Post by mirium on Jun 27, 2009 20:41:13 GMT -5
I hope that somewhere, Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson are together again. Ed died on June 23rd at the age of 86.
While many of you will probably be only vaguely aware of who they were, and mostly know Ed from his commercial endorsements, for us older folks they were an irreplaceable part of our world -- imagine, if you will, that instead of Jon Stewart, Leno, Letterman, and a herd of lesser lights, there was only one person who filled that role. And that one person had been on the air since before you learned to read. That was Johnny Carson -- and although many jokes were made about how all Ed did (as Johnny's sidekick) was laugh loudly at Johnny's worst jokes, Carson himself said repeatedly that without Ed's sense of timing (comedic and otherwise), the show would bomb.
And from the number of friends he had (and the absence of enemies), he seems to have been a genuinely nice guy. More complicated than his public persona, but those who knew him behind the scenes overwhelmingly liked him.
So, let's all hoist a Budweiser and toast "the world's first 'second banana' " !
While many of you will probably be only vaguely aware of who they were, and mostly know Ed from his commercial endorsements, for us older folks they were an irreplaceable part of our world -- imagine, if you will, that instead of Jon Stewart, Leno, Letterman, and a herd of lesser lights, there was only one person who filled that role. And that one person had been on the air since before you learned to read. That was Johnny Carson -- and although many jokes were made about how all Ed did (as Johnny's sidekick) was laugh loudly at Johnny's worst jokes, Carson himself said repeatedly that without Ed's sense of timing (comedic and otherwise), the show would bomb.
And from the number of friends he had (and the absence of enemies), he seems to have been a genuinely nice guy. More complicated than his public persona, but those who knew him behind the scenes overwhelmingly liked him.
So, let's all hoist a Budweiser and toast "the world's first 'second banana' " !