There's a joke about a sky diver whose chute doesn't open and a horrified crowd watches him plunging towards certain death…and then at the last second, a fluke gust of wind blows him into a haystack and he lands without a scratch on him. The onlookers all run up to the guy and one says, "My God…you're the luckiest man in the world!"
And the man replies, "No, [name of very wealthy celebrity who doesn't seem to have ever done much of anything] is the luckiest man in the world!"
These days when that joke's told, the inserted name is probably Simon Cowell or Keanu Reeves (is he still famous?) or someone like that. For a long time, whenever I heard the joke, it was Alan Thicke. But when I first heard it, the name in there was Ed McMahon.
It's unfair, of course. All those people do or did very popular things…but they had that sense of having gotten it all by chance, by being in the right place at the right time. Ed McMahon wasn't much different from dozens of professional announcers when he got the job working with Johnny Carson on a game show. He didn't do anything that others couldn't. Still, he fit right in and provided Carson with an anchor and someone to play off. At times, Ed's main function was as a kind of lifeguard. No matter how silly or bizarre things got, Johnny could go to him in moments of crisis and there was someone rock-steady to help him pull himself out of a hole. When Carson got The Tonight Show, he took Ed along as kind of security blanket.
A week or two ago here, I quoted former Tonight Show head writer Hank Bradford about the value of McMahon. Hank is aghast that while all of Johnny's successors — guys who now host that kind of show — cite Carson as the role model and the guy who did everything right, they all think they don't need an Ed. Carson never thought that. There was a period in Tonight Show history when McMahon's extracurricular activities, like selling Budweiser or hosting Star Search, caused him to not be there some nights for sidekick duty. Johnny finally sat him down and said that was not acceptable.
Ed was no dummy. He knew that everything he had, he had by the grace of Carson. His schedule was quickly adjusted, even though it probably cost him some serious money, so that he was always there when Johnny was there.
Before each show, he gave great warm-up. It was the same each night, almost word for word, but it worked. He delivered his employer a hot audience and then stood by, ready to be called upon if Johnny got into trouble or if Don Rickles needed someone to call a fat drunk. He learned Carson's timing and certain looks Johnny might give him that would cue his participation. One night when Mr. Carson said, "I'll never forget when I learned there was no Santa Claus…I was just devastated," Ed knew enough to jump in and ask, "How old were you?" so Johnny could immediately say, "Thirty-seven."
In person, Ed was a little bossy, a little phony, a little eager to prove he was more than Johnny's stooge. He occasionally tried acting or nightclub performing…never to any lasting success. He did a lot better as a pitchman or a host, but those were just ancillary perks of the Carson gig. Without it, he was just another announcer. In a way, it was perfect casting to have him doing those commercials where he'd go around, presenting contest entrants with checks that made them wealthy. It was one lottery winner passing the luck on to another.