Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan (40 page)

Rumors started sometime in the spring of 1950 about a monster being created in the NBC studios. It was to be one of the most lavish television shows, perhaps
the
most lavish show, to date—a jewel in the NBC lineup. It would be a weekly variety program, mixing comedy and music and celebrity, starring the brightest names in show business. The extravaganza would be backed by a budget large enough to fell Rocky Marciano in a single blow: $50,000 an episode by some accounts, still higher by other reports. To be called
The Colgate Comedy Hour
, it was scheduled to debut that fall. Its time slot was one that the television industry had learned was particularly desirable, when families were most likely to gather around the set: Sunday at 8
P.M.

In short, NBC decided to end Sullivan’s dominance of Sunday evening. The network had seen
Toast of the Town
own Sunday night since its 1948 debut. In the 1949–50 season, Sullivan had easily bested NBC’s Sunday evening program hosted by singer Perry Como. (ABC, perpetually third-ranked, wouldn’t have a show in the Top 20 until 1955; a fourth network, Dumont, offered little competition and ceased broadcasting in 1954.) NBC apparently took a look at
Toast of the Town
and figured, if he can do it, we can do it better.
Comedy Hour
, by sheer weight of budget, was the network’s move to grab the coveted Sunday 8
P.M.
slot. If the public wants a variety show, NBC’s strategy appeared to be, we’ll give them the best variety show money can buy. Sullivan would be buried.

In a novel approach,
Comedy Hour
would rotate hosts, each starring for a week. Hosting week one was Eddie Cantor, who was not just wildly popular but almost an institution, having conquered Broadway, vaudeville, radio, and Hollywood as a
singer, comedian, and actor; three years later Warner Bros. granted him the ultimate honor, producing
The Eddie Cantor Story.
Lined up for week two was comedy team Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the suave paesano and the overactive adolescent, whose fame had zoomed skyward since their television debut on
Toast of the Town
for $200; the duo were paid a breathtaking $100,000 for their first night, and $150,000 per show after that. Week three was hosted by Fred Allen, whose jaunty, cerebral wit had made him a top radio comic for more than a decade. He had, for example, invited boxer Joe Louis on his show to help him train for an imaginary bout with Jack Benny; the final Fred Allen–Jack Benny showdown had been a gargantuan ratings success, near that of the highest-rated Roosevelt fireside chat. The fourth week featured vaudeville–Hollywood comic Bobby Clark, the least famous of the crowd. However, he was scheduled to alternate with comedic powerhouse Bob Hope.

These celebrity hosts would emcee live variety revues—showcasing still more big names—that broadcast from a huge New York theater with flashy sets and first-rate orchestras.
Comedy Hour
, it seemed, planned not only to dominate Sunday night but to push television itself to a higher level.

CBS, seeing the freight train rushing toward it, told Sullivan there was more money if he needed it. As the network knew, the stakes in this competition were high. In the early days of television, many local stations were deciding which network to affiliate with; each of the networks knew it was vitally important to offer a successful lineup to attract long-term affiliates. Still,
Toast of the Town
’s budget, even with the infusion from CBS, would hover around $20,000 per program in the early 1950s, far smaller than
Comedy Hour
’s—which seemed to balloon markedly with every new report.

In fact, CBS appeared to be hedging its bet. The network, perhaps thinking it needed to work on securing a new night in the face of NBC’s assault on Sunday, poured money into Saturday evening. Set to launch that fall on CBS on Saturday nights was
The Frank Sinatra Show
, a variety show that guaranteed its star $250,000 for the first thirteen weeks. (The show was canceled after thirteen weeks; Frank sang brilliantly but his ability to work with others proved negligible.)

When
The Colgate Comedy Hour
debuted on September 10, it sparkled with all the transporting brilliance its massive prepublicity had promised. Eddie Cantor was as charming as he had been in vaudeville in 1925 or Hollywood in 1935, weaving a story line between the show’s variety acts, interacting with each as he sang, danced, and told jokes; the show culminated with Cantor in blackface singing one of his signature hits, “Ain’t She Sweet.” The following week, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin turned the small screen into a spirited night at the Copacabana, mugging and cracking wise through a lighthearted romp of an hour. Suddenly television had a new hit, and critics labored to find enough superlatives to laud it.

In contrast,
Toast of the Town
experienced a ratings collapse. Ed had been sanguine that summer, telling Marlo not to worry. “
For the most part, all they’ve got are the same old clowns doing the same old shtick. Eddie Cantor will clap his hands and sing ‘Susie’ and talk about Ida and the five daughters. Fred Allen will fall back on his old radio material.… Sure we’ll take it on the chin a few times. Martin and Lewis and Hope will win their rounds the first time out. But I’m not worried one bit about the rest of ’em.” However, his show’s ratings tumble clearly required him to counterpunch if he expected to stay on the air.

The weakness in
Comedy Hour
was those weeks when its less-popular hosts emceed; when Fred Allen or Bobby Clark took the stage,
Toast of the Town
surged back in the ratings. Ed exploited this advantage to its fullest. In October, against a Bobby Clark
Comedy Hour
, he booked Margaret Truman, the president’s daughter, who aspired to a career as a classical soprano. The twenty-six-year-old singer had performed only on local television, which to Ed presented an opportunity. He took her to lunch at the fashionable restaurant Sardi’s and asked her: would you like to make your national TV debut? When she agreed, Ed paid her $2,000 and touted it as her professional debut. Headline writers obliged, providing waves of free publicity. For that evening’s performance the backstage area was thick with secret service agents, who insisted that Sullivan (who was frisked by the agents) give his dressing room to Margaret for security reasons; several hours later they reversed themselves after deciding a nearby alley posed a risk, and the dressing rooms were switched back. The attendant publicity lifted Sullivan to an easy ratings win against that evening’s
Comedy Hour.

Two months later, Margaret Truman was again thrust into the news. After
Washington Post
music critic Paul Hume panned one of her recitals, President Truman dashed him off an angry letter that was reprinted in many national newspapers: “
I’ve never met you, but if I do you’ll need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below. Westbrook Pegler, a guttersnipe, is a gentlemen compared to you.” Ed, sensing a ratings spike in the petty tempest, offered Margaret $3,000 for a return appearance, allowing him to trounce a Bobby Clark
Comedy Hour.
After her performance, the president called Sullivan to thank him for the gracious way he had presented his daughter.

In the late fall, Ed began to go after Eddie Cantor. He again used his newshound’s instincts to exploit headlines. Roberta Peters, an understudy in a Metropolitan Opera production of
Don Giovanni
, stepped into the lead role and earned a full-throated standing ovation. The almost fairy-tale story of the young coloratura—from a modest home in the Bronx—triumphing at the Met made headlines across the country. Ed instantly booked her to reprise her
Don Giovanni
role opposite a Cantor
Comedy Hour
the following Sunday, riding the publicity for a ratings boost. Peters proved so popular that Ed booked the opera singer forty-one times over the years.

In another effort to dislodge Cantor, Ed booked Milton Berle against one of Cantor’s
Comedy Hour
nights. CBS executives must have been flabbergasted to present NBC’s biggest star, unless they laughed along with Sullivan as the Trendex ratings proved it worked. Showcasing the competition’s heavyweight was not only counterintuitive, it sent a signal. Due to the gaping budget disparity between
Toast of the Town
and
Comedy Hour
, it didn’t look like Sullivan could win the ratings battle—the NBC show could hire bigger names week after week. But the Berle booking revealed he was willing to try most anything.

Berle was electric that evening. As Sullivan introduced him, Berle bounded onstage and pumped Ed’s hand. “Thank you, Ed Solomon,” he said, as the emcee faded offstage. Without taking a breath, Berle whirled into a comedic tornado, interrupting himself, ad-libbing, inserting jokes within jokes, making fun of himself, and scolding the audience for not laughing enough—“these are the jokes, let’s face it”—although
the laughter was almost continuous. As he bobbed and weaved, the camera had to swivel to keep him in the frame. His punch lines were like short jabs, with few of his setups longer than five or six words; as a boy named Milton Berlinger he had grown up in vaudeville, and his style was straight from the Keith-Albee circuit.

He took great pleasure in pointing out that his own hit show ran on a competing network. “You know what CBS means? Catch Berle’s show”; “I only have two words to say to each Mercury Lincoln dealer—buy Texaco”; “Wait a second—What are these cameras here?—Is this show televised? Gee, I didn’t know that Sullivan’s show was televised”; “C’mon now, if you’re going to applaud, applaud all together!… (looking skyward)…. Oh Milton, you’re
wonderful
!”

Berle brought onstage a young trumpet player named Leonard Souse, who acted as a straight man, and then he produced his own trumpet. “Don’t laugh,” he said, “I used to be with Dorsey.” “Tommy or Jimmy?” asked Souse, to which Berle responded: “Fifi.” Souse riffed through a showy version of “Blue Skies,” after which Berle danced an impromptu classical ballet, mock-pirouetting around the stage and pulling up his pants legs to reveal tall black socks.

Ed came back onstage to join Berle, attempting to smile with limited success. “There’s the camera, Eddie,” Berle instructed, placing his body in front of Sullivan’s to shield him from the painful sight. They horseplayed with each other, each jostling to monopolize the camera’s eye, as the audience roared.

Bantering back and forth, Berle handily one-upped Sullivan, throwing a final barb as he exited the stage: “Eddie, you know we made a pact, I said I’d never become a columnist, and you said you’d never become an actor—well, you’ve kept your promise.”

Following Berle’s raucous act that evening was the ever-mellow Nat “King” Cole, in a booking that displayed Ed’s audacity in pushing the era’s racial boundaries. The showman gave the singer a big introduction: “And now let’s hear it for the calypso blues and
Nat … King … Cole!—Let’s hear it for Nat!
”

In a tropical set with palm trees and a painted island backdrop, the tall and dapper Cole rhythmically crooned a calypso tune, his silky voice as smooth as an ocean breeze. Four female dancers shook their hips in time to the music, their long skirts flowing with the Caribbean groove.

While highly pleasant for many audience members, Ed surely knew that the performance prompted dark stirrings in living rooms across the land. White women onstage with a black man—moving their hips in time to his voice, no less—was, at the very least, the height of exoticism in November 1950. And to some viewers it proved that America was becoming a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. Helping make this mixed-race performance palatable was Nat “King” Cole’s milquetoast charisma and his ability to cover himself with a blanket of profound deference. The handsome singer never once glanced at his attractive stage mates. Even so, that Ed booked this number revealed an odd fearlessness in a man who was otherwise hypersensitive to his audience’s comfort level. He was exporting a sight that hitherto had been seen chiefly in Manhattan nightclubs.

Not that Cole gave the slightest indication that what had just gone on was revolutionary. As he performed his own fade-out, doffing his hat and singing ever more softly while strolling offstage, his smile beamed large and genial. Ed led the applause and brought the singer back out to shake his hand.

In case Ed harbored any doubt about how some of his viewers regarded such performances, the show received regular waves of hate mail to this effect, which continued through the decades. The southern Lincoln Mercury dealers—and they were far from alone—furiously insisted he stop shaking hands with and hugging black performers, but he never gave in to their demands. “
I’ll never forget when Ed kissed a black girl” on the air, recalled Mike Dann, who worked in NBC’s programming department in the 1950s. “Ed was certainly not a racist—particularly if [the performer] was good.”

Sharing the bill with Cole that evening was vocalist Nanette Fabray, recreating a number from the recent Broadway show
High Button Shoes.
Clad in a full-length bathing gown, she sang the up-tempo tune on a beach set decorated with ocean-side dressing huts. In mid song, she and her four dancers shimmied out of their gowns to reveal summer jumpers, and a verse later they removed their jumpers to reveal 1919-era bathing suits. For all the outfits’ modesty, there was a lot of well-turned gam on display as the dancers posed and strutted. Fabray wrapped it up with a coy smile amid great clapping and cheering.