Today is the anniversary of the debut of “The Ed Sullivan Show” on CBS TV, June 20, 1948. At the beginning, it was called “Talk of the Town”, though it wasn’t long before people began to refer to it by the name of it’s not-very-telegenic host, a mumbling newspaper man who appeared awkward on camera. Critics savaged him, but viewers liked Ed just fine. He may have been the first “reality” TV star.
The thing I liked about Ed’s show was its variety. He had acrobats and actors, dancers and directors, opera stars and puppets and rock bands too. There were lots of songs from Broadway. Rogers and Hammerstein were on the very first show!
But the act I’ll always remember is the plate spinner. Watching this guy do his thing is how I learned I could never be an anarchist. I get far too tense thinking about the possibility that the fragile world will come crashing down into a state of total ruin. Watching this act was almost unbearable for me as a 13 year old who liked things to be nice and orderly.
You may have to sit through an ad to see it, but that’s shew biz!
It occurs to me now that Ed Sullivan’s plate spinner was a preview of our multi-tasking modern workplace. Nobody is responsible for only one thing these days. Back in 1969, we thought he was insane, but Erich Brenn could be any school teacher or office manager in 2011.
What was your favorite act on the Ed Sullivan Show?
Trail Baboon 
For me, there can only be one possibility. I loved Senor Wences with his puppets and spinning plates.
As in:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJiYZ6QIAtY
Great stuff!
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Me, too…and Victor Borge.
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loved him too!
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As soon as I saw the title of this piece I thought of the plate spinner. One of my colleagues at work who is like me of a certain age often use the plate spinner as an analogy for multiple tasks. The clip re-ignites other questions-How do you start out to be a spinner? What do you practice with? What do retired spinners do.
And after the commercial was Topo Gigio!
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ditto, Steve! Señor Wences – but i did like the plate spinning also. and then Elvis and the Beatles.
gracious good morning to You All – hope you do not float away in the deluge.
OT: busy times here on the farm – Terra and Freya’s departure postponed for two weeks, Alba shows symptoms of a tape worm just like last year, so she is medicated and we’re dumping her milk (ish da), everyone else is sick of rain and fog and cold.
the first crop of hay hasn’t been cut yet – friend Mike OTLH cut 20 acres last tuesday and it’s still on the ground. he hays around 1000 acres of leased land around here. 980 acres to go. fei da.
think Ed Sullivan was a very nice escape, Dale – thanks so much! hope the new job second week is great!
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I hate to ask, but if that 20 acres of hay is still on the ground and it gets rained on, isn’t it pretty much ruined?
I’m going to Iowa (and through Decorah, in fact) in a couple of weeks, do Freya and Terra want a ride or is a Buick not quite their style?
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re the hay – yup, ruined. well, not much nutrition left in it, for sure. he’ll bale it (if it ever dries) but won’t sell it – will use it for his cattle if he runs out next year.
Terra and Freya are going to Iowa in a Toyota Echo! so a Buick would be grand. but even with tarps, they seem to be able to pee somewhere outside of the legal area.
T and F will be living near Seed Savers in Decorah – hope they don’t escape and eat some valuable, heritage, mother-plant that is the only one left in the world!
i may switch out Terra for another goat because she is such a dear. maybe Niblet? he is sweet too, but unfortunately doesn’t have an udder.
happy day, All. trying to stay cheerful up here in fogland.
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Rule of thumb around here is you have to get hay made the last week of May because it always rains the first week of June.
And I always wonder ‘Yeah, but it’s been raining all of May so then what??’
Around here with all the dairy, most guys chop first crop of hay for silage because it doesn’t have to actually ‘dry’ for that.
I only have the road sides and one small field at the neighbors to make for hay anymore. I was lucky to get the ditches cut a week ago Friday and baled Tuesday.
Nothing gives you an ulcer like watching hay lay out there in the rain… I can’t image doing 1000 acres of hay.
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The Buick has leather seats, so they would probably be okay-I’ve mentally photoshopped them into the back seat, all buckled up. I imagine they are tall enough not to need car seats, I’m sure the s&h has left enough crumbs back there to keep them pretty happy.
I don’t think Seed Savers has anything that rare out where AWOL goats could get at it. They might really enjoy the heirloom orchard up the hill from Seed Savers, and then there is the nearby winery…. I suspect the less they know about that, the better 🙂
A thousand acres of anything sounds like a lot…..
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“And you have to make hay when the sun shines.”
That’s what all of the hill people say:
“Keep your load wide.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
And make sure it’s dry when you put it away.”
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I know I must have seen Ed Sullivan, and I have seen clips of the show, so I know what you are all talking about, but not enough to have a favorite. I think I have heard that Kermit the Frog got his start on Ed Sullivan-I do love the frog (don’t tell Miss Piggy, and I don’t love him that way anyway-more like I appreciate his work).
My thoughts do run along the lines of Beth-Ann’s, except one step back-what on earth makes one wake up one morning and think, ” I am going to become a famous plate spinner. I shall work and strive until I can spin more plates than anyone else, and I shall market this ability and go on to fame and fortune!” ? I can’t imagine this is something you just “fall into”, you have to really work on it, but why?????
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Ed Sullivan wasn’t as big in my house growing up. Sunday nights were reserved for Wonderful World of Disney, then Bonanza and Mission Impossible. What I remember about Ed Sullivan is that even though many of my friends thought that he was old fashioned, he did have quite a few pop/rock bands on the show. I do remember the Jackson Five and the Beatles, of course. I’ve read about The Doors, but did not actually see that one.
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Good morning to all:
The Ed Sullivan show was one of my favorites. I still can’t understand why there aren’t any show like that on TV today. I liked Senor Wences and the other acts several have mentioned. Many of the musical acts that appeared on the show were favorites of mine including famous rock bands and some jazz performers such as Count Basie I also liked the comedians. I more or less liked all of it, even Ed, who I understand was not a very good host to some of the groups he didn’t like..
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Jim, I think the Ed Sullivan (and other similar shows) disappeared for more or less the same reasons that Life magazine isn’t with us. When the audience for some form of entertainment is relatively fresh and naive, variety works because there is “something to please everyone.” When audiences get sophisticated, that breaks down. Teenagers want to see the hottest, latest bands. Jazz fans have their strong preferences. People have evolved specialized tastes.
TPT books the strangest acts to promote its pledge drives. They often book “Celtic” groups. I am a rabid fan of Celtic music, but I can’t watch the sort of syrupy, over-produced stuff TPT puts on without gagging.
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I think the John Denver specials get the award for over-produced! Yucko.
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I guess you are right, Steve. A something to please everyone show is not what is wanted at this time. I still think a show like this could work because it would be unique in it’s own way. I wonder if there might be some other factors, beyond the lack of appeal of a please everyone show, that prevents a show like the Ed Sullivan show from airing these days?
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I agree, Steve, that TPT’s celtic fare during pledge drives is ghastly stuff. And there was something about John Denver that both attracted and repulsed me, a quality that Celine Dion now exemplifies. Can’t quite figure out what it is, but it’s definitely there.
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called selling your soul for rock and roll
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Rise and Shine Baboons!
I am back to my regularly scheduled shew following my five day art class making decorated walking sticks. The end products from the class are worthy of a blog entry all their own.
Meanwhile, my favorite Ed Sullivan acts were the Chinese Acrobats, Flying Wallendas, Louie Armstrong and Judy Garland. We watched this shew every Sunday in the same black and white TV line-up everyone else mentioned. We would munch on popcorn and apples as the shews unwound through the evening.
Bedtime arrived at the end of Bonanza.
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I am a touch too young to remember Ed Sullivan – I have seen clips here and there, but it is not in my consciousness the way it might have been had I been born earlier. I did, however, reap the benefits of the 70s era of variety shows that are the descendants of Ed’s Big Shew: Flip Wilson, Sonny & Cher, Captain and Tennille, the Muppet Show…between the Muppet Show and Sesame Street, I suppose I owe a lot to Kermit the Frog – and if Ed Sullivan helped him along in his career, well, then I owe a lot to Mr. Sullivan, too.
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Smothers Brothers and Johnny Cash, too. And the Everly Brothers had a show that aired as a summer replacement for something else. I had a crush on Don Everly when I was twelve.
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I loved the Smothers Brothers. Many years after the show went off the air, I was doing a tour of wineries in Napa Valley and happened across Remick Ridge Winery, which is owned by the Smothers! I don’t remember if the wine was remarkable, but I did purchase a small pottery wine jug and matching wine glasses there. Then I came back to work and sold the jug and glasses as a gift on one of my programs. The artist was ecstatic to have such a big order. I still have my original jug and glasses — use them often!
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I always like to hear the Smother Brothers. One of their shows was one of the funniest things I have ever heard. I can’t remember why it struck as being extremely funny. I do remember that it hit my funny bone in a way that completely floored me.
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The Smothers Brothers were great fun – one of the shows my brother and I could agree on to watch. And, like Jim, I don’t remember anything specific that was funny, just that they could make me fall over laughing.
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What contemporary audiences usually miss is how subversive the Smothers Brothers were. They were hipper than Rowan and Martin and they were more unabashedly hostile to the Vietnamese war. Every show had anti-war jokes hidden in it. The story of the Smothers Brothers show is a fascinating study in corporate censorship.
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VS – that’s one of my favorite Smothers Brothers bits. Thanks.
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Did you all hear Dick Smothers on “The Story” Friday night? excellent, easy-going conversation including about the end of the show and CBS. It is archived, no doubt.
And did you all hear Mike Pengra live on Radio Heartland this morning??? back announcing the music…well, I assume he was live, I suppose he could have been pre-recorded. Maybe that means he will be able to talk about requests?
Still miss you on MPR air, Dale, but congratulations on your new adventure.
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http://www.life.com/gallery/34892/image/3207838#index/0
fun memory. i did not remember that ed went until 1971. i must have stoped somewhere along the line but i sure did enjoy him while i enjoyed . ted mack amature hour was a little like the realitiy shows of today, the performers were ok and sometimes you would get a good one but it was pretty easy to choose the oe you liked. ed sullivan had a great talent for stringing together the greatest folks at what they do and putting it on tv every week. cirque de soleil does that with acrobats and smalleuropean circus acts today and does it better thna every one else. ed did it for tv. you ahd all the variety shows with the great ones like the smothers bothers carol burnett,t eh flip wilson show dean martin nat king cole jackie gleason but they all had the star atht ehcenter and the bits and skits and the guests were the sideline, with ed he was only a vehicle, no one would ever tune in to watch ed but the people he would bring and you didnt have to listen to mike douglas, merv griffen joey bisop, you just got the juice. i loved the fact that you could trust ed to bring the best no clunkers from topeka tap dancing to accordian music here. how about elvis, the beatles the stones the supremes the like of streisand ,satchmo, streisand, sammy, on and on and on for years. there would be room for a show like this today or any day but i think we are heading off to internet show time where you can access any of this stuff any time like we do here, look at the late spinners and they remind you of the chinese plate sinners , chinese acrobats, the jugglers the ….. what a great world to see alll the people who specialize in wonderful things like spinning plates , playing trumpet, singing, makes you glad to know they take out the garbage at home too. what little ditty would i like to add to my bag of tricks?ill have to think on it a while, maybe plate spinning is the way to go
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Janis Joplin appeared on the show in March 1969. There is a little snippet of the performance on YouTube. One YouTube viewer wrote in the comments section “All the rest of you girls can get off the stage now. Janis is here.”
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“Like!”
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People: Mike is talking on the radio. Back announcing. To quote my husband: “Life is so different.”
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Morning–
I don’t recall ever watching Ed Sullivan. I’m just a bit too young too I guess. Sounds like a good excuse!
Like VS, I remember the Wonderful World of Disney, but we were out in the barn milking cows between about 6:00 and 8:00 so missed some of those shows.
Was Bonanza on Sundays? I remember watching it but don’t remember when…. maybe I was watching reruns.
Speaking of the Carwright’s, an uncle of mine passed away last week. His middle name was Benjamin. I asked my Mom if I was named for him and she said no, she didn’t think she knew his name was Benjamin. She said if anything, I was named for Ben Cartwright. Hah!
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Yes, I believe Wonderful World of Disney and Bonanza was after that. Sunday night TV was the best time of the week!
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I remember the puppets, too, but that is about it.l Am i correct in thinking that the muppets, I think Rawlf the dog, were on Ed’s show? i always liked Red Skelton’s show.
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I’ll bet Rawlf was on the Sullivan show, for that character is one of the truly early Muppets classic characters. Baboons as ancient as I am might recognize Rawlf as being based on Hoagy Charmichaeal, the wonderful old jazz pianist who created a special persona in the early days of jazz. Hoagy had a cigarette burning at all times on the piano and he performed with a kind of world-weary langor.
The Sullivan show had a puppet frog that looked a lot like Kermit but had not developed his persona yet.
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More than anyone needs to know about Muppets on Ed Sullivan
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Ed_Sullivan_Show
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rawlf was on the jimmy dean show and that is indeed where jim hensen got his start. i remember thinking how strange to have a cowboy tv guy who sang big bad john turn into the pork sausage guy, where the heck was that connection? george forman grill anyone? we never did have to deal with ed sullivan hot dogs or red skelton jelly beans.
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I along with Steve and barb in bh, should have the clearest memories of ol’ wooden-neck Ed, and my family did watch it and I was there in the livingroom, but I have few memories of it other than what has been named, and only vague memories of those. Sunday evenings was a time off for all of us, so I think I sort of just day-dreamed through the evening, perhaps at times not looking forward to school the next day.
My partner used to use the plates as an image of multi-tasking teachers. I used to tell him around 2000 that most of his audience did not know what he was talking about in referencing the show and the act. He dismissed that. Then one day after I had made a reference to “dime-store psychology,” a not-that-young young woman in PA at break asked me what a dime store was. That stopped him from using The Shew reference. When I told the young woman what a dime store was, she said, “Oh,you mean like a Dollar Store.” Stupidly that inflationary reference had escaped me.
New Ulm and Sleepy Eye had Ben Franklins until 2-3 years ago, but they are of the era of The Shew. Now, of the local Ben Franklin I have wonderful and detailed memories.
My clearest memories of Sunday evening are of radio, such as Jack Benny (which I think was also on Sunday evening on TV) and Inner Sanctum.
Hate this weather; acrylic paints take so long to dry.
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If you don’t mind, Clyde, here is a lovely bit of Americana celebrating the dime store. This is Nancy Griffith’s classic “Love at the Five and Dime.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3uURS1iIVo
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Steve — why did yours embed and mine just came up as a link? How did you do it?
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VS – I can find no rhyme or reason to the embedding process. Sometimes I’ll just click on the link I’m hoping for and it imbeds. Sometimes I’ve tried the prescribed formula someone gave and get nothing, so I just end up copying and pasting the link.
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VS I lead a life of unsullied virtue. I vote Democratic, eat local foods and drink tap water. I had my dog trained to only pee on Republican lawns when we took our walks. When I find a good You Tube link, the Gods all agree, “He’s such a wonderful guy, let’s embed this sucker for him.”
That’s as much as I know about it.
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Snort!
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double snort!!
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My link embedded and I am a registered Republican and I sometimes eat fast food. What up- Steve!?
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Dime stores were one of the places I was fond of visiting as a kid. There was usually a lunch counter with round topped stools that revolved and a big collection cheap toys including cap guns and fake rubber knives. I think the one I visted the most was a Woolworth.
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Yep, when I got to Marshalltown (the Big Town) there was a Woolworth’s and a Kresge’s (forerunner to K-Mart). Back in Storm Lake I don’t know what it was – we just called it the Dime Store. I’ll ask my mom.
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start the next painting and then the one after that and then come back to the first one. lets see what you are up to when you are ready. any leaves?
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Clyde – as the mother of a teenager, this happens to me quite a bit. It always catches me by surprise the things that are not part of the common knowledge anymore!
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As the mother of a 12-year-old, I like to grab those as “teachable moments”. I’ve never thought that claiming ignorance of things that happened “before I was born” made a person look any smarter or trendy, it just makes you look ignorant. It’s also rude to your elders and shuts down what might be an interesting conversation.
The Depression and WWII were well before my time, but I heard a lot them over the card table with the great aunts and uncle. I’ve never seen an installment of American Idol, but I feel I know more than enough about that too.
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i am amazed today as i remember the talk of ww2 and the olden days when i was a little kid like 1960. today the wars form 40 years ago seems like yesterday. my kids ask about the viet nam war and wasn’t that a long long time ago. and i tell them it was going on about 15 minutes before you were born.
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When my Molly was 12, I briefly had a fun game going. I began sensing that she thought I knew EVERYthing that had ever been mentioned in her school. She took it for granted that all the stuff I told her about history and politics were true.
The game really got going when I caught Molly about to eat a banana. “Molly! Don’t do that! That banana isn’t ripe yet.” Molly asked when I thought it would be ripe. I smelled it and felt it and flexed it and pronounced that it would be in perfect condition for eating After Mr. Rogers was over, maybe six or seven minutes into Sesame Street.
That launched a really crazy period in which I kept demonstrating to Molly my perfect command of information. I remember making a panicky long distance call to a friend in Washington DC to ask how the “Pick and Roll” worked because Molly was beginning to ask questions about basketball tactics.
It was fun while it lasted and fun when it was over.We have one wonderful photo in which I am demonstrating the “one perfect way to blow a bubble” to Molly. And she looks at me with a strange grin that says, “Dad, you are SO full of it!”
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You forget sometimes what young people don’t know about. I remember once at the dinner table explaining tamper-proof packaging and the Tylenol murders to my nieces. It seems odd to them that there was a time a bottle of aspirin didn’t come with an inner seal and shrinkwrap over the cap.
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My memory is too fuzzy to have a favorite from the Ed Sullivan Show. And although I know we watched it sometimes, our TV viewing was so strictly limited that I’m sure we didn’t get to watch it often. My favorite show, at one point, was The Smothers Brothers. Too bad the censors got the best of them.
It is cool to watch the plate spinner guy, but it reminds me of why I always felt overwhelmed and crazy as a mom. i noticed that the plates did exactly what the plate spinner wanted them to do…you can’t treat kids – or anybody – like plates. If you do, eventually they will all come crashing down.
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teaches em to spin like they are told
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I’m feeling a bit like a fish out of water here, TV was just not a part of my growing up experience, and to this day, I don’t watch a whole lot of TV, although I do confess to having seen a couple of American Idol shows. But I may very well be one of the few people on the face of the earth who never saw a single episode of Dynasty!
My parents didn’t get a television set until after I left home at 18, and I must have been 35 years old before I got a hand-me-down TV of my own. When I first arrived in the U.S. at age 22, my ex and I rented a basement apartment in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Our landladies, a couple of old spinsters named Ann and Kate Garvin, took me under their wing, and together with them I watched the occasional Ed Sullivan, Art Linkletter and Carol Burnett Shows. Somewhere along the line I’ve seen Bonanza, The Flintstones, Hollywood Squares, Dick Cavett, Smothers Brothers and Laugh-In, with the three latter ones being the only shows I watched with any regularity. I agree with mig that claiming ignorance of things that happened before my time just makes me look stupid, and I can see from the above links that I’ve missed some fun stuff. At my last job, I was appalled to discover that some of the younger teachers knew next to nothing about the Civil Rights Movement. What was worse, they didn’t care. Even the Vietnam War was ancient history to them and of little or no interest.
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what is the quote? those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it, or something like that–
the s&h is currently experiencing the family love of history, and keeps pointing out the parallels and recurrances to me-indeed, my boy, indeed.
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Like.
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Plainjane, I haven’t watched any episodes of Dynasty, either. I often felt “out of it” when other kids talked about TV shows that I had never watched; I guess it prepared me for a lifetime of being out of it.
However, I do find it appalling that some teachers know almost nothing about the Civil Rights Movement. Worse than being ignorant about it is not caring about it. What people had to endure to earn the rights that are now taken for granted boggles the mind, even if you lived through that time.
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Almost everyone I know w/ a TIVO or some such thing is absolutely SURE that my life would be better w/ such a system. No one seems to really believe that there is nothing on TV that is important enough to me to worry about when it’s on and whether I should record it for later.
The number of shows that I’ve never seen seems to send people into shock: Friends, Will & Grace, The Office, Seinfeld, American Idol, Dancing w/ Stars. It’s a long list.
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VS-what scares me no end is how much I know about shows I have NEVER seen-cultural (or lack thereof) bombardment.
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You and me both!
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just so long as you can check back in on andy and the beaver for correct moral guidance.
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I loved the variety shows, and one of my favorites on Ed Sullivan et al. was Victor Borge, esp. if he did his Phonetic Punctuation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF4qii8S3gw
There were so many variety shows for a while! Steve Allen, Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, Jack Benny, George Gobel (where Carol Burnett got her start), Perry Como, Andy Williams… Wow. Thanks for the fun clips today, ‘booners.
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Gizmo, our Amazon parrot, thinks this video very funny. He’s laughing out loud.
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Baboons entertaining a parrot-Ed would have approved!
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What does Gizmo sound like when he laughs?
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A very hearty huh, huh, huh. And he does it repeatedly, in response to hearing the audience laughing I’m sure. I’m pretty confident he doesn’t understand the jokes, but he does understand the cues and responds appropriately. For instance, when the phone rings, before I even answer it, he’ll say “Well hello.” Gizmo does have a well developed sense of humor. We also have a cockatiel in a neighboring care, and Joe and Gizmo do not like each other. When Joe is put back in his cage after having spent time outside of it, Gizmo will often laugh as if to say “Serves you right.”
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Yes, Borge tops them all. Even Senor Wences or the Smother Brothers.
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Well, for me, WWII when I was a child was several times my liftetime in the past, whereas Vietnam was only one lifetime ago now 😉
Interesting conversation at a family reunion yesterday, about how things have changed for service people stationed abroad communicating with family at home. The son is currently stationed in Afghanistan and can communicate fairly regularly with his young family. His dad was remembering that in the years he was stationed in Vietnam, he talked to his folks twice on a very intermittent connection that involved using the word “over” a lot.-in WWII, it was probably the USPS and that was if you were lucky and the letter didn’t get misdirected.
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I remember seeing the Beatles for the first time on the Ed Sullivan show! (I must be as old as dirt)
But my FAVORITE variety show was the Carol Burnett show. Here’s a funny one of Tim Conway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEGuVb-mtf0
I hope the link goes through.
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!Seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show while I was in 3rd grade began my deviance from my peer group. Everybody loved the boys from Liverpool. I thought with the pure dismissive, digust of a 3rd grader that if they really liked them so much they should stop screaming and listen.
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I have read that Ed Sullivan almost had Jimi Hendrix on the show. Sullivan wanted, for some reason, to have an orchestra behind Hendrix and to have the Viennese Ballet dance to his music. I don’t know what song Sullivan had in mind. Foxy Lady, maybe? Too bad it never happened. It would have been one of the most surreal moments in television history.
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What? It is hard to believe that something like that could be on the Shew. I guess Ed did have some strange ideas and did ask rock stars to play some songs they didn’t want to do. I supose he wanted to have Jimi because he was a big name and thought the orchestra and ballet would tone down Jimi to make him fit Ed’s idea of what should be on his shew.
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