There Was a Gentle Naivete

The Ed Sullivan Show - 21 May 1961
http://timespast.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-ed-sullivan-show-21-may-1961?xg_source=activity

This show aired before I was born, but not so much before that it isn't very much like the shows I remember from my earliest youth, that very narrow developmental window that screens out details but permits images and places and moments to pass through.

Television was expensive and still a novelty for most Americans. If you could get three channels you were lucky. And all of them went off the air at 11pm or not long after, switching over to a test pattern which let you know your TV was working, there just wasn't any programming available.

Notice the simplicity. There is singing, of course, but there is magic and dancing and acrobatics and jokes.

There is a gentle naivete, and the men and women were fully aware of it.

If you can watch this without a sad twinge of loss, you have no connection with a generation that saw two world wars, Korea and Vietnam, that literally sweat to earn a living and raise a family, that was grateful for nutritious meals and warm clothes and shoes that fit and didn't leak.

Jack Benny and Bing Crosby's boys say hello from the audience (it was common to acknowledge stars in those days, and it made folks at home feel like they were sharing something special with special people).

Phil Harris sings, and sincerely and just a little emotionally introduces a Black singing act. This was during civil rights strife in this country. And what did they sing about? That old-time religion. It was good enough for them, and it was inoffensive and sweet and innocent, and entertaining.

Jerry Lewis does Jerry sans Dean, but watching with the benefit (and baggage) of 50 years of show biz gossip and MDA telethons[1] it's difficult not to see an aging screwball comedian looking for new relevance without a straight man.

Somewhere along the way we lost something. I'm afraid it is gone for good.


[1]
Once upon a time, the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon was big TV for little kids. We tried to stay up all night with Jerry and "watch the stars come out," stars that we knew from old black and white TV and reruns. There is a commercial from that era I'm looking for, will share if I find it. I associate it with fall, back to school, Vernondale, and Beth Williams. Wow, was she hot. In a fifth grade kind of way.