February 3, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, we talk to author and journalist James Maguire on everything from Ed Sullivan's early child to the legacy he left. It's a deep dive into the pursuit and price of fame.
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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 story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. That's our American Stories dot com.
And today we have the author and journalist James mcguiren
(00:31):
to tell us the story of Ed Sullivan. 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):
I Sullivan was born in nineteen oh one 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 it was a desperate, very poor life there
(01:15):
in Harlem, New York. His father was known to be
someone who really could not get along with people very well,
but he was a civil servant. At first he made
almost a middle class wage, but then he got in
a number of disagreements with people, and his his you know,
socioeconomic status fell and fell. So when Sullivan's two siblings died,
(01:35):
I think that the parents just could not take it anymore.
They decided, you know, we need to move out of Harlem,
We need to move, you know, to a little town.
So when he was really a very young boy, 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 storway from New
York City. It was for him a very you know,
way more pleasant place to grow up. And in terms
(01:57):
of you know, his life around the house, there was
very big into opera and music. They played the piano
around the house and she played you know, recordings of
you know, opera. There was like there was a lot
of explosion in music around the house. You know, that
played a big role in him. He dreamed of New
York City. He was thought, you know, how am I
going to get to New York City first? He wanted to,
(02:18):
you know, as World War One broke out, he had
dreams of like going overseas and actually becoming a soldier.
But he actually wasn't 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 into the Armies. He was very disappointed about that.
He had to go back home, but he did move.
He took like a very low level job as a
sports writer in New York City in the nineteen twenties,
(02:42):
and that for him was a dream come true. I mean,
he wrote about this this show in Manhattan that featured dogs,
was like a huge dog show, and he saw his
byline on the newspaper and that he was full and
that was always somebody that that drove in im. He
he always really wanted to be famous, He wanted to
be known, and seeing his byline in a newspaper was just,
(03:02):
you know, it was addicted for him. And so he
had quite a bit of success as a sports reporter.
He bounced around from newspaper to a newspaper all throughout
the nineteen twenties. It was never hard for him to
get a job. He was He wrote about, you know,
and any kind of sports, football, baseball, swimming, golf. I mean,
he wrote about it all. The big twist for him,
they sort of moved him further into the world of entertainment,
(03:23):
was that he switched from being a sports reporter to
be in 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 really in the early days and
(03:44):
later on movie stars in New York City. So and
it gave him, you know, really a still more touch
of fame 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 Mitchell. His name is unknown at this point,
but in the nineteen thirties in America, and Ed and
Walter were fierce competitors. The two of them had a fierce,
fierce competition. And of course, as big as Walter's gossip
column was, really it was Walter's radio show. He had
(04:19):
a national radio show. And Edge saw that and thought,
you know, I need to get my own radio show.
So he round 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,
(04:39):
you know, downbeat, you know delivery. Still, he really wanted
to be he wanted to be famous, and so, you know,
the nineteen twenties, 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.
You know, he worked the gossip column angle really hard.
(05:01):
It's hard to remember exactly how big papers were, you know,
the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties. You know, they were
far far bigger than they are now. In a world
without television and a world in which movies were in
its infancy. You know, newspapers were the mass medium and
so and so being a columnist at that time was
really a big deal. And that helped Sullivan of course
(05:21):
get guests 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 the nineteen thirties in
New York City. And you know, the important thing to
(05:43):
remember about that is that, you know, America was in
a depression in those days, and so you know, people
would buy there. They would pay their you know, dime
to gate in and nickel to gate in for the
vaudeville show. And they were a very very demanding audience.
If they didn't like it, you know, if they didn't
like a performer, if they didn't like an that they
would certainly let let the let the performer know there
there are a rowdy bunch. And Sullivan he produced vaudeville
(06:08):
shows sometimes six nights a week, you know, five six
nights a week for years in New York City. And
and his vaudeville shows we're sort of a precursor to
the final television show. And that it was a mix.
It could be a comedian, a singer, you know, a mime,
you know, maybe some sort of a bizarre oddity act,
(06:29):
you know, a juggler, and they would all all move
really quickly, and Sullivan would m see 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 taught him a lot.
It also gave him that that very very immediate feedback.
You know, he would stand backstage and he would watch
the He would watch the performer on stage, He would
(06:50):
watch the audience on stage. He would see, Okay, how
is this, how is it the audience really need to
this performer. He became, you know, sort of very very
attuned to the idea of what it meant to build.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
An 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 Folks, if you love the great American stories
(07:25):
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the great American stories coming. That's our Americanstories dot Com.
(08:09):
And we're 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.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Gossip columnist he's really written now and way before his
television years, he was actually quite well known as a
gossip columnist. He wrote for a paper of the New
York Daily News, which is still publishing daily today, still
a big paper in New York City. In the nineteen forties,
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
(08:49):
were like, you know, play golf with them. And he
really hobnobbed 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
calm like that was really a ticket to get more notoriety.
So everyone wanted to be nice to him because they
wanted to you know, mention in his column in the
late nineteen forties, the very very beginning of television, and
(09:11):
you know, he had these these frustrated, you know, dreams
of fame from radio, and he had failed so much
in radio, and he saw television he thought, you know what,
I am not going to fail in this medium. I
failed constantly, and I'm not going to fail in television.
He actually wrote that in one of his columns before
he showed debuted, his television show debuted, he wrote a
column about how he had made up his mind. It
(09:33):
had failed in radio, but I'm not going to fail
in TV. And so, you know, CBS, you know, launched
a variety show in nineteen forty eight. It was called
Toast of the Town. They didn't know who to ask
to be the the MC of the show. I mean,
there weren't, of course, any television stars because TV had
not existed. And here was soliv and he was a
fairly well known quite actually quite well known gossip columnist.
(09:55):
So they thought, well, let's ask this Sullivan guy. And
the thing is, you know, the CBS thought that, you know,
or they knew that Slivan could get guests because Slivan
knew all these people because he wrote about the mines
gossip COLMN. They gave ed a three hundred dollars a
week budget to book guests, so I mean the entire
hour of performing was filled with a three hundred dollars
(10:17):
budget and so you know, much of those that that
early years, so Sullivan actually had to pay his use
his own money to pay guests to get on the show,
if you believe that or not. But one of the
reasons CBS was banking on him because he had the
power of newspapers, which is set of ironic when you
think about it. A television network was relying on the
power of a newspaper, you know, to get guests, which,
(10:39):
of course, you know, things have really changed now and
that early show, those early shows were really really rough.
Solvan of course, was extremely nervous. I mean, as it
was live television, it wasn't recorded, so like when that
camera blinked on, you were talking to the live audience,
and that in those early days, the live audience was
just the New York area, and that it wasn't even
a nationwide you know network at that point, CBS was
(11:01):
not quite nationwide. He was horribly nervous that the show
was you know, slow moving. But the thing that really
saved him early on was all those years producing 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.
(11:22):
So 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 nineteen forties turned
into the nineteen fifties, the show really did really well,
and CBS you know, was very happy with it. They had,
you know, advertisers and you know, Ford Motor Company began
advertising with it, and CBS realized, you know, they had
(11:43):
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 Slivan fellow is doing that, we can
do it far better than this Ed Sullivan guy. He's boring.
The thing that they didn't fully realize is that Sullivan
and himself was, of course, you know, not entertainer. He was.
He was a very you know, uncle led, very slow
(12:05):
measured performer. But but the way that he knew how
to put on a show that he could balance the
various acts on stage, you know, people really love that.
And Colgate Palm mall have sponsored the NBC show and
they thought, you know, well, you know, we will put
so much money into this, we will just steamroll you know,
the Sullivan Show. And you know, back by the Colgate
(12:25):
palm Olive's ad dollars, they they booked all sorts of
big acts. They had Abbott and Costello, Dean Martin and
Jerry Lewis, which were at the time were like super
super hot. They had had a you know, Jerry Lewis
and Dean Martin had a very hot night club back
in New York City. And the nbshow show did pretty well.
But you know, Sullivan really dug in his heels and
he used all the skills he had learned in all
(12:47):
those years at Vaudeville, and at the end of like
a two year period, he had really out produced 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 made the
show a huge success. And you know, when CBS first
(13:09):
hired Slvin to do the show, he was called toast
to town. But by the early nineteen fifties 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 ax every week.
You know, he chose what order they were in. Even
though he was the MC of the show, what he
was really doing, he was producing this show by choosing
(13:31):
the acts, deciding you know, who was going to be on.
You know, with every passing season, he kept his you know,
sort of finger in the pulse of America. He knew
who was big, and he kept you know, relating to
the culture at large. And you know, as TV really
became a prime part of American life through in the
nineteen fifties and everyone was gathered around their black and
white TV, he was really, you know, the one who
(13:53):
just who sort of he was. He became uncle ed
to the mass audience. They looked at him as sort
of the improm moters, so to speak of you know
what is good. Yeah, he had a consistent gift. He
never faltered, you know, he always sort of balanced, you know,
something really wholesome with something really jazzy. He would have
athletes on, he would he might have a choir on.
He'd have comedians on. It was a mix, and there
(14:15):
was always something for the entire family. It was something
for little kids, something for the teenagers, for the grown ups.
That 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 actually perform a scene,
you know, in live television. You know, could be Frank Sinatra,
could be you know, the larger, you know, the most
popular comedians of the day. Everyone was on the Solvent Show.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And James you right that he didn't just have his
finger on the pulse of entertainment. He was a forward
thinker to tell us about that.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
He really pioneered black performers. He really believed in, you know,
diversity on the air. And he was he was way
ahead of his time in this regard. And there was
you know, times where some of the sponsors and some
of the audiences even got upset, like, you know, there
might have been an element of racism in the audience,
but he refused to like bow down to that. And
there's this great moment ed booked the singer net King
(15:08):
Cole in the mid nineteen fifties. Necking Cole, of course,
is black. Netkin Cole did this sort of this Hawaiian theme,
and there were two dancers dancing along stage with them
instead of this Hawaiian you know, they're all everyone was
in Hawaiian garb. Neck Cole was very elegantly dressed, and
they were like white white women dancers, you know, swaying
their hips along with net King Cole's of jazzy tune.
(15:31):
And in nineteen fifty five or the early nineteen fifties,
that was actually 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.
There's sort of a an a historic moment when he
(15:54):
the singer Pearl Bailey, he gave her a kiss in
the cheek. One night after she performed, he was like,
oh my god, the audience, but it just did not
matter to him. He was he was going to go
ahead and do that. I mean, it was something that
mattered him greatly.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
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 2 (16:16):
You know, Elvis Presley was of course exploiting on the
scene of the nineteen fifties, and Sullivan realized that if
he was going to keep his ratings up, he needed
to be able to book these really huge ratings. And
he looked at Elvis and he was full of hesitation
at first, because Elvis was a rock and roller. There
was something dangerous about 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 stratus fear. 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.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Here on our American Stories, and.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
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.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Risky move, but Ed did it anyway. What was that
all about?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
You know? On the other hand, I mean he had
Sullivan had to have him on, and so what he
did is he did his best to balance it out.
He had Elvis on, you know, multiple times, and it
was it was going to be huge. It was actually
quite controversial because this show was so wholesome and Elvis
was not known to be wholesome. And the very first
(18:46):
night that Elvis was on it was it was a
huge cultural moment. I mean, there were literally sixty million
people tuned into live television that night, which is about
a third of the country at that point. What Sullivan
did was he struck through the cameraman to only shoot
Elvis from the hips upwards, so you couldn't see those
those dangerous swiveling hips that Elvis did, and you could
(19:09):
just see him singing. You know, he did his bet
to sort of sanitize Elvis for the for the section
of the audience that was outraged, and yet still you know,
mind him for ratings after that first show, there was
enormous controversy. I mean, people said, all that is filth.
You know, Ed has lost his way. You know, this
is really track. Why is this trash on the air.
On the other hand, the ratings were like so huge
(19:31):
that you know, Sullivan had to kind of keep trying
to get him on. So 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 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 he's a fine young boy. A fine young man
(19:54):
was a phrase, He's a fine young man, And it
was Ede's way of saying, look, don't be threatened by
the this guy. You know, he's okay. Which, yeah, it
was kind of like Ed beginning to go down that
slippery slope of well, the show had been really, really wholesome,
but you know, rock and roll is growing and we
need to help, we need to have this on. So
(20:16):
Elvis was a big cultural moment and it's sort of
it was. It was almost like the birth of rock
and rolling in the American living room when Ed. When
Ed Sullivan had Elvis Presley on television, something changed in America.
Somebody shifted there, which brings us to the early sixties.
You know, there's this the idea of the Beatles on
(20:38):
Ed Solvents for the Beatles debuted on Ed Sullivan Show
in February of nineteen sixty four. And there's this story
that Ed always tried to promote about how he discovered
the Beatles. It's actually not true. 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
actra to book the Beatles. In fact, there was a
(21:01):
young talent agent who worked in Europe named Peter Purchard
that Ed trusted, and Peter said, I think these Beatles, guys,
you know, might be worth booking. Ed wasn't sure at first,
and indeed, the Beatles had really hardly been heard of
in America at that point. They had may maybe some
radio play, but they were not big. And you know,
(21:22):
there's certainly you know, a 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 the potential for them. He could
see the you know, the them going up the charts
in England. He thought, okay, it's it's time to take
(21:42):
a chance on these young lads. But he was going
to downplay them as at first as well. I mean,
in that time in nineteen sixty four, you know, the
headliners for the Ed Salivan show, we were making it
be like ten thousand dollars you know a night. The
Beatles actually got paid thirty five undred dollars for three
different performers, thirty five hundred dollars a night for three
(22:03):
different performances. And they weren't even the headliners to begin with.
As the show came up, as February sixty four that
that first show came up, you know, the cultural momentum
built so much it was like, you know, oh my
god that you know, the teenagers were beginning to discover
who the Beatles were. You know, they came to America,
they gave a few interviews. They seem really charming, they
had long hair. It was pretty outrageous. And that night,
(22:27):
February ninth, at sixty four, they debuted. They played three songs.
The crowd went absolutely crazy. The teenage girls, you know,
were just could not control themselves. It had to like,
you know, restrict the ticket. It was really 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
(22:48):
get a seat in the auditorium that night. A total
of seventy four million people watched that first show. That
night was it was again really the night that had
Sullivan had the Beatles on the Ed Sulvan Show. In
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.
(23:11):
But it really changed things, and it's sort of it
did create the beginning of sort of a schism in
the show. And that obviously the Radies was through the roof,
and there was a there was a segment of the
audience that absolutely really loved the Beatles. There's another segment
of the audience that that really detested the Beatles. And
you know, I read a lot of the reviews in
(23:32):
the Washington Post and other you know, serious newspapers, and
you know they're outraged and that you know, these these
boys don't know how to make music. It's just you know,
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, again, he played a similar game
that he had done with Elvi, do his best to
sort of you know, soften the Beatles image and you know,
(23:53):
be friends with them and have these publicity photos taken.
The Beatles are actually nice young boys, you know. He
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 nineteen sixties. It became
the kind of platform where you know, if ed had
you on, you were going to be famous, whether it
(24:15):
was a comedian or a juggler or you know, certainly
a music band, something theatrical. If you were booked in
those at Solvent show. It meant, you know, you were famous,
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 some me for everyone,
and you know, the kids and the teenagers and the
(24:36):
and the and the grown ups and you know mom
and dad. And the problem is as rock became more dominant,
you know that the audience didn't always couldn't always sit
through 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 ratings,
(24:57):
you know, a big part of the audience was very,
very upset by it. And you know, the Rolling Stones
were getting big right there in that early the mid
nineteen sixties as well, and 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 changed the lyrics to Let's spend some
Time Together, which you know, the Rolling Stones agreed to
(25:20):
because they really wanted to be on the show because
we were 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, sort of rolled
his eyes like he kind of made fun of it.
For those people who knew what the real lyric was,
he should of almost mocked it. But I mean they
wanted to be on the show, and it was something.
One night actually had the Rolling Stones on a number
(25:40):
of times, and he actually insisted that they washed their
hair before they go on because he was really it
pissed Sullivan off if they had long hair. He did
not really like these long hair types. And I interviewed
Joan Rivers and I read about that he had asked
the Rolling Stones to wash their hair, and John Rivers
was on one of those nights. He said, yes, that
he really did. He insisted the Rolling Stones washed their hair.
(26:02):
It was just kind of like Ed was, you know,
endlessly square. He wanted the radis, but you know that
square part of never went away.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
No, it never went away, and part of the audience
was really square, and part of it wasn't imagine seventy
four million Americans watched the Beatles and their first appearance,
and the country then had one hundred and ninety two
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, and he did not like the
(26:33):
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
maguire here on our American Story and we're back with
(27:38):
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 products.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
The usually thing about the show is that it remained
live television throughout the run. It ran from nineteen forty
eight to nineteen seventy one. It was live television the
entire time, so if there was a mistake, there was
a mistake. And Slivan really ran it so so carefully,
a minute by minute, but I mean sometimes he would
need to tell performers later in the show, hey, you
know these earlier, 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 is on the
Salivan 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, minut minute fifty in the hour long show.
Sullivan would come backstage at around minute thirty eight and go, well,
you know, we're running longer. You're going to have to
cut two minutes from your act, and you know, in
the next ten 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
(28:59):
performers to have to make changes and deal with with
live television.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Things really took a turn.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
James when The Doors performed on the show, and that
band was of course led by Jim Morrison, tell us
about that incident.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
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 out on the air and so he said,
(29:34):
you know, you're gonna have to change the lyrics. Jim
Morrison and the band kind of hammed it hard about it,
and they, you know, they really wanted to me in
the show because there was so much fame involved with
being on the show. Morrison agreed, okay, I will change.
I will change the lyrics. And in the control room
they had ways of dealing with with you know, rock bands,
they could change the They sometimes you know, turn things
(29:55):
down and tek things up, which they would do on
occasion they would shift a camera angle. So they were
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. He sang
the original lyric as he was written in the song.
He just he refused and it was kind of this
this classic moment where you know, this rebellious generation simply
(30:18):
was not going to be controlled by the establishment anymore.
And you know, that was a real problem for Solvan.
So the producer of the show went went backstage and
said to the you know, the Door as well, mister
Slivan was going to book you boys five more times,
but you'll never be in this show again. And you know,
Jim Morrison, you know, looked at him and said, look,
(30:38):
you know, we did ed Solvan. 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 nineteen sixties. 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.
It really created a problem for the audience. It exacerbated
(30:59):
the earlier problem where like person 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, uh and the Solvent show
was you know, a big part of a rock band's
career in the nineteen sixties was playing the Sullivan Show.
The problem was you know, for the for the old,
(31:21):
older audience who who hated it. It caused a problem
for the show and it it It's really one of
the things that helped bring the show to an end,
and 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. Once these harder edged, you know, acid rock
(31:42):
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
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 Big Tent was really Solivan's
classic formula, but you know, American culture had begun to
(32:03):
break into its various niches, so that that Big Tent
wasn't working for Solvent anymore. Finally, you know, CBSA, we
can't you know, the ratings aren't there anymore, and the
show was canceled in nineteen seventy one. 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 later years. In the nineteen
(32:25):
six in the later nineteen sixties and early seventies, he
suffered what, you know, 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 elderlin man might. And
he had an extremely lonely period. And I mean his
family was didn't live right next to him, and so
(32:48):
as much as they loved him and did their best,
it's like he had for over all the glory of
the show and the glamor of the show, and the
enormous 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 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 you know, 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,
(33:36):
he died on a Sunday night, later in the evening,
on a Sunday night, And it's kind of like the
ultimate ironya of his life. And that he had lived
for Sunday nights from nineteen forty eight to nineteen seventy one.
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
a Sunday night. So I think it's something almost poetic
(33:58):
about that. There's a few things that I would say
is the legacy of him is that if you look
at the shows and the shows that are getting stored at
the Library of Congress, I mean, those twenty three years
from nineteen forty eight to nineteen seventy one are really
an incredible, you know, compendium of the brightest lights in
American culture in that time period. The best of Broadway,
(34:20):
the best of classical He booked classical music, the best
of rock music, you know, the comedians, entertainers of all stripes, athletes.
I mean it's something like, you know, ten thousand performers
were on the show over the course of his twenty
three year run, and the fact that record exists is
an amazing record of American culture in those years. I mean,
he was such a news sound and sort of a
(34:43):
he kept his finger in the pulse. When things changed,
he changed with it. He was never he was never
booking last year's act. He was always booking this year's actor,
maybe even a little bit ahead. And so that the
show becomes a complete, you know, sort of cultural repository
of what was so specially what was so wonderful and
fabulous about American culture in those years. In a sense,
(35:05):
his idea of the big tent in which there's somebody
for everyone became outdated for television itself. I mean, television
moved into serving narrow slices of date audience. But there
is that image of the big tent where we all
sat together and watched television as a family, and we
shared this communal experience. It's really very, very beautiful and.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
You've been listening to James McGuire in his terrific book Impresario,
The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan, and in a
way it's a walk through the twentieth century. There wasn't
anybody or anything that didn't want to come on that
stage 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 try anyone over thirty, and that he
hoped he died by the time he was thirty was
at the root of rock and roll. It was rebellion
at its essence, and in the end Sullivan embraced it.
(36:11):
And in the end, well, 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
(36:31):
he sang the lyrics from light my fire. He shouted, girl,
you can't get much higher, shouted it. He reveled in
the rebellion 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 pants like it. And
(36:51):
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 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.
(37:13):
He had wanted so desperately, by the way, to make
it to his twenty fifth anniversary, and he got to
twenty three ten thousand performers on the show in twenty
three years, an achievement that no one has matched since the.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Story of Ed Sullivan.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
And by the way, pick the book up, Impresario, go
to Amazon dot com.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
You won't put it down.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
It's quite a read about ambition and fame and the
limits of both and living a good and happy life again.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
The story of Ed Sullivan. The book is impresario.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
The Ed Sullivan story, the story of fame and its limits.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Here on our American
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Story when the
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 story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. That's our American Stories dot com.
And today we have the author and journalist James mcguiren
(00:31):
to tell us the story of Ed Sullivan. 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):
I Sullivan was born in nineteen oh one 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 it was a desperate, very poor life there
(01:15):
in Harlem, New York. His father was known to be
someone who really could not get along with people very well,
but he was a civil servant. At first he made
almost a middle class wage, but then he got in
a number of disagreements with people, and his his you know,
socioeconomic status fell and fell. So when Sullivan's two siblings died,
(01:35):
I think that the parents just could not take it anymore.
They decided, you know, we need to move out of Harlem,
We need to move, you know, to a little town.
So when he was really a very young boy, 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 storway from New
York City. It was for him a very you know,
way more pleasant place to grow up. And in terms
(01:57):
of you know, his life around the house, there was
very big into opera and music. They played the piano
around the house and she played you know, recordings of
you know, opera. There was like there was a lot
of explosion in music around the house. You know, that
played a big role in him. He dreamed of New
York City. He was thought, you know, how am I
going to get to New York City first? He wanted to,
(02:18):
you know, as World War One broke out, he had
dreams of like going overseas and actually becoming a soldier.
But he actually wasn't 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 into the Armies. He was very disappointed about that.
He had to go back home, but he did move.
He took like a very low level job as a
sports writer in New York City in the nineteen twenties,
(02:42):
and that for him was a dream come true. I mean,
he wrote about this this show in Manhattan that featured dogs,
was like a huge dog show, and he saw his
byline on the newspaper and that he was full and
that was always somebody that that drove in im. He
he always really wanted to be famous, He wanted to
be known, and seeing his byline in a newspaper was just,
(03:02):
you know, it was addicted for him. And so he
had quite a bit of success as a sports reporter.
He bounced around from newspaper to a newspaper all throughout
the nineteen twenties. It was never hard for him to
get a job. He was He wrote about, you know,
and any kind of sports, football, baseball, swimming, golf. I mean,
he wrote about it all. The big twist for him,
they sort of moved him further into the world of entertainment,
(03:23):
was that he switched from being a sports reporter to
be in 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 really in the early days and
(03:44):
later on movie stars in New York City. So and
it gave him, you know, really a still more touch
of fame 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 Mitchell. His name is unknown at this point,
but in the nineteen thirties in America, and Ed and
Walter were fierce competitors. The two of them had a fierce,
fierce competition. And of course, as big as Walter's gossip
column was, really it was Walter's radio show. He had
(04:19):
a national radio show. And Edge saw that and thought,
you know, I need to get my own radio show.
So he round 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,
(04:39):
you know, downbeat, you know delivery. Still, he really wanted
to be he wanted to be famous, and so, you know,
the nineteen twenties, 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.
You know, he worked the gossip column angle really hard.
(05:01):
It's hard to remember exactly how big papers were, you know,
the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties. You know, they were
far far bigger than they are now. In a world
without television and a world in which movies were in
its infancy. You know, newspapers were the mass medium and
so and so being a columnist at that time was
really a big deal. And that helped Sullivan of course
(05:21):
get guests 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 the nineteen thirties in
New York City. And you know, the important thing to
(05:43):
remember about that is that, you know, America was in
a depression in those days, and so you know, people
would buy there. They would pay their you know, dime
to gate in and nickel to gate in for the
vaudeville show. And they were a very very demanding audience.
If they didn't like it, you know, if they didn't
like a performer, if they didn't like an that they
would certainly let let the let the performer know there
there are a rowdy bunch. And Sullivan he produced vaudeville
(06:08):
shows sometimes six nights a week, you know, five six
nights a week for years in New York City. And
and his vaudeville shows we're sort of a precursor to
the final television show. And that it was a mix.
It could be a comedian, a singer, you know, a mime,
you know, maybe some sort of a bizarre oddity act,
(06:29):
you know, a juggler, and they would all all move
really quickly, and Sullivan would m see 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 taught him a lot.
It also gave him that that very very immediate feedback.
You know, he would stand backstage and he would watch
the He would watch the performer on stage, He would
(06:50):
watch the audience on stage. He would see, Okay, how
is this, how is it the audience really need to
this performer. He became, you know, sort of very very
attuned to the idea of what it meant to build.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
An 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 Folks, if you love the great American stories
(07:25):
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the great American stories coming. That's our Americanstories dot Com.
(08:09):
And we're 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.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Gossip columnist he's really written now and way before his
television years, he was actually quite well known as a
gossip columnist. He wrote for a paper of the New
York Daily News, which is still publishing daily today, still
a big paper in New York City. In the nineteen forties,
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
(08:49):
were like, you know, play golf with them. And he
really hobnobbed 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
calm like that was really a ticket to get more notoriety.
So everyone wanted to be nice to him because they
wanted to you know, mention in his column in the
late nineteen forties, the very very beginning of television, and
(09:11):
you know, he had these these frustrated, you know, dreams
of fame from radio, and he had failed so much
in radio, and he saw television he thought, you know what,
I am not going to fail in this medium. I
failed constantly, and I'm not going to fail in television.
He actually wrote that in one of his columns before
he showed debuted, his television show debuted, he wrote a
column about how he had made up his mind. It
(09:33):
had failed in radio, but I'm not going to fail
in TV. And so, you know, CBS, you know, launched
a variety show in nineteen forty eight. It was called
Toast of the Town. They didn't know who to ask
to be the the MC of the show. I mean,
there weren't, of course, any television stars because TV had
not existed. And here was soliv and he was a
fairly well known quite actually quite well known gossip columnist.
(09:55):
So they thought, well, let's ask this Sullivan guy. And
the thing is, you know, the CBS thought that, you know,
or they knew that Slivan could get guests because Slivan
knew all these people because he wrote about the mines
gossip COLMN. They gave ed a three hundred dollars a
week budget to book guests, so I mean the entire
hour of performing was filled with a three hundred dollars
(10:17):
budget and so you know, much of those that that
early years, so Sullivan actually had to pay his use
his own money to pay guests to get on the show,
if you believe that or not. But one of the
reasons CBS was banking on him because he had the
power of newspapers, which is set of ironic when you
think about it. A television network was relying on the
power of a newspaper, you know, to get guests, which,
(10:39):
of course, you know, things have really changed now and
that early show, those early shows were really really rough.
Solvan of course, was extremely nervous. I mean, as it
was live television, it wasn't recorded, so like when that
camera blinked on, you were talking to the live audience,
and that in those early days, the live audience was
just the New York area, and that it wasn't even
a nationwide you know network at that point, CBS was
(11:01):
not quite nationwide. He was horribly nervous that the show
was you know, slow moving. But the thing that really
saved him early on was all those years producing 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.
(11:22):
So 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 nineteen forties turned
into the nineteen fifties, the show really did really well,
and CBS you know, was very happy with it. They had,
you know, advertisers and you know, Ford Motor Company began
advertising with it, and CBS realized, you know, they had
(11:43):
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 Slivan fellow is doing that, we can
do it far better than this Ed Sullivan guy. He's boring.
The thing that they didn't fully realize is that Sullivan
and himself was, of course, you know, not entertainer. He was.
He was a very you know, uncle led, very slow
(12:05):
measured performer. But but the way that he knew how
to put on a show that he could balance the
various acts on stage, you know, people really love that.
And Colgate Palm mall have sponsored the NBC show and
they thought, you know, well, you know, we will put
so much money into this, we will just steamroll you know,
the Sullivan Show. And you know, back by the Colgate
(12:25):
palm Olive's ad dollars, they they booked all sorts of
big acts. They had Abbott and Costello, Dean Martin and
Jerry Lewis, which were at the time were like super
super hot. They had had a you know, Jerry Lewis
and Dean Martin had a very hot night club back
in New York City. And the nbshow show did pretty well.
But you know, Sullivan really dug in his heels and
he used all the skills he had learned in all
(12:47):
those years at Vaudeville, and at the end of like
a two year period, he had really out produced 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 made the
show a huge success. And you know, when CBS first
(13:09):
hired Slvin to do the show, he was called toast
to town. But by the early nineteen fifties 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 ax every week.
You know, he chose what order they were in. Even
though he was the MC of the show, what he
was really doing, he was producing this show by choosing
(13:31):
the acts, deciding you know, who was going to be on.
You know, with every passing season, he kept his you know,
sort of finger in the pulse of America. He knew
who was big, and he kept you know, relating to
the culture at large. And you know, as TV really
became a prime part of American life through in the
nineteen fifties and everyone was gathered around their black and
white TV, he was really, you know, the one who
(13:53):
just who sort of he was. He became uncle ed
to the mass audience. They looked at him as sort
of the improm moters, so to speak of you know
what is good. Yeah, he had a consistent gift. He
never faltered, you know, he always sort of balanced, you know,
something really wholesome with something really jazzy. He would have
athletes on, he would he might have a choir on.
He'd have comedians on. It was a mix, and there
(14:15):
was always something for the entire family. It was something
for little kids, something for the teenagers, for the grown ups.
That 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 actually perform a scene,
you know, in live television. You know, could be Frank Sinatra,
could be you know, the larger, you know, the most
popular comedians of the day. Everyone was on the Solvent Show.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And James you right that he didn't just have his
finger on the pulse of entertainment. He was a forward
thinker to tell us about that.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
He really pioneered black performers. He really believed in, you know,
diversity on the air. And he was he was way
ahead of his time in this regard. And there was
you know, times where some of the sponsors and some
of the audiences even got upset, like, you know, there
might have been an element of racism in the audience,
but he refused to like bow down to that. And
there's this great moment ed booked the singer net King
(15:08):
Cole in the mid nineteen fifties. Necking Cole, of course,
is black. Netkin Cole did this sort of this Hawaiian theme,
and there were two dancers dancing along stage with them
instead of this Hawaiian you know, they're all everyone was
in Hawaiian garb. Neck Cole was very elegantly dressed, and
they were like white white women dancers, you know, swaying
their hips along with net King Cole's of jazzy tune.
(15:31):
And in nineteen fifty five or the early nineteen fifties,
that was actually 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.
There's sort of a an a historic moment when he
(15:54):
the singer Pearl Bailey, he gave her a kiss in
the cheek. One night after she performed, he was like,
oh my god, the audience, but it just did not
matter to him. He was he was going to go
ahead and do that. I mean, it was something that
mattered him greatly.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
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 2 (16:16):
You know, Elvis Presley was of course exploiting on the
scene of the nineteen fifties, and Sullivan realized that if
he was going to keep his ratings up, he needed
to be able to book these really huge ratings. And
he looked at Elvis and he was full of hesitation
at first, because Elvis was a rock and roller. There
was something dangerous about 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 stratus fear. 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.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Here on our American Stories, and.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
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.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Risky move, but Ed did it anyway. What was that
all about?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
You know? On the other hand, I mean he had
Sullivan had to have him on, and so what he
did is he did his best to balance it out.
He had Elvis on, you know, multiple times, and it
was it was going to be huge. It was actually
quite controversial because this show was so wholesome and Elvis
was not known to be wholesome. And the very first
(18:46):
night that Elvis was on it was it was a
huge cultural moment. I mean, there were literally sixty million
people tuned into live television that night, which is about
a third of the country at that point. What Sullivan
did was he struck through the cameraman to only shoot
Elvis from the hips upwards, so you couldn't see those
those dangerous swiveling hips that Elvis did, and you could
(19:09):
just see him singing. You know, he did his bet
to sort of sanitize Elvis for the for the section
of the audience that was outraged, and yet still you know,
mind him for ratings after that first show, there was
enormous controversy. I mean, people said, all that is filth.
You know, Ed has lost his way. You know, this
is really track. Why is this trash on the air.
On the other hand, the ratings were like so huge
(19:31):
that you know, Sullivan had to kind of keep trying
to get him on. So 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 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 he's a fine young boy. A fine young man
(19:54):
was a phrase, He's a fine young man, And it
was Ede's way of saying, look, don't be threatened by
the this guy. You know, he's okay. Which, yeah, it
was kind of like Ed beginning to go down that
slippery slope of well, the show had been really, really wholesome,
but you know, rock and roll is growing and we
need to help, we need to have this on. So
(20:16):
Elvis was a big cultural moment and it's sort of
it was. It was almost like the birth of rock
and rolling in the American living room when Ed. When
Ed Sullivan had Elvis Presley on television, something changed in America.
Somebody shifted there, which brings us to the early sixties.
You know, there's this the idea of the Beatles on
(20:38):
Ed Solvents for the Beatles debuted on Ed Sullivan Show
in February of nineteen sixty four. And there's this story
that Ed always tried to promote about how he discovered
the Beatles. It's actually not true. 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
actra to book the Beatles. In fact, there was a
(21:01):
young talent agent who worked in Europe named Peter Purchard
that Ed trusted, and Peter said, I think these Beatles, guys,
you know, might be worth booking. Ed wasn't sure at first,
and indeed, the Beatles had really hardly been heard of
in America at that point. They had may maybe some
radio play, but they were not big. And you know,
(21:22):
there's certainly you know, a 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 the potential for them. He could
see the you know, the them going up the charts
in England. He thought, okay, it's it's time to take
(21:42):
a chance on these young lads. But he was going
to downplay them as at first as well. I mean,
in that time in nineteen sixty four, you know, the
headliners for the Ed Salivan show, we were making it
be like ten thousand dollars you know a night. The
Beatles actually got paid thirty five undred dollars for three
different performers, thirty five hundred dollars a night for three
(22:03):
different performances. And they weren't even the headliners to begin with.
As the show came up, as February sixty four that
that first show came up, you know, the cultural momentum
built so much it was like, you know, oh my
god that you know, the teenagers were beginning to discover
who the Beatles were. You know, they came to America,
they gave a few interviews. They seem really charming, they
had long hair. It was pretty outrageous. And that night,
(22:27):
February ninth, at sixty four, they debuted. They played three songs.
The crowd went absolutely crazy. The teenage girls, you know,
were just could not control themselves. It had to like,
you know, restrict the ticket. It was really 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
(22:48):
get a seat in the auditorium that night. A total
of seventy four million people watched that first show. That
night was it was again really the night that had
Sullivan had the Beatles on the Ed Sulvan Show. In
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.
(23:11):
But it really changed things, and it's sort of it
did create the beginning of sort of a schism in
the show. And that obviously the Radies was through the roof,
and there was a there was a segment of the
audience that absolutely really loved the Beatles. There's another segment
of the audience that that really detested the Beatles. And
you know, I read a lot of the reviews in
(23:32):
the Washington Post and other you know, serious newspapers, and
you know they're outraged and that you know, these these
boys don't know how to make music. It's just you know,
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, again, he played a similar game
that he had done with Elvi, do his best to
sort of you know, soften the Beatles image and you know,
(23:53):
be friends with them and have these publicity photos taken.
The Beatles are actually nice young boys, you know. He
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 nineteen sixties. It became
the kind of platform where you know, if ed had
you on, you were going to be famous, whether it
(24:15):
was a comedian or a juggler or you know, certainly
a music band, something theatrical. If you were booked in
those at Solvent show. It meant, you know, you were famous,
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 some me for everyone,
and you know, the kids and the teenagers and the
(24:36):
and the and the grown ups and you know mom
and dad. And the problem is as rock became more dominant,
you know that the audience didn't always couldn't always sit
through 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 ratings,
(24:57):
you know, a big part of the audience was very,
very upset by it. And you know, the Rolling Stones
were getting big right there in that early the mid
nineteen sixties as well, and 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 changed the lyrics to Let's spend some
Time Together, which you know, the Rolling Stones agreed to
(25:20):
because they really wanted to be on the show because
we were 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, sort of rolled
his eyes like he kind of made fun of it.
For those people who knew what the real lyric was,
he should of almost mocked it. But I mean they
wanted to be on the show, and it was something.
One night actually had the Rolling Stones on a number
(25:40):
of times, and he actually insisted that they washed their
hair before they go on because he was really it
pissed Sullivan off if they had long hair. He did
not really like these long hair types. And I interviewed
Joan Rivers and I read about that he had asked
the Rolling Stones to wash their hair, and John Rivers
was on one of those nights. He said, yes, that
he really did. He insisted the Rolling Stones washed their hair.
(26:02):
It was just kind of like Ed was, you know,
endlessly square. He wanted the radis, but you know that
square part of never went away.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
No, it never went away, and part of the audience
was really square, and part of it wasn't imagine seventy
four million Americans watched the Beatles and their first appearance,
and the country then had one hundred and ninety two
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, and he did not like the
(26:33):
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
maguire here on our American Story and we're back with
(27:38):
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 products.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
The usually thing about the show is that it remained
live television throughout the run. It ran from nineteen forty
eight to nineteen seventy one. It was live television the
entire time, so if there was a mistake, there was
a mistake. And Slivan really ran it so so carefully,
a minute by minute, but I mean sometimes he would
need to tell performers later in the show, hey, you
know these earlier, 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 is on the
Salivan 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, minut minute fifty in the hour long show.
Sullivan would come backstage at around minute thirty eight and go, well,
you know, we're running longer. You're going to have to
cut two minutes from your act, and you know, in
the next ten 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
(28:59):
performers to have to make changes and deal with with
live television.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Things really took a turn.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
James when The Doors performed on the show, and that
band was of course led by Jim Morrison, tell us
about that incident.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
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 out on the air and so he said,
(29:34):
you know, you're gonna have to change the lyrics. Jim
Morrison and the band kind of hammed it hard about it,
and they, you know, they really wanted to me in
the show because there was so much fame involved with
being on the show. Morrison agreed, okay, I will change.
I will change the lyrics. And in the control room
they had ways of dealing with with you know, rock bands,
they could change the They sometimes you know, turn things
(29:55):
down and tek things up, which they would do on
occasion they would shift a camera angle. So they were
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. He sang
the original lyric as he was written in the song.
He just he refused and it was kind of this
this classic moment where you know, this rebellious generation simply
(30:18):
was not going to be controlled by the establishment anymore.
And you know, that was a real problem for Solvan.
So the producer of the show went went backstage and
said to the you know, the Door as well, mister
Slivan was going to book you boys five more times,
but you'll never be in this show again. And you know,
Jim Morrison, you know, looked at him and said, look,
(30:38):
you know, we did ed Solvan. 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 nineteen sixties. 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.
It really created a problem for the audience. It exacerbated
(30:59):
the earlier problem where like person 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, uh and the Solvent show
was you know, a big part of a rock band's
career in the nineteen sixties was playing the Sullivan Show.
The problem was you know, for the for the old,
(31:21):
older audience who who hated it. It caused a problem
for the show and it it It's really one of
the things that helped bring the show to an end,
and 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. Once these harder edged, you know, acid rock
(31:42):
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
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 Big Tent was really Solivan's
classic formula, but you know, American culture had begun to
(32:03):
break into its various niches, so that that Big Tent
wasn't working for Solvent anymore. Finally, you know, CBSA, we
can't you know, the ratings aren't there anymore, and the
show was canceled in nineteen seventy one. 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 later years. In the nineteen
(32:25):
six in the later nineteen sixties and early seventies, he
suffered what, you know, 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 elderlin man might. And
he had an extremely lonely period. And I mean his
family was didn't live right next to him, and so
(32:48):
as much as they loved him and did their best,
it's like he had for over all the glory of
the show and the glamor of the show, and the
enormous 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 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 you know, 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,
(33:36):
he died on a Sunday night, later in the evening,
on a Sunday night, And it's kind of like the
ultimate ironya of his life. And that he had lived
for Sunday nights from nineteen forty eight to nineteen seventy one.
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
a Sunday night. So I think it's something almost poetic
(33:58):
about that. There's a few things that I would say
is the legacy of him is that if you look
at the shows and the shows that are getting stored at
the Library of Congress, I mean, those twenty three years
from nineteen forty eight to nineteen seventy one are really
an incredible, you know, compendium of the brightest lights in
American culture in that time period. The best of Broadway,
(34:20):
the best of classical He booked classical music, the best
of rock music, you know, the comedians, entertainers of all stripes, athletes.
I mean it's something like, you know, ten thousand performers
were on the show over the course of his twenty
three year run, and the fact that record exists is
an amazing record of American culture in those years. I mean,
he was such a news sound and sort of a
(34:43):
he kept his finger in the pulse. When things changed,
he changed with it. He was never he was never
booking last year's act. He was always booking this year's actor,
maybe even a little bit ahead. And so that the
show becomes a complete, you know, sort of cultural repository
of what was so specially what was so wonderful and
fabulous about American culture in those years. In a sense,
(35:05):
his idea of the big tent in which there's somebody
for everyone became outdated for television itself. I mean, television
moved into serving narrow slices of date audience. But there
is that image of the big tent where we all
sat together and watched television as a family, and we
shared this communal experience. It's really very, very beautiful and.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
You've been listening to James McGuire in his terrific book Impresario,
The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan, and in a
way it's a walk through the twentieth century. There wasn't
anybody or anything that didn't want to come on that
stage 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 try anyone over thirty, and that he
hoped he died by the time he was thirty was
at the root of rock and roll. It was rebellion
at its essence, and in the end Sullivan embraced it.
(36:11):
And in the end, well, 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
(36:31):
he sang the lyrics from light my fire. He shouted, girl,
you can't get much higher, shouted it. He reveled in
the rebellion 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 pants like it. And
(36:51):
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 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.
(37:13):
He had wanted so desperately, by the way, to make
it to his twenty fifth anniversary, and he got to
twenty three ten thousand performers on the show in twenty
three years, an achievement that no one has matched since the.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Story of Ed Sullivan.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
And by the way, pick the book up, Impresario, go
to Amazon dot com.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
You won't put it down.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
It's quite a read about ambition and fame and the
limits of both and living a good and happy life again.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
The story of Ed Sullivan. The book is impresario.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
The Ed Sullivan story, the story of fame and its limits.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Here on our American
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Story when the
Host
Lee Habeeb
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