Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan's America
Before the advent of cable and its hundreds of channels, before iPods and the Internet, three television networks ruled America's evenings. And for twenty-three years, Ed Sullivan, the Broadway gossip columnist turned awkward emcee, ruled Sunday nights. It was Sullivan's genius to take a worn-out stage genre-vaudeville-and transform it into the TV variety show, a format that was to dominate for decades. Right Here on Our Stage Tonight! tells the complete saga of The Ed Sullivan Show and, through the voices of some 60 stars interviewed for the book, brings to life the most beloved, diverse, multi-cultural, and influential variety hour ever to air. Gerald Nachman takes us through those years, from the earliest dog acts and jugglers to Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and beyond. Sullivan was the first TV impresario to feature black performers on a regular basis-including Nat King Cole, Pearl Bailey, James Brown, and Richard Pryor-challenging his conservative audience and his own traditional tastes, and changing the face of American popular culture along the way. No other TV show ever cut such a broad swath through our national life or cast such a long shadow, nor has there ever been another show like it. Nachman's compulsively readable history, illustrated with classic photographs and chocked with colorful anecdotes, reanimates The Ed Sullivan Show for a new generation.
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Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan's America
Before the advent of cable and its hundreds of channels, before iPods and the Internet, three television networks ruled America's evenings. And for twenty-three years, Ed Sullivan, the Broadway gossip columnist turned awkward emcee, ruled Sunday nights. It was Sullivan's genius to take a worn-out stage genre-vaudeville-and transform it into the TV variety show, a format that was to dominate for decades. Right Here on Our Stage Tonight! tells the complete saga of The Ed Sullivan Show and, through the voices of some 60 stars interviewed for the book, brings to life the most beloved, diverse, multi-cultural, and influential variety hour ever to air. Gerald Nachman takes us through those years, from the earliest dog acts and jugglers to Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and beyond. Sullivan was the first TV impresario to feature black performers on a regular basis-including Nat King Cole, Pearl Bailey, James Brown, and Richard Pryor-challenging his conservative audience and his own traditional tastes, and changing the face of American popular culture along the way. No other TV show ever cut such a broad swath through our national life or cast such a long shadow, nor has there ever been another show like it. Nachman's compulsively readable history, illustrated with classic photographs and chocked with colorful anecdotes, reanimates The Ed Sullivan Show for a new generation.
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Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan's America

Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan's America

by Gerald Nachman
Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan's America

Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan's America

by Gerald Nachman

Paperback(First Edition)

$23.95 
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Overview

Before the advent of cable and its hundreds of channels, before iPods and the Internet, three television networks ruled America's evenings. And for twenty-three years, Ed Sullivan, the Broadway gossip columnist turned awkward emcee, ruled Sunday nights. It was Sullivan's genius to take a worn-out stage genre-vaudeville-and transform it into the TV variety show, a format that was to dominate for decades. Right Here on Our Stage Tonight! tells the complete saga of The Ed Sullivan Show and, through the voices of some 60 stars interviewed for the book, brings to life the most beloved, diverse, multi-cultural, and influential variety hour ever to air. Gerald Nachman takes us through those years, from the earliest dog acts and jugglers to Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and beyond. Sullivan was the first TV impresario to feature black performers on a regular basis-including Nat King Cole, Pearl Bailey, James Brown, and Richard Pryor-challenging his conservative audience and his own traditional tastes, and changing the face of American popular culture along the way. No other TV show ever cut such a broad swath through our national life or cast such a long shadow, nor has there ever been another show like it. Nachman's compulsively readable history, illustrated with classic photographs and chocked with colorful anecdotes, reanimates The Ed Sullivan Show for a new generation.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780520268012
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: 11/05/2009
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 466
Product dimensions: 9.06(w) x 11.80(h) x 1.13(d)

About the Author

Gerald Nachman is the author of Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 60s, Out on a Whim: Some Very Close Brushes with Life, The Fragile Bachelor, Playing House and Raised on Radio. He is also a contributor to Esquire, Newsweek, GQ, Cosmopolitan, and the New York Times.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Theme Music

Part One. No-Talent Host Tames the One-Eyed Beast

1. Out of the Paley-ozoic Ooze
2. Battle of the Videoville Titans-Berle, Godfrey, and Sullivan
3. A Live Broadway Column Every Sunday Night
4. The $375 Extravaganza
5. Very Critical Condition
6. The Magic of Sullivision

Part Two. How to Succeed in Show Business without Really Talking

7. From Small-Town Sportswriter to Manhattan Sport
8. He's Just an Ink-Stained Broadway Baby
9. Toast of the Nation
10. It's the World, on Line One
11. Sacred Sunday Rite
12. Not Quite All in the Family
13. Extended Family

Part Three. Inside the Star-Making Machine

14. Herding Comedians
15. Backstage Life (and Death)
16. Give My Regards to La Scala
17. Elvis Has Entered the Building
18. Newspaper Wads at Fifty Paces-a Few Off-Camera Feuds
19. Embracing Blacks, Caving In to McCarthyism

Part Four. Rescued by Rock 'n' Roll

20. The Son-in-Law Also Rises
21. “And Now-the Beatles!”
22. The Showman without a Country
23. Echoes and Afterimages

Bibliography
Interviews
Acknowledgments
Index
Photographs follow page

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A memory-lane extravaganza, smart, witty and finely researched."—San Francisco Chronicle

"A fun, affectionate portrayal of the showman. A long time in coming, it's the tome that Sullivan always deserved."—Playbill

"A vivid, discerning portrayal of American history through the lens of popular culture."—Publishers Weekly

"This work is a 'don't miss' of nostalgia."—Wowowow.com

"An amusing, anecdote-rich book. . . . It's full of 'remember when' moments ranging from the bizarre to the insulting."—The Calgary Herald

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