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Old Smiley. Ed stays away from his show until Sunday afternoon when the first camera rehearsal begins. The physical production of The Ed Sullivan Show is in the hands of Co-Producer Mario Lewis, Director-Choreographer Johnny Wray and Musician Ray Bloch, who have been at work since the previous Monday. Ed comes onstage to a burst of applause from the audience of 500 crowded into the balcony (because of the demand for tickets, Ed's is one of the few shows that admits an audience to rehearsals; they must leave the theater later to make way for a completely new audience when the show goes on the air). Ed waves and strains a smile, squinting up against the battery of floodlights—lavender and blinding white. Then he sits before a stage monitor, turning his back on the acts, and watches the rehearsal on the screen.
After a dinner break, Ed comes back before air time to warm up the new theater audience. Again he leans into a gale of applause. "How are you all?" he asks. "How many are here from out of town?" He recoils from the forest of hands, crying: "Wow! New Yorkers can't even get seats!" He waggles a finger at his people onstage. "Heads will roll." The audience loves it. Ed continues: "Everybody in the audience is honor bound to be happy. So look happy!" They do. "In 30 seconds, Art Hannes is going to introduce me and he will be absolutely astonished that I showed up. They didn't think old Smiley would do it!"
Knights & Ladies. Ed got his lusty start 53 years ago when he and his twin Daniel were born in Manhattan to Peter and Elizabeth Smith Sullivan. Ed's father was a stern, moody man with a minor post in the U.S. Bureau of Customs.
The Sullivans' tenement apartment was in a part of Harlem that was already going to seed. Ed's twin, who was small and puny next to his larruping brother, died in his first year. The dead twin still looms symbolically in Ed's imagination. Whenever he was whaled by his father or switched by the nuns at his parochial school, Ed would sob passionately that everything would have been different "if only Danny were here." Even today Ed mystically attributes his excess of energy to some supernatural source of supply fed him by the dead twin.
When Ed was five, another of the six surviving children died, and his parents decided that Manhattan was no place to raise a family. They moved to Port Chester, an industrial town on the Connecticut state line, ringed by such suburban garden spots as Greenwich and Rye. As a boy, Ed gave his interest to reading and sports. His favorite author was Sir Walter Scott, with his romantic yarns of knights, ladies, tournaments, good and evil. Ed had no doubt about where the knights and ladies lived and where good and evil flourished. The place, naturally, was Manhattan and he dreamed of getting there.
Into the Big Time. Ed got another hungry look at a world he was to love when he worked as a caddy at Rye's Apawamis Club, where, after toting golf bags for 18 holes, he would compare tips with a fellow caddy named Gene Sarazen. who also grew up to make a name for himself. At Port Chester High School, Ed won eleven major letters but got "frightening" grades in everything except English. He also landed his first newspaper job: high-school correspondent for the Port Chester Daily Item.