The Pitchman

By the time he was 18, Edward Leo McMahon Jr. had been a pitchman for eight years. He was the genuine article, too, peddling merchandise on the sidewalks: "Folks, I'm gonna show you the Morris Metric Slicer. Two dollars is the price on the box, but forget the two dollars. I'm talking about one dollar, and I'm throwing in the onion slicer and the juice extractor." When Ed talked, the folks listened. And when they listened, they usually bought.

Today, at 45, McMahon is still pitching, and the folks are still buying. After six years as Johnny Carson's No. 2 man on NBC's Tonight Show, he ranks as TV's most effective salesman since the heyday of Arthur Godfrey. Besides appearing with Carson, McMahon hosts his own daily game show (Snap Judgment), and is getting ready to appear in his second movie, The Killing Time, in which he will play an F. Lee Bailey kind of lawyer defending a pathological killer. This week he moves up to No. 1 for a day as executive producer, director and master of ceremonies of the Inaugural Gala at Washington's National Armory.

Heartland, U.S.A. Gala Chairman General Emmett ("Rosie") O'Donnell Jr. picked McMahon to recruit and stage the show because "he can pick up the phone and get anybody." O'Donnell is just about right. Among those appearing at the ball will be Hugh O'Brian, Roger Williams, Lionel Hampton, Tony Bennett, Carson, James Brown, Connie Francis and Joel Grey and the George M! company. At the end Dinah Shore will sing America the Beautiful with the three service academy glee clubs. Says Pitchman McMahon: "That's gotta be Heartland, U.S.A."

McMahon is every bit as busy outside show business. In the four years that he has been doing the Budweiser beer commercials on Tonight, he has developed into principal spokesman for the company and now does 50% of all its radio and TV ads. He owns a stationery company, a knickknack concern, a talent agency, a TV and film production company and a Florida drive-in store. His wife Alyce does not see much of him during the week, but at least his four children do not have to peddle slicers: a conservative estimate of his earnings is something more than $250,000 a year. Says Bob Newhart, an occasional Tonight guest host: "He may be doing too much now, but in three years he might regret it if he did not take up all these things."

Security Blanket. On Tonight, McMahon is the perfect aide-de-camp. Like Carson, he keeps his chatter on the light side. It's a basketball game of sorts, the way Ed sees it: "I help him get the ball down the court, and he sinks the basket." Sliding farther and farther down the couch as the guests pile up, Ed can still be heard roaring delightedly at all Carson's jokes, even the frequent gibes at Ed's supposed alcoholic prowess. Last week, giving blood on camera to help dramatize a nationwide shortage, Carson lifted his head from the pillow and cracked: "Ed's is the only blood with a 10-minute head on it." Actually, Ed is an average drinker who likes a couple of martinis with meals or with the two peanut butter sandwiches that he sometimes eats when he arrives late at night at his home in suburban Bronxville.

To Tonight's guest hosts, McMahon, a 6-ft. 3 3/4-in. 215-pounder with the face of a friendly brown bear, is "the Rock of Gibraltar" (Joan Rivers), or "my security blanket" (Newhart). Once, when Newhart and Guest Bobby Morse were lulling the audience to sleep with reminiscences, McMahon piped: "Gee, have you two ever thought about putting a book of these stories out?" Says Newhart: "The relief was marvelous. Bobby and I would have kept going all night if Ed hadn't saved us." Jerry Lewis tried to break Ed up during commercials and even kept it up when Ed was trying to say something laudatory about him. "You're such a great mimic," said Ed, "why don't you act humble for a minute?" Silent and unsmiling, Lewis mumbled a humble, "I've got to admit, that's a good one."

McMahon attributes his success to a lonely childhood. His father was one of the first of the professional fund raisers, and the family was always on the move. By the time he was four, he had moved through 40 states. By high school graduation he had attended 15 schools. Throughout it all, he was earning his own spending money. At 10, he bought copies of the Bayonne Times on the newsstands for a penny, hawked them in bars and restaurants for two cents. He shined shoes, dug ditches, sold peanuts, labored on a construction gang. At 18, he toured New England with his own bingo game. After four years as a Marine fighter pilot in World War II, he got a degree in speech and drama from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., then moved to Philadelphia, where, among other things, he found a job as a circus clown. It was not long before he was one of Philadelphia's best-known TV personalities. He met Carson on a trip to New York, and Johnny hired him in 1958 as his sidekick on ABC's Who Do You Trust? In 1962 Carson took him along to Tonight, and they have been sinking baskets ever since.

ABC's Dick Cavett, a former Tonight writer and more recently a guest host, says that "Ed has mastered a very tricky thing. It's like a man learning to dance well without leading. There is an unslick look to him, which is good. For an announcer, he seems human--and so often announcers don't because they are too well-spoken, too well-groomed and too regular-featured." He can be sharp and funny, even at Carson's expense. Last week, when the boss muffed an imitation of John Wayne, Ed cracked: "You sound like David Brinkley." Because he is willing to jab Johnny every once in a while, he says: "I think I appeal to every guy who ever wanted to punch his boss."

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