Customer Reviews

Sundays with Sullivan: How the Ed Sullivan Show Brought Elvis, the Beatles, and Culture to America

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For anyone who enjoyed "The Ed Sullivan Show" -- or who just wants to know more about one of television's historic successes -- this book is a gem. Full of backstage tidbits and inside info on Ed and his frequent guests. Wonderful vignettes about the early years of television from the perspective of a real insider.

A book for every generation --- those of us who remember our own family's Sundays with Sullivan; and the younger people who want to know more about how Elvis got his start and how The Beatles began. Ilson explains how Ed Sullivan brought the cultural world into the homes of people all across the U.S. who wouldn't otherwise have known the joys of Ballet, Opera, etc.

A great gift - filled with terrific photos.

Interesting to learn how Ed Sullivan grew from young sports reporter to a renowned TV impresario. What I found to be most fascinating was the operations of his press agent, Bernie Ilson, who is also the auther of this book. The many clear photos added much enjoyment and value in the reading.

Ilson shares what it's like to be behind the scenes of one of TV's icon shows. Like the PR pro that he is, Ilson's writing absolutely captures the no nonsense Ed Sullivan attitude and approach - simple, direct, very visual and well balanced. You feel like you are part of the planning and right there in the audience as Sullivan mixed the puppets with the opera and ballet stars; Broadway's best and the Beatles and Elvis - Sunday after Sunday for a quarter of a century. Now with the new Beatles video and remastering of their 15 albums,this book captures the moptops amazing New York appearances and their American success on the Sullivan Show. "Let's hear it" for Ilson and Sundays with Sullivan.

A UNIQUE AND PENETRATING PORTRAIT:

Two of the previous reviewers are very unfair to Bernie Ilson's superb book

about Ed Sullivan, "Sundays With Sullivan." As Sullivan's press

representative, Ilson had personal access to him and creates a human and

insightful portrait of the genius behind TV's longest running variety show.

Ilson provides cultural context, perspective and personal insight into the

reasons for Sullivan's extraordinary impact despite his wooden TV

personality. His program opened up opportunities for a mix of both popular

and operatic artists, acrobats, jugglers and the greatest actors of the

theater, and for the Beatles and Robert Merrill, the Rolling Stones and

Rudolf Nureyev, Richard Pryor and Jimmy Durante. Strolling together around

the Manhattan he loved with Ilson while carefully planning each show,

Sullivan captured the cultural heartbeat of the times, creating a time

capsule that will be forever valuable. Ilson was the consummate show

business insider, and his portrait of an enigmatic and powerful, tough and

generous figure who had the vision and sense to combine "high" and popular

art in an updated vaudeville setting, is unique and penetrating. Ilson gives

Sullivan the recognition he has long deserved. This is the definitive

portrait of Ed Sullivan. It explains his enduring impact on American culture

and entertainment.

David Evanier

Sundays with Sullivan (subtitled "How the Ed Sullivan Show brought Elvis, the Beatles and Culture to America") was written by a publicist who handled press relations for the Ed Sullivan Show for the last eight years of its run on CBS television. It purports to give the reader a look behind the scenes of the phenomenal variety show that dominated Sunday night television during the 1950's and 1960's. In reality, there is very little in it that one could not learn from reading the entry for the Ed Sullivan Show on the Museum of Broadcast Communications' website. [...]

Week after week, from 1947 to 1971, Ed Sullivan presented the American TV audience with an eclectic mix of popular music, comedy routines, novelty acts--dancing dogs, ventriloquists, acrobats, Broadway performers, classical musicians, Russian ballet, and opera stars. He brought "high culture" to rural America in 3 to 4 minute segments; an aria here, a violin solo there, nestled among less heady stuff more familiar to the hoi poloi. In the midst of the cold war, he was somehow able to raise the Iron Curtain long enough to let dancers and puppeteers slip underneath and entertain the western world. He insisted on a full dress rehearsal every Sunday afternoon, before a live audience, and then tweaked the acts as he deemed necessary to create a dynamic live show at 8:00. Live TV...with finicky performers and sometimes animals. Week after week Sullivan did what no one else, not even his worthy rivals Steve Allen or Milton Berle, tried to do. Chapter after chapter, Bernie Ilson makes the point that this is what Ed Sullivan did. He tells us; then he quotes former CBS executive, Irwin Segelstein telling us; then he quotes (long dead) classical music impresario Sol Hurok telling us, and Bob Precht, and Paul Klein and Alvin Cooperman. These names may mean something to you or they may not; they were all insiders in the business of entertainment, and they should know. They all say the same thing, and I know that it's true, but man, does it get tedious.

How do you make the arrival of the Beatles on American soil sound mundane? How do you tell the story of Ed and Topo Gigio's last night together without conveying one mousey morsel of its poignancy (I cried when Topo said "Eddeeeee, Kees me gooo night" for the final time---I remember.) How do you write a whole book about the Ed Sullivan show without mentioning The Doors, or The Jackson Five (yes, their picture is in there, but there MUST be a story or two). How do you take an iconic chunk of entertainment history and make it dull as dishwater? Sadly, Bernie Ilson found a way.

The trouble with Sundays with Sullivan is, it wasn't written for the audience that remembers the Ed Sullivan Show in all its glory, or even for the younger inquiring minds who wonder what it was all about. It was written to satisfy the requirements of a PhD in culture and communications, and whatever editing was done to bring it to publication did not remove the dry academic flavor from its prose. Furthermore, as it was researched and written in the late `90's, some of its references and comparisons are over a dozen years out of date. A lot has happened in television in the meantime that this book does not take into account. If you remember the Ed Sullivan show, you already know everything this book sets out to explain. If you don't remember the show, [Sundays With Sullivan] is unlikely to help you "get it".

As a Beatles writer and historian I was very familiar with the name of Ed Sullivan and have read numerous stories of how the Fab Four ended up appearing on his show and the impact of that appearance. But growing up in the UK I never actually saw the show itself (except through modern DVD releases) and had no first hand experience of its impact on the entertainment landscape. I was hoping that this book would provide me with more information and understanding of the show itself and its somewhat enigmatic host. Unfortunately that was not the case.

The book is derived from the author's PhD thesis, and at times reads like that, with lengthy interview extracts that should have been edited to make them more pertinent to the story being told. And perhaps that's where the main problem with the book lies, author Bernie Ilson may have been Ed Sullivan's top public relations guru, but, based on this book, he is not a natural story teller. The narrative is very disjointed and makes sudden jumps without explanation. In fact big chunks of the story are missing. Most of the book's interest hinges on Ilson's own personal anecdotes of encounters with various guests and celebrities rather than any explanation or real examination of the show's growth and ultimate demise as the networks and advertisers shifted towards a younger target demographic ( a point raised and discussed by a TV network executive in one of the tacked on interviews rather than by the author himself in the main body of the text.)

By the end of the book I didn't really know much more about Sullivan himself that I hadn't gleaned from other sources. I would have expected a more in depth examination of his drives and methodology from someone who worked alongside him for so long. The one part of Sullivan's aims for the show that does get a spotlight in the book is his aim to bring what he termed 'culture' (classical music, ballet and opera) into the living rooms of America. Unfortunately this aspect is repeated over and over again almost relentlessly. The repeating of facts and concepts about the show is constant throughout, almost as if each chapter had been written to be read independently.

In the introduction the author cites that the book was the result of over a dozen years of research, it's therefore surprising that the main narrative is only 112 pages, with the rest of the book being filled with insights and observations from various interview subjects.

In short I found the book to be somewhat disappointing and superficial; but maybe my expectations were too high.

While I had high hopes for this book, it failed to measure up with better histories of the Ed Sullivan Show. The author admits that the book grew out of his Ph.D thesis, which is one of its shortcomings--the book is shallow, choppy, and clinical, as it winds its way through a discussion of the Ed Sullivan Show's effect on culture in America. For a better examination of Ed Sullivan and the contemporary world around him, I would look elsewhere.

Being an unabashed fan of the Ed Sullivan Show and its history, I was disappointed that this "insider's" account of the Ed Sullivan Show was so superficial. This book uncovers no new ground, except some perspectives around the show's cancellation. Other than that, there is little to recommend this book as it approaches its subject matter at such a high level that one gains no new insights whatsoever.

This is light fluff compared to "Impresario".

Written by Sullivan's press agent, "Sundays" has the same depth of a press release - short, with little depth.

Not much insight here even though it was written by a Sullivan "insider". The author comes across as quite old (which of course he is) but doesn't put the cultural influence of Sullivan's rock music bookings in any kind of historical perspective. How Sullivan "found" the Beatles is also inaccurate in this book. (Read "Impresario" for the facts on that)

The Doors are not even mentioned - "you'll never play the Sullivan show again!" Ray Manzerek's response - "we just did man".

Read "Impresario" for better insight, depth, and accuracy.