Fred Kaplan writes about the impact of The Beatles first appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show, which — hard for some of us to believe — happened fifty years ago today. I do not recall their appearance as feeling at the time like a seismic shift in our culture, an escape from the malaise of the Kennedy Assassination or anything that seemed to be lasting. At least at Emerson Junior High School, all it was was something that everyone was talking about the next day.
No one seemed to dislike them, not even any teachers. Apart from a few very loud girls, no one seemed to understand why we were all talking about them…but the point is we were talking about them. General consensus? They were four nice-looking chaps with a distinctive look who sang hummable, bouncy songs and made certain young ladies in Mr. Sullivan's audience shriek and cry. Even other girls of the kind shown getting hysterical in Ed's theater couldn't quite explain those ladies' reactions. Were they planted and paid to act like that? Or was it — more likely — that they were doing it because others were doing it? When you're that age, you often need no more reason to do anything than that others are doing it.
Oh — and why did no female performer ever foment the same crazed reactions from adolescent boys that Elvis or the Fab Four had triggered? Adolescent boys are, after all, supposed to have even more unstable hormones than adolescent girls. So that was an unanswerable question many asked.
In short: We at Emerson liked the four guys from Liverpool well enough. We just didn't see what all the fuss was about. Over the following months, the fuss seemed to have a life of its own. I thought a lot of kids my age — including, eventually, some males — became Beatles fans because adults were decrying and bemoaning them. That more than anything defined what they did as Our Music…and defending Our Music became, as it so often has, the battle we fought to establish Our Right to not become our parents or precisely what they wanted us to be.
In my world then, length of hair became a kind of beachhead for the boys — a line drawn in the sand. My friend Dan seemed to be growing his longer and longer just to stand his ground when his father or the boy's vice-principal at Emerson told him to go get a haircut. I don't know how many guys my age had arguments with their folks that included the phrases, "It's my hair" and "Not until you're 21, it isn't." That all really started, at least around me, when the Beatles did Ed's show.
It was a war I, personally, never had to wage. As I've written here, my father was most encouraging that I should not become like him. I did in many ways but in a key one — deciding what I was going to do with my life — I was free to do anything but follow in his footsteps. They led to a lifelong job in which he felt trapped and stifled. So I never felt any urge to grow my hair longer than my parents wanted or play music they hated. Actually, I don't think there was any music they hated but if there was, it wasn't the music of John, Paul, George, Ringo and My Generation.
Looking back, it's amazing how anyone argued over what they sang on Ed's show. It was so harmless and non-revolutionary. They even performed a tune from The Music Man. Eventually, The Boys would evolve as musicians and songwriters. They would do songs that most adults didn't "get" and a few which even seemed threatening or confrontational. That's why they became legendary. We wouldn't be talking about them today if all they did was things like "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Within months, you could get that kind of thing from The Dave Clark Five or Freddie and the Dreamers or hundreds of other groups.
I think what now impresses me more about that first show is Ed…and Ed Sullivan's appeal is now hard to understand. It's like why the hell did that guy have a prime-time TV show for 23 years? He was stiff and unfunny and always the least talented man on his stage.
There are two explanations for that. One is how he got his show in the first place and the other is his how he stayed on so long.
How he got his show in the first place is simple: He went on in June of '48. Back then, true professionals were in movies and on radio. There were a lot of guys on TV then who were as awkward and outta-place as Ed. He'd been a newspaper columnist at a time when that post conferred a lot of power. Performers didn't want to get on the wrong side of Ed or his competitor and sworn enemy, Walter Winchell. This gave columnists the power to get performers to perform.
Ed, who loved being on stage and hearing applause, used this position during World War II to organize shows for the U.S.O. and returning servicemen and to sell war bonds. He was good at recruiting acts but for reasons of self-promotion and ego, he never recruited a real Master of Ceremonies. He did it himself and he got away with it because as uncharming and unfunny as he was, it didn't matter. He was never more than a minute from bringing you someone who did belong on a stage.
In 1948, he carried that hosting over to a primitive TV show called The Toast of the Town. The premise was that Ed, as a columnist with his finger on the pulsebeat of the entertainment industry, would present the hottest acts then playing Manhattan. And even if he was stiffer than an overstarched shirt introducing them on the show, he was good at booking them on the show so his on-camera manner didn't matter much. It was a well-enough-booked show that he managed to stick around as television took off and the truly-talented folks from radio jumped in, displacing all the amateurish hosts and personalities.
Well, all but Ed.
He stayed on and he stayed on because he wanted so badly to be a TV star instead of just another newspaper columnist. Obviously, the money was a big reason but folks who knew Ed said that the real perk was being recognized in public. He loved it, they said. Absolutely loved it.
Each Sunday night, Ed did his show live from the theater in New York where Mr. Letterman now works. After the broadcast, Ed would do a little post-mortem, thanking most of his guests, discussing what went right or wrong with his staff, etc. Famously, there was the evening when he spent a half-hour or so screaming at Jackie Mason for kinda/sorta (but not really) giving the finger on camera. Rickie Layne, a ventriloquist who did Ed's show 87 thousand times with his puppet Velvel, told me that Ed would have to hurry through his post-show ritual because he had two things he had to do and dearly wanted to do.
One was to sign autographs at the stage door. There was always, even in the rain or snow, a crowd out there. It was vital to Ed to get out to them before they gave up and went home. Then he'd make his way to a waiting car that would take him to a post-show dinner with the biggest performer on that evening's show he could get to eat with him. Rickie said, "It wasn't always the biggest star on the show. Sometimes, that person had to rush off and catch a plane or perform somewhere else. But he always managed to find someone bigger than Velvel and me."
Ed and his guest would dine at a restaurant like Danny's Hideaway, which despite its name was a place celebrities went to be seen. Mr. Sullivan's night would not be complete unless he'd be dining there with someone like Tony Bennett and a fan would approach the table for autographs and treat them like stars of equal magnitude. Even better was when the approacher would ask Ed to sign his name and ignore Tony. Or Lena Horne or Alan King or whoever it was.
Toast of the Town became The Ed Sullivan Show and Studio 50, where he did the program, became The Ed Sullivan Theater. In-between those two upgrades of honor, there came a time when Ed's Sunday evening ratings supremacy was seriously challenged — by Steve Allen. Allen had been starring on the original Tonight Show on NBC and the network decided to put him on in prime-time. The premise was that Steve, as a performer who could so everything — sing, play the piano, tell jokes, even dance a little — could knock off Ed, the guy who could do none of those. So in 1956, the two men went head-to-head in a much publicized duel for 8 PM Sunday nights.
The smart money, of course, was on Steve…but it was Ed who emerged triumphant. Why? Probably because he wanted it more.
Allen was a guy who went from show to show all his life. When one Steve Allen Show was canceled, he knew there was another one in the offing…and indeed, there usually was. But for Ed, there was only one Ed Sullivan Show. He knew that once he lost that one, there would never be another…nor would there be much place for him in show business. Steve was fighting for the success of his current gig. Ed was fighting to stay on TV and to not go back to being a newspaper columnist that no one recognized on the street.
So he fought harder than anyone. He paid more for acts and/or used his power to get the performers he wanted to come in and do his show. From all reports, he was not above a little blackmail or threatening an agent: "You deliver this client of yours or I'll see that CBS never hires any of your people." That wouldn't be his opening move. He'd offer more money and a great showcase and even trade-offs: "You deliver this client and I'll book this other client of yours." But he was not reticent to use the threats or whatever else it took to get what he wanted…and he usually did.
Steve Allen was long since vanquished by the time The Beatles were the act Ed wanted to book but he went after them with the same determination. As you look back, it was so natural that his was the show that brought them to America. And he gave them such a big fanfare that he made it a major event. Give the guy credit for that.
People say there will never be another Beatles. I agree. But there will also never be another Sullivan. And February 9, 1964 would not have been a world-changing date without all five of them: John, Paul, George, Ringo and Ed. Some people called the disc jockey known as Murray the K "the fifth Beatle." Nonsense. The fifth Beatle was Edward Vincent Sullivan…and without him, I'm not sure we'd have had the other four.
