Ed McMahon's America

Affable, ever-smiling Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson's sidekick on the Tonight show, makes friends wherever he goes. Two years ago, he decided to win friends for the outcast International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He had a scheme to launch a coast-to-coast publicity campaign to polish up the union's image. Unfortunately, in the process he tarnished his own. Today, affable Ed is not smiling. In its current issue, Overdrive, a trucking-industry magazine, charges that Ed teamed up with Nicholas Torzeski, a man with links to the Mafia, to bilk the Teamsters out of more than a million dollars.

Investigative Reporter James Drinkhall, who has written exposes of the Teamsters in the past, says that Ed got together with Nick in late 1971. In a sense, Nick had solid Teamster connections. Among innumerable brushes with the law, he had been indicted along with three Mafia gangsters in 1968 for offering kickbacks in return for Teamster loans. Three years later, the indictment was dismissed for lack of evidence. As it happened, a crucial Government witness turned up dead--floating in his boat down a river, the back of his head removed by a shotgun blast. "Nick has always conducted himself like a real gentleman," says McMahon, explaining their friendship. Did Ed know of Nick's association with the Mafia? "Hell, they're everywhere. There isn't any way you can be in show business without knowing some of them."

The pair figured that what the Teamsters needed was a major image lift called America on the Move. The project would involve a TV network special, a nationwide truck tour and a high school essay contest on the subject of "What America on the Move Means to Me." Without appearing to give the matter much thought, the Teamsters put up $1.75 million. It was just a "little flyer," declared Teamster Secretary-Treasurer Murray W. ("Dusty") Miller. Over the years, the Teamsters have mysteriously lost millions of dollars in similar projects that turned out to be astonishingly poor business ventures for such a sophisticated union. Recently, a $7,000,000 Teamster loan to a New Mexican toy manufacturer was lost when the company went out of business. A similar fate has befallen Teamster loans to a Las Vegas ice-skating rink, to a hotel in Reno, to a truck stop in Dearborn, Mich., to a real estate development in the Santa Monica mountains in California.

By spring 1972, Ed and Nick received the first payment from the union. They formed a corporation, America on the Move, Inc., and hired a reputable public relations consultant, Thelma Gray, to handle the publicity campaign. Setting up offices at the Samuel Goldwyn studios in Hollywood, they launched the project at Teamster headquarters in Washington. Demonstrating its usual friendliness toward the union, the Nixon Administration sent top officials to attend the ceremonies.

Road Show. America on the Move covered the country in a 40-ft. tractor-trailer painted red, white and blue and draped from one end to the other with American flags. Inside, visitors were treated to an inspirational film short narrated by McMahon; they could also pick up pamphlets on drug abuse, ecology and patriotism. The road show got rave reviews as it made its way across the continent. On Christmas night, it was publicized by a TV show celebrating the Teamsters. McMahon hosted, and such stars as Sammy Davis Jr. and Debbie Reynolds performed. The caravan was scheduled to visit 55 cities, but after 33, it halted, dead broke.

America on the Move had been hijacked--by its own producers. It seems that no sooner had Ed and Nick set up shop in Hollywood than they formed a second corporation, Sabra Productions Inc., which began shooting a movie in Israel. To finance the film, they dipped heavily into money allocated for the Teamster campaign, an action that has caused the U.S. Department of Justice to start an investigation. Ed and Nick argue that $400,000 of their Teamster budget was "profit" to use as they pleased. But they spent much more than that. Explains McMahon: "We misused the money in the sense that we paid out money before we had anything else coming [back] in." Says Thelma Gray: "They looted the treasury and dumped it into that motion picture." For all that, Sabra Command, starring David Janssen, is not likely even to be released because of its uneven quality.

Most of the bills run up by America on the Move have not been paid. Although CBS received $182,000 for air time for the TV show and the actors were paid, the writers, producers and other participants have not been given a cent. Because of nonpayment of rent, the Samuel Goldwyn studios locked up the Hollywood offices, impounded the furniture and filed suit against America on the Move. Thelma Gray's firm, T. Gray & Associates, claims that the operation still owes it $59,000. Loudest to complain have been the parents of high school students who were supposed to win savings bonds in the essay contest. After an avalanche of letters, McMahon finally started making some awards. "I'm paying out of my own pocket," he says, "because I couldn't live with the letters from the kids' parents. It sounds like we were trying to defraud the kids, which we were not."

Even the nonchalant Teamsters raised an eyebrow when they received an audit from America on the Move in which there was no mention of diverting funds to the Israeli film. Otherwise, the Teamsters profess to be perfectly happy with the thwarted project. Says Dusty Miller: "We paid them for public relations work, and we got a lot of good publicity out of it."

Torzeski also does not understand what all the fuss is about. "Ask 99 out of 100 people and they'll tell you I'm really a good guy," he told TIME'S Jonathan Beaty in Los Angeles last week. Nick insisted that neither he nor Ed had done anything wrong, though he admitted that making the movie was a mistake. Alternately fondling a gold signet ring, a gold cigarette lighter and a gold watch with two dials (one for each coast, since he travels so much), he confessed to one weakness over luncheon at Hollywood's Brown Derby: "I'm just too friendly, I guess." That goes for Ed too.

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