Now I've Heard Everything

Ed McMahon had a career in broadcasting that dated back to the 1940s. But perhaps nothing he did on television was as memorable as this: his 30-year on-are partnership with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.

In 1998, McMahon wrote an autobiography, a mmoir of his decades in television entertainment. That's when I met him.

One night, 40 years ago this week, a young man approached musician John Lennon outside Lennon's Manhattan apartment building. The young man appeared to be asking for an autograph, but instead, shot and killed Lennon, who was just 40.

A few years later, Lennon's half-sister, Julia Baird, wrote a book about her, her brother, and their mother, called John Lennon, My Brother.

Today we're wrapping up Celebrity Cookbook Week on Now I've Heard Everything.

On Monday, we heard from actress Dawn Wells (Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island), then on Wednesday, musician-actor IsaacHayes.Today, one of my favorite comic actors from the '60s amd '70s, 

Dom DeLuise may be best known for the many movies he made with Burt Reynolds, and Mel Brooks.

I met him on a snowy Friday afternoon in January 1988, after he published his cookbook "Eat This, it'll Make You Feel Better."

It's Celebrity Cookbook Week here on Now I've Heard Everything. We continue today with a man who my younge listeners may kknow best for his work on South Park.

But for decades, Isaac Hayes was a major figure in the Southern soul music label Stax Records, where he was a songwriter, a session musician and record a producer

I met him 20 years ago, when he published a cookbook that brought together some of his own favorite family recipes, plus those of dozens of celebrities.

It's Celebrity Cookbook Week on Now I've Heard Everything. 

And we start with not only one of my favorite sitcom stars, but also one of my favorite cookbooks.

Dawn Wells portrayed Kansas farm girl Mary Ann Summers on Gilligan's Island. Turns out, she was pretty handy with coconuts, bananas, and whatever else the castaways were able to find -- plus a few food items probably not normally found on a desert island, but, that was Gilligan's Island. It was a fantasy.

Berkeley Breathed is perhaps best known for his comic strips "Bloom County," "Outland," and "Opus."  

But he's also a gifted children's book creator.  I first met him in 2003, upon publication of his book "Flawed Dogs."

We tal;;kerd again in 2007 after he published "Mars Needs Moms," which later became a Disney animated film.  It's about a 9-year-old boy named Milo who comes to appreciate everything about his mom, after she's abducted by Martians.

In the music business, backup singers often fade into the background.  Few achieve much fame on their own.  One who did was Cissy Houston.

After a successful career backing up the likes of Elvis Preslet, Dionne Warick, and Aretha Franklin, Houston struck out on her own -- and won two Grammies.

I met Cissy Houston in the spring of 1998, after she'd written her memoir. 

Alexa stopNot since Carl Sagan, perhaps, has there been a professional stargazer as engaging and as popular as Neil de Grasse Tyson.

A witty, Charming personality who seems to know everything about astrophysics, Tyson has become a very popular TV host, public speaker, and podcaster.

I met him in 2000, when he wrote a book for the light person, not the professional scientist. Science literacy is Tyson's thing.

If you're of a certain age, you remember where you were when something big and historical happened. For my parents, it was Pearl Harbor. For my children, it was the Challenger explosion. For me, it was the John F Kennedy assassination, on Nomb 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.

But in the intervening decades, members of the president's Secret Service detail rarely spoke about that day, even among themselves. That changed in 2010, when Gerald Blaine, a senior member of the detail, wrote a book about their common experience.

Very few professional athletes are best remembered for the game, or the play, that ended their career. But Joe Theismann maybe one of them.

It was on this date, November 18th, 1985 -- 35 years ago --  that Joe Theismann sustained a gruesome, career-ending injury before a national TV audience.

I met him two years later, after he had written a book about his football career an d the play that ended it..