For Laughing Out Loud

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 28 SET 1998

McMahon is known to the televiewing public for having excelled in two roles: as second banana to Carson on the Tonight Show for three decades and as the pitchman par excellence for dozens of products, especially magazines for American Family Publishers. Indeed, he has been so visible on TV for 50 years, i.e., from the very start of the medium, that it has been difficult to avoid him. In his time he has hosted Snap Judgment and Star Search, been the permanent spokesman for Budweiser Beer, worked with Jerry Lewis on the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon for 30 years and sold everything from kitchen appliances to Jenny Craig diet programs. There is no doubt he was a born salesman: on his first day peddling magazine subscriptions as a kid he sold three, and he financed his college career by selling, with a little help from the G.I. Bill, since he was a Marine Corps aviator in both WWII and the Korean War. In between pitches and punch lines (many cribbed from on-the-air performances), we see him give time and money to various charities, get married three times and raise five kids. The relentlessly upbeat tone falters only in discussions of his two divorces ("Imagine, me, hiring a private investigator to follow my wife" ). While it is difficult to imagine a true fan of McMahon, readers with a high tolerance for the ever-unctuous announcer will find this memoir every bit as lively as its subject. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour.