Yeah, Yeah, Yeah...

It was really just like any other Ed Sullivan show...except for those two segments that, you know, changed pop culture forever



The Ed Sullivan Show, "The Beatles' First Appearance"
OB: February 9, 1964, 8 p.m. EST, CBS
I was three weeks old when this broadcast first aired.

I don't remember it but I remember being told.  It's a lovely memory, one that people constantly try to take away from me.  I can see why they do that, but they won't.

The memory is this: my still-young mother, young enough to dearly love rock music, holding me (a three week old infant) in her lap, while she watched the Beatles make their debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. That simple act (my mom keeping me with her on the couch, perhaps so she wouldn't have to worry about running to the next room because Baby Dixon was wailing for a bottle in the middle of "All My Loving") put me face to face with one of the major pop culture moments of the 20th Century.  It's the first documented TV show to be playing when I was ever in front of a TV set, not to mention my first documented exposure to rock music and the Beatles, and the first nationwide, communal event in which I would take part (the next one would be the first moon landing).

Here's why people always try to take that away from me: at the time, my family was living in central Alabama (specifically a small apartment in Gadsden's Walnut Park neighborhood), and the main station that would've served as a CBS affiliate in central Alabama, WAPI, Channel 13 in Birmingham...didn't carry The Ed Sullivan Show that night.  WAPI was actually a combination CBS/NBC affiliate in those days, and with the apparent exception of CBS' Lassie, chose to run NBC's Sunday night lineup that night instead. Truthfully, it was (usually) the higher rated lineup, and included Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color and the unstoppable Bonanza. At the time of that night's Ed Sullivan Show, Channel 13 was showing the second half of Disney, followed by Imogene Coca's sitcom Grindl, which turned out to be one of that season's critical and ratings disasters.

But here's the thing: remember, we didn't live in Birmingham, we lived in Etowah County, about an hour northeast on the (then still unfinished) interstate. We lived in an area surrounded by mountains on almost all sides, so we weren't going to see much television without some help. So, the Etowah County/Gadsden area was one of the first communities to benefit from cable TV, which in those days was meant to import distant signals for clarity.  Sure enough, the Gadsden Times TV listings of that era tell which stations appear on "Cablevision." (I remember our having Cablevision; channel 8 was the one with all the clocks and barometers, and the sound of a local FM radio station.) And one of those stations just happened to be the Atlanta CBS affiliate, WAGA, Channel 5, which certainly did show Ed, John, Paul, George, Ringo and the other guests that night.  That's probably where my mother and I saw it.  And those who didn't have cable, could apparently still turn their antennas toward Chattanooga and pick up WDEF, Channel 12.

I should probably clear up some semantics and confusion first: the February 9, 1964 broadcast of The Ed Sullivan Show was not the first time the Fab Four's faces ever popped up on an American TV screen.  This show's distinction is a bit different from that.  They first appeared on the news, actually--first on NBC's Huntley/Brinkley Report then on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, both in 1963.  On NBC, Edwin Newman narrated video of the Beatles, while on CBS, their London correspondent Alexander Kendrick profiled them, showing them singing "She Loves You" and bags of mail coming into their fan club. Later, Jack Paar showed footage of the group, and the crowds reacting to them, in early January 1964. What Paar and the others weren't able to do was to get the Beatles live in their own network studios. That was what Sullivan did that was so momentous, actually got the Beatles live in the U.S., on an actual CBS soundstage in the Ed Sullivan Theater, without question. That's why his often-repeated phrase, "right here on this stage," was actually such a big deal whenever he introduced anyone.

That still wasn't what made the night special.  What made it special was that it was the very first time the Beatles ever performed on American soil, in the land that gave them all of their musical inspiration.

Ed Sullivan will always be remembered as a TV host, but he was a newspaper entertainment columnist first. In fact, that's how he became famous enough to host his own variety show, writing the "Little Old New York" column for the New York Daily News, and in the process, starting a rivalry with Walter Winchell. Both men had similar columns and similar politics.

In 1948, in the infancy of post-war television, Sullivan was tapped to host a show on CBS called Toast of the Town.  Variety shows themselves were in their infancy; the first, Hour Glass, premiered on NBC in 1946, and Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater would come along two years later, same time as Sullivan, and just after Arthur Godfrey.  The even older medium of vaudeville influenced nearly all of these shows (except Godfrey's, the first to have the sensibility of a broadcaster).  Sullivan's first show featured the television debut of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and also featured singer Monica Lewis, as well as Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein previewing the score to their upcoming musical "South Pacific."  The show eventually moved to CBS Studio 50, which would later be renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater.  The series, sponsored by Lincoln-Mercury Dealers for its first 14 years, would be officially renamed The Ed Sullivan Show in the fall of 1955.

Sullivan was a study in contrasts.  He was sensitive to disputes to the point that some people may not be invited to his show; yet his lack of personality and talent, and his ability to get tongue-tied, trip on microphone cords and forgot names of even iconic musical groups made him comedian fodder--and he loved it when comedians made fun of him, he loved the attention.  His right-wing sensibilities kept people off the show who were suspected of being "Communist sympathizers," yet he also positioned himself as one of the first major network stars to promote rock and roll music; his 1955 guests Bill Haley and the Comets, singing "Rock Around the Clock," is believed to be the first time a rock song was performed on U.S. network television.  Some were not without controversy; disputes with Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly and the Crickets and Bob Dylan were well known stories (and Dylan walked off without appearing).  But Sullivan made a name for himself by spotlighting the rising young singer, Elvis Presley, despite the fact that Sullivan got him only after he appeared with the Dorsey Brothers (on Stage Show, his TV debut), Milton Berle and Steve Allen.  Legend has it a lengthy layover at London's Heathrow first brought him into the path of the Beatles in 1963; he saw the crowds of girls who had lined up to see them fly in and realized he had another potential act that could deliver Elvis-type numbers.

The Beatles, who had been performing together since 1960, were starting to catch on in 1963.  Sullivan's talent coordinator had actually caught one of their concerts that summer, before Sullivan crossed paths with their fans at Heathrow.  The Fab Four had a couple of number one hits and a best selling album by the time they made their October 1963 television debut on Val Parnell's Sunday Night at the London Palladium, arguably the U.K. equivalent of Sullivan's American show.  The pandemonium related to that TV appearance on the BBC elevated the Beatles from just another pop group to a phenomenon in the British media, which in turn brought them to the attention of the London news bureaus of NBC and CBS and their appearances on both networks' nightly news.  Then the Beatles made their famous Royal Command performance at the London Palladium, the one where John Lennon famously asked everyone in the "cheap seats" to clap their hands during "Twist & Shout," and said "The rest of you can just rattle your jewelry."  While some thought that might have been disrespectful toward the royal family, the audience, including the royals themselves, ate it up.

By the time Sullivan saw the CBS Evening News appearance (it had appeared on the CBS Morning News the morning of November 22; the Kennedy assassination later that day kept it off the Evening News until December 10), he'd already booked the Beatles for three appearances on his show in February. He and Brian Epstein had worked out the details personally and sealed it with a handshake, giving the four a total of $10,000 for their two live and one taped appearances. Then Sullivan saw the CBS News story and called Cronkite personally to ask all about it; that was when he knew a major storm was coming.  That's when CBS started promoting the Beatles' upcoming appearance on the Sullivan show.

In January 1964 Jack Paar showed the Fab Four on his NBC show, in some footage he'd licensed from the BBC.  They were heard singing "She Loves You" just as they were on the CBS Evening News. The behind the scenes politics involving this is fascinating: Epstein went through the roof when he saw this, feeling it had violated the exclusivity deal worked out with Sullivan and threatened a boycott of the BBC Radio and TV (the Beatles had their own popular radio show on the BBC at the time).  But it was a different matter to Sullivan--he and Paar had been feuding over booking guests (or dumping guests who appeared on the others' programs), when Paar presented the Beatles footage, then used it to plug their upcoming appearance
on Sullivan's show.  This, to Sullivan, appeared to be an olive branch from Paar (which it was, actually) and he responded by inviting Paar's daughter Randy to the Beatles' show, and letting her bring guests.  She brought Richard Nixon's daughters, Julie and Tricia.

By that time, radio DJs in Washington, Chicago and St. Louis had jumped the gun by playing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" a month ahead of its scheduled release in January.  Capitol Records at first tried to get its attorneys to stop the radio stations, but by then popular demand had placed it in heavy rotation.  So Capitol moved up the release to December 26, 1963, and the record became a runaway hit, so much so that Capitol couldn't press enough singles to meet the initial demand.  Thus, Beatlemania had become pandemic.

Keep in mind, this was not an otherwise pleasant time in America.  We were still mourning the assassination of a young president, his official mourning period ending the day I was born, January 14, 1964, in the midst of a brutal winter that kept most of America indoors.  But something about those young, pleasant voices from far away, overseas, singing music that was influenced by America itself.  As they evolved from John Lennon's and Paul McCartney's Quarrymen garage band into what we would know as the Beatles, they listened to and paid tribute, to such U.S. performers as Carl Perkins, Buck Owens and Buddy Holly.  (They recorded an especially angelic version of Holly's "Words of Love" at one point.)  It lead to the Merseybeat/Liverpool sound, which the boys themselves didn't think was all that special.  ""It was a bit more like the original rock and roll than the stuff they've had over the last few months" was how George Harrison put it to CBS News.  "Just a way of classifying it, I don't think the music's very different," added Paul McCartney.  When asked whether they'd be just another flash in the pan and be forgotten in six months (a favorite topic of the media at the time), John Lennon candidly shot back, "It probably will, but it depends on how it takes for them to get tired, don't it?"

On February 7, 1964, the Beatles touched down at JFK International Airport in New York.  They arrived to about four thousand screaming teenagers who were encouraged by New York area radio DJs to turn out...on a school day.  They held a messy, chaotic news conference that actually began with a bald man shouting for everyone to "Shut up!" or there won't be a news conference.  The Fab Four show off a lot of their quick wit; when asked how they found America so far, Ringo Starr quipped, "Turn left at Greenland." Asked about criticism that they were four Elvis wannabes, they denied it as John and Ringo started gyrating like Elvis.

February 9th, show day, was a very extensively busy day in CBS Studio 50 on Broadway (known beginning in 1968 as the Ed Sullivan Theater).  There were dress rehearsals for Beatles and non-Beatles alike.  Their road manager, Neil Aspinal, filled in for George Harrison holding a guitar, while Harrison stayed at the hotel to recover from strep throat.  He had to leave to tend to a number of crises from the hotel itself: the Beatles were being threatened with eviction over all the screaming girls, many of whom were claiming to be a sister of a Beatle.  (This was especially bad news for the real sister of George Harrison, Louise, who had been turned away when she arrived to help take care of her brother's strep throat.)  So Aspinal left and one of the show's staff members go to briefly "jam" with the other three Beatles, even though the instruments weren't working. The comedy team of Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall, making their television debut that evening, thought all the crowds were for impressionist Frank Gorshin, and wouldn't know a Beatle if one knocked on their dressing room door asking for a Coke...which one did (John Lennon).  TV Guide even warned in advance that "30 policemen will be on hand in case a 'Beatle-Mania' reaches the riot pitch."

For the record, the first set the Beatles would ever play before a live audience in America, was a pre-taped appearance for the February 23rd show.  Sullivan opens that set by already expressing regret that this would be the boys' last of three appearances.  Then the Fab Four break into the Lennon-led "Twist and Shout," followed by a rousing "Please Please Me."  They then taped their closing number for the February 23rd show, their number 1 hit "I Want to Hold Your Hand."  Man, they're really good in this particular set.  Their backdrop would be different than the one seen that night, live, and so would the audience.

The February 9th show would be mostly live, and would kick off promptly at 8 Eastern with the show's surprisingly spartan open...the announcer saying "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, tonight, live from New York...The Ed Sullivan Show!"  (I would've added "From CBS Studio 50 on Broadway, it's the biggest show in New York..." but that's just me.)  The announcer then delivers the sponsor I.D. for the first half of the show, then introduces Ed.  We see our host take the stage and say, "You know, something very nice just happened and the Beatles got a kick out of it.  They just received a wire from Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker wishing them a lot of success in our country, and I think that was very, very nice."  (The telegram actually came a half hour before the show, prompting Harrison to say "Elvis who?")

One thing that's missing from this open: any sentence that sounds like "Tonight, right here on this show, the Beatles will be making their debut American performance!"  They apparently respect the audience's intelligence by not starting with a "Captain Obvious" moment like that one, as well as making it clear...the number of people watching that night very likely included precious few who just "channel surfed" onto the show during the second half of Disney.

Sullivan ran down some of the guests from the last few weeks...from the Singing Nun to Milton Berle to puppet semi-regular Topo Gigio, then last week's show in which Sammy Davis Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald performed together.  (That must've been something to see.)  He then mentions the Beatles as "tremendous ambassadors of goodwill," before pitching to a commercial for Aero Shave.

After the break, Ed's most famous introduction of his entire 23 year series: "Now yesterday and today our theater's been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation, and these veterans agreed with me that the city never has the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool, who call themselves The Beatles. Now tonight, you're gonna twice be entertained by them. Right now, and again in the second half of our show. Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles. Let's bring them on."
And so, on that now-iconic set with all the arrows pointing to the group (a visual embodiment, perhaps, of Sullivan's "right here on this very stage" line that he used so much) , Paul, Ringo, George and John break into "All My Loving," with Paul on lead vocal.  We can hear it just find all these years later on the videotape that's been remastered for DVD; but supposedly with the screaming girls in the audience--an audience of some 723 out of 50,000 actual ticket requests--they couldn't be heard that well in the studio.  But the Fab Four perform beautifully and energetically for that audience, with only George ever glancing into the camera. (George does surprisingly well in this show despite having strep throat.)

The next song has a much different tempo: it's a ballad, and a very nice choice.  Even though this was certainly a song already in their repertoire, they chose "Til There was You," a show tune from Meredith Willson's "The Music Man." Shirley Jones sang it in the movie version.  This pays tribute to the Broadway influence over The Ed Sullivan Show; Studio 50 was right there on Broadway, and Broadway tunes were a common factor in the show. Sullivan even featured original casts in current shows (and one of those would be featured in this very broadcast). I don't know if it was the Beatles' or the show producers' idea to include this number, which Paul sings rather angelically, but it's a nice way for the Beatles to fit into the actual show instead of treating it as one more of countless venues they'll play in their career.
And it's during this number when we see some of the most significant supers to ever come out of a character generator in television history: the first names of each individual Beatle on the screen, which is how most of America of a certain age will forever be able to place a Beatle's name with a face, as we were basically being formally introduced to the Fab Four.  It's during this segment that we see the now-famous super of Lennon, with the caveat, "Sorry Girls He's Married."

Right after this number, they almost immediately break into a rousing rendition of "She Loves You," which was climbing the charts at the time, and the main single they were promoting at the time.  One very significant choice made by the show's production staff that night: for the first time ever, they intercut the performance video with shots of the audience, screaming at specific times--when the band goes into a chorus, for instance. (O.K, I guess they could hear the music.)

There's even a camera shot from high in the audience, showing the Beatles distantly on stage amid screaming teenage girls and studio lights. It's a great effect that cements this show in our consciousness, and it may have very well been the birth of the modern concert film.  Too bad we didn't get any shots of them from backstage hitting their marks before the curtain went up.

After "She Loves You," Sullivan tries to quiet the audience long enough to remind them there are other acts coming up, right after this word from Anacin.  And sure enough, except for two more Beatles songs near the end of the show, this is mostly like any other Sullivan show.  People who often write about this particular broadcast often implore us to feel sorry for the other acts that night, but I submit...maybe not.  It was a once in a lifetime experience for everyone involved, and all but one of the acts were show biz veterans who were performing just another gig.  We'll get to the one exception in a little bit.

Next up: a French-accented magician named Fred Kaps, whose act is based on the idea that he's an inept magician but still possesses the full power of magic.  First he keeps trying to do a card trick where he's supposed to make two's and three's of hearts and diamonds disappear...but every time he tries to get rid of a card, it turns back into a black royalty card (what appears to be the queen of clubs).  Then he does a trick with salt and can't get the salt to stop flowing.  Ed, oddly enough, gives away all the jokes as he introduces him.  The good thing for Kaps is that this bit was taped in advance, perhaps earlier that evening, which is good since the subtlety of  what he's doing surely would've been lost immediately after the Beatles.  He seems to get a good reaction from the audience.

Immediately after the Kaps bit, Sullivan features the cast of Broadway's "Oliver!" at a time when the play was on Broadway. (Many Broadway theaters closed on Sunday nights in those days, freeing up the casts for an appearance on the Sullivan show.)  This was a tradition that also provides us with a very rare video record of these original casts performing in costume. In this case, Sullivan only mentions Georgia Brown, the British actress who appears as Nancy.  But we also see Bruce Prochnik as Oliver Twist, Clive Revill as Fagin, Alice Playten as Bet, and in the second most significant pop culture moment of the night, we hear a brief solo from the actor who plays the Artful Dodger.

He's none other than Davy Jones...yes, that Davy Jones, the same one who would be one-fourth of the Beatles sitcom knockoff, The Monkees, just two and a half years later. He starts off the number "I'd Do Anything for You," followed by Brown's solo, "As Long as He Needs Me," which is met with nice applause and a "come over" from Ed.

After a commercial break, Ed introduces impressionist Frank Gorshin from Hollywood.  He's probably the biggest non-Beatle hit of the night.  His routine is based on Hollywood stars taking over the country's government, with Broderick Crawford as Vice-President, Senator Dean Martin (especially funny, saying things like "I'd like to thank all the liquor dealers all over the world, for helping me get as high as I am today!"), Senator Anthony Quinn, Senator Marlon Brando, Secretary of State Burt Lancaster and others.

Gorshin's act is unique in that he puts his whole body into every impression he does.  He gets a lot of laughter, laughter that sounds very young and very female, which means he clearly reached the young girls in the studio audience. Gorshin clearly left the stage that night a big hit. The year he died, I'm pretty sure this is the clip the Emmy Awards used in their "In Memoriam" montage.

Once per show, Ed usually introduced at least one distinguished person in the audience and asked them to stand up and take a bow.  This particular night, it's winter Olympics Gold-Medal-winning speed skater, Terry McDermott.  If you ever see any backstage photos of the Beatles, with Paul pretending to wince as someone acts like they're cutting his hair, it's McDermott.  He happened to be a barber in the real world.

And now a word from Pillsbury...and about the commercials seen in this show.  By the 1961-62 season, the show had become too expensive for one sponsor, so that was the year Lincoln-Mercury pulled out of the show.  They were replaced by a multitude of advertisers, showing the big changes in the television business as the idea of buying ad time replaced buying entire shows.  During this show, viewers saw a smattering of ads from Griffin Shoe Wax, Coldwater All liquid detergent and a bunch of commercials for Pillsbury.  The way the advertising was sold may have been new, but the ads themselves were way retro.  A commercial for Pillsbury's canned biscuits and rolls, which was a new innovation at the time, shows a wife dutifully making them as part of a family dinner in which hubby is still wearing his coat and tie from work.  The jingle: "Nothing says lovin' like something from the oven, and Pillsbury says it best."  Then-unknown actor Paul Dooley also popped up in a commercial that night for Kent cigarettes, with the "Micronite" filter ("Micronite" = asbestos).

Tessie O'Shea, who Sullivan introduces as being from England and from the Broadway show "The Girl Who Came to Supper," comes out and sings a medley of old show tunes.  She, too, seems to do fine by the audience, getting a nice laugh when she says "Oh this will be sexy!" and some good applause from a mostly young audience.  She picks up a banjo for her signature song, "Two-Ton Tessie (from Tennessee)," so if you've never heard of it, this is a perfect idea of her act.

This particular audience wasn't an easy one to entertain this particular night.  It was largely teenaged and female and by all accounts, even within the show (as Ed tried to talk several times, for instance), we get the idea they were easily distracted and spoke amongst themselves quite often. There's a very real chance many of them weren't even born yet when the show premiered in 1948. But the show biz veterans who came on after the Beatles appeared, from what I can see, appear to have (mostly) held their own. No, there's no reason to feel sorry for Tessie or any of the other non-Beatle acts who appeared before her.

Which brings us to the next act...that one is a different story. Performers often bomb, and sometimes they bomb in a way that's the stuff of legend.

Just putting it out there up front, Mitzi McCall and Charlie Brill, in their television debut, pretty much laid an egg. I really wanted to like this part: I knew them from their 1970s appearances on game shows like Match Game '73 and Tattletales, and I could tell from the tone of their sketch, they're more used to intellectual humor than perhaps what they delivered here.  But during dress rehearsal, Sullivan (who usually wasn't there, but again this wasn't just any week) asked them to change their act.  He felt it was too "cerebral" for his family-oriented show, and worked with them as they pieced together another routine on the spot.

What they delivered was a piece about a producer auditioning actresses, with Brill as the producer and McCall as a ditzy secretary, two actresses (one of them a beauty pageant winner, one a method actress) and an overbearing stage mother.  Years later, the then-newlywed couple in their early 20s (which made them roughly the same age as the Beatles) recalled they couldn't hear each other over the crowd; on the DVD we can clearly hear them but we also hear the dull roar of a rude audience in the background, a sound not present during Gorshin's or O'Shea's acts.  The whole sketch suffers from poor timing (in more ways than one), a couple of misfired punch lines and a rotten final line that sounds so cruel 50 years later (the producer suddenly notices his secretary is just what he's looking for, but calls her "ugly" when she takes off her glasses).  At the end of the laughless act, the two, looking stunned, take a quick bow and leave, very noticeably not going over to shake hands with Ed.

Three things could've avoided this: a toned down final line; Ed mentioning them earlier (just before the last commercial he implied Tessie O'Shea was the only act left standing between the Beatles and their fans), and taping the segment in advance.  They were pretty much set up to fail.  The fact that McCall played four different characters may have been lost on an audience that was barely paying attention and couldn't hear the dialogue.

After a Pillsbury Cake Mix commercial, Ed reminds everyone the Beatles will also appear during the next two weeks of shows, then says simply "Once again...!" as he points to where the Beatles launch into "I Saw Her Standing There."  Then there's an especially big scream as they play the opening notes to "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

There's even a crane shot that zips over Paul, George and John straight to Ringo, a bit of camerawork that was rare in those days but taken for granted now.
The Fab Four finish their final number, leave their instruments on the stage, and shake hands with Ed.  After they leave the stage, Sullivan gives special thanks to the NYPD for their handling of thousands of teenagers clogging up Broadway, and the media who were on site covering the Beatles appearance.  Then he pitches to one final act: the "most likely to get booted for time reasons" Wells and the Four Fays acrobatic act.  But they do appear briefly.

And that's the show. That's the show that an estimated 73 million people watched that night, making it the highest rated show of all time up to that point, breaking a record set weeks earlier by a bunch of hillbillies and a giant jackrabbit. And it's an audience that included, for instance, a young mother and her infant son in Gadsden, Alabama. Mom never mentions what Dad was doing that night; I'm guessing he was reading a book or something. Dad was always more of a Frankie Valli fan.

The following week would find the show, and the Beatles, on the road in Miami for their second appearance. Sullivan actually pushes Mitzi Gaynor as the headliner, and suggests in his introduction that his staff had to work longer and harder to get her on the show than they did the Beatles. Then the week of February 23rd, America finally gets to see the Beatles' first performance ever on American soil: their pre-taped appearance before the February 9th show. No screaming, distracted audience to interfere with that night's other acts, including Gordon and Sheila MacRae, Cab Calloway and the British comedy team of Morecambe & Wise (who most certainly did not bomb, as they could hear themselves).  This particular broadcast was almost as highly rated as the Beatles' first appearance.

The Beatles would appear on Ed's stage one last time, in the 1965-66 season premiere (and what would turn out to be the show's very last black and white broadcast), promoting songs from both the movie and album "Help!" After that they'd only appear in occasional "performance clips" (read: music videos) that were filmed or taped in advance, by the Beatles themselves.

Sullivan's show outlasted the Beatles as an act, by one year.  I often bemoan the lack of variety shows in today's television, as well as how we've changed that makes variety shows no longer marketable.  But the Sullivan shows in which the Beatles appear, lay bare the main reason we don't have them anymore: so many of the acts are laughably outdated. In fact, critics often argued they were outdated even then. Sullivan's show didn't have a host who sang or was known for acting in sketches (though he did do that last one), but it did have a man who scouted talent and specifically programmed for every member of the family, from the youngest children to grandma and grandpa. That's why the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Supremes and so many other rock and soul acts were so prominent on his show during the last decade of its existence.

But still, all of the acts--the Beatles, Frank Gorshin, Tessie O'Shea, all of them--all bring their best and all bring their charm, in a way we don't see anymore.  Even Mitzi McCall and Charlie Brill clearly show us they're capable of better material than what we're seeing unfold.  We don't see any of that charm on modern day TV and certainly not cable, and will likely never see it first run ever again.

But the 1960s was the era in which networks discovered younger demographics being the most profitable, and started just going after them.  That made Ed's overall audience look so old, and prompted CBS to cancel the show in 1971, after 23 years.  Sullivan was so upset, he refused to do a finale, and the last few broadcasts were reruns. Sullivan still did specials for the network until his death in 1974.

Ironically, the hippest variety shows of the 1970s and '80s were rock and roll shows, ones that used so much of the talent Sullivan used on his own show.  American Bandstand, The Midnight Special and the still-going Soul Train far outlasted Sullivan--but truthfully, owe a lot to him as well.

As for the Beatles, I can't put into mere words, the impact they had on the world of music and pop culture, and on me. I remember nothing of that actual evening in February 1964, but somehow I grew up to be a Beatles fan. I was just short of my 17th birthday in December 1980, when my friend Marcus called me just before school to tell me John Lennon had been shot to death by a deranged stalker, the night before. I remember being upset about that for days. I remember being annoyed that there weren't any candlelight vigils for me to attend where I lived in Alabama. I never did find a vigil, so I held my own in my bedroom, in the dark but no candles, listening to "Strawberry Fields Forever" on my cassette player.

I guess this was the first time in my life, the death of someone famous left me with a need to grieve.

Availability:  All four Ed Sullivan Show broadcasts featuring the Beatles on stage, are on DVD; they're complete with most of the original commercials, except for the ones that advertised cigarettes.  Sofa Entertainment has put out similar sets of complete shows featuring Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones, and a number of releases featuring clips of rock and soul acts.

Next time on this channel: Bonanza.