Every Sunday night back in the 1950s and ’60s families would gather around their living room TV and watch The Ed Sullivan Show. The variety hour ran 23 seasons, ending 54 years ago in 1971. Now streaming on Netflix, the documentary Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan is not just another “best of” blast of nostalgia.
Before there was Saturday Night Live, MuchMusic or MTV, the really big shew with hottest music acts was The Ed Sullivan Show. It began in 1948 as The Toast of the Town, with bold face newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan introducing, between the plate spinners, acrobats, comedians and a little puppet mouse named Toppo Gigio, everyone
Way back when I was a high school student working as a busboy at a restaurant at Ontario Place, I was able to see several unforgetable concerts at the Forum. This was a beautiful, hillside venue, an outdoor theatre-in-the-round that sat three thousand in the circular stands and another four thousand on the surrounding hillsides.