The Fab 40!

Sunday January 11, 2004

Review of "The Ed Sullivan Shows Featuring The Beatles"

By Robert Hilburn

Imagine it's 8 p.m. on a Sunday 40 years ago and you're tuning in to "The Ed Sullivan Show" to see the Beatles' U.S. TV debut.

After the curtain rises on the Feb. 9 show, Sullivan, the former newspaper columnist who was so stiff on camera that he was the butt of countless comedic impressions, steps on stage to face what was, to date, the largest U.S. TV audience ever.

"You know, something very nice happened and the Beatles got a kick out of it," the host of the weekly variety show says. "They just received a wire from Elvis Presley and Col. Tom Parker wishing them a tremendous success in our country."

After pausing for a commercial, Sullivan returns to the stage and introduces the four "youngsters" from Liverpool. The girls in the theater begin shrieking with the intensity that would lead journalists to coin the term "Beatlemania."

The Beatles, in suits and ties, open with "All My Loving," then go into "Till There Was You," a ballad from "The Music Man." During the song, the name of each Beatle flashes on the screen. In Lennon's case, "John" is followed humorously by "Sorry girls, he's married."

The Beatles' arrival on the Sullivan show has been shown in documentaries, but the unique thing about a new DVD, "The Four Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows Featuring the Beatles," is that it doesn't just offer us the Beatles' 20 performances from three shows in 1964 and one in 1965, but the entire programs, including commercials. So we can watch each show just as viewers did.

Sullivan prided himself on presenting high culture to pop culture, mixing opera singers with circus acts, as well as stacking the audience with famous people whose contribution to the show often was no more than a wave.

On these four shows, guests ranged from the cast of the Broadway musical "Oliver!" and the comedy team of Allen & Rossi to jazz delight Cab Calloway and the aerobatic comedy team of Wells & the Four Fays. Fighters Joe Louis and Sonny Liston took bows from the audience.

It's a wonderful, two-disc salute to a classic moment in American pop history, and its recent release by SOFA Entertainment underscores the increasing number of pop music options available on DVD.

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