page_title: Ed Sullivan
section_title: Sullivan, the starmaker
hierarchical_section_title: Ed Sullivan / Sullivan, the starmaker
caption_attribution_description: English: Ed Sullivan congratulates Izhak Perlman after a concert at ZOA House in Tel Aviv.
context_page_description: Edward Vincent Sullivan was an American television personality, impresario, sports and entertainment reporter, and syndicated columnist for the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate. He is principally remembered as the creator and host of the television variety program The Toast of the Town, later popularly—and, eventually, officially—renamed The Ed Sullivan Show. Broadcast for 23 years from 1948 to 1971, it set a record as the longest-running variety show in US broadcast history. "It was, by almost any measure, the last great TV show," said television critic David Hinckley. "It's one of our fondest, dearest pop culture memories."
  Sullivan was a broadcasting pioneer at many levels during television's infancy. As TV critic David Bianculli wrote, "Before MTV, Sullivan presented rock acts. Before Bravo, he presented jazz and classical music and theater. Before the Comedy Channel, even before there was the Tonight Show, Sullivan discovered, anointed and popularized young comedians. Before there were 500 channels, before there was cable, Ed Sullivan was where the choice was. From the start, he was indeed 'the Toast of the Town'."
context_section_description: In the 1950s and 1960s, Sullivan was a respected starmaker because of the number of performers who became household names after appearing on the show. He had a knack for identifying and promoting top talent and paid a great deal of money to secure that talent for his show. Sullivan was quoted as saying "In the conduct of my own show, I've never asked a performer his religion, his race or his politics. Performers are engaged on the basis of their abilities. I believe that this is another quality of our show that has helped win it a wide and loyal audience."
  Although Sullivan was wary of Elvis Presley's "bad boy" image, and initially said that he would never book him, Presley became too big a name to ignore; in 1956, Sullivan signed him for three appearances. In August 1956, Sullivan was injured in an automobile accident near his country home in Southbury, Connecticut, and missed Presley's first appearance on September 9. Charles Laughton wound up introducing Presley on the Sullivan hour. When Ed returned to the show, audiences noticed a change in his voice. After Sullivan got to know Presley personally, he made amends by telling his audience, "This is a real decent, fine boy."
  Sullivan's failure to scoop the TV industry with Presley made him determined to get the next big sensation first. In November 1963, while in Heathrow Airport, Sullivan witnessed Beatlemania as the band returned from Sweden. At first he was reluctant to book the Beatles because the band did not have a commercially successful single released in the US at the time, but at the behest of a friend, legendary impresario Sid Bernstein, Sullivan signed the group. Their initial Sullivan show appearance on February 9, 1964, was the most-watched program in TV history to that point, and remains one of the most-watched programs of all time. The Beatles appeared three more times in person, and submitted filmed performances afterwards. The Dave Clark Five, who claimed a "cleaner" image than the Beatles, made 13 appearances on the show, more than any other UK group.
  Unlike many shows of the time, Sullivan asked that most musical acts perform their music live, rather than lip-synching to their recordings. Examination of performances show that exceptions were made, as when a microphone could not be placed close enough to a performer for technical reasons. An example was B.J. Thomas' 1969 performance of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", in which actual water was sprinkled on him as a special effect. In 1969, Sullivan presented the Jackson 5 with their first single "I Want You Back", which ousted the B.J. Thomas song from the top spot of Billboard's pop charts.
  Sullivan had an appreciation for African American talent. According to biographer Gerald Nachman, "Most TV variety shows welcomed 'acceptable' black superstars like Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey and Sammy Davis Jr. ... but in the early 1950s, long before it was fashionable, Sullivan was presenting the much more obscure black entertainers he had enjoyed in Harlem on his uptown rounds— legends like Peg Leg Bates, Pigmeat Markham and Tim Moore ... strangers to white America."  He hosted pioneering TV appearances by Bo Diddley, the Platters, Brook Benton, Jackie Wilson, Fats Domino, and numerous Motown acts, including the Supremes, who appeared 17 times. As the critic John Leonard wrote, "There wasn't an important black artist who didn't appear on Ed's show."
  He defied pressure to exclude African American entertainers, and to avoid interacting with them when they did appear. "Sullivan had to fend off his hard-won sponsor, Ford's Lincoln dealers, after kissing Pearl Bailey on the cheek and daring to shake Nat King Cole's hand," Nachman wrote.  According to biographer Jerry Bowles, "Sullivan once had a Ford executive thrown out of the theatre when he suggested that Sullivan stop booking so many black acts. And a dealer in Cleveland told him 'We realize that you got to have niggers on your show. But do you have to put your arm around Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson at the end of his dance?' Sullivan had to be physically re
caption: Ed Sullivan congratulates 13-year-old Itzhak Perlman after a concert in Tel Aviv, in 1958
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