I didn’t allow Miss Kilgallen to see me until just before we were introduced on camera. She gulped, turning slightly enviously green: “Isn’t it wonderful to see real jewels again? It’s so beautiful!”
I didn’t let on that I’d borrowed it. “It is rather nice,” I purred. The following week she had to top me. She arrived with her hair dyed bright red.... We females do that to each other.
I’ve made a lot of friends through television and a few enemies. On the whole, I imagine that enemies are better for me. I love them, because they keep me on my toes. That’s one small debt I owe “Stoneface” Ed Sullivan, the Irish Sunday supplement to the American home.
After “Toast of the Town” was launched, Billy Wilkerson made Ed an offer to come out and work for him on the Hollywood Reporter. Ed gave in his resignation to Captain Joseph Patterson, who ran the New York Daily News until he died. “I wonder if you know what you’re doing,” said Joe. “You’ll be in a trade paper with maybe 7500 readers instead of a two-million-plus circulation.”
“I think I’ll make a lot of money,” answered Ed. “I’ll know everybody out there and be able to get them for my TV show.”
“If that’s what you want, go ahead; but don’t ask to come back.”
Billy Wilkerson, who could run a dollar to ground as fast as any man, canvassed Hollywood, collecting advertisements for a special issue of the Reporter welcoming Ed Sullivan to his new roost. When that issue appeared, it was thick with page after page of greetings, all proceeds going to Billy as publisher. Somewhere along the line, Ed must have realized who was going to find himself on the better end of his new deal. He went back to Joe and announced that he’d changed his mind.
“Don’t do that again,” Joe chided him. “Another time, if you make up your mind to go, you go.”
When his “Toast” was in its salad days, Ed pursued the practice of inviting Hollywood stars to appear for free. Jack Benny was nudged into appearing for him, Bob Hope went on for the same nonexistent fee five times, until he got his own show, which was programmed opposite Ed’s on a different network. Ed repaid Bob’s earlier courtesies by opening fire on him in his “Broadway” column.
He invited Frank Sinatra to appear for nothing except the sheer joy of it to plug Guys and Dolls. When Frank refused, Ed roasted him in a press statement. Sinatra promptly took a full-page in the Reporter to holler: