One other element of the film relates closely to Ed’s life. Echoing the theme of racial equality he had espoused in his sports columns, the film featured gang warfare by both white and black gangsters, with both outfits equally competent—a highly unusual twist in a 1930s movie.
A few months before the film’s release, one of Ed’s rivals back in New York, a columnist for the New York Journal-American, imagined the consequences of bad reviews with a barely disguised schadenfreude. Sullivan, the writer noted, will play himself in the upcoming release. “Now watch all the film writers he panned get even. He wrote the opera himself, and it better be good or he’ll be a two-time loser.”
And so he was, given the blistering reviews and tepid box office. The notices for Big Town Czar were even more damning than those for Ed’s previous picture. “Story has many weak moments and slow spots,” observed Variety, calling the film suitable for “lower-bracketed action houses where patrons like their melodrama spread rather thick.” The New York Times’ Frank Nugent called it “a bustling little melodrama, all puffed up with its own unimportance.… It was written by Ed Sullivan in his best water-under-the-bridge style, which, as you know, is extremely first-personal, quite sentimental, and edifyingly moralistic.” As for the performances, most of them were passable in Nugent’s view. However, “The only word for Ed Sullivan’s portrayal of Ed Sullivan is ‘unconvincing.’ ” It was a humiliating blow for someone thinking of branching into acting—a critic had pronounced him unable to play even himself. He was not, apparently, destined for a career in front of the camera.
Christmas was always a last-minute affair in the Sullivan household. Ed’s daughter Betty remembered that the tree was never bought until late on December 24, and the final mad scramble was usually accompanied by irritated arguments and something verging on domestic panic. But in one of their Christmases in Hollywood, Ed endeavored to change this. On the morning of December 24, he told Sylvia and Betty he had already bought the tree—breaking all previous family records for advance preparation. However, when mother and daughter went into the living room to see his purchase, they found a short, shapeless, near-death evergreen. It might have passed muster back in their small New York apartment, but in their three-bedroom Californian home it resembled an underfed waif.
Betty’s heart sank at the sight of the scrawny pine. Sylvia, wanting domestic peace, recommended that Ed and Betty drive down to Wilshire Boulevard and choose a better tree, which they did. Wilshire that week was full of big tree lots, so father and daughter quickly found a healthy replacement. Betty, thrilled, could hardly wait to have it in their living room. But before they brought it home, Ed decided to have it sprayed white, a new trend in Christmas trees that year. The tree seller told them to come back at 7 P.M. for the sprayed evergreen.
When Ed and Betty went to pick it up, however, Ed realized he had neglected to jot down the lot’s address. He told her not to worry—they would easily spot a white tree among all the green. But when they parked on Wilshire and started searching the lots, they walked among a forest of white trees. Everyone wanted a sprayed evergreen that year.
They searched and searched, to no avail. Betty, tearful, felt they would never find their tree, and had visions of a giftless Christmas; with no tree, where would the presents go? “We went down Wilshire and we finally found the tree, but it was hard,” she recalled. After all the worry, there it stood—and to Betty’s eyes it was gorgeous. They hurried home with it. As was family custom, Ed decorated the tree very late in the evening, then woke up Betty around three in the morning to see his handiwork. She remembered the tree that year as beautifully and extravagantly decorated, her clearest memory of any of the Christmas trees they had.
Although Ed’s nascent film career was sputtering, his newspaper career had never been better. Covering Hollywood gave him a far higher profile than he had ever enjoyed on Broadway. He met virtually every major film star, and interviewed many of them.
In late 1937, he drove forty miles outside Hollywood to Malibu Lake for a long one-on-one with Katharine Hepburn. Then 30 years old, Hepburn’s career was at low ebb; after her first Academy Award for 1933’s Morning Glory, she developed a reputation as difficult and distant. Some fans complained that she wore slacks all the time and refused to put on makeup; some reporters claimed she wouldn’t pose for photographers or give interviews. Her audience began drifting away and her box office value dwindled.
Her interview with Ed was an attempt to warm up her image, and she spoke at length about her many struggles on stage and screen. She recalled that when she first worked on Broadway she felt so painfully shy that she wouldn’t eat in restaurants.
Ed asked her about her image as a “spoiled brat,” and she claimed that she had never refused to pose for photos or give interviews, but that she objected to the fabricated romantic gossip. After their afternoon together the columnist summed up his thoughts:
“Let this be entered in the records. The people who work with her are nuts about this girl. She’s generous, breezy, a good two-fisted curser, informal. She won’t take any shoving around, and if she thinks she’s being imposed upon, she’ll let it be known quickly. She is a bit affected, but no more so than any other star in this colony, and considerably less affected than most. The sensitive, aristocratic features are just as compelling off screen as on, the blue eyes just as alert. I’d say that she was a thoroughly nice person, suffering from no malady more serious than youth.”
About a year later, Ed interviewed Walt Disney over a two-hour lunch at Hollywood’s Tarn O’Shanter Inn. The two men would have oddly parallel lives. Like Sullivan, Disney was born in 1901 and lied about his age to take part in World War I (but Disney’s lie succeeded and he joined the American Red Cross). Decades later, Disney’s television show was a direct competitor with Sullivan’s for the Sunday night audience. Unlike Ed, on that August afternoon in 1938, the film producer was awash in success; the previous year’s release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had been wildly successful. “We ate out on the porch, and ladies and children clambered out of cars with Canada, New York, and Illinois license plates, and asked him for his autograph, grinning happily and appearing a trifle dazed by their good luck in having Disney drop out of the skies,” Ed wrote. “ ‘We’ve traveled six thousand miles,’ bubbled one nice-looking lady, ‘and this is the nicest single thing that has happened to us.’ ”
Disney spoke about his struggles in the Depression, about having to show a preview of Snow White to save a shaky bank loan, and about needing to ask employees to return part of their bonus during the bank panic. He explained his policy of barring visitors to his studio, claiming that people didn’t seem interested enough when touring the facility. The exception was writer H.G. Wells, who was thrilled by the carpentry shop, and Charlie Chaplin, who spent the day entertaining the animators.
“I asked him what he learned from the industry-shaking success of Snow White,” Ed wrote. “His brown eyes twinkled. ‘I’ll tell you what it has taught me, Ed—a deep respect for the juvenile audience. I never had it before. You see, I figured it was idiotic to make pieces for children, because a 10-cent or 15-cent audience is unimportant to this business. So all of our work was slanted principally at an adult audience. Snow White, road-showed at prices ranging from 85 cents up, proved that parents would pay even those prices for their children’s attendance.” Disney’s comments that day marked still another thing the two men would have in common; like Disney, Ed learned a profound respect for the juvenile audience.
The day that Ed drove out to interview W.C. Fields at the actor’s mansion became a favorite memory of his, so much so that decades later he recounted it to Peter Prichard, a young talent agent he spent time with in his older years. Ed arrived at Fields’ house at about 11 in the morning. The butler ushered him into the foyer, told him Mr. Fields would be with him shortly, and offered him a cocktail. Ed demurred, noting the early hour, but the manservant insisted. “Mr. Fields would prefer that you have a
drink.” Ed complied, finishing his drink, and over the next forty-five minutes servants brought him to two more locations in the mansion; at each spot he was arm-twisted into downing another cocktail. Finally he was brought out to the pool, where Fields was holding court. The comic offered him yet another tipple. “I’ve been waiting forty-five minutes and I’ve already had three drinks,” Ed protested. “Yes, my dear boy, let me tell you one thing,” replied the heavy-drinking Fields, explaining why he had plied Ed with alcohol, “Always meet a man on a level playing field.”
Ed, as a onetime sports writer, brought the conversation to boxing, but Fields turned it back to the virtues of Bacchus. The actor explained that boxer Max Schmeling’s storied loss to Joe Louis was due to his abstemious habits:
“After the Louis Massacre of Schmeling, Fields held forth long and earnestly on the conclusion to be drawn from Schmeling’s explanation that the first blow to the kidney paralyzed him. ‘It simply bears out what I’ve always contended,’ said Fields, ‘A kidney needs a good alcoholic lining to stand up under wear and tear. Schmeling was the victim of clean living. I dare say that if Louis or any other professional slasher dealt me such a blow that their hands would crumple from the impact.’ ”
As Ed began work on his third film in the fall of 1939, he wrote a long column about critics, detailing how scathing they could be and how wrong they often were. He gave myriad examples of their blunders and overly acid commentary:
“An Indianapolis poison-penner scored this direct hit on Tyrone Power in Jesse James: ‘Young Tyrone played his role as if Zanuck had been undecided to cast him or Shirley Temple in the part …’ A Kansas City assassin, with a grudge against Don Ameche, wrote: ‘Ameche, through eight reels, laughed and laughed while his audience endeavored with some difficulty to locate the reason for his merriment. This reviewer concludes Mr. Ameche’s laugh stems from sadism.’ ”
Ed himself was a critic of sorts, and he charitably included a Sullivan fumble.
“When Tobacco Road opened on Broadway, I remarked smugly that it would be fortunate to last out the week. It is still running.”
The point, of course, and one he wanted to convince himself of, was that past pans don’t prevent future success. After the dismal reviews of his first two films he certainly hoped that this was true as he started production on Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me, his new romantic comedy. Universal, for its part, appeared to have no great hopes. The studio funded the project but kept its investment to a minimum. Co-stars Tom Brown and Constance Moore were undistinguished contract players. Brown, who had been acting since his first silent film at age ten, had been typecast as the boy next door; he played fresh-faced Danny in Big Town Czar. Moore, previously a big band singer, recently scored a career high point in W.C. Fields’ 1939 comedy You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man; she would play lead in a string of B movies in the 1940s. Director Harold Schuster had been a film editor for most of his career, becoming a director just three years earlier. Scriptwriter Edmund Hartmann had churned out sixteen scripts in his four years as a screenwriter, one of which was Big Town Czar.
In Ed’s story, a fast-talking press agent schemes with an out-of-work chorus girl to publicize a clothing line. He dubs her “Miss Manhattan” and hires a young man to play “Mr. Manhattan,” staging a fake wedding for publicity. After a series of nutty stunts, the press agent realizes that he loves “Miss Manhattan” and he eventually proposes to her. All the while the young lady is equally fond of her press agent, as the movie’s tagline trumpeted: “When she saw him wink, her head said ‘NO’ … but her heart didn’t stop to think!” Interspersed with the general zaniness were musical numbers, most notably the title song.
When the movie opened on April 26, 1940, it was a clear flop. It’s likely that the daily headlines screaming of war in Europe dampened the reception to this frothy piece of cinematic cotton candy. But it might not have done well at any point. “This is the season for fashion shows, and that is about all you get with Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me,” pronounced The New York Times’ B.R. Crisler, calling it a “cut-rate, bargain-basement story” and “a limp and foolish little picture, inexcusable on any other grounds than as a chaser to follow the main picture.” Variety felt likewise, dismissing it as a “picture that’s deficient in every department, except implausibilities.” Worse yet, there was no box office success to offset the critical fusillade.
As the movie’s notice faded, so did Ed’s hopes for a film career. As he knew from his days on Port Chester’s baseball fields, three swings meant the batter was out. He felt his failure in movies deeply. Winchell had received huge offers from Hollywood for his story lines, Skolsky had appeared in a handful of pictures (and later produced The Eddie Cantor Story and The Jolson Story). Ed had produced nothing but a string of flops. His dream of moving to California to become a star had come to nothing. In truth, his Hollywood reporting had pushed his star far higher, yet that didn’t seem to matter to him. Fame was what he had come for, but as he had neared it, it had scurried from his grasp.
In the late spring of 1940 his sisters Helen and Mercedes took a train trip to Hollywood to visit Ed. The sisters were looking forward to a family reunion, but Ed was in a sour temper and in no mood to be the jovial host. His mind seemed elsewhere. After less than a week, Helen and Mercedes left for Yosemite. Ed was hurt by their departure, but the sisters wanted to enjoy their vacation.
His ulcer was acting up; he had developed an irritated stomach several years back that had grown steadily worse since moving to Hollywood. He made light of it in his column—reporting that a piece of baked halibut from the MGM commissary “swims upstream”—but it was a serious concern. At times he was completely incapacitated by intestinal pain, forced to spend a half day in bed at his doctor’s orders.
Although discouraged, he hadn’t completely given up on a film career. With his track record at Universal he knew he would find no interest there, but in June 1940 he sold a short to Warner Bros., Ed Sullivan’s Hollywood Revue. In November the studio released another short with a Sullivan story line, Alice in Movieland. But selling two preview pictures was a major step down from creating the story line for full-length features.
In his Daily News column, he had made no mention of any of his three features, not even as United Artists’ and Universal’s publicity machines were promoting the films with quarter-page newspapers ads in the News. (He did, however, toss positive column tidbits to their stars, writing a glowing laud for Frederic March.) Ed presumably didn’t want to further impress the News management that he was pursuing a second career while working for them.
But they noticed. By the premiere of his third film, the News management had grown restive with Sullivan’s Hollywood tenure. It became a replay of Sidney Skolsky three years earlier. Like Skolsky, Ed had used his column as an entree into a film career. And, as Ed had lobbied to replace Skolsky, now John Chapman, another News columnist, began lobbying to replace Sullivan. The News agreed. It was time for Ed to come home.
Sullivan and the News got into a tussle. He didn’t want to return to New York. Failing in films was bad enough; having to return to the Broadway beat after covering Hollywood was a big step backward. He had come to enjoy life on the Coast, particularly those almost-daily trips out to the Santa Anita racetrack, where he sometimes wrote his column. Several months earlier he had written a column entitled “The Typical Hollywood Male,” which described the many qualities of this mythic creature—and the portrait was close to a self-portrait. He is, wrote Ed, between thirty and forty years old, he is liberal, his wife likes Chinese or French food, he himself like an Eastern cut steak. He tends to lose when he bets on horses. Furthermore:
“Having come to Hollywood with a sense of superiority to the movies, he is alarmed deeply when he finds himself becoming convinced that the movies are a greater and more important medium than the stage which spawned him … Having come to California with a sneering attitude toward California’s climate, he finds himself perturbed by the fa
ct that the state has exercised its mellifluous charms … he never quite shakes off these reproaches; never is quite happy when he should be most happy … So he compromises; he squares his ambition and his reproaches by agreeing that he isn’t going back East because the California climate is better for his children.”
Ed dug in his heels in the summer of 1940. After being summoned back East, he fired off a wire to Daily News publisher Joseph Medill Patterson: he would not be returning to New York. Managing editor Frank Hause visited Sullivan in Hollywood in an effort to coax him back to Broadway. “I pointed out to the great Port Chester athlete the advantages of the Broadway beat, and the Daily News growth and prestige,” Hause later wrote. Whatever else he said, it must have been convincing. Hause soon sent a wire back to Patterson with Sullivan’s words: “I acted hastilly [sic]. Please ignore earlier telegram. Am returning New York.”
Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan Page 17