We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Toast of the PROGRAM OF THE WEEK I T MAY or may not have occurred to the other moguls running TV programming these days, but Toast of the Town has achieved something not only unique but impossible. In five years on the air it has become a top-ranking variety show—without a top comic. Indeed, it is presided over by one of the great wooden Indians of our times. The Indian, however—Ed Sullivan by name—has from the very begin¬ ning held two powerful weapons. His Broadway column has provided him with an open-sesame to the doors of the great; and his wholly non-pro¬ fessional stance as an emcee appar¬ ently has endeared him to an audi¬ ence weary of the I-Am-The-Great- est school of stand-up impresarios. Sullivan’s entree to the great is based today, of course, almost as much on the success of his show as it is on the power of his column. Whether it’s a comely female juggler from England, the First Piano Quar¬ tet or the entire MGM shooting match, Sullivan gets them in front of his cameras. The result continues to be a smooth and seemingly effort¬ less hodgepodge of entertainment, almost always pleasant and some¬ times bordering on the great. Many of the personalities and programming ideas he introduced have long since become standard items on other shows. A man whose expressionless face belies an inventive and inquir¬ ing mind, Sullivan is never content with the status quo. It is quite possible, in fact, that this dead-pan individual, whose prior show business experience could be lodged safely in a Ziegfeld’s left eye, has been responsible for more fresh ideas than any other single person in television. Five years on the same network with the same sponsor would seem to prove it. 20