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November 7, 2024

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November 7, 2024

Volume 54 - No. 45

THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW!

History’s Most

Unexpected Success Stories! By Friedrich Gomez Even before it first aired for a nationwide viewing audience over 76 years ago today -- on 20 June 1948 -- virtually every expert and every authority in entertainment thought it was the craziest, dumbest, most ridiculous idea ever conceived. And every single one staked their reputation and name, in predicting the show to be another “Hindenburg disaster!” It seemed no one bothered to tell Ed Sullivan that vaudeville was dead.

Long buried and given last rites by the juggernaut that is television. Neither did anyone tell Mr. Sullivan that he was totally unfit to be anything close to a television master of ceremonies. He was god-awful. The personification of two-left feet in a walking marathon during an earthquake. Or so everyone thought. The so-called experts sized him up as a failure before he even went on the air. And the great ones, the golden ones, the ones who placed the master-of-ceremonies bar ex-

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ceedingly high with their own inimitable skills and talents in front of the television lens – even they could not have predicted any remnant of success for him. Legendary television host and unrivaled master of ceremonies, Art Linkletter (1912–2010), was one of them. Of Ed Sullivan, Linkletter said: “He was one of the strangest personalities that you can ever imagine in the history of the business! He had no business being on the air – at all!” So, how could the immortal Lin-

kletter, from Moose Jaw, Canada, host of America’s favourite radio and television show “House Party,” which ran 25 successful years, and CBS’ radio and television’s “People Are Funny” for 19 years, have been so wrong? After all, Linkletter and others were the undisputed masters of their craft, the teachers and measuring rods of excellence which all aspiring M.Cs were required to emulate. Unlike Linkletter, American actress and singer, Florence Henderson (1934-2016), best known for her role on ABC’s “The Brady Bunch”

Sullivan

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November 7, 2024 by The Paper - Issuu