Toast of the Town

It was officially called "Toast of the Town", but to most of us it was simply "The Ed Sullivan Show." If I recall correctly, it came on Sunday nights, in glorious black and white. We always looked forward to seeing his show. Sullivan himself was not much to look at, in fact it is safe to say most would consider him 'funny looking.' Nor did he have a particularly good speaking voice. One of his catch phrases, 'we're going to have a really big show' came out 'a really big shoe.' That's the way he pronounced words. But regardless of his personal lack of charisma, Ed Sullivan knew how to bring in the big stars.

One of them was Elvis Presley before he became wildly popular. In fact, being on the Ed Sullivan show was perhaps the biggest springboard to his success. But there was a problem with Elvis, his hips moved just too much, were considered far too suggestive for this family program, so the TV cameras showed Elvis only above the waist.

Ed Sullivan also got the Beatles in the early 1960s, when they were still relatively unknown in the USA. I don't know if he was the first, but his show certainly went a long way towards introducing America to this group from England. And the rest, as they say, is 'history'!!

What everyone remembers are the Beatles and Elvis. What they forget is what people were forced to sit through.

This was before Tivo, videotape, or streaming. The only way to see the classic performances was to sit through 40 minutes of tedious bad circus performers, over the hill vaudeville comics with jokes that were old before you were born, and corny schmaltzy over the top "singers."

If you had to work, or even ran to the bathroom, you missed it. This also means even the greatest performances on Sullivan became badly overrated. The Beatles were amazing songwriters, but as live performers were just slightly better than average. Elvis was amazing live, that is, before his Vegas days. But on Sullivan they notoriously censored him from the waist down.

So watch, but be prepared to fast forward a lot. A lot. You'll finish a 40 minute episode in seven minutes.

I watched a video of the Ed Sullivan show. It was entitled "Red, White, and Blue." It was a patriotic compiled tape which everybody in America should own. I was born after the show's cancellation so I never saw the original. But I can tell you after watching this tape, it was probably one of the best television shows of all time. In this tape, they have the great Henry Fonda doing the first Lincoln address. Dame Judith Anderson reciting the Gettysburg Address. Carl Sandburg offers the Lincoln Birthday address and the great Charlton Heston gives the second Lincoln inauguration speech. There are great musical numbers with Dale Evans, the West Point crew, and Kate Smith singing "God Bless America." They also have Joel Grey singing "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Grey's not James Cagney but it's worth seeing. This short video tape is only an hour long from Sofa Entertainment. Now if you are a history teacher, an American patriot, American lover, or just patriotic, this tape is worth the money. I bought 2 copies and gave it to history teachers that I know of. It's also worth buying for your home.

I used to watch this program sometimes when I was growing up. Technically,of course, it is light years out of date--no flashy special effects, no elaborate staging, nothing except a host that acts like either a marble statue come to life, or a cold fish (take your choice!), and singers(pop and otherwise), actors, dancers, comedians, classical music virtuosos (such as then 13-year old Itzhak Perlman) and acrobats simply "doing their thing".

I took it for granted then. I didn't realize that we were sometimes seeing rare, priceless footage that we would seldom, if ever, see again in the future, and that it contained such gems as original cast performers singing the hit songs from legendary Broadway classics such as "My Fair Lady", "West Side Story", "Camelot", and "Man of La Mancha"-in full costume, yet. I always thought, "Well,we have the albums,and there's no reason these segments wouldn't be rerun someday. Besides,we'll have the film versions of the shows,so who needs to be so eager to catch the Broadway performers?"

How wrong I was.

Because, up until the advent of video remastering and restoration, and the invention of the VCR, these shows disappeared, apparently gathering dust in the CBS archives because modern-day programming and technology had made them seem so old-fashioned. Now they are back. Some years ago,Disney had the foresight to issue a video called "The Best of Broadway Musicals from the Ed Sullivan Show", and this priceless tape, which has since been transferred to DVD, contained Julie Andrews singing "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?", Andrews and Richard Burton singing "What Do The Simple Folk Do?", Carol Lawrence and Larry Kert singing "Tonight",Richard Kiley singing "The Impossible Dream",etc. And recently, when Ed Sullivan was broadcast on Nick-At-Nite,not only was Kiley shown singing this song, but we were also given the rare treat of seeing the original Aldonza/Dulcinea, Joan Diener, singing the lovely "What Does He Want of Me", a song omitted from the film version of "Man of La Mancha".

That is the kind of program this was.

I've been watching reruns of this show and it is just great!! The music, comedy everything is awesome. I wish there was a show like that around now!!! I can't believe I'm the first one to comment on this great show