The arrival of The Beatles in the U.S., and subsequent appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, marked the start of the British Invasion.

British Invasion is an American term used to describe the many rock, and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular in the United States during the mid-1960s.^[1]

Background[link]

The rebellious tone and image of American rock and roll and blues musicians became popular with British youth in the late 1950s. While early commercial attempts to replicate American rock and roll mostly failed, the trad jazz-inspired skiffle craze,^[2] with its "do it yourself" attitude, was the starting point of several British acts that would later be part of the "invasion". Lonnie Donegan, who is credited with singlehandedly popularizing skiffle in Britain, had a top 20 US hit with "Rock Island Line" during the 1950s and a top ten US hit with "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight?)" in 1961, both re-recordings of songs already known in the U.S. for several decades at the time.^[3][4] Young British groups started to combine various British and American styles. This coalesced in Liverpool during 1962 in what became known as Merseybeat, hence the "beat boom".^[5][6][7][8] In 1962 "Telstar", an instrumental by The Tornados, became the first U.S. number 1 single by a British rock act.^[9] Also that year the folk trio The Springfields featuring Dusty Springfield cracked the U.S. top 20.^[10]

The Invasion[link]

On December 10, 1963, the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite ran a story about the Beatlemania phenomenon in the United Kingdom, featuring their smash hit, "She Loves You."^[11] After seeing the report, 15-year-old Marsha Albert of Silver Spring, Maryland, wrote a letter the following day to disc jockey Carroll James at radio station WWDC asking "why can't we have music like that here in America?".^[11] On December 17 James had Albert introduce "I Want to Hold Your Hand" live on the air for its American premiere.^[11] WWDC's phones lit up and Washington, D.C. area record stores were flooded with requests for a record they did not have in stock.^[11] On December 26 Capitol Records released the record three weeks ahead of schedule.^[11] The release of the record during a time when teenagers were on vacation helped spread Beatlemania in America.^[11] For the January 25, 1964 edition of Cash Box magazine (on sale January 18) "I Want to Hold Your Hand" reached number one on the chart;^[11] it did the same on Billboard's February 1 chart.^[12] On February 7, the CBS Evening News ran a story about the Beatles' United States arrival that afternoon in which the correspondent said "The British Invasion this time goes by the code name Beatlemania".^[13] Two days later (Sunday, February 9) they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Nielsen Ratings estimated that 45 percent of Americans watching television that night viewed their appearance.^[8] On April 4, the Beatles held the top 5 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, the only time to date that any act has accomplished this.^[8][14] The group's massive chart success continued until they broke up in 1970.^[8]

Dusty Springfield, having launched a solo career, became the first non-Beatle act during the invasion to have a major U.S. hit, with "I Only Want to Be With You". She soon followed up with several other hits, becoming what Allmusic described as "the finest white soul singer of her era."^[10] During the next two years, Chad & Jeremy, Peter and Gordon, The Animals, Manfred Mann, Petula Clark, Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Herman's Hermits, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Troggs, and Donovan would have one or more number one singles.^[5] Other acts that were part of the invasion included Them and The Dave Clark Five.^[8] British Invasion acts also dominated the music charts at home in the United Kingdom.^[15]

British Invasion artists played in styles now categorized either as blues-based rock music or as guitar-driven rock/pop.^[15] A second wave of the invasion occurred featuring acts such as The Who and The Zombies which were influenced by the invasion's pop side and American rock music.^[15] The musical style of British Invasion artists, such as the Beatles, was influenced by earlier American rock and roll, a genre which had lost some popularity and appeal by the time of the Invasion. White British performers essentially revived a musical genre rooted in black American culture.^[16]

The Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night and fashions from Carnaby Street led American media to proclaim England as the center of the music and fashion world.^[5] Fashion and image marked the Beatles out from their earlier American rock and roll counterparts. Their distinctive, uniform style "challenged the clothing style of conventional US males", just as their music challenged the earlier conventions of the rock and roll genre.^[17]

The Rolling Stones were perceived by the American public as a much more 'edgy' and even dangerous band. They stated themselves that they were much more influenced by black-oriented rhythm and blues. This image marked them as separate from beat artists such as the Beatles, who had become a more acceptable, parent-friendly pop group. The Stones appealed more to an 'outsider' demographic and popularized, for young people at least, the rhythm and blues genre which had been largely ignored or rejected when performed by black American artists in the 1950s.^[17]

The emergence of a relatively homogeneous worldwide "rock" music style about 1967 marked the end of the "invasion".^[5]

Influence[link]

The British Invasion had a profound impact on the shape of popular music. It helped internationalize the production of rock and roll, establishing the British popular music industry as a viable centre of musical creativity,^[18] and opening the door for subsequent British and Irish performers to achieve international success.^[15] In America the Invasion arguably spelled the end of such acts as instrumental surf music, pre-Motown vocal girl groups, and (for a time) the teen idols that had dominated the American charts in the late 1950s and 60s.^[19] It dented the careers of established R&B acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and temporarily derailed the chart success of surviving rock and roll acts, including Elvis Presley.^[20] It prompted many existing garage rock bands to adopt a sound with a British Invasion inflection, and inspired many other groups to form, creating a scene from which many major American acts of the next decade would emerge.^[21] The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music, and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based around guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters.^[22]

Though a majority of the acts associated with the invasion did not survive its end, many others would become icons of rock music.^[15] That the sound of British beat bands was not radically different from American groups like The Beach Boys, and damaged the careers of African-American and female artists,^[23] has been the subject of criticism of the invasion in the United States.

Other American groups also demonstrated a similar sound to the British Invasion artists and in turn highlighted how the British 'sound' was not in itself a wholly new or original one.^[24] Roger McGuinn of The Byrds, for example, acknowledged the debt that American artists owed to British musicians, such as the Searchers, but that ‘‘they were using folk music licks that I was using anyway. So it’s not that big a rip-off.’’.^[25] The US Sunshine pop group the The Buckinghams and the Beatles influenced US Tex-Mex act The Sir Douglas Quintet to adopt British sounding names.^[26][27][28]

See also[link]

• Second British Invasion
• List of British Invasion Artists
• British rock
• Swinging London
• List of songs by British artists which reached number-one on the Hot 100 (USA)
• Beatlemania
• Anglophilia
• Korean wave (a.k.a. Korean Invasion)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Gilliland, John (1969). "The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming!: The U.S.A. is invaded by a wave of long-haired English rockers." (audio). Pop Chronicles. Digital.library.unt.edu. http://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/partners/UNTML/browse/?start=26&fq=untl_collection%3AJGPC. 
• Miles, Barry The British Invasion: The Music, the Times, the Era Sterling Publishing 2009 ISBN 978-1-4027-6976-4
• Harry, Bill The British Invasion: How the Beatles and Other UK Bands Conquered America Chrome Dreams 2004 ISBN 978-1-84240-247-4

v t e Pop rock Arena rock · Baroque pop · Dream pop · Emo-pop · Glam metal · Glam punk · Glam rock · Manila Sound · Pop punk · Power pop · Soft rock · Sunshine pop Category:Rock music · Portal:Rock music

Ed Sullivan
Sullivan in 1955
Born	Edward Vincent Sullivan (1901-09-28)September 28, 1901 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	October 13, 1974(1974-10-13) (aged 73) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Television host Writer
Years active	1932–1973
Spouse	Sylvia (m. 1930–1973)

Edward Vincent "Ed" Sullivan (September 28, 1901 – October 13, 1974) was an American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of the TV variety show The Ed Sullivan Show. The show was broadcast from 1948 to 1971 (a total of 23 years), which made it one of the longest-running variety shows in U.S. broadcast history.^[1]

In 1996, Ed Sullivan was ranked #50 on TV Guide's "50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time".^[2]

Early life and career[link]

Sullivan was born in New York City, New York, the son of Elizabeth F. (née Smith) and Peter Arthur Sullivan, a customs house employee.^[3] He was of Irish descent.^[4] A former boxer, Sullivan began his media work as a newspaper sportswriter for The New York Evening Graphic.^[5] When Walter Winchell, one of the original gossip columnists and the most powerful entertainment reporter of his day, left the newspaper for the Hearst syndicate, Sullivan took over as theatre columnist. His theatre column was later carried in The New York Daily News. His column, 'Little Old New York', concentrated on Broadway shows and gossip, as Winchell's had and, like Winchell, he also did show business news broadcasts on radio. Again echoing Winchell, Sullivan took on yet another medium in 1933 by writing and starring in the film Mr. Broadway, which has him guiding the audience around New York nightspots to meet entertainers and celebrities. Sullivan soon became a powerful starmaker in the entertainment world himself, becoming one of Winchell's main rivals, setting the El Morocco nightclub in New York as his unofficial headquarters against Winchell's seat of power at the nearby Stork Club. Sullivan continued writing for The News throughout his broadcasting career and his popularity long outlived that of Winchell.

Television[link]

Sullivan with Cole Porter on Toast of the Town in 1952.

In 1948, the CBS network hired Sullivan to do a weekly Sunday night TV variety show, Toast of the Town, which later became The Ed Sullivan Show. Debuting in June 1948, the show was broadcast from CBS Studio 50, at 1697 Broadway (at 53rd Street) in New York City, which in 1967 was renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater (and is now the home of The Late Show with David Letterman).^[6]

Television critics gave the new show and its host poor reviews.^[7] Harriet Van Horne alleged that "he got where he is not by having a personality, but by having no personality." (The host wrote to the critic, "Dear Miss Van Horne: You bitch. Sincerely, Ed Sullivan."^[8]) Sullivan had little acting ability; in 1967, 20 years after his show's debut, Time magazine asked "What exactly is Ed Sullivan's talent?"^[8] His mannerisms on camera were so awkward that some viewers believed the host suffered from Bell's palsy.^[8] Time in 1955 stated that Sullivan resembled

a cigar-store Indian, the Cardiff Giant and a stone-faced monument just off the boat from Easter Island. He moves like a sleepwalker; his smile is that of a man sucking a lemon; his speech is frequently lost in a thicket of syntax; his eyes pop from their sockets or sink so deep in their bags that they seem to be peering up at the camera from the bottom of twin wells.^[7]

The magazine concluded, however, that "Yet, instead of frightening children, Ed Sullivan charms the whole family."^[7] Sullivan appeared to the audience as an average guy who brought the great acts of show business to their home televisions. ("Ed Sullivan will last", comedian Fred Allen said, "as long as someone else has talent",^[7] and frequent guest Alan King said "Ed does nothing, but he does it better than anyone else in television."^[8]) He had a newspaperman's instinct for what the public wanted, and programmed his variety hours with remarkable balance. There was something for everyone.^[7] A typical show would feature a vaudeville act (acrobats, jugglers, magicians, etc.), one or two popular comedians, a singing star, a hot jukebox favorite, a figure from the legitimate theater, and for the kids, a visit with puppet "Topo Gigio, the little Italian mouse." The bill was often international in scope, with many European performers augmenting the American artists.^[8]

Sullivan had a healthy sense of humor about himself and permitted—even encouraged—impersonators such as John Byner, Frank Gorshin, Rich Little and especially Will Jordan to imitate him on his show. Johnny Carson also did a fair impression, and even Joan Rivers imitated Sullivan's unique posture. The impressionists exaggerated his stiffness, raised shoulders, and nasal tenor phrasing, along with some of his commonly used introductions, such as "And now, right here on our stage...", "For all you youngsters out there...", and "a really big shew" (his pronunciation of the word "show"). Will Jordan portrayed Sullivan in the films I Wanna Hold Your Hand, The Buddy Holly Story, The Doors, Mr. Saturday Night, Down with Love, and in the 1979 TV movie Elvis.^[9]

In 1963, Ed Sullivan appeared as himself in the film Bye Bye Birdie.

Sullivan, the starmaker[link]

Ed Sullivan congratulates Izhak Perlman after a concert at Tel-Aviv, in 1958.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Sullivan was a respected starmaker because of the number of performers that became household names after appearing on the show. He had a knack for identifying and promoting top talent and paid a great deal of money to secure that talent for his show.

When Elvis Presley became popular, Sullivan was wary of the singer's bad-boy style and said that he would never invite Presley on his program. However, Presley became too big a name to ignore, and Sullivan scheduled him to appear on September 8, 1956. In August, however, Sullivan was injured in an automobile accident that occurred near his country home in Southbury, Connecticut. Sullivan had to take a medical leave from the series and missed the Elvis Presley show. Charles Laughton wound up introducing Presley on the Sullivan hour.^[10] After Sullivan got to know Presley personally, he made amends by telling his audience, "This is a real decent, fine boy."^[11]

Sullivan's failure to scoop the TV industry with Presley made him determined to get the next big sensation first. In 1964, he achieved that with the first live American appearance of The Beatles, on February 9, 1964, the most-watched program in TV history to that point and still one of the most-watched programs of all time.^[12] The Beatles appeared three more times on the Sullivan show in person, and submitted filmed performances later. Sullivan struck up such a rapport with the Beatles that he agreed to introduce them at their momentous Shea Stadium concert on August 15, 1965. The Dave Clark Five, heavily promoted as having a "cleaner" image than the Beatles, made 13 appearances on the Sullivan show, more than any other UK group.

Unlike many shows of the time, Sullivan asked that most musical acts perform their music live, rather than lip-synching to their recordings. Some of these performances have recently been issued on CD.^[13] Examination of performances show that exceptions were made, as when a microphone could not be placed close enough to a performer for technical reasons. An example was B.J. Thomas' 1969 performance of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", in which actual water was sprinkled on him as a special effect. In 1969, Sullivan presented the Jackson 5 with their first single "I Want You Back", which ousted the B. J. Thomas song from the top spot of Billboard's pop charts.

Sullivan, shown here dressed up in a clown suit, hosted the 1972 special Clownaround.

Sullivan appreciated African American talent. He paid for the funeral of dancer Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson out of his own pocket. He also defied pressure to exclude African American musicians from appearing on his show. One of Sullivan's favorite and most frequent acts was The Supremes, who appeared 17 times on the show, helping to pave the way for other Motown acts to appear on the show such as The Temptations, The Four Tops, and Martha and the Vandellas.

At a time when television had not yet embraced country and Western music, Sullivan was adamant about featuring Nashville performers on his program. This insistence paved the way for shows such as Hee Haw and variety shows hosted by country singers like Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell.

The act that appeared most frequently through the show's run was the Canadian comedy duo of Wayne & Shuster, making 67 appearances between 1958 and 1969.

Sullivan also appeared as himself on other television programs, including an April 1958 episode of the Howard Duff and Ida Lupino CBS sitcom, Mr. Adams and Eve. On September 14, 1958 Sullivan appeared on What's My Line? as a mystery guest, and showed his comedic side by donning a rubber mask. In 1961, Sullivan was asked by CBS to fill in for an ailing Red Skelton on The Red Skelton Show. Sullivan took Skelton's roles in the various comedy sketches; Skelton's hobo character "Freddie the Freeloader" was renamed "Eddie the Freeloader."

Personality[link]

There was another side to Sullivan: he could be very quick to take offense if he felt he had been crossed, and could hold a grudge for a long time. This could sometimes be seen as a part of his TV personality. Jackie Mason, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, and The Doors became intimately familiar with Sullivan's negative side.

On November 20, 1955, Bo Diddley was asked by Sullivan to sing Tennessee Ernie Ford's hit "Sixteen Tons". Diddley sensed the choice of song would end his career then and there, and instead sang his #1 hit "Bo Diddley". He was banned from the show.

Buddy Holly and the Crickets had first appeared on the Sullivan show in 1957, singing two songs and making a favorable impression on Sullivan. He invited the band to make another appearance in January 1958. Sullivan thought their record hit "Oh, Boy!" was too raucous and ordered Holly to substitute another song. Holly had already told his hometown friends in Texas that he would be singing "Oh, Boy!" for them, and told Sullivan as much. Sullivan was unaccustomed to having his instructions disobeyed. When the band was summoned to the rehearsal stage on short notice, only Holly was in their dressing room. Sullivan said, "I guess The Crickets are not too excited to be on The Ed Sullivan Show," to which Holly, still annoyed by Sullivan's attitude, replied, "I hope they're damn more excited than I am." Sullivan, already bothered by the choice of songs, was now even angrier. He cut the Crickets' act from two songs to one, and when introducing them mispronounced Holly's name, so it came out vaguely as "Buddy Hollett." In addition, Sullivan saw to it that the microphone for Holly's electric guitar was turned off. Holly tried to compensate by singing as loudly as he could. The band was received so well that Sullivan was forced to invite them back for a third appearance. Holly's response was that Sullivan did not have enough money. Footage of the performance survives; photographs taken that day show Sullivan looking angry and Holly smirking and perhaps ignoring Sullivan.

In 1963, Bob Dylan was set to appear on the show, but network censors rejected the song he wanted to perform, "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", as potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Refusing to perform a different song, Dylan walked off the set at dress rehearsal. Sullivan, who had approved the song at a previous rehearsal, backed Dylan's decision. The incident resulted in accusations against the network of engaging in censorship. This was not the first incident of apparent network censorship on Sullivan's show. In 1956, Sullivan flew to Europe and was able to film an interview with Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, and Helen Hayes on the set of the film Anastasia. When he arrived home, Sullivan learned he would not be able to air the Bergman material from it.^[10]

Jackie Mason was banned from the series in October 1964 (the ban was removed a year and a half later, and Mason made his final appearance on the show). During a taping of Mason's monologue Sullivan, off camera, gestured that Mason should wrap things up, as the show was suddenly shown live following an abbreviated address by President Lyndon Johnson, which was expected to preempt the entire show.^[14] The nervous Mason told the audience, "I'm getting two fingers here!" and made his own frantic hand gesture: "Here's a finger for you!" Videotapes of the incident are inconclusive as to whether Mason's upswept hand was intended to be an indecent gesture, but Sullivan's body language immediately afterward made it clear that he was convinced of it, despite Mason's panic-stricken denials later.^[15] Sullivan later invited Mason back for a return engagement, but the notoriety of the "finger" incident lingered with the studio audience.

When The Byrds performed on December 12, 1965, David Crosby got into a shouting match with the show's director. They were never asked to return.^[16][17]

On January 15, 1967 The Rolling Stones were told to change the chorus of "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "Let's spend some time together". Lead singer Mick Jagger complied, but deliberately called attention to this censorship by rolling his eyes and mugging when he uttered the new words.^[18] Shortly, after the performance, the Stones went backstage, and came back on stage, dressed in Nazi uniforms with swastikas, which caused an angry Sullivan to tell them to go back to their dressing rooms and change back into their performing outfits, however, the Stones left the studio and Sullivan banned the group from ever appearing on his show again.^{[19][Full citation needed][page needed]} Nonetheless, the Stones appeared on the show one final time on November 23, 1969.^[20]

The Doors were banned on September 17, 1967 after they were asked to remove the lyric "Girl, we couldn't get much higher" from their song "Light My Fire" (CBS censors believed that it was too overt a reference to drug use). The band was asked to change the lyric to "girl we couldn't get much better". Morrison sang the original lyric.^[21]

Moe Howard of the Three Stooges recalled in 1975 that Sullivan had a memory problem of sorts: "Ed was a very nice man, but for a showman, quite forgetful. On our first appearance, he introduced us as the Three Ritz Brothers. He got out of it by adding, 'who look more like the Three Stooges to me'."^[22] Joe DeRita, who worked with the Stooges after 1959, had commented that Sullivan had a personality "like the bottom of a bird cage."^[23]

Diana Ross later recalled Sullivan's forgetfulness during the many occasions The Supremes performed on his show. In a 1995 appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman (which is filmed in Ed Sullivan Theater), Ross stated, "he could never remember our names. He called us 'the girls'." ^[24][25]

In a 1990 press conference Paul McCartney recalled meeting Sullivan again in the early 1970s. Sullivan apparently had no idea who McCartney was. McCartney tried to remind Sullivan that he was one of The Beatles but Sullivan obviously could not remember and, nodding and smiling, simply shook McCartney's hand and left.

Politics[link]

Sullivan, like many American entertainers, was pulled into the Cold War fervor of the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1949, Sullivan booked dancer Paul Draper to appear on Toast of the Town. However, Draper’s scheduled appearance in January 1950 was met with opposition from Hester McCullough, a woman who involved herself in the hunt for subversives. McCullough accused Draper of sympathizing with the communist party, and although Draper denied the accusation, McCullough demanded that Sullivan’s lead sponsor, the Ford Motor Company, cancel Draper’s appearance. Despite McCullough’s protest, Draper was a guest on Toast of the Town, as was originally scheduled. After the program was broadcast, Ford received over a thousand angry letters and telegraphs in response to Draper’s appearance. Consequently, Sullivan was obligated to write a letter of apology to Ford’s advertising agency, Kenyon & Eckhardt, promising to never again move forward with such a controversial guest. Meanwhile, Draper was forced to move to Europe to earn a living.^[26]

Another guest who never appeared on the show because of the controversy surrounding him was legendary African-American singer-actor Paul Robeson, who, at the time of the Draper incident, was undergoing his own troubles with the industry's hunt for supposed Communist sympathizers.

After the Draper incident, Sullivan began to work closely with Theodore Kirkpatrick of the anti-communist Counterattack newsletter. Sullivan would check with Kirkpatrick if a potential guest had some "explaining to do" about his politics. Sullivan wrote in his June 21, 1950 New York Daily News column that "Kirkpatrick has sat in my living room on several occasions and listened attentively to performers eager to secure a certification of loyalty."^[27] Jerome Robbins, in his PBS American Experience biography, claimed that he was forced to capitulate to the House Un-American Activities Committee, identifying eight Communist sympathizers and disgracing himself among his fellow artists, allegedly because Sullivan threatened to reveal Robbins's homosexuality to the public.

Later years and death[link]

In the fall of 1965, CBS began televising the weekly programs in color. Although the Sullivan show was seen live in the Central and Eastern time zones, it was taped for airing in the Pacific and Mountain time zones. Most of the taped programs (as well as some early kinescopes) were preserved, and excerpts have been released on home video.

By 1971, the show's ratings had plummeted. In an effort to refresh their lineup, CBS cancelled the program along with some of its other longtime shows. Sullivan was angered by this so greatly that he refused to do a final show, although he remained with the network in various other capacities and hosted a 25th anniversary special in 1973.

In early September 1974, X-rays revealed that Sullivan had advanced esophageal cancer. Only his family was told, however, and as the doctors gave Sullivan very little time, the family chose to keep the diagnosis from him. Sullivan, still believing his ailment to be yet another complication from a long-standing battle with ulcers, died five weeks later, on October 13, 1974, at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital.^[28] His funeral was attended by 3,000 at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York on a cold, rainy day. Sullivan is interred in a crypt at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Personal life[link]

Sullivan was engaged to champion swimmer Sybil Bauer, but she died of cancer in 1927 at the age of 23.^[29] He was married to the former Sylvia Weinstein from April 28, 1930, until her death on March 16, 1973. They had one daughter, Betty Sullivan (who married the Ed Sullivan Show's producer, Bob Precht). Sullivan was in the habit of calling Sylvia after every program to get her immediate critique.

Sullivan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6101 Hollywood Blvd.

References[link]