Ed McMahon Dead at 86
Ed McMahon, Tonight Show announcer and sidekick to host Johnny Carson for 30 years, has died. He was 86.
McMahon died after midnight June 23 at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. No cause of death was announced, though multiple health problems, including bone cancer, have been attributed to him.
In his final months, illness and financial problems plagued the talk show icon and kept him from working.
McMahon was born March 6, 1923, in Detroit, Mich., and grew up in Lowell, Mass. A graduate of Boston College and The Catholic University of America, McMahon began his television career in Lowell at a small AM station. He’d later join WCAU in Philadelphia as, primarily, a game show host.
It was as a game show announcer that McMahon met Johnny Carson. Carson was the host, and the game show was Who Do You Trust?. The dynamic duo left the game show to take on The Tonight Show. And the rest, as they say, is history.
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RIP Ed McMahon. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon is timeless Americana. Let us also not forget that Ed McMahon was the host of the Star Search game show, which was really the original American Idol if you think about it.