Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan

Year 18, Day 228 - 8/16/26 - Movie #5,403 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #41 

BEFORE: I'm skipping another day because this film has "Sunday" in the title and so even if I watched it on a Saturday, I'm going to review it on a Sunday in honor of Ed Sullivan. Also I snuck out to the movies today, so I fell behind, but I had a chance to watch the latest big-time Marvel movie for FREE, and I didn't want to pass that up. I'll review it next month if I can link to it. Also my wife came with me, so she finally got to see the theater I work in, I've only been there almost five years now. Two free movie tickets, that's a big deal these days with prices being what they are - I just had to pay for snacks, and we grabbed those at the deli the next block over. 

Anyway, I'm going to try to get back on track, no more skip days until the end of the Doc Block, unless of course somebody has a birthday and I see that as a message from the linking gods to land THAT film on THAT day for reasons I don't quite understand just yet, but still somehow it's kind of meant to be. 

Tonight's "Get to Know a State" state (and at this point, there aren't too many left) will be the home of the Jackson 5, who made their first TV appearance on Ed Sullivan's show - yes, it's INDIANA. I suppose in retrospect I could have used this state on the day I reviewed the Tom Petty concert film, because he mentions Indiana in the song "Mary Jane's Last Dance" but, you know, I didn't think of that then and also I had to clear Oklahoma somehow. Anyway, INDIANA.

Date admitted to the U.S.: December 11, 1816 (19th state)

Claim to fame: Umm, Notre Dame, is that in Indiana? And the Indy 500, plus it's the state David Letterman is from, in addition to the Jackson 5.

Nickname: The Hoosier State

State Motto: "Crossroads of America"

State Flower: Peony

State Bird: Northern Cardinal

State Insect: Say's Firefly

State Tree: Tulip tree - well, at least they made different choices

State Food: Popcorn. Nothing wrong with that!

State Fossil: Mastodon

State Firearm: Grouseland rifle. Wait, are they the only state with an official gun? 

Notable Sports Teams: Right, they have some. The Colts are an NFL team and the Pacers are an NBA team, they also have the Fever, a lady basketball team. Then they got college teams like the Hoosiers, the Purdue Boilermakers and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. 

Fun Facts: I know very little about Indiana, that's a fun fact, right? A Hoosier is a slang term for a backwoodsman or a country bumpkin, and if they want to lean into that, it's fine by me. William Henry Harrison was once governor of the state on his way to the White House, and this is a state that faced an influx of emancipated slaves from other states by barring further immigration and proposed re-settling them in Liberia, only to be told by the Supreme Court that would be quite illegal. Well, this was a state that had over 250,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan at one point. 

Well, I've never been to Indiana, and with that track record, I probably should boycott. So I'm still at 25 states visited out of 42 profiled, and Jackie Robinson carries over from "Reggie".

THE PLOT: Ed Sullivan broke barriers by booking Black artists on his Sunday night variety show. This documentary spotlights the TV pioneer's legacy of equality. 

AFTER: I've got a real beef with the forced scarcity of things in certain titles - in the last week I've watched films touting the "Lost Tapes" of Elizabeth Taylor, the "Unheard Tapes" of Marilyn Monroe, and now it's the "Untold Story" of Ed Sullivan. No, no and no. If Liz's tapes were lost, then how could I be hearing them in the film? Same with Marilyn's tapes, could nobody hear them when they were played, was there a technical issue? And Ed's story IS being told, right here in this film, right now, as you are watching it. How can THAT be called untold? It would only qualify as that if this documentary had NOT been made, so I guess it's a paradox - just call it something else, please. And then cheezy shows like "Entertainment Tonight" or "Extra" will say they've got "never before seen" footage coming up, if you just stay tuned. That's impossible - all footage is seen sometime by someone, what about the person who shot this footage, or the person who edited it into today's show, they must have seen it. What you meant to say was that it's "never before released", which is something different. It's all marketing hype and B.S.

But there IS an important story here, don't let it go untold or unheard. I had no idea that Ed Sullivan was such a champion for equality that he booked a lot of African-American performers on his show, for YEARS, at a time when people in Southern states were still pro-segregation and anti-civil rights, never mind the fact that equality had been mandated on the books since just after the Civil War, you know there were some states down South that claimed they never got the memo. Network executives and advertisers told Sullivan that he was SURE to lose ratings for this, especially down South, but he didn't care and just kept booking them. 

Now, at the same time, Motown Records was really coming in to its own, The Supremes and The Temptations and other groups were catching on, so the time was clearly right, maybe change would have come without Ed Sullivan's help, but probably things would have taken a bit longer. He had this platform, he booked all the acts HIMSELF, and he wanted to book performers of all races, that's a solid dude when much of the country didn't think that black people and white people should even be in the same building or swim in the same pool. If you want to change people's minds, sometimes you start by entertaining them, and then hopefully they'll come around - if they don't, well, screw 'em, then nothing was ever going to change their minds and they can just be stupid and racist until they die. 

I'm not saying Ed Sullivan didn't benefit from having the best Black entertainers he could on his show - hey, if you can get Ray Charles, Billy Preston, Diana Ross, Sammy Davis Jr. and Ike and Tina Turner, then that's who you book. A rising tide lifts all boats - and hey, even if some of those people were controversial, sometimes even the racists watch the show, even if they're hate-watching it, that still counts in the ratings. Smokey Robinson, Dionne Warwick, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and once he was able to prove he wasn't a Communist, Harry Belafonte. Now, Ed also had famous white acts on, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley and we've all seen the footage of the Beatles on his show a thousand times. But equity is a powerful thing, you can still have on people of all colors and faiths and heritages, just try to be a little fair about it. Then both the Doors and the Rolling Stones refused to change the lyrics of their songs to appear on the show, which was probably a sign that the show wasn't hip any more and nearing the end of its life cycle. 

This show was on CBS for 23 YEARS - first as "Toast of the Town" and it was renamed "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1955. From 1948 to 1971, the same man hosted the weekly show, that's a long freakin' time, and it's estimated that he booked 10,000 acts during that run. And most bands played LIVE on the Sullivan show, at a time when lip-synching was common on shows like "American Bandstand". Sullivan set the standard, like if you can't perform live for the audience in the theater, what exactly are you even DOING? And the show aired live, too, at least in the Eastern and Central time zones, then they ran it on tape delay for the Western half of the country. Ratings didn't really suffer until 1971, when there were more and more variety shows on TV, competing for the same audience. 

What I find fascinating is that Ed Sullivan and his wife lived out of a hotel in Times Square, so he probably just walked to work (at what later became called the Ed Sullivan Theater). Later they switched from that hotel to a suite at the Hotel Delmonico, which was on Park Avenue, and that also served as his office until his show was cancelled. It seems the family also had a house in Connecticut, but I think most weeks Ed probably lived in Manhattan at least any week when they were getting ready for the Sunday night show. Really, Ed Sullivan was Lorne Michaels before Lorne Michaels was, and David Letterman before David Letterman was. Barring all the stresses and issues with the network, it sounds like it was a great gig for a long period of time. 

Directed by Sacha Jenkins (director of "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James")

Also starring Harry Belafonte (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Berry Gordy (last seen in "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie"), Jackie Jackson, Tito Jackson, Smokey Robinson (last seen in "Diana Ross: Supreme Sensation"), Dionne Warwick (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Otis Williams, 

 with archive footage of Ed Sullivan (last seen in "Starring Dick Van Dyke"), Louis Armstrong (last seen in "What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?"), Pearl Bailey, Peg Leg Bates, Sonny Bono (last seen in "Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion"), Diahann Carroll (ditto), James Brown (last seen in "Roberta"), Ruth Buzzi (last seen in "Lorne"), Cab Calloway, Johnny Carson (also carrying over from "Reggie"), Walter Cronkite (ditto), Ray Charles (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Chubby Checker, Cher (last seen in "Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes"), Kelly Clarkson (last heard in "Trolls World Tour"), Stephen Colbert (last seen in "When We Went MAD!"), Nat King Cole (last seen in "Flipside"), Sammy Davis Jr. (last seen in "The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes"), Bo Diddley, Jimmy Fallon (last seen in "I Am: Celine Dion"), Ella Fitzgerald (last seen in "Billie"), David Frost (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Justin Guarini (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives")

Toni Harper, George Harrison (last seen in "John Candy: I Like Me"), John Lennon (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Goldie Hawn (last seen in "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not"), Lena Horne (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Ice-T (last seen in "Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only"), Keenan Ivory Wayans (ditto), Jesse Jackson (also last seen in "Roberta"), Mahalia Jackson, Michael Jackson (also last seen in "Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion"), Diana Ross (ditto), Barbra Streisand (ditto), Tina Turner (ditto), Mick Jagger (last seen in "Devo"), Lyndon Johnson (also carrying over from "Reggie"), Richard Nixon (ditto), Janis Joplin (last seen in "Stevie Nicks: Wild at Heart"), Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (also last seen in "The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes"), John F. Kennedy (ditto), Dean Martin (ditto), Edward R. Murrow (ditto), Keegan-Michael Key (last seen in "Dear Santa"), Martin Luther King (also last seen in "Starring Dick Van Dyke"), Gladys Knight (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Jerry Lewis (last seen in "Film Geek"), Joe Louis, Miriam Makeba, Tony Martin, Clayton Moore, 

Carroll O'Connor (last seen in "Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print"), Jean Stapleton (ditto), Sally Struthers (ditto), Rosa Parks, Elvis Presley (last seen in "Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins"), Billy Preston (last seen in "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie"), Richard Pryor (also last seen in "Film Geek"), Rob Reiner (last seen in "Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!"), Wanda Sykes (ditto), Alfonso Ribiero (last seen in "Muppets Haunted Mansion"), Joan Rivers (last seen in "Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story"), Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Sugar Ray Robinson, Hazel Scott, Jay Silverheels, Nina Simone (last seen in "Paul Anka: His Way"), Bruce Springsteen (last seen in "Roy Orbison Forever"), Herman Talmadge, Shirley Temple (last seen in "Child Star"), Oprah Winfrey (ditto), Ike Turner (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Ethel Waters, Flip Wilson (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Jo Anne Worley (ditto), Jackie Wilson, Stevie Wonder (also last seen in "Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes"), 

plus The Ink Spots, The Jackson 5, The Supremes, The Temptations

RATING: 5 out of 10 cameo appearances on other TV shows