Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan

by James Maguire

  Most compellingly for Ed, these impressionists appealed to his long-held hunger for renown. Being mimicked in front of a national audience meant the entire country knew who he was, and presumably, if the audience was laughing, felt some fondness for him. Bogart was imitated, Cagney was imitated, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart were imitated. For Ed to be mimicked in comics’ routines in 1953 meant he had been inducted into the glorious crowd he had always aspired to join. Will Jordan’s first tentative shoulder hunch was, provisionally, the start of Sullivan’s iconic status. This was fame. This, as much as anything, was what he had always wanted.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Stardom

  EVERY SUNDAY AT THE MAXINE ELLIOT THEATER a furious burst of activity began sometime around 7:00 A.M. With that evening’s broadcast looming, Sullivan staffers hustled with intense focus. Handling myriad tasks was a team of young secretaries who worked all day long on Saturday and Sunday. One, having met with that evening’s singers to get their exact lyrics—the album version couldn’t be trusted—transcribed all the words. She gave the lyrics to director Johnny Wray, who planned camera angles to accent the singer’s words; with just three cameras his choices were limited, yet Wray conceived of new shots for each verse. Another secretary, who maintained the show’s master script, typed and distributed copies to the production staff; this was revised and redistributed constantly. Throughout the morning, Marlo Lewis worked with set designer Grover Cole to plan the logistics of moving sets on- and offstage quickly; everything had to be assembled during commercial breaks.

  When Ed arrived in the early afternoon, carrying that evening’s suit over his shoulder, all action began revolving around him. Stowing his suit in his dressing room, he picked up a pencil and an unlined notepad and started preparing for the 4:00 P.M. rehearsal. On his notepad were instructions about virtually every aspect of the show. Some of the notes were for Marlo or the director, but most were for that evening’s performers. Comedians new to the show were required to audition in his Delmonico apartment, so his notepad contained edits for their routines. He wrote suggestions for animal or acrobatic acts and ideas for singers, and he frequently issued orders to cover a female guest’s cleavage—Ed forbade cleavage, not wanting to offer prurient fare to a family audience. (After viewers wrote to complain, he told the staff to keep yards of tulle for inventive cover-ups.) Additionally, Sullivan used his notepad to write his brief introductions, rewriting them four or five times, then dictating them to a secretary who copied them to the master script.

  The heightened energy that the crew buzzed with on Sunday was a kind of happiness, as many recalled. Creating the show carried a very real excitement. Although they worked at least a twelve-hour day there was no complaint—most felt honored to be there. The staffers were always nicely dressed; Ed expected it. None of them were seen on camera, yet in his view the television studio was no place for casual dress.

  Ed himself, depending on his mood, might be intense and focused, or moody and sour, or—if the ratings were trending upward—lighthearted enough to indulge a mischievous sense of humor. During one rehearsal he was headed out for a short break and asked a secretary if she wanted anything. Tongue-in-cheek, she requested a scotch and water; Ed brought her back a small container full of scotch.

  As Sullivan continued to call out instructions and write notes on his pad, the master script was amended. If he made last-minute changes, as he often did, there wouldn’t be enough time to retype it before broadcast. The secretary then resorted to putting small pieces of tape with Ed’s comments over the original master, hurriedly copying it on a ditto machine, then rushing around the theater to redistribute it. She sometimes found herself at the ditto machine ten minutes before broadcast.

  On certain evenings, Ed even made changes during the show. If his instinct told him the program was dragging, he suddenly reshuffled the running order during a commercial break, moving up a musician or a comic to provide extra spark. This prompted panic backstage, as stagehands scrambled to move sets or reposition animal acts, and production assistants told performers their timing needed to be adjusted. Even if Sullivan didn’t scramble the running order in mid broadcast, timing shifts during the hour often meant performers were told to shorten or lengthen their routine just minutes before going on live.

  This would remain true throughout the life of the show; as many programs shifted to taped broadcasts in the 1960s, the Sullivan show stayed live. Comedian George Carlin, a regular in the 1960s, recalled that playing the show was like performing without a net. “The thing I remember most about The Ed Sullivan Show was the great fear I had going over there from the hotel with my garment bag … walking over there was ritualistic on a Sunday afternoon before dress rehearsal. I would stop at a little deli store and buy a couple of cans of Rheingold beer. I’d take them up to my dressing room and they took the edge off.” The jitters came from two factors: “First of all, it was live, which produces a certain higher nervousness quotient than something that can be done over.” Additionally, “The Sullivan staff was notorious for coming to you during the air show and saying, ‘the monkey skated too much, and you have to give us back thirty seconds or a minute.’ The problem for me was, I didn’t do things that were chopped up into segments, I did things that had a thread, so that made it all the more panicky.”

  At 4 P.M. Ed ran a full dress rehearsal. That evening’s show played from beginning to end without stop, including the showman’s introductions. Even the commercials were played, with a staffer timing all the segments with a stopwatch. Sullivan brought in a live audience and their applause, in theory, made the timing more accurate. Before rehearsal began, Ed walked onstage and bantered with the crowd, asking people where they were from, cracking a few jokes to warm them up. As the dress rehearsal ran, he stood just offstage, watching on a television monitor, making more notes. Comedian Jack Carter recalled that Ed sometimes stood right onstage, which confused the audience because they also watched Sullivan. Since he was invariably deadpan during a comic’s performance, getting a laugh became that much harder.

  However reliable the rehearsal audience’s response was, Ed read it as he had read the reactions of countless audiences at his Loew’s State vaudeville shows, using his sense of the crowd to write still more notes. As the run-through ended he asked the audience for comments and many were shouted out, after which the crowd was ushered out. That evening’s show was seen by a fresh audience.

  Displaying his sentimental side, Ed invited Johnny Dundee to dress rehearsals. The onetime boxing champion, who had shown Ed around New York when he was a cub reporter, and who had been best man at Sullivan’s wedding, was nearly destitute by the 1950s. Ed reserved seats for the boxer and his daughter Lucille, and instructed the staff to treat them as guests of honor. After the afternoon rehearsal, Ed invited Johnny, now a wizened old man who was nearly blind, up onstage. After Lucille helped him up, Ed asked, “What did you think of the show, Johnny?” In his gravelly whiskey voice, Dundee invariably said something like, “I liked it Ed, I really liked it.” Ed prompted him for suggestions, and after Dundee gave his comments Ed opened his wallet and put cash in Johnny’s hand as payment for his advice. Sullivan sent Dundee a weekly check for the remainder of the boxer’s life.

  After rehearsal, Ed used his notes to take the show apart and put it back together again. First, the bad news: not infrequently, he canceled a performer’s appearance. Ed likely booked that entertainer because he or she was a proven crowd pleaser. Yet if he felt the performer wasn’t going to delight his viewers on that particular evening, he cut them without hesitation—just hours before showtime. Marlo Lewis had the unenviable task of informing the performer’s agent that their client’s moment of national television exposure was being nixed.

  After Ed’s cuts, he reshuffled the running order to provide the balance he had envisioned when he booked the show. The front of the program might need more humor, or, if he had just cut an act, he allowed a singer a second song. Negotiations we
re begun with comics. If their routines contained material that Ed didn’t like or understand, or he felt was too blue or too long, he directed edits. But, the comics would retort, that joke leads to the next; I can’t change one joke without changing my whole routine. Back and forth Sullivan and the comic would go, hashing out the act bit by bit. Sometimes Ed gave in and sometimes he demanded changes outright, depending on several variables: his mood, the comic’s level of fame—major stars got hands-off treatment—and the show’s running time. Many comics complained bitterly about the showman’s changes. Comedienne Phyllis Diller, a Sullivan show staple in later years, once quit in disgust after she felt her act had been decimated. “He knew nothing about comedy,” Diller said, echoing an opinion voiced by several comics. (On the other hand, Diller, like many performers who were grateful for the career boost, said, “I have Ed Sullivan to thank.”)

  Altering animal acts presented a special challenge because the chimps, tigers, bears, and horses knew their routine by rote. Nevertheless, Ed demanded edits. On numerous Sundays, Sullivan told an animal trainer to trim his act by two minutes, only to get a response like, “How am I going to explain that to the lion?” In one rehearsal an elephant trainer, after Ed insisted he cut two tricks in the middle, replied, “If you can do it, I’ll give you whole damn act,” then shoved the elephant prod at the showman. “Take this too, I’m sure you’ll know what to do with it.”

  Singers sometimes offered similar resistance. He had a last-minute showdown with opera star Maria Callas, who decided she wouldn’t render her famed aria from Tosca—the very aria for which Ed had booked her. With Callas on the eve of a much-anticipated Metropolitan Opera performance, Sullivan sought to garner headlines by presenting her first on Toast of the Town. But, she announced in rehearsal, she had decided to save Tosca for the Met; this evening she would sing an alternative. The production crew demurred, knowing Sullivan expected Tosca, but the diva was firm—the answer was no. Finally Ed issued an ultimatum: either you sing Tosca or you’re off the show. Callas argued and threatened a legal suit, and then, that evening, delivered her glorious Tosca. (The eighteen-minute scene from the Puccini opera proved a ratings disaster, so Ed, committed to a series of four opera performances, edited furiously. The last segment, a lengthy duet from La Bohème, was slashed to four minutes.)

  By the end of Sunday’s rehearsal, a list of acts on paper had been shaped into a show enjoyed by tens of millions of people. Sullivan’s formula, he explained, was based on creating a program to appeal to a group he described as the four dominant women in his life: his mother, his older sister Helen, his wife Sylvia, and his daughter Betty. To whatever extent this was his guiding principle, certainly Ed’s connection to his viewers was a big part of his success. Although he made plenty of booking mistakes, he rarely needed to guess his audience’s response. He wasn’t apart from them; he was them. If he understood and liked an act, they would; if he didn’t, his audience probably wouldn’t either. “He sure had his finger on the pulse of the country,” recalled comedienne Carol Burnett, who first appeared on Sullivan’s show in 1957.

  In later years, advertising firms began using focus groups to determine mass taste. Ed would have had no need for these groups, even if they had been available. In the mid 1950s the response of a roomful of average Americans would have been all but identical to his own. Like them, he was square, and that was something to be proud of, not uncomfortable with. He was a square, however, who had lived in the entertainment business for twenty-five years, providing him with an unparalleled education. Most importantly for his current job, his decades spent hobnobbing with New York and Hollywood performers hadn’t removed his small-town Port Chester roots. While his success meant he looked at life from an eleventh-floor suite overlooking Park Avenue, he still saw the world with the same eyes as his audience.

  Shortly before showtime he again walked onstage to warm up the crowd. Having taken control of every aspect of the program, he would now browbeat even the audience into playing their role properly. One evening in the mid 1950s, a reporter from Time magazine recorded the scene:

  “Again he leans into a gale of applause. ‘How are you all?’ he asks. ‘How many are here from out of town?’ He recoils from the forest of hands, crying, ‘Wow! New Yorkers can’t even get seats!’ He waggles a finger at his people onstage. ‘Heads will roll.’ The audience loves it. Ed continues: ‘Everybody in this audience is duty bound to be happy. So look happy!’ They do. ‘In thirty seconds Art Hannes is going to introduce me and he will be absolutely astonished that I showed up. They didn’t think Old Smiley would do it!’ ”

  In November 1954, Sonny Werblin paid a visit to Bill Paley. It wasn’t often that the MCA talent agency’s New York president visited the head of CBS. Werblin relegated most of the in-the-trenches negotiations work for individual performers to his underlings. He handled only the agency’s biggest clients. But the MCA president knew a lucrative deal when he saw one. Sullivan’s five-year contract would expire the following year, and it was time to lay new ink to paper.

  A recent development gave Sullivan greater leverage. Raising eyebrows across the industry, NBC had made him an offer, attempting to lure him away from CBS. Just a few years earlier this would have been unthinkable, but something unthinkable had happened. While Comedy Hour had topped Sullivan in the overall yearly ratings for the last four seasons, his show won enough weeks to stay near the top, and had steadily gained on its NBC rival. Now in the fall of 1954, Sullivan was besting it week after week—at a fraction of the cost. With his updated vaudeville format and an annual budget of about $2 million, he was embarrassing a show hosted by the biggest names in show business pulling down in excess of $6 million in talent fees. Comedy Hour’s sponsor, Colgate-Palmolive, was growing disenchanted. In response, NBC attempted a novel solution: couldn’t we just hire Sullivan?

  Ed had slain the Comedy Hour dragon at just the right time. His contract would expire as his show was overtaking the most expensive program in the industry. Werblin knew it, Sullivan knew it, and Paley was forced to acknowledge it. So Ed, with the help of his lawyer Arnold Grant, and with negotiations led by Werblin, struck a deal.

  In contrast to his last contract, this agreement—drafted by Werblin—treated Sullivan like a star. Its language fairly gushed. Stating that Ed had “built and maintained an outstanding reputation” as a “master of ceremonies, performing artist, and producer,” it continued, “Whereas, CBS Television is anxious to have Artist’s active services for as long a term as possible and to immobilize Artist as a competitor for as long a term as possible.…” To secure those long-term services, the contract stretched as far as the eye could see, no less than twenty years. CBS, having considered selling the show to advertisers without him just a few years before, now never wanted to let him go. Ironically, it was the executive who had offered the show to sponsors “with or without” Sullivan, Jack Van Volkenburg, who sent Ed a letter formally accepting the new terms. “I just want you to know how happy we all are at completing arrangements for our long-term marriage,” Van Volkenburg enthused.

  For the contract’s first seven years, his salary would be $176,000 a year; for the following thirteen years, the network guaranteed him $100,000 a year regardless of whether he produced a show, as long as he didn’t work for a competing network. He was given an expense account and eight weeks of vacation. Ed also negotiated an increase for Marlo Lewis, up to $1,000 a week.

  The following fall, the show’s weekly production budget would increase to $50,000. About $24,000 of that was specified as talent budget, which Sullivan could juggle between weeks, spending more on one week and then producing a less-expensive show the following week.

  Werblin did particularly well in the deal. Sullivan’s contract with MCA stipulated that the agency would receive ten percent of all his earnings from radio and television “for the duration of your life.” Additionally, the agency would receive $3,500 from the show’s weekly $50,000 production budget.

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nbsp; Ed happily told reporters about his new contract, so its details were soon widely reported, even down to the salary difference between the first seven years and the following thirteen. As industry observers realized that CBS had offered him a twenty-year contract, the news was clear: Sullivan had made it.

  Apart from the money, the showman made one major demand: the program had to be renamed The Ed Sullivan Show. It would finish the 1954–55 season as Toast of the Town and adopt the new name with the start of next fall’s season.

  The contract was everything he had ever wanted. In contrast to his many failed radio shows, he now had a lock on a major broadcast berth—signed after two networks engaged in a bidding war for his services. Most importantly, at age fifty-three he was set to place his name in lights above a top-rated national television show.

  Negotiations completed, and the alliance with Werblin formalized, Ed set out to finish off the Comedy Hour. But first he had a score to settle. During Sunday rehearsals, talent agents had always roamed the theater freely, watching their star clients perform, kvetching backstage, and socializing with the crew. But no more. In Ed’s view, they had taken advantage of him, so he now forced a petty indignity on them. Henceforth they were denied access to the theater; if they wanted to talk with their clients on Sunday they had to wait in a cramped, uncomfortable area outside the stage door. MCA agent Marty Kummer nicknamed the area “The Wailing Wall,” because performers cried or cursed there after hearing of Ed’s changes or cancellations.

  The agents hated having to wait outside, and many “prayed that Sullivan dropped dead,” Marlo Lewis recalled. Years later, Sullivan claimed that he laid down this edict because Sylvia and Betty had once visited the theater and none of the agents offered to give up their seats to allow them to sit. In truth, Sylvia and Betty virtually never visited the theater, preferring to watch the show on television, and at any rate there were hundreds of seats in the Maxine Elliot. But in Ed’s mind, talent agents were the kind of men who wouldn’t even give a lady a seat.