ed sullivan show

Today would have been Elvis Presley's 75th birthday. Here's video of his first performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, singing one of my favorite Elvis songs, "Don't Be Cruel." Interestingly, Ed Sullivan didn't even host this episode, it was guest hosted by Charles Laughton.

Elvis isn't shown from the waist down here (except for when he walks out at the start), but that wasn't because of censorship. That didn't happen until this third and final appearance, in 1957. That's after the jump.

When Adam Lambert was competing on American Idol, there were times when his performances reminded the judges -- and viewers -- of Elvis Presley. And other rock icons, too. It was all part of Adam's appeal. But now that he's promoting his new CD and did a "scandalous" performance at the American Music Awards, he's really getting the Elvis treatment. There's fear that his actions, which are more graphic than anything Elvis ever did, will go too far.

Today, Adam tweeted that ABC had cancelled two more spots on the network -- his upcoming Jimmy Kimmel Live! date and a New Year's Eve performance. Adam added that nobody should blame ABC for the cancellations because it was pressure from the FCC that prompted ABC's action. So maybe we should really be blaming Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake for the infamous Super Bowl breast/costume malfunction? ABC previously dumped Adam from Good Morning America.

Apparently, it wasn't The Ed Sullivan Show, as most of us think.

Sure, that was their first major, nationwide U.S. TV appearance where they actually performed, but what show did they first appear on in general? When Walter Cronkite died recently, CBS showed footage of Cronkite's CBS Evening News broadcast from December 1963 -- a rebroadcast of what ran on the CBS Morning Show on November 22; it was going to run on Cronkite's show that night too but you can guess why it didn't -- where they showed footage of an interview that someone did with the group. Sullivan saw the footage and called Cronkite because he wanted them on his show.

But now Brian Williams' NBC Nightly News blog says that the group's first appearance was actually a few days earlier, on November 18, a piece by Edwin Newman on The Huntley-Brinkley Report.

Stamp collecting is something I just never got into (don't worry, I have plenty of other obsessions), but this might be the first time I actually go to my local post office and get a sheet.

Yesterday, 20 new classic TV stamps were unveiled: I Love Lucy, The Twilight Zone, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, The Honeymooners, Texaco Star Theater, Perry Mason, The Lone Ranger, Burns and Allen, Ozzie and Harriet, Hopalong Cassidy, Lassie, Dragnet, You Bet Your Life, The Dinah Shore Show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Phil Silvers Show, Howdy Doody, The Red Skelton Show, and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie,