Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan (28 page)

In his
Daily News
column, he had made no mention of any of his three features, not even as United Artists’ and Universal’s publicity machines were promoting the films with quarter-page newspapers ads in the
News.
(He did, however, toss positive column tidbits to their stars, writing a glowing laud for Frederic March.) Ed presumably didn’t want to further impress the
News
management that he was pursuing a second career while working for them.

But they noticed. By the premiere of his third film, the
News
management had grown restive with Sullivan’s Hollywood tenure. It became a replay of Sidney Skolsky three years earlier. Like Skolsky, Ed had used his column as an entree into a film career. And, as Ed had lobbied to replace Skolsky, now John Chapman, another
News
columnist, began lobbying to replace Sullivan. The
News
agreed. It was time for Ed to come home.

Sullivan and the
News
got into a tussle. He didn’t want to return to New York. Failing in films was bad enough; having to return to the Broadway beat after covering Hollywood was a big step backward. He had come to enjoy life on the Coast, particularly those almost-daily trips out to the Santa Anita racetrack, where he sometimes wrote his column. Several months earlier he had written a column entitled “The Typical Hollywood Male,” which described the many qualities of this mythic creature—and the portrait was close to a self-portrait. He is, wrote Ed, between thirty and forty years old, he is liberal, his wife likes Chinese or French food, he himself like an Eastern cut steak. He tends to lose when he bets on horses. Furthermore:

“Having come to Hollywood with a sense of superiority to the movies, he is alarmed deeply when he finds himself becoming convinced that the movies are a greater and more important medium than the stage which spawned him … Having come to California with a sneering attitude toward California’s climate, he finds himself perturbed by the fact that the state has exercised its mellifluous charms … he never quite shakes off these reproaches; never is quite happy when he should be most happy … So he compromises; he squares his ambition and his reproaches by agreeing that he isn’t going back East because the California climate is better for his children.”

Ed dug in his heels in the summer of 1940. After being summoned back East, he fired off a wire to
Daily News
publisher Joseph Medill Patterson: he would not be returning to New York. Managing editor Frank Hause visited Sullivan in Hollywood in an effort to coax him back to Broadway. “
I pointed out to the great Port Chester athlete the advantages of the Broadway beat, and the
Daily News
growth and prestige,” Hause later wrote. Whatever else he said, it must have been convincing. Hause soon sent a wire back to Patterson with Sullivan’s words:
“I acted hastilly [
sic
]. Please ignore earlier telegram. Am returning New York.”

The decision made, Sullivan moved quickly. In early July, Ed, Sylvia, and Betty boarded the Chief—the same train they had traveled out on—to move back to New York. Nine-year-old Betty was truly disconsolate at leaving. It wasn’t Hollywood she missed; Ed had introduced her to Shirley Temple and she found the experience less than thrilling. It was having her own house and yard she so loved, and the freedom to play outside whenever she wanted, unlike being cooped up in a New York apartment. “
I was heartbroken,” she said. “I remember pulling out of Union Station, and saying to my parents, ‘Are we coming back, when are we coming back?’ ” Ed, clearly, was no happier than his young daughter at having to return to New York.

He had written a column in late 1938 about winning and losing, and how losing had to be kept in perspective. It was part of a series he called “Listen, Kids,” in which he gave advice about life to “youngsters,” as he called them. (That he sometimes
addressed his Hollywood gossip column to children was an oddity, but he saw his audience as all-inclusive.)

“Don’t place too great an emphasis on defeat, and don’t yield to the American habit of overemphasizing victory, because one is no more important than the other,” he advised, noting that Warner Bros. had fired Clark Gable and Universal had fired Bette Davis. Considering his funk at having failed at films, he probably needed his own advice during the trip east. The scores from victories and defeats, he noted, are not written in indelible ink. “Through life, you’ll encounter your share of both of them, and you’ll find that defeats are really the prep school of victories.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
The War Years

N
ew York was miserable in July of 1940. As Ed returned to the Broadway beat late that month, a four-day heat wave hit the city, engulfing the canyons of Manhattan in an oppressive blanket of humidity. So many overheated people thronged to Jones Beach that authorities had to close roads leading to the shoreline. Although America was not yet at war, the headlines made it feel that way. In June the Nazis had overrun France, and each day’s newspaper blared the grim developments in bold, oversized type. Dark times lay ahead. Furthermore, the economic hardship of the Depression, though only a wan shadow of its former self, meant New Yorkers were still far from flush.

Ed’s mood mirrored the city’s funk. In the debut of his relaunched Broadway column, now dubbed
Little Old New York
, he portrayed his move back to the city as his fondest wish. “
When I asked the boss to transfer me to New York, he wanted to know the reason and I told him that after all, this was my city, where I’d been born and lived … No city ever has been so kind to me,” he claimed, disingenuously. Having no news, he riffed through his twelve-hundred-word column, explaining that this time around his beat would be bigger than Broadway, it would encompass the city in its entirety. “No one will be too big or too small to get entree to this column … through these portals will pass the most beautiful and the least lovely characters of Baghdad-on-the-Subway: the only ticket of admission they’ll need to this daily vaudeville show, two columns wide, will be a common denominator of interest to all of us.”

But his frustration that summer spoke large between the lines. Because he wrote five pieces a week his column had always been a diary of sorts, no matter how happy a face he attempted. In early August, Ed’s replacement on the Hollywood beat, John Chapman, was writing about the joys of Beverly Hills and the hot news from Hal Roach Studios (where Ed, had his collaboration with Roach not been a failure, might now be a hitmaker). Seemingly in response, Ed devoted a column to fallen stars of all kinds, individuals who had risen high only to see their dreams dashed.
Joe Helbock, onetime owner of the Onyx Club, was now a bartender at Ben Marden’s Riviera. Rube Marquard, once a pitcher for the Giants, was now a pari-mutuel ticket seller. However, Ed reported, these frustrated dreamers were gamely coping. “
Instead of sitting in the corner and moping about the injustice of the current setup, they’ve adapted themselves to the changed conditions and altered circumstances and are working it out the hard way.”

Indeed he would not sit in the corner. If he could not be a film star, then he would throw himself into emceeing and stage producing with more passion than ever before. He moved his family into the Hotel Astor in midtown Manhattan so he could be across the street from Loew’s State Theatre, on Broadway and 45th Street. He seemed unaware that the unsavory center of New York’s theater district was no place to raise a child. The Depression had stripped the luster from the city’s once-glorious core, and a cadre of sleazy burlesque houses was taking over the neighborhood. The Times Square area was on a downward slide that, by the 1950s, would make it a haven for drug dealing and prostitution. The neighborhood was full of seedy types, and ten-year-old Betty sometimes had to step around drunks to get to school. “
It was a terrible place for a young kid to be,” she recalled.

But Ed felt compelled to be close to the theater. His
Daily News
salary was more than sufficient to live in a nicer neighborhood, but Loew’s State drew him like a moth to a flame. It was where he wanted to spend most of his days and nights. Not that this seemed to afford him any great joy. His ulcer was giving him hell; the family’s small suite had no refrigerator so he kept a carton of milk on the windowsill for his frequent nocturnal battles with stomach pain.

By the end of August, Ed mounted a new variety revue at Loew’s State. As before, his stage show was updated vaudeville. Providing a contemporary feel were the recent Harvest Moon Ball winners, swing dancers who juked and jived to Big Band music; harking back to vaudeville’s roots was Dave Vine, a Jewish dialect comic. Also on the bill were vocalist Luba Malina, singing Spanish tunes (the fashion that year favored all things South American), and the Paul Remos acrobats, tumbling and twirling. As always, Ed was both emcee and producer. He “headlined” the show as its emcee, with his name in block letters on the marquee, yet his more important role was shaping the program. He chose the acts and determined their order, creating the pace and feel of the show, standing just offstage to gauge audience response, making adjustments based on his instinct. Judging from ticket sales, he had a knack for this; his first show was held over into September and Loew’s State management gave him an open invitation to produce more.

But he didn’t want to be there. He couldn’t get over his desire to live on the West Coast, and Hollywood kept calling to him like a song he couldn’t get out of his mind. In mid November, Ed made a surprise announcement: He was leaving the
Daily News
to take a job as the editor for the
Hollywood Reporter
, a film industry trade paper. In addition to being its editor he would write some of its movie reviews, making him a Hollywood tastemaker. He had also arranged with his current syndicator, the Chicago Tribune—New York News Syndicate, to write a feature every Sunday about screen stars. He gave his two-week notice to the
News
; his last day at the paper would be December 2, after which he would move back to Hollywood.

News
publisher Joseph Medill Patterson was on a Florida fishing trip with his wife that week. But on November 16 he interrupted his vacation to telegram a paternal appeal to his star columnist: “
If you can better yourself permanently, I would not wish to stand in your way. Mary [Patterson] suggests your health might be involved and that, of course, is a matter you know best. But I want to make it clear I consider you one of our best men and that,
rebus sic stantibus
[as matters stand], you can stay with us as long as you want.”

That was a seductive offer. Ed had navigated the choppy seas of newspaper job-hopping in his twenties; reporter-editor posts tended to come and go, but his
Daily News
column had the feeling of permanency. Patterson made it clear: if you stay with us you have job security. So he made his decision: he would forego his dreams of Hollywood for the stability of the
News.
Ed explained his change of heart to reporters by saying that he was staying at the
News
“
because of his high regard for Captain Patterson.” The telegram from Patterson, in fact, became a prize possession he dug out when the slings and arrows of his columnist’s life became too much.

Like it or not, he was now a New Yorker again. He was home for good.

Crazy with the Heat
appeared to be a doomed Broadway show when it opened in January 1941. The two-act revue rambled through an ill-fitting medley of comedy and dance routines, guided by a mere wisp of a story line. In theory, the show had been improved by revisions in smaller cities before opening in New York, but its Broadway premiere still presented a work in progress. Produced and directed by Kurt Kasznar, a twenty-seven-year-old Viennese actor, the production survived a scant seven performances before closing. A phalanx of uniformly negative reviews turned it into an instant money pit for its investors.

For Ed, the failed show offered an opportunity to become a Broadway producer. He decided to take over the show, revamp it, and then relaunch it. Entering into negotiations with the show’s various parties, he convinced the theater owner to host it with no additional rent payments, and won concessions from the Actors Equity Association and Musicians Local 802. After raising $20,000, he reshaped the production, pruning and adding based on critics’ reviews and his own stage sense. He added a pair of ballroom dancers, Mary Raye and Naldi, who were considered the city’s finest; vocalist Carlos Ramirez parodied an excerpt from the opera
Figaro
; comedian-pianist Victor Borge goofed through a comic turn; a black tap-dance team, Tip, Tap & Toe, soft-shoed in both acts; Betty Kean tap-danced and told jokes; original stars Willie Howard and Louella Gear provided the show’s thin continuity in a series of comic sketches; and songwriter Lew Brown helped with the music direction. As Ed described it, “
We are taking the constructive criticism offered by the critics … and are going ahead with a $3.30 top.” Although the show had just closed on January 18, he had it ready for its second debut on January 30.