Right here on our stage tonight!
Subtitle: Ed Sullivan's America
By: Gerald Nachman.
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Berkeley
Language: eng
Number of pages: 455
ISBN-13: 9780520258679
Subjects: Sullivan, Ed, -- 1902-; Ed Sullivan show (Television program); Television personalities -- United States -- Biography
Genres: Biography.
Description: "Before the advent of cable and its hundreds of channels, before iPods and the Internet, three television networks ruled America's evenings. And for twenty-three years, Ed Sullivan, the Broadway gossip columnist turned awkward emcee, ruled Sunday nights. It was Sullivan's genius to take a worn-out stage genre - vaudeville - and transform it into the TV variety show, a format that was to dominate for decades. Right Here on Our Stage Tonight! tells the complete saga of "The Ed Sullivan Show" and, through the voices of some 60 stars interviewed for the book, brings to life the most beloved, diverse, multi-cultural, and influential variety hour ever to air." "Gerald Nachman takes us through those years, from the earliest dog acts and jugglers to Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and beyond. Sullivan was the first TV impresario to feature black performers on a regular basis - including Nat King Cole, Pearl Bailey, James Brown, and Richard Pryor - challenging his conservative audience and his own traditional tastes, and changing the face of American popular culture along the way. No other TV show ever cut such a broad swath through our national life or cast such a long shadow, nor has there ever been another show like it. Nachman's compulsively readable history, illustrated with classic photographs and chocked with colorful anecdotes, reanimates The Ed Sullivan Show for a new generation."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Out of the Paley-ozoic ooze; title: Videoville; title: The columnist conspiracy; title: The $375 extravaganza; title: Very critical condition; title: The magic of sullivision; title: Barefoot boy with cheek; title: Just a broadway baby; title: Toast of the country; title: It's the world, on line one; title: Sacred sunday rite; title: Semi-family man; title: Extended family; title: Unkindest cuts; title: Backstage life (and death); title: Give my regards to La Scala; title: Elvis has entered the building; title: Newspaper wads at 50 paces; title: The reds and the blacks; title: The son-in-law also rises; title: "And now, the Be-'uls!"; title: Man without a country; title: Echoes and after-images.