At about 8:04 tonight, fifty years ago, it is estimated that 73 million Americans were watching The Ed Sullivan Show as the Beatles made their live U.S. television debut. Sullivan gave his now-famous intro, “Ladies and gentlemen… The Beatles!” and after a few seconds of rapturous cheering from the audience, the band kicked into “All My Lovin’.”
Fifty seconds in, the first audience-reaction shot of the performance shows a teenage girl beaming and possibly hyperventilating.
Two minutes later, Paul McCartney is singing another number: “Til There Was You,” from the Broadway musical Music Man. There’s screaming at the end of every phrase in the lyrics, of course, but to view the broadcast today, it seems driven more by anticipation than by the relatively low-key performance itself. And then came “She Loves You,” and the place seems to explode.
After returning from a commercial break for Anacin Pain Reliever, Ed Sullivan is standing before a restless crowd. He tried to begin his next introduction, but then stopped and extended his arms in the universal sign for “Settle Down.”
“Quiet!” he said with mock gravity, and the noise died down just a little. Then he resumed: “Here’s a very amusing magician we saw in Europe and signed last summer… Let’s have a nice hand for him— Fred Kaps!”
Fred Kaps performed 5 minutes of good magic. He was famous himself… among other magicians, but he must have quickly realized he made a mistake by signing on to follow The Beatles. The young crowd wasn’t interested in a birthday party performance of the best magic available. They wanted to see the boys from Liverpool.
The Beatles would return later in the show to perform “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” as the audience remained at the same fever pitch it had reached during “She Loves You.”
Next, it was Wells & the Four Fays, a troupe of comic acrobats, who had to suffer what Fred Kaps had after the Beatles’ first set.
Perhaps the only non-Beatle on Sullivan’s stage that night who did not consider the evening a total loss was the young man from the Broadway cast of Oliver! who sang “I’d Do Anything” as the Artful Dodger midway through the show. His name was Davy Jones, and less than three years later, he’d star in a TV show of his own that owed a rather significant debt to the hysteria that began on this night in 1964: The Monkees.
The Beatles would appear twice more on The Ed Sullivan Show in the next two weeks.
The girls never stopped screaming.
Disclaimer: On January 4, 2016, the owner of WestEastonPA.com began serving on the West Easton Council following an election. Postings and all content found on this website are the opinions of Matthew A. Dees and may not necessarily represent the opinion of the governing body for The Borough of West Easton.
