to see a doctor; he refused. Instead he drove to his mother's house in Philadelphia. He was so weak that for two days he could barely get out of bed. He complained of stomach pains. Alyce took him to her doctor, who diagnosed Michael's problem as a peptic ulcer. Minor. Treatable. We didn't think much about it. I mean, Michael was forty-four years old, big and healthy; there was no reason to believe anything was seriously wrong with him.
He drove across country to St. Jude's. Father Ward called me the day he got there. "Something's wrong with him," he said. "He really looks very bad." I insisted Michael fly to Los Angeles. The moment I saw him I knew that he was very sick. My doctor, Dr. Phil Levine, took a complete set of X rays. As Michael waited outside, the doctor held them up to the window. I could see right away that too much sunlight was blocked by big black spots on those pictures.
"Michael has cancer of the colon," he told me. Cancer? My son? That just didn't seem possible. He was only forty-four years old. "I'm going to start him on chemotherapy, radiation right away . . ."
"Will that cure it?" I asked.
He shook his head. "This isn't something that can be cured. But it'll prolong his life."
And then I asked a question that no father should ever have to ask about his son. "How long do you think he'll live?"
"Maybe six months."
I had to fly that afternoon to Washington, D.C., for the annual meeting of the Horatio Alger Association. As a member of the board it was important that I be there, but I didn't know what else to do. At times you just keep going because you don't know how to stop. We met in the chambers of the United States Supreme Court—Clarence Thomas is a member of Horatio Alger. It was the first time I'd been in that room. To be standing a few feet away from the long bench where so much history has been made, and to be not guilty of anything, inspires a feeling of tremendous awe. For a few minutes it helped me forget the horror of that day.
Michael refused to believe that he had cancer. At one point I suggested to his oncologist, Dr. Larry Heifetz, that we just tell Michael the truth, and then Michael and I would go to Las Vegas for a few days and just raise hell. "No," Dr. Heifetz said, "you can't tell him. He knows I know the answer, and when he's ready to ask the question, he'll ask me. He won't ask you, his mother, his sisters, he'll ask me, 'How much time have I got? Am I gonna get out of this?' That's when he'll be ready to know."
Just a few years earlier I had seen the same spirit in Michael Landon. The last time he appeared on the show everyone knew he was dying, but he just wasn't going to admit it. His attitude was, I'm fighting this thing to the end and I'm going to win. Whether he was kidding himself, trying to live the lie that he was going to make it, or just clinging to the last bit of hope, it didn't matter. And I saw this once again in my son.
Finally, there came a day when Michael was ready to know. He asked Dr. Heifetz how much longer he had to live. "It's hard to know," the doctor explained, and then tip-toed around the answer as gracefully as possible. The number of days didn't really matter; it meant that Michael was ready to deal with it. At home we tried to be positive, we all tried to pretend that this was an illness from which he would eventually recover. We did the best we could, and we waited.
By this time I was married to the former Pam Hurn, an extraordinary woman in so many different ways, and Michael came to die in our house. We turned one room into a hospital room and Claudia came out from New York to take care of her brother. Claudia was there for Michael every minute of his last few months, every minute. It was the most beautiful expression of love imaginable. She became his nurse, she took him to the hospital for chemo and radiation, she went with him to the nutritionist and made sure he ate only what he was supposed to, she administered morphine to kill the pain, she changed the electrodes attached to his back to diffuse pain when scheduled, she gave him his pills, and when necessary, she changed his diapers. At night she slept on the floor at the base of his bed in case he should need something.
Linda was there as much as possible. She'd fly out for several days, fly back to see her children, then come right back. She hated leaving to go back because none of us knew what to expect, and she wanted to be there at the end. And Jeffrey was there whenever he could get away from work. It had been a long time since we had all been together in one place, and there was something comforting about that. I didn't know what to do. It's rare that I'm at a loss for the right words or the proper actions, but nothing in my life had ever prepared me for this.
For a long time Michael had not been on good terms with his sisters. If he wasn't mad at Claudia, he was mad at Linda. There was no reason for it—they'd never fought—but he found reason to be angry with both of them. Even when Claudia was doing everything possible for him he would lash out at her. But in the last weeks, the kids fell back into their childhood patterns, when the girls had idolized their brother. Claudia and Linda competed to see who could please him the most. Linda would carefully fold his dinner napkins into triangles and Claudia would respond by bringing him an extra piece of chocolate, then Michael would grade them. He'd award them points for being attentive but deduct points for things like forgetting to bring a fork. Michael said he thought Linda had the edge because she was used to being a mother. It was heartwarming to see them end up as close as they had been as children, loving each other.
Michael never stopping fighting. One afternoon we went out for lunch. By this point he had shriveled down to nothing, he was gaunt and had little energy, and without actually saying it, I implied how important it was that he enjoyed whatever time he had. And Michael responded, "Oh come on, Dad, it's not as bad as that."
I left the next day for New York, then I was going to Washington to appear with a symphony orchestra and a chorus, reading two pieces at the dedication of the Korean War Memorial. I called Claudia from New York to ask about her brother. When she answered the phone, she started crying. She told us to come home as quickly as possible. While I was in New York I started planning Michael's funeral.
We all gathered in the house. Alyce came from Philadelphia several times. She usually stayed in a nearby hotel, but when he started failing she stayed with us. Pam tried to make her as comfortable as possible. It was a strange situation, seeing Alyce with Pam, but so many years had passed since our divorce, and Alyce had also remarried, so although awkward, it wasn't difficult.
Michael was in a coma and there was nothing anyone could do but wait. During the night we took turns staying in the room with him. About midnight, Linda and my stepson, Pam's son Lex, were in Michael's room and his breathing became difficult. We all gathered in his room and were with him when he died. We bowed our heads and said a prayer.
Three or four hours later I did a car commercial. People might not understand that, but my family did. I needed to be busy, I needed to be occupied, I certainly wasn't going to be able to sleep, and I had made this commitment. All of the people involved had flown out from New York. This had been scheduled for months. Besides, I hoped that losing myself in work might make the terrible pain go away for a few seconds. I told the director, "I don't want people to know this, but I lost my son a few hours ago and anything we can do to make this go as fast as possible, I'd really appreciate." Sometimes you just keep going . . . We did it in one take, and then I went home to finish making the necessary arrangements.
Just about the first phone call I got was from Johnny Carson. Johnny had lost his son Ricky, who was just a great, loving kid, in a car accident, so he knew exactly what I was going through. The words said at a time like this aren't really that important, but the emotional support is enormous. Steve Lawrence, who also had lost his son, called and we talked and it all helped. Once the phones started ringing, they didn't stop for days. We all tried to keep busy, keep moving.
It seemed as if it had been just hours earlier that I had spoken at Michael's high school graduation and now I was speaking at his funeral. My hands were shaking but somehow I got through it. Alyce came back to the house with us, and I think she was as surprised as I was about how natural it all felt. When we came back from the memorial service Alyce and I and our three kids spent just a little time together in one of the bedrooms discussing some things that had to be discussed. I was lying on the bed, wearing a comfortable old pair of socks—they had big holes in them, as I've worn just about forever. And all of a sudden Alyce leaned over, grabbed one of the socks, and said, "I can't believe it. The same socks!"
Never, never in my life have I so enjoyed the sound of laughter.
We all wanted to memorialize Michael in some way that would help other people but be a place that said Michael in some permanent way. So, inscribed into a stone monument at the top of a hill at St. Jude's that overlooks the football field there is an etching of him with his name and the name of the facility, the Michael McMahon Memorial Sports Complex. The message on the plaque reads: "Michael Edward McMahon—April 12, 1951–July 28, 1995—ACCEPT GOD IN YOUR HEART AND HE WILL HELP GUIDE YOU IN THE GAME OF LIFE.
I'm so proud of my children. Claudia is senior news producer at the Fox network, Linda and Peter Schmerge are the parents of three of my grandchildren, while Jeff, an executive at the National Football League, and his wife, Martha, are the parents of my fourth and youngest grandchild, Maggie McMahon.
I wasn't there as often as I wanted to be when they were growing up, but I know that I did the best job I could. And sometimes, when I wonder how anyone ever finds the proper balance between raising a family and sustaining a career, I think back to one night in Ohio. The kids were young and I was working in summer stock; I was doing a musical on the Kenley circuit somewhere in Ohio. It was opening night and we had a full house, five thousand people. At the end of the show, as part of our contracts, the performers were required to meet the audience and sign autographs. After that we had the opening-night party.
Alyce and the children were arriving by train late that night. As the train began pulling into the station about one o'clock in the morning, Claudia told her mother, "Don't worry if Dad isn't here. It's opening night and you know he has to sign autographs and go to the party. Somebody'll be here to pick us up and he'll be at the hotel . . ."
Claudia was worried that her mother would be hurt if I wasn't there and was making all kinds of excuses for me. And when she finished, Alyce said matter-of-factly, "Your father will be waiting for us at the train station."
Alyce knew me. When the train arrived I was the only person waiting on the platform. Always, I did my best to be there.