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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
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1950
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<text>
<title>
(1950s) Big As All Outdoors
</title>
<history>Time-The Weekly Magazine-1950s Highlights</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
TIME Magazine
October 17, 1955
Big As All Outdoors
</hdr>
<body>
<p> A recurring nightmare haunts TV men. The nightmare scene,
set in any American living room, begins and ends quickly when
Mom or Pop or Junior or Sis snaps off the TV set with the
dreaded verdict: "There's nothing on tonight."
</p>
<p> The industry this year passionately hopes to make such a
verdict impossible. Millions of dollars--and thousands of
individual careers--are at stake as the networks, film makers,
admen, and sponsors gamble seven nights a week to keep Americans
glued to their 32 million TV sets. Like circus barkers pulling
in a crowd, TV spokesmen shout about the wonders to come. They
promise the finest opera, the best ballet, the most gripping
drama, the newest movies, the funniest comedians and dozens and
dozens of full-color, star-studded Spectaculars--a monster
extravaganza planned to make U.S. living rooms jump with the
most concentrated entertainment that the world has ever seen.
</p>
<p> And this is only the beginning. In his 20th floor office
on Manhattan's Madison Avenue, CBS President Frank Stanton
(Ph.D. in Psychology, Ohio State, '35) cries: "Not even the sky
is the limit. The potentials of television are as big as the
potentials of American society--and I do not feel like setting
a limit on that." In Rockefeller Center, NBC President Pat
Weaver (Phi Beta Kappa, Dartmouth '30) grows ever more
expansive: "Television is as big as all outdoors. The whole
country can visit the Vatican and La Scala at once. Our horizons
are boundless!"
</p>
<p> What's New? One prominent TV personality, hard at work this
week on his 379th consecutive program (The Ed Sullivan Show,
Sun. 8 p.m., CBS), is not quite sure what all the shouting is
about. Says Ed Sullivan, calmly: "Everything they're promising
to do is something I've done already." Opera? Ed has presented
Metropolitan Soprano Roberta Peters 21 times, oftener than any
other performer on his show. Ballet? Moira Shearer, Margot
Fonteyn and the Sadler's Wells Ballet troupe made their first
U.S. TV appearances with Sullivan (whose show was known as Toast
of the Town until last month). Drama? Ed has given his viewers
50 Broadway hits, including the smash successes Pajama Game, the
Member of the Wedding, South Pacific and Don Juan in Hell.
Movies? Sullivan's show pioneered in showing pre-release
snatches of films (as in this week's Guys & Dolls, starring
Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons and Frank Sinatra, with music by
Frank Loesser). Comedians? Ed has ransacked the U.S. and Europe
for funnymen: Victor Borge, Jackie Gleason, Dean Martin and
Jerry Lewis all made their TV debuts on the Sullivan program.
Spectaculars? Ed is convinced that the basic idea came from such
Toast of the Town biographies as those of Oscar Hammerstein II,
Bea Lillie, Cole Porter and Walt Disney. Sullivan boasts that
his show was the first to 1) have a permanent chorus line; 2)
originate outside Manhattan; 3) introduce celebrities from the
audience.
</p>
<p> Cardiff Giant. Sullivan started on TV in 1948. Where Milton
Berle and Arthur Godfrey had their time of glory and then fell
back exhausted, Ed has thrived and grown stronger in the heat
of conflict. The battleground of TV is strewn with entertainers
who could not quite stay the course--Red Buttons, Wally Cox,
George Jessel, Ed Wynn, Ray Bolger, Bing Crosby. Sullivan is the
first to admit that any one of these entertainers makes his own
talents seem dim indeed. On camera, Ed has been likened to a
cigar-store Indian, the Cardiff Giant, and a stone-faced
monument just off the boat from Easter Island. He moves like a
sleepwalker; his smile is that of a man sucking a lemon; his
speech is frequently lost in a thicket of syntax, his eyes pop
from their sockets or sink so deep into their bags that they
seem to be peering up at the camera from the bottom of twin
wells. Yet, instead of frightening children, Ed Sullivan charms
the whole family.
</p>
<p> The blasts of the critics in his early days on TV would
have broken the spirit of an ordinary man. But Ed Sullivan is
a fighter, and, like most good fighters, a hungry one. Hungry,
that is, for fame, national recognition, the deference of
headwaiters and the friendship of the great. He burns up energy
as a jet burns up fuel, but the only damage it has done is give
him an ulcer. The crises and satisfactions of his life can best
be described in his favorite cliches of sport and Broadway. Ed
"plays the game hard": he "hates to be pushed around"; he thinks
"the public is always right." He spent most of his youth miles
from Broadway but the gleam of the bright lights was always in
his eyes.
</p>
<p> Royal Barge. Sullivan 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. No one has any ready explanation, although many have
tried. Fred Allen cracks: "Ed SUllivan will last as long as
someone else has talent. He has a natural feeling for his
audience, which is subterranean." Dave Garroway argues that
Sullivan is a good master of ceremonies "because he tells the
facts and then gets out of the way." Even Sullivan is mystified.
He once asked a show-business friend: "What have I got?" Replied
the friend: "I don't know, but you've got it."
</p>
<p> In effect, no one likes Ed except his million viewers and
his ecstatic sponsor, the Lincoln-Mercury Dealers. The dealers
speak of Ed with reverential awe. Dealer Paul Pusey in Richmond
reckons that Ed "does two-thirds of our selling job for us."
</p>
<p> Nearly every major meeting the dealers attend finds
Sullivan on hand with a load of entertainers. To further the
cause of Lincoln-Mercury, Ed has addressed steel-workers before
their blast furnaces in Pittsburgh, landed on Boston Common in
a helicopter, gone down 20-ft. in a Navy diving suit and sailed
up the Mississippi in a barge before 75,000 spectators at the
opening of the Memphis Cotton Carnival. His identification with
his sponsor is so strong that any Lincoln or Mercury buyer who
is dissatisfied with his car is apt to drop Ed a complaining
line. (Within ten days of such a complaint, the local district
manager is on the phone or the car owner's doorstep,
solicitously asking what he can do to help.)
</p>
<p> Late to Bed. Ed and his wife Sylvia have lived in hotels
for most of their married life. For the past twelve years home
has been a small four-room apartment--office, living room, two
bedrooms and kitchenette--in Manhattan's Delmonico Hotel on
Park Avenue. Last year Ed bought a 200-acre dairy farm in
Southbury, Conn., where he can occasionally relax, as fond
parent and grandfather, with his 24-year-old daughter Betty and
her two children (Robert Edward 1 1/2, and Carla Elizabeth, 3
weeks), while Betty's husband, Lieut. (j.g.) Robert Precht Jr.
is on a tour of sea duty.
</p>
<p> Ed goes to bed late and rises late. Usually he prepares his
own breakfast--an unappetizing bowl of strained oatmeal and
a glass of milk, which he hopes are good for his ulcer--and
eats in the white-walled living room decorated with two
portraits of his tall, attractive wife and a Renoir landscape
that Ed gave Sylvia this year for their 25th wedding
anniversary. Then he lights the first of the day's many
cigarettes and is ready for the phone calls that his secretaries
Carmine Santullo and Jean Bombaird have been holding at bay all
morning. When Ed is not scheduled to deliver dealer pep talks
in Akron or Denver, he often makes three-day flying trips to
Europe, as he did last week for a film interview with Gina
Lollabrigida in Paris. Last year he traveled 175,000 miles
looking for new talent. He does all the booking on his show.
Many of his leads come from entertainers who have been on his
program. ("They play everywhere and see all the new acts"),
while his aide, Mark Leddy ("He knows every animal act there
is") constantly scouts the furred, feathered and four-legged
field.
</p>
<p> Touch and Emotions. After whipping up a new show every
Sunday night for seven years, Ed has formulated some definite
theories. Each program must contain 1) something children will
like, 2) comedy. Ed says, "The best ones are those where two
different kinds of people play against each other; if Lily Pons
and Pearl Bailey do a duet, Lily sings it straight while Pearl
clowns it up." His added ingredient is a shrewd combination of
news and human interest. When Arthur Godfrey fired Baritone
Julius La Rosa, Ed had the young singer on his show the same
week ("There's nothing personal in it--if Arthur got fired,
I'd hire him"). The human interest touches are usually
emotional. Sullivan presented Helen Hayes shortly after the
tragic polio death of her 19-year-old daughter, Mary MacArthur;
Broadway Director Josh Logan (South Pacific), who had suffered
a breakdown, spoke feelingly on Ed's show about the problems of
mental health. Observes Ed: "It's things like these that people
remember about a show, things that touch their emotions. They're
far more important than the acts."
</p>
<p> Old Smiley. Ed stays away from his show until Sunday
afternoon when the first camera rehearsal begins. The physical
production of The Ed Sullivan Show is in the hands of
Co-Producer Marlo Wray and Musician Ray Bloch, who have been at
work since the previous Monday. Ed comes onstage to a burst of
applause from the audience of 500 crowded into the balcony
(because of the demand for tickets, Ed's is one of the few shows
that admits an audience to rehearsals; they must leave the
theater later to make way for a completely new audience when the
show goes on the air). Ed waves and strains a smile, squinting
up against the battery of floodlights--lavender and blinding
white. Then he sits before a stage monitor, turning his back on
the acts, and watches the rehearsal in the screen.
</p>
<p> After a dinner break, Ed comes back before air time to warm
up the new theater audience. 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 the audience is honor bound to be
happy. So look happy!" They do. "In 30 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!"
</p>
<p> Knights and Ladies. Ed got his lusty start 53 years ago
when he and his twin Daniel were born in Manhattan to Peter and
Elizabeth Smith Sullivan. Ed's father was a stern, moody man
with a minor post in the U.S. Bureau of Customs.
</p>
<p> The Sullivans' tenement apartment was in a part of Harlem
that was already going to seed. Ed's twin, who was small and
puny next to his larruping brother, died in his first year. The
dead twin still looms symbolically in Ed's imagination. Whenever
he was whaled by his father or switched by the nuns at his
parochial school, Ed would sob passionately that everything
would have been different "if only Danny were here." Even today,
Ed mystically attributes his excess of energy to some
supernatural source of supply fed him by the dead twin.
</p>
<p> When Ed was five, another of the six surviving children
died, and his parents decided that Manhattan was no place to
raise a family. They moved to Port Chester, an industrial town
on the Connecticut state line, ringed by such suburban garden
spots as Greenwich and Rye. As a boy, Ed gave his interest to
reading and sports. His favorite author was Sir Walter Scott,
with his romantic yarns of knights, ladies, tournaments, good
and evil. Ed had no doubt about where the knights and ladies
lived and where good and evil flourished. The place, naturally,
was Manhattan and he dreamed of getting there.
</p>
<p> Into the Big Time. Ed got another hungry look at a world
he was to love when he worked as a caddy at Rye-Apawamis Club,
where, after toting golf bags for 18 holes, he would compare
tips with a fellow caddy named Gene Sarazen, who also grew up
to make a name for himself. At Port Chester High School Ed won
eleven major letters but got "frightening" grades in everything
except English. He also landed his first newspaper job: high-
school correspondent for the Port Chester Daily Item.
</p>
<p> Like his father, Ed never made it to college. He got part-
time jobs at factories, played semi-pro baseball (catcher),
before finally becoming the sports editor of the Item at $12
a week. Ed next moved to the Hartford Post and last made the
grade as a Manhattan sportswriter in the New York Evening Mail,
where he says he coined the phrase "Little Miss Poker Face" for
Tennis Champion Helen Wills. In his early days as a reporter,
Ed was frequently mistaken for a rising young actor named
Humphrey Bogart, who also had high cheekbones and a deadpan
expression.
</p>
<p> During the roaring 1920s, Ed turned up on the noisiest and
brashest of Manhattan's tabloids, the scandal-shrieking Evening
Graphic, where Walter Winchell was beginning his labors in the
vineyard of gossip. The meeting of Sullivan and Winchell was
explosive. Out of their four years together on the Graphic grew
a feud that lasts to this day. Says Ed: "Winchell's all through--and I'm an expert of Winchelliana. I've followed him like a
hawk. He's a dead duck. He couldn't be resuscitated by
injections at half-hour intervals."
</p>
<p> Gossip Monger. In 1926, Ed saw an attractive brunette
sitting at a nightclub table with some friends of his. He
joined them and met 20-year-old Sylvia Weinstein. He promptly
invited Sylvia to a heavyweight fight between Jack Sharkey and
Harry Wills. It was the first prizefight Sylvia had ever seen,
and she recalls that she tried hard to like it. Three and a half
years later, Ed and Sylvia were married in the rectory of a
Roman Catholic Church in West Orange, N.J. Sylvia has remained
a Jew, but their daughter Betty has been raised a Catholic.
Meanwhile, Winchell left the Graphic for the Daily Mirror, and
Louis Sobel replaced him as Broadway columnist. When Sobel
joined the Journal-American, Sports Editor Sullivan inherited
the Broadway assignment. "I didn't want the job, but it was
either take it or be fired. I took it, but determined never to
rap anyone the way Winchell does. I don't think I have the
right to pass final judgement on other people's behavior."
</p>
<p> When the Graphic folded in 1932, Ed and his column moved
into the Daily News. He has been there ever since, but his
syndicated column (35 papers) now appears two times a week
instead of five. Though at war with Winchell, Ed--like a good
general--learned a lot from his enemy. Winchell emceed a stage
show at Manhattan's Paramount, using the pressure of his column
to line up good acts at a nominal cost. Ed did the same and
earned $3,750 for a nine-week stand. He was always available as
a master of ceremonies for charity benefits, and this practice
paid its first dividend when the News had Ed take over the job
of running its annual Harvest Moon Ball.
</p>
<p> Red Light. In 1947, CBS television carried the Harvest Moon
affair. NBC's Worthington Miner, then a CBS executive, watched
the show and decided that Ed "seemed relaxed and likeable with
none of the brashness of a hardened performer." This was just
the kind of man CBS wanted as M.C. of a projected Sunday-night
variety show. When Toast of the Town went on TV, Ed was so
petrified with stage fright that he aroused a strongly maternal
feeling in his audience. One fan wrote: "It takes a real man to
get up there week after week--with that silver plate in his
head." So many others warmly congratulated him for his triumph
over facial paralysis, a twisted spine and other dire but
imaginary ills that Sullivan has about given up protesting that
he has always been sound of wind and limb.
</p>
<p> But the Manhattan critics were not moved to sympathy. They
practically ordered Ed off the air. He responded by firing off
a waspish letter after each review, dissecting the critic's
writing, speculating about his (or her) neurotic problems, and
offering to meet him in Central Park with shotguns at ten
paces. Says Ed, with satisfaction: "They really burn after they
get one of my letters. Jack Gould called up blazing about a
letter I wrote, and I asked him: 'What are you so hot about? I
just put my opinion of you in a personal letter. You spread your
opinion of me all over the Sunday Times.'"
</p>
<p> The Second Major. In his first year on TV, it looked as if
the decision would go to the critics. Ed's sponsor, Emerson
Radio, dropped him after 26 weeks. Then he heard that CBS was
offering Toast of the Town to prospective buyers--with or
without Ed Sullivan. Ed's salvation came from Detroit, where the
Ford Motor Company grabbed the show. Mercury General Sales
Manager Joe Bayne, an old radio veteran who had worked with
Major Bowes in the heyday of his Amateur Hour, says: "It took
us less than 20 minutes to decide on Ed Sullivan. It was crystal
clear. Ed was a second Major Bowes. Bowes used to muff the
English language. Ed does too. But the thing about the two of
them is their genuineness and truthfulness. So we said, `We'll
buy Sullivan for 13 weeks.'" The 13 weeks has lengthened into
seven years. Contemplating his handiwork, Bayne remarks: "Every
period since then we've put more money into the show, and, to
tell the truth, it's millions of dollars a year. I don't know
if it's worth it any more, but there you are: Sullivan is
Mercury, Mercury is Sullivan."
</p>
<p> Magic Hours. Ed's own struggle for survival is inescapably
linked with the greater war the networks themselves are fighting
for control of a billion-dollar empire. All other forms of mass
entertainment have been enfeebled by the burgeoning rise of TV.
Except for heavy-weight championship bouts, TV practically owns
boxing; it has cut heavily into the attendance of baseball
games, and each year the colleges squabble more fiercely about
how much or little TV should be allowed. Radio, though it still
has 3,410 stations and 120 million receivers, trails far behind
TV as an attention-getter and moneymaker. The Hollywood studios
reeled for a time under the impact of TV. Movies still may be
made but, thanks to TV, they are already far fewer and far
different (e.g., CinemaScope, VistaVision, stereophonic sound).
</p>
<p> This year the TV networks are riding high, with sponsors
bidding feverishly for prime time--those magic evening hours
between 7:30 and 10:30. In this sellers' market, CBS and NBC
are in the fortunate position of wartime butchers. At times the
steak offered is obviously horsemeat, but if the man in the
white apron says it's steak, steak it is.
</p>
<p> But while the triumphant networks lord it over admen and
sponsors, a celluloid cloud looms threateningly in the West. If
TV's entertainment remains mostly live, Manhattan will be its
source and Broadway its inspiration. Should TV go to film, the
bulk of the industry will shift to Hollywood--as radio did
before it. Some pessimists see the day not far off when 70% of
TV shows will be movies (currently about 35% is filmed).
</p>
<p> Bad Spot. Each network firmly believes it has a host of
loyal followers who sit before the glowing tube and never tune
to another channel all evening long. Therefore what precedes and
follows each program is terribly important. A show that has a
small audience, even if it has a contented sponsor, is a network
liability. NBC last year dropped the veteran Voice of Firestone,
despite the advertiser's willingness to pay its way, because the
network thought the show's low rating ruined all the programs
that followed it. Explains an executive: "A bad show in an
evening line-up is like a bad spot on an apple. Cut out the spot--or the firm meat around the spot is infected too."
</p>
<p> Similarly, a network tries desperately to undermine its
rival's strong shows. Ed Sullivan's show, since it begins at 8
o'clock, has long been the key to Sunday evening dominance. In
succession, NBC has challenged it with the Philco TV Playhouse,
the Lambs Club Show, and the Comedy Hour. NBC's Weaver is as
baffled as everyone else by the riddle of Sullivan's popularity.
Currently, he subscribes to the theory that Ed has never lost
his appeal because he doesn't have any to start with. Says
Weaver: "He doesn't do anything on a stage. He's not a
performer. Ed just knows the trick of putting together a variety
show and it's a good staple. We were after him to switch to NBC,
and twice I though we had him. We knocked him galley-west for
a while with the Colgate comedy show, but we've been lousy
opposite him the last two years. This season we've got Martin
and Lewis. He can be taken."
</p>
<p> Burning Issue. Ed agrees that he has a fight on his hands.
In his last 75 shows, according to Trendex ratings, he has
beaten the NBC opposition 66 times and lost nine decisions.
Seven of those nine defeats were administered by Martin and
Lewis. "But we've handled big names before," says Ed
confidently. "They threw Jimmy Durante at us first and when I
overhauled him, they threw in Frank Sinatra and Milton Berle.
We've always had tough competition."
</p>
<p> The network way of doing things is often frustrating to
viewers, who would like to watch both Ed Sullivan's show and
Martin and Lewis. But that is the way competitive TV works. If
NBC has a top-rated show, CBS will put an equal attraction
opposite it and vice versa. Since the networks believe that once
a viewer tunes to another channel he may never tune back, the
moral is: don't let him get away.
</p>
<p> So each night viewers must make the decision whether to
watch Robert Montgomery Presents, or Studio One; I Love Lucy or
Medic; Disneyland or Arthur Godfrey; George Gobel or Gunsmoke.
Shrewd Pat Weaver made these decisions even more difficult by
spotting his 90-minute spectaculars in places calculated to do
the most audience harm to rival CBS. This year, NBC is replying
in kind. Some TV families, rent with quarrels about which show
to turn to, have ended in the divorce court.
</p>
<p> The Challenge. One canker of doubt, however, is disturbing
all the hallelujahs about the glorious new TV season. Its name:
The $64,000 Question. The instant smash success of the quiz show
dreamed up by Lou Cowan has brought a flood of imitators
promising to give contestants everything from a producing oil
well to a quarter of a million dollars. The industry is
quivering with the unmistakable impulse of a new "trend." NBCs
Weaver, instead of planning new telecasts from Mars or from the
bottom of the sea, has been closeted with Question's sponsor
(Revlon), promising them the moon if they will move the show to
NBC. And CBS's Stanton is equally busy trying to keep the show
on CBS. Instead of becoming memorable as the year TV came of
age, this season may go down in history as the one in which TV
took the same dismal turn as radio and lost itself in an endless
morass of giveaway shows.
</p>
<p> Sullivan can view the current uproar without too much
concern. Last month he started on a 20-year contract with CBS
that guarantees him $176,000 a year for seven years for
producing his show. During the following 13 years, he does not
have to produce anything but will draw $100,000 annually for his
promise not to create a show for a competing network. In
February, Ed moves his program to Hollywood for two months while
he stars in that ultimate tribute to a living celebrity, a
Warner Bros. film biography called The Ed Sullivan Story.
</p>
<p> But Ed thrives on challenge, He is ready to fight fire with
fire if this becomes the year of the big-money quiz shows. Says
he: "The nice thing about my program is that it has room for
everything. If what people want are giveaways, then we'll add
giveaways, too."
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>