Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan (55 page)

The next tidal wave to engulf television was just barely visible at the end of the 1956–57 season.
Gunsmoke
, a radio show since 1952, debuted on CBS-TV in 1955, and by the following year rose to be the eighth-rated show; down at number nineteen that season was
Wyatt Earp.
With the advent of the 1957–58 season the Western began proliferating like well-watered sagebrush:
Tales of Wells Fargo, Wagon Train
, and
Have Gun, Will Travel
were all in the top twenty.
Wyatt Earp
climbed to number six and
Gunsmoke
became television’s top-rated show.

ABC, enjoying success with
Wyatt Earp
on Tuesday night, made a move to grab Sunday night with still another Western,
Maverick.
Offering a fresh take on the traditional format, the show starred James Garner as the humorous antihero who was better with a wisecrack than with a six-gun. Debuting in September 1957 in the 7:30 time slot, for its first few weeks it was a straight western, but as it found its comedic voice its ratings started climbing. On November 12, 1957,
Maverick
’s Trendex rating bested
The Ed Sullivan Show
’s for the first time.

Sullivan faced an intractable ratings challenge in
Maverick.
Against
Comedy Hour
he could wait for it to present less interesting weeks and then produce specials; against
The Steve Allen Show
he easily out-scooped and out-produced the witty show host. When the quiz show craze began in the mid 1950s,
Time
reported that Ed even stood prepared for that: “
He is ready to fight fire with fire if this becomes the year of the big money quiz shows. Says he: ‘If what people want are giveaways then we’ll add giveaways, too.’ ” But how could he compete with a Western?

He had a plan. If the Western transported audiences to a distant locale, he would transport them to an even more distant locale, to a world more exotic than the dusty plains. He had long sprinkled acts from other countries into the show, yet they now came in a torrent. Sullivan’s talent coordinator Jack Babb booked acts from far and wide: Japanese dancers, Taiwanese acrobats, Italian comedy group The Three Bragazzis, Viennese soprano Rita Streich, Spanish magician Rochiardi, singing group the Kim Sisters from Korea, and others.

But more than bringing international acts to the United States, Ed envisioned transporting the show across the globe. In late 1957 he began planning to produce a program at the Brussels World’s Fair. It would cost an extra $50,000 so Ed romanced his sponsor, Eastman Kodak (Ford was now cosponsoring with other advertisers). He convinced Kodak to foot the bill in exchange for a product endorsement during the show; a Sullivan crew filmed the University of Rochester glee club singing in front of Kodak’s corporate headquarters, to be shown during the World’s Fair broadcast. How this related to the Fair was unclear, but it didn’t matter; Ed had his funding.

In March 1958 he and a crew took a chartered flight to Belgium, toting a mass of studio equipment. For the Fair broadcast, Ed walked among the many pavilions, presenting the Ukrainian State Dance Group performing a hyperkinetic spear and sword dance, comic Jacques Tati pantomiming a French fisherman, and the London Symphony Orchestra rendering an excerpt from Wagner’s
Lohengrin.
Making cameo appearances were Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, and William Holden. Lest it all seem too far from home, Ed boasted about the American pavilion and included a section honoring the graves of American soldiers in Belgium. In deference to the fact that the United States was deep in the Cold War, and the Fair’s theme was “A New Humanism”—the term made some viewers uneasy—Ed gave a short homily at the end making it clear he was against communism and in favor of religion.

The Cold War, however, didn’t keep him from the season’s biggest ratings triumph. In the spring of 1958 Russia’s Moiseyev Ballet was earning hyperbolic reviews as it toured America. Contrary to their name, they were folk dancers, dressed
in
peasant garb, highly athletic and stylistically muscular. Their Madison Square Garden performance was so anticipated that scalpers sold $8 tickets for $80. Ed haggled for weeks with impresario Sol Hurok for the rights to present the dancers
on his show. He dedicated the full hour to the Russian folk performers on the evening of June 29, scoring an artistic and commercial success. (Doubtless part of the appeal was a glimpse of a people that many Americans considered to be their foremost enemy.) Sullivan’s Trendex rating was a healthy 40.3, topping
Maverick
’s 33.6 and Steve Allen’s 21.4. (Sullivan’s Trendex increased in the second half of the hour, as it usually did after
Maverick
ended at 8:30.)

Rock ’n’ roll was the other driving force in Sullivan’s formula for the 1957–58 season. Having discovered a ratings goldmine with his Elvis bookings, he now presented a bevy of pioneering artists. The Everly Brothers, invited for a string of appearances, sweetly harmonized through “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Be-Bop-a-Lula.” The Champs romped through “Tequilla,” the Platters doo-wopped “The Great Pretender,” and Sam Cooke crooned “You Send Me.” Riding the brief rockabilly wave, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps had fun with “Dance to the Bop” and the Sparkletones rocked on “Black Slacks.” Connie Francis wept her romantic teen lament “Who’s Sorry Now?” Ed, like many of his viewers, felt that rock ’n’ roll needed a tight leash, and he kept a watchful eye on the new arrivals.

Everything went well the night that Ed introduced Buddy Holly and the Crickets for their television debut in December 1957. Holly, in his signature horn-rimmed glasses and armed with a Fender Stratocaster, was backed by drums, rhythm guitar, and plucked upright bass. All the band members were clad in tuxedos as they rocked through their recent number one hit, “That’ll Be the Day.” The group followed it up with the rambunctious “Peggy Sue,” which climbed to number five a month after the show.

When the group came back in January, however, Sullivan and Holly got into a verbal fisticuffs during rehearsal. Ed felt the lyrics to the group’s “Oh Boy” were lewd: “All of my life I been a-waitin’ / Tonight there’ll be no hesitatin’.” The verse was quaint by rock ’n’ roll standards, yet Irving Berlin would never have penned it. Sullivan told Holly to choose another song. Holly, in a first for a Sullivan guest, issued his own ultimatum: it was that song or nothing. Ed, furious, but unwilling to lose the ratings boost—especially with
Maverick
submerging his Trendex numbers—relented. Still, he cut the Crickets from two songs to one, and placed the band toward the end of the show.

In that evening’s broadcast, when Ed listed the Crickets in his opening remarks he pronounced their name correctly, but right before they played he introduced them as “Buddy Hollied and His Crickets!” That might have been merely a Sullivan malapropism, but when the camera cut to the band, both their lighting and sound were low. Holly tried to turn up his guitar, with limited result, then started singing at the top of his voice. As if in retaliation, the band jumped into double time during an instrumental break, allowing them to add a second verse to the song. When the camera cut back to Ed he was clearly livid, and didn’t give the Crickets the customary after-song mention before going to the next act.

In addition to rock ’n’ roll and many international attractions, Ed continued his all-inclusive Big Tent philosophy in the 1957–58 season. The Glenn Miller Orchestra swung standards, and balladeers Tony Bennett and Nat “King” Cole crooned. George Burns and Gracie Allen earned laughs with their vaudeville-style comedic patter. In January, Ed presented a twenty-two-minute segment of Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play
Long Day’s Journey into Night
, starring Frederic
March and Florence Eldridge (but Ed insisted that one of the script’s epithets be toned down). Actor Douglas Fairbanks recited the Rudyard Kipling poem “If and famed playwright-actor-singer Noël Coward warbled a medley of his own songs. The cross-dressing men of the Princeton Triangle Club strutted “The Charleston,” and eighty-four-year-old W.C. Handy, considered the father of the blues, made a cameo in a wheelchair.

For the kids, diminutive elephant Baby Opal frolicked, puppeteer Joe Castor painted a portrait along with his marionette, and eight-year-old piano player Joey Alfidi dazzled on “The Minute Waltz” as three beauty pageant contestants looked on admiringly. Johnny Carson did a stand-up routine about a children’s show host with a hangover, and Carol Burnett sang a comic tune called “I Fell in Love with John Foster Dulles.” (Dulles, Eisenhower’s secretary of state, was famously dour, but he found Burnett’s bit amusing and requested a copy. When reporters asked him why this young woman was singing about falling in love with him, he smiled and said, “
I never talk about my private life in public”) The season’s political guest was Eleanor Roosevelt, who paid tribute to Israel’s tenth anniversary.

But Sullivan’s 1957–58 season, despite its global talent show, big names, and fresh rock ’n’ roll faces, suffered major ratings erosion in the face of the public’s fascination with Westerns. Although
The Ed Sullivan Show
still ran ahead of ABC’s
Maverick
, it tumbled from the previous season’s number two spot all the way down to number nineteen. Of the eighteen shows that rated higher, seven of them were Westerns.
The Steve Allen Show
also contributed to the ratings fall, though Sullivan still ranked far ahead of Allen, who never entered the top twenty. This season was the first in which Sullivan grappled with more than one serious competitor in his time slot; ABC had always run a distant third. Now, the network’s sagebrush and spurs offering was besting Sullivan on certain nights.

Aside from the ratings plunge, June 1958 offered Ed a consolation prize: the show reached its ten-year anniversary. Sullivan was virtually alone in his program’s longevity and clearly alone in its success. All the other members of the class of 1948 were either gone or headed that way.
The Milton Berle Show
had been canceled in June 1956, and Arthur Godfrey’s
Talent Scouts
would be cut in the summer of 1958 (though Berle would make two one-year comebacks and
Arthur Godfrey and His Friends
limped along to 1959). Sid Caesar’s wildly popular
Your Show of Shows
had come and gone. Two other powerhouses of 1950s variety television, Jackie Gleason and Jack Benny, had run behind Sullivan since the 1955–56 season.

Newspapers, whose television critics had so uniformly panned Sullivan’s debut, now considered it de rigueur to run an article feting the program’s ten-year anniversary.
The New York Times
opined that, “
During these ten years Mr. Sullivan has not improved perceptibly as a performer,” yet still the show was “remarkably successful.” The
Times
reporter, interviewing the showman in his Delmonico apartment, noted that while Ed was jet-lagged (from his trip to Brussels) and had suffered a terrible bout with his ulcer, he answered questions affably—many reporters were surprised at how conversational the showman could be offstage. Most notably, Sullivan claimed that he looked forward to perhaps five more years as a host-producer, after which he hoped to focus exclusively on producing. He was less equivocal in his
New York Journal-American
interview, claiming, “
I’m going to quit in five years.” As he waxed philosophic about his career, he explained why he booked impressionists to
mock his stage persona: “
I used to get letters that said I looked as if I took myself too seriously. Unfortunately I have a graver looking kisser than most.”

CBS head Bill Paley, to honor the ten-year milestone, hosted a luncheon to which he invited all the network’s executives, and he directed CBS vice president Larry Lowman to buy an expensive gift for Sullivan. Lowman called Marlo Lewis, who told him that Ed had been eyeing a Renoir oil painting at a gallery on 57th Street, not far from the Delmonico; Sylvia adored it and stopped to look at it every time she passed.

At the luncheon the guests were full of good spirits, as Paley and other top executives, Frank Stanton and Hubbell Robinson, reminisced with Sullivan, Lewis, bandleader Ray Bloch, and director Johnny Wray about the show’s early days. After a couple hours of chatting and eating, Paley presented Sullivan with the gift, wrapped in brown paper. “
Ed, here’s something I know both you and Sylvia wanted. I am delighted we could find a way to show you how much we think of you and how happy we are that you are part of CBS.”

Ed unwrapped the Renoir, and, unable to speak, put it in the middle of the table. Everyone looked at it, thinking Sullivan would soon make a comment. But Ed, speechless, reached into his pocket and took out his handkerchief to cover his eyes. He began to cry, softly, and then slumped in his chair, crying more freely. The Sullivan staff members said nothing, as the executives looked on with small smiles, though network president Frank Stanton seemed surprised. Pulling himself together, Ed gestured toward his production staff. “
All of us thank you, Bill.” He took a small drink of water, dried his eyes, shook hands with everyone, then took the painting and walked out the door. Afterward, Stanton asked Marlo Lewis, “
What was all that about?”

Sullivan’s wellspring of emotion, as Lewis recounted it, came from Ed at long last getting something he had so craved from CBS: personal recognition. When he was struggling in the early years they had offered the show to advertisers “with or without” Ed Sullivan; the show had been underfunded during his battle with
Comedy Hour
; and even as he prevailed it was only after an offer from NBC that the show was renamed
The Ed Sullivan Show.
Consequently, he developed a hard defensive shell against what he saw as the network’s lack of appreciation.

In interviews in later years he never passed up a chance to hurl a gibe at CBS executives, using pointed language that left no doubt that he detested them. The network’s executives were “
ungrateful, impolite people,” and Frank Stanton was “a hopeless case as a human,” he told
Life
magazine in 1967. With the exception of Paley, that is. Ed always drew a distinction between the animus he felt toward the network management and Paley himself, whom Sullivan always respected. Now, Paley’s thoughtful personal gift was a sign of something he felt he had seen far too little of, from the one executive whose opinion he held in esteem. He wasn’t merely getting paid like a star, he was being treated like one.