Which would explain why McMahon was nervous as he planned a Philadelphia surprise party in Carson' s honor. He'd told Carson that TV Guide (located in Radnor) needed the "Tonight Show" host in the City of Brotherly Love for a cover photo. McMahon, meanwhile, was carefully inviting 30 guests he knew Carson would be pleased to see.

McMahon arranged for Carson's driver to stop by his house on the way to the photo shoot. One of McMahon's kids answered the door and told Carson to head to the back of the house.

Though he was a bit annoyed to have to travel to Philly, when Carson walked out and saw the party gathered around the pool, McMahon got the reaction he was looking for. "Tears welled up in his eyes. I had nailed him. He's a hard man to nail," he told me when we spoke a few years ago.

Better than the alternative. The party was in Gulph Mills, and McMahon feared Carson might walk all the way to Bryn Mawr to avoid staying.

Sure, it was a footnote in an on-air partnership and off-air friendship that lasted for decades. But McMahon's death reminded me of the conversation. The party he described was far from his lone connection to Philadelphia. In a lot of ways, McMahon was a natural Philly guy.

He spent his sophomore year at Olney High. He skipped about after that and ended up with his grandmother in Massachusetts.

He trained as a Marine pilot during World War II, graduated from Catholic University and found his way onto the local airwaves on Sept. 12, 1949, on WCAU, then a CBS affiliate.

"We didn't know exactly what we were doing, but we did it anyway. And I learned how to do television in Philadelphia," he told me.

Called back into military service, McMahon flew 85 combat missions in Korea and earned six medals. When he got back to the States, he made two calls.

The first was to his wife. The other to Dan Kelly, owner of the Drexelbrook apartments in Drexel Hill. Kelly set McMahon up with an apartment - not a small favor, McMahon recalled. ("You couldn't get an apartment at gunpoint" at the time, he said.)

Even luckier, McMahon's new place was next to Dick Clark's. He continued to hustle, ultimately working on more than a dozen projects locally and hunting down some broadcast work in New York. "And along that way I met Johnny Carson, and that started this whole run," he said. Indeed, McMahon lived in Philadelphia for the first three years of the duo's run on "Tonight."

And he had a lot of Philly in him even after he left. McMahon always worked hard. He spent 30 years on the "Tonight Show" couch. Hosted "Star Search" for more than a decade. Pitched dozens of products. Ran a couple of businesses - and took flak for it from Carson, who would tell the audience that McMahon would be selling something in the elevator after the show.

Indeed, Carson's foil always knew his role. He was an everyman to people across the country. No doubt that on-screen persona - and the decorated military man, pavement-pounding salesman behind it - had a special appeal around here.

McMahon was also not without faults. At times, he drank too much. Was twice divorced. His last gigs - hawking FreeCredit Report.com and a self-parodying ad for something called Cash4Gold - reflected the financial strife he encountered late in life. He defaulted on his $4.8 million house in 2008.

But he never gave up the classy sense of humor that he and Carson had perfected. "I'm very upset with what's happened in broadcasting since we said goodbye on the 'Tonight Show.' It's like anything goes. Any words, any phrase, anything." A sense of decorum, he said, was disappearing from television. In a few years, he said, "Victoria's Secret models will be topless, but it won't be near as great to look at."

The lights of TV Land lost a bit of their luster when big Ed McMahon left the stage. And with his death, so did Philadelphia. *

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.smerconish.com.