Ed McMahon may have been the world’s No. 1 second banana. As Johnny Carson’s sidekick on The Tonight Show, he helped keep millions laughing late at night for three decades, and his rousing introduction, “He-e-e-e-r-e’s Johnny!” was soon part of the language. When Jack Nicholson, as a homicidal maniac in the Stanley Kubrick movie The Shining, smashed through a locked door with an ax, stuck his head in the splintered opening, and belted out the phrase with demonic glee, everybody got the joke.

Mr. McMahon, who died on June 22 at 86, grew up in Lowell, Mass., when he was not traveling with his entertainer father. He served in World War II as a Marine flight instructor, flew 85 missions in the Korean War, and worked in Maine as a carnival barker and in Atlantic City, touting the virtues of vegetable slicers, before landing jobs as a pitchman on television. He started working with Johnny Carson in 1957, on the daytime game show Who Do You Trust? Mr. Carson liked his style so much that he insisted he join him on the Tonight Show.

The 6-foot-4 Mr. McMahon was famous late in life as the host of Star Search, the announcer on the annual Jerry Lewis telethon, and as the guy handing out the big checks in commercials for Publisher’s Clearinghouse. But he was best known as Mr. Carson’s sidekick, doing a marvelous — and greatly underrated — job as a straight man, setting up Johnny’s jokes, chortling along and throwing out his own zingers from time to time. It seemed effortless, but Mr. McMahon had almost flawless timing, and a well-honed sense of how to work with Mr. Carson to help his humor unfold.

“My talent is making it seem I have no talent,” Mr. McMahon wrote. “It took me years of hard work to convince an audience that I wasn’t working.”

The host certainly understood how important he was to the show, and made sure Ed stayed by his side for decades. Mr. McMahon also was the glue that held the show together, maintaining its friendly and familiar atmosphere when guest hosts filled in during Johnny’s many nights off and vacations.

In later years, he ran into trying financial and health problems, but he was remembered by all who knew him as an amiable, kind-hearted person who refused to bear grudges. He hailed from an age when it was easier to be considered funny without being vicious.