Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan (52 page)

The evening was a decisive ratings triumph, garnering a 43.7 Trendex rating, translating to some sixty million people, or about a third of the country—the largest television audience to date. Indeed, Elvis’ performance of “Hound Dog” that night would be one of a small handful of moments that defined the decade. However, the ratings win was a Pyrrhic victory for Sullivan; the Trendex number masked a deep unhappiness.

Critics, predictably, kept the singer at arm’s length. “
From his extensive repertoire of assaults on the American ear, Mr. Presley included ‘Hound Dog, ’ ” sniffed
The New York Times’
Jack Gould. More worrisome for Ed, viewers were upset. Gould’s paper printed a raft of letters about Presley’s debut on Sullivan, most of them profoundly outraged. Typical of the responses was that of Howard Spalding, a high school principal in Mount Vernon, New York, who wrote, “
If the adverse public reaction that follows an unfortunate performance such as this were directed at the sponsor, would it not cause advertisers to consider more carefully what they wished to present to the public?” Harry Feldman, a high school music teacher, complained, “One shudders to contemplate the cultural level of the next generation.”

Mrs. Rhoda Frank attempted something of a defense of Presley: “Adults who forever misunderstand the desires of these teenagers immediately took up the cries of ‘suggestive performance,’ ‘degrading routines,’ and ‘sexual gyrations.’ Believe me, the teenagers were not aware of this interpretation until it was presented to them by the unhealthy few.” But Mrs. May Zeoli gave notice: “
The few studios that welcome rock ’n’ roll and vile characters should be warned that a license to operate a TV station is a privilege that can be taken away by the authorities.”

At this point Ed sought to navigate two opposing currents. He wanted to assuage his audience’s fears, and he also wanted to keep riding the Presley ratings tidal wave. For the singer’s second appearance on October 28, Ed, now recuperated from his car crash, attempted to play both sides. He spaced Elvis’ appearances at three points in the program—ensuring that Trendex ratings stayed high throughout the hour—but again did not allow the singer to open. Instead, he began the show with a dose of pure virtue, an Irish children’s choir, thirty kids singing a sweet Gaelic folk
tune accompanied by piano. Their performance was churchy, with slow tempos and plenty of close-ups of their angelic faces. Clearly, the Sullivan show had not been overtaken by the forces of licentiousness. As Ed led the applause, he made light of the tensions underlying this evening. “Some people have wondered if that little boy in a kilt is Elvis Presley—it’s not,” he intoned, getting a solid chortle.

When he introduced Elvis, the girls screamed as if they had glimpsed an apparition. Dressed in a light-colored blazer and a skinny tie, the singer seemed to have grown more comfortable with an audience even in the weeks since his first appearance. But the camera didn’t share that comfort: it shot his rendition of the finger-snapping “Don’t Be Cruel” mainly from the shoulders up. Again, though, the singer couldn’t be contained. He projected physical exuberance with a head shot alone, and when he added seductive little vocal twists to his melody line, while sending a knowing smile out to his fans, they deluged him with shrieks.

Before Elvis’ second number Sullivan walked on and shook his hand, having to labor to stop the female screaming for a little chitchat. Ed told the audience that Elvis sang this next number, the theme song to the film
Love Me Tender
—his first film, released just seven weeks earlier—in a scene in which “his three brothers come home from the Confederate armies … and he sings this song to his mother and his young bride.” Certainly, Ed’s comments implied, this boy’s heart was in the right place; based on Ed’s setup the song was almost sanctimonious. The studio audience clearly agreed that Elvis was adorable. As he crooned the moody “Love Me Tender,” with minimal movement, it seemed a riot was about to break out, with spontaneous shrieks at melodic pauses. Frantic “shushes” were heard, producing temporary quiet, yet as he finished the final chorus an intense burst of female energy overwhelmed the studio sound system.

As the screams subsided, Ed joined Presley on the set. He tried to talk about the singer’s next song—“Now Elvis is going to be back in just a few minutes …”—yet the girls cut him off. He and Elvis chatted for a few moments while waiting for the wave to crest, but it wouldn’t, so Ed gave up. “All right,
c’mon!
” he shouted, gesturing with his arms to let the screams loose.

To calm the audience, Elvis had to walk offstage, leaving Ed to address the older folks at home. “I can’t figure this darn thing out. He just goes like this”—and here Ed did his own little hip shake, earning a few stray female shrieks—“and everybody yells.” The showman was placing himself on the side of the reasonable adults in the audience, who couldn’t figure it out either.

Before Sullivan went to commercial, he told viewers of Elvis’ recent visit to his Delmonico apartment. The singer had startled Sylvia and her friends during an afternoon card game. Ed said that in his conversation with Presley that day, he mentioned to Elvis that he liked the melody to “Love Me Tender,” to which the singer replied, that’s no wonder, it’s based on a Stephen Foster tune. Again, Ed’s story attempted to offer a life raft to his older viewers: this wild rock ’n’ roller’s song was actually based on something as square as a nineteenth-century folk song.

While waiting for Elvis’ second appearance that night, the teenagers in the audience had to endure Senor Wences, the Spanish ventriloquist who used his own hand as his dummy, painting it to resemble a face. The audience laughed delightedly as Wences’ hand chirped back at him in quirky Spanish-accented phrases. A Sullivan favorite, Wences appeared twenty-three times over the years.

When the camera cut to Elvis, for the first time that evening he had left his guitar backstage, so nothing covered his mid section. He acknowledged Ed’s introduction with characteristic politeness: “Thank you very much, Mr. Sullivan.” The Jordanaires began harmonizing a slow ballad, and Elvis started singing “Love Me,” turning toward Ed offstage during a melodic pause: “It’s a new one, Ed,” getting a few laughs for his effort. He stumbled on the lyrics but kept going, to the clear joy of his fans. As he gently swayed they shrieked at most every pause.

The moment he finished, Ed came on the set. “I want to thank all you youngsters, you made a promise you wouldn’t yell during his songs, and you’re very, very good— you haven’t,” he said. Yet they
had
screamed, in ways that no previous Sullivan audience ever had. Ed appeared almost too eager to congratulate them on their supposed good behavior, as if by praising wayward children he could encourage improvement.

He kept the lid on the teenage energy by allowing Elvis only one song this set, forcing the singer’s fans to sit through other acts. Joyce Grenfell, a very proper British comedienne dressed as a grande dame with long white gloves, warbled a novelty tune. Then the full Broadway cast of Frank Loesser’s
The Most Happy Fella
kicked and twirled across the stage in a series of visually rich musical dance numbers.

When Elvis came back for his final set, he appeared to be in a lighthearted mood. So too, were his fans. They had behaved, or so they had been told, but they didn’t want to anymore. The singer’s mere appearance provoked screams that suggested a fire had broken out in the theater. He asked, “Ladies and gentlemen, ah, could I have your attention, please?” and he flashed a beguiling smile, suddenly getting near silence. He started to play with the audience, as if its excitement level could be increased. “I’d like to tell you that we’re going to do a sad song for you,” he said with a big grin. “This here song is one of the saddest songs you ever heard … it really tells a story, friends …” He pretended to jumpstart the song several times, teasing the audience with his head fakes, each time eliciting a groan of female anticipation, each time pulling back for a toothy smile, his well-lubricated pompadour glistening in the studio lights.

And then he did it. Presley catapulted into the rapid-fire growl of “Hound Dog”—the song had hardly ever been rendered this fast. For the first time that evening, viewers got all of Elvis, his hips gone mad, the camera pulling back to show full torso, his whole body a quivering, dancing blur. For a moment he caught himself, clearly shaking his head
no
, as if to say,
I shouldn’t shake like that
, and he stood ramrod stiff—which lasted all of four beats, after which the dam broke.

As the rock beat kept up a foot-tapping rhythm, he swiveled with untrammeled abandon; not only were his hips gyrating,
everything
about him was gyrating. He was a human zigzag, his lip upturned, his legs akimbo, his head bobbing, unshackled from anything that had come before, dancing and weaving across the stage in immoderate happiness. He wasn’t just singing rock ’n’ roll, he
was
rock ’n’ roll; this was freedom and joy and sex all wrapped up into a moment of spontaneous beatitude. The girls were out of control, their promises of restraint broken and forgotten, their screams erecting a wall of sound over which Elvis was hardly audible. As he concluded his two-and-half-minute revolution, he breathlessly grinned and waved good-bye: “Until we meet again, may God bless you, like he’s blessed me.” His fans
shrieked as if they had been hypnotized. Based on the studio audience’s response, this had to be one of the most successful Sullivan shows ever.

But it wasn’t. While the evening provided yet another overwhelming ratings victory, far outpacing
The Steve Allen Show
, a segment of the audience felt more deeply upset than ever. Elvis was hanged in effigy in Nashville, and a group of concerned citizens in St. Louis got together and burned him in effigy. That a segment of Sullivan’s audience was so unhappy presented him with a dilemma. The singer’s contract called for one more appearance. But how was Ed to handle an act that drove ratings into the stratosphere while so profoundly alienating so many of his viewers? He had always produced his show with the belief that there was a single audience, but now, for the first time, there were two very distinct audiences, irreconcilably so. Even for a master showman, rock ’n’ roll was proving to be a difficult beast to handle.

Yet Sullivan had a solution. For Elvis’ final appearance on January 6, Ed attempted to heal the schism that wouldn’t be healed. Pleasing both the Elvis fans and Elvis haters, if such a minefield could be tiptoed through, required him to present the singer with a strict guiding hand.

Ed was in good spirits as he opened the show that night. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a big show, a real big shew,” he said, getting a hearty chuckle with his imitation of Sullivan impressionists, “with Elvis Presley headlining tonight.” At the singer’s name the female contingent erupted into a full-throated screech. “You promised,” Ed said, smiling and pointing up at the offenders, earning him another rippling laugh.

For the first time in his three appearances, Ed presented Elvis first. The singer was dressed in a glittery vest, his moist pompadour letting fly with a few seductively errant strands. Surrounded by the Jordanaires, he opened with a languorous, intimate version of “Love Me Tender,” in which the camera, appropriately, focused on a close facial shot. He stopped only to give a short smile—he had, if possible, grown still more charismatic since his last appearance—before launching into an aching “Heartbreak Hotel.” His shoulders quaked with the opening guitar twangs, and his entire body shimmied with the descending bass line’s plaintive cry. Or rather, it
seemed
as if his entire body was moving, but the camera’s eye stayed firmly fixed at chest level, so viewers at home had to surmise what the rest of him was doing based on his flurry of shoulder movements.

As the song whirled to a close, Elvis gave an aw-shucks thanks to his fans for making the next tune his biggest hit of the year—“We really are thankful for all the success you made us have, and everything”—then jumped into a bouncy, mid-tempo “Don’t Be Cruel.” He was having fun, flashing his high-wattage smile, though he wasn’t moving much. At the song’s high point he started working it, spinning into a hip-shaking dance, but again, television viewers couldn’t see it. With this restricted camera angle it became clear—
the camera would not show anything beneath his chest.
The spontaneous choreography of his infamous pelvis was only implied, not seen. Ed was censoring Elvis. As the third song ended it was clear, too, that the audience had been browbeaten into its best behavior; they were curiously silent except for right after a song. Elvis, to prompt shrieks during songs, was reduced to periodically cupping his hand to his ear, which coaxed short screeches
from his more free-spirited fans. But the wall of squeals came only as the singer danced offstage to end his set.

The show moved on to English ventriloquist Arthur Worsley, whose dummy taunted him. His dummy spoke without moving its lips just as the ventriloquist did, earning hearty audience laughter. Following Worsley was Lonnie Satin, a very stiff black man in a tuxedo who crooned the ballad “I Believe” to polite applause.