Morecambe and Wise, although massively popular in the UK were unknown in America, and like every act at the time, wanted to break into that lucrative market. Their chance came, quite literally, by chance.

During a show at the Palladium with Bruce Forsyth, sitting in the stalls was a certain American entertainment host called Ed Sullivan. Regularly pulling in huge audiences, the largest being 73,000,000, this was a man who could make things happen.

Luckily for Eric and Ern, he liked what he saw and after the curtain had dropped, made a deal for them to appear on three shows. For this he offered them £5,000. This was extended as Ed grew to like them more, but the audience just didn’t respond. The exact number of shows and routines is hard to trace, but from the shows own archives there are 8 different appearances plus repeats. IMDB (Internet Movie DataBase) has them doing 12, but does not go into details, and some may well be re-runs, and in interview with Michael Parkinson Eric states they did 14.

Despite getting a luke warm response, Ed Sullivan continued to bring the boys back between 1964 and 1968. The last show they did was a huge 90 minute spectacular to celebrate the 80th Birthday of Irving Berlin. Alongside them that night were legends such as Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, this alone showed just how much Ed believed in them.

Although not a complete washout, they never made it big despite doing the shows for Sullivan. Maybe it was the material that the Americans just didn’t get, or the accents, what ever it was the American dream never blossomed. Ernie was disappointed not to have made a big impression; Eric on the other hand was never keen. He said on many occasions, including the Parkinson interview, that he hated changing the routines to fit the audience. He and Ern had rehearsed and fine tuned sketches and gags, and resented having to change words like pavement to sidewalk, just to ‘fit in’ with America. They were English, and that was that.

Another problem was the dialogue used in some of the routines. Having the kind of viewing figures Sullivan had, meant there was a huge cross section of viewers to cater for, and more importantly, to offend. They had to trim routines down in case they offend anyone. An example of this is the ventriloquist routine.

Ernie: I never you were a ventriloquist. I didn’t know you were interested in it.
Eric: I’m not any more. I’m too old. That’s why I took up this.

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The Ed Sullivan Show was not their only visit to that side of the Atlantic... read on