‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’ Debut

In case you missed it, you can see the kick off above.  HOW ABOUT THAT SET? Cool! It’s huge…tall and rich looking with all that wood. I like the new theme song too! WHAT DO YOU THINK?

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Little Known Facts Of Ed Sullivan’s Start With CBS…

in 1948, Ed Sullivan was hired by CBS as a counter to the soon to debut ‘Texaco Star Theater’ starring Milton Berle on NBC. $375 a week was the shows production budget! In today’s money, that’s about $3,700 but that’s still barely a drop in the bucket. It was hard to do, but Sullivan and co creator Marlo Lewis (with Elvis in photo above) turned ‘Toast Of The Town’ into one of television’s biggest shows.

Previously a newspaper sportswriter, and vaudeville producer/emcee, Ed Sullivan made his most prominent mark on the entertainment industry as a show business columnist for “The New York Daily News”. His credentials and connections within the industry would grant Sullivan a unique synergy as the host of CBS’s new program. Ed was an influential columnist; if anyone could convince stars to work cheap, he could. CBS head Bill Paley, however, viewed Sullivan as a short-term investment: “Ed Sullivan was hired as a temporary master of ceremonies for a variety program I wanted in 1948 because the programming department could not find anyone like Milton Berle … We planned to replace him as soon as we could afford a professional master of ceremonies.”

Sullivan was hired to a dismal three-year contract to host ‘Toast Of The Town’. The contract stipulated that the show could be cancelled with two weeks’ notice, Sullivan and his partner Marlo Lewis would receive no profit or residuals, and their names would not appear on the billing (so that they could be replaced at any time). For their first two years on ‘Toast Of The Town’, Sullivan and Lewis took home no pay for their efforts, funneling their meager earnings into keeping the show alive.

‘Toast Of The Town’ debuted at 9 P.M. on June 20th, 1948 with a diverse lineup that would be indicative of Sullivan’s formula to come. The bill featured comedy duo Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, Broadway producers Rodgers and Hammerstein, ballerina Kathryn Lee, pianist Eugene List, singing fireman John Kokoman, jazz singer Monica Lewis, and boxing referee Ruby Goldstein.

Reviews of the debut program’s talent were overwhelmingly positive, but many critics focused harshly on Sullivan’s on-screen persona. Sullivan had little acting ability and was immediately criticized for his wooden, deadpan delivery. Seemingly of two minds regarding his critics, Sullivan was alternately defensive and self-effacing. In response to Harriet Van Horne’s assertion in New York’s “World Telegram & Sun” that he got where he is, not by having a personality, but by having no personality, Sullivan wrote “Dear Miss Horne. You Bitch. Sincerely, Ed Sullivan.”

Critics focused on Sullivan’s shortcomings as a host, but failed to credit his singular greatest talent: that of producing his weekly variety show. His skill at scouting talent and balancing the various high-brow, low-brow, and kiddy fare acts that made up each program’s roster was unrivaled in television and vaudeville history. As the show’s producer, he took dictatorial control over every aspect of its production. In contrast to his persona as the reserved and respectful host, as producer he didn’t care who he offended.

Sullivan’s methodology was simple. After choosing and booking the acts for a given week’s broadcast, he would run a full dress rehearsal in front of a live audience on Sunday afternoon prior to the evening’s live broadcast. Ed stood offstage, carefully watching each act and gauging the audience’s response. After dress rehearsals concluded, Sullivan would drastically retool the night’s show up until the last minute, canceling some acts, extended or shortening others, changing song selections, forcing lyrical changes, and would otherwise completely alter the show based on his impressions of what would play best to a national audience. At times, he would even make changes during the show, shuffling the running order to speed up the tempo, cover backstage snafus, or to better set up the closing act.

The naturally competitive Sullivan was interested in one thing only: ratings success. He instinctively knew that the only way to ensure his place on the air was to continue to hold his audience while attracting new viewers. Throughout 1948 Sullivan was testing his formula, his version of updated vaudeville: highbrow and lowbrow, something funny, something for the kids. The bookings could ever so slightly challenge the audience, but he always included material to soften any edge. Sullivan made “variety” the strength of ‘Toast Of The Town’. By the spring of 1950, the show could safely be viewed as a success after two seasons. Sullivan and Lewis had begun to profit from the show due to contract renegotiations, advertising sponsorship had stabilized, and reviews of the program had remained favorable. The program faced considerable new competition in the fall of 1950 from NBC’s ‘Colgate Comedy Hour’, but ultimately held its own against Colgate‘s high-budget extravaganza. Sullivan even went so far as to book competitor Milton Berle himself as a guest.

Below is the rarely seen Marlo Lewis…the man who pitched the show idea and the host to CBS. Lewis was the show’s co creator and co producer. Ed handled the booking and talent end and Marlo handled the television and sponsor end. Here he is below with Elvis on his second Sullivan show.

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‘Tonight’…The Jack Paar Era

Location wise, the ‘Tonight’ show with Jack Paar started where Steve Allen left off…in the Hudson Theater but the final show from there came the week the 1950s ended. The first week of January 1960, the show’s new home would be NBC’s Studio 6B. In the photo below (and at the link above) we see Jack’s famous June 16, 1960 interview with JFK done with RCA TK11/31 black and white cameras in 6B. The show went color September 19, 1960, but on January 12, 1959, while still at The Hudson, the show had begun being videotaped. For the first few months of taping, Paar did the Thursday night show live for some reason, but before long that ended and over the years, the taping time moved from 8 PM till 6:30 PM.

Steve Allen hosted his final episode of Tonight on January 25, 1957. The following Monday, NBC debuted a new multi-hosted, “magazine” show in the time slot…’Tonight: America After Dark’. It was an instant flop and they hurriedly began searching for someone who could do a new version of ‘Tonight’ that was more like the old version. The logical choice might have been Ernie Kovacs, who’d hosted two nights a week during the final months of Allen’s run, but Kovacs had moved west and was appearing in movies. Instead, they picked Jack Paar, who had hosted an array of short-lived programs for all the networks in the preceding years. Paar got his first tastes of television in the early 1950s, appearing as a comic on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ and hosting two game shows, ‘Up To Paar’ (NBC) in 1952, and Bank on the Stars (CBS) in 1953, before hosting ‘The Morning Show’ in 1954 on CBS.

Paar took over NBC’s late night time slot on July 29, 1957.
The early Paar ‘Tonight’ program was a mess. At one point before its debut, someone at NBC got the brilliant idea that it should consist of three separate game shows. Each night, the contestant who won the first would move on to appear on the second…and so forth. This notion was discarded, in part because ‘America After Dark’ was sinking fast and there wasn’t the time to develop three new game shows. So they went with the idea of conversation/chat show but even then, NBC wanted to save a tiny amount of money by booking guests a week at a time — the same people for five nights in a row. This too was discarded but for the initial weeks, Paar struggled to make conversation with eccentric guests in whom he had no interest. Further souring the proceedings was the man selected as Paar’s sidekick, veteran comic actor Franklin Pangborn. Pangborn had been funny in scripted film parts but on a live, ad-lib show he was a disaster.

For several months, Paar teetered on the brink of cancellation but then everything miraculously came together. Pangborn was eliminated and eventually, the show’s announcer, Hugh Downs, expanded his role to full sidekick status. And Paar found his style and the right kind of guest to have on. He soon had a whole stock company of recurring visitors that included Alexander King, Oscar Levant, Dody Goodman, Jonathan Winters, Peter Ustinov, Hans Conried, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Elsa Maxwell, Cliff “Charlie Weaver” Arquette and Peggy Cass.

When network censors cut a joke about a “water closet” (the British term for a toilet), on February 11, 1960, he received national attention by leaving the show and did not return until three weeks later after the network apologized and he was allowed to tell the joke. Paar’s emotional nature made the everyday routine of putting together a 105-minute program difficult to continue for more than five years. As a TV Guide item put it, he was “bone tired” of the grind. He signed off the show for the last time on Friday, March 30, 1962. The following six months were filled by numerous guest hosts as NBC awaited the expiration of the “no compete” part of Johnny Carson’s ABC contract.

Because NBC did not want to lose Paar to another network, it offered him a Friday prime-time hour, giving him carte blanche on content and format. Paar agreed, deciding on a variation of his late-night format and titling his show, which first aired in the fall of 1962, ‘The Jack Paar Program’…that ran until 1965.

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A Side Of Ed Sullivan We Never Knew…

In the photo is Barbara Smith Forster with Ed and his two grandsons. They are on stage at the Deuville Hotel in Miami where the Beatles performed live 50 years ago on Sunday, February 16, 1964. Barbara was secretary to the show’s producer, and Sullivan son-in-law Bob Precht. I’ve had the good fortune to have some extended conversations with Barbara and other Sullivan staffers over the past month and that has given me a lot of new insights into the show and it’s people, including Mr. Sullivan. It’s well known that Ed had an explosive temper and was by all accounts, “a bit gruff”, however…there were things he did in private that most never knew about. For instance, the Tessie O’Shea appearance on the Beatles debut show. Along with the fab four and Georgia Brown of ‘Oliver’, Tessie shares top billing on that famous marquee, but why? The truth is, Sullivan had a soft spot for some of the old vaudeville and Broadway people that were having a hard time. Occasionally, like in Tessie’s case, he would book them on the show himself and surprise the talent scheduling people. At times, he would encourage night club owners he knew in the northeast to offer bookings to some, but Mr. Sullivan would also secretly give many of them a “loan”. For those of us lucky enough to have grown up with ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ as a part of our lives, we know that this was one of a kind! Nothing that comes after it can ever capture the uniqueness, stature and iconic nature of one of television’s true landmarks.

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All Hail Caesar!

Sadly, the father of television sketch comedy is no longer with us.
From 1950 till 1957, Sid Caesar was one of the biggest names in television. The link above is to one of my favorite sketches from the show. Below left, is Sid’s first television project, ‘The Admiral Broadway Revue’ in 1949. In the middle is a photo from ‘Your Show Of Shows’ which ran from ’50 till ’54 when Imogene Coca went on her own. Sid replaced her with Nanette Fabre and returned to the NBC airwaves with ‘Caesar’s Hour’ (right) which ran from ’54 till ’57. Some of the biggest writers ever got their start with Caesar including Mel, Brooks, Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart and others.

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Dave Puts An Audience Member Behind A Camera…

It’s been a year since I first posted this, but now seems a good time for us to take another look. NBC’s ‘Late Night With David Letterman’ debuted at 12:30 AM, Monday, February 1, 1982 replacing Tom Snyder’s ‘Tomorrow’ show. This clip is from his second night on the air. At the end of the first week, the ratings were 30% better than Snyder’s. The night after this clip, baseball great Hank Arron was on and after his time with Dave, a camera followed him backstage where Marv Albert did a “post interview, interview” to see how it had gone, just like a post game interview.

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