According to McMahon, Carson
said he was a “loner” who worked better with cameras than humans. “I’d do better
if people had little red lights in their foreheads,” McMahon recalls him
saying. Of their friendship, he writes, “I was supremely lucky to be one of the
people who did have a red light in his forehead for [Carson] because he often
performed privately for me.”
Though McMahon refers to
himself as Carson’s “second banana” in Here’s Johnny, he recollects a time
his old friend told him he somewhat envied him. As it turns out, Carson coveted
McMahon’s social skills when the cameras were off.
“I wish I could be like you,”
McMahon writes the iconic host once told him. “You’re so hearty. Mr.
Sunshine; you’re everyone’s friend. It’s really depressing.”
As McMahon reveals, Carson
“connected wonderfully with people of all ages” but he wasn’t comfortable at
cocktail parties. “He was usually in a corner doing magic,” he notes. And he says,
“His least entertaining trick was making himself disappear.”
It seems that while Carson was
a highly charismatic host, he coveted his sidekick’s social graces.
