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The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. In 2002, The Ed Sullivan Show was ranked #15 on TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. HistoryFrom 1949 until its cancellation in 1971, the show ran on CBS every Sunday night from 8–9 p.m. ET, and is one of the few entertainment shows to have been run in the same weekly time slot on the same network for more than two decades. (For its first season, it had run from 9:00 to 10:00 P.M., E.S.T.) Virtually every type of entertainment appeared on the show; opera singers, popular artists, songwriters, comedians, ballet dancers, dramatic actors performing monologues from plays, and circus acts were regularly featured. The format was essentially the same as vaudeville, and although vaudeville had died a generation earlier, Sullivan presented many ex-vaudevillians on his showOriginally co-created and produced by Marlo Lewis, the show was first titled Toast of the Town, but was widely referred to as the Ed Sullivan Show for years before September 25, 1955, when that became its official name. In the show’s June 20, 1948 debut, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis performed along with singer Monica Lewis and Broadway composers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II previewing the score to their then-new show South Pacific, which opened on Broadway in 1949.The Ed Sullivan Show was originally broadcast via live television from the Maxine Elliott Theatre at Broadway and 39th St. before moving to its permanent home at CBS-TV Studio 50 in New York City, which was renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater[4] on the occasion of the program’s 20th anniversary in June 1968. Late Show with David Letterman has taped from that studio since 1993. The last original Sullivan show telecast (#1068) was on March 28, 1971 with guests Melanie, Joanna Simon, Danny Davis and the Nashville Brass, and Sandler and Young. Repeats were scheduled through June 6, 1971.Background
Along with the new talent Sullivan booked each week, he also had recurring characters appear many times a season, such as his “Little Italian Mouse” puppet sidekick Topo Gigio, who debuted April 14, 1963, and ventriloquist Señor Wences While most of the episodes aired live from New York City, the show also aired live on occasion from other nations, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. For many years, Ed Sullivan was a national event each Sunday evening, and was the first exposure for foreign performers to the American public. On the occasion of the show’s tenth anniversary telecast, Sullivan commented on how the show had changed during a June 1958 interview syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA):The chief difference is mostly one of pace. In those days, we had maybe six acts. Now we have 11 or 12. Then, each of our acts would do a leisurely ten minutes or so. Now they do two or three minutes. And in those early days I talked too much. Watching these kines I cringe. I look up at me talking away and I say “You fool! Keep quiet!” But I just keep on talking. I’ve learned how to keep my mouth shut. The show enjoyed phenomenal popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. As had occurred with Amos ‘n Andy on the radio in the early 1930s, and would happen with the annual telecasts of The Wizard of Oz in the 1960s and ’70’s, the family ritual of gathering around the television set to watch Ed Sullivan became almost a U.S. cultural universal. He was regarded as a kingmaker, and performers considered an appearance on his program as a guarantee of stardom, although this sometimes did not turn out to be the case. The show’s iconic status is illustrated by a song from the 1960 musical Bye Bye Birdie. In the song “Hymn for a Sunday Evening”, a family of viewers expresses their regard for the program in worshipful tones.In September 1965, CBS started televising the program in compatible color, as all three major networks began to switch to 100 percent color prime time schedules. CBS had once backed its own color system, developed by Peter Goldmark, and resisted using RCA’s compatible process until that year.In the late 1960s, Sullivan remarked that his program was waning as the decade went on. He realized that to keep viewers, the best and brightest in entertainment had to be seen, or else the viewers were going to keep on changing the channel. Along with declining viewership, Ed Sullivan attracted a higher median age for the average viewer (which most sponsors found undesirable) as the seasons went on. These two factors were the reason the show was canceled by CBS after the end of the 1970–1971 season. Because there was no notice of cancellation, Sullivan’s landmark program ended without a series finale. Sullivan would produce one-off specials for CBS until his death in 1974.Many kinescopes and tapes still exist, including a comprehensive collection of 1030 hours that is accessible to the public at the Library of Congress; the earliest “kinnie” in the Sullivan archive is the November 28, 1948 telecast. In the 1990s, performances were repackaged as The Best of the Ed Sullivan Show and Ed Sullivan—Rock & Roll Classics in syndication and on the VH1 and TV Land cable channels. From 2001 through 2004, PBS stations across the U.S. aired edited versions of The Ed Sullivan Show (usually airing two 30-minute programs back-to-back). These were produced by WQED Multimedia in Pittsburgh. Since then, CBS has reacquired the rights to the show and makes clips from episodes available on the CBS Innertube web site.The Canadian comedy troupe Wayne & Shuster appeared on the program 67 times, a record for any performer. Famous erformances
The Ed Sullivan Show is especially known to the World War II and baby boomer generations for introducing acts and airing breakthrough performances by popular 1960s musicians such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Supremes, The Beach Boys, The Jackson 5, The Rolling Stones, The Lovin’ Spoonful and The Doors.Elvis PresleyOn September 9, 1956, Presley made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (after earlier appearances on shows hosted by the Dorsey Brothers, Milton Berle, and Steve Allen) even though Sullivan had previously vowed never to allow Presley on the show According to biographer Michael David Harris, “Sullivan signed Presley when the host was having an intense Sunday-night rivalry with Steve Allen. Allen had the singer on July 1 and trounced Sullivan in the ratings. When asked to comment, the CBS star said that he wouldn’t consider presenting Presley before a family audience. Less than two weeks later he changed his mind and signed a contract. The newspapers asked him to explain his reversal. ‘What I said then was off the reports I’d heard. I hadn’t even seen the guy. Seeing the kinescopes, I don’t know what the fuss was all about. For instance, the business about rubbing the thighs. He rubbed one hand on his hip to dry off the perspiration from playing his guitar.’ ”
Sullivan’s reaction to Presley’s performance on the Milton Berle Show was, “I don’t know why everybody picked on Presley, I thought the whole show was dirty and vulgar.” Elvis mythology states that Sullivan censored Presley by only shooting him from the waist up. Sullivan may have helped create the myth when he told TV Guide, “as for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled with camera shots.” In truth Presley’s whole body was shown in the first and second shows. At the time, Presley was filming Love Me Tender, so Sullivan’s producer, Marlo Lewis, flew to Los Angeles to supervise the two segments telecast that night from CBS Television City in Hollywood. Sullivan, however, was not able to host his show in New York City because he was recovering from a near fatal automobile accident. Charles Laughton guest-hosted in Sullivan’s place. Laughton appeared in front of plaques with gold records and stated, “These gold records, four of them… are a tribute to the fact that four of his recordings have sold, each sold, more than a million copies. And this, by the way, is the first time in record making history that a singer has hit such a mark in such a short time. …And now, away to Hollywood to meet Elvis Presley.” However, according to Greil Marcus, Laughton was the main act of Sullivan’s show. “Presley was the headliner, and a Sullivan headliner normally opened the show, but Sullivan was burying him. Laughton had to make the moment invisible: to act as if nobody was actually waiting for anything. He did it instantly, with complete command, with the sort of television presence that some have and some—Steve Allen, or Ed Sullivan himself—don’t.”Host Laughton wrongly introduced the singer as “Elvin PresleyOnce on camera, Elvis cleared his throat and said, “Thank you, Mr Laughton, ladies and gentlemen. Wow”, and wiped his brow. “This is probably the greatest honor I’ve ever had in my life. Ah. There’s not much I can say except, it really makes you feel good. We want to thank you from the bottom of our heart. And now…” “Don’t Be Cruel”, which was, after a short introduction by Elvis, followed by “Love Me Tender”.According to Elaine Dundy, Presley sang “Love Me Tender” “straight, subdued and tender … —a very different Elvis from the one in the Steve Allen Show three months before”.When the camera returned to Laughton, he stated, “Well, well, well well well. Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis Presley. And Mr. Presley, if you are watching this in Hollywood, and I may address myself to you. It has been many a year since any young performer has captured such a wide, and, as we heard tonight, devoted audience.” Elvis’s second set in the show consisted of “Ready Teddy” and a short on-air comment to Sullivan, “Ah, Mr Sullivan. We know that somewhere out there you are looking in, and, ah, all the boys and myself, and everybody out here, are looking forward to seeing you back on television.” Next, Elvis declared, “Friends, as a great philosopher once said, ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a Hound Dog…,’ ” as he launched into a short (1:07) version of the song. According to Marcus, “For the first of his two appearances that night, as a performer Elvis had come on dressed in grandma’s nightgown and nightcap.” Concerning the singer’s second set in the show, the author adds that there were “Elvis, Scotty Moore on guitar, Bill Black on stand-up bass, D. J. Fontana on drums, three Jordanaires on their feet, one at a piano. They were shown from behind; the camera pulled all the way back. They went into ‘Ready Teddy.’ It was Little Richard’s most thrilling record”, however, “there was no way Elvis was going to catch him, but he didn’t have to—the song is a wave and he rode it. Compared to moments on the Dorsey shows, on the Berle show, it was ice cream—Elvis’s face unthreatening, his legs as if in casts …” When “he sang Little Richard’s ‘Reddy Teddy’ and began to move and dance, the camera pulled in, so that the television audience saw him from the waist up only.” Although Laughton was the main star and there were seven other acts on the show, Elvis was on camera for more than a quarter of the time allotted to all acts. The show was viewed by a record 60 million people which at the time was 82.6 percent of the television audience, and the largest single audience in television history. “In the New York Times”, however, “Jack Gould began his review indignantly: Elvis Presley had ‘injected movements of his tongue and indulged in wordless singing that were singularly distasteful.’ Overstimulating the physical impulses of the teenagers was ‘a gross national disservice.'”In late 1963, Sullivan and his entourage happened also to be passing through Heathrow and witnessed how The Beatles’ fans greeted the group on their return from Stockholm, where they had performed a television show as warmup band to local star Lill Babs. Sullivan was intrigued, telling his entourage it was the same thing as Elvis all over again. He initially offered Beatles manager Brian Epstein top dollar for a single show but the Beatles manager had a better idea—he wanted exposure for his clients: the Beatles would instead appear three times on the show, at bottom dollar, but receive top billing and two spots (opening and closing) on each show. The Beatles appeared on three consecutive Sundays in February 1964 to great anticipation and fanfare as “I Want to Hold Your Hand” had swiftly risen to No. 1 in the charts. Their first appearance on February 9 is considered a milestone in American pop culture and the beginning of the British Invasion in music. The broadcast drew an estimated 73 million viewers, at the time a record for US television, and was characterized by an audience composed largely of screaming hysterical teenage girls in tears. The Beatles followed Ed’s show opening intro, performing “All My Loving”, “Till There Was You” which featured the names of the group members superimposed on closeup shots, including the famous “Sorry girls, he’s married” caption on John Lennon, and “She Loves You”. They returned later in the program to perform “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”The following week’s show was broadcast from Miami Beach where Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) was in training for his first title bout with Sonny Liston. The occasion was used by both camps for publicity. On the evening of the television show (February 16) a crush of people nearly prevented the band from making it onstage. A wedge of policemen were needed and the band began playing “She Loves You” only seconds after reaching their instruments. They continued with “This Boy”, and “All My Loving” and returned later to close the show with “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
They were shown on tape February 23 (this appearance had been taped earlier in the day on February 9 before their first live appearance). They followed Ed’s intro with “Twist and Shout” and “Please Please Me” and closed the show once again with “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”The Beatles appeared live for the final time on August 14, 1965. The show was broadcast September 12, 1965 and earned Sullivan a 60 percent share of the nighttime audience for one of the appearances. This time they followed three acts before coming out to perform “I Feel Fine”, “I’m Down”, and “Act Naturally” and then closed the show with “Ticket to Ride”, “Yesterday”, and “Help!.” Although this was their final live appearance on the show, the group would for several years provide filmed promotional clips of songs to air exclusively on Sullivan’s program such as the 1966 and 1967 clips of “Paperback Writer”, “Rain”, “Penny Lane”, and “Strawberry Fields Forever”.Although the appearances by The Beatles, Elvis and The Supremes are considered the most famous rock and roll performances on Ed Sullivan, several months before Elvis debuted, Sullivan invited Bill Haley & His Comets to perform their then-current hit “Rock Around the Clock” in early August 1955. This was later recognized by CBS and others (including music historian Jim Dawson in his book on “Rock Around the Clock”) as the first performance of a rock and roll song on a national television program
The Supremes were a special act for The Ed Sullivan Show. In addition to nearly 20 appearances they were a personal favorite of Sullivan, whom he affectionately called “The Girls.” Over the five years they performed on the program, the Supremes performed 15 of their hit singles, and numerous Broadway showtunes and other non-Motown songs. The group featuring the most popular lineup of Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Florence Ballard appeared 15 times from December 1964 through May 1967. The group reappeared on the series in October 1967 as the newly rebilled “Diana Ross & the Supremes”, with Ballard replacement Cindy Birdsong and Ross more prominently featured. The Supremes’ final appearance on the show, shortly before it ended, served as the platform to introduce America to Diana’s replacement, Jean Terrell, in March 1970.OpportunityIn an era when few opportunities existed for African American performers on national television, Sullivan was a champion of black talent. He launched the careers of many performers by presenting them to a nationwide TV audience and ignored the criticism. In an NEA interview, Sullivan commented:The most important thing [during the first ten years of the program] is that we’ve put on everything but bigotry. When the show first started in ’48, I had a meeting with the sponsors. There were some Southern dealers present and they asked if I intended to put on Negroes. I said yes. They said I shouldn’t, but I convinced them I wasn’t going to change my mind. And you know something? We’ve gone over very well in the South. Never had a bit of trouble.The show included entertainers such as Frankie Lymon, The Supremes, Marian Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey, LaVern Baker, Harry Belafonte, James Brown, Godfrey Cambridge, Diahann Carroll, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, Bill Cosby, Count Basie, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis, Jr., Bo Diddley, Rocío Dúrcal, Duke Ellington, Lola Falana, The 5th Dimension, Ella Fitzgerald, The Four Tops, Aretha Franklin, Dick Gregory, W. C. Handy, Lena Horne, The Jackson 5, Mahalia Jackson, Eartha Kitt, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Little Anthony & The Imperials, Moms Mabley, Johnny Mathis, The Miracles (later known as Smokey Robinson & the Miracles), Melba Moore, The Platters, Leontyne Price, Richard Pryor, Lou Rawls, Della Reese, Nipsey Russell, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, The Temptations, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, Tina Turner (at the time known as “The Ike & Tina Turner Revue”), Leslie Uggams, William Warfield, Dionne Warwick, Dinah Washington, Ethel Waters, Flip Wilson, Jackie Wilson, Nancy Wilson, and Stevie Wonder. Before his untimely death in a plane crash in December 1967, soul singer Otis Redding had been booked to appear on the show the following year. One telecast included African-American bass-baritone Andrew Frierson singing “Ol’ Man River” from Kern and Hammerstein’s Show Boat, a song that, at that time, was usually sung on television by white singers, although it was written for a black character in the musical.However, Sullivan featured “rockers”, and gave prominence to black musicians “not without censorship”. For instance, he scheduled Fats Domino “at the show’s end in case he had to cancel a guest”. A year later the same thing happened to Sam Cooke, cutting him off in the middle of “You Send Me”. Aware that many white adults considered Domino a threat, Sullivan hid his band behind a curtain, reducing the number of black faces. He presented Domino alone at his piano singing as if he were a young Nat ‘King’ Cole or Fats Waller, and he “had Fats stand up during the last verse of the song to reveal his pudgy figureControversiesBo DiddleyOn November 20, 1955, African-American rock ‘n’ roll singer and guitarist Bo Diddley appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, only to infuriate Sullivan (“I did two songs and he got mad”). Diddley had been asked to sing Tennessee Ernie Ford’s hit “Sixteen Tons”. But when he appeared on stage, he sang his #1 R&B hit “Bo Diddley”. Diddley later recalls, “Ed Sullivan says to me in plain words: ‘You are the first black boy—quote—that ever double crossed me!’ I was ready to fight, because I was a little young dude off the streets of Chicago, an’ him callin’ me ‘black’ in them days was as bad as sayin’ ‘nigger’. My manager says to me ‘That’s Mr. Sullivan!’ I said: ‘I don’t give a shit about Mr. Sullivan, [h]e don’t talk to me like that!’ An’ so he told me, he says, ‘I’ll see that you never work no more in show business. You’ll never get another TV show in your life!'” Indeed, Diddley seems to have been banned from further appearances, as “the guitarist never did appear on The Ed Sullivan Show again.” Buddy Holly and the Crickets
On January 26, 1958, for their second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Buddy Holly and the Crickets were scheduled to perform two songs. Sullivan wanted the band to substitute a different song for their record hit “Oh, Boy!”, which he felt was too raucous. Holly had already told his hometown friends in Texas that he would be singing “Oh, Boy!” for them, and told Sullivan as much. During the afternoon the Crickets were summoned to rehearsal at short notice, but only Holly was in their dressing room. When asked where the others were, Holly replied, “I don’t know. No telling.” Sullivan then turned to Holly and said “I guess The Crickets are not too excited to be on The Ed Sullivan Show” to which Holly caustically replied, “I hope they’re damn more excited than I am.”Sullivan, already bothered by the choice of songs, was now even angrier. He cut the Crickets’ act from two songs to one, and when introducing them mispronounced Holly’s name, so it came out vaguely as ‘Hollered’ or “Holland.” He also pronounced Holly’s backing band as what sounded like “The Picketts”. In addition, Sullivan saw to it that the microphone for Holly’s electric guitar was turned off. Holly tried to compensate by singing as loudly as he could, and repeatedly trying to turn up the volume on his guitar. For the instrumental break he cut loose with a dramatic solo, making clear to the audience that the technical fault wasn’t his. The band was received so well that Sullivan was forced to invite them back for a third appearance. Holly’s response was that Sullivan did not have enough money. Film of the performance survives; photographs taken that day show Sullivan looking angry and Holly smirking and perhaps ignoring Sullivan.
Jackie MasonOn October 18, 1964, Jackie Mason allegedly gave Sullivan the finger on air. A tape of the incident shows Mason doing his stand-up comedy act and then looking toward Sullivan, commenting that Sullivan was signaling him. Sullivan was reportedly letting Mason know (by pointing two fingers) that he had only two minutes left, as CBS was about to cut away to show a speech by President Lyndon Johnson. Mason began working his own fingers into his act and pointed toward Sullivan with his middle finger slightly separated. After Mason left the stage, the camera then cut to a visibly angry Sullivan. Sullivan argued with Mason backstage, then terminated his contract. Mason denied knowingly giving Sullivan the finger (he later claimed that he had never even heard of the middle finger gesture at that time) and later filed a libel suit. Sullivan publicly apologized to Mason when he appeared on the show two years later, in 1966. At that time, Mason opened his monologue by saying, “It is great to see all of you in person again.” Mason dropped the lawsuit, but never appeared on the show again.Bob DylanBob Dylan was slated to make his first nationwide television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on May 12, 1963, and intended to perform “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues”, a song he wrote lampooning the John Birch Society and the red-hunting paranoia associated with it. During the afternoon rehearsal that day, CBS officials told Dylan they had deemed the song unacceptable for broadcast and wanted him to substitute another. “No; this is what I want to do”, Dylan responded. “If I can’t play my song, I’d rather not appear on the show.” He then left the studio, rather than altering the act.
The DoorsThe Doors were notorious for their appearance on the show. CBS network censors demanded that lead singer Jim Morrison change the lyrics to their hit single Light My Fire by altering the line, “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher”, before the band performed the song live on September 17, 1967. The lyric was to have been changed to, “Girl, we couldn’t get much better”. Morrison suggested they change it to, “Girl, you couldn’t bite my wire”. However, Morrison sang the original line, and on live television with no delay, CBS was powerless to stop it. A furious Sullivan refused to shake the band members’ hands, and they were never invited back to the show. According to Ray Manzarek, the band was told, “Mr. Sullivan liked you boys. He wanted you on six more times… You’ll never do the Sullivan show again.” Morrison replied with glee, “We just did the Sullivan show.” —at the time, an appearance was a hallmark of success. Manzarek claims the band agreed with the producer beforehand but had no intention of altering the line.Sullivan apparently felt the damage had been done and relented on bands using the word “higher.” The following year, Sly & the Family Stone sang a medley where Sly repeated the lyric “Wanna take you higher! The Rolling StonesIn contrast, the Rolling Stones were instructed to change the title of their “Let’s Spend the Night Together” single for the band’s January 15, 1967 appearance. The band complied, with Mick Jagger ostentatiously rolling his eyes heavenward whenever he reached the song’s one-night-only, clean refrain, “Let’s spend some time together”. In revenge, the Stones went backstage, only to return in Nazi uniforms with swastikas, which caused an angry Sullivan to tell them to change back into their performing outfits, however, the Stones left the studio, and Sullivan declared that he would never again allow the Stones to ever appear on his show. Nonetheless, the Stones appeared on the show one final time on November 23, 1969. However, Diana Ross & the Supremes, frequent guests on Sullivan’s show, debuted their then-release and eventual controversial #1 hit song “Love Child” on Sullivan’s show, but nothing about its title or its content about a woman in poverty having a child out of wedlock seemed to faze Sullivan, the show’s producers, or the networkEdward Vincent “Ed” Sullivan (September 28, 1901 – October 13, 1974) was an American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of the TV variety show The Ed Sullivan Show. The show was broadcast from 1948 to 1971 (a total of 23 years), which made it one of the longest-running variety shows in U.S. broadcast history. In 1996, Ed Sullivan was ranked #50 on TV Guide’s “50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time”.Early careerA former boxer, Sullivan began his media work as a newspaper sportswriter for The New York Evening GraphicWhen Walter Winchell, one of the original gossip columnists and the most powerful entertainment reporter of his day, left the newspaper for the Hearst syndicate, Sullivan took over as theatre columnist. His theatre column was later carried in The New York Daily News. His column, ‘Little Old New York’, concentrated on Broadway shows and gossip, as Winchell’s had and, like Winchell, he also did show business news broadcasts on radio. Again echoing Winchell, Sullivan took on yet another medium in 1933 by writing and starring in the film Mr. Broadway, which has him guiding the audience around New York nightspots to meet entertainers and celebrities. Sullivan soon became a powerful starmaker in the entertainment world himself, becoming one of Winchell’s main rivals, setting the El Morocco nightclub in New York as his unofficial headquarters against Winchell’s seat of power at the nearby Stork Club. Sullivan continued writing for The News throughout his broadcasting career and his popularity long outlived that of Winchell.In 1948, the CBS network hired Sullivan to do a weekly Sunday night TV variety show, Toast of the Town, which later became The Ed Sullivan Show. Debuting in June 1948, the show was broadcast from CBS Studio 50, at 1697 Broadway (at 53rd Street) in New York City, which in 1967 was renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater (and is now the home of The Late Show with David Letterman). Television critics gave the new show and its host poor reviews. Harriet Van Horne alleged that “he got where he is not by having a personality, but by having no personality.” (The host wrote to the critic, “Dear Miss Van Horne: You bitch. Sincerely, Ed Sullivan.” Sullivan had little acting ability; in 1967, 20 years after his show’s debut, Time magazine asked “What exactly is Ed Sullivan’s talent?” His mannerisms on camera were so awkward that some viewers believed the host suffered from Bell’s palsy.[ Time in 1955 stated that Sullivan resembled a cigar-store Indian, the Cardiff Giant and a stone-faced monument just off the boat from Easter Island. He moves like a sleepwalker; his smile is that of a man sucking a lemon; his speech is frequently lost in a thicket of syntax; his eyes pop from their sockets or sink so deep in their bags that they seem to be peering up at the camera from the bottom of twin wells. The magazine concluded, however, that “Yet, instead of frightening children, Ed Sullivan charms the whole family.” Sullivan appeared to the audience as an average guy who brought the great acts of show business to their home televisions. (“Ed Sullivan will last”, comedian Fred Allen said, “as long as someone else has talent”,and frequent guest Alan King said “Ed does nothing, but he does it better than anyone else in television.) He had a newspaperman’s instinct for what the public wanted, and programmed his variety hours with remarkable balance. There was something for everyoneA typical show would feature a vaudeville act (acrobats, jugglers, magicians, etc.), one or two popular comedians, a singing star, a hot jukebox favorite, a figure from the legitimate theater, and for the kids, a visit with puppet “Topo Gigio, the little Italian mouse.” The bill was often international in scope, with many European performers augmenting the American artists. Sullivan had a healthy sense of humor about himself and permitted—even encouraged—impersonators such as John Byner, Frank Gorshin, Rich Little and especially Will Jordan to imitate him on his show. Johnny Carson also did a fair impression, and even Joan Rivers imitated Sullivan’s unique posture. The impressionists exaggerated his stiffness, raised shoulders, and nasal tenor phrasing, along with some of his commonly used introductions, such as “And now, right here on our stage…”, “For all you youngsters out there…”, and “a really big shew” (his pronunciation of the word “show”). Will Jordan portrayed Sullivan in the films I Wanna Hold Your Hand, The Buddy Holly Story, The Doors, Mr. Saturday Night, Down with Love, and in the 1979 TV movie Elvis. In 1963, Ed Sullivan appeared as himself in the film Bye Bye Birdie.In the 1950s and 1960s, Sullivan was a respected starmaker because of the number of performers that became household names after appearing on the show. He had a knack for identifying and promoting top talent and paid a great deal of money to secure that talent for his show.When Elvis Presley became popular, Sullivan was wary of the singer’s bad-boy style and said that he would never invite Presley on his program. However, Presley became too big a name to ignore, and Sullivan scheduled him to appear on September 8, 1956. In August, however, Sullivan was injured in an automobile accident that occurred near his country home in Southbury, Connecticut. Sullivan had to take a medical leave from the series and missed the Elvis Presley show. Charles Laughton wound up introducing Presley on the Sullivan hour. After Sullivan got to know Presley personally, he made amends by telling his audience, “This is a real decent, fine boy.” Sullivan’s failure to scoop the TV industry with Presley made him determined to get the next big sensation first. In 1964, he achieved that with the first live American appearance of The Beatles, on February 9, 1964, the most-watched program in TV history to that point and still one of the most-watched programs of all time The Beatles appeared three more times on the Sullivan show in person, and submitted filmed performances later. Sullivan struck up such a rapport with the Beatles that he agreed to introduce them at their momentous Shea Stadium concert on August 15, 1965. The Dave Clark Five, heavily promoted as having a “cleaner” image than the Beatles, made 13 appearances on the Sullivan show, more than any other UK group. Unlike many shows of the time, Sullivan asked that most musical acts perform their music live, rather than lip-synching to their recordings. Some of these performances have recently been issued on CD. Examination of performances show that exceptions were made, as when a microphone could not be placed close enough to a performer for technical reasons. An example was B.J. Thomas’ 1969 performance of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”, in which actual water was sprinkled on him as a special effect. In 1969, Sullivan presented the Jackson 5 with their first single “I Want You Back”, which ousted the B. J. Thomas song from the top spot of Billboard’s pop charts.Sullivan appreciated Black talent. He paid for the funeral of dancer Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson out of his own pocket. He also defied pressure to exclude Black musicians from appearing on his show. One of Sullivan’s favorite and most frequent acts was The Supremes, who appeared 17 times on the show, helping to pave the way for other Motown acts to appear on the show such as The Temptations, The Four Tops, and Martha and the Vandellas.At a time when television had not yet embraced country and Western music, Sullivan was adamant about featuring Nashville performers on his program. This insistence paved the way for shows such as Hee Haw and variety shows hosted by country singers like Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell.The act that appeared most frequently through the show’s run was the Canadian comedy duo of Wayne & Shuster, making 67 appearances between 1958 and 1969.Sullivan also appeared as himself on other television programs, including an April 1958 episode of the Howard Duff and Ida Lupino CBS sitcom, Mr. Adams and Eve. On September 14, 1958 Sullivan appeared on What’s My Line? as a mystery guest, and showed his comedic side by donning a rubber mask. In 1961, Sullivan was asked by CBS to fill in for an ailing Red Skelton on The Red Skelton Show. Sullivan took Skelton’s roles in the various comedy sketches; Skelton’s hobo character “Freddie the Freeloader” was renamed “Eddie the Freeloader.” There was another side to Sullivan: he could be very quick to take offense if he felt he had been crossed, and could hold a grudge for a long time. This could sometimes be seen as a part of his TV personality. Jackie Mason, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, and The Doors became intimately familiar with Sullivan’s negative side.On November 20, 1955, Bo Diddley was asked by Sullivan to sing Tennessee Ernie Ford’s hit “Sixteen Tons”. Diddley sensed the choice of song would end his career then and there, and instead sang his #1 hit “Bo Diddley”. He was banned from the show.Buddy Holly and the Crickets had first appeared on the Sullivan show in 1957, singing two songs and making a favorable impression on Sullivan. He invited the band to make another appearance in January 1958. Sullivan thought their record hit “Oh, Boy!” was too raucous and ordered Holly to substitute another song. Holly had already told his hometown friends in Texas that he would be singing “Oh, Boy!” for them, and told Sullivan as much. Sullivan was unaccustomed to having his instructions disobeyed. When the band was summoned to the rehearsal stage on short notice, only Holly was in their dressing room. Sullivan said, “I guess The Crickets are not too excited to be on The Ed Sullivan Show,” to which Holly, still annoyed by Sullivan’s attitude, replied, “I hope they’re damn more excited than I am.” Sullivan, already bothered by the choice of songs, was now even angrier. He cut the Crickets’ act from two songs to one, and when introducing them mispronounced Holly’s name, so it came out vaguely as “Buddy Hollett.” In addition, Sullivan saw to it that the microphone for Holly’s electric guitar was turned off. Holly tried to compensate by singing as loudly as he could. The band was received so well that Sullivan was forced to invite them back for a third appearance. Holly’s response was that Sullivan didn’t have enough money. Footage of the performance survives; photographs taken that day show Sullivan looking angry and Holly smirking and perhaps ignoring Sullivan.In 1963, Bob Dylan was to set appear on the show, but network censors rejected the song he wanted to perform, “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues”, as potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Refusing to perform a different song, Dylan walked off the set at dress rehearsal. Sullivan, who had approved the song at a previous rehearsal, backed Dylan’s decision. The incident resulted in accusations against the network of engaging in censorship. Jackie Mason was banned from the series in October 1964 (the ban was removed a year and a half later, and Mason made his final appearance on the show). During a taping of Mason’s monologue Sullivan, off camera, gestured that Mason should wrap things up, as the show was suddenly shown live following an abbreviated address by President Lyndon Johnson, which was expected to preempt the entire show. The nervous Mason told the audience, “I’m getting two fingers here!” and made his own frantic hand gesture: “Here’s a finger for you!” Videotapes of the incident are inconclusive as to whether Mason’s upswept hand was intended to be an indecent gesture, but Sullivan’s body language immediately afterward made it clear that he was convinced of it, despite Mason’s panic-stricken denials later. Sullivan later invited Mason back for a return engagement, but the notoriety of the “finger” incident lingered with the studio audience.When The Byrds performed on December 12, 1965, David Crosby got into a shouting match with the show’s director. They were never asked to return. On January 15, 1967 The Rolling Stones were told to change the chorus of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “Let’s spend some time together”. Lead singer Mick Jagger complied, but deliberately called attention to this censorship by rolling his eyes and mugging when he uttered the new words. Shortly, after the performance, the Stones went backstage, and came back on stage, dressed in Nazi uniforms with swastikas, which caused an angry Sullivan to tell them to go back to their dressing rooms and change back into their performing outfits, however, the Stones left the studio and Sullivan banned the group from ever appearing on his show again. Nonetheless, the Stones appeared on the show one final time on November 23, 1969The Doors were banned on September 17, 1967 after they were asked to remove the lyric “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher” from their song “Light My Fire” (CBS censors believed that it was too overt a reference to drug use). The band was asked to change the lyric to “girl we couldn’t get much better”. Morrison sang the original lyric. Moe Howard of the Three Stooges recalled in 1975 that Sullivan had a memory problem of sorts: “Ed was a very nice man, but for a showman, quite forgetful. On our first appearance, he introduced us as the Three Ritz Brothers. He got out of it by adding, “who look more like the Three Stooges to me.” Diana Ross later recalled Sullivan’s forgetfulness during the many occasions The Supremes performed on his show. In a 1995 appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman (which is filmed in Ed Sullivan Theater), Ross stated, “he could never remember our names. He called us ‘the girls’.” In a 1990 press conference Paul McCartney recalled meeting Sullivan again in the early 1970s. Sullivan apparently had no idea who McCartney was. McCartney tried to remind Sullivan that he was one of The Beatles but Sullivan obviously could not remember and, nodding and smiling, simply shook McCartney’s hand and left.Ed Sullivan, like many American entertainers, was pulled into the Cold War fervor of the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1949, Sullivan booked dancer Paul Draper to appear on Toast of the Town. However, Draper’s scheduled appearance in January 1950 was met with opposition from Hester McCullough, a woman who involved herself in the hunt for subversives. McCullough accused Draper of sympathizing with the communist party, and although Draper denied the accusation, McCullough demanded that Sullivan’s lead sponsor, the Ford Motor Company, cancel Draper’s appearance. Despite McCullough’s protest, Draper was a guest on Toast of the Town, as was originally scheduled. After the program was broadcast, Ford received over a thousand angry letters and telegraphs in response to Draper’s appearance. Consequently, Sullivan was obligated to write a letter of apology to Ford’s advertizing agency, Kenyon & Eckhardt, promising to never again move forward with such a controversial guest. Meanwhile, Draper was forced to move to Europe to earn a livingAnother guest who never appeared on the show because of the controversy surrounding him was legendary African-American singer-actor Paul Robeson, who, at the time of the Draper incident, was undergoing his own troubles with the industry’s hunt for supposed Communist sympathizers.After the Draper incident, Sullivan began to work closely with Theodore Kirkpatrick of the anti-communist Counterattack newsletter. Sullivan would check with Kirkpatrick if a potential guest had some “explaining to do” about his politics. Sullivan wrote in his June 21, 1950 New York Daily News column that “Kirkpatrick has sat in my living room on several occasions and listened attentively to performers eager to secure a certification of loyalty.” Jerome Robbins, in his PBS American Experience biography, claimed that he was forced to capitulate to the House Un-American Activities Committee, identifying eight Communist sympathizers and disgracing himself among his fellow artists, allegedly because Sullivan threatened to reveal Robbins’s homosexuality to the public.In the fall of 1965, CBS began televising the weekly programs in color. Although the Sullivan show was seen live in the Central and Eastern time zones, it was taped for airing in the Pacific and Mountain time zones. Most of the taped programs (as well as some early kinescopes) were preserved, and excerpts have been released on home video. By 1971, the show’s ratings had plummeted. In an effort to refresh their lineup, CBS cancelled the program along with some of its other longtime shows. Sullivan was angered by this so greatly that he refused to do a final show, although he remained with the network in various other capacities and hosted a 25th anniversary special in 1973.In early September 1974, X-rays revealed that Sullivan had advanced esophageal cancer. Only his family was told, however, and as the doctors gave Sullivan very little time, the family chose to keep the diagnosis from him. Sullivan, still believing his ailment to be yet another complication from a long-standing battle with ulcers, died five weeks later, on October 13, 1974, at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital His funeral was attended by 3,000 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York on a cold, rainy day. Sullivan is interred in a crypt at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Personal life
Sullivan was engaged to champion swimmer Sybil Bauer, but she died of cancer in 1927 at the age of 23 He was married to the former Sylvia Weinstein from April 28, 1930, until her death on March 16, 1973. They had one daughter, Betty Sullivan (who married the Ed Sullivan Show’s producer, Bob Precht). Sullivan was in the habit of calling Sylvia after every program to get her immediate critique.
Sullivan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6101 Hollywood Blvd.