"Sunday Best" - Netflix trailer: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMc4iVMv28h/
This is not the doc you think it is... As a matter of fact, I'm not sure it would be made in today's anti-DEI environment. You think it's going to be a survey of Ed's show, the highlights, and although the Beatles do appear, really this is about how Ed was a hero to the Black community, how he featured Black artists and stood up to the man to do so.
If you were alive and conscious back then, Ed Sullivan was hated amongst the Boomer/Beatle generation. Sure, he featured the Beatles, Elvis Presley before that, but Sullivan was square. About as hip as Topo Gigio, who appeared on the show fifty times. I don't think any artist plying the boards today can compete with the ubiquity of the anthropomorphic mouse. You see we had to watch Topo Gigio's act in order to see the rock star/musical acts.
First it was Steve & Eydie, acts that appealed to our parents. However, comics were prevalent on Sullivan, Alan King was the Chappelle of the day, and Allen & Rossi were nearly as big...HELLO DERE! The comedy duo were actually on with the Beatles. But they broke up in '68 and are now lost to the sands of time.
Sullivan hosted a variety show. Something that's been extinct for a while now, which has no purchase in today's niche-based society. Variety shows were smorgasbords, a little bit of everything, to appeal to the whole family, and to offend no one.
And if you did, offend that is, you got bounced, ask the Smothers Brothers, although Tommy's gone now (do you remember the sitcom that preceded the variety show, wherein Tommy was an angel?). "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" was so powerful, it made head writer Mason Williams's "Classical Gas" a huge hit. But the Smothers Brothers triumphed in the late sixties, although they were born in the thirties, they had youthquake sensibilities. The Smothers Brothers tested TV limits, that's where you broke acts, Ed Sullivan was more of a victory lap.
But not if you were Black.
We used to make fun of Ed... A really big SHEW! This guy was the antithesis of the sixties, never mind starting in 1948. The show petered out in '71, when there was FM rock in every town and the entire country had been exposed to the world of hip, not that everybody partook. But marijuana was no longer dangerous, the war was anathema and Sullivan was out of time.
But before that...
What you've got to know is Sullivan PAID the acts! The script has been flipped today, acts pay for transportation, hair and makeup, to appear for the exposure, hoping it will make a difference. But other than SNL and CBS "Sunday Morning," it doesn't. And despite the hoopla, fewer people watch SNL than they did in its heyday in the late seventies. Then again, there's online video exposure. Then again, the show is no longer dangerous, no longer a club of like-minded people. You HAD to watch SNL, it was a tribal rite!
But before that there was Sullivan.
The show starts with Sullivan's story. How he became a journalist and fell into TV broadcasting.
And then comes the story of him airing Black acts.
Berry Gordy testifies, but the doc focuses most on Harry Belafonte, and how the two ultimately became friends.
But those Motown acts... The Supremes were a regular feature. Once Sullivan broke the color barrier, there were a plethora of Black acts who soon crossed over to AM radio and became superstars, if not wealthy.
Now the funny thing is my inbox is just starting to blow up about this doc now. Even though it launched weeks ago, I saw it weeks ago. There were reviews... But does anybody read reviews anymore, even Boomers? No, what is selling this is underground word of mouth. It seems if you were conscious back then it rings a bell and it's more than nostalgia.
"Sunday Best" is not a slog, it's only ninety minutes. Billy Joel gets five hours, but a show that truly influenced the culture gets a fraction of that time.
If you were alive back then... You may not necessarily end up loving Sullivan, but you'll no longer hate him. And you'll be reminded of the way it was back then.
You remember the sixties, don't you? When the world was our oyster, when the sky was the limit and before the Army ripped off our slogan we did our best to be all we could be?
Talk about an era in the rearview mirror... The squares want to deny it even happened, want to focus on the drugs and coloring outside the lines. But the Beatles? There's never been an act that big and that influential since. Period. And they opened the floodgates for more, music dominated the culture and if you wanted to know what was going on you listened to the radio, many turned off the television completely. And really, it all started on Ed Sullivan.
So if you haven't seen it yet, or if it's not even on your radar, the consensus is in... "Sunday Best" touches a nerve, affects your soul in such a way that you feel compelled to tell others about it.
Community... This is what "Sunday Best" delivers. Because it's not pure entertainment, it's about people, choices and life.
I'm sure you watched the show, forget your preconceptions of Ed, dig in and the sinews of context will begin to form. In ways that most people can only see in retrospect. Good luck making sense of today's world, one which flummoxes many so much that they want to return to the perceived glory of an earlier era, that had great elements, but was far from perfect.
Racism, sexism... They still exist, but the big breakthroughs happened in the sixties and seventies. And Ed Sullivan helped moved the needle, he did his part. Amazing.
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