This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected.
That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at let's get real about skincancer.com. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years.
And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q.
That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. Labor Day savings are happening now at the Home Depot with select appliances starting at $399. Plus, save up to an extra $1,000 and get free delivery on appliance purchases of $998 or more. Upgrade your kitchen with a Samsung refrigerator featuring zero clearance. Designed for all spaces with special hinges and slim doors for a seamless look.
Right now, at great prices at the Home Depot, you can save on top-brand appliances built to elevate. Your kitchen. Shop Labor Day Savings at the Home Depot today. Offer Valid August 27th through September 16th. USLAC Store Online for details.
You've watched racing.
Now get behind the wheel. At Kaizen Autosport Racing School at VIR, professional race drivers teach you how to drive faster, safer, and with more confidence on one of America's legendary racetracks. Never driven on track, we'll get you started. Already experienced, we'll take you to the next level. Ready to race?
Earn your competition license and learn real wheel-to-wheel racecraft. Stop watching, start driving. Go to racevir.com. That's racevir.com. Indeed Sponsored Jobs gets you quality candidates when you need them most.
Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply.
Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Mm. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports and from business to history and everything in between, including your stories.
Send them to ouramericanstories.com. That's ouramericanstories.com. And today, we have the author and journalist James Maguire on to tell us the story of Ed Sullivan. James wrote a book on Ed's life, Impresario, The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan, and we wanted to hear from him about the life. of this T V legend.
James, thanks for joining us. Let's start at the beginning. Where did Ed Sullivan come from? What made him who he became? Ed Sullivan was born in 1901 in Harlem, New York.
Very poor Irish Catholic family. And I mean, I think they did not even have the money for medical care. He had a twin brother who died very, very young, like shortly after his birth. He also had a sister who died very young as well. I mean, it was a desperate, very poor life there in Harlem, New York.
His father. Was known to be someone who really could not get along with people very well. He was a civil servant. At first, he made uh almost a middle class wage, but then he got into a number of disagreements with people and his socioeconomic status fell and fell.
So when Sullivan's Two siblings died. I think the parents just could not take it anymore. They decided, you know, we need to move out of Harlem. We need to move to a little town.
So when he was really a very young boy, they moved to Port Chester, New York, which is just north of New York City, maybe a half hour or so, really. It's basically a stone's throw away from New York City. It was for him a very, you know, way more pleasant place to grow up. And in terms of, you know, his life around the house. His mother was very big into opera and music.
They played the piano around the house, and she played recordings of operas. There was a lot of exposure to music around the house. You know, that played a big role in him. He dreamed of New York City. He always thought, you know, how am I going to get to New York City?
First, he wanted to, you know, as World War I broke out, he had dreams of like going overseas and actually becoming a soldier. but he actually wasn't quite old enough to be a soldier.
So he went down to the recruiting office and tried to fake it. But they they would not let him into the uh into the army, so he was very disappointed about that. He had to go back home. But he did move. He took a like a very low-level job as a sports writer in New York City in the 1920s.
And that for him was a dream come true. I mean, the He wrote about this. The show in Manhattan that featured dogs was like a huge dog show. And he saw his byline on the newspaper, and he was hooked. And that was always something that drove him.
He always really wanted to be famous, he wanted to be known. And seeing his byline in a newspaper. was just, you know, it was it was addictive for him. And so He had quite a bit of success as a sports reporter. He bounced around from newspaper to newspaper all throughout the 1920s.
It was never hard for him to get a job. He wrote about any kind of sports, football, baseball, swimming, golf. I mean, he wrote about it all. The big twist for him that sort of moved him further into the world of entertainment was that He switched from being a sports reporter to be in a gossip columnist for a newspaper. And that really suddenly got him into the world of fame in New York City.
So he was constantly hanging out and getting to know and writing about celebrities and athletes. You know, movie stars, radio stars really in the early days, and later on, movie stars in New York City.
So And it gave him. You know, really a still more touch of fame, and he loved it. Ed's life was driven by a competitive zeal. Can you tell us about his first major rivalry? There was a gossip columnist in New York City, a guy named Walter Witchell.
His name is unknown at this point, but in the 1930s in America. And Ed and Walter were fierce competitors. The two of them had a fierce competition. And of course, as big as Walter's gossip column was, really, it was Walter's radio show. He had a national radio show, and Edge saw that and thought, you know, I need to get my own radio show.
So he rounded up some talent and he would interview people on a radio show, and it was a complete flop. And the problem was that He wrote a very colorful gossip column, but he himself was not a performer. He was, you know, he had a very sort of a droll. you know, downbeat, you know, delivery. He really wanted to be, he wanted to be famous.
And so. You know, in the 1920s, radio was the domain.
So he tried to get another radio show. And again, it would last like six or eight weeks, and it just would not work. He worked the gossip column angle really hard. It's hard to remember exactly how big news papers were, you know, the 1920s and 1930s. You know, they were far, far bigger than they are now.
And in a world without television, in a world in which movies were really in its infancy, newspapers were the mass medium. And so, and so being a columnist at that time was really a big deal. And that helped Sullivan, of course, get guests for his radio show. And he had a total of five radio shows finally, and every single one was canceled after a fairly short run. You know, one of the things he did that partially to compensate and also as an outgrowth of his gossip column was that He began to organize vaudeville shows in the 1930s in New York City.
You know, the important thing to remember about that is that You know, America was in a depression in those days. And so You know, people would buy their their they would pay their you know a dime to get in a nickel to get in for the vaudeville show and they were a very very demanding audience if they didn't like it you know if they didn't like a performer if they didn't like an act they would certainly let let the uh let the performer know they're they're a rowdy bunch And Solvent. You know, produced vaudeville shows sometimes six nights a week, you know, five, six nights a week for years. In New York City. And his vaudeville shows.
We're sort of a precursor to the final television show in the It was a mix. It could be a comedian, a singer. you know, a mime, you know, maybe some sort of a bizarre oddity act, you know, a juggler, and they would all move really quickly. And Sullivan would MC those vaudeville shows. Of course, there was live, live theater.
And that really gave him a lot of experience in terms of how to put on a show. It taught him a lot. It also gave him that very, very immediate feedback. You know, he would stand backstage and he would watch the performer on stage. He would watch the audience on stage.
He would see, okay, how is this? How is the audience relating to this performer? He became sort of very, very attuned to the idea of what it meant to build an audience. And we're listening to James Maguire talk about the life of Ed Sullivan, a man we all know or have heard of, but don't know the story behind the story. More of the life of Ed Sullivan here on Our American Stories.
Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, We're asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please. Make a donation. A monthly gift of $17.76 is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to ouramericanstories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's ouramericanstories.com. Not every sale happens at the register. Before ATT Business Wireless, customer checkout would take too long and create awkward delays. At one point, completing a transaction felt less like making a sale and more like a staring contest no one wanted to win.
Now, with ATT Business Wireless, transactions happen fast, helping us to keep things moving. That means less time spent dealing with delays and more time staying focused on the day ahead. When the connection matters, it has to be ATT. Get ATT Business at ATT.com/slash 5G network. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer.
Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at let's get real about skincancer.com.
Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage.
Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. You've watched racing.
Now get behind the wheel. At Kaizen Autosport Racing School in VIR, professional race drivers teach you how to drive faster, safer, and with more confidence on one of America's legendary racetracks. Never driven on track? We'll get you started. Already experienced, we'll take you to the next level.
Ready to race? Earn your competition license and learn real wheel-to-wheel racecraft. Stop watching, start driving. Go to racevir.com. That's racevir.com.
Professional wrestling fans, the action continues every week. Watch CNA Thursday Night Impact every week on AMC. It is like electricity blowing through your veins. Don't miss the adrenaline, the drama, and the total non-stop action. No one can ever be as good as this, drug!
Don't miss the action of TNA Thursday Night Impact every week on AM SIG. For show types and more information, visit TNAWrestling.com. And we're back with our American stories and with the story of Ed Sullivan. And joining us is James Maguire, who wrote the book Impresario, The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan. Let's pick up where we last left off with James talking about Sullivan's experience in vaudeville.
And as a gossip columnist, he's really renowned way before his television years. He was actually quite well known as a gossip columnist. He wrote for a paper, the New York Daily News, which is still publishing daily today, still a big paper in New York City. In the 1940s, they even sent him out to Hollywood. Uh to sort of, you know, write about you know, movie stars and I mean, everyone, you know, Fred Astaire, all the major stars would like, you know, play golf with them.
And he really hobnobbed with all these people, he knew them all. because they wanted to be in his gossip column. Because you know, in the days before television, being in a major gossip column like that was really a ticket to get more notoriety.
So everyone wanted to be nice to him because they wanted mentioned in his column. In the late 1940s, the very, very beginning of television. And You know, he had these frustrated dreams of fame from radio when he had failed so much in radio. And he saw television. He thought, you know what?
I am not going to fail in this medium. I fail constantly, and I'm not going to fail in television. He actually wrote that in one of his columns before his show debuted, his television show debuted, he wrote a column about how he had made up his mind he had failed in radio, but I'm not going to fail on TV. And so, you know, CBS. You know, it's launched a variety show in 1948.
It was called Toast to the Town. They didn't know who to ask to be the MC of the show. I mean, there weren't, of course, any television stars because TV had not existed. And here was Sullivan. He was a fairly well-known, quite actually quite well-known gossip columnist.
So they thought, well, Well, that's this Sullivan guy. And the thing is, you know, the CBS thought that, you know, or they knew that Solvin could get guests because. Sullivan knew all these people because he wrote about them in his gossip calm. They gave Ed a $300 a week budget to book guests.
So, I mean, the entire hour of performing was filled with a $300 budget. And so You know, much of those that early year or so, Sullivan actually had to use his own money to pay guests to get on the show, if you believe that or not. One of the reasons CBS was banking on him because he had the power of newspapers, which is sort of ironic when you think about it. A television network was relying on the power of a newspaper. You know, to get guests, which, of course, you know, things have really changed now.
And that early show, those early shows were really, really rough. Sullivan, of course, was extremely nervous. I mean, as it was live television, it wasn't recorded.
So, like, when that camera blinked on, you were talking to the live audience. And in those early days, the live audience was just. The New York area. There wasn't even a nationwide network at that point. CBS was not quite nationwide.
He was horribly nervous. The show was slow moving, but. The thing that really saved him early on was all those years producing vaudeville shows. He knew how to put on a show and he knew what the audience liked. He didn't need to guess what the audience liked because, in a sense, he was one of them.
He was an everyman.
So, if he liked it, they were going to like it. He had a very good sense of what they were going to like. As the 1940s turned into the 1950s, The show really did really well. And CBS was very happy with it. They had advertisers and Ford Motor Company began advertising with it.
And CBS realized they had a hit on their hand.
Meanwhile, NBC looked at it and they said, oh, a variety show on Sunday night, huh?
Well, if if this Ed Sullivan fellow is doing that, We can do it far better than this Ed Sullivan guy. He's boring. The thing that they didn't fully realize is that Sullivan himself was, of course, not an entertainer. He was a very uncle-led, very slow-measured performer. But the way that he knew how to put on a show, the way he could balance the various acts on stage, people really loved that.
Colgate Palmolive sponsored the NBC show and they thought, you know, well, you know, we will put so much money into this, we will just steamroll, you know, the Sullivan show. And You know, backed by the Colgate Palm Olives ad dollars, they uh they booked all sorts of big acts, they had Abbott and Costello. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, which at the time were like super, super hot. They had had a Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin had a very hot nightclub act in New York City. The NBSO show did pretty well, but Sullivan really dug in his heels and he used all the skills he had learned in all those years at vaudeville.
And at the end of like a two-year period, he had really out-produced the NBC show. And so his ratings were actually beating NBC. Even though NBC's talent budget was far greater, it was simply his ability to produce a show. really was made made the show a huge success. And You know, when CBS first hired Sullivan to do the show, it was called Toast of the Town.
But by the early 1950s, he was able to renegotiate his contract. and it would now be called the Ed Sullivan Show. And it was really his show. And he produced it and he chose the acts every week. You know, he chose what order they were in.
Even though he was the MC of the show, what he was really doing, he was producing the show by choosing the acts, deciding who was going to be on. With every passing season, he kept his sort of finger on the pulse of America. He knew who was big. And he kept relating to the culture at large. And as T V.
Really became a prime part of American life there in the 1950s. You know, everyone was gathered around their black and white TV. He was really, you know, the one who just sort of, he was, he became Uncle Ed to the mass audience. They look to him as sort of the imprimatur, so to speak, of what is good. He had a consistent gift.
He never faltered. He always sort of balanced something really wholesome with something really jazzy. He would have athletes on, he might have a choir on, he'd have comedians on. It was a mix. And there was always something for the entire family.
There was something for little kids, something for the teenagers, something for the grown-ups. There might be a Broadway show, might be actually a cat, the live cast from a Broadway show, would walk across town and actually perform a scene in live television. You know, it could be Frank Sinatra. Could be the largest, you know, the most popular comedians of the day. Everyone was on the Sullivan show.
And James, you write that he didn't just have his finger on the pulse of entertainment. He was a forward thinker too. Tell us about that. He really pioneered black performance. He really believed in diversity on the air.
And he was way ahead of his time in this regard. And there were times where some of the sponsors and some of the audience even got upset. You know, there might have been an element of racism in the audience, but he refused to bow down to that. There's this great moment Ed booked the singer Nat King Cole in the mid-1950s. Nat King Cole, of course, is black.
Net Kinkole did this sort of Hawaiian theme, and there were two dancers dancing along stage with him instead of this Hawaiian. You know, they're all, everyone was in Hawaiian garb. Nat Kiko was very elegantly dressed. And they were like white women dancers, you know, swaying their hips along with Nat King Cole's sort of jazzy tune. And in 1955 or the early 1950s, that was actually unheard of.
For like white performers and black performers to be on stage together was like, oh my God, I'm sure much of the audience would have been shocked by that. But Sullivan refused to be cowed by that. He constantly booked black performers. Uh, there was sort of a an historic moment when he when he uh there was the singer Pearl Bailey gave her a kiss on the cheek one night after she performed. It was like, oh my god, I outraged the audience, but.
It just did not matter to him. He was going to go ahead and do that. It was something he that that mattered him greatly. You know, James, Sullivan took a leap of faith that most of us wouldn't think of. is a hard decision.
And that was booking Elvis Presley. You know, Elvis Presley was, of course, exploding on the scene in the 1950s. Sullivan realized that if he was going to keep his ratings up, he needed to be able to book these really huge ratings. And he looked at Elvis. And he was full of hesitation at first because Elvis was a rock and roller.
There was something dangerous about Elvis Presley. And when we come back, we're going to continue with that thought on Elvis Presley and how Ed Sullivan made the choice to head in the direction and embraced a lot of these rock and rollers, and how he balanced. The old cultural norms with the new ones. and how all of that catapulted his show into well, let's just say the stratosphere. When we come back, more of the life of an unlikely impresario, and in the end a very likely one.
As well, and that is, of course, Ed Sullivan and the Ed Sullivan show. More of this remarkable life story, this quintessential American story. here on our American stories. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S.
and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at Let's Get Real about Skin Cancer.com. Yeah.
Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage.
Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. You've watched racing.
Now get behind the wheel. At Kaizen Autosport Racing School at VIR, professional race drivers teach you how to drive faster, safer, and with more confidence on one of America's legendary racetracks. Never driven on track? We'll get you started. Already experienced, we'll take you to the next level.
Ready to race? Earn your competition license and learn real wheel-to-wheel racecraft. Stop watching, start driving. Go to racevir.com. That's racevir.com.
Professional wrestling fans, the action continues every week. Watch CNA Thursday Night Impact every week on AMC. It is like electricity. Destiny blowing through your veins. Don't miss the adrenaline, the drama, and the total non-stop action.
No one can ever be as good as This right here! Don't miss the action of TNA Thursday Night Impact every week on AMC. For showtimes and more information, visit TNA Wrestling.com. Love discovering new music before anyone else? Stop being just a listener.
Start making the rules and work with your new favorite artist before they even break. The Beam is a free music competition app where real emerging artists compete, you vote, and massive brands step in to fund the next big name. Your votes change careers. Find them first. Download thebeam at thebeam.com or on the app store.
Vote for an artist you love or discover your next obsession. It's the first music chart that pays artists. And we're back with Our American Stories and with James McGuire. The author of Impresario. James, you were just telling us about how having Elvis on the Sullivan show.
was a risky move, but Ed did it anyway. What was that all about? You know, on the other hand, I mean, he had to, Sullivan had to have him on. And so, what he did is he did his best to balance it out. He had Elvis on multiple times.
And it was, it was going to be huge. It was actually quite controversial because the show was so wholesome, and Elvis was not known to be wholesome. And the very first night that Elvis was on. It was a huge cultural moment. I mean, there were literally 60 million people tuned into live television that night, which is about a third of the country at that point.
What Sullivan did was he instructed the cameraman to only shoot Elbis from the hips upwards.
So you couldn't see those dangerous swiveling hips that Elbis did. And you could just see him singing. You know, he did his best to sort of sanitize Elvis for the section of the audience that was outraged. And yet, still mine him for ratings. After that first show, there was enormous controversy.
I mean, people said, oh, that is filth. Ed has lost his way. This is really trash. Why is this trash on the air? On the other hand, the ratings were like so huge.
That Sullivan had to kind of keep trying to get him on.
So he had him on again. The second time he booked him, he actually booked a children's choir to sing before him. It was very sort of religious and then you know. Very, very sweet and wholesome. And then, you know, Ed introduced Elvis and he talked about Elvis, and he said.
You know, he's a fine young boy. A fine young man was the phrase. He's a fine young man. And it was Ed's way of saying, Look, don't be threatened by this guy. You know, he he's okay, which Yeah, it was kind of like Ed beginning to go down that slippery slope of: well, the show had been really, really wholesome.
But rock and roll is growing, and we need to have this on.
So Elvish was a big cultural moment and It was almost like the birth of rock and roll in the American living room when Ed Sullivan had Elvis Presley on television.
Something changed in America.
Something shifted there. Which brings us to the early 60s. You know, there's this idea of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, which was the Beatles debuted on Ed Sullivan's show in February of 1964. And there's this story that Ed always tried to promote about how he discovered the Beatles. It's actually not true.
He always claimed that he. Was coming home from London and he saw the Beatles getting off a plane in London, and it was a mob scene. He decided right then and there. to actually to to book the the Beatles. In fact, there was a young talent agent who worked in Europe named Peter Prichard that Ed trusted.
And Peter said, I think these Beatles guys might be worth booking. Ed wasn't sure at first, and and indeed The Beatles had really hardly been heard of in America at that point. They had maybe some radio play, but they were not big. And You know, they're certainly really a rock band, as soft as the Beatles may seem now, they were truly a rock band in their day. And um He decided that he saw the potential for them.
He could see the, you know, the. them going up the charts in England. He thought, okay, it's time to take a chance on these young lads. But he was going to downplay them as at first as well. In that time in 1964, You know, the headliners for the Ed Sullivan show were making simply like $10,000 a night.
The Beatles actually got paid $3,500 for three different performances, $3,500 a night for three different performances. And they weren't even the headliners to begin with. As the show came up, as February of 64, that first show came up, you know, the cultural momentum built so much. It was like, you know, oh my God, you know, the teenagers were beginning to discover who the Beatles were. You know, they came to America, they gave a few interviews, they seemed really charming.
They had long hair, it was pretty outrageous. And That night, February 9th, 1964, they debuted. They played three songs. The crowd went absolutely crazy. The teenage girls, you know, were just could not control themselves.
Ed had to restrict the tickets. It was really hard to get a ticket that night. He made a big deal of giving his ticket, giving a few stray tickets to some friends because. Everyone who had a teenager wanted to get a seat in the auditorium that night. A total of 74 million people watched that first show that night.
It was, again, really the night that Ed Sullivan had the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. In a sense, it was like The true beginning of the rock era in America. We'd have them on live two more times, and then he had a number of recorded performances. But it really changed things. And it sort of did create the beginning of sort of a schism in the show in that.
Obviously, the ratings were through the roof, and there was a segment of the audience that absolutely really loved the Beatles. There's another segment of the audience. That really detested the Beatles. And I read a lot of the reviews and the Washington Post and other serious newspapers. You know, they're outraged and that, you know, these boys don't know how to make music.
It's just, you know, a lot of noise. And they need to get a haircut, you know, get a job and get a haircut. And, you know, but Sullivan did, again, he played a similar game that he had done with Elvis, do his best to sort of, you know, soften the Beatles' image and, you know, be friends with them and have these publicity photos taken. The Beatles are actually nice young boys. You know, he really played that as much as he could.
if if anything it made the show you know, really, really the dominant cultural platform of the 1960s. It became The kind of platform where, you know, if Ed had you on, you were going to be famous, whether it was a comedian or juggler or, you know, certainly a music band, something theatrical. If you were booked in the Sullivan show, it meant you were famous, and the Beatles helped move that process along. You know, one of the problems was that the show was always the big tent, and it had something for everyone, and you know, the kids, and the teenagers, and the grown-ups, and you know, mom and dad. problem is as rock became more dominant.
You know, the audience couldn't always sit through what the other audience members liked. And so that rock and roll caused something of a schism. In his audience, even as it sort of jet-fueled the ratings. You know, a big part of the audience was very, very upset by it. You know, the Rolling Stones were getting big right there in the early, the mid-1960s as well.
You know, Ed did his best to sanitize them. The Rolling Stones had a song called Let's Spend the Night Together. And Sullivan insisted that they change the lyrics to let's spend some time together. Which the Rolling Stones agreed to because they really wanted to be on the show because we were so big. I mean, when Mick Jagger actually sang that lyric, Let's Spend Some Time Together.
He really kind of played with it very theatrically, sort of rolled his eyes. Like he kind of made fun of it. For those people who knew what the real lyric was, he sort of almost mocked it. But I mean, they wanted to be on the show. Anyway, something.
One night actually had this the Rolling Stones on a number of times and He actually insisted that they wash their hair before they go on because he was really, it pissed Sullivan off if they had long hair. He did not really like these long hair types. And I interviewed Joan Rivers, and I read about that he had asked the Rolling Stones to wash their hair. And Joan Rivers was on one of those nights. He said, yes, he really did.
He insisted the Rolling Stones wash their hair. It was just kind of like Ed was you know endlessly square. He he wanted the ratings, but you know, that that square part of him never went away. No, it never went away. And part of the audience was really square, and part of it wasn't.
Imagine 74 million Americans watched the Beatles. and their first appearance. And the country then had a hundred and ninety two million people. By the way, even Uncle Walter did not approve. The great Walter Cronkite complained about the music, he said it wasn't for him, and he did not like the long hair and made notice of it.
And thus came the great divide in America. There's Ed Sullivan, right in the middle of it. When we come back, more of this remarkable story about the impresario. Ed Sullivan with James Maguire here on our American story. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer.
Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at Let's Get Real about skin cancer.
skincancer.com Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage.
Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. You've watched racing.
Now get behind the wheel. At Kaizen Autosport Racing School at VIR, professional race drivers teach you how to drive faster, safer, and with more confidence on one of America's legendary racetracks. Never driven on track? We'll get you started. Already experienced, we'll take you to the next level.
Ready to race? Earn your competition license and learn real wheel-to-wheel racecraft. Stop watching, start driving. Go to racevir.com. That's racevir.com.
Professional wrestling fans, the action continues every week. Watch CNA Thursday Night Impact every week on AMC. It is like electronic. Blowing through your veins. Don't miss the adrenaline, the drama, and the total non-stop action.
No one can ever be as good as me. Don't miss the action of TNA Thursday Night Impact every week on AM SIG. For show types and more information, visit TNAWrestling.com. Love discovering new music before anyone else? Stop being just a listener.
Start making the rules and work with your new favorite artist before they even break. The Beam is a free music competition app where real emerging artists compete, you vote, and massive brands step in to fund the next big name. Your votes change careers. Find them first. Download thebeam at thebeam.com or on the app store.
Vote for an artist you love or discover your next obsession. It's the first music chart that pays artists. And we're back with our American stories and the final segment with James Maguire and his book, Impresario, The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan. James, tell us about the production of the show and what made it so unique. for that kind.
A product. The interesting thing about the show is that it remained live television throughout the run. It ran from 1948 to 1971. It was live television the entire time.
So if there was a mistake, there was a mistake. And Sullivan really ran it so carefully, minute by minute. But I mean, sometimes he would need to tell performers later in the show: hey, you know, these earlier show performers ran a little long. you know, you're going to have to cut down your act a little bit if you want to get on the air. George Carlin, the comedian.
Carlin is on the Sullivan show many times, and it would always be very nerve-wracking to him because George Carlin would have this routine put together, like five or six minutes, carefully constructed routine. One line led to the next. And he would be booked for like, you know, minute 50 in the hour-long show. Sullivan would come backstage at around minute 38 and go, Well, you know, we're running long. You're going to have to cut two minutes from your act.
And in the next 10 minutes before he went on the air, George Carlin would have to figure out: okay, how am I going to cut down my act from six minutes to four minutes?
So it was, I mean, it was really, really nerve-wracking for a lot of performers. to have to make changes to and deal with with live television. Things really took a turn, James, when the Doors performed on the show, and that band was of course led by Jim Morrison. Tell us about that incident.
So, the Doors, of course, were going to, as they became famous, they were booked. Ed definitely booked them on the show. Again, he didn't like the lyrics. There was a drug reference, something along the lines of you take me higher. And it sounded to Ed like, you know, someone's doing drugs.
He didn't want that on the air. And so He said, you know, you're going to have to change the lyrics. Jim Morrison and the band kind of hemmed and hawed about it. And they, you know, they really wanted to be in the show because there was so much fame involved with being on the show. Morrison agreed, okay, I will change the lyrics.
And In the control room, they had ways of dealing with rock bands. They could change the They could sometimes turn things down, turn things up, which they would do on occasion. They would shift a camera angle.
So they were ready for Morrison, but they expected him to change the lyric as he did. When it actually came to the live performance, he went ahead and sang the original lyric as it was written in the song. And he just w he refused. And it was kind of this classic moment where You know, this rebellious generation simply was not going to be controlled by the establishment anymore. And that was a real problem for Sullivan.
So The producer of the show went backstage and said to the doors, Well, Mr. Sullivan was going to book you boys five more times, but you'll never be in this show again. And Jim Morrison looked at him and said, look, we did Ed Sullivan. And of course that that was the end of the doors. It did create a time period where the rock bands were getting edgier.
It was the late 1960s. It wasn't sort of the wholesome, you know, finger-snapping Beatles quite as much anymore. The acid rock was coming up. It really created a problem for the audience. It exacerbated the earlier problem where like person of the audience simply could not handle it.
They would not want to sit through the rock music. Obviously the teenagers loved it. And the Solvent show was You know, a big part of a rock band's career in the 1960s was playing the Ed Sullivan show. The problem was, you know, for the for the older older audience who who hated it. It caused a problem for the show and it It It's really one of the things that helped bring the show to an end in that.
Before rock and roll, everyone could sit together and watch this show. And you might not love all of it, but it was all going to be okay. Once these harder-edged, you know, acid rock bands sort of getting on. Part of the audience said, no, we're just not going to take it anymore. We're just, and so that it caused a lot of problems with ratings for the show.
It was almost like the beginning of a trend in television where there was narrow casting. Before there had been the big tent was really Sullivan's classic formula. But You know, American culture had begun to break into its various niches so that the big tent wasn't working for Sullivan anymore. Finally, uh Yeah, CBS say we can't You know, the the ratings aren't there anymore. And it the show was canceled in 1971.
Ed was hoping it could run for a couple more years. He was really, really heartbroken. His world ended at that point. And he had suffered in those later years in the 1960s, in the later 1960s and early 70s. He suffered what You know, what appeared to be, it was never officially diagnosed as Alzheimer's, but it had the feeling of kind of a dementia.
He had a lot of memory problems beyond just what an elderly man might. And He had an extremely lonely period and I mean, his family was di didn't live right next to him. And so As much as they loved him and did their best, it's like I think he had a For all the glory of the show and the glamour of the show and the enormous fame that the show brought him, and really, in a sense, he attained his lifelong dream was to be famous. He wanted to be famous and he became famous. At the very, very end of his life, I think he was very lonely and I think he felt lost.
James, tell us about Sullivan's final days. and also about the legacy he left. In his very final days, he was living in New York City by himself and very, very lonely. And he. Contracted esophageal cancer.
You know, the doctors knew he was dying. They didn't want to let him know. His family. Didn't want to let him know because they wanted to keep his spirits up, but they knew, in fact, he was dying. He was admitted to the hospital.
Ironically, he died on a Sunday night, later in the evening on a Sunday night. And it's it's kind of like the ultimate irony of his life in that he had lived for Sunday nights from 1948 to 1971, every Sunday night for all those years. Had been about the show. And so, you know, he had lived for Sunday nights. And indeed, he died on a Sunday night.
So I think there's something almost poetic about that. There's a few things I I would say is is is the legacy of him. It's that If you look at the shows, and the shows are again stored at the Library of Congress, I mean, those 23 years from 1948 to 1971. Are really an incredible compendium of the brightest lights. in American culture in that time period.
The best of Broadway, the best of classical music. He booked classical music, the best of rock music, you know, comedians, entertainers of all stripes, athletes. I mean, it's something like 10,000 performers. were on the the show over the course of his 23-year run. And the fact that that record exists is an amazing record of American culture in those years.
And he. He was such a newshound and sort of a, he kept his finger in the pulse. When things changed, he changed with it. He was never booking last year's act. He was always booking this year's act, or maybe even a little bit ahead.
And so the show becomes a complete sort of cultural repository of what was so special, what was so wonderful and fabulous about American culture in those years. In a sense, his idea of the Big Tent. in which there's something for everyone, became outdated for television itself. I mean, television moved into serving narrow slices of that audience. But there is that image of the big tent where we all sat together and watched television as a family And we all share this communal experience.
It's really very, very beautiful. And you've been listening to James McGuire. In his terrific book, Impresario the Life and Times. of Ed Sullivan And in a way, it's a walk through the 20th century. There wasn't anybody or anything that didn't want to come on that stage.
and share their talents. Nobody didn't come there and show up. and what made the Sullivan show a success ultimately in the end led to its demise. Rock and roll became that medium that had at its core separation from the old and the young. I mean the infamous Pete Townsend, quote, never trust anyone over thirty and that he hoped he died by the time he was thirty.
Was at the root of rock and roll. It was rebellion at its essence. And in the end, Sullivan embraced it, and in the end.
Well, the country was fragmenting, and the country was being split apart by not only this music, by a new generation hell-bent on separating from their family traditions and from American traditions often. I can still see in my head vividly that performance by Jim Morrison, because it wasn't just edgy, it was dark. and when he sang the lyrics from Light My Fire, he shouted, Girl. you can't get much higher. Shouted it.
He reveled in the rebellion and in sticking it to Sullivan. And this was something I think that Ed felt a deep betrayal about, because here he was trying to advance the careers of these folks and the Doors and bands like it. and in the end they had no respect for him, and no regard for his audience. And in the end, Ed died a lonely man, had spent no time on his family, had chased fame, got the fame. But something big was missing.
I mean, the end of the book is really tough 'cause he loses his wife and his show. At about the same time. And in the end he lost. life. He had wanted so desperately, by the way, to make it to his 25th anniversary, and he got to 23.
Ten thousand performers on the show in twenty three years, an achievement that no one has matched since. The Story of Ed Sullivan And by the way, pick the book up impresario. Go to amazon.com. You won't put it down. It's quite a read about ambition and fame and the limits of both in living a good and happy life.
Again, the story of Ed Sullivan, the book is impresario. The Ed Sullivan Story. The story of fame and its limits here. on our American stories. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer.
Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at let's get real about skincancer.com.
Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage.
Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. You've watched racing.
Now get behind the wheel. At Kaizen Autosport Racing School in VIR, professional race drivers teach you how to drive faster, safer, and with more confidence on one of America's legendary racetracks. Never driven on track? We'll get you started. Already experienced, we'll take you to the next level.
Ready to race? Earn your competition license and learn real wheel-to-wheel racecraft. Stop watching, start driving. Go to racevir.com. That's racevir.com.
Professional wrestling fans, the action continues every week. Watch CNA Thursday Night Impact every week on AMC. It is like electricity flowing through your veins. Don't miss the adrenaline, the drama, and the total non-stop action. No one can ever beat it!
Good is this right here! Don't miss the action of TNA Thursday Night Impact every week on AM SIG. For showtimes and more information, visit TNAWrestling.com. You're grinding, putting tracks on Spotify, making TikToks, and watching fractions of a cent roll in. Exposure doesn't pay rent.
It's time for real stakes. Welcome to The Beam, the new music competition app. Real fans vote. Brands buy your music before it breaks. You win money and exposure.
No more chasing algorithms. Just compete and get aid. Download the Beam at theBeam.com or on the App Store. Submit your track. Earn what your music deserves on The Beam, the only chart that writes checks.
Mm-hmm.
