The decision made, Sullivan moved quickly. In early July, Ed, Sylvia, and Betty boarded the Chief—the same train they had traveled out on—to move back to New York. Nine-year-old Betty was truly disconsolate at leaving. It wasn’t Hollywood she missed; Ed had introduced her to Shirley Temple and she found the experience less than thrilling. It was having her own house and yard she so loved, and the freedom to play outside whenever she wanted, unlike being cooped up in a New York apartment. “I was heartbroken,” she said. “I remember pulling out of Union Station, and saying to my parents, ‘Are we coming back, when are we coming back?’ ” Ed, clearly, was no happier than his young daughter at having to return to New York.
He had written a column in late 1938 about winning and losing, and how losing had to be kept in perspective. It was part of a series he called “Listen, Kids,” in which he gave advice about life to “youngsters,” as he called them. (That he sometimes addressed his Hollywood gossip column to children was an oddity, but he saw his audience as all-inclusive.)
“Don’t place too great an emphasis on defeat, and don’t yield to the American habit of overemphasizing victory, because one is no more important than the other,” he advised, noting that Warner Bros. had fired Clark Gable and Universal had fired Bette Davis. Considering his funk at having failed at films, he probably needed his own advice during the trip east. The scores from victories and defeats, he noted, are not written in indelible ink. “Through life, you’ll encounter your share of both of them, and you’ll find that defeats are really the prep school of victories.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The War Years
New York was miserable in July of 1940. As Ed returned to the Broadway beat late that month, a four-day heat wave hit the city, engulfing the canyons of Manhattan in an oppressive blanket of humidity. So many overheated people thronged to Jones Beach that authorities had to close roads leading to the shoreline. Although America was not yet at war, the headlines made it feel that way. In June the Nazis had overrun France, and each day’s newspaper blared the grim developments in bold, oversized type. Dark times lay ahead. Furthermore, the economic hardship of the Depression, though only a wan shadow of its former self, meant New Yorkers were still far from flush.
Ed’s mood mirrored the city’s funk. In the debut of his relaunched Broadway column, now dubbed Little Old New York, he portrayed his move back to the city as his fondest wish. “When I asked the boss to transfer me to New York, he wanted to know the reason and I told him that after all, this was my city, where I’d been born and lived … No city ever has been so kind to me,” he claimed, disingenuously. Having no news, he riffed through his twelve-hundred-word column, explaining that this time around his beat would be bigger than Broadway, it would encompass the city in its entirety. “No one will be too big or too small to get entree to this column … through these portals will pass the most beautiful and the least lovely characters of Baghdad-on-the-Subway: the only ticket of admission they’ll need to this daily vaudeville show, two columns wide, will be a common denominator of interest to all of us.”
But his frustration that summer spoke large between the lines. Because he wrote five pieces a week his column had always been a diary of sorts, no matter how happy a face he attempted. In early August, Ed’s replacement on the Hollywood beat, John Chapman, was writing about the joys of Beverly Hills and the hot news from Hal Roach Studios (where Ed, had his collaboration with Roach not been a failure, might now be a hitmaker). Seemingly in response, Ed devoted a column to fallen stars of all kinds, individuals who had risen high only to see their dreams dashed. Joe Helbock, onetime owner of the Onyx Club, was now a bartender at Ben Marden’s Riviera. Rube Marquard, once a pitcher for the Giants, was now a pari-mutuel ticket seller. However, Ed reported, these frustrated dreamers were gamely coping. “Instead of sitting in the corner and moping about the injustice of the current setup, they’ve adapted themselves to the changed conditions and altered circumstances and are working it out the hard way.”
Indeed he would not sit in the corner. If he could not be a film star, then he would throw himself into emceeing and stage producing with more passion than ever before. He moved his family into the Hotel Astor in midtown Manhattan so he could be across the street from Loew’s State Theatre, on Broadway and 45th Street. He seemed unaware that the unsavory center of New York’s theater district was no place to raise a child. The Depression had stripped the luster from the city’s once-glorious core, and a cadre of sleazy burlesque houses was taking over the neighborhood. The Times Square area was on a downward slide that, by the 1950s, would make it a haven for drug dealing and prostitution. The neighborhood was full of seedy types, and ten-year-old Betty sometimes had to step around drunks to get to school. “It was a terrible place for a young kid to be,” she recalled.
But Ed felt compelled to be close to the theater. His Daily News salary was more than sufficient to live in a nicer neighborhood, but Loew’s State drew him like a moth to a flame. It was where he wanted to spend most of his days and nights. Not that this seemed to afford him any great joy. His ulcer was giving him hell; the family’s small suite had no refrigerator so he kept a carton of milk on the windowsill for his frequent nocturnal battles with stomach pain.
By the end of August, Ed mounted a new variety revue at Loew’s State. As before, his stage show was updated vaudeville. Providing a contemporary feel were the recent Harvest Moon Ball winners, swing dancers who juked and jived to Big Band music; harking back to vaudeville’s roots was Dave Vine, a Jewish dialect comic. Also on the bill were vocalist Luba Malina, singing Spanish tunes (the fashion that year favored all things South American), and the Paul Remos acrobats, tumbling and twirling. As always, Ed was both emcee and producer. He “headlined” the show as its emcee, with his name in block letters on the marquee, yet his more important role was shaping the program. He chose the acts and determined their order, creating the pace and feel of the show, standing just offstage to gauge audience response, making adjustments based on his instinct. Judging from ticket sales, he had a knack for this; his first show was held over into September and Loew’s State management gave him an open invitation to produce more.
But he didn’t want to be there. He couldn’t get over his desire to live on the West Coast, and Hollywood kept calling to him like a song he couldn’t get out of his mind. In mid November, Ed made a surprise announcement: He was leaving the Daily News to take a job as the editor for the Hollywood Reporter, a film industry trade paper. In addition to being its editor he would write some of its movie reviews, making him a Hollywood tastemaker. He had also arranged with his current syndicator, the Chicago Tribune—New York News Syndicate, to write a feature every Sunday about screen stars. He gave his two-week notice to the News; his last day at the paper would be December 2, after which he would move back to Hollywood.
News publisher Joseph Medill Patterson was on a Florida fishing trip with his wife that week. But on November 16 he interrupted his vacation to telegram a paternal appeal to his star columnist: “If you can better yourself permanently, I would not wish to stand in your way. Mary [Patterson] suggests your health might be involved and that, of course, is a matter you know best. But I want to make it clear I consider you one of our best men and that, rebus sic stantibus [as matters stand], you can stay with us as long as you want.”
That was a seductive offer. Ed had navigated the choppy seas of newspaper job-hopping in his twenties; reporter-editor posts tended to come and go, but his Daily News column had the feeling of permanency. Patterson made it clear: if you stay with us you have job security. So he made his decision: he would forego his dreams of Hollywood for the stability of the News. Ed explained his change of heart to reporters by saying that he was staying at the News “because of his high regard for Captain Patterson.” The telegram from Patterson, in fact, became a prize possession he dug out when the slings and arrows of his columnist’s life became too much.
Like it or not, he was now a New York
er again. He was home for good.
Crazy with the Heat appeared to be a doomed Broadway show when it opened in January 1941. The two-act revue rambled through an ill-fitting medley of comedy and dance routines, guided by a mere wisp of a story line. In theory, the show had been improved by revisions in smaller cities before opening in New York, but its Broadway premiere still presented a work in progress. Produced and directed by Kurt Kasznar, a twenty-seven-year-old Viennese actor, the production survived a scant seven performances before closing. A phalanx of uniformly negative reviews turned it into an instant money pit for its investors.
For Ed, the failed show offered an opportunity to become a Broadway producer. He decided to take over the show, revamp it, and then relaunch it. Entering into negotiations with the show’s various parties, he convinced the theater owner to host it with no additional rent payments, and won concessions from the Actors Equity Association and Musicians Local 802. After raising $20,000, he reshaped the production, pruning and adding based on critics’ reviews and his own stage sense. He added a pair of ballroom dancers, Mary Raye and Naldi, who were considered the city’s finest; vocalist Carlos Ramirez parodied an excerpt from the opera Figaro; comedian-pianist Victor Borge goofed through a comic turn; a black tap-dance team, Tip, Tap & Toe, soft-shoed in both acts; Betty Kean tap-danced and told jokes; original stars Willie Howard and Louella Gear provided the show’s thin continuity in a series of comic sketches; and songwriter Lew Brown helped with the music direction. As Ed described it, “We are taking the constructive criticism offered by the critics … and are going ahead with a $3.30 top.” Although the show had just closed on January 18, he had it ready for its second debut on January 30.
The critical response, though still not enthusiastic, was markedly better. “Being a person of unusual compassion, Ed Sullivan, the celebrated columnist, hated to see all the good things go to waste in Crazy with the Heat, which succumbed to prostration nearly a fortnight ago,” wrote The New York Times’ Brooks Atkinson. “With the assistance of Lew Brown, songwriter and beer jongleur, he revived it last evening at the Forty-forth Street Theatre in an improved condition.” Atkinson noted, however, that the show still lacked the material for a first-rate revue, and audiences agreed. Crazy with the Heat ran just ninety-two performances. Still, after it closed on Broadway, Ed revised it again, booking a pared-down version into Loew’s State, where he gave it a lengthy run. With its odd melange of fast-moving acts the show was better fit for vaudeville than Broadway.
As the show was running, so was the rumor mill. Ed, or so some said, was having an affair with one of its actresses. Who the actress was remains unclear because Ed maintained discretion, whatever the extent of the dalliance. Yet knowledge of the affair seemed widespread. In 1941, Walter Winchell began a very public romance with Mary Lou Bentley, a leggy twenty-year-old showgirl. All Broadway columnists followed an unwritten rule that prohibited the reporting of affairs involving anyone who was married, as was Winchell, unless they were clearly separated from their spouse. A blind item was permissible but naming the participants was forbidden (and the Daily News’ editorial policy also forbade it). But Ed, always envious of Walter, tried to include an item about Winchell and Bentley. After News editor Dick Clark deleted it, Ed ran into his office screaming, wanting it put back in before publication. Clark calmly explained to the columnist that if the item ran, Winchell would take revenge by printing bits about Sullivan’s own affairs. Ed decided it was best to let the matter drop.
Whatever romance Ed may have been having during Crazy with the Heat’s run on Broadway, it must have been on-again, off-again; he flew down to Miami Beach that winter for his first of many annual two-week press junkets. Perks for columnists were numerous but this all-expense-paid trip was one of the dearest. Ed stayed in a lavish penthouse suite and the staff feted him like royalty. “By day a columnist surveys the trimly proportioned misses lounging around the beach or around the pools; by night he sits at ringside tables of Florida clubs and is entertained by the cream of the performers,” he reported. In exchange he wrote glowing reports about the joys of Miami tourism, though he noted that the city suffered a severe crime problem. He could be influenced, but, his caveat seemed to say, he could not be bought.
Soon after the Eastern Airlines Douglas airliner returned him to New York, he began laying the groundwork for another radio program. Producing stage shows was lucrative, but true fame required getting inside the living room radio; the most successful stage performers resembled mere understudies next to broadcast stars. Debuting on April 27 on WABC, the new program was a weekly talk show, every Sunday night at 6 P.M. As the headliner, Ed alternated between interviewing guests and sprinkling celebrity pixie dust, offering an insider’s glimpse into Broadway and Hollywood by reprising his column.
Accompanying him were drummer-comedian Ray McKinley and vocalist Terry Allen, with Will Bradley’s orchestra vamping swing music. Sponsored by the International Silver Company, the show was titled Summer Silver Theater. The network clearly viewed the thirty-minute program as a seasonal replacement for its serial radio drama, but with luck—in the form of high ratings—the show would earn its own time slot when fall arrived. To boost ratings, Ed used his column’s influence to cajole appearances by some big names, like Eddie Cantor and bandleader Tommy Dorsey, though most of the guests were only modestly known.
Throughout the summer, Ed’s radio program, vaudeville shows at Loew’s State, and daily column became a circular path for performers. Once the showman-columnist invited them in he could circulate them between the three. That a singer had performed at Loew’s State gave him reason to tout him or her in his column; once the singer appeared on his radio show, he or she could be introduced at Loew’s State as having just been on the air. In the early summer, Gertrude Niesen, a popular big band chanteuse, performed in his Loew’s State show, sang on his radio program, and enjoyed plugs in his column. It was his own one-man show business circuit, a revolving platform for singers and comics, a cross-venue promotional device placing the name Ed Sullivan front and center in print, on marquees, and over the airwaves.
For a short time, that is. On September 28 the radio show saw its last broadcast. True to the original schedule, Sullivan’s program proved to be simply a summer replacement. Huge listener interest, of course, would have won it another spot, but that hadn’t materialized. Ed’s latest attempt to launch a broadcast career lasted slightly longer than five months.
Toward the end of the year it finally happened. After long and rancorous national debate about whether to intervene, and years of anxious anticipation, events forced a decision. On December 8, 1941, the Daily News reported the previous day’s carnage in type so large that only three words fit on the front page: JAPS BOMB HAWAII.
Although Ed, a forty-year-old family man, wasn’t going to don a uniform, he threw himself into the war effort as if he had. As his age had kept him from the first war it also kept him from this one, yet he was as eager to take part now as when he ran away to join the Marines at age sixteen. The News had been isolationist, and Ed had nominally echoed this. As late as February 1941 he dashed off column asides like, “At any continental dinner party Uncle Sam always gets stuck with the check.” But with the attack he was ready. That June, six months before Pearl Harbor, he volunteered to be an air-raid warden, part of the city’s new civil defense plan; in the event of German attack each district’s air-raid warden would coordinate its response. Ed signed up the first day the program was announced. (And he wasn’t alone in his enthusiasm. “Chinese, Italians, Germans, Jews, and Irish all appeared to respond,” reported The New York Times.) And in May he had joined Irving Berlin, the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, and others at the Greek Festival for Freedom, a fund-raiser for the Greek war-relief effort.
Suddenly, life moved faster. Slapped awake by Pearl Harbor, New York no longer slogged along in its late Depression funk. One month after the attack, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia declared a six-day work week for city employees, an
d the city’s nightlife, as if responding in kind, also sprang to life. “Nightclubs did a terrific business starting Friday night … All joints jammed,” Ed reported in January. The Copacabana started including table maps showing all fire exits, and the Stork’s receipts soon leaped by more than thirty percent. But as fast as the city would spin, Ed would spin still faster.
His primary battle had always been his career, his indefatigable effort to push his star higher. The war, and indeed nothing, would ever interrupt this. But the war required him to redouble himself, because he would also be needed—and would answer the call eagerly—for war benefit drives, hospital shows, and a plethora of fund-raising personal appearances.
In the few short months before war rallies became a steady drumbeat, Ed launched his second Broadway show, this one an all-black production in partnership with Noble Sissle. A fifty-one-year-old composer and bandleader, Sissle cowrote the hit “It’s Your Fault” with pianist Eubie Blake, and would win a posthumous Tony Award for Best Original Score in 1979 for the Broadway musical Eubie. When Ed began their collaboration, Sissle’s orchestra was the house band for Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe club, a fashionable Manhattan nightspot.
Sullivan, as producer and codirector, and Sissle, as codirector and performer, conceived of a rollicking, high-energy revue. They recruited the stars of black vaudeville: Moke and Poke, the 5 Crackerjacks, the Harlemaniacs, Pops and Louie, and several others, with Sissle himself performing two numbers. In a nod to the headlines, some of the vocalists dressed as air-raid wardens, and a sketch portrayed a young man grappling with a draft questionnaire. Opening at Broadway’s Ritz Theater in May 1942, Harlem Cavalcade offered a fresh twist on Ed’s variety shows. The production presented vaudeville as practiced above 125th Street, in the neighborhood to which the show paid homage.
Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan Page 18