TV Radio Mirror (Jan - Jun 1955)

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Circle Size: Girl's Sizes 7. 8, 10. 12, 14 are S for $2.75 Junior Miss Sizes 9. 11, 13, IS are S for $3.75 'Sizes 12, 14, 16, 18,20,38,40.42,44, 5 for $3.75 I Sizes 14!/,. 1 6 'A. 18 '/, , 20'/,. 22'/,, 24 %.S for $3. 75 I I Extra Large Sizes 46, 48, 50, 52 are 5 for $4.75 I D Check here to save C.O.D. fee. Send full amount with 2 50 postage. , D Please send FREE CATALOG FOR FAMILY J Nome • Address I |__City City Zone State normally seats up to 3,650 people, looked as if it were holding 3,651. "It looked like an indoor colosseum. So big, and so many people! I nearly dropped dead — I tried hard enough, but couldn't. I was so nervous that I didn't eat that week." At the end of the week, Ed collected his $3,500, gave more than half of it to a caterer (who had been running a continuous buffet backstage for Ed's friends), went back to his apartment, and collapsed in relief. Unknowingly, however, he had been inoculated. For, when he was asked to do a stage show at another theater a couple of months later, he accepted. Shortly afterwards, he organized his "Dawn Patrol" stage troupe which toured the nation for years. He even had his own radio show on CBS. On that CBS show, Jack Benny made his broadcasting debut, more than twenty years ago. Others who rode the kilocycles for the first time, with Ed, were Jack Pearl, Jimmy Durante, Gertrude Niesen, Jack Haley, Frances Langford. It was no accident then. It is no accident now that Vallee, Hope, Bogart and Laughton, Rita, Lana and Hedy have made their TV debuts on Ed's present show. The reason Ed has more "firsts" than anyone else on TV is quite simple. The stars trust his great talent as a showman. And his judgment of material is always excellent. Ed will, for example, watch an act that runs thirty or forty minutes — then pick three minutes for the TV show. He has an unerring instinct for the best. It's an instinct which his daughter Betty either inherited or acquired. In her premarital days, she served as an unofficial scout for Ed. Now Betty lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and infant son. "She'll write about shows that open in Washington before moving into Broadway. Her predictions of success or failure, and her analyses, always prove to be right." Sylvia, Ed's wife, doesn't have that same instinct, but she doesn't need it. She's got Ed and, with Ed, the fun and work of the business. Some of their nights each week are spent at first-night openings. But, generally speaking, Ed has cut out the late night-club routine. Occasionally, he will dash over to a club, catch a floor show — or usually just one act in the show — and be home by midnight. Ed is neither a drinking nor a party man, contrary to what people may expect of a Broadway columnist. The Sullivans like to visit with friends, read and watch TV. He, Sylvia and "Boje," his gray miniature French poodle, have had a suite of rooms in a Park Avenue hotel for the past ten years. Ed breakfasts in a tiny kitchen, where they prepare coffee and oatmeal. Then Ed walks into the living room about ten and gets to work on the phone and the typewriter. He edits, interviews, auditions. A connecting door leads to the working office and several desks and file cabinets, and hundreds of autographed pictures of celebrities, and Ed's office assistants, Carmine Santullo and Jean Bombard. Ed's normal working day is abnormal— from ten A.M. until two P.M. Add to this Manhattan schedule his talent hunts abroad — he's made about forty trips in the past six years. Last year, he bought himself a farm, after twenty-four years of living in a hotel apartment. He bought one hundred and thirty acres of land, with a handsome home, fifty head of cattle, and a tenant farmer. As Ed says, "It's quite a sight to see Boje, with his French crewcut, investigating cows after being limited to fire hydrants on Park Avenue." Unfortunately, even in a Lincoln Capri, it takes an hour and forty-five minutes to get to the farm, and it's difficult to see just where Ed will get much time for the farm, considering how much of the responsibility he takes on at the show. A long time ago, he was asked why he did everything himself. "The way I see it is that I'm the fall guy if the show doesn't click," he explained, "so I may as well have the pleasure of digging my own grave." Ed isn't afraid of traditions, critics, temperament. He began changing the order of things long before television. When he plunged into vaudeville with his "Dawn Patrol," he decided to revolutionize the business a bit. One of vaudeville's ruts, he decided, was the format. Whether you were watching a stage show in Peoria or Kalamazoo, it would have the same program. Open slow with a dog act, wheeze a second breath with an indifferent boygirl-number — with everything good saved for last. Ed had a different theory. Start off with something exciting, and it would brighten up the whole show. Ed prevailed, and broke a tradition that had been born with vaudeville. Today, he's still doing things they tell him he can't or shouldn't do. This winter he scheduled an excerpt from the Menotti opera, "The Saint of Bleecker Street." Ed was warned that it was longhair, highbrow. Ed went ahead, put on the opera, and was stormed afterwards with enthusiastic calls and letters and wires. "That's one of the thrills, to discover over and over that your faith in the public's good taste is justified," he says. Ed is very proud of the artists who have performed on Toast Of The Town. They are, literally, the very toast of the world: Alfred Lunt, Marian Anderson, Gloria Swanson, Charles Laughton, Lauritz Melchior, the late Bill Robinson, Yehudi Menuhin, Jose Greco, Moira Shearer, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Raymond Massey, Ethel Waters, Helen Hayes, and Beatrice Lillie. There are dozens more. But, for Ed, the Charles Laughton appearance rates as one of the most memorable and thrilling. This has been reported before — but never before with the verbatim dialogue which led to the wonderful performance. Laughton phoned to ask about his scheduled appearance on Toast. Mr. Laughton's voice was laced with sarcasm suggesting that, perhaps, he would be asked to do an imitation of Frankie Laine or Howdy Doody. "Now, Ed, you wouldn't let me get up there and just read from a book — now would you?" "Why not?" "But certainly not the Bible. You wouldn't approve of Bible readings on a variety show?" "Why not?" Ed asked. "After all, it is a Sunday show." Mr. Laughton, more stunned than startled, nevertheless had the stamina to continue, with still a trace of sarcasm: "And could I write in my own camera directions?" "Of course," Ed said. "You know more about camera work than we do." Charles Laughton appeared on the show, on his own terms, and he was superb. A producer, Paul Gregory, saw the show and it started a chain of events in Mr. Laughton's career which included a new TV series, a tour of the country with "Don Juan in Hell," "John Brown's Body," culminating in the smash production of "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial." Ed is a man of daring and imagination. As quiet and good-natured as he appears, he can take a stand — and it can be a stand of importance. January of this year, The Chicago Defender, a Negro-edited newspaper, chose Ed as one of eleven citizens, including President Eisenhower, to be nationally honored. The award Ed received is one of the most highly prized in the field of