The Toast of the Town

"You're an inspiration to us all," said the studio visitor, emotionally pressing Ed Sullivan's hand. "It takes a real man to get up there week after week--with that silver plate in your head." So many other televiewers have warmly congratulated him for his triumph over facial paralysis, twisted spine and other dire but imaginary ills, that Sullivan has just about given up protesting that he is and always has been sound of wind and limb.

"When I walk on the stage I apparently look as if I'd just been embalmed," he says moodily. "I don't know why, but people get maternal about it."

The TV Sullivan is a strange contrast to the bumptious know-it-all of Sullivan's Broadway column in New York's Daily News. His TV expression--or lack of expression--is a cross between that of Joe Louis and a cigar-store Indian. When he walks out to introduce an act he looks as though someone had wound him up with a key--located somewhere under the coat hanger that seems to have been built into the broad shoulders of his double-breasted jacket. But televiewers apparently approve his wooden personality. Sullivan's hourlong, celebrity-studded variety show, Toast of the Town (Sun. 8 p.m., CBS-TV), has been continuously on the air since 1948, has won more than 300 awards and citations, is rated a close runner-up to Milton Berle.

In those three years, Toast of the Town has also scored some notable firsts. Margaret Truman made her TV debut on the show. So did Bob Hope, Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, Sam Levenson, Faye Emerson, Vaughn Monroe. Charles Laughton used the show to launch the Bible readings that are now a staple of the lecture circuit; Gloria Swanson publicly revealed her belief in God, and Hedy Lamarr renounced the role of seductress long enough to sing RockaBye, Baby exactly as she does to her own children.

Toast of the Town now pays Sullivan $125,000 a year (compared with his $35,000 annual income from the News), and beginning this week the sponsor, Lincoln-Mercury, will pay more than $2,225,000 to keep the show on for its fourth year of television. Sullivan, who is a little dizzied by these boxcar numbers, remembers that the talent on his first program, including Rodgers & Hammerstein, who worked for nothing, cost only $270. He says: "We couldn't get the same people today for less than $12,000."

Three years of TV experience have given Sullivan only one rule of thumb: always have one act that will appeal to children. For the rest, he says: "I get the best acts I can, keep them as short as I can, and get myself the hell off the stage."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.