Free Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan by James Maguire Page B

organization asked Ed, then famous, to record a voiceover to accompany Sybil’s photo in its museum. In the recording, he summarized her athletic achievements, adding, “Sybil, a girl from Chicago, was a very attractive girl. Most of us sports-casters had a crush on her. I know I did. Sybil really belongs in the Swimming Hall of Fame.” Claiming he had a crush on her like all the boys was quite an understatement for the fiancé who held Sybil’s hand on her deathbed. Ed seemed to have a need to exorcise her from his history, and after her death he never again made reference to her. In the early 1950s, after he became a major television star, he was interviewed constantly about his life history, yet never once mentioned his former fiancée. Even when he detailed his life story in a multipart series for the New York Post he included not one word of Sybil. Perhaps the episode was too grief inducing, or perhaps he simply preferred to keep it to himself. Like his father, he was a man who rarely spoke of his inner feelings, even to those closest to him.

    Back in New York, Ed was not alone in his loss. Sylvia had become his steady date. Not that there was anything steady about the stormy sea of the Ed-Sylvia romance. The two were together as often as they decided to break things off. They would meet for a dinner date, or go out to a nightclub, only to call it quits by the end of the evening. But Ed couldn’t stay away, and a few days later he would call and say, “I can’t stand it anymore.” The farewell dinners became a routine element of their relationship. “Afterward we would say ‘Meet you for another good-bye party in two weeks,’ ” Sylvia recalled.
    The chief problem, or so it seemed, was their religious backgrounds. For Sylvia, it was one thing to accept a date with an attractive Catholic boy she had met in the intoxicating atmosphere of the Casa Lopez; it was another to tell her family she was dating a gentile. “I guess Ed was the first Christian boy I ever really knew,” Sylvia said. When some months later she informed her family that she had a steady boyfriend, she told them his name was Ed Solomon. After her brother heard he wrote for the Graphic , he said, “Oh, you mean Ed Sullivan, not Solomon.”
    Sylvia described herself as coming from a“regular Marjorie Morningstar world,” a reference to the Herman Wouk novel about an affluent Jewish girl in the 1930s who disobeys her family’s wishes to pursue her own desires and date a gentile. Her family, however, was not particularly observant, going to temple only on High Holy days, and despite her reluctance to acknowledge dating Ed, they seemed to have no serious objection. Sylvia later contradicted her reference to Marjorie Morningstar, saying, “I can honestly say that there was very little opposition from my family.” And according to Ed’s grandson, Rob Precht, the Weinsteins were happy to see Sylvia date Ed. “Her family was thrilled,” he said. “He was a man about town, a go-getter, attractive, an all-American sports guy. They liked him.”
    However accepting Sylvia’s family felt about Ed, their attitude met its equal and opposite reaction in Ed’s family. The Sullivans were unequivocally opposed to him dating a Jewish girl. That he would marry Sylvia was not in the realm of possibility, in their view. Ed, bowing to the supposed immovable obstacle of their different religious backgrounds, kept insisting to Sylvia that their relationship could never work out. Then he would once again tell her he couldn’t see her anymore.
    Still, nothing could keep them apart. Their chemistry worked. Sylvia, warm and easygoing, understanding, a good conversationalist; Ed, ambitious, moody, sometimes hot-tempered, yet exceptionally fond of her. Sylvia knew how to let Ed be Ed, how to take his moods with a grain of salt. She was also, like his mother, encouraging. She believed in him. He was always on the lookout, for the next job, the next hand to