At 8 o'clock on a Sunday evening sometime between 1948 and 1971, where were you? If you were like a lot of Americans, you and your family were sitting in front of the television watching Ed Sullivan present a wide range of talented performers from all over the world—musicians, actors, comedians, puppeteers, acrobats, you name it. As it says in the song Hymn for a Sunday (aka The Ed Sullivan Song) from the movie Bye Bye Birdie (1963), “We'll be coast to coast, with our favorite host, Ed Sul-li-van, Ed Sul-li-van…”
When the hour-long show began on CBS in The announcer introduced the host as “the nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, Ed Sullivan,” which was how he was best known at that time. In 1955, the show's title was changed to
