Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan (9 page)

A few days later he wrote about how the Ku Klux Klan had influenced a southern sporting event, the Klan being a favorite target of the
Leader.
He began his piece with a reference to a black boxer named Battling Siki, who was originally from Senegal, Africa:

“Battling Siki, the Senegalese dark horse, can’t speak English fluently, but if he could, he probably would express himself somewhat after this fashion: ‘Any Irishman who risks a world’s title down below the Mason–Dixon line of Kukluxland is about as crazy as any colored boy who risks one against an Irishman in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day.’ Yesterday’s near-riot in Columbus, Ga., precipitated by the Mike McTigue—Young Stribling championship go, can be traced directly to the Ku Klux clan [
sic
]. McTigue, an Irish Catholic, managed by Joe Jacobs, a Jew, has as much chance of getting an even break in Georgia as the well-known snowball has of enduring the scorching blasts of Dante’s Inferno.”

After his first week, though, Ed’s
Leader
writing turned largely apolitical, however much the newsprint around him trumpeted the international proletariat. His
move to the
Leader
seemed less a reflection of his politics than a desire to step up a career rung, less about the working class than about one individual worker. Although he advanced from reporter to editor, he covered sports much as he had at the
Mail
, offering sharply opinionated reports of everything from horse racing to the upcoming Olympics. He touted Illinois sophomore Red Grange as one of the great football halfbacks, lauded Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne’s competitive spirit—“
Army never got over the shock of Notre Dame’s cocksuredness”—and plugged his friends, speed skater Joe Moore, on his way to the Olympics, and boxer Johnny Dundee, now featherweight champion. When he was wrong, which was not infrequent, he poked fun at himself. Covering the 1923 World Series, he forecast a Giants victory over the Yankees by four games to two; instead it was the Yankees, propelled by Babe Ruth, who won by that very score. Ed acknowledged his strikeout by adding a drawing to his column showing a group of men looking quizzically at a newspaper, with the caption, “Yes, We Picked the Giants!”

But Ed’s newfound editorial status proved ill-starred. On November 13, less than six weeks after launching with its new name, the
Leader
suspended publication. Organized labor and socialist groups had pooled $100,000 to revamp the newspaper but increased costs quickly devoured the investment. “
It seemed in every way right to suspend the
Leader
while it is solvent rather than try to continue at a financial hazard a paper of greatly reduced size,” announced one of its worker-managers. That may have made sound business sense but it didn’t change the fact that its entire staff, including its sports editor, was now unemployed.

His newspaper contacts came in handy. The
Evening Mail
, which Ed had left to work for the
Leader
, threw him a lifeline, hiring him to cover winter sports in Florida. It was a plum job. He had canvassed the New York area covering sporting events but this was his first travel assignment. And covering baseball’s spring training was an added perk. Sullivan headed south sometime after the first of the year, 1924.

This door, however, closed even faster than the
Leader.
On January 25, publishing mogul F.A. Munsey bought the
Evening Mail
for a price rumored to be in excess of $2 million, planning to incorporate the paper into one of his existing dailies. In the shuffle, Ed lost his assignment and found himself stranded in Florida.

He was not only unemployed but nearly broke. Living the high life in Manhattan hadn’t entailed a savings plan. A golf pro named Tommy Armour loaned him $50 and referred him to famed sportswriter Grantland Rice (who wrote the oft-quoted aphorism “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game”). Rice helped Ed get a job as a publicist for a golf course at Ormond Beach, Florida, a career detour that taught him a skill he often used later in life, event organizing. He gained his first experience as an event producer by putting together exhibition golf tournaments, which he promoted with minor publicity stunts.

He supplemented his salary by writing freelance sports stories for the Associated Press and United Press International, and that winter Ed spotted a potential big scoop. Leading financier George F. Baker was traveling south in a private railcar to play golf with industrialist John D. Rockefeller, who owned a mansion in Ormond Beach. Ed checked with some New York dailies: Would they buy a story about the famous tycoons playing golf? That Ed had just finished a stint on a socialist newspaper
didn’t deter him from covering Rockefeller, the very embodiment of capitalism. Finding interest, he gathered details about Baker and Rockefeller’s golf game and wrote his story. But he ran into an obstacle when his employer, the manager of the Hotel Ormond, refused to allow him to send it, fearing the piece might offend the two men. Ed began maneuvering to get his piece published. “
When you are broke you become inventive,” he said.

He suggested to his boss that the Hotel Ormond offer its services to the train car that Baker had traveled on. The manager liked the idea, and Ed volunteered to present the offer himself. Once there, he convinced the railroad manager to read his story, having him initial it to show his agreement that it contained nothing offensive. Ed’s employer, seeing the initials, agreed to let him send his story, which became a major sale for the reporter. The story was presumably the one in
The New York Times
on March 28, 1924 detailing a Rockefeller golf game in Ormond Beach. The glowing three-paragraph piece carried no byline and didn’t mention the businessman’s partner that day, yet one day earlier the paper had reported that George Baker was headed south for business meetings. As Ed later told it, Rockefeller himself sent the reporter “
a very human note,” shortly after the article ran, explaining that Baker had won hole by hole, yet the industrialist was victorious in the final score. The letter may have been Ed’s embellishment of the story—he claimed he didn’t keep it—yet it’s true that after decades of distrusting the press, late in life Rockefeller actively courted reporters, especially adoring ones.

At any rate, Florida held little appeal for Sullivan. After a few months in the sun he eagerly sought another sports-reporting berth. Between April 1924 and early 1925, he worked at three newspapers, hopping from one to the next, searching for what he had at the
Mail
and the
Leader:
a high-profile job covering a smorgasbord of sports. In April he took a job at the Philadelphia
Public Ledger
, a staid daily that mixed national news with voluminous coverage of local debutantes. But as at each of his three short-lived posts, the
Ledger
gave him no byline. In May, publisher Frederick Enright launched a new evening paper, the
New York Bulletin
, a Democratic broadsheet. Ed jumped at the chance to move back to New York, yet before he was established at the
Bulletin
he found an opening at the
New York World.

Established by Joseph Pulitzer in 1883, the
World
was a big, prosperous daily with offices throughout the United States and Europe—just the sort of publication an ambitious newsman would desire.
World
sports editor George Daley, however, proved to be a minor tyrant and Ed chafed under his supervision, calling him a perfectionist. Even worse, Daley covered all the choice events himself. The reporter kept looking for an ideal position.

Sometime in the fall of 1924 he took a sportswriting job at the New York
Morning Telegraph
, a racing sheet that whispered insider’s tips about that afternoon’s track action, and whose front page covered the careers of hot ponies. For a reporter fluent in all the major sports, the
Telegraph
offered a much smaller world. The paper, as described by famed New York chronicler O.O. McIntyre, was “
a barney refuge for the journalistically forlorn,” which “harbored a dozen white-hair paragraphers.” Still, it did deliver Sullivan from George Daley’s clutches. From his tenure at the tip sheet he developed a passion for horse racing, and throughout his life spent many afternoons at the tracks; when he became wealthy later in life he bought his own racehorse. But the
Telegraph
didn’t provide enough to hold him.

Finally, in early 1925 he ran into a casual friend, Will Gould, a sports cartoonist for the
New York Evening Graphic
, who told him of the paper’s plans for a Saturday sports magazine. Gould recommended Sullivan write articles for the new insert. Ed jumped at the opportunity. At age twenty-three he was, astonishingly, starting his eighth newspaper job—and the most unusual. Launched in September 1924, the
Graphic
was a screaming two-fisted tabloid, dispensing with all journalistic rules except the inviolable precept that tawdry sensationalism draws readers. Yellow journalism had never been quite so yellow. The
Graphic
influenced Ed in numerous ways, the first of these being that it allowed him to meet someone who moved him profoundly.

When Ed met Olympic swimming star Sybil Bauer while covering a meet in 1925, it was love at first sight. Perhaps it was her winsome smile, or the sight of her in a swimsuit, but whatever the case, suddenly, even the fact that she lived half a country away didn’t matter.

By the mid 1920s Bauer was something of a national celebrity. In 1921 she won her first Amateur Athletic Union backstroke championship, a title she claimed every year until 1926. In 1922 she became the first woman to break a men’s record, besting Stubby Kruger’s 440-yard backstroke record by four seconds. (The meet in Bermuda was not officially sanctioned so her performance was never formally recognized.) By the time she qualified for the 1924 Olympics, Bauer held world records at every backstroke distance. That year in Paris she won Olympic gold with ease, flashing through the 100-meter backstroke four full seconds faster than the silver medalist. She would eventually set twenty-three world records in swimming.

For all her competitive prowess, Sybil was easygoing, gentle, and upbeat. She wasn’t classically pretty—her features were blunt—yet she possessed a swimmer’s svelte form. When Ed and the twenty-one-year-old swimmer met, he wasn’t the only one to swoon: the young Olympic star also found the sports reporter quite charming. Because the two lived in different parts of the country it was an unlikely romance; Sybil was a student at Northwestern University in Chicago, where she had grown up, and Ed lived in New York. But that proved no obstacle for Sullivan, and he pursued Sybil with a passion.

The romance blossomed. Sybil’s swimming career brought her to the East Coast at times, and Ed made the trip to Chicago when he could. Several months after meeting, the two were quite serious about each other. In an unusual gesture, Ed even brought Sybil home to Port Chester to meet his family. Once established in New York he had rarely gone back, preferring to keep his distance from his father, if not from Port Chester itself. However, the trip home with Sybil proved a major success. Everyone in the Sullivan family liked her enormously.

The romance, while growing, remained a long-distance relationship, with Sybil attending college in Chicago and pursuing her swimming career while Ed remained immersed in his life as a New York sports reporter. He continued burning the candle at both ends, covering athletics during the day and nightclubbing virtually every night of the week.

Sybil appeared to have everything—athletic prowess, renown, winning charm—yet her life took an unexpected turn in early 1926. While being honored in a parade in St. Augustine, Florida, after winning an AAU swimming championship in February, Sybil
suffered a momentary dizziness and fell from a slow-moving touring car. Though she suffered no major injuries, it soon became evident that her dizziness was symptomatic of a very real health problem. One newspaper attributed her fall to a nervous breakdown caused by the strain of her vigorous athletic training—the idea of a prominent female athlete was resisted by many. The real cause, however, was far more serious, and Sybil’s health began to deteriorate, precipitously. Sometime in the next several months her family was told that she had cancer. The champion swimmer, in peak physical shape just months before, was now gravely ill.