Shew Business

It's one of the most bizarre stories in show biz.  A bug-eyed, round-shouldered, mush-mouthed non-talent became the entertainment industry's gatekeeper for over 20 years.  Ed Sullivan.  I suppose he's slowly being forgotten, but throughout the 50s and 60s, his Sunday night TV show was an American ritual.  I just read Gerald Nachman's biography of Ed.  Worth checking out if you're interested in the subject.

If Nachman has a fault, it's that he's better at research than storytelling.  In his last book, Seriously Funny--the story of edgy comedians since the 50s--it didn't hurt as much, since every chapter dealt with a separate comic, whereas this time it's all Ed, so there's a lot of repetition and stops and starts.

Nachman notes today Ed's show is remembered for five things:  Elvis, the Beatles, Topo Gigio, Senor Wences and Ed himself.  But for years, it was so much more.



Ed was raised in Port Chester, New York (where I spent an hour once--that seemed about right).  He started as a sportswriter and moved on to being a show biz columnist, always in the shadow of Walter Winchell.  When TV started in the late 40s, Ed, who'd never made it in radio, was thrilled to be getting in on the ground floor.  His CBS variety show debuted in 1948, only a few weeks after Milton Berle's.  He got the job not because he had any talent, but because he had connections to performers.  Also because the show had almost no budget, and he and his producers were willing to float things for a while.

Once on the air, he was attacked by the critics, but he persevered.  There were a lot of nasty lines out there, my favorite being "Ed Sullivan will do fine as long as other people have talent." But his producing abilities, and middlebrow taste (he combined high, middle and low on his show, but in general he played it safe for Middle America) turned the show into an institution.  Rival networks tried to knock him off but the viewers would always return to Ed.



In the 50s, Will Jordan famously imitated him.  Many followed, most imitating Jordan's imitation.  It helped turn Ed into a popular personality on his own.  Ed himself was an odd guy.  Thin-skinned, he got into a lot of feuds.  He'd also get angry with acts and keep them off the show.  And while he was a family man who insisted his show be sparkling clean, he also chased after women connected to the show, and apparently attacked some.  Also, during his final years on the air, he had early signs of dementia.

Some say his show was simply the return of Vaudeville. That's true, in a way, but he adapted it to television, which requires a different speed and style.  For example, a Vaudeville program could build to its big act, but on TV if you don't grab them right away they changed the channel.

Ed didn't discover talent so much as display it after it made good.  While he was no fan of rock and roll, he recognized hot acts. When he put on Elvis in the 50s, it was shocking to a lot of his audience, but it also got him top ratings.  Putting the Beatles on in 1964 got him his biggest ratings ever.  Throughout the rest of the decade, he put on top, if safe, rock acts, because the public demanded it.  But it was also the death knell of his show--the generation gap split the audience, and it wasn't as easy for families to sit down after their Sunday dinner and watch all the same acts.  The show was canceled in 1971.  (It was part of a general purge at CBS--canceling popular shows for a better demo.  It doesn't help that Nachman writes "Not until the mid-1970s could CBS justify having sacked Sullivan, when it came up with truly groundbreaking hits: All In The Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Columbo."  All In The Family was a huge hit early in its run, hitting #1 in late 1971.  MTM was also a top ten hit by then.  And Columbo was on NBC.  Makes you wonder what else he gets wrong.)

There probably couldn't be another show like Ed's.  The closest is probably something like American Idol.  I suppose this means something is lost, but things move on.