Tonight Show Sidekick Ed McMahon Dies

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Tonight Show Sidekick Ed McMahon Dies

Tue., Jun. 23, 2009 11:40 AM PDT by Joal Ryan

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Ed McMahon was a first-rate second banana.

McMahon, Johnny Carson's devoted friend and Tonight Show straight man who defined what it meant to be a late-night TV wingman, died just after midnight Tuesday, his publicist, Howard Bragman, confirmed to E! News.

The 86-year-old, surrounded by his wife and loved ones, passed away at Los Angeles' Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

In March, it was learned that a seriously ill McMahon, who appeared in a TV spot on Super Bowl Sunday, had been hospitalized for several weeks in intensive care with pneumonia and other unspecified ailments.

McMahon worked alongside Carson for nearly 35 years—first, as the comic's announcer on the daytime game show Who Do You Trust? from 1958-62; then, most famously, as his right-hand man on late-night's Tonight Show from 1962-92.

"I [am] quite happy being the second banana," McMahon told the New York Times in 1988. "I enjoy that role very much, and it's been the mother lode for quite a lot of other things."

Indeed, McMahon parlayed his spot on Carson's couch into starring gigs as TV pitchman and host. In 1983, he found his biggest success apart from the Tonight Show: Star Search. For 12 years, McMahon hosted the pre-American Idol talent competition, giving early exposure to Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Rosie O'Donnell and more.

McMahon worked as an actor, too, throwing around his ex-Marine weight as the heavy in the original Fun With Dick and Jane, with Jane Fonda, and the blaxploitation favorite Slaughter's Big Rip-Off.

RON WOLFSON/Landov

At times, McMahon seemed to be everywhere: in your mailbox, informing you that you could be the "missing" winner of $10 million, via American Family Sweepstakes, the company for which he was a longtime pitchman; in prime time, cohosting the 1980s' equivalent of Punk'd with Dick Clark, TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes.

McMahon was so successful at carving out his own identity that only his sidekick job, not his career, ended with Carson's 1992 retirement. Post-Tonight Show, McMahon remained in touch with his famously private former boss. Carson died in 2005 at the age of 79.

"For 46 years, Johnny and I were as close as two nonmarried people can be," McMahon wrote in his 2006 memoir, Here's Johnny! "And if he heard me say that, he might say, 'Ed, I always felt you were my insignificant other.' "

In 2008, McMahon put a famous face on the nation's real-estate bust when it was reported he was facing foreclosure on his Beverly Hills home.

In February, McMahon seemed to spoof his—if not the country's—financial woes by costarring with MC Hammer in a Cash4Gold commercial that aired during Super Bowl XLIII.

Born March 6, 1923, in Detroit, McMahon is survived by his wife, Pamela, and five children.

(Originally published June 23, 2009, at 5:50 a.m. PT)