Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan

by James Maguire

  With the Supremes, December 1969. Sullivan was particularly fond of the Motown group, booking them fifteen times. (CBS Photo Archive)

  But it felt like the balance had tipped. For every time Rodney Dangerfield played the regular guy (“I don’t get no respect”), Richard Pry or did one of his offbeat routines, like a bit about what it means to be “cool.” Norm Crosby played his working-class fractured English for laughs, to be followed not long after by Flip Wilson, a black comic who sometimes dressed as a woman. During dress rehearsal in the fall of 1968, comedian George Carlin was asked to eliminate one of two particularly trenchant segments; delivering both would have been too abrasive, Bob Precht and Sullivan felt. One of Carlin’s segments skewered archconservative politician George Wallace for decrying “pointy-headed intellectuals”—Carlin’s routine turned the phrase around to refer to the Ku Klux Klan; his other segment referred to Muhammad Ali, who had been stripped of his boxing license for refusing military induction: “Muhammad Ali, whose job is beating people up, didn’t want to go overseas and kill people. And the government said, ‘If you’re not going to kill them, we’re not going to let you beat them up.’ ” Of the two segments, Carlin chose to perform the Ali material for that evening’s broadcast, because “it had more resonance in what was wrong with the society than the Governor Wallace pointy-head line.”

  In response to the Sullivan show’s more challenging material, many of Ed’s viewers turned the channel. The FBI, a crime drama on ABC that had played opposite The Ed Sullivan Show since 1965, had always run far behind. But during the 1968–69 season, a large portion of Sullivan’s audience preferred the square-jawed certitude of its weekly triumph of good over evil. That season The FBI was ranked eighteenth, while the Sullivan show tumbled to number twenty-three, its first time outside the top twenty since the Western craze of the late 1950s.

  If the show was on the ropes, its host seemed all but down for the count. Ed’s forgetfulness had progressed far past the typical absentmindedness of an elderly man. He was clearly in the early stages of what his colleagues referred to as Alzheimer’s, although it was never diagnosed as such. Whatever it was, it didn’t prevent him from functioning effectively much of the time, yet by this point he was only a shadow of the shrewd producer he had been. At times he seemed shaky and almost feeble. While early in the broadcast he might appear to be his former self, stiff but sure, later in the hour he would seem noticeably vacant. After he delivered his introduction his face might go slack and detached before the camera cut to the act he was introducing. He came to rely heavily on Bob Precht. His son-in-law continued to confer closely with him but was now very much in charge of keeping the Sullivan formula spinning. It was an odd truth of Ed’s life: though no one could have planned it, his daughter had delivered to him a man who extended his career long past when it otherwise would have ended.

  Not that the showman was resigned to becoming a fossil. After maintaining his 1920s hairstyle for decades, he now incongruously sported long sideburns, much like the young rock ’n’ rollers who played the show. He would, of course, never wear his hair long, but it was no longer strictly slicked back. Instead it was allowed to follow its natural wave, and with the color and improved video clarity of the show’s later years, his hair appeared distinctly auburn, not the black it had always seemed to be. Those cosmetic enhancements, however, didn’t distract from his timeworn, hollowed-out look.

  Sullivan and his show were moving in opposite directions. As the program’s 1969–70 season kicked off, its production values were ever more contemporary as Ed appeared ever more antique. The program’s theme music was a bold orchestral rock number, and its sets were increasingly elaborate and realistic, some with brilliant electric colors; the weekly budget for sets had grown to a hefty $10,000. Amid it all, with his haggard face and sometimes unsteady manner, Ed seemed as if he had wandered onto the wrong set. That is, until the old energy came back—his odd alembic of reserve and moxie—and he bantered with a guest or played a cameo in a comedy skit.

  The show’s 1969–70 season presented the most culturally discordant combinations ever seen on the Sullivan stage. That past August, the youth counterculture’s leading rock bands had held forth in a three-day bacchanal known as the Woodstock Music and Art Festival. Now the Sullivan show combined the festival’s shaggy iconoclasm with the butterscotch gentility of the musical establishment, as Woodstock alumni shared billing with far older performers. Santana reprised his Woodstock performance of “Persuasion” shortly before film composer Henry Mancini led an orchestra in the theme from Romeo and Juliet. The next week The Band romped through “Up on Cripple Creek,” to be followed by aging vaudevillian Pearl Bailey singing “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You” (Ed clowned around with her that evening, pretending to sing and then dancing a few steps). Douglas Fairbanks Jr.—who had appeared in silent movies—performed an excerpt from a stage revival of My Fair Lady on the same show that Creedence Clearwater Revival sang their antiwar anthem “Fortunate Son.”

  That fall, the Rolling Stones were in California for the notorious tour that culminated in the death of a fan at the Altamont Raceway. Eager to showcase the band, Ed, Bob, and a production crew flew to Los Angeles to film the Stones at a CBS studio. The three tunes they filmed, “Gimme Shelter,” “Love in Vain,” and “Honky Tonk Woman,” were shown on a November broadcast featuring jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald interpreting “You Better Love Me” and “Open Your Window.”

  In January 1970, Muhammad Ali—a vilified figure in some quarters after refusing military induction on religious grounds—bantered with Ed onstage, then sang the spiritual “We Came in Chains.” He was an engaging performer, but the controversial boxer didn’t appeal to Ed’s more traditional audience. Nor were they likely entertained by that February’s appearance by comic Richard Pryor. The CBS censors were eager to tone down Pryor, but Bob and Ed insisted he be allowed to perform as he wanted. “Ed adored Richard,” recalled staffer Russ Petranto. That evening the comic played the character of a black poet reciting his newest poems, one of which was Pryor screaming the word “BLACK!” as loud as possible. “That’s what we got to do, brothers and sisters, we got to organize ourselves against whitey!” proclaimed Pryor as poet. The joke was that every time he came to the word “white,” he had to struggle to pronounce it, because the term made him so anxious. Clearly, this was a generational leap past the always-smiling deference of Nat “King” Cole.

  Shaking the hand of a bearded Muhammad Ali, January 1970. At the time, Ali was a highly controversial figure after refusing military induction. (CBS Photo Archive)

  Introducing the Jackson 5, December 1969. One Sullivan crew member recalled watching over Michael Jackson backstage: “He was such a cute little guy.” (CBS Photo Archive)

  Attempting to bolster ratings, Bob Precht produced some traditional specials, like that season’s Holiday on Ice. But it wasn’t enough to reverse the slide. Over the last several years, Sullivan’s audience had trended steadily older, despite the cornucopia of rock acts and increasingly edgy comedians. Tens of millions of viewers had bonded with the show in earlier years, and many stayed loyal as the program updated itself. Or rather, they had until now. The 1969–70 Nielsen rankings revealed that many viewers were uninterested in watching the program’s all-too-accurate reflection of current trends; The Ed Sullivan Show slid to number twenty-seven. In January 1970, a woman named Beatrice Rapp wrote a letter to the Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin that spoke for many of Sullivan’s viewers: “Whatever happened to The Ed Sullivan Show? It was a good family show until recently. Now with the suggestive dancers that he puts on and the disgusting display of that character Tiny Tim—what is happening?”

  That spring, Ed received troubling news: CBS was canceling a handful of still successful shows, including The Jackie Gleason Show and The Red Skelton Hour. The Skelton show had been that season’s seventh-ranked program, so its cancellation raised numerous eyebrows. A major shift was underway in the television
industry. Networks faced pressure from advertisers, who were adopting a new approach based on demographics. Having a sizable audience was no longer enough to make a show attractive; advertisers now wanted an audience with a desirable composition, which in their view meant younger viewers, ideally living in urban areas. Advertisers were most eager to reach the eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old age group. As Irwin Segelstein, then CBS’s New York head of programming, recalled, “The changeover in audience composition [requirements] meant we were losing shows that had good ratings, like Skelton … we were getting big ratings, but not the right audience composition … it was a disaster for the programming department.”

  Bob Precht understood the changes taking place in television: “We made every effort to appeal to a younger audience,” he said, hence the season’s highly contemporary feel. While Ed’s formula had always targeted a younger audience, it also catered to an older audience, as well as urban, suburban, and rural audiences. Its Big Tent philosophy ran counter to the notion of focusing exclusively on one group. (That many of Sullivan’s viewers were rural was a related problem, in the network’s eyes; over the next year, CBS would cancel mainstay Petticoat Junction and the highly rated Beverly Hillbillies to counteract the perception that its audience was older and rural.)

  With its plethora of rock acts, the Sullivan show should have been able to offer advertisers the younger audience they desired. But by 1970 the younger set no longer wanted to sit through ancient vaudevillians and oldsters like Henry Mancini, and Ed himself was the very definition of square. The show had never been hip, though it had hip elements; instead, getting booked by Ed was the imprimatur of establishment success—precisely what younger viewers found so off-putting. (In January 1969 the rock group The Rascals announced they would stop appearing on the Sullivan show because they didn’t want to perform on “establishment shows.”) Worse, watching The Ed Sullivan Show meant enduring an hour with one’s parents. As for the older audience, they still revered Ed but they couldn’t stomach the show’s current youth-oriented fare. Getting the entire family to sit down together was increasingly difficult. The culture was coming apart at the seams; the big tent was being ripped asunder. In February 1969, ABC debuted The Generation Gap, a humorous game show pitting teens against adults. It was canceled after ninety days; for most, the widening gap was no laughing matter.

  Mike Dann, then CBS’s programming head, recalled being in a network meeting that included discussion of the Sullivan show’s falling ratings. “We didn’t know what to do … we had to be very careful, he had built [a major following].” Compounding the network’s indecision was the fact that it had no ready replacement. As a result, despite the changes roiling the television industry, Sullivan escaped the fate of canceled performers like Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason.

  But if Ed harbored any optimism it was dashed by the first few Nielsen reports of the 1970–71 season. Indicating a steady slippage, they revealed that the declining Nielsens of the past two years were part of a continuing trend. Perhaps if Ed had been fully mentally present he might have found a way to turn this around, to renew his format as he had always shifted it to boost ratings. Battling the heavily financed Comedy Hour, his decision to veer from a variety format to produce tributes to Broadway and Hollywood stars kept the program alive. Through the 1950s he maintained the show’s appeal by looking far and wide for the best talent, internationalizing it as he himself traveled. He hadn’t wanted to book Elvis, but the ratings potential prompted him to phone Colonel Parker; he then rode the rock ’n’ roll wave hard for years, and his wanderlust allowed him to present the Beatles before any American promoter. Now, with the younger set’s aversion to the show’s square façade, and older viewers’ dislike of twanging guitars, Sullivan’s rock offering no longer kept his Nielsens aloft. As the calendar said good-bye to the 1960s, the show’s direction needed to be shifted once again. But how was an inventive producer to recreate The Ed Sullivan Show in 1970?

  The program faced its most organic problem: the format itself was exhausted. The concept of appealing to everyone was exhausted. And in truth, Ed himself was exhausted. The sixty-nine-year-old showman could no longer bob and weave with the culture as he had for so many years. CBS sent a questionnaire to the show each year, requesting details about its direction for the upcoming season. Ed, who never lost his disdain for management, responded: “Fuck ’em, we’ll do the same thing we did last year.” (Bob Precht then very conscientiously filled it in.) The erosion of his memory continued, and the attendant mental fog grew thicker. On one occasion, a reporter in the theater asked Sullivan his age, and he blanked on the question, having to turn to a staff member for help. Mary Lynn Shapiro, one of his personal secretaries, recalled him asking on a Sunday afternoon, “Who’s on the show tonight?” The same producer who once controlled every detail, from who was booked to what material they performed, now simply showed up to read his cue cards as best he could.

  The Sullivan show launched its 1970–71 season with a format as diverse—if not more so—as ever. In October, Engelbert Humperdinck sang the Sinatra warhorse “My Way” on a broadcast with Tiny Tim, who trilled a medley of children’s songs that included “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” A few weeks later, legendary bluesman B.B. King performed “The Thrill Is Gone” on the same evening saccharine pop sensation Karen Carpenter sang her number one hit “(They Long to Be) Close to You.” A broadcast that fall seemed to sum up the season. Billed as a United Nations twenty-fifth-anniversary tribute, it ran the gamut from sitar master Ravi Shankar, known to rock fans for his influence on the Beatles, to Brazilian songstress Astrud Gilberto performing “Girl from Ipanema,” to the Ballet Africains, a percussion outfit jamming on an Afro-Caribbean groove. In a world heading toward niche programming, the Sullivan show’s focus was growing ever broader. The Big Tent was as big as it ever had been.

  The audience kept slipping away. Attempting to satisfy older viewers, Bob Precht produced a special dedicated to Richard Rodgers. That kind of program had saved Sullivan in the early 1950s, but now it wasn’t enough. On Sunday night at 8 P.M., many of Ed’s traditional viewers were tuned to ABC’s The FBI, which had surged into television’s top ten. The youngest set was entranced by NBC’s The Wonderful World of Disney, television’s fourteenth-ranked show, which ran opposite the Sullivan show’s first half hour. In the second half hour, NBC presented Bill Cosby, starring a forward-looking young comic whom Ed himself had booked in the last few years.

  The Sullivan show normally topped Bill Cosby yet was now running far behind its other time slot competitors. By the winter of 1971 The Ed Sullivan Show’s ranking had slid to forty-third. Of the eighty or so shows in prime time, it was middle of the pack, which it had never been in more than two decades. The show’s production staff assumed the end was near. Ed, however, had his mind set on a goal. With its debut in 1948, the show was in its twenty-third season. He desperately hoped to make it to the twenty-fifth-season mark.

  In March 1971, Precht received a call from CBS-TV president Bob Wood. Some changes were being made, Wood explained. Long the leading network, CBS had now fallen even with NBC. A major schedule revamp was needed to pull ahead. In the management’s view, too many of its shows, while still successful, catered to an older or rural audience. After seeing success with its two new contemporary situation comedies, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family, the network wanted to continue to refresh its programming. CBS sought to more actively target a younger, urban audience. Eight shows were being canceled, including three that were highly rated in the previous season. Wood informed Precht that The Ed Sullivan Show was one of those being canceled.

  Bob called Ed at the Delmonico. In Ed’s eyes, the cancellation was one more example of the network management’s lack of respect for him. “Well I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said. “After all I’ve done for the network over the years.” A letter was written to CBS head Bill Paley to appeal the decision, but the cancellation was final. However, the network want
ed to soften the blow—and hedge its bet, in case cancellation proved to be a mistake—so it offered a consolation. In honor of what Wood called the show’s “grand tradition,” the network asked Sullivan to do eight ninety-minute Ed Sullivan Show specials.

  To Ed, this was no consolation. He had been canceled and the specials didn’t change that. There was discussion about how to end the show; a big good-bye broadcast was suggested, but Ed didn’t like the idea. He couldn’t face going on to say farewell; it was like announcing he had lost his show. He decided to play reruns for the remainder of the season, so the last new show aired on March 28. The reruns ran until the official cancellation date of June 6, 1971, after which the network was deluged with letters protesting the decision.

  Ironically, one of the many letters Ed received was from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who was indirectly involved with The FBI, the very show that had drawn viewers away from the Sullivan show. The two men had corresponded over the years, and now the Bureau director offered his condolences. “I was indeed sorry to learn that your show will no longer be seen on television,” Hoover wrote. “Your presentations have always been most interesting and entertaining. Your outstanding contributions over the years will be long remembered.… Sincerely, Edgar.”