Here's another veteran comedian on The Ed Sullivan Show. It's 1966 and the comic is Jackie Kahane. I knew Jackie a little bit and when he passed away in 2001, I wrote this about him here…
The last five years of Elvis Presley's life, his opening act was Mr. Kahane, a comedian who also, in his day, opened for the likes of Wayne Newton, Tony Bennett and just about every other singing headliner.
Amazingly, this was a side job for Jackie, whose main income then came from managing comedy writers. A lot of them were, like Jackie, Canadians…but he also managed American writers and was often urging me to join his stable. I never did, but I enjoyed lunching with Jackie and hearing colorful (often, unquotable) tales of Elvis and Wayne and Tony and Show Biz in general. He seemed to do well for his clients…and he also performed a special service for some. He was a "front." You see, TV shows produced in Canada like to hire Canadian writers because it qualifies them for special investment credits from the government which can make it a lot easier to produce something.
Sometimes, they'd hire one of Jackie's American writers but Jackie, who retained Canadian citizenship, would be the official writer of record. As a result, he got screen credit on an awful lot of shows that were actually written by other folks. (Bizarre, which starred John Byner, was one) I thought that was kinda sleazy but otherwise, Jackie — who died Monday at the age of 79 — was a class act all the way.
He told me stories about doing Ed's show, too. The show was done live on Sunday evenings and earlier in the day, there was a full run-through in front of an audience that, Jackie said, never laughed at anything. "During snow season," he said, "they were just derelicts seeking a place to get out of the cold for a few hours." After that, Ed himself would cut down your act because it hadn't gotten much response from the derelicts. I wonder what Jackie's act was like at the afternoon run-through.,,