As the incident divided the city into warring factions, Winchell was forced to choose between supporting Baker and his loyalty to the Stork. He not only chose the Stork, he launched a broadside against Baker, printing a fifteen-year-old news item about her offer to recruit a black army for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Worse, he charged her with communist sympathies. Among the chattering classes, the conflict devolved into Winchell versus Baker, and, by extension, Winchell versus civil rights. This was the irony of the conflict: the powerful columnist had a strong civil rights record and often aided black causes.
In Ed’s view, Winchell’s entanglement in the Josephine Baker melee provided a welcome chink in the gossip’s armor. After Baker went on Barry Gray’s radio show to attack Winchell, Sullivan appeared on the program the following night to blast the columnist. Gray’s show broadcast from the front table of Chandler’s restaurant, and a standing room—only audience gathered to watch Sullivan denounce Winchell. “I thought a shameful thing had been done,” Ed said, claiming that Winchell had attempted to deny Baker’s fundamental right to protest. “I despise Walter Winchell because he symbolizes to me evil and treacherous things in the American setup.” Sullivan said that Winchell had launched a journalistic attack against Baker “recklessly and with great abandon … confident in his power and buoyed by the fact that no New York newspaper except one had taken this thing up, because they didn’t want to give him publicity on it.… I say he’s a megalomaniac and a dangerous one.”
Not satisfied, Ed appeared on Gray’s program a second time. “I don’t think that Winchell is a great American anymore,” he declaimed. “I think that something has happened to him. I don’t know what it is, but I think the effects of it are evil.” Some of this was far afield from the issue of racism, particularly the charge of megalomania. But Ed, while indulging his own longstanding grudge, gained extra currency by voicing a commonly held opinion of Winchell: his enormous power had no counterbalance. Most performers were afraid of him, as were an array of public figures in several walks of life. These otherwise influential people felt they had no recourse against the off-the-cuff judgments he rendered in his column and on his radio show. Ed knew he tapped a wellspring of tacit approval as he attacked Walter.
After Sullivan’s attack, Broadwayites waited for Winchell’s counterpunch. One Winchell associate urged the columnist to sue Sullivan for libel. But when a reporter for Time asked Winchell for comment, the normally vindictive columnist feigned indifference. “I didn’t hear what Sullivan said,” he claimed. “I do not want to engage in bouts with small-timers. I would rather hear what the president has to say about me.” In his column he remained curiously mum, going only so far as to print a poem by sportswriter Grantland Rice that ended, “They rarely ever knock a guy / Who doesn’t matter much.” This was a pulled punch by Winchell’s standards.
The rumored reason for Winchell’s quiet was that Sullivan held a weapon in reserve against his rival. According to Mario Lewis, it was a document “so devastating that Winchell knew he could never tangle with Sullivan publicly and survive.” Ed never confided to Marlo what the item was, saying only, “I’ve got it—and Walter knows I’ve got it. He also knows that I’ll never use it unless he tries to push me too far. That’s all I’m ever gonna say about it.” Winchell biographer Neal Gabler speculated that the document was a copy of Winchell’s divorce decree, the date of which may have shown that Winchell’s daughter was illegitimate.
Not long after the Baker affair, whenever Ed and Sylvia went to the Stork Club, Ed requested a table close to Table 50, Winchell’s roost. Ed would sit at a nearby table and glare at his foe. According to Broadway lore, one evening he and Sylvia were at the club with a young television production assistant who once worked for Winchell (and who referred to the experience as “the most miserable year of my life”). When Winchell got up to go to the bathroom, Sullivan, as if waiting for the moment, stood up, said, “Excuse me,” and walked down the hall after Walter. Sylvia panicked, knowing Ed’s volatile temper and knowing, too, that Winchell carried a pistol (he accompanied police on late evening calls). She hurriedly told the production assistant to follow them. The young man walked to the restroom and opened the outer door discreetly. He stood in the anteroom for a moment, listening, then slowly opened the second door. He claimed that he saw Sullivan holding Winchell’s head in a toilet bowl and flushing, continuously, with maniacal glee. Winchell, though it was hard to tell above the flushing roar, seemed to be sobbing. The young assistant watched for a moment, then quietly slipped out of the bathroom.
Whether the incident actually took place is unclear. The production assistant’s name is unknown and the story’s source is unverifiable, although by Sullivan’s own account he often took a table at the Stork that allowed him to glare at Winchell. But if the anecdote is invented, or exaggerated, it does contain a kernel of truth, in that it describes the changed relationship of the two men. After years of walking in Walter’s shadow, Ed, buoyed by a taste of success on television, was clearly ascendant. Walter, after two decades of supremacy, was faltering, and by the end of the decade would be sinking toward oblivion. Whether this emboldened Ed to the point where he stuck Walter’s head in a toilet is certainly possible—his jealous rage had long simmered—yet the story may be merely apocryphal.
The same combative spirit that fueled Ed’s feud with Walter Winchell also drove his approach to the 1951–52 television season. Like Winchell, Comedy Hour had outshone Sullivan, using its gargantuan budget to top his ratings. The question now was: how to compete against a far larger opponent?
In his first year against the NBC show, Sullivan realized that beating it on its own turf, the variety format, was unlikely. With Colgate-Palmolive’s deep-pocketed sponsorship, now grown to $3 million per year, Comedy Hour could always field a more compelling variety lineup than Toast of the Town. So in the 1951–52 season Ed took a new tack, in certain weeks dispensing with variety altogether. In its place he produced specials—hour-long biographies of entertainment icons, the first of their kind on television. He wrote the scripts for the programs, interviewing their stars and narrating the story line in each episode.
He kicked off the season with a two-part special dedicated to Broadway giant Oscar Hammerstein. Along with Hammerstein himself, Ed presented an ensemble of singers and dancers performing highlights from his work, such as Show Boat, Oklahoma, South Pacific, and Carousel. At the second evening’s dramatic high point, Hammerstein stood on a darkened stage in a pin spotlight, reciting the melancholy lyrics to his “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” accompanied by a small ensemble and Richard Rodgers on the piano.
Two weeks later, Ed presented a tribute to Helen Hayes. An acclaimed film star, the fifty-year-old actress was best known as the first lady of the American stage (when she died in 1993, the lights on Broadway were dimmed for one minute at eight P.M.). At the evening’s conclusion, Sullivan and Hayes chatted about her life, and the actress played the moment for high drama. She told the audience that when the final curtain came down on her, she hoped someone would shout—and here she quoted from Victoria Regina, one of her great stage triumphs—“Go it, old girl! You’ve done it well!” The studio audience members, many in tears knowing that Hayes had lost her daughter to polio not long before, thundered their approval.
The Hammerstein and Hayes specials boosted Sullivan’s Nielsen ratings, prompting him to keep interspersing specials with his usual variety format. Later that fall, he presented “The Robert Sherwood Story,” producing scenes from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright’s works; the stage crew built a life-size replica of a train’s rear platform as a set for Robert Massey’s portrayal of Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois. In early February, “The Bea Lillie Story” celebrated the Broadway comedienne, and later that month Sullivan’s version of George Whites Scandals recreated the lavish Broadway revue. Ed stretched “The Cole Porter Story” over two Sundays, presenting Porter himself and a cast of vocalists (including Roberta Pete
rs, the young Metropolitan Opera star he had just introduced to television) to reprise the tunesmith’s musicals. The 1951–52 season ended with a ratings blowout: “The Richard Rodgers Story.” Presented on two consecutive Sundays, it featured the composer himself in performances of his hits ranging from the 1920s-era Garrick Gaieties to the current The King and I, still in its debut run on Broadway.
Still, it wasn’t enough. Comedy Hour had culled its weak hosts in the previous season, so it now clicked like a well-honed entertainment machine. While Sullivan’s two-night version of “The Richard Rodgers Story” topped Comedy Hour evenings hosted by Eddie Cantor and Bob Hope, when Cantor or Hope hosted opposite Sullivan’s usual mixed bag, Ed saw his Nielsen numbers fall.
Toast of the Town’s budget at this point, according to Marlo Lewis, was $25,000 per show; Ed told The New York Times it was $15,000. Either Marlo was exaggerating or, more likely, Ed downplayed the number to help him negotiate with talent agents. But even the higher figure was dwarfed by the Comedy Hour’s weekly budget, which had levitated to the $100,000 range. The show was now the costliest on television. Due to the budget disparity, there were nights when Ed showcased mid level performers against true heavyweights. When he headlined Joe E. Lewis, a nightclub comic in late career, against audience magnet Bob Hope, his Nielsen rating was far outpaced by Comedy Hour’s, 49.3 to 24.3. When Ed presented film star Audrey Hepburn and vaudevillian Pearl Bailey against a Jerry Lewis-Dean Martin Comedy Hour, he lost the Nielsen battle by a still more lopsided margin: 56.6 to 24.5. Attempting a creative twist—perhaps inspired by the recent success of I Love Lucy—Ed booked Errol Flynn and Paulette Goddard to play a weekly comic sketch about a constantly nattering couple. But the aging screen idols couldn’t rise above lifeless scripts, and the effort did little for ratings.
Yet while Sullivan wasn’t winning the Nielsen contest, he was surely winning some grudging respect. That he could even stay in the ring with the slugger known as Comedy Hour—and sometimes win a round—earned him kudos throughout the TV industry. NBC head Pat Weaver, impressed by Sullivan’s specials, decided to start developing some of his own. Television critic Jack Gould lauded Ed for injecting new life into television with his specials, and commended him for the creativity behind the Flynn-Goddard experiment, though he noted it failed dreadfully. (And Gould, for the first time, referred to Sullivan as a producer rather than a host, judging him accordingly.) Ed was himself feeling bullish; Toast of the Town’s ratings made it a hit even as it trailed Comedy Hour. That winter he told The New York Times, “I am the best damned showman on television.… I really believe, immodestly, that I am a better showman and have better taste than most and have a better ‘feel’ as to what the public wants because of my newspaper experience. And I know quicker than anybody else on Sunday nights whether we have done a good performance or not.” Ed later tried to backpedal from the “best damn showman” boast, claiming it was taken out of context. But whatever the context, over the years it became clear the quote accurately reflected how he felt about his abilities.
Sullivan went into the 1952–53 season with ever-grander specials planned. For his proposed “The Sam Goldwyn Story” he met with the legendary film mogul and broke new ground. The studios were unequivocally opposed to television; scads of movie theaters across the country had shuttered since television invaded the living room. Consequently, many studios refused to let their movies be shown on the small screen—that would be helping the enemy. Ed, however, talked Goldwyn into the idea of using television to promote his films; TV could be an advertising vehicle for movies, he reasoned, not a competitive force. Goldwyn, impressed, gave him access to a large library of film clips. Not coincidentally, Ed chose clips that featured Bob Hope and Eddie Cantor, provoking protest from NBC—the network was unhappy to see Sullivan present Comedy Hour’s hosts on his show. But Ed paid no heed to the complaints. Sullivan as usual wrote and narrated the continuity to “The Sam Goldwyn Story,” from the early talkies through Laurence Olivier and Gary Cooper, bringing Goldwyn and his wife Frances onstage for a final bow.
After the success of the Goldwyn tribute, Ed frequently negotiated with the studios to show movie previews on Toast of the Town. Some of them Sullivan paid for; others were free promotion. The alliance created an unusual thawing of relations between Hollywood and television, as Ed helped turned television from a threat into a publicity conduit. Not that everything went well with Hollywood. Following the Goldwyn tribute, Ed planned a show dedicated to Cecil B. DeMille. But the legendary filmmaker, ever the egoist, insisted on narrating his tribute show himself, which the actors union wouldn’t allow—presumably he wasn’t a member—so the program never happened.
The most successful of all Ed’s specials was “The Walt Disney Story,” for which he flew to California in February and spent five days directing filming in the Disney studio. Ed was so excited about the show that he telegrammed President Eisenhower to ask him to record a testimonial for Disney, which the president declined. During the broadcast, Sullivan talked with the film producer about his career, interspersing their conversation with behind-the-scenes footage of the animator’s magic and clips from films like 1950’s Cinderella and 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Ed talked about traveling through Europe and being amazed at the popularity of Disney films there. “After the war, people were hungry for something to believe in, and they could always find this in a Disney picture,” he told the audience. Garnering a whopping 63.4 Trendex rating, the evening was the season’s second-highest-rated Sullivan show, topping any of the year’s Comedy Hour shows, except those hosted by Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin (almost nothing topped Jerry and Dino). Disney, happy with the resulting publicity, hand drew a caricature of Sullivan as a thank-you gift.
The ratings spike produced by the Disney story and Sullivan’s other lavishly produced tribute hours was only part of their value. In addition to being television shows they were news events, as the nascent medium expanded before viewers’ eyes. Newspapers gave Sullivan reams of free publicity for his tribute programs. And no special generated as many headlines as “The Josh Logan Story.”
For Ed’s tribute to the famed Broadway director and writer, he took a risk with controversial material. Much of the evening consisted of live performances from plays like Mr. Roberts and Picnic, with Logan directing an ensemble that included Jimmy Stewart and a still-little-known Paul Newman. During rehearsal, Logan had made a special request: would Ed allow him to talk about his battle with mental illness, how he had suffered from depression and been hospitalized, and how such an ordeal could be conquered? His goal was to break the taboos surrounding mental illness.
Ed discouraged him, fearing the reaction to talk of mental illness, and Logan conceded. But during the broadcast, Sullivan came across Logan backstage looking despondent. The showman asked the director if he still wanted to tell his personal story, and Logan said yes. “Ed was terrified of CBS’s reaction,” Logan recalled. “But he took a chance with me.” Ed abruptly changed the show’s running order to allow time for Logan’s speech. The director went onstage and described, in very personal terms, the history of his mental breakdown, hospitalization, and subsequent recovery. He urged people to view mental illness as a disease that could be treated, not a moral failing. When he stopped speaking, the studio sat in stunned silence—and then broke into a torrent of applause. CBS received a small mountain of appreciative letters.
Ed himself received a letter from a judge on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Justice Michael A. Musmanno (well-known for presiding over the Nuremberg trials), who wrote to say that seeing Josh Logan speak on Toast of the Town influenced one of his recent court decisions. A local woman had been briefly confined in a mental institution, after which she experienced a full recovery. But during her stay her husband took permanent custody of their children, which she contested in court. Justice Musmanno ruled, in part based on Logan’s story of overcoming mental illness, that confinement in a mental institution does not nullif
y a parent’s rights if that individual can medically certify his or her recovery.
At a later date, Ed recounted the Logan story while speaking to a civic organization in Oklahoma (he accepted countless such invitations). After his talk, the director of a mental health program told Sullivan that the day after Logan’s appearance, his state budget director increased his appropriation due to the star’s emotional appeal. Such was the power of this new medium. In the late 1960s, Ed pointed to the Logan episode as one of the show’s peak moments.
Comedy Hour still led Toast of the Town in overall ratings during the 1952–53 season, yet the balance was starting to shift. While in the fall of 1951 the average Trendex rating for Comedy Hour topped that of Toast of the Town by a comfortable margin, 32.6 to 21.9, by the spring of 1953 that margin had narrowed to 31.3 to 24.7. Comedy Hour’s slip was small, yet that slippage revealed a larger trend. Eddie Cantor suffered a heart attack after a 1952 Comedy Hour performance, and the following season the sixty-one-year-old declared he would quit. The program’s younger hosts were feeling the strain as well. By the 1953–54 season, Comedy Hour’s annual budget ballooned to $6 million. In return, Colgate-Palmolive wanted only the biggest names to host. But the top tier, notably Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin—now making $1,000,000 a year from the program—were hard-pressed to keep their routines fresh during months of broadcasts. They weren’t alone. A man in Long Island, New York, after yet another Abbot and Costello Comedy Hour without new material, shot his television set. (The resultant publicity earned him an appearance on the game show Strike It Rich, where he won a new set.) What had once glittered now began to appear lackluster.
Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan Page 27