Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan (65 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Beatlemania

A
S
E
D WALKED ONSTAGE TO BEGIN HIS BROADCAST
on February 9, 1964, little about his demeanor revealed what this night was to be. Yet surely he felt it. In retrospect this evening’s show would be a cultural capstone, a black-and-white snapshot that defined the era as much as any of the decade’s moments. Its video footage would be replayed endlessly, as if it were some kind of visual mantra that contained the essence of its tumultuous period. Ed’s mien, however, was hardly different than during the hundreds of Sunday nights he had walked onstage over the last sixteen years.

As always, he was dressed in his trademark Dunhill suit, with a small white handkerchief jutting from the left breast pocket. His hair was slicked straight back in the same style he had worn it in since his reporter days in the early 1920s, a bit of dark hair dye the only concession to the years. The camera showed his steps to be stiff and measured. As he got to center stage, he managed a momentary smile that did little to brighten his almost cadaverous countenance.

But the studio audience’s expectant buzz was palpable. As the applause in CBS Studio 50 went on longer than usual, threatening to run away with itself, he waved his arm in a gesture of,
okay kids, let’s quiet down.
That afternoon at dress rehearsal he had warned the audience—largely teenage girls—to behave themselves. Otherwise, he had half-joked, he would “
call in a barber.” Outside the theater at Broadway and 53rd Street there had been a near riot earlier that day, and an extra contingent of New York’s finest had been required to keep order.

He told his viewers he had just received a “very nice” telegram from Elvis and his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, wishing the Beatles—that evening’s headliner, making their American debut—“a tremendous success.” (Elvis, of course, wished the Beatles no such thing. The Fab Four, having just hit number one on the pop charts three weeks earlier, were pushing Elvis off the rock ’n’ roll throne. His resentment and envy of them is well documented; years later, in Elvis’ surprise visit to the Nixon White House, woozy with barbiturates, he explained to the president
that it was groups like the Beatles who were leading kids toward drugs. But in 1964, sending this telegram was a good way to keep his name in front of the kids.)

The crowd, at the mention of Elvis and the Beatles in the same sentence, once again began bubbling over, and Ed again motioned to quiet them down. Veering from his usual practice, he began listing some of the season’s big moments: the singing nun Sister Sourire, the puppet Topo Gigio, the previous week’s duet of Sammy Davis, Jr., and Ella Fitzgerald. He was, as he often did, speaking in code:
don’t worry, the teenagers don’t own this show, there’s always something for you older folks, and the little ones, too.
For his studio audience, Sullivan’s catalog of the show’s allures was a minor agony, something to endure politely while attempting to keep the dam from bursting.

Then he said it. He announced that the Beatles would be out onstage shortly. At that point was heard a single female moan, apparently involuntary, almost sexual in its longing.
The Beatles.
Sullivan ignored it, mimicking himself as he set up the commercial break, after which he would bring on the English group: “If you’re a person who needs to be shown, here’s a
rilly
big proof from all new Aeroshave shaving cream.…”

Ed’s decision to book the Beatles came about partially by chance—or so the story goes. In truth, he helped invent a fabricated version of the event, a bit of creative storytelling that became accepted as historical fact.

According to Beatles lore, on the previous October 31, Ed and Sylvia were waiting for a flight in London Airport. While in London, they had visited Peter Prichard, an easygoing young Englishman who was Ed’s European talent scout, and who also worked for powerhouse British impresarios Lew and Leslie Grade. For Peter, who had performed in English vaudeville as a boy, landing the assignment as Sullivan’s eyes and ears in Europe was a dream job. He met Ed when the showman was auditioning talent agents at London’s Savoy Hotel; Peter was one of several agents Ed invited to come speak to him about their acts. Ed asked Peter to give his appraisal of the other agents’ acts. “
I gave him my honest opinion, and I presume he liked it, because he called me in the next day, then he called Lew and said, ‘I’ve got your young man with me, he’s very good—he’s crafty.’ ” Over time, Prichard recalled, he and Ed developed something of a father-son relationship.

When Ed made one of his frequent trips to Europe, he always visited Peter in London, where they went to the theater together. If Ed heard of a European performer, he called Peter to investigate; the young agent also flew to Beirut, Russia, and Greece to see acts at Ed’s request. When Ed and Sylvia took their annual vacation in France, invariably staying at the Carleton Hotel in Cannes, Ed invited Peter and his wife to join them for a couple weeks. During their annual French vacations the two sat on the beach and talked for hours, Peter telling Ed about current European acts, Ed regaling the younger man with stories of his reporter days. Peter, who addressed Ed as “Mr. Sullivan” in his presence, held the showman in great regard and always listened raptly. Prichard remembered his friend as “a man’s man, tough, who wouldn’t handle fools easily.”

As Ed and Sylvia sat in London Airport in October 1963, an English rock ’n’ roll group was returning from a five-day tour of Sweden. The airport was mobbed by frenzied
teenagers eager for a glimpse or a word—anything—from these young musicians. By some reports the crowd numbered close to fifteen hundred semicrazed fans. Their manic energy brought the airport to a near standstill—it even delayed Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home as his limousine was pulling into the airport. Ed knew a phenomenon when he saw one. Soon thereafter he called Peter Prichard; did Peter know who they were? Yes, they were called the Beatles, and they were becoming quite the sensation. Trusting his young friend’s opinion, Ed told him to keep track of the band. When they were ready for America he wanted to book them.

The London Airport story makes for a flattering portrait of Ed: in a moment of serendipity, the veteran showman, always looking for the next trend, spots a rock ’n’ roll band perched on the cusp of international fame. But it’s highly unlikely that Ed was in London Airport on October 31. His twice-weekly
Daily News
column shows him to be in New York on this date. It’s possible he could have made a trip to London between columns, but he invariably mentioned his foreign jaunts in the
Daily News
, and this period’s columns included no such reference. And nothing in his show’s schedule called for a trip to London in October. He
was
in London for a few weeks in September, at the end of his summer vacation, but there was no Beatles airport ruckus then.

By his own account, Ed first learned of the Beatles by reading the newspapers, not in an airport sighting. Ten months after the Beatles debut on his show, he wrote a letter to British showman Leslie Grade: “
You have been misinformed—or understandably have forgotten how I came to sign the Beatles. In late September 1963 when we were taping acts in London, I locked up the Beatles, sight unseen, because London papers gave tremendous Page 1 coverage to the fact that both the Queen’s flight and the newly elected Prime Minister Douglas-Home’s plane to Scotland had been delayed in takeoffs for three hours. The reason: the airport runways had been completely engulfed by thousands of youngsters assembled at the airport to cheer the unknown Beatles!”

The letter contains a misstatement. The only time both the prime minister and the Beatles were at London Airport was October 31, so Ed was incorrect in his reference to late September. But his statement that he read news accounts of the band before seeing them appears true. He said as much in a 1968 interview with the
Saturday Evening Post.
The interviewer, noting that Sullivan told him that he learned of the Beatles in the newspapers, quoted Ed’s recollection of seeing the headlines: “ ‘
Sylvia,’ he said (Mrs. Sullivan recalls it well), ‘Sylvia, there must be something here.’ ”

One other thing the letter doesn’t make clear: the news accounts of the Beatles that Ed read were probably the British clippings that Peter Prichard sent him in the fall of 1963. Throughout most of that fall, American newspapers hardly knew the Beatles existed—the band was all but unknown in the United States. And in fact it was a call from the London-based Prichard, along with these clippings, that convinced Ed to give this band a guest shot.

It’s not surprising that Sullivan booked the Beatles based on news accounts and a tip from Prichard, given how much he relied on newspapers and his talent scouts. He deserves no less credit for understanding the band’s potential. He was agreeing to present a group that, at the time he booked them, had never charted a single U.S. hit—there was an element of risk involved. Moreover, he had long been an adventurous rock promoter. Ever since Elvis he had used his hallowed talent showcase to introduce the latest rock acts to American living rooms, at a time when most adults
viewed rock ’n’ roll as akin to a social disease. So the story of the London Airport sighting, with its portrait of Ed as a firsthand observer, does capture the spirit with which he stayed current with the new youth sound, if not the actual fact.

Still, Ed enjoyed the London Airport anecdote. It was almost true. He
had
booked the Beatles before any American promoter, he
had
been in London Airport just a few weeks before the band was, and the airport scene had really happened. It’s just that Sullivan wasn’t there—though at times he claimed he was. (Actually, his version varied based on his mood and what reporter he was talking to.) Just four months after the Beatles debut, he told an interviewer, “
We were in London last September. There was a commotion at the airport. We inquired what the cause was and discovered that hundreds of teenagers were at the airport to see the Beatles off.” As he repeatedly put himself in London at the time of the first Beatles airport mob scene—complete with the mistaken September date—it became accepted as fact.

Peter Prichard, interviewed decades after the purported London Airport sighting, chuckled, and noted, “
Well, as I always said, it’s a great press story. What can I say?” The anecdote, he said, sounds like the invention of a public relations expert. “In real life, if it would have happened, he [Sullivan] would have had a photograph of himself there.”

However, he hastened to add, “I wouldn’t argue with my boss [Sullivan]. After all these many years I wouldn’t want to end up being wrong with him. If that’s what he said he did, then hey.…” In fact, “I would never say aloud that Mr. Sullivan was wrong,” remarked Prichard. “I’ll be seeing him soon—and watch out! Imagine going through the pearly gates and seeing him coming at me.” Prichard laughed, and then imitated the famed Sullivan temper:
“ ‘I’ve got to have a word with you!’ ”