Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan (13 page)

Ed and Sylvia’s relationship had grown ever stronger since its beginning in the fall of 1926, despite their steady-as-a-clock pattern of breakups and reconciliations. Although by the spring of 1930 it was clearly a longstanding romance, Ed appeared to be moving no closer to marriage. Sylvia, however, needed to move things along. “
Ed had no intention of getting married,” she recalled much later in life, “but finally I trapped him into eloping.”

In April, Sylvia told Ed that she was pregnant. Hurried discussions ensued. Ed agreed to get married, but the two decided to keep the wedding a secret from their families until after a short honeymoon. Ed planned a City Hall ceremony, witnessed by close friends, to be followed the next evening by a short Catholic ceremony. (Ed wanted any children raised as Catholics, which Sylvia agreed to.) Then the couple planned on honeymooning for the weekend in Atlantic City, after which they would break the news to their parents.

Ed and Sylvia went to City Hall on April 28. The witnesses were Sylvia’s close friend Ruth Sanburg, and Ed’s friends Jim Kahn, a sportswriter from his
Evening Mail
days, and Johnny Dundee, the boxer who had shown him around New York when he first arrived. A quick wedding ceremony was performed, and the couple went to dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel with Dundee.

Everyone understood it was to be kept secret until Ed gave the okay, but apparently someone at City Hall hadn’t agreed to the plan. As soon as the newlyweds got back to Ed’s apartment the phone started to ring. Reporters quizzed them about the
details; a photographer was on the way. This put Ed and Sylvia in a quandary—their families would soon read about their wedding in the newspapers. They realized they had no choice. The two of them placed hurried calls to their parents to let them know they had gotten married.

Sylvia’s family took the surprising news with relative equanimity. “
At that point I was so emotionally involved with Ed that they wanted me to have anything that would have made me happy,” she said. But the Sullivans were aghast. As Sylvia described it, Ed’s family was “
all devout Catholics—who were opposed to the marriage.” It would take several years—and diplomatic efforts on Sylvia’s part—before Ed’s family would speak to him.

Ed and Sylvia moved into an apartment on 154 West 48th, not far from where Ed had lived when he first moved to New York. They lived over Billy LaHiff’s tavern, a Broadway watering hole frequented by show business types, celebrity athletes, and politicians. (The apartment, owned by LaHiff, had once been rented by Jack Dempsey and, later, by Broadway chronicler Damon Runyon.) The couple’s only child, Elizabeth, named after Ed’s mother, was born on December 22.

In June 1931 the
Graphic
needed a new Broadway gossip columnist. Walter Winchell had gone to Hearst’s
Daily Mirror
in 1929, lured by a hefty salary increase and a signing bonus. Winchell’s high-profile post at the
Graphic
had been filled by Louis Sobol. As written by the mild-mannered Sobol, the
Graphic
’s gossip column was never as talked about as it had been under Winchell, yet Sobol still parleyed it into a career boost. In mid June, he too landed a column in a Hearst publication, the
New York Journal-American.
With Sobol’s departure imminent, the
Graphic
needed a new Broadway scribe to keep tabs on the glitterati.

The job was offered to Ed. Or, as he later claimed, he was forced into it. The
Graphic
, he said, gave him an ultimatum: “
I didn’t want the job, but it was either take it or be fired.” He did agree to take the Broadway gossip column, yet in truth it may not have required the arm-twisting he later recounted.

Management changes at the paper were casting doubt on Ed’s job security. Lee Ellmaker, who co-owned a tabloid in Philadelphia with publisher Bernarr Macfadden, had joined the
Graphic
’s senior management. Ellmaker brought with him the Philadelphia tabloid’s sports editor, Ted von Ziekursch, to be the
Graphic
’s managing editor. But von Ziekursch had little interest in being managing editor; he wanted to cover sports. Hence, he looked enviously at Ed’s column.

As recalled by Walter Winchell, the new managing editor began encroaching on Sullivan’s turf. Ed ran into Walter one evening as he was buying a newspaper on 47th Street, and as they stood chatting, Ed told Walter of his troubles. “
He takes my ringside seats to the fights and World Series. He covers them himself. My column doesn’t run. It’s humiliating.” Walter recommended that Ed live up to his contract regardless. “Keep turning in your column. If you don’t, he’ll use that as a reason to say you broke it. Give me some time to think. I’ll call you.”

However, the
Graphic
, despite von Ziekursch’s intrusion on Sullivan’s beat, wasn’t going to force out Ed to allow its managing editor to cover sports. When Ed finally began the Broadway column, his sports column was given to new hire Sam Taub—not von Ziekursch. Moreover, when Ellmaker offered Ed the Broadway beat,
it wasn’t accompanied with a take-it-or-you’re-fired ultimatum, recalled editor Frank Mallen: “
Ellmaker … called him to his office and asked him to make the switch saying he believed that Sullivan understood the Broadway setup better than anyone else.”

In fact, Ed even felt in a strong enough position to negotiate a raise, remembered Mallen. Sullivan told Ellmaker he would take the new assignment “
on [the] condition that $50 a week be added to his pay for night club expenses. Ellmaker agreed.” Ed’s new pay was $375 a week.

Although he had agreed to write the Broadway column, Ed would never have admitted an interest in being a gossip columnist. He had always had a streak of the puritanical. That is, he presented a moralist’s face in his writings and later on television, though in reality he was far from this. And in 1931 being the
Graphic
’s gossip columnist was only a step away from being a pornographer, to some observers not even a step.

Underneath his reluctance to switch columns—clearly genuine—was likely some desire for the gossip beat. The last two men to have filled it went on to lucrative high-profile positions at better newspapers. For someone who had always enjoyed the attention that came with being a prominent columnist, the Broadway column surely held appeal.

As Ellmaker had said, the reason the
Graphic
wanted Ed to take the Broadway beat was that they knew he was well qualified. Like any good gossip, he was an inveterate socializer. He rubbed elbows with all and sundry up and down Broadway, from mobsters to flappers to barkeeps to shoe shine boys. His army of sources was already in place. And it was no secret he possessed the foremost job qualification for the Broadway reporter: he was a confirmed nightclub habitué. He had seen all the cabaret routines and musical revues for the last few years, the very acts he would cover. He had organized and emceed the
Graphic
’s celebrity dinners, with stars like Al Jolson and Sophie Tucker. His name and face were familiar to readers, and his sports column was already as much a gossip’s diary as straight sports coverage.

Still, this was a life-altering shift. In moving to the Broadway column, Ed was making more than a career change; he was making an identity change. A sports columnist was a man’s man, discussing Tunney’s uppercut and the Yankees’ pennant chances; a Broadway columnist was an odd creature, both sought after and shunned by society, living among musicians and comics and actors. Ed was not new to the milieu he was about to enter, but his new post would entail an unpredictable journey away from familiar terrain.

When Louis Sobol wrote his farewell column for the
Graphic
, he gently jibed the columnist-to-be: “I understand Eddie’s going to use his picture in this column. It’s a grand idea, because this Sullivan fellow is one of the good-looking, he-man type of fellows. When he turns his firm-chinned pan at a certain angle, he’s a dead ringer for Gary Cooper. Running his picture should help him a lot in the matter of mail from gal readers, and mail’s mighty important to a columnist.”

Sullivan was “
not a newcomer to Broadway … his daily routine has brought him constantly into contact with Broadway,” Sobol noted. But he had some things to learn: “It’s only fair to warn Eddie, of course, that his home life is a thing of the past.
He’ll be coming home anywhere from 5 to 8 in the morning. He’ll be coming home worn out, tired, grouchy and resentful at the world in general. He’ll toss around in bed wondering what in the world he’ll use for a column the next day.” Sobol went on to reassure Mrs. Sullivan: “They’ll only mean that Eddie is a good Broadway columnist. Only good Broadway columnists act that way.”

In the last week of June, the
Graphic
began running ads touting Ed’s debut as a Broadway columnist. On the Friday before his first week, it ran a half-page ad with Sullivan posed in a movie poster countenance, fedora at an even set, gazing out with an insider’s knowing look. The ad read:

“He’s a curiosity! He actually was born and brought up along the main stem of the big town. He’s the pal of Jimmy Walker, Jack Dempsey, Marilyn Miller, Buddy Rogers, Bernarr Gimbel, George White, Earle Sande, Nancy Carroll, Gene Tunney, Paul Whiteman, Flo Ziegfeld, Babe Ruth—of Mrs. O’Grady and Officer 666—and he will tell you all about them as you’ve never been told before. He’s been famous as a reporter and sports reporter these many years. Maybe you know Ed Sullivan, but, if you don’t, be sure to meet him Monday in the
New York Evening Graphic
.”

Ready or not, Ed was about to make his Broadway debut.

CHAPTER FOUR
Broadway

E
D’S COLUMN
,
E
D
S
ULLIVAN
S
EES
B
ROADWAY
, debuted on Monday, July 1, 1931. For someone who professed to not want the job, he jumped in headfirst. He began by taking a broad swipe at his colleagues in the gossip trade, a strategy guaranteed to maximize his profile—they were duty bound to swipe back.

“So many have asked me my sensations in turning from sports to Broadway that I will answer them in this introductory column. I feel, frankly, that I have entered a field of writing which offers scant competition, a field of writing which ranks so low that it is difficult to distinguish any one columnist from his road companies.…
I charge the Broadway columnists with defaming the street
.”

He proclaimed that his column would not indulge Broadway’s undesirable elements, as his competitors’ did.

“The uppermost stratum of Broadway, as revealed in the writings of its contemporary historians, the columnists, is peopled with mobsters, cheap little racketeers and a vast army of phonies.… As I sat at the gala opening of Hollywood Gardens on Friday night, I marveled to myself.… I marveled at the phonies who were there for no better reason than they had a mad desire to be seen.… They will betray themselves by rushing up to Mayor Jimmy Walker and shaking his hand as an endless stream of pests did on Friday night … they will gape at racketeers and mobsters who are tough killers and can prove it by the list of victims they have shot—always through the back.…
I pledge you this huge army of phonies will receive no comfort in this space. To get into this particular column will be a badge of merit and a citation
.”