Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan

by James Maguire

  Ed quickly counterpunched. He filed a $200,000 lawsuit against the Daily Mirror and Dan Parker, charging them with libel and defamation of character. For Parker, that was more fuel for the fire. “Eddie picked the argument and then ran off sniveling to his lawyer and threatened to sue me! Hot cha cha! What a powerful writer! I mean Eddie’s lawyer.… A nice kid but he can’t take it … that is, he can’t take a bit of rough joshing … otherwise he can—and does—take it.… Now hop back into Primo’s left shoe, Eduardo, until I need you again.”

  Sullivan’s arch nemesis, Walter Winchell, who in the 1930s and 1940s commanded a vast radio and newspaper audience. (Globe Photos)

  Those words made Ed even more determined to fight back, but his court case suffered a setback. A State Supreme Court judge ruled that Sullivan had mistaken “facetious twitting for malicious libel.” Ed, however, didn’t give up. His honor had been impugned and he would, as always, keep slugging until he got what he wanted. He appealed the case to a higher court, where he won a reversal. The court case went forward and this time the judge ruled in his favor. But it wasn’t the money he was after. “I considered the reversal vindication enough,” Ed said. “I settled with the Hearst lawyers for my lawyers fees, about $850, I think. They were astonished when I said I didn’t want any money for myself.” As Ed reiterated after his court victory, he was indeed a friend of Bill Duffy’s, but his many plugs for Primo Camera had been genuine. As such, “I was willing to call the whole thing off after I succeeded in defending my reputation.”

  (In 1956 Camera sued the movie studio that produced The Harder They Fall, based on the Budd Schulberg novel about a fighter whose fights are fixed; many felt it was based on Camera. The boxer lost his suit. In the film, a sportswriter named Eddie Willis is hired by the mob to promote a fighter until he can win a title bout with a champion named Gus Dundee.)

  On the morning of October 29, 1929, Wall Street brokers began the trading day under a cloud. Soon after the gong was struck to begin business, their worst fears were realized. The great bull market, after weeks of hiccupping, and a handful of very bad days, was now heading dizzily, devastatingly, downward. The day’s collapse was the worst carnage in the history of American markets. As stocks had climbed in the late 1920s, they lured legions of small investors—teachers, seamstresses, railroad men. Every cabbie, it seemed, had a hot stock tip. Their nest egg was now gone. With the breathtaking declines of Black Tuesday, even large institutions cashed in their chips. Herbert Hoover assured the country that fundamental conditions remained sound, but the crash reverberated throughout the economy. Businesses failed and commodity prices tumbled. Within six months, unemployment soared. One of the sectors hit hardest was newspaper advertising, affecting the Graphic as much as any New York daily. The paper had always been a hard sell to advertisers. Its impressive circulation was offset by its questionable reputation; many businesses were reluctant to be associated with the lurid tabloid. Now, as advertising budgets grew tight, the paper’s fortunes began to slide.

  The Depression, of course, was a change of mood as much as a change in business fortunes. The world that Ed inhabited, the nightspots and cabarets of Broadway, felt a sobering chill. It could hardly have been otherwise: by March 1930 the breadlines in New York snaked block after block, and the city’s YMCA fed twelve thousand unemployed workers daily. The mad spirit of the 1920s—the rouged flappers, the insouciant evenings at gin joints—was slipping away. The carefree effervescence was replaced by a deepening shadow. Even romances, once content to be casual, now faced a make-or-break point.

  Ed and Sylvia’s relationship had grown ever stronger since its beginning in the fall of 1926, despite their steady-as-a-clock pattern of breakups and reconciliations. Although by the spring of 1930 it was clearly a longstanding romance, Ed appeared to be moving no closer to marriage. Sylvia, however, needed to move things along. “Ed had no intention of getting married,” she recalled much later in life, “but finally I trapped him into eloping.”

  In April, Sylvia told Ed that she was pregnant. Hurried discussions ensued. Ed agreed to get married, but the two decided to keep the wedding a secret from their families until after a short honeymoon. Ed planned a City Hall ceremony, witnessed by close friends, to be followed the next evening by a short Catholic ceremony. (Ed wanted any children raised as Catholics, which Sylvia agreed to.) Then the couple planned on honeymooning for the weekend in Atlantic City, after which they would break the news to their parents.

  Ed and Sylvia went to City Hall on April 28. The witnesses were Sylvia’s close friend Ruth Sanburg, and Ed’s friends Jim Kahn, a sportswriter from his Evening Mail days, and Johnny Dundee, the boxer who had shown him around New York when he first arrived. A quick wedding ceremony was performed, and the couple went to dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel with Dundee.

  Everyone understood it was to be kept secret until Ed gave the okay, but apparently someone at City Hall hadn’t agreed to the plan. As soon as the newlyweds got back to Ed’s apartment the phone started to ring. Reporters quizzed them about the details; a photographer was on the way. This put Ed and Sylvia in a quandary—their families would soon read about their wedding in the newspapers. They realized they had no choice. The two of them placed hurried calls to their parents to let them know they had gotten married.

  Sylvia’s family took the surprising news with relative equanimity. “At that point I was so emotionally involved with Ed that they wanted me to have anything that would have made me happy,” she said. But the Sullivans were aghast. As Sylvia described it, Ed’s family was “all devout Catholics—who were opposed to the marriage.” It would take several years—and diplomatic efforts on Sylvia’s part—before Ed’s family would speak to him.

  Ed and Sylvia moved into an apartment on 154 West 48th, not far from where Ed had lived when he first moved to New York. They lived over Billy LaHiff’s tavern, a Broadway watering hole frequented by show business types, celebrity athletes, and politicians. (The apartment, owned by LaHiff, had once been rented by Jack Dempsey and, later, by Broadway chronicler Damon Runyon.) The couple’s only child, Elizabeth, named after Ed’s mother, was born on December 22.

  In June 1931 the Graphic needed a new Broadway gossip columnist. Walter Winchell had gone to Hearst’s Daily Mirror in 1929, lured by a hefty salary increase and a signing bonus. Winchell’s high-profile post at the Graphic had been filled by Louis Sobol. As written by the mild-mannered Sobol, the Graphic’s gossip column was never as talked about as it had been under Winchell, yet Sobol still parleyed it into a career boost. In mid June, he too landed a column in a Hearst publication, the New York Journal-American. With Sobol’s departure imminent, the Graphic needed a new Broadway scribe to keep tabs on the glitterati.

  The job was offered to Ed. Or, as he later claimed, he was forced into it. The Graphic, he said, gave him an ultimatum: “I didn’t want the job, but it was either take it or be fired.” He did agree to take the Broadway gossip column, yet in truth it may not have required the arm-twisting he later recounted.

  Management changes at the paper were casting doubt on Ed’s job security. Lee Ellmaker, who co-owned a tabloid in Philadelphia with publisher Bernarr Macfadden, had joined the Graphic’s senior management. Ellmaker brought with him the Philadelphia tabloid’s sports editor, Ted von Ziekursch, to be the Graphic’s managing editor. But von Ziekursch had little interest in being managing editor; he wanted to cover sports. Hence, he looked enviously at Ed’s column.

  As recalled by Walter Winchell, the new managing editor began encroaching on Sullivan’s turf. Ed ran into Walter one evening as he was buying a newspaper on 47th Street, and as they stood chatting, Ed told Walter of his troubles. “He takes my ringside seats to the fights and World Series. He covers them himself. My column doesn’t run. It’s humiliating.” Walter recommended that Ed live up to his contract regardless. “Keep turning in your column. If you don’t, he’ll use that as a reason to say you broke it. Give me some time to think. I’ll call you.”


  However, the Graphic, despite von Ziekursch’s intrusion on Sullivan’s beat, wasn’t going to force out Ed to allow its managing editor to cover sports. When Ed finally began the Broadway column, his sports column was given to new hire Sam Taub—not von Ziekursch. Moreover, when Ellmaker offered Ed the Broadway beat, it wasn’t accompanied with a take-it-or-you’re-fired ultimatum, recalled editor Frank Mallen: “Ellmaker … called him to his office and asked him to make the switch saying he believed that Sullivan understood the Broadway setup better than anyone else.”

  In fact, Ed even felt in a strong enough position to negotiate a raise, remembered Mallen. Sullivan told Ellmaker he would take the new assignment “on [the] condition that $50 a week be added to his pay for night club expenses. Ellmaker agreed.” Ed’s new pay was $375 a week.

  Although he had agreed to write the Broadway column, Ed would never have admitted an interest in being a gossip columnist. He had always had a streak of the puritanical. That is, he presented a moralist’s face in his writings and later on television, though in reality he was far from this. And in 1931 being the Graphic’s gossip columnist was only a step away from being a pornographer, to some observers not even a step.

  Underneath his reluctance to switch columns—clearly genuine—was likely some desire for the gossip beat. The last two men to have filled it went on to lucrative high-profile positions at better newspapers. For someone who had always enjoyed the attention that came with being a prominent columnist, the Broadway column surely held appeal.

  As Ellmaker had said, the reason the Graphic wanted Ed to take the Broadway beat was that they knew he was well qualified. Like any good gossip, he was an inveterate socializer. He rubbed elbows with all and sundry up and down Broadway, from mobsters to flappers to barkeeps to shoe shine boys. His army of sources was already in place. And it was no secret he possessed the foremost job qualification for the Broadway reporter: he was a confirmed nightclub habitué. He had seen all the cabaret routines and musical revues for the last few years, the very acts he would cover. He had organized and emceed the Graphic’s celebrity dinners, with stars like Al Jolson and Sophie Tucker. His name and face were familiar to readers, and his sports column was already as much a gossip’s diary as straight sports coverage.

  Still, this was a life-altering shift. In moving to the Broadway column, Ed was making more than a career change; he was making an identity change. A sports columnist was a man’s man, discussing Tunney’s uppercut and the Yankees’ pennant chances; a Broadway columnist was an odd creature, both sought after and shunned by society, living among musicians and comics and actors. Ed was not new to the milieu he was about to enter, but his new post would entail an unpredictable journey away from familiar terrain.

  When Louis Sobol wrote his farewell column for the Graphic, he gently jibed the columnist-to-be: “I understand Eddie’s going to use his picture in this column. It’s a grand idea, because this Sullivan fellow is one of the good-looking, he-man type of fellows. When he turns his firm-chinned pan at a certain angle, he’s a dead ringer for Gary Cooper. Running his picture should help him a lot in the matter of mail from gal readers, and mail’s mighty important to a columnist.”

  Sullivan was “not a newcomer to Broadway … his daily routine has brought him constantly into contact with Broadway,” Sobol noted. But he had some things to learn: “It’s only fair to warn Eddie, of course, that his home life is a thing of the past. He’ll be coming home anywhere from 5 to 8 in the morning. He’ll be coming home worn out, tired, grouchy and resentful at the world in general. He’ll toss around in bed wondering what in the world he’ll use for a column the next day.” Sobol went on to reassure Mrs. Sullivan: “They’ll only mean that Eddie is a good Broadway columnist. Only good Broadway columnists act that way.”

  In the last week of June, the Graphic began running ads touting Ed’s debut as a Broadway columnist. On the Friday before his first week, it ran a half-page ad with Sullivan posed in a movie poster countenance, fedora at an even set, gazing out with an insider’s knowing look. The ad read:

  “He’s a curiosity! He actually was born and brought up along the main stem of the big town. He’s the pal of Jimmy Walker, Jack Dempsey, Marilyn Miller, Buddy Rogers, Bernarr Gimbel, George White, Earle Sande, Nancy Carroll, Gene Tunney, Paul Whiteman, Flo Ziegfeld, Babe Ruth—of Mrs. O’Grady and Officer 666—and he will tell you all about them as you’ve never been told before. He’s been famous as a reporter and sports reporter these many years. Maybe you know Ed Sullivan, but, if you don’t, be sure to meet him Monday in the New York Evening Graphic.”

  Ready or not, Ed was about to make his Broadway debut.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Broadway

  ED’S COLUMN, ED SULLIVAN SEES BROADWAY, debuted on Monday, July 1, 1931. For someone who professed to not want the job, he jumped in headfirst. He began by taking a broad swipe at his colleagues in the gossip trade, a strategy guaranteed to maximize his profile—they were duty bound to swipe back.

  “So many have asked me my sensations in turning from sports to Broadway that I will answer them in this introductory column. I feel, frankly, that I have entered a field of writing which offers scant competition, a field of writing which ranks so low that it is difficult to distinguish any one columnist from his road companies.… I charge the Broadway columnists with defaming the street.”

  He proclaimed that his column would not indulge Broadway’s undesirable elements, as his competitors’ did.

  “The uppermost stratum of Broadway, as revealed in the writings of its contemporary historians, the columnists, is peopled with mobsters, cheap little racketeers and a vast army of phonies.… As I sat at the gala opening of Hollywood Gardens on Friday night, I marveled to myself.… I marveled at the phonies who were there for no better reason than they had a mad desire to be seen.… They will betray themselves by rushing up to Mayor Jimmy Walker and shaking his hand as an endless stream of pests did on Friday night … they will gape at racketeers and mobsters who are tough killers and can prove it by the list of victims they have shot—always through the back.… I pledge you this huge army of phonies will receive no comfort in this space. To get into this particular column will be a badge of merit and a citation.”

  Breaking from the practice of other Main Stem reporters, he announced, his column would not promote the prurient.

  “Divorces will not be propagated in this column.… I will always experience greater pleasure in seeing Gus Edwards roadhousing with his wife than in seeing a celebrity flaunting his mistress.… So with high resolve and no fears, I enter upon my career as a Broadway columnist.… I confess that the prospect of competing against the present field leaves me quite cold.… It looks like a breeze and, as Mike Casale would say, ‘Weather clear, fast track.’

  P.S. No apprentice allowance claimed.”

  When the paper hit the stands the Broadway community was agog. Ed’s debut was the talk of the town. Graphic publisher Bernarr Macfadden wondered if Sullivan could be serious: a clean Broadway column? The publisher of Variety, Sime Silverman, reprinted the column in full, with commentary: “Sullivan is well known, if not famous, as a sports reporter. He will become equally so as a Broadway writer if continuing the way he started. The tabloids have been called the trade papers of the racketeers. Sullivan is on a tab [an apparent reference to the Daily Mirror claim that he was on the mob’s payroll]. His initial outburst sounds as if he intends to disprove the allegation. It’s a great opening.” Many thought the column’s claim of propriety merely funny, like a Burlesque dancer lecturing on grammar. Some speculated it was the columnist’s standard ploy: to gain readers by starting a feud. Winchell and Sobol, understanding that the jabs were aimed directly at them, were incensed.

  The evening after his column’s debut, Sullivan ran into Winchell at the Reuben Delicatessen. According to Sullivan, he himself was talkative and Winchell was quiet, until Winchell asked, “Did you mean what you wrote today?” The freshman columnist
soft-pedaled his attack, explaining that he had merely wanted to make a dramatic entrance. Winchell said he accepted this as an apology, at which point it was Ed who took offense. The Sullivan hair-trigger temper leaped out of the bag. “I got so mad I grabbed him by the knot in his necktie and pulled him over the table, right on top of the cheesecake. ‘Apologize to you?’ I said, ‘You son of a bitch, I did mean you and if you say one more word about it I’ll take you downstairs and stick your head in the toilet bowl.’ ” In Sullivan’s telling of the story, Winchell then fled the Reuben.

  Sobol, in the Journal-American, parried Sullivan’s opening salvo by writing a column entitled “The Ennui of His Contempt-oraries.” Referring to Ed, he archly noted, “Empty vessels make the most sound.”

  Sobol’s riposte was standard stuff by the rules of the Broadway gossips; throwing barbs back and forth was part of their stock-in-trade. They were as much performers as the nightclub acts they covered. But for Ed, hypersensitive and in a new situation, it was too much. Sobol’s column enraged him. One evening shortly after it ran, Sullivan ran into Sobol outside a Broadway performance. Ed grabbed his rival columnist and, according to Sobol, bellowed, “I’ll rip your cock off, you little bastard.” Sobol, all of one hundred twenty-five pounds, ducked out of Sullivan’s reach while bystanders held him back.

  As if Ed hadn’t vented enough, he also took Sobol to task in his column, writing:

  “To my former associates in the field of sports writing, I must report that THIS is a soft touch in an unusually responsive arena.… While all my columning contemporaries are fuming and fretting at my invasion, one of them has even carried his personal alarm into the two-column measure of his daily piece. This particular fellow has never had much competition. He’s got it now. I have not decided whether to chase him over the right field fence or the left field fence. This, however, is purely a matter of route, and immaterial.”