September 10, 2026 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Ed Sullivan couldn't sing, dance, act, or tell a joke. He wasn't even particularly comfortable in front of a camera. Yet for more than two decades, millions of Americans tuned in every Sunday night to watch him introduce the biggest names in entertainment. It was an unlikely destination for a poor kid from Harlem who spent years chasing success as a sportswriter, gossip columnist, and radio personality.
James Maguire, author of Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan, joins our own Lee Habeeb to share how Sullivan built one of the most influential shows in television history. He introduced America to Elvis Presley and the Beatles, championed Black performers on national television, and made everyone from comedians to opera singers feel at home on the same stage.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories.
And we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports and from business to history
and everything in between, including your stories. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com.
That's OurAmericanStories.com. And today, we have the author and journalist
James McGuire on to tell us the story of Ed Sullivan.
(00:34):
James wrote a book on Ed's life, Impresario, The Life
and Times of Ed Sullivan, and we wanted to hear
from him about the life of this TV legend. James,
thanks for joining us. Let's start at the beginning. Where
did Ed Sullivan come from? What made him who he became?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Sullivan was born in 1901 in Harlem, New York. Very
poor Irish Catholic family. And I mean, I think they
did not even have the money for medical care. He
had a twin brother who died, you know, very, very young,
like shortly after his birth. He also had a sister
who died very young as well. I mean, it was
a desperate, very poor life there in Harlem, New York.
(01:16):
His father, was known to be someone who really could
not get along with people very well.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
He was a civil servant.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
At first, he made almost a middle class wage, but
then he got into a number of disagreements with people
and his socioeconomic status fell and fell. So when Sullivan's
two siblings died, I think the parents just could not
take it anymore. They decided, you know, we need to
move out of Harlem. We need to move to a
little town. So when he was really a very young boy,
(01:44):
they moved to Port Chester, New York, which is just
north of New York City, maybe, oh, you know, half
hour or so. Really, it's basically a stone's throw away
from New York City. It was for him a very,
you know, way more pleasant place to grow up. And
in terms of, you know, his life around the house,
his mother was very.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Big into opera and music.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
They played the piano around the house and she played,
you know, recordings of, you know, opera. So it was
like there was a lot of exposure to music around
the house. That played a big role in him. He
dreamed of New York City. He always thought, how am
I going to get to New York City? First, as
World War I broke out, he had dreams of going
overseas and actually becoming a soldier. But he actually wasn't
(02:24):
quite old enough to be a soldier. So he went
down to the recruiting office and tried to fake it.
But they would not let him into the Army. So
he was very disappointed about that. He had to go
back home.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
But he did move.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
He took a very low-level job as a sports writer
in New York City.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
In the 1920s.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
And that for him was a dream come true. I mean,
he wrote about this show in Manhattan that featured dogs.
It was like a huge dog show. And he saw
his byline on the newspaper and he was hooked. And
that was always something that drove him. He always really
wanted to be famous. He wanted to be known. And
seeing his byline in a newspaper was just, you know,
(03:02):
it was addictive for him. And so He had quite
a bit of success as a sports reporter. He bounced
around from newspaper to newspaper all throughout the 1920s. It
was never hard for him to get a job. He
wrote about any kind of sports, football, baseball, swimming, golf.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I mean, he wrote about it all.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
The big twist for him that sort of moved him
further into the world of entertainment was that he switched
from being a sports reporter to being a gossip columnist
for a newspaper. And that really suddenly got him into
the world of fame in New York City. So he
was constantly hanging out and getting to know and writing
about celebrities and athletes, you know, movie stars, radio stars
(03:43):
really in the early days and later on movie stars
in New York City.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
So and it.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Gave him, you know, really still more touch of fame.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
And he loved it.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Ed's life was driven by a competitive zeal. Can you
tell us about his first major rivalry?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
There was a gossip columnist in New York City, a
guy named Walter Winchell. His name is unknown at this point,
but in the 1930s in America, and Ed and Walter
were fierce competitors. The two of them had a fierce competition.
And of course, as big as Walter's gossip column was, really,
it was Walter's radio show. He had a national radio
(04:20):
show and Ed saw that and thought, you know, I
need to get my own radio show. So he rounded
up some talent and he would interview people on a
radio show and it was a complete flop. And the
problem was that he wrote a very colorful gossip column,
but he himself was not a performer. He was, you know,
he had a very sort of a droll, you know, downbeat,
(04:40):
you know, delivery. It's still He really wanted to be famous.
And so the 1920s radio was the domain. So he
tried to get another radio show. And again, it would
last like six or eight weeks. And it just would
not work. He worked the gossip column angle really hard.
(05:01):
It's hard to remember exactly how big newspapers were in
the 1920s and 1930s. you know, they were far, far
bigger than they are now. And in a world without
television and a world in which movies were really in
its infancy, you know, newspapers were the mass medium. And
so being a columnist at that time was really a
big deal. And that helped Sullivan, of course, get guests
(05:22):
for his radio show. And he had a total of
five radio shows finally. And every single one was canceled
after a fairly short run. You know, one of the
things he did partially to compensate and also as an
outgrowth of his gossip column was that He began to
organize vaudeville shows in.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
The 1930s in New York city.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
And, you know, the important thing to remember about that
is that, you know, America was in a depression in
those days. And so, you know, people would buy their, their, they,
they would pay their, you know, a dime to get
in a nickel to get in for the vaudeville show.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
And they were a very, very demanding audience.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
If they didn't like it, you know, if they didn't
like a performer, if they didn't like an act, they
would certainly let, let the, let the performer know they're,
they're a rowdy bunch. And, and, Sullivan produced vaudeville shows,
sometimes six nights a week, five, six nights a week
for years in New York City. And his vaudeville shows
(06:18):
were sort of a precursor to the final television show.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
In that it was a mix. It could be a comedian,
a singer.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
You know, a mime, you know, maybe some sort of
a bizarre oddity act, you know, a juggler, and they
would all, all move really quickly. And Sullivan would MC
those vaudeville shows. Of course there was live, live theater.
And that really gave him a lot of experience in
terms of how to put on a show. It, it,
it taught him a lot. It also gave him that,
that very, very immediate feedback. You know, he would stand
(06:47):
backstage and he would watch the, he would watch the
performer on stage. He would watch the audience on stage.
He would see, okay, how is this, how is the
audience relating to this performer? He became, you know, sort
of very, very attuned to the idea of.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
What it meant to build an audience.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And we're listening to James Maguire talk about the life
of Ed Sullivan, a man we all know or have
heard of, but don't know the story behind the story.
More of the life of Ed Sullivan here on Our
American Stories.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
¶ ¶.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
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(07:43):
now and go to the donate button and help us
keep the great American stories coming. That's OurAmericanStories.com. And we're
(08:10):
back with Our American Stories and with the story of
Ed Sullivan. And joining us is James McGuire, who wrote
the book Impresario, The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan.
Let's pick up where we last left off with James
talking about Sullivan's experience in vaudeville and as a gossip columnist.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
He's really renowned way before his television years. He was
actually quite well known as a gossip columnist. He wrote
for a paper, the New York daily news, which is
still publishing daily today, still a big paper in New
York city in the 1940s. They even sent him out
to Hollywood to sort of, you know, write about, you know,
movie stars. And I mean, everyone, you know, Fred Astaire,
all the major stars were like, you know, play golf
(08:50):
with them. And he really hobnob with, with all these people.
He knew them all because they wanted to be in
his gossip column, you know, in the days before television,
being in a major gossip column like that was really
a ticket to get more notoriety. So everyone wanted to
be nice to him because they wanted, you know, mentioned
in his column. In the late 1940s, the very, very
beginning of television. And, you know, he had these frustrated,
(09:13):
you know, dreams of fame from radio.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
And he had, you know, he failed so much in radio.
And he saw television.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
He thought, you know what? I am not going to
fail in this medium. I fail constantly and I'm not
going to fail in television. He actually wrote that in
one of his columns before his television show debuted. He
wrote a column about how he had made up his mind.
He had failed in radio, but I'm not going to
fail in TV. And so CBS launched a variety show
(09:41):
in 1948. It was called Toast to the Town. They
didn't know who to ask to be the emcee of
the show. I mean, there weren't, of course, any television
stars because TV had not existed. And he was Sullivan.
He was a fairly well-known, actually quite well-known gossip columnist.
So they thought, well, let's ask this Sullivan guy. And
and the thing is you know the CBS thought that
(10:02):
you know or they knew that Sullivan could get guests
because Sullivan knew all these people because he wrote about
them in his gossip column.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
They gave Ed a $ 300 a week.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Budget to book guests so I mean the the entire
hour of performing was filled with a $ 300 budget and
so the Much of those, that early year or so,
Sullivan actually had to use his own money to pay
guests to get on the show, if you believe that
or not. One of the reasons CBS was banking on
him because he had the power of newspapers, which is
(10:31):
sort of ironic when you think about it. A television
network was relying on the power of a newspaper network.
you know, to get guests, which of course, you know,
things have really changed now. And that early show, those
early shows were really, really rough. Sullivan, of course, was
extremely nervous. I mean, this was live television.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
It wasn't recorded.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
So like when that camera blinked on, you were talking
to the live audience. And in those early days, the
live audience was just the New York area. And it
wasn't even a nationwide, you know, network at that point.
CBS was not quite nationwide. He was horribly nervous. The
show was, you know, slow moving, but the thing that
really saved him early on was all those years producing
(11:10):
vaudeville shows. He knew how to put on a show
and he knew what the audience liked. I mean, he
didn't need to guess what the audience liked because in
a sense he was one of them. He was an
every man. So he, he, if he liked it, they
were going to like it. He had a very good
sense of what they were going to like as the
1940s turned into the 1950s.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
The show really did really well. And CBS was very
happy with it.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
They had advertisers and Ford Motor Company began advertising with it.
And CBS realized they had a hit on their hand. Meanwhile,
NBC looked at it and they said, oh, a variety
show on Sunday night, huh? Well, if this Ed Sullivan
fellow is doing that, we can do it far better
than this Ed Sullivan guy.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
He's boring. The thing that they didn't fully realize is
that Sullivan himself was.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Of course, not an entertainer. He was a very uncle-led,
very slow-measured performer. But the way that he knew how
to put on a show, the way he could balance
the various acts on stage, people really loved that. Colgate-Palmolive
sponsored the NBC show. And they thought, well, we will
put so much money into this. We will just steamroll
(12:21):
the Sullivan show. And so Back by Colgate-Palmolive's ad dollars,
they booked all sorts of big acts. They had Abbott
and Costello. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, which at the
time were super, super hot. Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin
had a very hot nightclub act in New York City.
The NBC show did pretty well, but Sullivan really dug
(12:44):
in his heels and he used all the skills he
had learned in all those years at Vaudeville. And at
the end of like a two year period, he had
really outproduced the NBC show. And so his ratings were
actually beating NBC, even though NBC's talent budget was far greater.
It was simply his ability to produce a show really
(13:04):
made the show a huge success. And when CBS first
hired Sullivan to do the show, it was called Toast
to the Town. But by the early 1950s, he was
able to renegotiate his contract And it would now be
called the Ed Sullivan show. And it was really his
show and he produced it and he chose the acts
every week. You know, he chose what order they were in,
(13:27):
even though he was the MC of the show, what
he was really doing, he was producing this show by
choosing the acts deciding, you know, who was going to
be on, you know, with every passing season, he kept
his sort of finger on the pulse of America. He
knew who was big and he kept, you know, relating
to the culture at large. And, you know, as, as TV,
really became a prime part of American life in the 1950s.
(13:49):
Everyone was gathered around their black and white TV. He
was really the one who just, he became Uncle Ed
to the mass audience. They looked to him as sort
of the imprimatur, so to speak, of what is good.
He had a consistent gift.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
He never faltered.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
He always sort of balanced something really wholesome with something
really jazzy. He would have athletes on. He might have
a choir on. He'd have comedians on. it was a
mix and there was always something for the entire family.
It was something for little kids, something for the teenagers,
something for the grownups. There might be a, you know,
a Broadway show might be actually a cat, the live
cast from a Broadway show would walk across town and
(14:27):
actually perform a scene in, you know, in live television,
you know, it could be Frank Sinatra. It could be the,
you know, the larger, you know, the most popular comedians
of the day. Everyone was on the Sullivan show.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And James, you write that he didn't just have his
finger on the pulse of entertainment. He was a forward
thinker too. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
He really pioneered Black performance. He really believed in diversity
on the air. And he was way ahead of his
time in this regard. And there were times where some
of the sponsors and some of the audience even got upset.
There might have been an element of racism in the audience,
but he refused to bow.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Down to that.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
And there's this great moment. Ed booked the singer Nat
King Cole in the mid-1950s. Nat King Cole, of course,
is Black. Nat King Cole did this sort of this
Hawaiian theme and there were two dancers dancing along stage
with him. And so this Hawaiian, you know, they're all,
everyone was in Hawaiian garb. Nat King Cole was very
elegantly dressed. And they were like white, white women dancers,
(15:27):
you know, swaying their hips along with Nat King Cole's
sort of jazzy tune. And in 1955 or the early 1950s,
that was absolutely unheard of for like white performers and
black performers to be on stage together was like, oh
my God, I'm sure, you know, much of the audience
would have been shocked by that. But, but Sullivan refused to,
you know, be cowed by that. He constantly booked black performers.
(15:51):
It was sort of a, an historic moment when he,
when he, the singer Pearl Bailey, he gave her a
kiss in the cheek one night after she performed. It
was like, oh my God, it outraged the audience. But,
It just did not matter to him. He was going
to go ahead and do that. I mean, it was
something that mattered to him greatly.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
You know, James, Sullivan took a leap of faith that
most of us wouldn't think of as a hard decision.
And that was booking Elvis Presley.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
You know, Elvis Presley was, of course, exploiting on the
scene in the 1950s.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
And Sullivan realized that if he was going to keep
his ratings up, he needed to be able to book
these really huge ratings.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
And he looked at Elvis Presley.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
And he was full of hesitation at first because Elvis
was a rock and roller. There was something dangerous about
Elvis Presley.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
And when we come back, we're going to continue with
that thought on Elvis Presley and how Ed Sullivan made
the choice to head in the direction and embraced a
lot of these rock and rollers and how he balanced
the old cultural norms with the new ones and how
all of that catapulted his show. into, well, let's just
(16:59):
say the stratosphere, when we come back, more of the
life of an unlikely impresario, and in the end, a
very likely one as well, and that is, of course,
Ed Sullivan and the Ed Sullivan Show. More of this
remarkable life story, this quintessential American story, here on Our
(17:20):
American Stories.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And we're back with Our American Stories and with James McGuire,
the author of Impresario. James, you were just telling us
about how having Elvis on The Sullivan Show was a
risky move, but Ed did it anyway. What was that
all about?
Speaker 3 (18:26):
On the other hand, Sullivan had to have him on.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
And so what he did is he did his best
to balance it out.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
He had Elvis on multiple times. And it was going
to be huge.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
It was actually quite controversial because the show was so
wholesome and Elvis was not known to be wholesome. And
the very first night that Elvis was on, it was
a huge cultural moment. I mean, there were literally 60
million people tuned into live television that night, which is
about a third of the country at that point. What
Sullivan did was he instructed the cameraman to only shoot
(19:02):
Elvis from the hips upwards. So you couldn't see those dangerous...
swiveling hips that Elvis did.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
You could just see him singing.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
He did his best to sort of sanitize Elvis for
the section of the audience that was outraged, and yet
still mine him for ratings. After that first show, there
was enormous controversy. I mean, people said, oh, that is filth.
Ed has lost his way. Why is this trash on
the air? On the other hand, the ratings were so
huge that Sullivan had to kind of keep trying to
(19:34):
get him on. He had him on again The second
time he booked him, he actually he booked a children's
choir to sing before him. It was very sort of
religious and then, you know, very, very sweet and wholesome.
And then, you know, Ed introduced Elvis and he talked
about Elvis. and he said you know he's a he's
a fine.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Young boy a fine young man was the phrase he's
a fine young man and it was ed's way of
saying look don't be threatened by this guy you know
he's okay which It was.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Kind of like Ed beginning to go down that slippery
slope of, well, the show had been really, really wholesome,
but rock and roll is growing and we need to
have this on. So Elvis was a big cultural moment
and it was almost like the birth of rock and
roll in the American living room. When Ed Sullivan had
(20:26):
Elvis Presley on television, something changed in America.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Something shifted there. Which brings us to the early 60s.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
You know, there's this, the idea of the Beatles on
Ed Sullivan, which the Beatles debuted on Ed Sullivan's show
in February of 1964. And there's this story that Ed
always tried to promote about how he discovered the Beatles.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
It's actually not true.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
He always claimed that he was coming home from London
and he saw the Beatles getting off a plane in
London and it was a mob scene. He decided right
then and there to book the Beatles. In fact, there
was a young talent agent who worked in Europe named
Peter Pritchard that Ed trusted. And Peter said, I think
these Beatles guys might be worth booking. Ed wasn't sure
(21:11):
at first. And indeed, the Beatles had really hardly been
heard of in America at that point. They had maybe
some radio play, but they were not big. And they're
certainly really a rock band. As soft as the Beatles
may seem now, they were truly a rock band in
their day. And he decided that, you know, he saw
(21:34):
the potential for them. He could see them going up
the charts in England. He thought, okay, it's time to
take a chance on these young lads. But he was
going to downplay them at first as well. I mean,
in that time in 1964, you know, the headliners for
the Ed Sullivan show were making simply like $ 10, 000 a night.
(21:58):
The Beatles actually got paid $ 3, 500 for three different performers,
$ 3, 500 a night for three different performances. And they weren't
even the headliners to begin with. As the show came up,
as February of 64, that first show came up, the
cultural momentum built so much. It was like, oh my God,
the teenagers were beginning to discover who the Beatles were.
(22:20):
They came to America, they gave a few interviews, they
seemed really charming. They had long hair. It was pretty outrageous.
And that night, February 9th, 1964, they debuted. They played
three songs. The crowd went absolutely crazy. The teenage girls,
you know, were just could not control themselves. Ed had
to like, you know, restrict the tickets. It was really
(22:40):
hard to get a ticket that night. He made a
big deal of giving his ticket, giving a few straight
tickets to some friends because everyone who had a teenager
wanted to get a seat in the auditorium that night.
A total of 74 million people watched that first show
that night. It was, again, really the night that Ed
Sullivan had the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. In
(23:01):
a sense, it was like the true beginning of the
rock era in America. We'd have them on live two
more times, and then he had a number of recorded performances.
But it really changed things. And it sort of, it
did create the beginning of sort of a schism in
the show in that, Obviously, the ratings were through the roof,
(23:21):
and there was a segment of the audience that absolutely
really loved the Beatles. There's another segment of the audience
that really detested the Beatles.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I read a lot of the reviews in the.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Washington Post and other serious newspapers, and they were outraged
that these boys don't know how to make music. It's
just a lot of noise. And they need to get
a haircut, you know, get a job and get a haircut. And,
you know, but Sullivan did, again, he played a similar
game that he had done with Elvis. Do his best
to sort of, you know, soften the Beatles image and,
(23:53):
you know, be friends with them and have these publicity
photos taken. The Beatles are actually nice young boys. You know,
he really played that as much as he could. And
if anything, it made the show, you know, really, really
the dominant cultural platform of the 1960s.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
It became.
The kind of platform where, you know, if, if Ed had.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
You on, you were going to be famous, whether it
was a comedian or a juggler or, you know, certainly
a music band, something theatrical. If you were booked in
those at Sullivan show, it meant, you know, you were
famous and, and, and the Beatles helped move that process along.
You know, one of the problems was that the show
was always the big tent and it had something for
(24:34):
everyone and.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
You know, the kids and then the teenagers and the,
and the, and the grownups and, you.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Know, mom and dad and, problem is as rock became
more dominant you know the the audience didn't always couldn't
always sit through what what the other audience members liked
and so that rock and roll caused something of a
schism in his audience even even as it it sort
of jet fueled the the ratings you know a big
part of the audience was very very upset by it
(24:59):
and you know the rolling stones were getting big right
there in the early the mid 1960s as.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Well and.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
You know, Ed did his best to sanitize them. Of course,
the Rolling Stones had a song called Let's Spend the
Night Together. And Sullivan insisted that they change the lyrics
to Let's Spend Some Time Together, which, you know, the
Rolling Stones agreed to because they really wanted to be
on the show because it was so big. I mean,
when Mick Jagger actually sang that lyric, Let's Spend Some
Time Together, he really kind of played with it very theatrically,
(25:29):
sort of rolled his eyes like he kind of made
fun of it for those people who knew what the
real lyric was. He sort of almost mocked it, but
I mean, they wanted to be on the show. And
it was something, one night, actually he had the Rolling
Stones on a number of times, and he actually insisted
that they wash their hair before they go on. Because
he was really, it pissed Sullivan off that they had
long hair. He did not really like these long hair types.
(25:51):
And I interviewed Joan Rivers, and I read about that
he had asked the Rolling Stones to wash their hair.
And Joan Rivers was on one of those nights. He said, yes,
he really did. He insisted the Rolling Stones wash their hair.
It was just kind of like, Ed was, you know,
endlessly square. He wanted the ratings, but, you know, that
square part of him never went away.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
No, it never went away. And part of the audience
was really square and part of it wasn't. Imagine 74
million Americans watched the Beatles and their first appearance. And
the country then had 192 million people. By the way,
even Uncle Walter did not approve. The great Walter Cronkite
complained about the music. He said it wasn't for him.
(26:32):
And he did not like the long hair and made
notice of it. And thus came the great divide in America.
There's Ed Sullivan right in the middle of it. When
we come back, more of this remarkable story about the impresario,
Ed Sullivan, with James McGuire, here on Our American Stories.
(27:37):
And we're back with our American stories and the final
segment with James McGuire and his book Impresario, The Life
and Times of Ed Sullivan. James, tell us about the
production of the show and what made it so unique
for that kind of product.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
The interesting thing about the show is that it remained
live television throughout the run. It ran from 1948 to 1971.
It was live television the entire time. So if there
was a mistake, there was a mistake. And Sullivan really
ran it so carefully, minute by minute. But I mean,
sometimes he would need to tell performers later in the show, hey,
you know, these earlier show performers ran a little long.
(28:17):
You know, you're going to have to cut down your
act a little bit if you want to get on
the air. George Carlin, the comedian, Carlin was on the
Sullivan show many times. And it would always, you know,
be very nerve wracking to him because George Carlin would
have this routine put together, like five or six minutes,
you know, carefully constructed routine, you know, one line, you know,
led to the next. And he would be booked for like,
(28:38):
you know, a minute, minute 50 in the hour long show.
Sullivan would come backstage at around minute 38 and go, well,
you know, we're running long.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
You're going to have to cut two minutes from your act.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
And, you know, in the next 10 minutes before he
went on the air, you know, George Carlin would have
to figure out, okay, how am I going to cut
down my act from six minutes to four minutes? So
it was, I mean, it was really, really nerve wracking
for a lot of performers to have to make changes
and deal with live television.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Things really took a turn, James, when the doors opened.
performed on the show. And that band was, of course,
led by Jim Morrison. Tell us about that incident.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
So the Doors, of course, were going to, as they
became famous, they, you know, they were booked. Ed definitely
booked them on the show. And again, he didn't like,
you know, the lyrics. There was a drug reference, you know,
something along the lines of, you know, you take me higher.
And it sounded to Ed like, you know, someone's doing drugs.
He didn't want that on the air. And so he said,
(29:34):
you know, you're going to have to change the lyrics.
Jim Morrison and the band kind of hemmed and hawed
about it.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
And they, you know, they really wanted.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
To be in the show because there was so much
fame involved with being on the show.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Morrison agreed, okay, I will change, I will change the lyrics.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
And in the control room, they had ways of dealing with, with,
you know, rock bands. They, they, they could change the
They could sometimes turn things down and turn things up,
which they would do on occasion. They would shift the
camera angle. So they were ready for Morrison, but they
expected him to change the lyric as he did. So
when it actually came to the live performance, he went ahead,
(30:08):
he sang the original lyric as it was written in
the song.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
And he refused.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And it was kind of this classic moment where this
rebellious generation simply was not going to be controlled by
the establishment anymore. And, you know, that was a real
problem for Sullivan. So the producer of the show went
backstage and said to the, you know, the doors, well, Mr.
Sullivan was going to book you boys five more times,
but you'll never be in the show again. And, you know,
(30:36):
Jim Morrison, you know, looked at him and said, look,
you know, we did Ed Sullivan. And of course, that
was the end of the doors. But it did create.
a time period where the rock bands were getting edgier.
It was the late 1960s. It wasn't sort of the wholesome,
you know, finger snapping Beatles quite as much anymore that,
you know, the acid rock was coming up.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
It really created a problem for the audience.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
It exacerbated the earlier problem where like parts of the
audience simply could not handle it. They would not want
to stand, you know, sit through the, you know, the
rock music. Obviously the teenagers loved it. And the Sullivan
show was, You know, a big part of a rock
band's career in the 1960s was playing the Ed Sullivan Show.
The problem was, you know, for the older audience who
(31:23):
hated it, it caused a problem for the show. And
it's really one of the things that helped bring the
show to an end in that before rock and roll,
everyone could sit together and watch this show. And, you know,
you might not love all of it, but it was
all going to be okay.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Once these harder edged, you know, acid rock bands started
getting on part of the audience said, no, we're just
not going to take it anymore. We're just, and so
that it caused a lot of problems with, with ratings
for the show. And it was almost like the beginning
of a trend in television where there was narrow casting
before there had been the, the big tent was really
Sullivan's classic formula, but you know, American culture had began to,
(32:03):
to break into its various niches. So that, that big
tent wasn't working for Sullivan anymore. Finally, uh, CBS said,
the ratings aren't there anymore. And the show was canceled
in 1971. Ed was hoping it could run for a
couple more years. He was really, really heartbroken. His world
ended at that point. And he had suffered in those
(32:24):
later years in the later 1960s and early 70s. He
suffered what? What appeared to be, it was never officially
diagnosed as Alzheimer's, but it had the feeling of kind
of a dementia. He had a lot of memory problems
beyond just what an elderly man might. And he had
an extremely lonely period. And I mean, his family didn't
(32:46):
live right next to him. And so as much as
they loved him and did their best, it's like he
had a, for all the glory of the show and
the glamour of the show and the enormous success, fame
that the show brought him. And really, in a sense,
he attained his lifelong dream was to be famous. He
wanted to be famous and he became famous. At the very,
very end of his life, I think he was very
(33:07):
lonely and I think he felt lost.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
James, tell us about Sullivan's final days and also about
the legacy he left.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
In his very final days, he was living in New
York City by himself and very, very lonely. And he
contracted esophageal cancer. You know, the doctors knew he was dying.
They didn't want to let him know. His family didn't
want to let him know because they wanted to keep
his spirits up. But they knew, in fact, he was dying.
He was admitted to the hospital. Ironically, he died on
(33:37):
a Sunday night, later in the evening on a Sunday night.
And it's kind of like the ultimate irony of his
life in that he had lived for Sunday nights from
1948 to 1971, every Sunday night for all those years.
had been about the show. And then, so, you know,
he had lived for Sunday nights and indeed, you know,
he died on.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
A Sunday night.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
So I think it's something almost poetic about that. There's
a few things I would say is the legacy of him.
It's that if you look at the shows and the
shows are going to start at the Library of Congress.
I mean, those 23 years from 1948 to 1971 are
really an incredible, you know, compendium of the brightest lights
(34:17):
in American culture in that time period. the best of Broadway,
the best of classical, he booked classical music, the best
of rock music, you know, comedians, entertainers of all stripes, athletes.
I mean, it's something like, you know, 10,000 performers were
on the show over the course of his 23 year run.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
And the fact that that.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Record exists is, is an amazing record of American culture
in those years. I mean, he, he was such a,
a news hound and sort of a, he kept his
finger in the pulse of, When things changed, he changed
with it. He was never booking last year's act. He
was always booking this year's act.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Or maybe even a little bit ahead.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
And so the show becomes a complete sort of cultural
repository of what was so special, what was so wonderful
and fabulous about American culture in those years. In a sense,
his idea of the big tent in which there's something
for everyone became outdated for television itself. I mean, television
moved into serving narrow slices of the audience. But there
(35:17):
is that image of the big tent where we all
sat together and watched television as a family. And we all, we,
we shared this communal experience.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
It's really very, very beautiful.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
And you've been listening to James McGuire and his terrific book, impresario,
the life and times of Ed Sullivan. And in a
way it's a walk through the 20th century. There wasn't
anybody or anything that didn't want to come on that
stage and and share their talents. Nobody didn't come there
and show up. And what made the Sullivan Show a success, ultimately,
(35:49):
in the end, led to its demise. Rock and roll
became that medium that had at its core separation from
the old and the young. I mean, the infamous Pete Townsend, quote,
never trust anyone over 30, and that he hoped he
died by the time he was 30, was at the
root of rock and roll. It was rebellion at its essence.
And in the end, Sullivan embraced it, And in the end,
(36:12):
the country was fragmenting and the country was being split
apart by not only this music, by a new generation
hell-bent on separating from their family traditions and from American
traditions often. I can still see in my head vividly
that performance by Jim Morrison. Because it wasn't just edgy,
it was dark. And when he sang the lyrics from
(36:32):
Light My Fire, he shouted, girl, you can't get much higher.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Shouted it.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
He reveled in the rebellion spirit. and in sticking it
to Sullivan. And this was something I think that Ed
felt a deep betrayal about because here he was trying
to advance the careers of these folks and the Doors
and bands like it. And in the end, they had
no respect for him and no regard for his audience.
And in the end, Ed died a lonely man, had
(36:59):
spent no time on his family, had chased fame, got
the fame, but something big was missing. I mean, the
end of the book is really tough because he loses
his wife and his show. at about the same time,
and in the end, he lost his life. He had
wanted so desperately, by the way, to make it to
his 25th anniversary, and he got to 23. 10,000 performers
(37:22):
on the show in 23 years, an achievement that no
one has matched since. The story of Ed Sullivan, and
by the way, pick the book up, Impresario. Go to Amazon.com.
You won't put it down. It's quite a read about
ambition and fame and the limits of both in living
a good and happy life. Again, the story of Ed Sullivan,
(37:44):
the book is in Presario. The Ed Sullivan Story, the
story of fame and its limits, here on Our American Story.
Speaker 4 (37:54):
¶ ¶ ¶ ¶
This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories.
And we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports and from business to history
and everything in between, including your stories. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com.
That's OurAmericanStories.com. And today, we have the author and journalist
James McGuire on to tell us the story of Ed Sullivan.
(00:34):
James wrote a book on Ed's life, Impresario, The Life
and Times of Ed Sullivan, and we wanted to hear
from him about the life of this TV legend. James,
thanks for joining us. Let's start at the beginning. Where
did Ed Sullivan come from? What made him who he became?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Sullivan was born in 1901 in Harlem, New York. Very
poor Irish Catholic family. And I mean, I think they
did not even have the money for medical care. He
had a twin brother who died, you know, very, very young,
like shortly after his birth. He also had a sister
who died very young as well. I mean, it was
a desperate, very poor life there in Harlem, New York.
(01:16):
His father, was known to be someone who really could
not get along with people very well.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
He was a civil servant.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
At first, he made almost a middle class wage, but
then he got into a number of disagreements with people
and his socioeconomic status fell and fell. So when Sullivan's
two siblings died, I think the parents just could not
take it anymore. They decided, you know, we need to
move out of Harlem. We need to move to a
little town. So when he was really a very young boy,
(01:44):
they moved to Port Chester, New York, which is just
north of New York City, maybe, oh, you know, half
hour or so. Really, it's basically a stone's throw away
from New York City. It was for him a very,
you know, way more pleasant place to grow up. And
in terms of, you know, his life around the house,
his mother was very.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Big into opera and music.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
They played the piano around the house and she played,
you know, recordings of, you know, opera. So it was
like there was a lot of exposure to music around
the house. That played a big role in him. He
dreamed of New York City. He always thought, how am
I going to get to New York City? First, as
World War I broke out, he had dreams of going
overseas and actually becoming a soldier. But he actually wasn't
(02:24):
quite old enough to be a soldier. So he went
down to the recruiting office and tried to fake it.
But they would not let him into the Army. So
he was very disappointed about that. He had to go
back home.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
But he did move.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
He took a very low-level job as a sports writer
in New York City.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
In the 1920s.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
And that for him was a dream come true. I mean,
he wrote about this show in Manhattan that featured dogs.
It was like a huge dog show. And he saw
his byline on the newspaper and he was hooked. And
that was always something that drove him. He always really
wanted to be famous. He wanted to be known. And
seeing his byline in a newspaper was just, you know,
(03:02):
it was addictive for him. And so He had quite
a bit of success as a sports reporter. He bounced
around from newspaper to newspaper all throughout the 1920s. It
was never hard for him to get a job. He
wrote about any kind of sports, football, baseball, swimming, golf.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I mean, he wrote about it all.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
The big twist for him that sort of moved him
further into the world of entertainment was that he switched
from being a sports reporter to being a gossip columnist
for a newspaper. And that really suddenly got him into
the world of fame in New York City. So he
was constantly hanging out and getting to know and writing
about celebrities and athletes, you know, movie stars, radio stars
(03:43):
really in the early days and later on movie stars
in New York City.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
So and it.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Gave him, you know, really still more touch of fame.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
And he loved it.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Ed's life was driven by a competitive zeal. Can you
tell us about his first major rivalry?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
There was a gossip columnist in New York City, a
guy named Walter Winchell. His name is unknown at this point,
but in the 1930s in America, and Ed and Walter
were fierce competitors. The two of them had a fierce competition.
And of course, as big as Walter's gossip column was, really,
it was Walter's radio show. He had a national radio
(04:20):
show and Ed saw that and thought, you know, I
need to get my own radio show. So he rounded
up some talent and he would interview people on a
radio show and it was a complete flop. And the
problem was that he wrote a very colorful gossip column,
but he himself was not a performer. He was, you know,
he had a very sort of a droll, you know, downbeat,
(04:40):
you know, delivery. It's still He really wanted to be famous.
And so the 1920s radio was the domain. So he
tried to get another radio show. And again, it would
last like six or eight weeks. And it just would
not work. He worked the gossip column angle really hard.
(05:01):
It's hard to remember exactly how big newspapers were in
the 1920s and 1930s. you know, they were far, far
bigger than they are now. And in a world without
television and a world in which movies were really in
its infancy, you know, newspapers were the mass medium. And
so being a columnist at that time was really a
big deal. And that helped Sullivan, of course, get guests
(05:22):
for his radio show. And he had a total of
five radio shows finally. And every single one was canceled
after a fairly short run. You know, one of the
things he did partially to compensate and also as an
outgrowth of his gossip column was that He began to
organize vaudeville shows in.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
The 1930s in New York city.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
And, you know, the important thing to remember about that
is that, you know, America was in a depression in
those days. And so, you know, people would buy their, their, they,
they would pay their, you know, a dime to get
in a nickel to get in for the vaudeville show.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
And they were a very, very demanding audience.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
If they didn't like it, you know, if they didn't
like a performer, if they didn't like an act, they
would certainly let, let the, let the performer know they're,
they're a rowdy bunch. And, and, Sullivan produced vaudeville shows,
sometimes six nights a week, five, six nights a week
for years in New York City. And his vaudeville shows
(06:18):
were sort of a precursor to the final television show.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
In that it was a mix. It could be a comedian,
a singer.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
You know, a mime, you know, maybe some sort of
a bizarre oddity act, you know, a juggler, and they
would all, all move really quickly. And Sullivan would MC
those vaudeville shows. Of course there was live, live theater.
And that really gave him a lot of experience in
terms of how to put on a show. It, it,
it taught him a lot. It also gave him that,
that very, very immediate feedback. You know, he would stand
(06:47):
backstage and he would watch the, he would watch the
performer on stage. He would watch the audience on stage.
He would see, okay, how is this, how is the
audience relating to this performer? He became, you know, sort
of very, very attuned to the idea of.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
What it meant to build an audience.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And we're listening to James Maguire talk about the life
of Ed Sullivan, a man we all know or have
heard of, but don't know the story behind the story.
More of the life of Ed Sullivan here on Our
American Stories.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
¶ ¶.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
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(07:43):
now and go to the donate button and help us
keep the great American stories coming. That's OurAmericanStories.com. And we're
(08:10):
back with Our American Stories and with the story of
Ed Sullivan. And joining us is James McGuire, who wrote
the book Impresario, The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan.
Let's pick up where we last left off with James
talking about Sullivan's experience in vaudeville and as a gossip columnist.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
He's really renowned way before his television years. He was
actually quite well known as a gossip columnist. He wrote
for a paper, the New York daily news, which is
still publishing daily today, still a big paper in New
York city in the 1940s. They even sent him out
to Hollywood to sort of, you know, write about, you know,
movie stars. And I mean, everyone, you know, Fred Astaire,
all the major stars were like, you know, play golf
(08:50):
with them. And he really hobnob with, with all these people.
He knew them all because they wanted to be in
his gossip column, you know, in the days before television,
being in a major gossip column like that was really
a ticket to get more notoriety. So everyone wanted to
be nice to him because they wanted, you know, mentioned
in his column. In the late 1940s, the very, very
beginning of television. And, you know, he had these frustrated,
(09:13):
you know, dreams of fame from radio.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
And he had, you know, he failed so much in radio.
And he saw television.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
He thought, you know what? I am not going to
fail in this medium. I fail constantly and I'm not
going to fail in television. He actually wrote that in
one of his columns before his television show debuted. He
wrote a column about how he had made up his mind.
He had failed in radio, but I'm not going to
fail in TV. And so CBS launched a variety show
(09:41):
in 1948. It was called Toast to the Town. They
didn't know who to ask to be the emcee of
the show. I mean, there weren't, of course, any television
stars because TV had not existed. And he was Sullivan.
He was a fairly well-known, actually quite well-known gossip columnist.
So they thought, well, let's ask this Sullivan guy. And
and the thing is you know the CBS thought that
(10:02):
you know or they knew that Sullivan could get guests
because Sullivan knew all these people because he wrote about
them in his gossip column.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
They gave Ed a $ 300 a week.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Budget to book guests so I mean the the entire
hour of performing was filled with a $ 300 budget and
so the Much of those, that early year or so,
Sullivan actually had to use his own money to pay
guests to get on the show, if you believe that
or not. One of the reasons CBS was banking on
him because he had the power of newspapers, which is
(10:31):
sort of ironic when you think about it. A television
network was relying on the power of a newspaper network.
you know, to get guests, which of course, you know,
things have really changed now. And that early show, those
early shows were really, really rough. Sullivan, of course, was
extremely nervous. I mean, this was live television.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
It wasn't recorded.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
So like when that camera blinked on, you were talking
to the live audience. And in those early days, the
live audience was just the New York area. And it
wasn't even a nationwide, you know, network at that point.
CBS was not quite nationwide. He was horribly nervous. The
show was, you know, slow moving, but the thing that
really saved him early on was all those years producing
(11:10):
vaudeville shows. He knew how to put on a show
and he knew what the audience liked. I mean, he
didn't need to guess what the audience liked because in
a sense he was one of them. He was an
every man. So he, he, if he liked it, they
were going to like it. He had a very good
sense of what they were going to like as the
1940s turned into the 1950s.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
The show really did really well. And CBS was very
happy with it.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
They had advertisers and Ford Motor Company began advertising with it.
And CBS realized they had a hit on their hand. Meanwhile,
NBC looked at it and they said, oh, a variety
show on Sunday night, huh? Well, if this Ed Sullivan
fellow is doing that, we can do it far better
than this Ed Sullivan guy.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
He's boring. The thing that they didn't fully realize is
that Sullivan himself was.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Of course, not an entertainer. He was a very uncle-led,
very slow-measured performer. But the way that he knew how
to put on a show, the way he could balance
the various acts on stage, people really loved that. Colgate-Palmolive
sponsored the NBC show. And they thought, well, we will
put so much money into this. We will just steamroll
(12:21):
the Sullivan show. And so Back by Colgate-Palmolive's ad dollars,
they booked all sorts of big acts. They had Abbott
and Costello. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, which at the
time were super, super hot. Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin
had a very hot nightclub act in New York City.
The NBC show did pretty well, but Sullivan really dug
(12:44):
in his heels and he used all the skills he
had learned in all those years at Vaudeville. And at
the end of like a two year period, he had
really outproduced the NBC show. And so his ratings were
actually beating NBC, even though NBC's talent budget was far greater.
It was simply his ability to produce a show really
(13:04):
made the show a huge success. And when CBS first
hired Sullivan to do the show, it was called Toast
to the Town. But by the early 1950s, he was
able to renegotiate his contract And it would now be
called the Ed Sullivan show. And it was really his
show and he produced it and he chose the acts
every week. You know, he chose what order they were in,
(13:27):
even though he was the MC of the show, what
he was really doing, he was producing this show by
choosing the acts deciding, you know, who was going to
be on, you know, with every passing season, he kept
his sort of finger on the pulse of America. He
knew who was big and he kept, you know, relating
to the culture at large. And, you know, as, as TV,
really became a prime part of American life in the 1950s.
(13:49):
Everyone was gathered around their black and white TV. He
was really the one who just, he became Uncle Ed
to the mass audience. They looked to him as sort
of the imprimatur, so to speak, of what is good.
He had a consistent gift.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
He never faltered.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
He always sort of balanced something really wholesome with something
really jazzy. He would have athletes on. He might have
a choir on. He'd have comedians on. it was a
mix and there was always something for the entire family.
It was something for little kids, something for the teenagers,
something for the grownups. There might be a, you know,
a Broadway show might be actually a cat, the live
cast from a Broadway show would walk across town and
(14:27):
actually perform a scene in, you know, in live television,
you know, it could be Frank Sinatra. It could be the,
you know, the larger, you know, the most popular comedians
of the day. Everyone was on the Sullivan show.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And James, you write that he didn't just have his
finger on the pulse of entertainment. He was a forward
thinker too. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
He really pioneered Black performance. He really believed in diversity
on the air. And he was way ahead of his
time in this regard. And there were times where some
of the sponsors and some of the audience even got upset.
There might have been an element of racism in the audience,
but he refused to bow.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Down to that.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
And there's this great moment. Ed booked the singer Nat
King Cole in the mid-1950s. Nat King Cole, of course,
is Black. Nat King Cole did this sort of this
Hawaiian theme and there were two dancers dancing along stage
with him. And so this Hawaiian, you know, they're all,
everyone was in Hawaiian garb. Nat King Cole was very
elegantly dressed. And they were like white, white women dancers,
(15:27):
you know, swaying their hips along with Nat King Cole's
sort of jazzy tune. And in 1955 or the early 1950s,
that was absolutely unheard of for like white performers and
black performers to be on stage together was like, oh
my God, I'm sure, you know, much of the audience
would have been shocked by that. But, but Sullivan refused to,
you know, be cowed by that. He constantly booked black performers.
(15:51):
It was sort of a, an historic moment when he,
when he, the singer Pearl Bailey, he gave her a
kiss in the cheek one night after she performed. It
was like, oh my God, it outraged the audience. But,
It just did not matter to him. He was going
to go ahead and do that. I mean, it was
something that mattered to him greatly.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
You know, James, Sullivan took a leap of faith that
most of us wouldn't think of as a hard decision.
And that was booking Elvis Presley.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
You know, Elvis Presley was, of course, exploiting on the
scene in the 1950s.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
And Sullivan realized that if he was going to keep
his ratings up, he needed to be able to book
these really huge ratings.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
And he looked at Elvis Presley.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
And he was full of hesitation at first because Elvis
was a rock and roller. There was something dangerous about
Elvis Presley.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
And when we come back, we're going to continue with
that thought on Elvis Presley and how Ed Sullivan made
the choice to head in the direction and embraced a
lot of these rock and rollers and how he balanced
the old cultural norms with the new ones and how
all of that catapulted his show. into, well, let's just
(16:59):
say the stratosphere, when we come back, more of the
life of an unlikely impresario, and in the end, a
very likely one as well, and that is, of course,
Ed Sullivan and the Ed Sullivan Show. More of this
remarkable life story, this quintessential American story, here on Our
(17:20):
American Stories.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And we're back with Our American Stories and with James McGuire,
the author of Impresario. James, you were just telling us
about how having Elvis on The Sullivan Show was a
risky move, but Ed did it anyway. What was that
all about?
Speaker 3 (18:26):
On the other hand, Sullivan had to have him on.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
And so what he did is he did his best
to balance it out.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
He had Elvis on multiple times. And it was going
to be huge.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
It was actually quite controversial because the show was so
wholesome and Elvis was not known to be wholesome. And
the very first night that Elvis was on, it was
a huge cultural moment. I mean, there were literally 60
million people tuned into live television that night, which is
about a third of the country at that point. What
Sullivan did was he instructed the cameraman to only shoot
(19:02):
Elvis from the hips upwards. So you couldn't see those dangerous...
swiveling hips that Elvis did.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
You could just see him singing.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
He did his best to sort of sanitize Elvis for
the section of the audience that was outraged, and yet
still mine him for ratings. After that first show, there
was enormous controversy. I mean, people said, oh, that is filth.
Ed has lost his way. Why is this trash on
the air? On the other hand, the ratings were so
huge that Sullivan had to kind of keep trying to
(19:34):
get him on. He had him on again The second
time he booked him, he actually he booked a children's
choir to sing before him. It was very sort of
religious and then, you know, very, very sweet and wholesome.
And then, you know, Ed introduced Elvis and he talked
about Elvis. and he said you know he's a he's
a fine.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Young boy a fine young man was the phrase he's
a fine young man and it was ed's way of
saying look don't be threatened by this guy you know
he's okay which It was.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Kind of like Ed beginning to go down that slippery
slope of, well, the show had been really, really wholesome,
but rock and roll is growing and we need to
have this on. So Elvis was a big cultural moment
and it was almost like the birth of rock and
roll in the American living room. When Ed Sullivan had
(20:26):
Elvis Presley on television, something changed in America.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Something shifted there. Which brings us to the early 60s.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
You know, there's this, the idea of the Beatles on
Ed Sullivan, which the Beatles debuted on Ed Sullivan's show
in February of 1964. And there's this story that Ed
always tried to promote about how he discovered the Beatles.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
It's actually not true.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
He always claimed that he was coming home from London
and he saw the Beatles getting off a plane in
London and it was a mob scene. He decided right
then and there to book the Beatles. In fact, there
was a young talent agent who worked in Europe named
Peter Pritchard that Ed trusted. And Peter said, I think
these Beatles guys might be worth booking. Ed wasn't sure
(21:11):
at first. And indeed, the Beatles had really hardly been
heard of in America at that point. They had maybe
some radio play, but they were not big. And they're
certainly really a rock band. As soft as the Beatles
may seem now, they were truly a rock band in
their day. And he decided that, you know, he saw
(21:34):
the potential for them. He could see them going up
the charts in England. He thought, okay, it's time to
take a chance on these young lads. But he was
going to downplay them at first as well. I mean,
in that time in 1964, you know, the headliners for
the Ed Sullivan show were making simply like $ 10, 000 a night.
(21:58):
The Beatles actually got paid $ 3, 500 for three different performers,
$ 3, 500 a night for three different performances. And they weren't
even the headliners to begin with. As the show came up,
as February of 64, that first show came up, the
cultural momentum built so much. It was like, oh my God,
the teenagers were beginning to discover who the Beatles were.
(22:20):
They came to America, they gave a few interviews, they
seemed really charming. They had long hair. It was pretty outrageous.
And that night, February 9th, 1964, they debuted. They played
three songs. The crowd went absolutely crazy. The teenage girls,
you know, were just could not control themselves. Ed had
to like, you know, restrict the tickets. It was really
(22:40):
hard to get a ticket that night. He made a
big deal of giving his ticket, giving a few straight
tickets to some friends because everyone who had a teenager
wanted to get a seat in the auditorium that night.
A total of 74 million people watched that first show
that night. It was, again, really the night that Ed
Sullivan had the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. In
(23:01):
a sense, it was like the true beginning of the
rock era in America. We'd have them on live two
more times, and then he had a number of recorded performances.
But it really changed things. And it sort of, it
did create the beginning of sort of a schism in
the show in that, Obviously, the ratings were through the roof,
(23:21):
and there was a segment of the audience that absolutely
really loved the Beatles. There's another segment of the audience
that really detested the Beatles.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I read a lot of the reviews in the.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Washington Post and other serious newspapers, and they were outraged
that these boys don't know how to make music. It's
just a lot of noise. And they need to get
a haircut, you know, get a job and get a haircut. And,
you know, but Sullivan did, again, he played a similar
game that he had done with Elvis. Do his best
to sort of, you know, soften the Beatles image and,
(23:53):
you know, be friends with them and have these publicity
photos taken. The Beatles are actually nice young boys. You know,
he really played that as much as he could. And
if anything, it made the show, you know, really, really
the dominant cultural platform of the 1960s.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
It became.
The kind of platform where, you know, if, if Ed had.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
You on, you were going to be famous, whether it
was a comedian or a juggler or, you know, certainly
a music band, something theatrical. If you were booked in
those at Sullivan show, it meant, you know, you were
famous and, and, and the Beatles helped move that process along.
You know, one of the problems was that the show
was always the big tent and it had something for
(24:34):
everyone and.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
You know, the kids and then the teenagers and the,
and the, and the grownups and, you.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Know, mom and dad and, problem is as rock became
more dominant you know the the audience didn't always couldn't
always sit through what what the other audience members liked
and so that rock and roll caused something of a
schism in his audience even even as it it sort
of jet fueled the the ratings you know a big
part of the audience was very very upset by it
(24:59):
and you know the rolling stones were getting big right
there in the early the mid 1960s as.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Well and.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
You know, Ed did his best to sanitize them. Of course,
the Rolling Stones had a song called Let's Spend the
Night Together. And Sullivan insisted that they change the lyrics
to Let's Spend Some Time Together, which, you know, the
Rolling Stones agreed to because they really wanted to be
on the show because it was so big. I mean,
when Mick Jagger actually sang that lyric, Let's Spend Some
Time Together, he really kind of played with it very theatrically,
(25:29):
sort of rolled his eyes like he kind of made
fun of it for those people who knew what the
real lyric was. He sort of almost mocked it, but
I mean, they wanted to be on the show. And
it was something, one night, actually he had the Rolling
Stones on a number of times, and he actually insisted
that they wash their hair before they go on. Because
he was really, it pissed Sullivan off that they had
long hair. He did not really like these long hair types.
(25:51):
And I interviewed Joan Rivers, and I read about that
he had asked the Rolling Stones to wash their hair.
And Joan Rivers was on one of those nights. He said, yes,
he really did. He insisted the Rolling Stones wash their hair.
It was just kind of like, Ed was, you know,
endlessly square. He wanted the ratings, but, you know, that
square part of him never went away.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
No, it never went away. And part of the audience
was really square and part of it wasn't. Imagine 74
million Americans watched the Beatles and their first appearance. And
the country then had 192 million people. By the way,
even Uncle Walter did not approve. The great Walter Cronkite
complained about the music. He said it wasn't for him.
(26:32):
And he did not like the long hair and made
notice of it. And thus came the great divide in America.
There's Ed Sullivan right in the middle of it. When
we come back, more of this remarkable story about the impresario,
Ed Sullivan, with James McGuire, here on Our American Stories.
(27:37):
And we're back with our American stories and the final
segment with James McGuire and his book Impresario, The Life
and Times of Ed Sullivan. James, tell us about the
production of the show and what made it so unique
for that kind of product.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
The interesting thing about the show is that it remained
live television throughout the run. It ran from 1948 to 1971.
It was live television the entire time. So if there
was a mistake, there was a mistake. And Sullivan really
ran it so carefully, minute by minute. But I mean,
sometimes he would need to tell performers later in the show, hey,
you know, these earlier show performers ran a little long.
(28:17):
You know, you're going to have to cut down your
act a little bit if you want to get on
the air. George Carlin, the comedian, Carlin was on the
Sullivan show many times. And it would always, you know,
be very nerve wracking to him because George Carlin would
have this routine put together, like five or six minutes,
you know, carefully constructed routine, you know, one line, you know,
led to the next. And he would be booked for like,
(28:38):
you know, a minute, minute 50 in the hour long show.
Sullivan would come backstage at around minute 38 and go, well,
you know, we're running long.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
You're going to have to cut two minutes from your act.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
And, you know, in the next 10 minutes before he
went on the air, you know, George Carlin would have
to figure out, okay, how am I going to cut
down my act from six minutes to four minutes? So
it was, I mean, it was really, really nerve wracking
for a lot of performers to have to make changes
and deal with live television.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Things really took a turn, James, when the doors opened.
performed on the show. And that band was, of course,
led by Jim Morrison. Tell us about that incident.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
So the Doors, of course, were going to, as they
became famous, they, you know, they were booked. Ed definitely
booked them on the show. And again, he didn't like,
you know, the lyrics. There was a drug reference, you know,
something along the lines of, you know, you take me higher.
And it sounded to Ed like, you know, someone's doing drugs.
He didn't want that on the air. And so he said,
(29:34):
you know, you're going to have to change the lyrics.
Jim Morrison and the band kind of hemmed and hawed
about it.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
And they, you know, they really wanted.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
To be in the show because there was so much
fame involved with being on the show.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Morrison agreed, okay, I will change, I will change the lyrics.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
And in the control room, they had ways of dealing with, with,
you know, rock bands. They, they, they could change the
They could sometimes turn things down and turn things up,
which they would do on occasion. They would shift the
camera angle. So they were ready for Morrison, but they
expected him to change the lyric as he did. So
when it actually came to the live performance, he went ahead,
(30:08):
he sang the original lyric as it was written in
the song.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
And he refused.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And it was kind of this classic moment where this
rebellious generation simply was not going to be controlled by
the establishment anymore. And, you know, that was a real
problem for Sullivan. So the producer of the show went
backstage and said to the, you know, the doors, well, Mr.
Sullivan was going to book you boys five more times,
but you'll never be in the show again. And, you know,
(30:36):
Jim Morrison, you know, looked at him and said, look,
you know, we did Ed Sullivan. And of course, that
was the end of the doors. But it did create.
a time period where the rock bands were getting edgier.
It was the late 1960s. It wasn't sort of the wholesome,
you know, finger snapping Beatles quite as much anymore that,
you know, the acid rock was coming up.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
It really created a problem for the audience.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
It exacerbated the earlier problem where like parts of the
audience simply could not handle it. They would not want
to stand, you know, sit through the, you know, the
rock music. Obviously the teenagers loved it. And the Sullivan
show was, You know, a big part of a rock
band's career in the 1960s was playing the Ed Sullivan Show.
The problem was, you know, for the older audience who
(31:23):
hated it, it caused a problem for the show. And
it's really one of the things that helped bring the
show to an end in that before rock and roll,
everyone could sit together and watch this show. And, you know,
you might not love all of it, but it was
all going to be okay.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Once these harder edged, you know, acid rock bands started
getting on part of the audience said, no, we're just
not going to take it anymore. We're just, and so
that it caused a lot of problems with, with ratings
for the show. And it was almost like the beginning
of a trend in television where there was narrow casting
before there had been the, the big tent was really
Sullivan's classic formula, but you know, American culture had began to,
(32:03):
to break into its various niches. So that, that big
tent wasn't working for Sullivan anymore. Finally, uh, CBS said,
the ratings aren't there anymore. And the show was canceled
in 1971. Ed was hoping it could run for a
couple more years. He was really, really heartbroken. His world
ended at that point. And he had suffered in those
(32:24):
later years in the later 1960s and early 70s. He
suffered what? What appeared to be, it was never officially
diagnosed as Alzheimer's, but it had the feeling of kind
of a dementia. He had a lot of memory problems
beyond just what an elderly man might. And he had
an extremely lonely period. And I mean, his family didn't
(32:46):
live right next to him. And so as much as
they loved him and did their best, it's like he
had a, for all the glory of the show and
the glamour of the show and the enormous success, fame
that the show brought him. And really, in a sense,
he attained his lifelong dream was to be famous. He
wanted to be famous and he became famous. At the very,
very end of his life, I think he was very
(33:07):
lonely and I think he felt lost.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
James, tell us about Sullivan's final days and also about
the legacy he left.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
In his very final days, he was living in New
York City by himself and very, very lonely. And he
contracted esophageal cancer. You know, the doctors knew he was dying.
They didn't want to let him know. His family didn't
want to let him know because they wanted to keep
his spirits up. But they knew, in fact, he was dying.
He was admitted to the hospital. Ironically, he died on
(33:37):
a Sunday night, later in the evening on a Sunday night.
And it's kind of like the ultimate irony of his
life in that he had lived for Sunday nights from
1948 to 1971, every Sunday night for all those years.
had been about the show. And then, so, you know,
he had lived for Sunday nights and indeed, you know,
he died on.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
A Sunday night.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
So I think it's something almost poetic about that. There's
a few things I would say is the legacy of him.
It's that if you look at the shows and the
shows are going to start at the Library of Congress.
I mean, those 23 years from 1948 to 1971 are
really an incredible, you know, compendium of the brightest lights
(34:17):
in American culture in that time period. the best of Broadway,
the best of classical, he booked classical music, the best
of rock music, you know, comedians, entertainers of all stripes, athletes.
I mean, it's something like, you know, 10,000 performers were
on the show over the course of his 23 year run.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
And the fact that that.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Record exists is, is an amazing record of American culture
in those years. I mean, he, he was such a,
a news hound and sort of a, he kept his
finger in the pulse of, When things changed, he changed
with it. He was never booking last year's act. He
was always booking this year's act.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Or maybe even a little bit ahead.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
And so the show becomes a complete sort of cultural
repository of what was so special, what was so wonderful
and fabulous about American culture in those years. In a sense,
his idea of the big tent in which there's something
for everyone became outdated for television itself. I mean, television
moved into serving narrow slices of the audience. But there
(35:17):
is that image of the big tent where we all
sat together and watched television as a family. And we all, we,
we shared this communal experience.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
It's really very, very beautiful.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
And you've been listening to James McGuire and his terrific book, impresario,
the life and times of Ed Sullivan. And in a
way it's a walk through the 20th century. There wasn't
anybody or anything that didn't want to come on that
stage and and share their talents. Nobody didn't come there
and show up. And what made the Sullivan Show a success, ultimately,
(35:49):
in the end, led to its demise. Rock and roll
became that medium that had at its core separation from
the old and the young. I mean, the infamous Pete Townsend, quote,
never trust anyone over 30, and that he hoped he
died by the time he was 30, was at the
root of rock and roll. It was rebellion at its essence.
And in the end, Sullivan embraced it, And in the end,
(36:12):
the country was fragmenting and the country was being split
apart by not only this music, by a new generation
hell-bent on separating from their family traditions and from American
traditions often. I can still see in my head vividly
that performance by Jim Morrison. Because it wasn't just edgy,
it was dark. And when he sang the lyrics from
(36:32):
Light My Fire, he shouted, girl, you can't get much higher.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Shouted it.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
He reveled in the rebellion spirit. and in sticking it
to Sullivan. And this was something I think that Ed
felt a deep betrayal about because here he was trying
to advance the careers of these folks and the Doors
and bands like it. And in the end, they had
no respect for him and no regard for his audience.
And in the end, Ed died a lonely man, had
(36:59):
spent no time on his family, had chased fame, got
the fame, but something big was missing. I mean, the
end of the book is really tough because he loses
his wife and his show. at about the same time,
and in the end, he lost his life. He had
wanted so desperately, by the way, to make it to
his 25th anniversary, and he got to 23. 10,000 performers
(37:22):
on the show in 23 years, an achievement that no
one has matched since. The story of Ed Sullivan, and
by the way, pick the book up, Impresario. Go to Amazon.com.
You won't put it down. It's quite a read about
ambition and fame and the limits of both in living
a good and happy life. Again, the story of Ed Sullivan,
(37:44):
the book is in Presario. The Ed Sullivan Story, the
story of fame and its limits, here on Our American Story.
Speaker 4 (37:54):
¶ ¶ ¶ ¶
Host
Lee Habeeb
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