The Ed Sullivan Show

I've been watching reruns of this show and it is just great!! The music, comedy everything is awesome. I wish there was a show like that around now!!! I can't believe I'm the first one to comment on this great show

(sorry for my bad English) I am interested in find the episode 816 of 1/3/1965. I am Spanish and in this episode was appeared the Spanish singer Carmen Sevilla. Carmen Sevilla born in Sevilla in 1930, she is in the actually a famous showman in the TV of my country. She was appeared in films with Richard Kiley and Charlton Heston and she filmed in 1961 King of kings. She was an important singer of traditional and pop Spanish music at the 50 and 60's decade and she was to Hollywood at the Paramount studies in 1956. I wait your answer and your resolution. This is very important for me trouble this program because is marvellous and a bid entartaimente. Thank you. Best Regards from Spain.

Miguel.

It was officially called "Toast of the Town", but to most of us it was simply "The Ed Sullivan Show." If I recall correctly, it came on Sunday nights, in glorious black and white. We always looked forward to seeing his show. Sullivan himself was not much to look at, in fact it is safe to say most would consider him 'funny looking.' Nor did he have a particularly good speaking voice. One of his catch phrases, 'we're going to have a really big show' came out 'a really big shoe.' That's the way he pronounced words. But regardless of his personal lack of charisma, Ed Sullivan knew how to bring in the big stars.

One of them was Elvis Presley before he became wildly popular. In fact, being on the Ed Sullivan show was perhaps the biggest springboard to his success. But there was a problem with Elvis, his hips moved just too much, were considered far too suggestive for this family program, so the TV cameras showed Elvis only above the waist.

Ed Sullivan also got the Beatles in the early 1960s, when they were still relatively unknown in the USA. I don't know if he was the first, but his show certainly went a long way towards introducing America to this group from England. And the rest, as they say, is 'history'!!

I must say that I have become immersed in watching reruns of this awesome television classic as of late. Everything about it is great. It is my opinion that highlights of its series run include guest appearances by Elvis Presley, The Beatles and The Doors. Ed Sullivan was always a truly great and cordial host and it's very easy to see why this show is so fondly remembered even today.

I used to watch this program sometimes when I was growing up. Technically,of course, it is light years out of date--no flashy special effects, no elaborate staging, nothing except a host that acts like either a marble statue come to life, or a cold fish (take your choice!), and singers(pop and otherwise), actors, dancers, comedians, classical music virtuosos (such as then 13-year old Itzhak Perlman) and acrobats simply "doing their thing".

I took it for granted then. I didn't realize that we were sometimes seeing rare, priceless footage that we would seldom, if ever, see again in the future, and that it contained such gems as original cast performers singing the hit songs from legendary Broadway classics such as "My Fair Lady", "West Side Story", "Camelot", and "Man of La Mancha"-in full costume, yet. I always thought, "Well,we have the albums,and there's no reason these segments wouldn't be rerun someday. Besides,we'll have the film versions of the shows,so who needs to be so eager to catch the Broadway performers?"

How wrong I was.

Because, up until the advent of video remastering and restoration, and the invention of the VCR, these shows disappeared, apparently gathering dust in the CBS archives because modern-day programming and technology had made them seem so old-fashioned. Now they are back. Some years ago,Disney had the foresight to issue a video called "The Best of Broadway Musicals from the Ed Sullivan Show", and this priceless tape, which has since been transferred to DVD, contained Julie Andrews singing "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?", Andrews and Richard Burton singing "What Do The Simple Folk Do?", Carol Lawrence and Larry Kert singing "Tonight",Richard Kiley singing "The Impossible Dream",etc. And recently, when Ed Sullivan was broadcast on Nick-At-Nite,not only was Kiley shown singing this song, but we were also given the rare treat of seeing the original Aldonza/Dulcinea, Joan Diener, singing the lovely "What Does He Want of Me", a song omitted from the film version of "Man of La Mancha".

That is the kind of program this was.