Sullivan himself recalled that “on three occasions, at dress rehearsals, I had our wardrobe chief, Bill Walstrom, cover up with tulle the cleavage in the gowns of Kim Novak, Jeanne Crain and Esther Williams. Yet when each of these stars emerged from the wings, the tulle mysteriously had disappeared. We solved that simply by focusing the cameras on their faces.”
In one infamous incident, on October 18, 1964, Jackie Mason was banished from the show for allegedly making an obscene gesture at Sullivan. Mason, who felt that Sullivan’s practice of standing off-camera and grimly counting down time with his fingers had a distracting effect on the studio audience, had supposedly responded with a finger flurry of his own. But in a libel-and-slander suit filed by Mason, the judge—according to the comic—could discern no offensive gesture by Mason.
“The gesture,” Mason told me, “was in his mind. He used four-letter words and dirty gestures as a way of life, because he was a Broadway street guy. I was a yeshiva student and a rabbi. I didn’t know from dirty gestures.” The feud was, by Sullivan standards, short-lived. Two years later at the Las Vegas airport, Sullivan expressed regret. “It was a very touching speech he made,” says Mason. “It was a very long, apologetic speech, and two weeks later I was on the show again.”
The effects of the scandal, however, were, according to Mason, long-lived. “It basically destroyed my career for at least 10, 15 years. Because in those days, if you had an image of a filthy person, you were wiped out. Today, if you have an image as a filthy person, you become a sensation.”
To Mason, Sullivan “was a wonderful guy. Off the show, he was the nicest, classiest man. On the show itself, he became very intense. . . . He became very nervous before each show. He was just trying to make the show as perfect as possible, and he was very insecure.”
There were other celebrated feuds: with Frank Sinatra (who in 1955 called “for movie performers to stop appearing cuffo on commercial TV shows to plug pictures”) and with his competitors such as Jack Paar (who were getting guests for scale, while Sullivan was paying them thousands). Alan King, who describes Ed as “my best friend but worst enemy,” says that when he appeared on Garry Moore’s show, “Ed literally came close to slapping me in the face at Danny’s Hideaway. He called me a traitor. . . . For five years Ed didn’t talk to me.”
In the Winchell feud, whose true origin lies clouded in contradiction, there would not be as much as a gesture of reconciliation until 1967, almost 40 years after it began. “They hated each other,” Betty says.
Above all else—above women in pants and sissies and smut and anatomical holes—Sullivan hated Commies. He once suggested that the House Committee on Un-American Activities subpoena choreographer Jerome Robbins because “in my office not long ago he revealed he had been a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.” He publicly denounced John Garfield, Charlie Chaplin, and Arthur Miller; lauded Red Channels, the broadcasters’ blacklist guide; held court in his Delmonico suite for performers “eager to secure a certification of loyalty”; and, according to Alvin Davis of the New York Post, “proposed a quasi-official agency to issue clearances for television personalities.”
He felt he had helped keep black performers from Communism, a point he made while commending their decency: “I’ve never had to censor the material of a Negro performer” or “ask a Negro girl or woman to correct her costume,” he wrote in 1956. “So, when the Commies were trying to take over AFTRA [American Federation of Television and Radio Artists], the Negro performers always voted solidly with me to defeat them.”
Betty Sullivan and Bob Precht were married in Los Angeles in 1952, the year of their college graduations. Bob spent four years in the navy, but found his interest drifting from his planned career in diplomatic service. “When we lived in D.C., we were with the Sullivans much more, and I was able to get a taste of the television business, which was . . . very appealing, very exciting, and very glamorous. So, when I got out of the navy, in 1956, I went into the television business.”
Marlo Lewis, who produced the Sullivan show, found Precht a position with the children’s show Winky-Dink and You, which folded in 1957. “About four years later, Marlo decided to either quit or retire or make a career move. Ed obviously looked in my direction. . . . There’s no question that I was young, and certainly, I guess, there was favoritism.”
Bob Precht became associate producer of the show in 1959, producer in 1960. He learned quickly that the show was his father-in-law’s life. “My father just wasn’t a very social person,” Betty says. “He really was the person people saw on Sunday.” Ed’s eldest grandchild, Rob, says, while he was very supportive, “deep down, I think, he thought family life was overrated, and that the symbols of family life tired him a bit.”
“It was a life cycle,” Bob Precht says. “I mean, he lived for that Sunday night, and his whole week, particularly as he got older, would be a preparation for that Sunday night.”
Bob remembers that life cycle well. “Monday, we would have a production meeting. Myself, the director, the music director, the scenic designer, the choreographer, the production team. We would see what the lineup was and what had to be done, and in some instances we would begin rehearsals very early. We would begin rehearsals as early as that Monday or Tuesday if it was a fairly complicated production number, or a Wayne and Shuster sketch, Bert Lahr sketch—something like that. . . . Our production offices were on 57th Street, and we had some rehearsal halls there, but sometimes we would go to a rehearsal hall over on Eighth Avenue. With musical acts, it would be a matter of meeting with them to determine what music we could use, et cetera. That would continue through the week, and then on Saturday we would go into the studio and basically block it out. In some instances, Ed would come over to those rehearsals. During the week, he and I basically communicated by phone, or if there was something special, I’d go over to the Delmonico, or we’d meet at Gino’s, on Lexington.
“Ed, because of his nocturnal life, would usually have his breakfast or lunch about three in the afternoon, at Gino’s, when the waiters were having their lunch. Ed would be the only customer. We’d sit in the back of the restaurant talking about various show matters. By Saturday we were basically on our feet. But the big moment of truth was the dress rehearsal, which was on Sunday afternoon, and we had to have everything in order, ready to show an audience. Ed would come over. He knew the lineup and he knew the people, and he would dictate his copy to one of the girls, who would put it on the TelePrompTer, and then we would have our dress rehearsal. . . . Between the end of that dress rehearsal and going on-air, he would make substantial changes. That was Ed’s newspaper approach to show business. He would edit, he would change, and if something was particularly weak, he would drop it. . . . I had the unhappy job of going to the acts or their agents and having to say, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t use you.’ ”
Unlike most singers, Connie Francis had carte blanche to sing whatever she wanted. She remembers an incident backstage, when she was going to sing “My Yiddishe Momme,” from her album Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites. Sophie Tucker, who had recorded “My Yiddishe Momme” in the late 20s, became outraged that Connie should sing what she called “my song.” As Connie recalls, Jerry Lewis stuck his nose in, and he and Tucker threatened to walk off the show if Connie—Concetta Franconero—was allowed to desecrate this hallowed Tucker heirloom. “Ed,” she said, “made them reconsider.”
Robert Arthur, the show’s music and creative coordinator, remembers that “Ed’s main interest was in booking the show and finding the acts. . . . It was sort of up to us to figure out exactly what that person might do on the show.” Robert remembers the Motown acts as being “pleasant to work with.” Kate Smith, on the other hand, was “an iron butterfly.”
Another important figure in Sullivan’s life was Carmine Santullo, the secretary and right-hand man who had served Sullivan since the early 1930s. Rob Precht remembers Santullo as seeming “slightly Dickensian to me. I mean, he was someone I imagine out of a Dickens novel, the faithful retainer. I loved Carmine, but there was something lugubrious in his appearance. He would prepare a lamb chop for my grandfather on a hot plate. Although they had a stove, they would use the hot plate.”
“Once it started,” says Jack Carter, “the show was Ed’s life. He was concerned with every small act, every detail. He’d be there at rehearsal all day. . . . He fought you tooth and nail for every joke, every line.” Not everything went smoothly. Carter remembers the night Frankie Laine was singing “I Believe” with a live horse pulling him in a buggy. “He started singing and the horse started dropping these lumps. They didn’t know you got to clean out animals before they go on.”
Problems or delays were rarely traceable to Ed, who wouldn’t stop working—even when it hurt. Under the heading HE WAS AFRAID OF THE KNIFE, Jim Bishop, writing in the New York Journal-American, gave a graphic account of Ed’s ulcer: “It is situated in the duodenum and, when it erupts, it locks the stomach exit in a closed position. When this happens, Ed sticks two tubes through his nostrils and down into his esophagus. Then he pumps out his stomach.” Ed finally confronted the knife in June 1960.
Despite his show’s reputation as lowbrow, Sullivan was the greatest supporter of opera on commercial television. “He loved Roberta Peters,” Bob Precht remembers, and, indeed, the soprano was one of the show’s most frequent performers. Under a 1956 contract with the Metropolitan Opera, Sullivan scheduled several scenes of opera for the show, beginning with 18 minutes of Tosca featuring Maria Callas and George London. The opera presentations, however, resulted in a drop in ratings, and the contract was ended early in 1957.
Sullivan had better luck with rock ’n’ roll. He featured Louis Jordan, one of the genre’s progenitors, on September 19, 1948; the Ravens on January 2, 1949; and in November 1955 dedicated a segment to the new black music, presenting Bo Diddley, LaVern Baker, and the Five Keys.
Sullivan was recuperating from an automobile accident in the late summer of 1956. Thus it came to pass that Charles Laughton, who filled in for him on the night of September 9, introduced Elvis Presley for the first of the three appearances for which Sullivan had agreed to pay a total of 50 grand. (This was barely more, per appearance, than the 13 grand he had paid Sonja Henie for her 1952 ice-spectacular television debut.) Presley was not a Sullivan scoop—he already had nine network performances behind him—but he did bring in the ratings, beating by 5 percent the Sullivan audience record set in 1954 by a show featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Julius LaRosa, and the Harlem Globetrotters. As Sullivan himself observed, “Presley’s style was not as agitated as that of Johnnie Ray when Ray made his TV debut on our stage January 6, 1952.” It was true: not until Presley’s final appearance did the cameras cut off his gyrations from the waist down. As Sullivan said, “There could never be any possible chance for anything offensive to happen on our stage. I am in control of the cameras.”
Bob Dylan was scheduled to appear on May 12, 1963. But he came into rehearsal on the appointed Sunday with “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” a whimsical little song to which the CBS censors objected. Offered the chance to choose another song, he decided not to do the show at all.
The Beatles, on February 9, 1964, were a coup, and a new ratings record: the largest viewing audience yet in television history. It was after this that Sullivan entered into the negotiations with CBS that won him ownership of all past and future shows. From this vast and invaluable archive, acquired in 1990 by the producer Andrew Solt, there will soon emerge what promises to be one of the best exhibitions of rock ’n’ roll archaeology ever unveiled, The Sullivan Pop and Rock Classics, a 20-part series of half-hour segments that will premiere on VH1 in January 1998.
Tamer than Presley, the Beatles, in their cute little suits and ties, with their cute little smiles, posed no threat. The Rolling Stones, whom Sullivan first presented on October 25, 1964, were another matter entirely. With their five appearances through January ’67, the show seemed to enter dangerous territory beyond the absolute control of its aging master and mediocrator. Mitzi Gaynor’s performance of “Too Darn Hot,” on February 16, 1964, was another omen: it was as lascivious a moment as television had ever known.
And—this might mean something—it was also during this period, on September 19, 1965, that the Sullivan show passed from black and white to color.
On January 15, 1967, as Robert Arthur remembers, the Stones “were going to sing one of their hits, ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together.’ Well, at that time, that was absolutely . . . it would be like saying, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ People’s eyes would roll in their heads at the network. So I was sent to deal with them, because I was also a songwriter . . . and I came up with a phrase that was almost the same thing and sounded almost the same, and it was ‘Let’s spend some time together.’ Mick Jagger agreed . . . but then, on the show . . .”
The Stones honored their promise in performance, with Jagger parodying the edit with his ironic glances. “I was sort of on their side,” says Robert Arthur, looking back. It would be November 23, 1969, almost three years later, before the Stones returned to the show, for the last time, with a pre-Altamont “Gimme Shelter” that portended changing times.
On September 17, 1967, came the Doors. The self-styled “Erotic Politicians” refused to sanitize their song “Light My Fire” by deleting the word “higher,” which the Sullivan forces considered a blatant drug reference. Jim Morrison’s band never made it back for a second show. They might not have wanted to; it had become an anachronism. During the program of December 10, 1967, the CBS studio at Broadway and 53rd Street was renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater. But all was not well. Two weeks later, on Christmas Eve, George Carlin managed to slip a marijuana joke into one of his routines.
“The only live show with a dead host”—again, the line is courtesy of Jack Carter—itself began to die. In March of 1971, CBS announced that Sullivan would not be a part of its coming fall schedule. The last show was broadcast on May 30. The time slot would be filled by another movie of the week.
Ed’s old enemy, Walter Winchell, died in February 1972. Sylvia died in March 1973. Without his show, without hate, without love, Ed Sullivan was lost. “He was a shattered man,” his grandson Rob says. “He really didn’t have any point, or probably didn’t feel any point, in living.”
When Rob was attending Scarsdale Junior High School, his father and grandfather had arranged for him to interview Mick Jagger backstage for the school magazine. “He would look at me during the course of my stupid questions and say, ‘You know, you look like your father,’ and then we would have a few more questions, and he would say, ‘You know, you talk like your grandfather,’ and we would continue on, and he would say, ‘You know, you walk like your grandfather.’” Now Rob, who went on to become a lawyer, says of himself and his grandfather, “I’ve inherited his show-business sensibility.” A few years ago, as a public defender, he represented Mohammad Salameh in the World Trade Center bombing case. Today, at the University of Michigan Law School, he heads a program to create and promote pro bono and public-service legal work. “In many ways, I think I’m kind of like the Ed Sullivan of public service.”
Rob was in his late teens in his grandfather’s final years. “Shortly before he died, when he was in frail health, I remember taking him back to his hotel from a restaurant. It was about 11 at night, and as I was walking with him down the lonely sidewalks, hoping that no one would recognize him, because I didn’t want to have to stop, I noticed two women in the distance walking toward us. As they came closer, it was obvious to me that they were prostitutes. I became anxious because I didn’t want them to recognize my grandfather and engage him in conversation or anything like that. I just wanted to get back to the hotel. So, as we got closer, I got more and more concerned, and just as we got to within five feet of passing them, my grandfather yelled out to them, ‘Oh, hello, girls!’”
He entered Lenox Hill Hospital on September 6, 1974, suffering from cancer of the esophagus. Some weeks later, on October 13, a Sunday, he died there, just after his 73rd birthday. Three days later, two thousand mourners converged on St. Patrick’s, where Cardinal Cooke officiated at a Requiem High Mass.
From ‘ill-advised’ choice to host of the longest-running variety show in television, from cramming tulle into cleavage to ‘Hello, girls!’ There is simply no explaining Ed Sullivan. John Leonard, the Schopenhauer of television exegetes, has been trying. As long ago as 1975, he described Sullivan as “what Ezra Pound might have meant by ‘The fourth; the dimension of stillness / And the power over wild beasts.’ ” Almost 22 years later, Leonard is still at it—nigh as long a pursuit as the span of Sullivan’s show. In his recent book, Smoke and Mirrors, the chapter “Ed Sullivan Died for Our Sins” presents Ed as “our father and our Fisher King.” But, in the end, high-voltage erudition is but tulle in the hole of unknowing.
It is April, the cruelest month, or so I have heard it said. I sit with Señor Wences in his memory-filled West Side Manhattan apartment on the eve of his 101st birthday.
“What was Ed Sullivan like as a human being?”
“Difficult,” answers his wife, from somewhere nearby.
“Yes,” says the master ventriloquist, “very difficult, very difficult.” He shows me a hand-mask device, works his fingers into it, calls out to his wife: “You have one orange? Orange? One orange?”
“An orange? No, I don’t have an orange,” she replies. “Would you like a ball instead of an orange?”
He accepts the ball, bounces it from his ankle toward a hoop in the hand mask’s mouth. Almost—but not quite. He shrugs, takes out another puppet-head hand device, introduces it as “Ernesto.”
I remember the bizarre little face he made by painting lips on his forefinger and thumb, placing eyes and a little blond wig over his knuckles. I always thought it was a girl. But, no, its name, I have been reminded, is Johnny. Originally, in Spain, Juanito; then, in America, Johnny.
“Was Johnny always a boy? Did you ever do a girl?”
“No. Johnny. I use the name Johnny.”
I remember the head in the box. “Ees all right?” he would ask it. “Ees all right,” it would answer. Jerry Lewis feared the head. I loved the head. The head’s name was Pedro. The head’s name is Pedro.
“Do you have Pedro here?”
“Pedro. Yes. He here.”
“Where?”
“He wants to see Pedro.”
“Pedro is asleep,” says the wife. She enters the room, gestures hopelessly to a bottom shelf blocked by heavy boxes. Wences shrugs.
“Was Pedro your favorite?” I ask.
“No. Johnny. Johnny more.”
“Did Ed Sullivan have a sense of humor?”
“No, none,” answers the wife.
“No,” says Wences.
Ihave brought with me a copy of The Oracle, by the 17th-century Spanish sage Baltasar Gracián y Morales. What better than this volume to have the wise man Wenceslao Moreno sign? He kindly and with care takes to the task, laboring at an accompanying illustration.
This afternoon is my pot of gold at the end of the monochromatic rainbow of Edward Vincent Sullivan. I ask Señor Wences the secret of life. “How have you lived so long and happily?”
He shrugs, smiles. “I am very happy to make laugh people.”
In the language of Gracián, in the language of Gracián’s ancient countryman Martial, the syntax is perfect, eloquent. Mrs. Moreno, who speaks seven languages, lights a cigarette. I light a cigarette. Wences beams amid the secondary smoke. I ask him if he smokes. He regards me spryly, slyly.
“No. Johnny smokes. And Pedro, he drinks.”
It is time to go. Señor Wences rises, walks me to the elevator, waits with me, advises with a gesture of his thumb that I should please remember to push the button upon entering if I want the elevator to move. I wish him 20 years more, and I give him a hug.
I press the button and descend. The true secret of life, of longevity and happiness, is to me now clear but unstated. As Gracián, in the 59th aphorism, counsels us to “end well,” so I here end by sharing the secret with you: Speak to your hand often.
As for Ed, he remains, as ever, deceased and immortal.