Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan Page 6
He supplemented his salary by writing freelance sports stories for the Associated Press and United Press International, and that winter Ed spotted a potential big scoop. Leading financier George F. Baker was traveling south in a private railcar to play golf with industrialist John D. Rockefeller, who owned a mansion in Ormond Beach. Ed checked with some New York dailies: Would they buy a story about the famous tycoons playing golf? That Ed had just finished a stint on a socialist newspaper didn’t deter him from covering Rockefeller, the very embodiment of capitalism. Finding interest, he gathered details about Baker and Rockefeller’s golf game and wrote his story. But he ran into an obstacle when his employer, the manager of the Hotel Ormond, refused to allow him to send it, fearing the piece might offend the two men. Ed began maneuvering to get his piece published. “When you are broke you become inventive,” he said.
He suggested to his boss that the Hotel Ormond offer its services to the train car that Baker had traveled on. The manager liked the idea, and Ed volunteered to present the offer himself. Once there, he convinced the railroad manager to read his story, having him initial it to show his agreement that it contained nothing offensive. Ed’s employer, seeing the initials, agreed to let him send his story, which became a major sale for the reporter. The story was presumably the one in The New York Times on March 28, 1924 detailing a Rockefeller golf game in Ormond Beach. The glowing three-paragraph piece carried no byline and didn’t mention the businessman’s partner that day, yet one day earlier the paper had reported that George Baker was headed south for business meetings. As Ed later told it, Rockefeller himself sent the reporter “a very human note,” shortly after the article ran, explaining that Baker had won hole by hole, yet the industrialist was victorious in the final score. The letter may have been Ed’s embellishment of the story—he claimed he didn’t keep it—yet it’s true that after decades of distrusting the press, late in life Rockefeller actively courted reporters, especially adoring ones.
At any rate, Florida held little appeal for Sullivan. After a few months in the sun he eagerly sought another sports-reporting berth. Between April 1924 and early 1925, he worked at three newspapers, hopping from one to the next, searching for what he had at the Mail and the Leader: a high-profile job covering a smorgasbord of sports. In April he took a job at the Philadelphia Public Ledger, a staid daily that mixed national news with voluminous coverage of local debutantes. But as at each of his three short-lived posts, the Ledger gave him no byline. In May, publisher Frederick Enright launched a new evening paper, the New York Bulletin, a Democratic broadsheet. Ed jumped at the chance to move back to New York, yet before he was established at the Bulletin he found an opening at the New York World.
Established by Joseph Pulitzer in 1883, the World was a big, prosperous daily with offices throughout the United States and Europe—just the sort of publication an ambitious newsman would desire. World sports editor George Daley, however, proved to be a minor tyrant and Ed chafed under his supervision, calling him a perfectionist. Even worse, Daley covered all the choice events himself. The reporter kept looking for an ideal position.
Sometime in the fall of 1924 he took a sportswriting job at the New York Morning Telegraph, a racing sheet that whispered insider’s tips about that afternoon’s track action, and whose front page covered the careers of hot ponies. For a reporter fluent in all the major sports, the Telegraph offered a much smaller world. The paper, as described by famed New York chronicler O.O. McIntyre, was “a barney refuge for the journalistically forlorn,” which “harbored a dozen white-hair paragraphers.” Still, it did deliver Sullivan from George Daley’s clutches. From his tenure at the tip sheet he developed a passion for horse racing, and throughout his life spent many afternoons at the tracks; when he became wealthy later in life he bought his own racehorse. But the Telegraph didn’t provide enough to hold him.
Finally, in early 1925 he ran into a casual friend, Will Gould, a sports cartoonist for the New York Evening Graphic, who told him of the paper’s plans for a Saturday sports magazine. Gould recommended Sullivan write articles for the new insert. Ed jumped at the opportunity. At age twenty-three he was, astonishingly, starting his eighth newspaper job—and the most unusual. Launched in September 1924, the Graphic was a screaming two-fisted tabloid, dispensing with all journalistic rules except the inviolable precept that tawdry sensationalism draws readers. Yellow journalism had never been quite so yellow. The Graphic influenced Ed in numerous ways, the first of these being that it allowed him to meet someone who moved him profoundly.
When Ed met Olympic swimming star Sybil Bauer while covering a meet in 1925, it was love at first sight. Perhaps it was her winsome smile, or the sight of her in a swimsuit, but whatever the case, suddenly, even the fact that she lived half a country away didn’t matter.
By the mid 1920s Bauer was something of a national celebrity. In 1921 she won her first Amateur Athletic Union backstroke championship, a title she claimed every year until 1926. In 1922 she became the first woman to break a men’s record, besting Stubby Kruger’s 440-yard backstroke record by four seconds. (The meet in Bermuda was not officially sanctioned so her performance was never formally recognized.) By the time she qualified for the 1924 Olympics, Bauer held world records at every backstroke distance. That year in Paris she won Olympic gold with ease, flashing through the 100-meter backstroke four full seconds faster than the silver medalist. She would eventually set twenty-three world records in swimming.
For all her competitive prowess, Sybil was easygoing, gentle, and upbeat. She wasn’t classically pretty—her features were blunt—yet she possessed a swimmer’s svelte form. When Ed and the twenty-one-year-old swimmer met, he wasn’t the only one to swoon: the young Olympic star also found the sports reporter quite charming. Because the two lived in different parts of the country it was an unlikely romance; Sybil was a student at Northwestern University in Chicago, where she had grown up, and Ed lived in New York. But that proved no obstacle for Sullivan, and he pursued Sybil with a passion.
The romance blossomed. Sybil’s swimming career brought her to the East Coast at times, and Ed made the trip to Chicago when he could. Several months after meeting, the two were quite serious about each other. In an unusual gesture, Ed even brought Sybil home to Port Chester to meet his family. Once established in New York he had rarely gone back, preferring to keep his distance from his father, if not from Port Chester itself. However, the trip home with Sybil proved a major success. Everyone in the Sullivan family liked her enormously.
The romance, while growing, remained a long-distance relationship, with Sybil attending college in Chicago and pursuing her swimming career while Ed remained immersed in his life as a New York sports reporter. He continued burning the candle at both ends, covering athletics during the day and nightclubbing virtually every night of the week.
Sybil appeared to have everything—athletic prowess, renown, winning charm—yet her life took an unexpected turn in early 1926. While being honored in a parade in St. Augustine, Florida, after winning an AAU swimming championship in February, Sybil suffered a momentary dizziness and fell from a slow-moving touring car. Though she suffered no major injuries, it soon became evident that her dizziness was symptomatic of a very real health problem. One newspaper attributed her fall to a nervous breakdown caused by the strain of her vigorous athletic training—the idea of a prominent female athlete was resisted by many. The real cause, however, was far more serious, and Sybil’s health began to deteriorate, precipitously. Sometime in the next several months her family was told that she had cancer. The champion swimmer, in peak physical shape just months before, was now gravely ill.
In New York, Ed stayed in touch with Sybil while maintaining both his vigorous work and night lives. One of his favorite Manhattan nightclubs was the Casa Lopez, an upscale speakeasy owned by famed bandleader Vincent Lopez. Socializing at the club one evening in early October, Sullivan spotted a young woman at the next table he described as a “very stunning brunet
te youngster.” He asked the Casa Lopez’s publicity man, Joe Russell, to arrange an introduction.
Her name was Sylvia Weinstein. Elegantly dressed, the twenty-two-year-old possessed almost movie star good looks, with a trim figure, high cheekbones, and dark hair that complemented her pretty dark eyes. Her family was distinctly upper crust; her father, Julius Weinstein, a first-generation émigré from Lithuania, had made a considerable fortune in New York real estate.
When Ed sat down at her table the attraction soon became mutual. Their conversation turned, naturally, to sports, and Ed asked Sylvia if she liked tennis. “Of course I said I loved it. Ed was very attractive,” she recalled. Ed brought up boxing and it turned out that, yes, Sylvia was also enthusiastic about attending boxing matches. Over the course of the evening’s animated chat, Ed asked Sylvia for not one but two dates. The answer to both was yes. They made a date to attend tennis star Suzanne Lenglen’s match at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, October 9, and they also planned to see the Harry Wills—Jack Sharkey prizefight at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on Tuesday, October 12.
Both events had an element of glamour. French tennis star Suzanne Lenglen, a dazzling player and star of the 1920 Olympics, was the first female tennis pro to wear an outfit that afforded a generous view of her calf—stirring a mild scandal. Her Madison Square Garden match that Saturday, attended by thirteen thousand fans, was the start of her first tour as a professional. Upon arriving in New York to launch the tour, she had hiked up her skirt for reporters and announced she had come to America to make a whole lot of money.
The prizefight between Harry Wills, known as the “Brown Panther,” and Jack Sharkey was a precursor to a title bout, with the winner earning a shot at champion Gene Tunney. (Wills, a black man, had signed a contract in the early 1920s to face then-champion Jack Dempsey, but New York’s governor canceled the bout, fearing a race riot after the fight.) Ebbets Field was crammed with forty thousand fans, and in the high-octane economy of New York in the 1920s plenty of high rollers were sprinkled among the crowd. The evening was Sylvia’s first at a boxing match, and she did her best to enjoy it.
Although pugilism held little interest for her, she felt quite intrigued by her date. At age twenty-five, he was in his element at events like these. As a well-known sports reporter he was part of the party, a major fellow who knew the inside scoop. He likely had good seats, and plenty of opportunities for glad-handing with important personages—which he never failed to do. With his tailored suit and easy familiarity with everybody who was a somebody, he cut an attractive figure. If his goal was to impress his date, the two events were the perfect venue.
Sullivan’s first love, Sybil Bauer, an Olympic gold medalist in the 1924 games. (International Swimming Hall of Fame)
In Chicago, Sybil’s health showed no sign of improvement. At the end of October her condition took a turn for the worse and she entered the hospital. In November, Ed made a trip to see her, after which the couple made a major announcement. Ed had proposed, Sybil had accepted, and the two were now engaged. The wedding was set for June. Due to Sybil’s celebrity status the engagement was a minor national news item, reported in papers across the country. Ed, perennially short on money, borrowed enough from his older sister Helen to buy a diamond engagement ring at Black, Starr and Frost, an elegant high-end jeweler.
Or, Helen may have insisted that Ed take the money. Given Sybil’s ill health, his proposal may have been as much a gesture of sympathy as love. Decades later, Ed’s daughter Betty recalled that his sisters Mercedes and Helen urged Ed to propose because they knew Sybil was dying. The sisters were fond of her and apparently saw the proposal as fulfilling her last wish. “From what I understand he was sort of pushed into that by Helen and Mercedes,” Betty said.
After proposing, Ed returned to New York as Sybil’s condition continued to worsen. In late January, he again made the trip to Chicago, likely knowing that this was his last visit. As his fiancée died on January 31 he was sitting by her bedside, along with her two brothers, her sister, and her parents. The Bauer family gave Ed back his ring, and he returned to New York. Sybil Bauer’s untimely death was a far bigger news story than had been her engagement, and was splashed on the front page of many newspapers, with Ed mentioned as her bridegroom-to-be. Her pallbearers were six well-known swimmers, including 1924 Olympic gold medalist Johnny Weissmuller (who later played Tarzan in a string of B movies). Some editorialists pointed to Sybil’s illness as proof that women shouldn’t be allowed to compete in athletics, but, noted one swimming organization in its obituary, “her life had contradicted those claims.”
In 1967, Sybil was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. The organization asked Ed, then famous, to record a voiceover to accompany Sybil’s photo in its museum. In the recording, he summarized her athletic achievements, adding, “Sybil, a girl from Chicago, was a very attractive girl. Most of us sports-casters had a crush on her. I know I did. Sybil really belongs in the Swimming Hall of Fame.” Claiming he had a crush on her like all the boys was quite an understatement for the fiancé who held Sybil’s hand on her deathbed. Ed seemed to have a need to exorcise her from his history, and after her death he never again made reference to her. In the early 1950s, after he became a major television star, he was interviewed constantly about his life history, yet never once mentioned his former fiancée. Even when he detailed his life story in a multipart series for the New York Post he included not one word of Sybil. Perhaps the episode was too grief inducing, or perhaps he simply preferred to keep it to himself. Like his father, he was a man who rarely spoke of his inner feelings, even to those closest to him.
Back in New York, Ed was not alone in his loss. Sylvia had become his steady date. Not that there was anything steady about the stormy sea of the Ed-Sylvia romance. The two were together as often as they decided to break things off. They would meet for a dinner date, or go out to a nightclub, only to call it quits by the end of the evening. But Ed couldn’t stay away, and a few days later he would call and say, “I can’t stand it anymore.” The farewell dinners became a routine element of their relationship. “Afterward we would say ‘Meet you for another good-bye party in two weeks,’ ” Sylvia recalled.
The chief problem, or so it seemed, was their religious backgrounds. For Sylvia, it was one thing to accept a date with an attractive Catholic boy she had met in the intoxicating atmosphere of the Casa Lopez; it was another to tell her family she was dating a gentile. “I guess Ed was the first Christian boy I ever really knew,” Sylvia said. When some months later she informed her family that she had a steady boyfriend, she told them his name was Ed Solomon. After her brother heard he wrote for the Graphic, he said, “Oh, you mean Ed Sullivan, not Solomon.”
Sylvia described herself as coming from a “regular Marjorie Morningstar world,” a reference to the Herman Wouk novel about an affluent Jewish girl in the 1930s who disobeys her family’s wishes to pursue her own desires and date a gentile. Her family, however, was not particularly observant, going to temple only on High Holy days, and despite her reluctance to acknowledge dating Ed, they seemed to have no serious objection. Sylvia later contradicted her reference to Marjorie Morningstar, saying, “I can honestly say that there was very little opposition from my family.” And according to Ed’s grandson, Rob Precht, the Weinsteins were happy to see Sylvia date Ed. “Her family was thrilled,” he said. “He was a man about town, a go-getter, attractive, an all-American sports guy. They liked him.”
However accepting Sylvia’s family felt about Ed, their attitude met its equal and opposite reaction in Ed’s family. The Sullivans were unequivocally opposed to him dating a Jewish girl. That he would marry Sylvia was not in the realm of possibility, in their view. Ed, bowing to the supposed immovable obstacle of their different religious backgrounds, kept insisting to Sylvia that their relationship could never work out. Then he would once again tell her he couldn’t see her anymore.
Still, nothing could keep them apart. Their chem
istry worked. Sylvia, warm and easygoing, understanding, a good conversationalist; Ed, ambitious, moody, sometimes hot-tempered, yet exceptionally fond of her. Sylvia knew how to let Ed be Ed, how to take his moods with a grain of salt. She was also, like his mother, encouraging. She believed in him. He was always on the lookout, for the next job, the next hand to shake, the next opportunity. She knew he was headed somewhere, and she allowed him to take the lead. Ed was very much in charge, and Sylvia was happy to go along.
And they both loved to go out. For the two of them, the New York nightclub was like a second living room. Ed made the rounds practically every evening and Sylvia often accompanied him. She took pleasure in dressing with great style, and Ed himself was invariably nattily attired. Sylvia favored elegant dresses and her date usually wore a double-breasted jacket topped with a fedora; so dashing a figure did he cut that in the early 1930s Adam Hats ask him to pose for a newspaper ad. They made an attractive couple, Sylvia with her dark good looks and Ed still ruddily handsome from his days as a Port Chester athlete. The two sat and socialized in various expensive speakeasies on most nights, Ed with his cigarette and drink, Sylvia sipping a cocktail. Throughout the evening they greeted passersby and chatted with Ed’s many acquaintances and friends; after years of knocking around newspapers and nightclubs, he seemed to know most of the city.
So, as soon as they called the whole thing off, it was back on again. The romance between Ed and Sylvia—intermittent and mercurial at one level—was as steady and predictable as the train schedule at Grand Central Station.