Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan (35 page)

The second Sunday’s
Toast of the Town
followed the formula of the first. To headline, Ed booked The Ink Spots, a black rhythm and blues vocal quartet who had just ended a long engagement at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, and whose hit “If I Didn’t Care” currently backed a Lucky Strike cigarettes radio ad. Also appearing were Irving Berlin, preceded by a song-and-dance routine featuring his songs; famed ballroom dance team Raye and Naldi (Mary Raye had danced with screen idol Rudolph Valentino in 1925’s smoldering
Cobra
); singing policeman Peter Hayes; big band songstress Nan Wynn; and ventriloquist Paul Winchell with his hand-carved dummy Jerry Mahoney.

Like the debut evening, this program stretched the boundaries of a late 1940s variety show beyond recognition. On no local New York stage would the Ink Spots have appeared with Irving Berlin—presenting a black R&B group with the “White Christmas” composer was counterintuitive, even daring; pairing a big band vocalist like Nan Wynn with a singing cop would have confounded a local audience. On the other hand, Sullivan often booked dancers Raye and Naldi along with a ventriloquist at Loew’s State, so the evening’s bill presented comforting combinations even as it stretched the genre. His show was often called vaudeville, and it did resemble this venerable form, but the evening veered sharply from traditional vaudeville as Sullivan felt his way toward reaching a television audience.

Ventriloquist Paul Winchell recalled the technical difficulties of mounting that evening’s show. During rehearsal, Ed, from the control room, told Winchell that his
dummy’s voice was too soft. To compensate, the ventriloquist spoke Jerry Mahoney’s part louder, yet it still didn’t project enough, so he tried it even louder. But, still, Ed told him the dummy’s voice wasn’t coming through in the control room. “
I panicked,” Winchell said. “I became convinced that my aspirations for this new medium were totally over.” He began to suspect that for some reason ventriloquism couldn’t be broadcast on television. Finally, Winchell looked up and saw that every time he spoke Jerry Mahoney’s part, the boom operator moved the microphone toward the dummy—which of course moved the microphone away from the real sound source. In other words, the production crew was pretty green.

His panic about the microphone snafu was part of an almost debilitating stage fright. “What I remember most was how scared I was,” Winchell said. Although he had played vaudeville and radio for years, making his television debut felt like jumping off the end of the earth. Ed, sensing the ventriloquist’s nerves, attempted to reassure him. “Look, there’s nothing different about it, don’t pay attention to the cameras,” Winchell recalled Ed saying. “You just do your routine and don’t worry about it. This is not a big bugaboo, we’ll do the shots—you won’t even know it.” Certainly there was an irony to the showman who was himself knock-kneed in front of the camera telling one of his performers to relax. As the ventriloquist recalled from working with Sullivan throughout the 1950s, Ed was as scared as he was.

Despite its terrors, Winchell soon found out that this new medium conquered all. As a result of his debut on
Toast of the Town
, ad agency Young & Rubicam approached him to launch his own television show on NBC,
The Bigelow Show
, which debuted that October. And a short time after that, Macy’s department store began selling little Jerry Mahoney dolls.

After Ed’s second night on the air,
New York Times
critic Jack Gould wrote a piece reviewing both Berle’s and Sullivan’s shows. Berle, he wrote, was proof that television had arrived.
“Register Mr. B. as television’s first real smash!” he effused. “The increasing maturity of Mr. Berle’s art was, perhaps, best demonstrated in the likable accord which he established with the other acts on the bill. His wonderful bit of business with the incomparable Bert Wheeler and his blackface routine with Harry Richman brought back nostalgic memories which through the sheer force of personality of all three acquired a 1948 newness and pace.”

Toast of the Town
, however, was a weak competitor in Gould’s view. “In terms of lavishness and expense, it is on a par with
Texaco Star Theatre
but suffers badly if the comparison is extended to such matters as routining and general professional know-how.… For a variety revue, where a dominant personality is so helpful in tying up the loose ends, the choice of Ed Sullivan as master of ceremonies seems ill-advised.… CBS has all the necessary ingredients for a successful program of variety. Once it appreciates more fully the need for knowing hands to guide the proceedings—both onstage and off—it, too, should have an enjoyable hit.”

Ed, who rarely let a jab go by without jabbing back, immediately fired off a long rebuttal to the
Times
, which the paper printed the following week:

“Your review of my CBS
Toast of the Town
television show, in last Sunday’s issue, is in error on so many points that I must challenge it.… “From every survey we have been able to make, the CBS
Toast of the Town
has the biggest audience in television and the most enthusiastic.… Oscar Hammerstein II, a rather experienced hand in show business, has expressed his delighted amazement at our progress in a completely new medium and specifically praised ‘the professional polish, the pacing of the show, and high entertainment value.’ Eddie Cantor, after seeing the show, on a television set, said that we were so far ahead of any program he’s seen that he was dumbfounded at the potentialities of a medium he had disregarded.…

“Your conclusions are at such variance to the expressions of expert showmen, and so opposed to public reaction, that I feel very strongly you are in error.…

“So much for the overall show. As to your opinion of me as master of ceremonies, I won’t challenge that, because difference of opinion makes horse racing. However, I do feel that when you compare me to Milton Berle, you misunderstand my position on the show. They wanted a working newspaperman, sufficiently versed in show business, to nominate acts that could live up to a
Toast of the Town
designation. As it is a Sunday show, they wanted a certain measure of dignity and restraint, rather than a vain attempt to work with acrobats, tumblers, etcetera, which Berle does brilliantly.”

Despite his assiduous defense, as a series of reviews echoed Gould’s and
Variety
’s, CBS began to grow embarrassed by its show host. The pans of Sullivan hampered efforts to find an advertiser, and the program remained unsponsored as the weeks went by. The lack of sponsorship money led to another problem: the talent budget, which the CBS contract stipulated at $375 per show, remained at this token level. Since this wasn’t enough to mount the show, Sullivan and Lewis were chipping in to cover expenses. In effect, they were paying to work for CBS.

Three weeks after the debut, an actors’ union, Associated Actors and Artists of America, launched an inquiry into
Toast of the Town.
The show paid performers so far below customary compensation that the union threatened to ban its members from appearing. Additionally, the union was concerned that Sullivan was using his column as a club, coercing performers to appear for low pay. As the headlines turned negative, a CBS spokesman disavowed all responsibility, explaining that the network “
paid a flat fee to Mr. Sullivan and that he arranged for the appearance of the artists.”

Sullivan agreed to sit down with the union. He defended the show by noting that television performance rates had not yet been set, and saying that he knew of other shows that paid less. “
Apparently we’re being made the whipping boy for the whole field,” he said. Ed and Marlo opened their books, which placated union officials about the payment issue; Ed said that if his show were to find a sponsor the rates would increase. He denied using his column to twist the arms of performers, saying that he brought “
no pressure, direct, indirect, inferential, or practical,” to persuade entertainers to appear. The meeting seemed to settle the issue. Although the union made noises about establishing a separate rate for columnists-hosts, no action was taken. But the union left its options open, noting that it would advise Sullivan at “
a later date” about its final decision.

Ed was, of course, using his column to get performers to appear—that was why CBS hired him—but it was more of a carrot than a stick. He wrote no rash of negative tidbits about entertainers likely to have spurned his show invitations. He did, however, trumpet the success reaped by artists who appeared on
Toast of the Town
, dangling a tantalizing offer of greater exposure. “
Ventriloquist Paul Winchell landed a Columbia Pictures project, Jackie Miles a $1500 television spot because of
Toast of the Town
clicks!” he wrote in mid July. The following week, “As a result of his
Toast of the Town
click, Roxy Theatre wants band-poll sensation Illinois Jacquet for the Harvest Moon Show.” (Since Ed headlined this Roxy bill it’s probable that he himself was the reason the theater requested Jacquet.) He also explained in his column, by quoting someone else, why performers needed television exposure regardless of pay. “[MCA talent agency executive] Sonny Werblin defines MCA’s policy on television: ‘We want all our acts to get into television. The fact that there is little money in it at the moment is unimportant. Now is the time for them to learn all about it, and get in on the ground floor.’ ”

Meanwhile, Ed received a ray of sunlight amid the otherwise gray critical response to the show.
Variety
issued a softer follow-up review of
Toast of the Town
on July 21, less than a month after its initial critique. The paper may have been influenced by Ed’s highly empathetic eulogy of a recently deceased
Variety
critic, one of two such lauds he wrote for the reviewer that week. At any rate, the trade publication observed that the show was making progress, and seemed to suggest that Sullivan himself had moved past the sheer terror of his debut. The emcee “
kept the event moving smoothly and with a minimum of words. It was his most ingratiating job to date on this series, which seems to be taking on that quickening know-how complexion from week to week. The lighting could still stand improvement.”

The critics, by focusing on Sullivan as host, were critiquing his most visible but least important role on the program. He was the show’s producer, its creator and shaper, the one who molded it into something enjoyed by a mass audience. His talent was as an impresario, not as a show host.

On camera, he stood center stage and ushered acts on and off in a reserved monotone, pointing out celebrities in the crowd, prompting audience applause with his jerky arm movements. The critics were correct in noting he did this with surprising lack of ease. He had been in front of an audience since the early 1930s, yet tapes of the show reveal that the stage was still an alien atmosphere for him in 1948. At moments he smiled or even laughed, but, living up to his nickname Old Stoneface, he kept it to a minimum, as if this were a serious business that required a sober demeanor. In his view, his onstage persona wasn’t what the audience came for; his work was mostly done by the time the cameras clicked on.

A big part of his job was being a talent scout. Within his first year on the air, he introduced Brooklyn-born Jackie Gleason to the television audience—four years before the comic made a major impact on TV with
The Jackie Gleason Show.
A master of the wordless grimace, Gleason was appearing in New York nightclubs when Ed booked him to perform a monologue about an unfortunate man who was love struck with a jukebox. In this same period, Sam Levenson, a former schoolteacher, launched his long career with a critically lauded
Toast of the Town
stand-up routine about life in New York City.

More important was taking this talent and mixing it into a concoction that enchanted the living room audience. Throughout 1948 Sullivan was testing his formula, his version of updated vaudeville: highbrow and lowbrow, something funny, something for the kids. The bookings could ever so slightly challenge the audience, but he always included material to soften any edge. In July he booked tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, a vaudeville legend who had danced with Shirley Temple in numerous 1930s musicals, to perform with jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, a virtuoso scat singer. As Fitzgerald scatted through what
Variety
described as “
neo-modern jazz vocalistics,” Robinson’s feet flashed in a flurry of heel and toe. To keep the evening from overwhelming the folks at home, Sullivan balanced Fitzgerald–Robinson with lighter material: a novelty singer who warbled about a bearded lady, acrobatic team Toy and Wing, comedian Dick Buckley, and Baltimore city official Elmert Reinhart rendering “Home on the Range.” (Spotlighting common folks was a key part of the Sullivan blueprint.) Ed’s formula was square enough for a mass audience, but rarely bland; he offered the spice of the new—like a Fitzgerald–Robinson jazz-dance duet—then provided cotton candy comforts.