Impresario

April 3, 2006
Running from 1948 to 1971, the Ed Sullivan Show
's "Big Tent" theory defined family viewing. Each Sunday night, more than 35 million people tuned in to see everyone from Elvis to Richard Pryor, the Beatles to Nureyev. Animal acts and high art shared billing. A gig on Sullivan
made many performers. Maguire, who is also publishing an account of the National Spelling Bee this season (American Bee
), reveals the man behind the curtain, portraying Sullivan (1901–1974) as tyrannical, egotistical and controlling. As Maguire tells it, the sportswriter turned Daily News
columnist had one goal: fame. Sullivan failed at radio and film, but triumphed in print, and though his early TV years were rocky, he successfully (and lucratively) captured the zeitgeist; his tastes were America's tastes. As an emcee, he was awkward and stilted in front of the camera; as a producer, he was brilliant and intuitive. "ithout being able to sing, tell jokes or be charming," he became famous. Yet the successful star was a loner. He adored his wife, but had no close friends or real home life. Maguire has written a fascinating biography and meticulously recorded the birth of TV, the heyday of newspaper columnists and the glamour of New York. 40 b&w illus.

April 15, 2006
Although Ed Sullivan started out as a tough-as-nails " New York Daily News" Broadway columnist, he became an arbiter of American taste as the wooden, sour-faced host of a long-running TV variety show that validated the talents of mouse puppet Topo Gigio, Elvis, and the Beatles for the masses. He was perceived as so potent a fortune maker that the Rolling Stones altered lyrics to cater to his fears of offending his ardent viewers. Thirty years before clipping Mick and the gang's lyrical wings, he picked a fight in print with vaudevillian and movie star Eddie Cantor, accusing the singing comic of plagiarizing Bert Lahr's dog act and stealing jokes in the manner of then up-and-comer Milton Berle. Cantor fired back that vaudevillian-turned-club-comic George Jessel was the actual dog-act thief, but Sullivan "characteristically," Maguire says, "admitted no mistake." Well written and highly detailed, Sullivan's biography, like his career, has it all, really-big-show-wise. A must-have for collections emphasizing show-biz history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)