A Really Great Doc

Sacha Jenkins, ‘Sunday Best’ (2025)

The Ed Sullivan Show was such a fixture of mid-century American culture that it’s hard to convey to anyone under 60 how pervasive it was: an hour-long variety show watched coast to coast on Sunday-night TV. Presumably because this was long before videotape, it came on at 8 in the east and, near as I can determine, an hour later per each time zone to the west. It was a staple in my house, where the seven-inch set my dad bought us was replaced in the early ‘50s by a 13-inch model, and each week even my five-year-old brother (though not our baby sister) was allowed to crowd into the narrow TV annex my father created by erecting a divider in the dining room. There both boys squeezed onto a sparse stretch of carpet until the show ended and we retreated to the basement bedroom we shared.

The parade of well regarded although not always truly famous performers was educational for a future pop critic: mid-century showbiz pros doing five-10 minutes of music, patter, or both, with Daily News entertainment columnist Sullivan providing an intro that usually comprised an ID and some fresh facts that between them established why the guest’s career was something special. Sullivan was far from slick or entertaining. On the contrary, there was a somewhat lugubrious solemnity to his affect that as audiences lapped it up became a trademark that was often parodied but seldom truly mocked—he soon established a de facto showbiz identity that remained imposing as it became legendary. But there was something so awkward about him that he was remembered as comically clumsy after fading ratings took this TV staple he always called “a really big show” off the air in 1971 after 23 years.

So when I learned a Sullivan documentary called Sunday Best was streaming on Netflix I thought it kind of strange, actually. But the word-of-mouth kept building—not a blockbuster, it seemed, but worth checking out. And by the time I did, accompanied of course by my more cinematically astute partner Carola Dibbell, who grew up in a less tubecentric household than me, the word-of-mouth remained so persistent we decided it was worth seeing again, as we soon did. The main reason was that to our surprise, even pre-Brown vs. Board of Education and then more after, the profusion of black musicians was striking and we wanted a better bead on why. Was the Daily News’s Broadway columnist some kind of lefty?

Well, not a Commie, that’s for sure. As the product of a mixed Irish-Jewish marriage, we can assume he absorbed more tolerance than a lot of guys named Sullivan back then. But in the ‘40s, not a Commie meant something on television, as the well-funded efforts of outfits called Red Channels and Counterattack to keep lefties off the air helped assure. When it came to tolerance, that was as far as this Sullivan was willing to go. In 1969, a few years before the show was cancelled, he told David Frost why, for instance, a 1929 New York Evening Graphic sports column of his called out the NYU football team when a black player was benched because the Georgia Bulldogs were in town: “My parents knew these things were wrong. It wasn’t broad-minded, it was just sensible.”

Nonetheless, that remains a long time to host a variety show even if some claim you resemble a wooden Indian. One guest I especially recall appeared on both October 28, 1956, and January 6, 1957, although I missed the second of those shows even though by then I was a serious rock and roll fan hooked on pioneering rock and roll DJ Alan Freed of WINS, who initially had his doubts about this white Southern up-and-comer with the strange cognomen Elvis—doubts not shared by any of the girls in my social studies class, all of whom were raving about him that Monday. And I should note that in a similar instance, by which time I was a college graduate working for a Chicago encyclopedia company, a buddy down the hall in our rooming house invited me to watch Sullivan with him on February 9, 1964. I came away so impressed by this hysterically received new British group that I bought the Swan 45 “She Loves You” on State Street the next day. I regret to report that appearance gets left out of the film.

Sunday Best, which was completed in 2023, was directed by the Black hip-hop journalist Sacha Jenkins (co-found of Ego Trip and contributor to Vibe, Spin, and Rolling Stone), who just this past May died tragically at 54 of a rare condition called multiple system atrophy. It’s reasonable to wonder whether even the most well-meaning white director could have made anything as provocative and complex of Ed Sullivan’s legacy. But it’s also reasonable to wonder whether anyone else could have done the job properly at all. Even the second time I watched it—without the hint of dull moment, I should make clear—I could scarcely keep up with commentary by talking heads Berry Gordy, Smokey Robinson, and a garrulously well-informed Harry Belafonte. But for the early ‘50s and vicinity, the parade of guest stars famed although then still often obscure is even more impressive: Cab Calloway, Pearl Bailey, Bill Bojangles Robinson, the Will Maston Trio featuring Sammy Davis Jr., Nat King Cole featuring white crooner Tony Martin. Later attractions include Jackie Wilson, Gladys Knight, “folk blues singer” Bo Diddley, “young singing star” James Brown, the much younger Stevie Wonder, and prophetically anti-apartheid South African singer Miriam Makeba. Legendary heavyweight Joe Louis also makes himself heard. So, just as strikingly in her own way, does a then anonymous 12-year-old girl named Toni Harper crooning “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” She wasn’t the Beatles or Elvis. But her three-minute legacy is as worth preserving as many of the others we’re fortunate both Ed Sullivan and Sasha Jenkins preserved for us.