The Legacy of the "Great Stone Face"

If you are of a "certain age," you probably remember what you were doing every, and I mean EVERY, Sunday night back in the 1950s and 1960s.   You were camped out with the rest of your family in front of your Crosley, Sylvania, or Zenith television watching the same show as everyone else you knew.   The Ed Sullivan Show.   It was the mother of all variety shows, a genre which doesn't exist on TV these days, even with (or because of) the 500+ channels many of us can access via cable or satellite.   It was a genre that included comedians, musicians, and what always seemed to me to be leftover vaudeville acts.   And when I say leftover, I'm not using the term in a negative manner at all.  

A recent article in the Trib described the Ed Sullivan Show on the 40th anniversary of the show's cancellation back in 1971.  It's nearly impossible to describe to a person born after 1971 how big the Sullivan show was, but here's a comparison to today's big pop TV shows:

"American Idol" draws about 30 million viewers for its grand-finale shows, whereas Sullivan attracted some 40 million viewers nearly every Sunday night for two decades — when the country had half as many people as it does now.

In the article, Gerald Nachman says that the show today is remembered for two of its "10,000 acts":  the American debut of the Beatles and Elvis Presley's scandalizing hip gyrations.  I don't agree with that assessment.   I'll bet that if you were watching TV when the Ed Sullivan Show was airing, you remember two other acts: Topo Gigio, and that guy who spun multiple pie plates on long poles.  Who could forget the "little Italian mouse?"  And what about Senor Wences?!

That said, Nachman discusses in detail that Sullivan's greatest legacy was his relentless efforts to introduce black entertainers to the wider viewing public, acts like The Supremes, Sam Cooke, and a very young Richard Pryor.   

The show was truly a remarkable trend setter and brought countless hours of entertainment right into our living rooms every week.  The Trib article is well worth the 10 minutes to read it.

I miss variety television shows.   But you probably figured that out already.