For Laughing Out Loud by Ed McMahon & David Fisher

Author:Ed McMahon & David Fisher [MCMAHON, ED]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO005000
ISBN: 9780759520738
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2000-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

6

More than any other, the night that I will never forget was May 22, 1992. Our final show. I had been just as surprised as everyone else when Johnny announced almost a year earlier that he was leaving. I had no warning. I don't think he told anyone except his wife, Alex, that he had decided to quit. There had been so many times in the past when it looked as though he might leave that long ago I had stopped thinking about it. In 1979, when after considerable deliberation Johnny decided to continue doing the show, NBC President Fred Silverman took the news calmly. "I got down from the chair," he explained, "and put the rope back in the closet." I don't know why Johnny finally decided that this was the right time, but it was. Johnny Carson has always been a master of timing.

NBC asked me to continue with the show for six months after Johnny left, but there had never been any question in my mind that I would leave with him. It was time for me too. Years earlier I had given him a statue of Don Quixote with his faithful Sancho Panza, on which I'd had inscribed, "I follow ever in your footsteps, O Master. But you told me it would only be for ten years."

That last show was incredibly emotional, incredibly. In addition to the show ending, Johnny and I were ending a thirty-four-year professional relationship. We'd been together more than half our lives. "Ed has been a rock for thirty years," he said on that show, "sitting over here next to me . . . We have been friends for thirty-four years. A lot of people who work together on television don't necessarily like each other. This hasn't been true. We've known each other thirty-four years, we have dinner together, we're good friends, you cannot fake that on television. Some of the best things we've done on the show have just been, you start something, I'll start something . . . I got a letter from a guy. It said, 'Now you're gonna find out if Ed McMahon really thinks you're funny.' "

I responded to those kind words with the nicest gesture I could think of at that moment. I invited him to appear on Star Search. I mean, the guy needed a job. And with his experience he had a real shot at the one-hundred-thousand-dollar first prize.

It took me a long time to get used to the fact that the show had ended. At one point my assistant had made an appointment for me on a Thursday afternoon. A Thursday afternoon? "I can't do that Thursday," I started to explain. "I have to . . ." And then I realized I didn't have to do anything at all. I called Johnny and asked him if the same thing was happening to him.

"Every morning when I'm reading the newspaper," he said, "I start writing jokes for the monologue in the margin. And then

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