Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan

by James Maguire

  The minor irritations of talent agents aside, the 1954–55 season was a winning one for Sullivan. The year’s Nielsen figures indicated that Toast of the Town had climbed to be television’s fifth-rated show. On top was I Love Lucy, followed by The Jackie Gleason Show, Dragnet, and You Bet Your Life, the humorous game show hosted by Groucho Marx. Incredibly, Sullivan was higher ranked than The Bob Hope Show, seventh-rated, and The Jack Benny Show, eighth-rated. Milton Berle, who had run just ahead of Sullivan between 1948 and 1950, had fallen to thirteenth. Comedy Hour had tumbled out of the Top 20, bested by Toast of the Town almost every Sunday.

  Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, playing off Sullivan’s ascendant popularity—and helping promote another CBS property—performed a sketch from I Love Lucy on Sullivan’s show. Lucy hears remarkable news, which she reports to Ricky: “Ed Sullivan is going to do the whole show about us!” The couple, comically, fall all over themselves in an attempt to remain calm in the face of such a portentous development. When Ed himself rings their doorbell, Lucy emits a trademark shriek, and Ricky is so excited he drags Ed through the living room in a manic attempt at hospitality. Lucy shoves him into an easy chair and manhandles him into crossing his legs so he’ll be more comfortable. Both try to pretend they hadn’t heard the news, waiting to hear it directly from Ed. Finally, amid great fussing by Lucy, he gets out his invitation: he wants to do a show about them. In response, Lucy and Ricky intone in unison: “About us?” Ed as straight man played his part with reasonable aplomb, projecting ease with his role as the all-powerful television producer, if not his role as an actor in a comedy skit. At the end he flashed a big smile, yet he managed to look almost completely away from the camera.

  Lucy and Desi felt fondly toward Sullivan after he had pitched in to sway public opinion when Ball’s career was imperiled. In 1953 she had been called to testify about her alleged communist affiliation before a secret session of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Ball admitted that as young woman she had once registered to vote as a communist. But she had done so, she explained, merely to placate her grandfather, a committed socialist. HUAC, satisfied with her explanation, let the matter drop.

  However, news of her closed-door testimony leaked to Walter Winchell. In a blind item on his radio broadcast he announced, “The most popular of all television stars was confronted with her membership in the Communist Party.” Although he didn’t name her, in 1953 that description fit exactly one performer. Suddenly Ball’s phone began ringing nonstop for comment. The Herald Express printed a copy of her 1936 voter registration card, proving she had planned to vote for the Communist Party. With the story’s coverage exploding, and Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler writing that Ball had to be “tracked down and exposed,” the comedienne’s career was in serious jeopardy.

  But the momentum of her ever-growing popularity, and the helping hand of several columnists, saved her. Ed weighed in firmly with those who felt the issue should be dismissed—no doubt partially driven by his dislike of Winchell. Since Winchell had ignited this controversy, Ed was happy to douse it. As he wrote in his Daily News column, “It’s a singularly fortunate thing for Lucille Ball that she’s been a weekly visitor to millions of American living rooms.… TV cameras being as revealing as they are, the Jury of Public Opinion is an informed jury as it renders its verdict on a silly thing she did 17 years ago.”

  Indeed it was: after the first broadcast of I Love Lucy following Winchell’s leak, Trendex figures revealed that Ball continued to star in television’s top-ranked program.

  The trappings of fame arrived quickly now. Ed acquired what every successful Manhattan executive was expected to own, a Connecticut estate. He bought Kettletown Farms, a one-hundred-eighty-acre property in bucolic Southbury, with a ten-room house, swimming pool, two lakes, and an orchard. The family’s primary residence continued to be their apartment in the Delmonico, at Park Avenue and 59th Street; the Connecticut estate was a weekend retreat. The problem was finding the time to be there. Ed continued to log miles as a spokesman for Lincoln Mercury, and his Daily News column (now syndicated to thirty-five papers) kept calling him to the city.

  In his tours for Lincoln Mercury, at every ribbon cutting, store opening, and civic event, the crowds mobbed him like some kind of national folk hero. Benson Ford remarked, “Wherever he goes, women hold up babies for him to kiss, traffic stops, policemen smile.… Sullivan is a one-man interfaith council, a chamber of commerce, and an unequaled sales force. The crowds love him.” As Ed frequented his many Manhattan haunts—he remained a night owl, making the rounds of clubs like the Copacabana and Lindy’s—he was met with squads of autograph hounds. He happily obliged them.

  On October 10, 1955, the cover of Time featured Richard Nixon, the apple-cheeked vice president projecting a confident smile. On the cover the following week was Ed Sullivan, the showman smiling with a similar sense that all was well with the world. Underneath his portrait was a small cartoon of a television, out of which tumbled a crowd of miniature performers and a flurry of dollar bills. Sullivan, noted Time, “is about the longest shot ever to have paid off in show business. It is as if Featherweight Willie Pep knocked out Rocky Marciano with a single punch in the second round.”

  The cover story detailed Ed’s rise, from his Port Chester days to, as Time portrayed it, the very top of the television industry. The article quoted TV executives about the medium’s potential—its revenues had zoomed to $1 billion annually—then noted Ed’s response to their promises of coming attractions: “Everything they’re promising to do is something I’ve already done.” Time listed the many entertainers whose shows had come and gone during Sullivan’s tenure, including Red Buttons, George Jessel, and Bing Crosby. In the section on his background, Ed took the opportunity to jab his perennial rival: “Winchell’s all through—and I’m an expert on Winchelliana. I’ve followed him like a hawk. He’s a dead duck. He couldn’t be resuscitated by injections at half-hour intervals.” (The powerful columnist was indeed beginning to decline. His first attempt at television in 1952, though lauded by critics, had been canceled. Winchell’s rat-a-tat-tat insistency didn’t translate to the restrained 1950s.)

  In the spring of 1955 came the big news: Warner Bros. was planning a film about Ed. As proposed by the studio, The Ed Sullivan Story would recount the showman’s journey to national stardom. He had been a flop in Hollywood fifteen years earlier, but now Warner Bros. felt his life warranted a major bio-picture. Moreover, they wanted him to produce the film as well as star.

  Studio head Jack Warner professed great faith in the film. “Mr. Sullivan’s motion picture will be one of the most important forthcoming pictures on our release schedule,” he told reporters. He wasn’t just posturing: the studio budgeted $1 million for the film, which was higher than the average movie budget in the mid 1950s (though plenty of epics and star vehicles had surpassed this level). As with all his projects, Jack Warner’s investment was more than financial: he would oversee the Sullivan film’s production, with his usual firm hand. Warner was a man who felt supremely confident in his opinions. Having grown up in vaudeville—he was a boy soprano who sang between acts—and been a film producer since the medium’s birth, he had an innate sense of the public’s tastes, and in fact had helped mold those tastes. When he barked he expected others to jump, and he was known for his battles with stars like Bogart and Cagney, as well as for steamrolling producers and writers. On the night that Casablanca won the Oscar for Best Picture, Warner jumped up onstage to accept it before Hal Wallis, who was the film’s producer, which led Al Jolson to quip, “I can’t see what J. W. can do with an Oscar. It can’t say ‘yes.’ ”

  Sullivan’s representative in his negotiations with Warner Bros. was his lawyer Arnold Grant, not his talent agent Sonny Werblin. According to Ed’s contract with MCA, the agency only got a percentage of his radio and television work—film wasn’t mentioned in the contract. Werblin was likely kicking himself for not including film; it cost him ten perce
nt of Ed’s lucrative movie payday. But Werblin’s oversight was understandable. That Sullivan would be a highly paid television star was already far-fetched; that he would also be a well-compensated film star almost exceeded the boundaries of imagination. Ed’s pay was $100,000, and he retained the television rights to the film.

  Ed and Arnold Grant flew out to the coast to sign the paperwork and meet with Warner Bros. executives. While Ed was out there, Sylvia left a phone message for him at Arnold Grant’s office: “Mrs. Sullivan called about 6:15 last night and said she had purchased a Renoir and would like you to get a $15,000 advance from Warner in order to pay for same.” Ed’s agreement with Warner Bros. however, specified that he wouldn’t be paid until 1957. The studio, apparently seeking to limit its risk, wasn’t going to pay him until after the film was released.

  Jack Warner wanted to move quickly on the project. He hoped to get the script written over the summer and begin production on October 1. Warner asked Ed to write a script treatment, and in mid July Ed sent him a six-page synopsis. As he conceived of it, the movie would be a glorified version of his weekly show, a fast-paced array of acts with only a thin narrative about his and the show’s history.

  Ed’s letter to Warner told the real story of why this film was being made. “I believe this will be a tremendous grosser, with a ready-made audience plus the exploitation I can give it on our show.” Undoubtedly, Jack Warner saw the potential. Regardless of how unlikely a film star Ed was, with the showman pushing the movie every week to his audience of thirty million, generating box office success wouldn’t even require an advertising budget. Ed’s earlier alliance with Sam Goldwyn had been based on the then-counterintuitive idea that television and Hollywood could work together; now Sullivan’s own bio-picture was about to be the best proof of that.

  Warner all but ignored Ed’s synopsis. He conceived of the film as a dramatic story, not merely an elaborately produced Toast of the Town. In mid August he sent screenwriter Irving Wallace to New York to spend a week with Ed and observe him producing the show. Wallace was a good fit for the project. As a short story writer and novelist, he was adept at crafting stories based on current events; he would write a series of best-selling novels based on contemporary trends. Also an experienced screenwriter, he wrote 1950’s The West Point Story, starring Jimmy Cagney, as well as a number of TV scripts.

  Wallace completed the Sullivan script by late September. Having seen Ed in action, he developed a fictional treatment based on real life. A character named Robbins was inspired by actual CBS executive Hubbell Robinson; Ed’s first sponsor was Grimsley, “a large florid, booming man,” who owns an appliance firm, much like Ed’s real first sponsor, Emerson Radio; his second sponsor was “the chairman of the board of a leading automotive firm.” The antagonist was Joyce Jekyll, “a feline slob who dips her pen in arsenic and writes TV tattle for a Manhattan daily.”

  In Wallace’s story, Ed launches the show despite harsh critical barbs. After an initial period of success, his ratings fall as a heavily financed competing program draws viewers away. Things get so bad that Sylvia leaves him. Finally, the show is about to go off the air—but, at the last moment, Sylvia reappears. She hasn’t left him; she secretly went to Las Vegas to bring back a singer who will revive ratings. The young singer goes on, the Trendex rating jumps skyward, and everything ends happily ever after.

  Ed hated it. Sylvia’s disappearance and show-saving last-minute return created dramatic tension, but it embarrassed him. Wasn’t the show his creation? (Wallace, despite the odd story twists, was accurate in depicting how supportive Sylvia was of Ed.) Sullivan told Jack Warner the script needed to be rewritten.

  Warner agreed, but he was becoming anxious about the film’s production schedule. He moved the shooting back to February, but even the delayed date required that the script be rewritten quickly—actors couldn’t be hired and acts lined up until the studio had a script. In mid October, Warner dispatched Wallace back to New York to spend a second week with Sullivan, with instructions to turn out a script posthaste. The screenwriter completed his second draft by November 1.

  This time Wallace wrote a story line custom-made for Ed’s vision of his show. At the plot’s critical turning point, with the show imperiled, instead of Sylvia stepping in, Ed’s own ingenuity as a producer saves the day. The script shows him breaking precedent by combining jazz and opera in the same program, presenting prerelease Hollywood film clips, producing lavish show business biographies—the first of their kind—and introducing fascinating celebrities in the audience. It portrays him as a driven, competitive showman who assesses the opposition and out-produces it at every turn.

  If Wallace’s intent was to create a script that so flattered Ed that he had no choice but to approve it, this was a well-aimed arrow: “As these acts go on, we go to a series of flash cuts of Ed’s TV audience around the country. We see people phoning neighbors and relatives, excitedly telling them to switch from the opposition to ‘Toast of the Town.’ … Ed winds up in a blaze of glory.” At the story’s conclusion, CBS is so overjoyed at Sullivan’s performance they decide to rename the show in his honor—it will now be called The Ed Sullivan Show. They inform him of this in the final scene by changing his cue card text without telling him, so he learns of it only as he announces it to a national audience. As he informs viewers of the show’s new name, “Ed looks off into the thunderous ovation.…”

  Wallace submitted the new script to Jack Warner, who swiftly approved it and rushed it to Ed by airmail. In his cover letter, Warner preempted any concerns Ed might have, in case the script’s fawning wasn’t enough. “Naturally, this was done in great haste,” he wrote. “We will have these incidents slanted so we can get some good heart tug and humor.” The studio head closed his letter with a reminder of the pending schedule: “I would like to get your reaction as quickly as possible.”

  But Ed wasn’t feeling the urgency. Moreover, despite all the script’s flattery, he didn’t like it. He decided he had to toss out Wallace’s work and write the script himself. As Jack Warner fumed, Ed sat down to work from scratch.

  Two things bothered him about Wallace’s script. First, he felt it didn’t fully portray the powerful forces that threatened his television survival. Additionally—contradicting his first concern—he did not want to be depicted as so fiercely competing against these forces.

  A long month later, he sent his half-finished script treatment to his lawyer Arnold Grant, to pass along to Warner. As Ed noted to Grant in his treatment, “The greatest European pictures, ‘The Bicycle Thief,’ ‘The Baker’s Wife,’ were built around a deep, fundamental issue.… For our picture, Hollywood writers have an equally simple and fundamental premise … the powerful and subtle forces that threaten a man’s employment.” In short, Ed wanted the film to dwell still more on how he had persevered in the face of a critical onslaught—though Wallace’s script already included this element.

  As Ed wrote in his synopsis: “So this is the story we have: the story of a guy who worked like a bastard in TV and found his employment jeopardized by the critics, some of the network brass, and others.” Families across the country would relate to this theme, he wrote, because it mirrored their own breadwinners’ struggles in the working world. Ed conceived of two strong characters who were set to undermine him: one was a composite of all the critics who skewered him, and another represented the network brass who didn’t believe in him. As he envisioned it, the movie of his life would portray him as surrounded by challengers on every side.

  However, in Ed’s version his own character’s triumph over these obstacles wasn’t due to his competitive spirit, as Wallace had portrayed. Instead, his success was a result of how accurately his show reflected what viewers wanted. He even suggested that the film include interviews from typical American living rooms, with families talking about why they liked the show. Ed’s script was somewhat contradictory: he wanted to include powerful characters arrayed against him, but he didn’t want to be seen
as fighting against them. Instead, he portrayed himself as triumphing by transcending them, by going directly to the public.

  Wallace’s emphasis on his competitive nature made Ed uncomfortable. Although his column readers knew he was no stranger to confrontation, his television audience saw him as reserved and avuncular. As early as 1951, Time pointed out, “The TV Sullivan is a strange contrast to the bumptious know-it-all of Sullivan’s Broadway column.” Onstage, the audience saw an emcee who was nonthreatening and eager to please, bearing a gift bag of acts that offered something for everyone. He was stilted and awkward, yet safe—perhaps even safer because of his stiffness. His lack of slickness led many viewers to believe he was onstage by happenstance, as if whoever was really in charge had picked him at random from the audience. As a fan letter said, “We were discussing your program the other night and all of us agreed that my brother Charlie could do exactly what you do.” Families trusted this good-natured uncle enough to invite him into their living rooms every Sunday night. He was one of them. The Warner Bros. script, however, portrayed the other man, the one behind the curtain, the competitor, the ambition-driven workaholic. This was a more interesting man, surely a better film subject, but it wasn’t the persona that Ed brought into living rooms on Sunday night. And it wasn’t the persona he wanted splashed on movie screens across the country.

  So Ed’s new script included no scenes of him as a competitor, instead emphasizing the show’s allures; the script was close to his original concept of the film as a cinematic version of his TV show. Ed’s treatment had an open-ended quality, interweaving his theme of triumph over great odds with many stars’ performances, from showy Broadway numbers to cameos by sports figures. Rather than finalize his outline, he planned to bring the film together as he produced it, much as he did with his television show.