Ed Sullivan and Back When ...

This morning, I shared on Facebook a post from Writer's Almanac, a post that commemorated the birthday of the late TV personality Ed Sullivan (1901-74), an "old man," who, I see, died at the age I will reach in November this year. Not so old, I guess? (Link to that Writer's Almanac post.)

My mother didn't much like watching TV. And for pretty good reasons, as I remember it now. For one thing, TV in my boyhood (late 40s-mid-1950s) was pretty dreadful stuff. For the most part there were the three broadcast networks (CBS, ABC, NBC), and not every community had access to all three. (In fact, when we were living in Amarillo, TX, 1952-53. we had no TV service. Our set sat (!) in the corner, neglected and sorely missed by the three Dyer boys--and their father.)

So Mom would watch the news and maybe, now and then, just to be sociable, some program that the rest of us were watching.

It was not a problem, by the way, on school nights. No TV for us kids. A rule I passed along to our son, years later. Can't say that he was delighted by it.

Dad loved TV, right from the get-go. He especially liked Westerns, and I can still remember when Gunsmoke's opening segment would appear (Marshal Matt Dillon in a shoot-out on the street; you view him from the back), and Dad would say, every single time, "There's the most famous fanny in television."

That would change. Other fannies became more famous.

Dad also loved sports--and for the rest of his days (especially toward the end) he would watch multiple games every week, much to the dismay of my mother, who tried to quilt or read alongside him--to be sociable--but when she realized Dad was sort of, uh, fixated on the screen, she abandoned her efforts. I still remember Dad in his final hospital rooms before he died in November 1999 in Pittsfield, MA, watching baseball games on TV ...

But Back in the Day, all five of us usually gathered on Sunday evenings to watch The Ed Sullivan Show--CBS, 1948-71. It ran from 8-9 pm beginning in 1949. I would turn five that fall.

It was a variety show--and there were all sorts of things going on--circus performers, comedians, athletes, musicians, odd variety acts, song-and-dance routines.

And then, of course, The Beatles, February 9, 1964. (Link to YouTube video of it.) I was in college by then (sophomore year), but on Sunday nights I often went home (just down the hill from my dorm at Hiram College) to watch Ed Sullivan (and do some wash--and get some food--and annoy the hell out of my parents, who had just about given up on me--as well they should have).

My parents never did like rock-n-roll, so The Beatles brought them no evident pleasure. I, on the other hand ...

Ed Sullivan was kind of a stiff, dour dude. I can't imagine he would ever manage to do what he did--host an enormously popular TV show--in these days of bright teeth and naughtiness--in these days when being stiff and dour will bring you little but ill reports from your supervisor at work.

But, as the Writer's Almanac post mentions, he was popular throughout America. Millions were watching every week. And, on Monday, 'round the water cooler (or whatever), lots of chatter about what we'd seen and heard the night before. It was still a day when TV was a unifier, and that function, of course, is long, long gone. Probably forever.

One more thing: I mentioned in my Facebook post that, years later, a grandfather, I got to see--on December 12, 2013--my older grandson, Logan, portray Ed Sullivan in his 3rd-grade play at school--a piece about the history of rock-and-roll. Logan had never heard of  Ed Sullivan, of course, and our son (his father), born in 1972, arrived after the end of the Sullivan series. His mother is a bit younger than that. So ... YouTube to the rescue!

And--truth be told--Logan nailed it. Took me right back. Wish my mom and dad could have been there. They would have wept with pride. So I did it for them ...