The problems with last night’s show were legion, and much of the media agrees that what we might’ve witnessed could well rate as the worst  Oscar telecast ever.  My memory isn’t good enough to say that for sure, but that the show was dreadful isn’t in dispute and while a post-mortem isn’t what this write-up is about, I will say that James Franco’s arrogant, sleepy, cooler-than-thou attitude that forced the usually delightful Anne Hathaway to over-compensate with the cute factor, was only half the problem. The other half was in the producing (and writing). This was a horribly produced three-plus hours. But rather than complain further, I’m going to offer constructive suggestions. No one cares what I think. I get that. But I’m going to offer them anyway.

1. The Host

The host is crucial, not only to the success of the overall show but also to the ratings. The cynical grab of Franco and Hathaway in an effort to attract younger voters was beyond stupid. Neither is a standalone box office draw, neither has captured America’s imagination, and both are inter-changeable as a dozen or so other actors in that same age range. I hate to tell Hollywood this, but (and the ratings back me up) young people aren’t stupid. They really don’t want to “watch people their own age” host the Oscars. Like the rest of us, they want to watch a good show. Upon hearing Franco and Hathaway were hosting this year, even the squealiest of teenagers was likely as confused  by that choice as the rest of us.

There’s two ways to go with a host.

 You make the Oscar telecast the host’s show —  The Billy Crystal Show or the The Johnny Carson Show or The Whoever Show. Whoever the host is, the Oscars should become their program. When Johnny Carson or Crystal hosted, our affection for them was one of the main reasons we tuned in and kept watching. We couldn’t wait for them to return to the podium between awards and quip on what just happened or extend a running joke. Now it seems as though we have a host for the first half hour before the program dissolves into a structure-less hodgepodge of famous faces and various awards. It actually feels more and more out of place when the hosts appear closer to the end of the show.  

Or…

Find an Ed Sullivan to take us through the evening. Instead of a bad variety show with truly awful comedy writing and musical numbers, have a steady, warm, familiar, charismatic figure glide us through the evening. Ed Sullivan wasn’t an entertainer and yet Americans young and old tuned in because Americans young and old liked Ed. Rather than demand our host perform (and risk the ever-increasing likelihood of a flop), have him or her serve as our guide for the night, walking us through the various awards. Morgan Freeman would be perfect for this. America loves him, he’s classy,  has a wry sense of humor, a warm presence, and who wouldn’t want to spend a few hours with Morgan Freeman?

How about TCM’s Robert Osbourne? Or Ellen Degeneres?

2. Structure

A well-structured show that actually feels like it’s building towards something will solve a ton of problems. There might well be some sort of structure in place now, but we in the audience can’t sense or feel it. As it stands now, the show feels episodic, messy and plodding. There’s no rhyme or reason as to how the three-plus hours unfold: a big award! an obscure award! a song! Celine Dion sings for the dead! What the hell is that about? Structure is KEY to making a successful film or television show, to telling any kind of story, and someone needs to grab all the disparate elements involved in the yearly Oscar giveaway and turn them into a cohesive whole that gives the audience a sense of momentum.

3. Pacing

For years, and for good reason, people complained about the length of the telecast and the pacing. But from where I sit, the remedy applied to this problem has been exactly the wrong one. Speeches are truncated, songs are shortened, and the show feels hurried in too many places. Cutting and trimming is not an instant cure for pacing. “Gone With the Wind” is nearly four hours long but if you cut an hour out of it, you’ll hurt the pacing because the story is so well-told and perfectly — here comes that word again — structured.

The Academy Awards don’t lag because the show is too long, the Academy Awards lag because the show sucks. Stop worrying about time and worry more about compartmentalizing each segment of the telecast and making them better. Last night no one spoke longer than Kirk Douglas and yet no one was bored. We couldn’t get enough of him. He was charming and funny and we adore the guy. I would’ve also liked to have seen a longer and more dignified tribute to Lena Horne. With an eye towards allowing the audience to make an emotional connection to Ms. Horne, to miss her and appreciate her and feel the loss of this great talent — as opposed to rushing Halle Berry off the stage — the moment could’ve been a truly memorable one.

Shorter isn’t better. Better produced segments is better. Making each segment an individual gem is better. Lena Horne deserved a gem.  

4. Suspense

I’m not sure what the Academy can do about this but the biggest bummer, the biggest drag on the show every year, is a numbing lack of suspense. Who wins should not be a foregone conclusion, and this is a problem that only feels like it’s getting worse.  What we have now are favorites always emerging from the abundance of awards shows that come before the Oscars and an avalanche of media prognosticators in the entertainment press who know a lot of people in Hollywood and can get the lay of the land as far as who’s voting for whom.

Sitting through a poorly paced, poorly structured show awaiting the inevitable is never fun.

Maybe people just need to shut up about who they’re voting for?

5. Watch the Super Bowl

Year after year, ratings for the Super Bowl embarrass the Academy Awards. Over 100 million people tune in to watch a game involving teams other than their own. There’s a reason for this. Watch and figure out what that reason is. Structure and suspense certainly helps, but there’s more to it than that. People love football. People love the movies. The Academy Awards shouldn’t get less than half the viewership the Super Bowl does. Crack that code.

6. Create Traditions

What the Oscars need most are a few traditions, four or five can’t-miss annual events that we can count on during each and every telecast. The Super Bowl is brilliant at this, from their opening reading of the Declaration of Independence to the big deal made out of the half-time show to the awarding of the Lombardi Trophy. Create some beloved traditions and your audience will come.

Perhaps…

7. More Magic Through the Use of Nostalgia

Hollywood needs to honor its past more. Right now that happens during the program in spots, but again the structure is such a mess and the pace so hurried that these moments always feel shoehorned and  perfunctory — like the Academy can’t wait to get them out of the way. Slow down! Take us back, move us, make us cry, remind us why we fell in love with the movies in the first place. Last night, one of the most memorable moments was simply hearing the “Star Wars” theme. But again, by the time I turned my head to watch it was over.

Furthermore, and no one wants to admit this, it’s just a fact that today’s movie stars are lacking in all the qualities that made The Greats great. There’s a reason a 95 year-old Kirk Douglas can steal the show and the sight of a digital Bob Hope puts a smile on our face James Franco never could. The Academy can make up for the lack of star-power today and our lack of affection for most of today’s stars by mining the rich legacy of their past.

8. A Smart Producer

The Oscars need a producer familiar with taking nothing and creating a story or at least a crafting some sort of narrative with some kind of momentum. Reality show producer Mark Burnett would be an excellent choice. His entire career has been built around crafting narratives and a sense of momentum from practically nothing. I appreciate that you want “A SHOW!” so let Burnett be the Executive Producer who crafts the structure and let him hire the Bob Fosse needed to bring the pizazz.

9. Bring Back Billy Crystal

Just do it already.

10. Start with Class and Stop Thinking Outside the Box

Go back and watch the best reviewed and most beloved telecasts.

Rinse, wash, repeat…

The world hasn’t changed all that much. You have.

The day before Halloween? I’m sure it’ll be a solemn occasion, where people intend to reflect upon the real problems that face our nation, dressed up in costumes mocking conservative movers and shakers like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. In fact, I can just imagine the oh-so-clever people who will be dressed up like Christine O’Donnell as a witch. (Funny, isn’t it, how when a conservative admits to “dabbling” in something like witchcraft as a teenager it’s a big scandal, but progressive, leftist PC dictates that we should be sensitive to the beliefs of those who declare themselves pagans and Wiccans.)

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert – your hosts

Oh, but I’m being cynical. The Comedy Central guys don’t really “mean” anything by the whole thing. It’s just a big joke, doncha know:

“We’re not provocateurs, we’re not activists; we are reacting for our own catharsis,” Stewart tells [New York magazine's Chris] Smith. “There is a line into demagoguery, and we try very hard to express ourselves but not move into, ‘So follow me! And I will lead you to the land of answers, my people!’ You can fall in love with your own idea of common sense. Maybe the nice thing about being a comedian is never having a full belief in yourself to know the answer. So you can say all this stuff, but underneath, you’re going, ‘But of course, I’m f*cking idiotic.’ It’s why we don’t lead a lot of marches.” (emphasis mine)

Perhaps that’s why the Comedy Central overlords have asked Craig Minassian, former Clinton administration press aide who is now a consultant to Comedy Central, and Chris Wayne, a former Clinton White House event organizer who works on large-scale media events and promotions, to help them file their permit for the October 30th event. But I’m sure they won’t be helping them actually run the event…

Still, we know that Stewart, Colbert and Comedy Central aren’t activists. How do we know? Jon Stewart told us so! Why would he lie?

Remember when comedians used to speak “truth to power” (I hate that phrase, but there it is) to the rich and powerful? Back in the ’70s, Chevy Chase enjoyed portraying Gerald Ford (an accomplished athlete in his youth) as a perpetual klutz. Even Johnny Carson wasn’t averse to making the occasional funny reference to politicians.

During the 2008 campaign, politicians running for president were the butt of many jokes (some more than others – guess who?, but we’ll put that aside for now). More recently, Will Ferrell loved to bash George W. Bush so much that he even expanded his SNL impressions of W to a one-man Broadway show. And Tina Fey milked her impression of Sarah Palin until the cow ran dry.

Tired schtick.

Then there are the really vulgar offerings of David Letterman and Kathy “I’ll say anything to get press” Griffin.

That’s to be expected, of course. Public figures are ripe for ridicule, deserved or not. It goes with the territory.

But now, Colbert and Stewart (real last name Leibowitz) are, to bastardize a quote from Emeril Lagasse, kicking it down a notch. Because instead of going after the rich and powerful – or those who would like to be rich and powerful – and those associated with them, they’re going after YOU.

That’s right. If you:

• Went to Glenn Beck’s recent (and massively attended) Restoring Honor rally in August or wished you could have;
• are an official Tea Partier or a Tea Party supporter;
• are one of the people whose values are closer to Sarah Palin than Barack “The Won” Obama’s;
• agree with 68% of Pennsylvanians that cutting taxes, not increasing spending, will lead to more jobs
• and read Big Hollywood…

…then the Wonder Twins at Comedy Central have a bone to pick with you.

You see, Colbert and Stewart and their ilk (the big cahunas in the entertainment industry) have risen above such petty concerns as which bills will have to go unpaid this month or what to do when you’ve been informed that your job will shortly be eliminated. Paid much, much more than the average schlub and surrounded by yes men and other adoring admirers, they live in a bubble world where unicorns and sugar-coated raindrops really do exist.

In other words, they are part of the self-anointed elite. As such, the people lovingly described by accomplished actress and American icon Megan Fox as “white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America” who are becoming more politically aware and not liking what they see, have become a threat who must be eliminated. Not literally, of course.

And it doesn’t matter if you watch their shows or not. Hollywoodites have proven again and again that they really don’t care if they insult their loyal fans as long as they can suck up to one another and to their liberal overlords in the government. How else would they get chances to schmooze with the prez? (Another reason why I think they despised W – he wasn’t as impressed with vapid celebrity as his predecessor and successor.)

This is not a rally to restore “sanity;” it’s a rally to show the Democrats that they still haven’t lost Hollywood – and to show middle America the finger.

Question: Am I the only one who thinks Stephen Colbert is a dead ringer for the nerdy, upper crust Cecil Vyse (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) in one of my favorite films, 1985’s A Room With a View?

Stephen Colbert and Cecil Vyse: Separated at birth?

Seriously, one more question: Will this event be reported as an in-kind donation to the DNC?

In the entire gaggle of Late Night Hosts, I believe that Craig is the only one who comes close to filling the big empty shoes left behind when Johnny retired. While Leno and Letterman each have some of Carson’s characteristics, Ferguson is able to capture both sides of his genius. He is warm and goofy like Leno, but he’s also cool and sophisticated like Letterman. Like Johnny, he can handle a shy guest with disarming charm; hold his own against a tough guest; then put on the buck-teeth, the big fake ears, and do an impression of Prince Charles that is both ridiculously silly, and satirically eviscerating.

Craig Ferguson’s latest book is entitled “American on Purpose.” It’ spans his career  from the beginning as an alcoholic punk rock drummer, to becoming one of Late Night’s brightest stars. There are some marvelous insights about what it’s really like growing up in Europe, from a person who has seen the side that the tour buses usually avoid.

He grew up in one of the bleak concrete housing projects that popped up all over Europe in the wake of World War II. (You’d think a continent so ravaged by central planning, would have lost their affection for it.) Craig talks about his longing to be an American from the time he was very young, and made his first trip abroad; admiring the Americans for their beautiful straight teeth. Because he isn’t here by accident of birth, he is the only network talk host who recognizes American Exceptionalism. (He is also quite visibly the only host who actually had to pass a test on the U.S .Constitution.).

Every year on this day, Craig Ferguson has mentioned the terrorist attack. While the rest of his colleagues safely avoid the subject, Craig has been quite bold about marking September 11th in his show opening. Here is his first September 11th monologue done back in 2006 [transcript here]. It still chokes me up every time I watch it. 

He repeated his commemoration with a different monologue on September 11, 2007, performing what was for me the pinnacle of a stand-up routine; the most brilliant monologue I have ever seen on television. Topics like terrorist attacks are avoided by even the bravest comics, but Craig seamlessly wove somber recollections, the Gettysburg Address, and hilarious comedy lines into a tapestry of genius. It was the kind of stand-up routine every comic should aspire to. Unfortunately, it disappeared from the Internet, and is nowhere to be found today. (I wish I had made a copy. If anybody out there works for CBS could you PLEASE put it up again?)

Craig couldn’t even do a monologue about the day in 2008. It seemed like he set the bar so high the previous year, that he didn’t even want to attempt the leap. He did however make a short mention of the attack in his pre-show, that was just as poignant and commemorative.

—–

He followed up by bringing his sister and Drew Carey on as guests, mentioning later in the show, that he felt spending time with friends and family could help him through, what is obviously still a tough day for him.

Last year, he did another pre-show mention that was almost as good as his 2007 monologue:

 —–

September 11th doesn’t fall on a weeknight this year, so that was the last monologue we can expect until 2012 (Nielsen willing). 

To fill the void this year, I’m posting an excerpt from the final chapter of his book. In it, Craig outlines why he made applying for American citizenship a running gag on the show:

“It seemed to me that American patriotism had been hijacked by politicians who used it for their own jingoistic ends, and I wanted to use my television show to get away from that. I wanted to get back to the image of the gum-chewing GIs who brought swing dancing, fruit, and hope to Scotland when my parents were kids. I wanted to share the feeling I got when I received my big color poster from NASA in the mail. I wanted as many native-born Americans to understand the thrill and exhilaration that comes from joining the land of the free.”

If this sounds trite, I don’t give a rat’s ass. I believe in it. America truly is the best idea for a country that anyone has come up with so far. Not only because we value Democracy and the rights of the individual, but because we are our own effective voice of dissent. The French may love Barack Obama, but they didn’t f***ing elect him. We did.”

God save Craig Ferguson.

—–

First off, David Letterman should never feel the need to remind us he’s ignorant.

And good for Donald Trump, who hits the nail on the head when he says that the Ground Zero Mosque builders would engender a tremendous amount of goodwill if they would, of their own volition, move someplace where — as Roger Ebert was good enough to remind us – the ashes of the dead don’t still lay.

Below the fold you’ll find a video of Letterman taking a shot at His One. This makes a total of two jokes (I’m aware of) Letterman’s told at the expense of chronic vacationer Barack Obama. Think about how divisive and biased Letterman is that the strange occasion of his making a joke about our sitting president is found worthy of a mention.

If memory serves, night after night, the great Johnny Carson was pretty scrupulous about making sure he went after Democrats and Republicans equally. The TV legend apparently understood that “The Tonight Show” wasn’t a political forum and that as an American entertainer his job was to make everyone laugh and not to grind his own personal partisan ax.

How far Letterman has fallen.  

You never get the sense Letterman’s heart is in the jokes told at Obama’s expense. He certainly doesn’t relish them in the same way he does ripping on Sarah Palin’s family. In the video below, Letterman appears to be warning the President as much as teasing him, offering up a little friendly political advice in the hopes of helping the poor guy out: 

—–

“Guns are tools.  They are no better or worse than the person holding them.” W.P. Wessel 

I have a gun.  It has never shot anyone.  Not even people I’m mad at.  It just lies there, like it’s sleeping. 

I bought it in 1986 when Richard Ramirez was on a killing spree in Los Angeles and I had a new baby.  You know, the guy who used his victim’s blood to paint pentagrams on their walls? They said he liked yellow houses.  I lived in a yellow house in Laurel Canyon.  It was hidden in the trees far away from other houses so no one would even hear us scream. 

So, I bought a gun to protect my daughter. 

Some people think owning a gun is bad. 

I sure wish I would have had a gun the night I got held up by the six foot tall man in the parking lot of the Variety Arts Center.  I was 21 years old.  All I had to protect myself was my scream.  The man was holding a gun to my head and trying to push me into a dark alley.  Fortunately, my blood curdling scream scared him away.  A friend ran out of the V.A.C. to help me and said he thought he’d heard a siren. I filed a police report and used the experience as material for my next Johnny Carson appearance. 

Click here to play video

(Complete Lyrics) I’m Paranoid  

I’m paranoid now
So very paranoid now
Ever since I got held up in a parking lot
By a big, mean man with a short, black gun you see
My attitude has changed from naive, trusting one
To “I’m-gonna-get-you-before-you-get-me”
Cause I’m paranoid now
So very paranoid now 

Daddy doesn’t have to give me lectures anymore
About what weirdos do to you if you don’t lock your door
I’ve got a small revolver, some poison, and sharp keys
So if you need to tell me something please…
Tell it to my phone machine
Cause I’m very paranoid now 

In my burglar alarm infested apartment
Two drooling German Shepherds lurk
And one small cat with sharp claws
For when the dogs don’t work
Don’t look at me, don’t talk to me, don’t invade my space
Unless you want hamburger to be made out of your face
Cause I’m paranoid now 

Yesterday while I was jogging in the neighborhood
A young man pulled up his car and said, “Mmm, you’re lookin’ good”
He said, “You live around here?”
Instead of saying, “Yes, I do”
I said, “Look Buddy, I know Kung Fu!”
Cause I’m very paranoid now
I’ll probably miss my big chance at finding sweet romance
Cause every time a guy gives me the eye, I say, go away
I’m Paranoid now. 

I’m ready for Trouble
But is Trouble ready for me?!
Vicious Vicki 

I still have the gun.  It’s still lying there.  Hasn’t shot anyone. 

My husband Paul shot and killed a man.  Paul is a cop.  Actually, it happened to be the night he was flying from Miami to NY to see me at Saturday Night Live for his first time. We were dating long distance. Maybe he was anxious to see me or something.  He had to stay up all night filling out paperwork and getting counseling, because I guess that’s what happens when you shoot someone.  He finally got to SNL and I was on the stage getting out of an alien space ship with eyeballs on my nipples because we were doing a sketch about a planet where women’s eyes have mutated to their nipples because men stared at women’s chests for so long.  Kirstie Alley was our leader.  I said, “Paul this must be so surreal for you…to kill someone… and stay up all night…and see me in a spaceship.”   

Paul said, “It is.”  

When I introduced him to the cast, Mike Meyers said, “Hey, you got any war stories?  Ha, ha!”  

Paul said, “I killed a man last night.”  Silence.  

I realized our worlds were completely opposite.  But we do have some things in common.  1) We both like donuts 2) We both could die, him for real and me onstage, and they’re equally painful, and 3) We both get rewarded for a big bust! 

Anyway, don’t feel bad for the man who got shot.  He was drunk and firing a gun at his wife because she wouldn’t “wife swap” anymore.  She called 911. The SWAT team arrived.  The man aimed at Paul.  End of story.  The woman was saved. 

The purpose of a gun is to protect the innocent.
     (Or, feed them. Hunting is practice for the day when we might need to catch our dinner.)  

My gun is still sitting here.  Hasn’t moved.  Hasn’t killed anyone. 

But, I’ll be keeping it just in case.

If there is any real blame it should go to Conan’s attorneys who didn’t think of writing a specific time slot for the show into his contract. Yet Conan’s supporters insist that Jay Leno is at fault.

Jay is being caricatured as a cry-baby by Conan supporters. In my opinion, Conan is the one being immature, acting like a sixteen year old, who can’t believe his parents are taking the car away … after he wrecked it.

Few remember that Conan isn’t a pacifist. When his contract was up for re-negotiation back in 2003, he told NBC that he wouldn’t sign the contract until the Tonight Show seat was added to the contract. Jay never really raised a stink about being forced out, because he remembered how he got the Tonight Show in the first place.

Jay’s backstabbing grab of the Tonight Show back in 1992 is legendary, and there was little sympathy for Jay when Conan turned the tables on him.

Back in 2003, Jay was quite remorseful about what he had done to Johnny, and Letterman, and he didn’t want to repeat his mistakes. So he agreed to concede the chair. But 2009 came up faster than he imagined, and when the time came to exit, he didn’t want to go. The 10 PM time slot was a compromise to keep Jay’s revenue stream within NBC, and despite its low ratings, Jay continues to make money for the network.

I don’t really get the protests. It’s only a half hour. Are Conan viewers now getting so old that they can no longer stay up until one o’clock? And why don’t they have DVRs like the rest of us? This is the same generation that made fun of their parents for not being able to figure out how to program a VCR.

It’s almost as if they see it as a personal slight, as a rejection of their generation. Perhaps, Conan taking over the Tonight Show was seen as their move into the mainstream. Unfortunately, things like The Masturbating Bear were left behind in the old slot, and without them, Conan never seemed entirely comfortable in The Seat.

It probably would have worked better if the change had been gradual. Jay could have let Conan guest host a few times, to transition the audience slowly. He never once used a guest host though, probably because Jay used his guest hosting to undermine Johnny Carson. He wasn’t about to let anybody sit in his desk even for a minute. It was almost as if he was afraid to leave, fearing his key card would be deactivated when he returned.

There also seems to be a political undercurrent to the Conan protests. Most of Conan’s supporters seem to be liberal, and there is a mistaken impression that Jay is a conservative. (I would describe him as an old school Kennedy Democrat.) Perhaps the anger over Jay is leftover anger once directed at George W. Bush, anger that has been circulating around the hate-o-sphere for the past year looking for a cause to inhabit

There is some likelihood to that scenario. Because when I mention to some Conan supporters that Conan hasn’t been performing terribly well in the ratings, I get the same response I get from Obama supporters for the President’s dismal performance: “He hasn’t had enough time yet.”

In fairness, I should mention that I never found Conan very funny. I liked some of the surrounding comedy on the show, but Conan himself reminded me of the dorky rich kid, whose father bought his way into the cool fraternity. Making silly faces, begging the audience to laugh, and jumping up and down until they did, never quite appealed to me.

Not that I find Jay any funnier. He never seemed comfortable in the seat either. For the past seventeen years he seemed like he was still filling in for Johnny. But that was fine with me. The Tonight Show still felt like The Tonight Show.

Which is why Jay’s Tonight Show was such a powerhouse; It isn’t always about ratings. Jerry Springer consistently beat out Oprah Winfrey in sheer numbers but never made as much money because he couldn’t get advertisers. Pilsbury wasn’t about to associate their muffins with the likes of Springer’s freak show, so their dollars went to Oprah’s less-viewed show. Despite it’s weaknesses, Jay Leno’s Tonight Show had a warm fuzzy feeling to it.

The Tonight Show at one time was responsible for 17% of NBCs operating revenue, and last year was clearing close to a half a million dollars a week. This compared to the projected losses of 3-5 million dollars for 2010 from Conan makes the decision to move Jay back an obvious one. Giving Conan more time to prove himself is a $30 million gamble the network wasn’t willing to take. Like they say, it’s nothing personal, just business.

Jay Leno’s prime time show will obviously be remembered as the worst business decision since New Coke. When it all shakes out, it will probably be no different than it would have been if NBC let Conan go to another network back in 2004. The difference is, when Old Coke returned, it was more popular than ever. I’m not convinced that the same nostalgia will benefit Jay when he returns.

Americans admire excellence and authenticity.

The rise of the Hollywood movie star was built on powerful performances that projected the idea of authentic emotions. Film audiences experienced a magical connection—often, deeply intimate—with scores of charismatic actors.

Lillian Gish’s heartbreaking performance as the abused daughter in Broken Blossoms (1919) cemented the image of a sensitive and vulnerable child/woman. It did not matter that Gish was, in fact, rigid and hard-headed. The huge shadows on the silver screen settled the matter in the public’s mind.

Garbo’s close-ups—she was gawky in long shot and her best director, Clarence Brown, kept her in tight shots a majority of the time—convey a world of passion and emotional depth. In truth, Garbo was a shallow narcissistic who loved herself above all others.

Carson’s Couch

Johnny Carson, the slayer of stars.

Hollywood star artifice was forever shattered by the birth of television. Specifically, Johnny Carson’s late night show. The star system, already threatened by the decline of the studios, was dealt a death blow by Carson’s couch. Stars submitted to unscripted interviews in order to promote their latest film. But absent studio minders, captured in unflattering TV lights and unequal to Carson’s rapid fire wit, most stars shriveled, frequently revealing breathlessly dim personalities. And as the evening wore on and the fidgety actor moved down the couch to make room for the newer guest, the pale star was reduced to the role of disposable prop.

Genuine Hollywood stars were dead and celebrity—a culture of sordid notoriety—moved in to fill the vacuum.

Tiger in Your Tank

Tiger Woods, a case study in authentic artifice.

Tiger Woods was an old fashioned star for a brief and shining moment. The greatest golfer ever, he was young, handsome, modest and best of all to a generous American public, black. Sorta.

Married with children, he was Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart and Sidney Poitier all rolled into one.

But now that carefully constructed public persona has been shattered by an emerging scandal and Tiger Woods verges on becoming nothing less than grist for smutty jokes.

Tiger Woods ads and endorsements are rapidly being pulled and we can expect a further erosion in his corporate support.

To an adoring public, Tiger’s authenticity has been revealed as smooth artifice.

Excellence is not enough.

Obama, Sorta

So it is with President Barack Obama.

He was perceived as a prime example of American excellence. Handsome, bright, an accomplished politician and yes, black. Sorta.

America voted for an image.

There was no record of genuine accomplishments. We were gravely informed that being a community organizer—code for socialist agitator—was superb preparation to be POTUS.

And Obama’s dismal one-hundred and fifty days in the Senate consisted of a record number of “Present” votes.

The only thing we knew for sure—aside from the inconvenient fact that he was most comfortable in the company of rabid Jew/America hater Jeremiah Wright—about candidate Obama was that he spoke well when using a teleprompter, looked good in a suit and his unflappable manner suggested a man who was serious and capable.

In a very short time, Obama has been unmasked as a fraud and blunderer who regularly delivers preposterous and self-contradictory gems such as:

“We have to spend our way to prosperity.”

Nothing less than a radical call for endless deficits and the advent of an American nanny state.

In foreign policy, Obama has so devalued America’s exceptional role in the world that our allies are deeply shaken, and our enemies emboldened.

Recently, an ambassador from Kuwait quietly slipped into Iran for the very first time.

Terrified of Iran, Kuwait realizes that it can no longer count on America to project its power, thus she is preparing the ground to gain entry into Iran’s brutal orbit. We can expect a Soviet-style Finlandization of Kuwait in very short order.

Kuwait, along with the entire Arab Muslim world, understands that Obama is an amateur, genuinely weak.

Yup, Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin, an authentic American star.

Which brings us to Sarah Palin.

The liberal media claim that she is a joke, that she doesn’t matter. She has been pornified and attacked in a manner that is unique in modern American politics.

In response to the Palin phenomenon, liberals have enthusiastically embraced Lenin’s ruthless advice: “We are not interested in debating our political opponents, we only want to crush them.”

It’s not hard to comprehend this level of vitriol.

Much to their dismay, liberals understand that the American people are responding to an authentic person. A voice and image that resonates with deeply felt American values.

Palin touches the historic American core in a way that elitists like Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer and their ilk cannot begin to comprehend much less project.

When Obama appears on our TV screens in yet another baffling and tedious speech/lecture/kvetch we sigh, exhausted, because the Obama artifice is, by now, so naked, we marvel that his handlers don’t realize that Obama has become a poison pill for Obamism—a political and social philosophy that is, at best, at odds with classical American Judeo Christain values.

But when Sarah Palin simply Tweets—her death panel Tweet is now historic—people pay attention, people react, ordinary people take to the streets.

Authenticity has become such a rare commodity in the public sphere that when it appears, the very landscape shifts under our heels.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

The man who would become one of the most popular movie stars of the last quarter century was born in 1936, the son of a small-town police chief in Florida. He grew up handsome and tough, randy and reckless — by fourteen, he had lost his virginity to a much older woman, and soon after knocked up the prom queen (his attempts to cajole her into marriage were rebuffed by the girl’s society-maven mother, who forced her daughter to abort the baby). Such antics were an early harbinger of both the charismatic charm and voracious, self-destructive appetites that would define (and sometimes decimate) his later career (a typical joke — Q: Why didn’t Burt Reynolds ever take Loni Anderson out to dinner? A: He made it a rule never to date married women.)

Like John Wayne thirty years earlier, an injury ended Reynolds’ budding college football career, and in 1955 he turned toward acting. Future stars like Joanne Woodward and Rip Torn were early friends during his New York salad days, and the connections he built there ultimately allowed him to journey west in the late Fifties to seek his fortune in Hollywood. At the time he bore an uncanny resemblance to superstar Marlon Brando, and along with new pals like Clint Eastwood he spent long, disheartening years scrambling between minor roles in various television shows such as Riverboat and Gunsmoke. He even served as a contestant on The Dating Game. “I spent a long time playing the third Indian from the left,” he says ruefully of those early jobs.

From the start of the “swingin’ Sixties,” he seldom felt at home among the young, self-important thespians who would eventually rule the industry. “I don’t belong in places like New York or Los Angeles,” he insisted when pressed. “I should be on a farm with a few cases of good beer.” Reynolds’ first marriage, to the English actress Judy Carne, disintegrated when he couldn’t bring himself to join the never-ending drug-infested parties she presided over with an assortment of heroin-addicted hippies and Charles Manson rejects.

While many of his friends tried to emulate the new hip stars of that decade and their space-cadet ways, Reynolds was drawn to a different world, one to which his pal Hal Needham provided the gateway. “One time,” Needham remembers, “[Burt] mentioned that he didn’t know much about motorcycles, so I suggested that he come over to my place and practice. I had motorcycles and a tree where we used to do high falls. Every weekend there were fifteen or twenty stunt guys practicing. Burt started coming around every weekend. He got along well with all of the guys.”

In that way, over a long period of association, Reynolds’ persona became more of a stuntman than an actor — and for the most part, that was fine by him. The rarefied careers of emotive twerps like Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino didn’t interest him. “There are two or three young actors around,” he once said in his heyday, “I won’t mention any names — who if I see them painfully staring at the rug in one more picture, I’m gonna puke.” I imagine Reynolds shares that thought, then and now, with a vast swath of the nation’s movie-going public. The Needham/Reynolds friendship grew over the course of fifteen years, and Reynolds never forgot the way his pal shared his contacts and expertise.

By the end of the 1960s, Reynolds was an established television personality, but his early work had stereotyped him as a serious, angry, morose action star, a role that didn’t jive with his true nature. Something important was missing from the mix: humor. The venue Reynolds ultimately used to introduce his jocular side to the public was novel. “The beginning of almost everything good that ever happened to me,” he says, “was a result of my being on the Tonight Show.” His first appearances there were a revelation, creating a pop-culture electricity that today is hard to fathom. “The guy on Evening Shade [his successful early 1990s TV sitcom] is who I am and always was,” Reynolds feels. “The guy on the Tonight Show is who I was after seven vodka and tonics, which is generally what I had before I walked out.”

Whatever he drank, his stints on the program utterly transformed his persona in the eyes of the public. Instead of the usual actors taking themselves ultra-seriously, mumbling about how much effort and technique and skill they put into their roles, Reynolds would cheerfully call his latest film a flat-out turkey, poke fun at his lack of top-flight acting ambition, and shamelessly play the part of a rich, sexy, fun-loving Hollywood star who was enjoying the wild ride like no one else.

The following 1974 appearance on the Tonight Show, made while promoting The Longest Yard, gives the modern viewer an idea of the early swagger that he would later parlay into the films that made him the top box-office attraction of the late Seventies and early Eighties:

Soon the fairly unknown TV star was Johnny Carson’s hottest guest, to the point where Carson often had Reynolds guest host the show for him. The fame gained from these appearances rocketed him out of the Hollywood doldrums. For the first time, the name BURT REYNOLDS on a marquee opened movies all by itself, and he now had his choice of what kind of projects to do.

But crucially, rather than go the usual route of chasing Oscars, he opted for a more personal direction. “My friends all wear cowboy hats and have horse manure on their boots,” he said. “They ask me if I knew John Wayne, and I say ‘no,’ and that’s the end of the show business talk.” So with his new-found clout he began doing Southern “hick flicks,” many of which (Deliverance, White Lightning, The Longest Yard, Gator) became popular, making him a beloved figure throughout flyover country. Tellingly, these projects were spaced out with other, more mainstream roles, many of which weren’t popular at all. Reynolds was getting stereotyped again, but this time as a character America was warming to.

In the mid-Seventies, with Needham still living in Reynolds’ guest house after his divorce twelve years earlier, the chance finally came to pay back a karmic debt to his old friend. “One day,” Reynolds says, “[Needham] gave me a script he’d written. Titled Smokey and the Bandit, it was scrawled on a yellow legal pad in his own handwriting. Cheap bastard hadn’t even had it typed.” He read the script and was underwhelmed. “Now Hal and I had one of the tightest friendships in show business. He’d directed second-unit footage and coordinated stunts on six of my films. My God, we’d lived together longer than either of us had lived with any of the women to whom we’d been married. So it was hard to tell him I thought it was the worst script I’d read in my life.”

Nevertheless, he saw some potential in the tale — its outlaw, Robin Hood conceit might be greatly appealing, if the dialogue and scenes could be spruced up to match. Various agents and hangers-on told Reynolds he would be crazy to star in a madcap, low-budget screwball comedy. He needed more movies, they argued, like Deliverance — parts that could further his reputation as a serious actor. “Every single one of my advisers and friends,” Reynolds says, “went down on their hands and knees begging me with tears in their eyes not to make that film. Mind you, if you had read the original script, you’d probably have done the same.”

But beyond Reynolds affinity for the basic plot and the Southern atmosphere, he felt he owed his friend a good turn. Hal Needham was in his forties and nearing the end of his useful life as a stuntman, and Reynolds well knew of his desire to move into directing. So, when Needham tried and failed to get any of the studios interested in the picture, Reynolds made it known around town that he would be willing to star as the Bandit. Instantly, studio doors opened wide, and Needham found his previously derided script in demand. It was, Needham later admitted, “the biggest thing anyone has ever done for me in my life.”

If Reynolds had saved the script by putting his potent box-office muscle behind it, Needham himself added some necessary guts to the package. Reynolds remembers how

[film executive Mike] Medavoy wanted to make a movie with me — but not Smokey. Instead, he handed Hal the script of Convoy and said he could direct that one if I starred. Hal, who’d never directed, considered the bigger-budget offer and said, “No, it’s mine or nothing.” That’s the reason I love Hal. He’s a hell of a man.

It would have been easy for Needham to fold his hand, toss away his script, and try to make someone else’s movie. But he perceptively decided that Convoy had none of the charm, authenticity, or raw excitement that his own Smokey and the Bandit tale promised, and he held firm under withering studio pressure.

Looking back, Burt Reynolds epitomizes not only the best but much of the worst that movie stardom has to offer. Stardom often went to his head, something he freely admits in his autobiography. He’s known for having a short fuse. All the womanizing left him a twice-divorced, 73-year-old lonely bachelor. Vanity led to cadaverous plastic surgery (compare Reynolds’ futile attempt to still look 40 to the gracefully aged visages of contemporaries like Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood). Many of his films are now derided as junk, projects he undertook even as he rejected such choice roles as James Bond, Trapper John in M*A*S*H, Han Solo in Star Wars, the (Oscar-winning) astronaut Garrett Breedlove in Terms of Endearment, John McClane in Die Hard, and many others.

In 1996, the former superstar’s spendthrift ways caught up to him, and he was forced to file bankruptcy with assets of $6.65 million against debts of $11.2 million — a pathetic pittance of an estate for a four-decade member of Hollywood royalty. Reynolds suffered his share of plain old bad luck as well: acute hypoglycemia in the Seventies, a horrible case of temporomandibular joint disorder in the Eighties. He once mused wryly that when life-threateningly ill, “you make a hundred bargains with God. But as soon as you feel better, you break them.”

But there’s another side to Burt Reynolds: the stand-up guy, full of graciousness and generosity to fans and friends. Note that he never has built his personal politics into a wall between himself and the public. One incident in particular hammers this home for me. Back in 1985, when AIDS was first entering the nation’s consciousness, the activist group AIDS Project Los Angeles asked Elizabeth Taylor (a close friend of the then-dying Rock Hudson) to organize a fundraiser that would help create mainstream awareness of this feared disease. Taylor called everyone she knew asking for help, but according to her virtually everyone balked. “The people in this town didn’t give a damn!” she remembered many years later. “That made me cynical about Hollywood. What a sad lesson. It’s a very sad comment on this town.”

Actually it’s par for the course — today many of those same people fly private jets while lecturing the rest of us about carbon emissions. But it says a lot that — with Rock Hudson having only weeks to live, and everyone else afraid to attend an AIDS fundraiser that might hurt their careers — Burt Reynolds was one of only a small handful of stars to say “yes” to Taylor’s request. Not only that, he took upon himself the most thankless task of the event: reading aloud the pledge of support that the hated Republican President, Ronald Reagan, had generously sent from Washington. Let it be noted for the record that, on September 19, 1985, actor Burt Reynolds stood up at Taylor’s event and read Reagan’s letter, while being roundly booed by a mass of angry activist attendees. That counts for something in my book.

(as an aside: at a similar event some time later, Reagan showed up in person to once again graciously pledge his support for AIDS research. The same classless ingrates from ACT UP who had booed Reynolds began doing the same thing to the President. To Elizabeth Taylor’s everlasting credit, she grabbed the mic and shut them all down, yelling, “I don’t care what your politics are, I don’t care how you feel about the President or what he’s not doing, he is still the President of the United States of America and you owe him some due respect, so shut the f*** up!” Properly chastised, the buffoons did shut up, and Reagan was able to give his speech.)

In light of all of this, I’ve got a question for you: do you know if Burt Reynolds is a Democrat? A Republican? An Independent?

No clue, right?

Good.

“Most of my friends are very political,” Reynolds admits, “and they were chagrined when I wasn’t active during the 1976 Presidential campaign.” He was making Smokey and the Bandit during that time, and could have joined the usual suspects in protesting and posturing and shrieking hate at ordinary Americans, all in an attempt to fit in with the Hollywood gang and grease the wheels of his career. Instead, he chose to “shut up and sing.” As conservatives and as movie lovers, we should give him due credit for that gift of silence.

Hal Needham dismisses those in Hollywood who think of Reynolds as a jerk, and reminds us that, “Without Burt, I’d never have had a chance. Burt has this capacity for loyalty and caring. He has made it and he doesn’t forget anyone he has ever cared for, man or woman.” That caring extends not only to friends like Needham, but to all the people who have enjoyed his films over the years. On September 24, 1981, at the height of his fame, Reynolds immortalized his hand and footprints in the famous forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. He took the opportunity to scratch a simple line into the moist cement, one that speaks for itself and that modern Hollywood would do well to emulate:

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers: The Great One. ’Nuff said.

Previous posts in the series “Hal Needham, Burt Reynolds and Smokey and the Bandit”:

Part 1

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

If you ever find yourself in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale/West Palm Beach area, you might consider taking a detour to Jupiter, Florida to visit the Burt Reynolds Roadside Museum, located in an old bank building and filled with memorabilia, autographed pictures, awards, and other items.

After making such a point about Reynolds’ laudable decision to keep his politics to himself, I should mention that NewsMeat: America’s Most Popular Campaign Donor Search Engine lists a mere two political contributions from Burt Reynolds: one to Florida Senator Bob Graham way back in 1986, and one to Bill Clinton during his first run in 1992. Both Democrats, but also Southerners who Reynolds might have known and felt obligated to help on grounds other than raw politics.

To balance the scales, the entry for Smokey and the Bandit director Hal Needham lists three donations, one for the Dems and two for the GOP. Poke around the site and examine their celebrity donation lists — you might be surprised to find out how many of your favorite stars are closet Republicans.

Reynolds’ My Life is one of the better celebrity autobiographies out there. Like all such volumes it is more than a bit self-serving, but overall it lays bare the ups and downs, and gives some crucial insights into the blessing/curse of fame. If you haven’t seen Reynolds’ excellent four-hour-long one-man show An Evening with Burt Reynolds (alas, it’s not available on DVD, and who knows how many more times the seventy-three-year-old Reynolds is going to perform it live), reading this book is the next-best thing.

Like Barbara Walters’ painfully inane TV specials, Inside the Actor’s Studio has long been a safe place for actors and directors to preen like peacocks, cry like children, and indulge in the fantasy of being a thoughtful intellectual. Nevertheless, excepting perennially vacuous questions like “What sound or noise do you love” and “What is your favorite curse word,” this Bravo TV show occasionally teases enough insight and anecdotage out of its subjects to make it worthwhile. Here are four YouTube videos (part 2 has been deleted by YouTube, probably because of the Smokey clips) showing Reynolds braving host James Lipton’s Lamb’s Den.

Part 1 | Part 2 (missing) | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

As announcer and second banana to host Johnny Carson during the NBC Tonight Show’s years of greatest prominence and cultural influence, McMahon exemplified what was then a relatively new phenomenon: the ability to become famous, wealthy, and admired without having any particular talent.

That’s not to say there was anything dishonorable about his career or something wrong with McMahon’s public persona. Quite the contrary. He was quite likable, pleasant, well-mannered (an underrated virtue these days), and overall a boon companion both for Carson and the audiences in the studio and at home.

However, he was liked for what he was, not what he could do. He couldn’t sing, dance, tell a joke, or even read the news. His turns as straight man to Carson’s various comical characters were most notable for their, well, charming ineptitude.

McMahon’s most memorable characteristic, in fact, was his continual failure to refrain from laughing at even the worst jokes purveyed by his boss, Carson, and even though his laughter was often obviously forced and insincere, he kept at it to fill the silences when Carson’s jokes bombed, which they often did.

Even that seeming foible, however, was quite charming, and it indicated what was best about McMahon: he was a good sport. He displayed admirable humility in always playing along and refusing to upstage Carson–and that showed good sense as well, as he surely would have been fired had he done so, for Carson was clearly a very insecure man.

McMahon demonstrated the same humility and essentially benevolent nature in his other work as well, such as his duties as host of Star Search. Those characteristics were a good lesson for his audiences, without ever becoming a boring sermon.

McMahon quite evidently enjoyed life and wanted others to do so as well. Having no great talent at anything, he employed his most appealing personal characteristic–his affability–to demonstrate some of the cardinal virtues and make the world a slightly more pleasant place than it otherwise would be.

For that accomplishment he’s is well remembered and will be missed.

—S. T. Karnick is editor of The American Culture.

In a November 2007 radio interview I did on The Andrea Shea King Show with McMahon to talk about his then newly published book “When Television Was Young, Live, Spontaneous and in Living Black and White,” we talked about his life, and what it was like to share the NBC “Tonight Show” set with The King of Late Night.

McMahon was dealing with a bout of layrngitis, but it didn’t stop him from opening the interview with the famous words that announced to American viewers it was time for their eagerly anticipated nightly entertainment — “Heeere’s Johnny!”

Their Friendship

McMahon told of how he and Carson met.

“The first day I ever worked, I did a show with him called “Who Do You Trust” on ABC.  It was a quiz show, a game show in the afternoon, it was live, and he hosted it. He had another announcer, a fellow named Bill Nimmo who got his own show and he had to leave.   I came up and auditioned for the show and I got the job. Which was a wonderful, lucky happenstance for me.

“What happened was, on the very first show here I am a little nervous, you can imagine.  I’m doing the first show, and I’m replacing somebody.  I want to do a good job, and I’ve got a script in front of me and on this script it’s got these six responses of the day: “Swansdown Cake Mixes, the cake mixes you can trust.”  I have to read this.  Now, the audience at home doesn’t see me of course, but the audience in the theater does.  Johnny Carson comes over and sets fire to my script.  That’s the very first day I ever worked with him!

“Talk about buddies!  That kind of sealed us forever.  For at least thirty-seven years anyway.  And forty-seven years of friendship. But that sealed it. When he set fire to my script, I knew we were off and running, this is gonna be different than any other show I was on.  And then of course, when he got the Tonight Show he took me with him, which was another happenstance for me.  And we had thirty years of wonderful times on the Tonight Show.”

There never was a disagreement between them.  “We’d have dinner once a week or a couple of times a week.  We just became buddies.  We were like two kids kicking a can down the street, we just enjoyed each other, we liked to be with each other.”

The Funniest Bit

McMahon recalled the funniest moment on the show, the one that to this day holds the record for the longest sustained audience applause.

“Ed Ames had been a singer with his brothers, the Ames Brothers, then he went out on his own.  And then he went into acting. He got a job on a frontier show as an Indian.  And he was trying to show Johnny how you threw a tomahawk.  He was gonna throw a tomahawk at a cut-out we had.  We’d taken a piece of plywood and we’d drawn a cowboy outline on there in black chalk, full size.  You know, with the guns and the holsters and the vest and the badge, the ten-gallon hat and the boots.  Ed Ames was supposed to throw this hatchet, or tomahawk, at the target.  Now, he threw it and it struck the cowboy where no cowboy should be struck.  Especially if he plans on having a family.

“Johnny had three of the greatest lines ever — ad libs.  And to give you an idea of how sharp he was, Ed Ames of course is embarrassed and wants to go and retrieve the tomahawk.  There it is with the handle sticking out.  You can imagine what that looked like.  Anyway, Johnny grabbed him.  He knew that he had gold.  And when the laughter subsided a little bit, he said, ‘I didn’t even know you were Jewish’.

“More laughter.  And then when that subsided, he said, ‘Welcome to the Frontier Bris’.

“And it’s not over yet. Wait a minute. Because Ed Ames was so nervous he said, ‘Do you want to try it Johnny?’  Johnny looked at Ed Ames, he looked at the poor cowboy with the hatchet sticking out and he said, ‘Well, I couldn’t hurt him anymore than you did.’

“That was like in the third year, so that kind of gave us a definition of where we were headed on the “Tonight Show.” I think that exemplified to the audience what was going to happen for the future, so twenty-seven years later, they didn’t want him to say goodbye.  They didn’t want us to leave.  They wanted us to stay right there.”

May 22, 1992 – The Goodbye

“There were really two closing nights.  The next to the last show was really the last show.  That was where Bette Midler sang to him and Robin Williams was his crazy, wonderful self.  But that last show was like a compilation of all of the bits that had happened over the years, and we saw some of the people on the screen that had left us, who are no longer around.  And we saw a lot of the good stuff that had happened, and it was just like a big basketful of goodies.

“But the night before is the one people think as the last show, and that’s where Bette Midler sang that wonderful song — a parody of  ‘One for my Baby, one more for the Road.’   And at one point she said — and I think this exemplifies the thirty years of the Tonight Show — she said, ‘And all the class that you showed.’  And boy, did he have class when he did that show!

“They called him the King of Late Night, and as far as I’m concerned, he’s still the King of Late Night.

Carson’s Foil

“I loved being the second banana.  You know, it’s quite a challenging role.  The whole idea is that you have to be in when you’re needed, and out of the way when you’re not needed.  And that’s kind of like a tightrope walker, that’s a balancing act to try to do it right.  And hopefully I did it right all those years because he didn’t say, ‘Let’s get another guy.’   He kept me.

“We knew each other, we saw each other, we had fun together, and it translated itself onto the screen.  I think people knew that.  In fact, on that next to the last show, he commented about that.  He said, ‘You know, a lot of couplings on television aren’t really good friends.’  You know what happened with Martin and Lewis.  I’m told that the Marx Brothers didn’t hang out together.  Abbott and Costello apparently were not good friends.  I don’t know.  But he said, ‘We are good friends.  We go out to dinner, we have fun together, we enjoy each other.’  And it’s true.  We just had a good time together.”

The Brigadier General

Not many people know that McMahon flew 85 combat missions in two wars.

“Well, the very first show I was on was a play I was in.  I was going to Catholic University in Washington right after World War II.  I was a Marine fighter pilot in World War Two and a test pilot.  I taught carrier landings and so forth.  But anyway, the war was over, and I wanted to continue my education.  I had been in Boston College for a year and a half and I got an OK to go to Catholic University and I studied drama and speech.  I was in a play that was broadcast from Washington, through Philadelphia to New York, in 1947.  That’s how far back I go. And it was the first use of the coaxial cable which took programming through a city, which never happened before.

“Then in 1949, Sept. 12th, a Monday, I started in Philadelphia on a show called “Take Ten”, that was the call letters, you know, the number of the station — WCAU in Philly — and there I was, host of a three-hour daily live variety show… I was the producer, I was the make-up man, I swept up the studio, whatever you had to do.  I was on the air from 12 to 3, and I was the happiest man in North America.

“I had thirteen different shows — on the air thirteen different shows a week.  Unbelievable!

“I was called back for the Korean war and off I went for a year and a half, but when I got back I went right into the same station.

“The California Air National Guard named me a Bigadier General, an honorary position, but in the Marine Corps, I got to be a full bird, what they call a full bird, a colonel.  And I’m very proud of that, and I’m very proud of my career in the Marines.  I had six years, two wars, 85 combat missions, so I’m very proud of that.”

Hollywood Then

“It’s not the same, no it’s not.  It’s unfortunate.You know, in World War Two, even in Korea, everyone was kind of involved.  They called Korea the ‘forgotten war’ but still, everybody had someone, a cousin or somebody that was in the war, and in World War Two, everybody was in the war — the Gold Star mothers, you know, everybody was involved.  We had certain restrictions and rules we had to abide by and it was a different situation.

“Unfortunately now, it’s tumbled into a thing almost like Vietnam again where these boys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan — they should be honored as well and it disappoints me that they’re not.”

Fade to black

We went on to talk briefly about his book and with that, his faltering voice faded and he said goodnight.

McMahon was gold, and to Carson’s credit, he recognized it and kept him close by.  Sadly, we’ll never see the likes of the late night duo again.  Ed’s passing marks the end of a sparkling era in late night TV.

Goodnight, Ed McMahon.  Thank you for everything.