TV Radio Mirror (Jan - Jun 1955)

The Ed Sullivan Story (Continued from ■page 48) always entertaining, though forever touched with dignity. When it celebrates its seventh anniversary this June, Toast will have presented more than nine thousand performers comprising some three thousand acts — quite a record for the show and for Ed, the man who selects the acts, edits the material, travels endlessly on talent hunts, writes the scripts and creates the new ideas. It all takes more than a touch of genius — the kind worthy of such other great showmen as Ziegfeld and Barnum. Ed's got it. But he went through more than half of his life not knowing it. Until he was thirty, if anyone had suggested that he entertain, Ed would have laughed them off — which is exactly what he did, in the spring of 1933, when he was asked to head a show at Broadway's Paramount Theater. That particular event was to be the turning point in his life, though, at that particular moment, all of Ed's experience had been as a newspaperman. Ed was born in Manhattan in 1903, and raised in Port Chester, a suburb of the big city. As a youngster, Ed won twelve letters in school sports — plus good grades — then graduated to the Port Chester Daily Item as sports, police and obituary editor at ten dollars a week. At eighteen, he moved into the big city as a sports writer. Twelve years later, he seemed a more likely candidate for Big Story than Toast Of The Town, when the managing editor of the old Graphic assigned Ed to write a Broadway column. "It was the first year I was doing the Broadway column that I got a call from Boris Morris, who was manager and director of the Paramount Theater. He offered me $1500 to come into the theater for a week and head a vaudeville show. I gave him a flat no and hung up. "I had organized some benefits around town, but had no crazy idea about being an emcee," Ed recalls. "I tried to explain to Boris it had nothing to do with money. ' But Boris kept calling back every halfhour and raising the ante. He also explained to Ed that the movie coming in was a weak one, and he thought Ed would draw crowds to make up for it. Ed just couldn't see it. "By noon, his offer for one week's work was $3,250. And, by that time, I figured maybe I could do it for the money, after all. So I said maybe." Before Ed accepted, he went into conference with Gary Cooper, who was making a personal appearance at the Paramount. "Coop told me to go ahead. He said there was nothing to it. All you had to do was walk onto the stage and mumble a little. It didn't occur to me at the moment that all Gary Cooper had to do was put on a cowboy outfit — and smile — to make the audience swoon." So Ed agreed to go on, and immediately broke into a sweat. What was he going to do and how was he going to do it? As his own specialty, he decided to show some old movies which he had already begun to collect. He prepared a kind of comedy travelogue of New York. He invited friends to drop around — which meant there would be surprise guest stars at most of the shows. He was organized, but so scared that he stayed up all of the night before he was to open, with comedians Block and Sully rehearsing him. "I thought I'd get at least one break. The first stage show went on before noon, when you'd figure they would have to pay people to come in, so I hoped the theater would be practically empty and give me a chance to try the act out." But the Paramount Theater which STOP PAIN INSTANTLY COMBAT INFECTION PROMOTE HEALING ^ WITH STAINLESS Campho-Phen/oue WHEN USED ON PIMPLES-ACNE CAMPHO-PHENIQUE HELPS PREVENT THEIR SPREAD AND RE-INFECTION. It's wonderful, too, for fever blisters, cold sores, gum boils, cuts and scratches, minor burns caused by book matches, hot cooking utensils, hot water or steam. 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