The Ed Sullivan Show

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Ed Sullivan
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Ed Sullivan

The Ed Sullivan Show was an American television variety show that ran from June 20, 1948 to June 6, 1971, and was hosted by former entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It ran on CBS every Sunday night at 8pm. Virtually every type of entertainment appeared on the show; opera singers, rock stars, songwriters, comedians, ballet dancers, and circus acts were regularly featured. The format was essentially the same as vaudeville, and although vaudeville had died a generation earlier, Sullivan presented many ex-vaudevillians on his show.

The show was originally entitled Toast of the Town, but was widely referred to as The Ed Sullivan Show for years before 1955, when that became its official name. In its debut, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis performed along with Broadway composers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II previewing the score to South Pacific.

The show was broadcast from CBS-TV Studio 50 in New York City, which is now named The Ed Sullivan Theater and is the home of The Late Show with David Letterman.

Contents

[edit] Background

Along with the new talent Sullivan booked each week, he also had recurring characters appear many times a season, such as his puppet sidekick Topo Gigio, and ventriloquist Señor Wences. While most of the episodes aired live from New York City, the show also aired live on occasion from other nations, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. For many years, Ed Sullivan was a national event each Sunday evening, and was the first exposure for foreign performers to the American public.

On the occasion of the show's ten-year anniversary telecast, Sullivan commented on how the show had changed during a June 1958 interview syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA):

The chief difference is mostly one of pace. In those days, we had maybe six acts. Now we have 11 or 12. Then, each of our acts would do a leisurely ten minutes or so. Now they do two or three minutes. And in those early days I talked too much. Watching these kines I cringe. I look up at me talking away and I say "You fool! Keep quiet!" But I just keep on talking. I've learned how to keep my mouth shut.

The program did not shy away from airing performances from black entertainers. Sullivan also commented on this during during his NEA interview:

The most important thing [during the first ten years of the program] is that we've put on everything but bigotry. When the show first started in '48, I had a meeting with the sponsors. There were some Southern dealers present and they asked if I intended to put on Negroes. I said yes. They said I shouldn't, but I convinced them I wasn't going to change my mind. And you know something? We've gone over very well in the South. Never had a bit of trouble.

The show included performances from black entertainers such as Diahann Carroll, Sammy Davis Jr., Nat King Cole, Bo Diddley, The Fifth Dimension, Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson, The Supremes, and The Temptations.

In that same 1958 NEA interview, Sullivan noted his pride about the role that the show had had in improving the public's understanding of mental illness. Sullivan considered his May 17, 1953 telecast to be the single most important episode in the show's first decade. During that show, a salute to the popular Broadway director Joshua Logan, the two men were watching in the wings and Sullivan asked Logan how he thought the show was doing. According to Sullivan, Logan told him that the show was dreadfully becoming "another one of those and-then-I-wrote shows;" Sullivan asked him what he should do about it, and Logan volunteered to talk about his experiences in a mental institution. Sullivan took him up on the offer, and in retrospect believed that several advances in the treatment of mental illness could be attributed to the resulting publicity, including the repeal of a Pennsylvania law about the treatment of the mentally ill and the granting of funds for the construction of new psychiatric hospitals.

The show enjoyed phenomenal popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. As had occurred with Amos 'n Andy on the radio a decade earlier, and as would occur with network TV showings of The Wizard of Oz (1939 film), the family ritual of gathering around the television set to watch Ed Sullivan became almost a U.S. cultural universal. Ed Sullivan was regarded as a kingmaker, and performers considered an appearance on his program as a guarantee of stardom. The show's iconic status is illustrated by a song from the 1960 musical, Bye Bye Birdie. In the song, "Hymn for a Sunday Evening," a family of viewers expresses their regard for the program in worshipful tones.

In the late 1960s, Sullivan remarked that his program was waning as the decade went on. He realized that to keep viewers, the best and brightest in entertainment had to be seen, or else the viewers were going to keep on changing the channel. Along with declining viewership, Ed Sullivan attracted a higher median age for the average viewer as the seasons went on. These two reasons were evidence for its cancellation in 1971. Sullivan would produce one-off specials for CBS until his death in 1974.

[edit] Famous performances

The Ed Sullivan Show is especially known to today's generation for airing breakthrough performances by Elvis Presley and The Beatles. On September 9, 1956, Presley made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (after earlier appearances on shows hosted by the Dorsey Brothers and Steve Allen) even though Sullivan had previously vowed never to allow the performer on his show. At the time Presley was filming Love Me Tender so Sullivan's producer Marlo Lewis flew to Los Angeles, California to supervise the Hollywood side of the show taping. Sullivan, however, was not able to host his show in New York City because he was recovering from a near fatal automobile accident. Oscar-winner Charles Laughton guest-hosted in Sullivan's place introducing Presley with "And now away to Hollywood to meet 'Elvin' (Elvis) Presley" to which Presley eventually responded "This is probably the greatest honor that I've ever had in my life."

The show was viewed by a record 60 million people which at the time was 82.6% of the television audience and the largest single audience in television history. Sullivan was able to host other appearances by Presley starting on October 28 later the same year. But for this appearance Presley dyed his naturally sandy blond hair to his soon-to-be trademark "bad boy" jet black. Presley's third and final appearance on the show occurred on January 6, 1957. Although it has often been mentioned that it was the controversy over Presley's provocative hip and pelvis movements that prompted Sullivan, on this occasion, to order the show's cameras to shoot the rock star from the waist up, the decision to do so, according to one of Sullivan's camera directors, was prompted by a ludicrous, yet heeded rumour circulating on the studio, just prior to Presley's entrance, that Presley was getting ready to use a sock or some kind of device, and hang it inside his pants, near the top of his left leg. It is no small wonder, then, that following Sullivan's visual check that, after all, Presley had no such device on him, that he profusely thanked Presley after his last number saying, "This is a real decent, fine boy. We've never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we've had with you.... You're thoroughly all right."

Many television historians consider Elvis Presley's appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show as helping to bridge a large generation gap between Great Depression and World War II era parents and their Baby Boomer children. Later performers would use this bridge to introduce themselves to millions of American households. Among them were The Rolling Stones, The Doors, and The Beatles.

The July 1, 1962 show was taped at the famed Moulin Rouge nightclub in Paris, France and featured Connie Francis and French rocker Johnny Hallyday.

Bob Dylan was slated to make his first nationwide television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on May 12, 1963, and intended to perform "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," a song he wrote lampooning the John Birch Society and the red-hunting paranoia associated with it. During the afternoon rehearsal that day, CBS officials told Dylan they had deemed the song unacceptable for broadcast and wanted him to substitute another. "No; this is what I want to do," Dylan responded. "If I can't play my song, I'd rather not appear on the show." He then left the studio, walking out on the stint.

The Beatles performing on the show
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The Beatles performing on the show

The Beatles appeared live on the show three times during February 1964 and again on September 12, 1965 and earned Sullivan a 60% share of the night time audience for one of the appearances. Their first appearance on February 9, in particular, is considered a milestone in American pop culture and the start of the British invasion in music itself.

The May 14, 1961 show featured the first televised performance given by The Idlers of the U. S. Coast Guard Academy singing Eternal Father. The March 10, 1963 show featured a live performance from the London Palladium by Judy Garland.

On September 17, 1967 The Doors appeared on the show. The show's network censors demanded the group to change its lyrics for their hit song Light My Fire, altering the line "Girl we couldn't get much higher" because of what they said was a reference to drugs. Jim Morrison, the band's lead singer, agreed but changed his mind after a quick band meeting and sang the original line instead with notice to the show's producers. In truth, Morrison insisted that it was an accident, and that he meant to change the lyric but was so nervous about performing on live television that he forgot to change it when he was singing. Sullivan was reportedly so furious that he refused to shake their hands. They were never invited back.

In contrast, the Rolling Stones were instructed to change the title of their "Let's Spend the Night Together" single for the band's January 15, 1967 appearance. The band complied, with Mick Jagger ostentatiously rolling his eyes heavenward whenever he reached the song's one-night-only, clean refrain, "Let's spend some time together."

Although the appearances by The Beatles and Elvis are considered the most famous rock and roll performances on Ed Sullivan, several months before Elvis debuted, Sullivan invited Bill Haley & His Comets to perform their then-current hit "Rock Around the Clock" in early August 1955. This was later recognized by CBS and others (including music historian Jim Dawson in his book on "Rock Around the Clock") as the first performance of a rock and roll song on a national television program.

The show is also famous for showcasing original cast members of Broadway shows performing hit numbers from the musicals in which they were then appearing, at a time when this was rare. There were appearances from Broadway celebrities such as Carol Lawrence and Larry Kert singing Tonight from West Side Story, Julie Andrews singing Wouldn't It Be Loverly? from My Fair Lady as well as What Do The Simple Folk Do? (with Richard Burton) from Camelot (musical), and Richard Kiley singing The Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha. La Mancha leading lady Joan Diener also made an extremely rare television appearance in her stage role of Aldonza/Dulcinea, singing the song What Does He Want of Me?

All of these artists performed their songs wearing the same makeup and costumes that they wore in the shows, in order to preserve the illusion that one was actually seeing the musical in question. This was also extremely rare on television at the time. (Several of these performances have recently been released on a DVD).

Jim Henson and The Muppets also appeared often from 1966-1971, including famous sketches such as "Mahna Mahna" and "Java". The Muppet Wiki has a list of appearances.

[edit] Parodies

Due to the program's legacy, many musicians have parodied The Ed Sullivan Show over the years in countless music videos. Among the notable include:

[edit] Celebrity Guests

Note: Year indicates first appearance on the show.

[edit] 1948

[edit] 1949

[edit] 1950

[edit] 1951

[edit] 1952

[edit] References

  • Joe Garner, Stay Tuned: Television's Unforgettable Moments (Andrews McMeel Publishing; 2002) ISBN 0-7407-2693-5
  • Slate article about the Beatles' appearances on the Ed Sullivan show
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