Quote of the Day (Fred Allen, on Ed Sullivan)

“Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.”—Attributed to radio comedian Fred Allen, in TV Guide (June 21, 1958 issue), commemorating the 10th anniversary of Sullivan’s variety show that week.

This quote fascinates me for a couple of reasons. 

First, because of the mordant comic genius who supposedly uttered it (he had died two years before it appeared in print)—John Florence Sullivan, better known as Fred Allen. 

I remember the first time I went to visit my grandparents’ grave in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, NY., and was startled also to find, not too far away, not only a headstone for my grandfather’s hero, labor leader Michael J. Quill, but also one for a man far more famous in the same era—Allen. 

I’m afraid that more than 50 years after his death, Allen has been forgotten by a couple of generations of comedy fans. He deserves a far better fate. 

If you can’t visit the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan to listen to a tape of one of his shows, then turn on Saturday Night Live, which, in its spoofs of advertising, satire of current events, and still-often brilliant sketches, essentially possesses the same comic DNA.

But second, as Allen’s sardonic quip indicates, entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan possessed little talent himself—but he sure had a way of recognizing it in others. 

The Ed Sullivan Show—initially called The Talk of the Town—premiered June 20, 1948, and ran until June 6, 1971. He never really got over its demise, dying only three years later. By the end of his life, he surely felt out of sorts with the cultural changes taking place in America. 

Can you imagine one small episode in his life--the impresario inviting Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits--whom, he had learned, had been raised Roman Catholic--out for Sunday mass with him on the morning of his big appearance? I can't.

For a long time, Sullivan seemed ready to join Allen among the annals of the forgotten in the entertainment industry, remembered dimly for Jackie Mason’s hysterically funny hooded-eye, hunched-over impersonation. 

More recently, however, segments of his must-see variety show have been released on DVD, so a new generation of fans can experience what it must have felt for the first time to see Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Supremes, The Doors -- who were banned from the show, lest we forget, after refusing to bowdlerize “Light My Fire”-- and a host of other new acts too numerous to mention.