Recently, Johnny Carson’s co-host, Ed McMahon, who became just as famous for making a very small number of people ecstatic as spokesperson for American Family Publishing sweepstakes as he did for his role on The Tonight Show has run into some financial trouble and is facing foreclosure on his California home.
According to public records, McMahon is nearly $644,000 behind in payments on a $4.8 million mortgage loan he obtained in 2005. The six-bedroom, five-bathroom home is in an exclusive area of Beverly Hills, and has been on the market for about two years and its current asking price is $6.25 million. According to his business manager, Johnny Podell, McMahon, who in 1969 wrote Ed McMahon’s Barside Companion and once boasted he drank eight martinis before breakfast, got sober a decade ago. By then he probably had lost much of his fortune, but his apparently free-spending 54-year-old wife of 16 years, Pamela McMahon, may have contributed to the malaise by charging more than a few expenses on their American Express card, for which court documents show a $747,000 judgment. According to reports, he paid $2.6 million for the pad back in 1990.
With Trump offering to help Ed McMahon avert foreclosure, do you think that Ed will be doing the right thing to do a RENT BACK? It didn’t seem to be a good idea for her, as we learned from the Foreclosure DVD, and her house definately wasn’t worth $4.5 million. Donald Trump doesn’t know Ed McMahon, but he “grew up watching him on tv,” so he’d like to be his new landlord. McMahon is currently facing foreclosure from Countrywide, and had 2 weeks to sell his house before the bank repossessed it.
I’m glad Trump is stepping up to help. The mystery buyer who had topped Donald Trump’s offer “did not perform on a specific point of the contract,” McMahon’s Realtor said although Trump’s bid is apparently still on the table. McMahon’s plight may have a bright side, ABC News reports, because many Americans are learning that even stars suffer in today’s economy.
Lee says that he intends to end the emotional and financial roller coaster that McMahon has endured since the Notice of Default was filed on his Beverly Hills home, threatening foreclosure and financial ruin. After several attempts by well-meaning individuals to help save the T.V. McMahon blames his financial woes on a neck injury, which he says kept him from working. In fact, he’s suing Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, as well as two doctors and the owner of the house where he says he fell and broke his neck in 2007, according to CNN. But it’s not all bad news for McMahon: The former Tonight Show sidekick shot a series of funny spots for Pontiac that aired recently on Jimmy Kimmel Live. “I went in like a professional to do a commercial, like I’ve done a million times in my life in my long career,” said McMahon.
