Ed Sullivan was 46 years old and a relative unknown when, on June 20, 1948, the CBS television network introduced him as the host and co-producer of a new Sunday night variety program called the Toast of the Town. Leaning heavily on the show-business connections he’d cultivated over the years as a New York-based newspaper columnist, Sullivan’s lineup that evening included the then-breaking-big nightclub comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Broadway giants Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, a ballet dancer, a classical pianist, an interview with a boxing referee, and, for local color, a Bronx fireman who’d won a community singing contest.
On paper, the mix made little sense. Yet, from that night on, as Ed Sullivan continued to present his handpicked but seemingly random assortment of performers—and…
