Early Years
McMahon was born in Detroit, Michigan to Edward Leo Peter McMahon, Sr. a fund-raiser and entertainer, and his wife Eleanor (Russell) McMahon. He was raised in Lowell, Massachusetts. McMahon attended Boston College in 1940-41 and later graduated from the Catholic University of America, majoring in speech and drama on the GI Bill in 1949. He was a member of Phi Kappa Theta fraternity. McMahon began his career as a bingo caller in Maine when he was fifteen.
Prior to this, he worked as a carnival barker for three years in Mexico, Maine. He put himself through college as a pitchman for vegetable slicers on the Atlantic City boardwalk. His first broadcasting job was at WLLH-AM in his native Lowell and he began his television career in Philadelphia at WCAU-TV.
Read more about this topic: Ed McMahon
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“Some would find fault with the morning red, if they ever got up early enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Neither years nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men. His duties lead him directly into the holy ground where other men’s aspirations only point. His successes are occasions of the purest joy to all men. Eyes is he to the blind; feet is he to the lame. His failures, if he is worthy, are inlets to higher advantages.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)