Ed McMahon, best known as the long-time side-kick and announcer of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, passed away on Tuesday, June 23, 2009, shortly after midnight at the Ronald Regan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California after a long battle with pneumonia, bone cancer and other medical problems.

Ed McMahon was 86 years old.

Born Edward Leo Peter McMahon, Jr. on March 6, 1923 to Elenor and Edward McMahon in Detroit, Michigan, Ed grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts and attended Catholic University of America where he majored in speech and drama, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949. McMahon served our great country during World War II as a fighter pilot in the USMC decorated with six  Air Medals until his discharge in 1946, and remained in the reserves until returning to active duty after college. Sent to Korea in 1952, he flew unarmed OE-1 Bird Dogs on 85 tactical air control and artillery spotting missions.  He remained in the reserves retiring in 1966 with the rank of Colonel before being commissioned as a Brigadier General in the California Air National Guard.

Before The Tonight Show, he co-hosted a game show opposite the late, great Johnny Carson called “Who Do You Trust?” which ran from 1957-1962, before the dynamic-duo left to join the Tonight Show in 1962 and enjoyed a very successful 30 year run until Carson retired in 1992.  During that time, McMahon found time to host the successful weekly syndicated series Star Search beginning in 1983, which helped launch the careers of many of today’s actors, singers, and comedians which include Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Rosie O’donnell. McMahon stayed with the show during its entire run until it ended in 1995. In 2003, he made a cameo appearance on the CBS revival of the show hosted by Arsenio Hall.

McMahon was also co-host until 2008 of the annual Labor Day Jerry Lewis Telethon for MD appearing 41 times, second only to Lewis himself. In 1982, he and Dick Clark hosted NBC’s TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes. He stayed with the show intil 1998 when Clark decided to move the show to ABC.

In 2004 McMahon became announcer and co-host of Alf’s Hit Talk Show on TVLand, along with authoring two memoirs, Here’s Johnny!: My Memories of Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show, and 46 years of Friendship and For Laughing Out Loud.

In 2007, McMahon was injured in a fall, and in March of 2008, it became public that he was recovering from a broken neck and follow-up surgeries.  He subsequently sued Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and two of its doctors claiming fraud, battery, elder abuse, and emotional distress, accusing them with dicharging him with a broken neck after the 2007 fall and botching the two later neck surgeries.  In 2009, it was reported that McMahon was in an undisclosed L.A. hospital (which turned out to be in later reports as Ronald Regan UCLA Medical Center) for almost a month in serious condition and the ICU. Reports were that he was admitted for pneumonia, but reports that he had been diagnosed with bone cancer would never be confirmed or denied.  McMahon would remain here until his demise.

For more than 30 years, McMahon introduced the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with a drawn-out “Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Johnny!” His larger than life persona and hearty laughter alongside the “King of Late Night” earned him nicknames such as “The Human Laugh Track” and “Toymaker to the King, and Conan O’Brien, present host of the Tonight Show, paid tribute to McMahon later that evening of his passing by saying “It is impossible, I think, for anyone to imagine The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson without Ed McMahon. His laugh was really the soundtrack to that show”, adding that along with Carson, they created “the most iconic two-shot in broadcasting history.”

There will never be anything like that or him ever again.

Rest in Peace, Ed McMahon

Until Next Time!

Michael Queenstown

Follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/MQueenstown