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Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!
Gerald Nachman
Ed Sullivan's America
University of California Press
November 2009
On Sale: November 5, 2009
472 pages
ISBN: 0520258673
EAN: 9780520258679
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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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