Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan

by James Maguire

  “What are you, showing me fingers? You got fingers for me, I’ve got fingers for you,” he said, as he comically mirrored Ed’s finger signs. The comedian’s gesticulations grew more exaggerated as the studio audience’s laughter fueled his improvising. “Who talks with fingers in the middle of a performance, you think they came here to watch your fingers?… If your fingers are such a hit, why do you need me, why don’t you come here and show your fingers?”

  Mason concluded his act feeling like his performance was a hit, that he had rescued himself from a career disaster. But Ed felt differently. Visibly upset onscreen after Mason’s exit, he was livid after the program. As he saw it, the comic’s finger improvisations included the profane middle finger gesture. Mason had just insulted him in the most profound manner, on live television, or so Ed thought. There had been a slight ambiguity to what Mason had done; he made so many gestures so rapidly that, if one were predisposed to view them as obscene, a viewer might have interpreted them as such. And Mason had treated Ed irreverently on the air, which alone was enough to anger him. But it was clear to most observers on the set—like Vince Calandra, who later became the show’s talent coordinator—that even at close range, Mason’s gestures were not profane.

  After the show, “Ed came over to me and blew his top,” Mason recalled. “He said, ‘Who the fuck are you to use these filthy gestures, you son of a bitch—on national TV!’ ” The showman called him “a variety of four-, ten-, and eleven-letter words of Anglo-Saxon origin having to do with the subject of sex and perversion.” At first Mason didn’t know what Ed was mad about. The comic had been a rabbi and continued to serve part-time as one until about six months beforehand; by his account, he wasn’t even familiar with the gesture Ed referred to. “A guy who uses that kind of terminology and vulgarity as a way of life on the streets of New York is from a different world than I come from,” he said. Mason tried to explain to the enraged showman that he meant no insult, that Sullivan misinterpreted the gestures, but Ed wouldn’t hear it. “He was too wound up and furious,” the comic recalled. The damage was done. According to Mason, at the end of their encounter Ed bellowed “I’ll destroy you in show business!” Ed denied having said this.

  The headlines began blaring almost immediately. Ed canceled the comedian’s $45,000 contract for six appearances, charging “insubordination and gross deviation from the material agreed upon.” The thirty-three-year-old comic, once eagerly sought by nightclubs, saw his bookings evaporate. After four months of skimpy bookings, in February he filed a $3 million libel suit against Sullivan and Bob Precht, charging that his professional reputation had been injured.

  In January 1966, Sullivan lost the first round of the court case. State Supreme Court judge Harry Frank reviewed the tape in court, finding that there was nothing offensive or obscene in Mason’s performance. (The judge also noted that he was a fan of the Sullivan show, “although I don’t know why I watch it,” he said.) Soon afterward, the two parties decided to settle; Mason dropped his suit and Sullivan agreed to have him back on the show. During the following September 12 show—two years after the original broadcast—Ed told his audience: “Highlighting the show will be an old friend of mine and yours, Jackie Mason.” The comic, as if to say bygones could be bygones, performed his Sullivan imitation.

  Prior to that evening, the two men ran into each other in an airport. By Mason’s account, he pretended he didn’t see the showman, but Sullivan came up to him and apologized profusely. “He said he never forgave himself for doing that to me … and he felt terrible that he had done it,” Mason said. “Then he gave me the example of a man who had a fight with his wife, and both people felt that they’d like to make up, but nobody bent enough to say it.”

  There may have been an extra factor contributing to the Sullivan–Mason fracas. Ed was getting tired. It was clearly visible onscreen as 1964 turned into 1965. The sixty-four-year-old showman had not aged gracefully; the years had taken their toll. The previous August (two months before Mason’s disputed appearance) he was hospitalized briefly for an intestinal disorder, and at moments onstage it seemed as if he hadn’t fully recovered. The once-virile newsman was now baggy-eyed and sunken-cheeked. His onstage persona had always been famously stiff and reserved, but now, toward the end of a broadcast he could be almost listless. Late in the hour when the camera cut back to him after a commercial break he sometimes had a momentarily vacant look in his eyes.

  And it was more than that. There was a forgetfulness, a mental confusion that was starting to become frequent. His associates had seen it, an inability to remember names or even a directive he had just given. One Sunday night he told a stagehand to lay a golf mat onstage in preparation for the following act; a few minutes later, having forgotten his request, he became enraged at the crewmember for setting up too early, and fired him on the spot. He ignored staff members’ explanations that he himself gave the order. This same tendency toward mental confusion, coupled with his general cantankerousness, may have led him to misinterpret Jackie Mason’s gestures.

  In any case, these lapses were passing and Ed could summon the old energy when need be. Over the last few years he had developed a technique of introducing an act by running through a couple of sentences in a low-level monotone, then exploding into a shout at the end. The effect was disjointed but it helped create the sense that something thrilling was coming. And, after all these years, he found a somewhat better relationship with the camera. Ed had always treated the camera’s eye like an interloper to be avoided; he addressed the studio audience and let the television lens follow him if it could—ignoring the camera was a symptom of his stage nerves. “He always had stage fright,” said John Moffit, the show’s director. “He just wasn’t comfortable in front of the audience.” Yet in the mid 1960s he began looking straight into the camera at times, usually turning away to address the studio after a few moments. After some sixteen seasons on the air it was a modest improvement.

  If the showman was feeling his years, the show pulsed with more youthful energy than ever before. Opening the 1965–66 season was the Beatles, in their last “live” Ed Sullivan Show appearance. (Although the band performed on the Sullivan stage for a live audience, their performance had been taped a month earlier as they arrived in New York to launch an American tour. Over the next few years they sent in five more taped guest shots, but they never again performed live on the Sullivan show.)

  To introduce the foursome, still looking cherubic in their matching dark suits and skinny ties—though their hair was getting shaggy—Ed brought over each Beatle in turn for a handshake, with each band member hailed by an unbroken wall of screeches. They rocked through “I Feel Fine,” which had topped the charts the previous December; “I’m Down,” a blues romp that was one of their least memorable songs; and “Act Naturally,” featuring a self-described “nervous and out-of-tune” Ringo on lead vocal. After the first song Paul tried his own Ed impression: “We’d like to carry on…the shew,” he intoned, dropping into Sullivanese.

  Later in the hour they performed a rollicking “Ticket to Ride,” which had hit number one the previous May; “Yesterday,” with an intimate solo vocal by Paul—the song hit number one three weeks later; and the hard-charging “Help,” which held the current number one chart spot. Afterward Ed brought the band over and tried to chat with them, but the screams submerged his and the Beatles’ voices; the kids were out of control. (That hysteria had been in full fury when the Beatles performed at New York’s Shea Stadium four weeks earlier for fifty-five thousand crazed teenagers. Ed introduced them onstage, and Brian Epstein hired Sullivan Productions to film the concert, with Bob Precht as director.)

  In the weeks ahead, the show (broadcasting in color for the first time) presented Sonny and Cher crooning their number one hit “I Got You Babe”; later in the hour Cher sang solo—she didn’t always need Sonny. That fall saw appearances by British Invasion bands like Herman’s Hermits, who played “Just a Little Bit Better,” and rising Ame
rican groups like blue-eyed soul duo the Righteous Brothers, who sang “Turn on Your Love Light.” Also upping the energy level were Motown acts like Marvin Gaye, singing the rambunctious soul ballad “Take This Heart of Mine,” and Martha and the Vandellas, harmonizing on “Dancin’ in the Streets.”

  In October, Barry McGuire growled his number one hit “Eve of Destruction,” which was banned by some radio stations after a deluge of complaints about the lyrics: “And think of all the hate there is in Red China / Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama.” As much as any performance that season, “Eve of Destruction” foreshadowed the changes inherent in 1960s youth culture. The song was a leap forward from just a few years back, when the Sullivan show’s newest music was the sugary confections of pop kitten Connie Francis and dreamboat Frankie Avalon.

  The comedy, too, was changing. That same month, Ed booked Woody Allen, a twenty-nine-year-old stand-up comic whose material was decidedly forward looking. Instead of mother-in-law jokes he mined sex and psychology for laughs, with his trademark cerebral style. In Sunday’s dress rehearsal, Allen performed without censoring himself, planning a safer routine for that evening’s broadcast—but he hadn’t told Ed that. His afternoon performance included a reference to “orgasmic insurance.” As soon as he finished, Sullivan gave him a severe tongue lashing, calling Allen lewd and all but blaming him for what Ed saw as the country’s moral decay. “Attitudes like yours are why kids are burning their draft cards,” he shouted at the comedian.

  Caught off guard, Allen briefly considered responding in kind, but instead spontaneously apologized. Ed was mollified, and the comic delivered his less adventurous material in that evening’s broadcast. “When the storm abated, from that day on I had no better ally in show business,” Allen said. Ed plugged him in his column and booked the comic for three additional appearances.

  For rock bands, playing the Sullivan show became an important rite of passage, as well as an exponential boost to record sales. The new groups came fast and furious now. To fit them all in, Ed sometimes booked two to an evening, clearly bending his sacrosanct rule about balance. In December, the Byrds sang “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Turn, Turn, Turn” the same night the Dave Clark Five trilled “Catch Us If You Can.” In February, The Animals performed “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” on a show in which Simon and Garfunkel harmonized on “Sounds of Silence.” In May, James Brown funked it up with “(I Got You) I Feel Good” after the Supremes sang “Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart.”

  In the winter and spring of 1966, the Sullivan show’s combination of young and old became almost surrealistic. The program had always been a Big Tent, offering an act for every taste, but now the contrast between performers almost strained credulity. In February, the Rolling Stones rocked on “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” the same night that Ethel Merman, who debuted in film shortly after the invention of talkies, belted out “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” In April, Petula Clark miniskirted through “A Sign of the Times” the same evening that Jimmy Durante—whom Ed had met in the Silver Slipper speakeasy in 1923—crooned “Inka Dinka Doo.” On that same broadcast, acrobat Jose Cole balanced on top of a cane, which itself was on top of a bottle, while twirling five rings. His balancing act was no less impressive than that of Sullivan and Precht: in June, a taped Beatles performance of “Paperback Writer” shared the bill with the very middle-aged Robert Goulet drowsing through “Two Sleepy People.” In May, James Brown quick-stepped to “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” the same night that Tin Pan Alley legend Harold Arlen played an excerpt from his classic “Over the Rainbow.”

  With James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, October 1966. (CBS Photo Archive)

  This same unlikely mix occurred in the realm of comedy, with one broadcast combining Richard Pryor, the Smothers Brothers, and Myron Cohen—a young black comic who embraced his racial identity; a duo whose lighthearted goofiness softened their irreverent edge; and a traditional Borscht Belter, respectively. Pryor’s routine invoked the name of a public figure Ed had banned from the show, Muhammad Ali, as the stand-up mock reenacted the title bout between Sonny Liston and Ali. Ed had playfully bantered with Ali back when the boxer was called Cassius Clay, but declared he would have nothing to do with Ali as long as he remained connected with the Nation of Islam. (Like many of Ed’s statements foreswearing a performer, this too was reversed.)

  It got confusing at times, finding the cultural boundaries. For viewers who looked to Ed not just for entertainment but for cultural guidance, as the source of a show business seal of approval, the program’s current offering must have been perplexing. In earlier years, Sullivan’s stage presented an eclectic lot, yet its underlying worldview had been unified. Now the show’s performers purveyed messages that seemed markedly at odds with one another, and furthermore, the music and comedy grew more strident and questioning with every passing month.

  Even Ed’s censorship, that ever-reliable watchful eye, seemed to be navigating with a changing lodestar. In June, he presented an unknown rock ’n’ roll group called the Thomas Band, whom he booked as a favor to well-known entertainer Danny Thomas, whose son fronted the group. The band was a nonentity, a well-scrubbed bunch with crew cuts and preppie clothes who sang a generic, neutered rock number. The group’s lyrics, however, would never have gotten past Ed in years past: “You don’t know what she does to me / when she’s making love to me.” Sullivan had threatened to cancel Buddy Holly in 1958 for far less.

  Clearly, the showman was less mentally present. As he wrapped up that evening’s broadcast he began to extemporize: “We’re delighted that you’re here tonight, specifically, have a nice time, those of you who are visiting our city. And right down the street here is the river, the Hudson River. You should go and take a look—I don’t want you to jump in—and have a nice time while you’re here with us. Good night!”

  It was odd: promoting the Hudson River? Warning the audience not to jump in? On the surface it was a standard Sullivan goof, perhaps an awkward attempt at humor. But, based on his semidazed on-screen appearance, the sign-off revealed that his mind was wandering further afield than a mere goof. The mental fatigue, or whatever it was, seemed to be catching up with him. Several months later, he was standing onstage after the broadcast returned from a deodorant ad. The girl in the ad had explained to the boy—who did not use Ban deodorant—that she liked him “not much.” As the camera cut to Ed, he editorialized on the ad: “That’s a fine crack—‘not much.’ ” It was, again, perhaps a funny bit of irreverence. But it didn’t appear as such. It seemed as if he had momentarily gotten lost in the ad’s little scenario, forgetting where he was before he commented. Strangely, his tone of voice suggested he was truly annoyed at the girl’s comment.

  Few Sullivan critics had been as harsh as The New York Times’ Jack Gould. In the early 1950s he provided a running lambaste of Sullivan’s foibles. Gould’s attitude had softened in the late 1950s as Ed’s focus grew international. Now, in 1965–66 season, the Times critic reversed himself altogether. Sullivan “is unquestionably one of the medium’s great intuitive showmen,” he wrote. And while Sullivan on camera “may be about as animated as an untipped cab driver,” his success had allowed him “the enviable position of being a world unto himself amid the competitive scramble.” The critic, however, bemoaned the show’s greater emphasis on rock ’n’ roll, referring to it as a “compromise” that sacrificed the program’s well-rounded quality for ratings. “Mr. Sullivan shouldn’t go unsung; with all due deference to the noisy disc jockeys of radio, he’s really one of the fathers of rock ’n’ roll.”

  Indeed, “If the lay sociologist wants firm evidence that the younger generation has taken command of the home dial, Mr. Sullivan is their case in point,” Gould wrote. The critic voiced an opinion held by many: “Mr. Sullivan undoubtedly has an obligation to keep the teenagers in mind when he plans his show, but perhaps he will also see the wisdom of not disenfranchising other members of the family too regularly,
if only because they are the ones who have somewhat larger allowances to spend with advertisers.”

  Behind the scenes, Ed was not solely responsible for many of these bookings. More and more, his son-in-law Bob Precht was handling not just production chores but actually choosing the acts. The move toward rock was certainly made with Ed’s blessing—Bob never made a move without conferring with Ed. As many staffers recalled, Bob always handled his father-in-law with great deference. But where their partnership had once been master to mentor, it was now far closer to equal. Ed no longer decided, or much less frequently decided, to cancel an act during dress rehearsal. If he opted to change the running order after rehearsal it was not a complete scrambling. And the 1950s-era Sullivan practice of changing the running order during the broadcast was now nearly impossible; his son-in-law put together too complex a production for such a maneuver. Precht, in fact, was becoming the man behind the curtain, keeping the Sullivan formula spinning like one of the show’s many plate spinners.

  The gradual shift in power between the two men was resisted by many of the talent agents who dealt with the show. “Because Ed had gone so many years of doing it on his own, many of the agents and managers continued to go directly to him, to try to get him to okay something,” Precht said. Some performers, too, grumbled about Precht, as they realized that a second gatekeeper stood between them and the lucrative exposure of a Sullivan booking.