Ed McMahon dead at 86

Ed McMahon, the man perhaps best known for the many years he spent as Johnny Carson's sidekick on the Tonight show, has died. He was 86.

McMahon's publicist made the announcement early Tuesday morning at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center. Earlier this year, McMahon was hospitalized with pneumonia and other ailments. He was born in Detroit in 1923 and began his career as a bingo caller in Maine at the age of 15. McMahon put himself through college working as a pitchman for vegetable slicers on the Atlantic City boardwalk. McMahon got his big break in the late 1950s when ABC decided to replace ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his puppet sidekick, Charlie McCarthy, on the daytime game show Who Do You Trust? Johnny Carson was brought in as the host, and McMahon got the "dummy's" role. In 1962, Carson took over the Tonight Show from Jack Paar in 1962. Carson brought McMahon along with him and for the next 30 years, McMahon introduced Carson with a resounding "Heeeeere's Johnny!" Carson retired in 1992 and McMahon also left the show. McMahon appeared in a few movies including Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), Just Write (1997), Butterfly (1982) and in the film version of Bewitched (2005). He also did Budweiser commercials and co-hosted Jerry Lewis's muscular dystrophy telethons, and appeared in numerous television commercials, most notably for Budweiser.