Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan (49 page)

Peck was a natural choice: the following week Ed dedicated the full hour to director John Huston, and Peck gave a dramatic reading from
Moby Dick
, a Huston film currently in production in which he starred. Sullivan presented film clips from the director’s work, including
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
and
The Maltese Falcon
, interviewing Huston along with Peter Lorre, Mary Astor, and José Ferrer, who demonstrated getting in and out of makeup for a Hollywood movie. Ed performed mock gangster dialogue with Edward G. Robinson, then Robinson, Ed, and Huston brought on Lauren Bacall, who talked about her husband Humphrey Bogart’s work with the director. (Bogart was seriously ill and in the last months of his life.) In the audience for a bow that night was horror maven Vincent Price.

Over the next few weeks, Ed interviewed Bing Crosby, presented Borscht Belt comic Myron Cohen, and introduced the Iowa Highlanders, a Scottish bagpipe squad. In late July—Ed continued to produce new shows almost all summer long— Sullivan showcased the Barnum & Bailey Circus, spotlighting famed clown Emmett Kelly and the full mélange of aerialists, big cats, and trapeze artists.

As the weeks of glittering spectacle and celebrity flew by,
The Ed Sullivan Show
’s ratings edged ever higher. Having been television’s fifth-ranked show the previous year, Nielsen ratings for the 1955–56 season indicated that it was now the third-ranked show. It ran behind only
I Love Lucy
and
The 64,000 Question
, and was one spot higher than
Disneyland
, The program had reached its loftiest perch yet. By most accounts the show had been second-ranked in the 1948–50 time period, running behind Milton Berle, yet there was very little competition then. Now, the Sullivan show had regained its earlier leading status in a crowded field, in an industry whose production standards boasted the beginnings of sophistication.

Further sign of the program’s ratings dominance was seen in the fate of the show that ran opposite Sullivan’s, NBC’s
Comedy Hour
, which collapsed that season. As
Time
reported, “
Colgate, which was displeased with the failure of its show to equal the drawing power of the Sullivan show, asked to be relieved of its contract.” Ed, inarguably, had done it. He had reached the pinnacle of the new medium that was taking over the American living room.

At the tail end of the 1955–56 season, for all the dizzying success Sullivan enjoyed, the showman stumbled. In question was his booking of film star Ingrid Bergman. On his July 18 program, Ed made a titillating announcement about the Swedish-born actress: she was scheduled for a guest appearance in October.

Viewers across the country gave a collective gasp. Known for her luminous portrayals in 1942’s
Casablanca
and 1945’s
Spellbound
, Bergman had shocked Hollywood and scandalized the public in 1949. Although married, while in Italy filming
Stromboli
she had fallen in love with the film’s director, Roberto Rossellini. As news of her pregnancy and her decision to leave her husband made headlines, the public turned away from her.

Yet Bergman proved remarkably resilient. After a career trough in the early 1950s, during which she lived outside the United States, she landed the lead in the 1956 big-budget Hollywood film
Anastasia.
She was in London filming the picture when Ed announced her upcoming appearance. As Sullivan left for London to shoot some footage from the set, reporters deluged him with questions. His announcement of Bergman’s return was a national news item—which was why he made it. Between her earlier controversy, her long self-exile, and her current film role, the prospect of the first live Bergman television appearance touched off a publicity firestorm. How, reporters wanted to know, had Sullivan pulled off such a scheduling coup? Responding to their queries the day before he flew to London, Ed explained that the actress’s guest shot had been scheduled in conjunction with Twentieth Century Fox.

Sullivan’s plans began to backfire on him within the week. His sponsor, Ford, began to grumble about not wanting to be associated with Bergman, and letters from viewers poured in protesting her planned appearance. No small part of his success was his audience’s belief in him as their filter; they trusted him as a kind of Minister of Culture. While Ed could pick and choose from almost anything to entertain his viewers, from poet Carl Sandburg to the Barnum & Bailey Circus, his viewers expected him to be a prudent moralist in his choices. Was he now betraying their trust?

A still-thornier problem was posed by Bergman herself. On location in London, she told reporters that she had never agreed to go on Sullivan’s program. She acknowledged that a clip of
Anastasia
would be previewed on his show, yet “
there was never any question of me going to the States with him.” When Ed returned from London and reporters asked him about the discrepancy, he again said that Twentieth Century Fox had been responsible for the announcement. But the studio declined comment.

Ed was now in a public relations conundrum. Some viewers were upset at the proposed appearance, while others were disgruntled at having been promised a glimpse of the controversial actress only to have it withdrawn. And everyone—including the battalion of reporters now following the story—wondered what was going on. He had to find a way to explain, amid escalating negative publicity, why the star would not appear despite his recent and very clear statement that she would.

The solution he chose reflected his anger at Bergman. She could have made an appearance yet instead had publicly embarrassed him. For her part, she likely remembered that he had joined the chorus labeling her a pariah when she announced her intention to have a child with Rossellini. As Ed had then written in his column, “
The Ingrid Bergman–Rossellini baby will be baptized because in such a case, the Catholic Church holds that the sins of the parents cannot victimize the child, born out of wedlock.…” Despite his column’s judgmental excoriation of Bergman, Ed apparently assumed that since he was promoting her film, the studio would strong-arm her into an appearance. But the actress was not to be coerced.

When Ed went on the air on the night of July 29, the public awaited an explanation. Instead, he portrayed the situation as an issue to be decided by the viewers themselves. At the very end of the show he addressed the matter: “Now I know that she’s a controversial figure, so it’s entirely up to you. If you want her on our show, I wish you’d drop me a note and let me know to that effect. And if you don’t, if you think it shouldn’t be done, you also let me know that, too. Because I say it’s your decision and I’d like to get your verdict on it.” He told viewers that Bergman had “seven and a half years of time for penance,” and it was up to them to decide if that was enough.

Sullivan regretted his comments the moment he made them. He was offstage no more than a few seconds when, spotting talent coordinator Jack Babb, he exclaimed, “
Why the hell did I say that?” With his intimate knowledge of his audience he knew that viewer mail would vote against having the actress on; in theory this would relieve him of the need to present her.
Newsweek
reported, presumably based on figures from Sullivan staffers, that mail was running 5,826 for, 6,433 against. But of course the vote meant nothing; Bergman certainly wouldn’t appear after Ed asked viewers to vote on the quality of her morality. His attempt to deflect attention from his own mistake was, at best, clumsy, and at worst, pharisaical.

Not since the show’s debut were reviewers so united in their attitude toward him—and so vociferous.
New York Post
columnist Leonard Lyons called Sullivan’s handling of the issue “
tasteless and shocking.”
New York Journal-American
critic Jack O’Brian—always Sullivan’s toughest critic—printed a long statement by a Catholic priest who had “
never seen anything like it,” and who noted that an individual’s morality could never by judged by public opinion.
The New York Times’
J.P. Shanley pointed out that Sullivan had made no reference to Bergman’s morality when he initially announced her appearance, writing, “
it would seem the producer’s approach to the subject has changed significantly.” Los Angeles
Mirror-News
columnist Hal Humphrey, after censuring the showman, snorted, “
Incidentally, when is Ed Sullivan up for reelection?”

For once, Ed had no response to the hail of criticism. He knew he had bungled the Bergman affair. In the face of the fusillade of negative publicity he decided to cancel the preview of
Anastasia.

Contributing to his awkward handling of the incident was his tendency to keep his own counsel in running the show. Director Johnny Wray supervised camera angles, but he had no veto over Ed’s on-air comments; likewise Marlo Lewis, like much of the staff, sometimes heard things from Ed for the first time when the showman told the television audience. The Sullivan show was run by exactly one person. And Ed, despite great affability in social situations, maintained a reserve between himself and those around him, handling issues as he saw fit. In this case that led to a serious stumble. “
Ingrid never forgave me for what I had done,” he told an interviewer in the late 1960s. “And she was right.”

In the short term, if Ed wished to divert attention from the Bergman contretemps, he would succeed. Within the week an event happened in his life that effectively erased the incident from the headlines.

CHAPTER TWELVE
Elvis

E
D’S
DAUGHTER
B
ETTY
REMEMBERED
HER
CHILDHOOD
YEARS
in Hollywood with great fondness. Her happy memories drew her back to California; in her teenage years she made summer visits, staying with a friend. After graduating from Miss Hewitt’s School in New York, she attended the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where she majored in English. It was there, in 1949, that she met Robert Precht, a tall, good-looking classmate majoring in international relations. A romance bloomed, and although Bob transferred to U.C. Berkeley they continued to see each other.

During one of Ed and Sylvia’s trips to Los Angeles to visit Betty, she invited her boyfriend to meet her parents, with mixed results. The foursome had dinner at Chasen’s, a Beverly Hills restaurant known for its red leather booths and frequent celebrity appearances. At first the dinner went smoothly, the group chatting amiably, but things grew tense when the conversation turned to politics. Bob, an infrequent television viewer who had grown up in California, was only vaguely aware of Ed’s background. Thoughtful and articulate, he spoke at length about his antipathy toward the anticommunist fervor engulfing the nation. Specifically, he was upset that teachers were forced to sign loyalty oaths, and he detested what he thought of as the witch hunt of Richard Nixon, then a young senator allied with Joseph McCarthy. “
I was a hot-headed college student,” Precht remembered. Ed, who was then actively promoting
Red Channels
, cut in with an angry retort: “
Well, if you’re that upset, why the hell don’t you stop talking about it and do something?” An awkward silence fell over the table, with Bob at a loss for words and Betty and Sylvia clearly embarrassed. Recalled Precht: “
He put me in place with that line.”

From that difficult start, however, the Sullivan family began to accept Bob. When Ed and Sylvia visited Betty during their summer vacations they spent more time with him. Betty temporarily left her sorority house to stay with her parents at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and Bob often met them at the hotel for dinner (though he was
careful to park his beat-up 1938 Chevrolet a few blocks away to avoid presenting it to the hotel’s valet staff). On the surface, Ed, having come of age in the rough-and-tumble of 1920s-era New York newspapers, came from a world far different from that of Precht, who grew up in middle class surroundings in San Diego. Yet Ed saw something in Precht, perhaps his strength of character or native intelligence, perhaps an ambition not dissimilar to his own. When Betty and Bob got married, shortly after Betty’s graduation in 1952, Ed wrote her a note blessing the union: “
Betty Dearest: This is the most wonderful day in your lives and the life of your mother and me. You are two fine kids, your love is based on mutual respect for each other’s rights, and it will be a happy marriage.… Our deep love now reaches out to embrace Bob.… God love you both and protect you and grant you just as much happiness as He has granted your mother and daddy. With all my love, Daddy.”