I was disappointed in Ed McMahon's new book on Johnny Carson. I hadn't expected anything but a love letter to his former employer but I had expected more behind-the-scenes and off-camera info than we get in Here's Johnny! An awful lot of it is "Ed" (or whoever actually wrote it) recounting funny things Johnny said and did on the air. That's nice but anyone could have written those chapters without working side-by-side with J. Carson for three or four decades. The press release says, "Now, with Johnny's blessing before he died, McMahon can finally share all the stories that only he knows." Actually, you know a lot of them if you read Ed's two previous books, Here's Ed and For Laughing Out Loud: My Life and Good Times. I'll give you an Amazon link in case you are, like me, a Carson completist. But did we really need Ed to tell us what happened on The Tonight Show when Ed Ames tried to demonstrate tomahawk-throwing? Bill Zehme is working on an exhaustive bio of Johnny and I'll bet it tells us more about his relationship with Ed than Ed did.
On the other hand, I did enjoy Alan Alda's autobiography, which is called — for reasons you don't necessarily want to know — Never Have Your Dog Stuffed. Alda grew up in an amazing family. His father was a burlesque straight man who later became a leading actor on Broadway and in films. Young Alan spent much of his early life watching strippers from the wings and later, hanging out as his dad played Sky Masterson in the original Guys and Dolls. In the meantime, his mother was going steadily out of her mind. It's amazing that the lad born Alphonso D'Abruzzo grew up into most folks' idea of a sane, well-adjusted human being.
There isn't as much about M*A*S*H as I'd expected or might have wanted. Then again, I'm glad Alda did not skip over all the non-M*A*S*H portions of his life. Unlike Ed's, this book actually feels like it was written by the guy it says wrote it, and you learn an awful lot you didn't know about someone you already felt like you knew. Here's an Amazon link and a much higher recommendation. And you can read an excerpt and listen to some interviews with Mr. Alda here.