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Chicago Tribune
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
‘Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan' review: How the TV variety show boosted Black talent when segregation was the norm
The documentary 'Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan' on Netflix examines the pivotal role 'The Ed Sullivan Show' played in spotlighting Black music and culture to TV audiences at a time when segregation was still the norm. In a clip discussing his Sunday night variety show, which ran on CBS from 1948 to 1971, Sullivan keeps his intentions clear and to the point: 'It seemed to me, if you're using public air(waves), the least you can do — or TV can do — in return for this high privilege was to try to do something to bring people a little closer together.' Sullivan died in 1974 and sometimes in the film his voice is drawn from television interviews he gave over the years. But sometimes it's courtesy of artificial intelligence — a synthetic recreation — that gives literal voice to the columns and articles he wrote over the years. I have an ethical problem with this choice. Plenty of documentary projects before the advent of AI handled this by simply hiring a talented actor to voice the written words of their subjects. It's the more honest choice and it doesn't detract from the end result. I wish filmmakers embraced that instead. But otherwise 'Sunday Best,' from director Sacha Jenkins (who died this past May), is a fine effort that explores Sullivan's commitment to pushing back against network forces, sponsors and other interested parties who were opposed to the presence — the celebration, really — of Black people on the show. Sullivan's influence predates all but the boomer generation, and though I've seen clips, I don't think I've ever watched an episode all the way through. My ideas around him were vague and uninformed, mostly of the stiff host tolerating the younger acts. But that impression is inaccurate and undersells his own taste; instead of the reluctant old fogie, he was keeping his finger on the pulse of pop culture and handpicked every entertainer who appeared on his show. Watching his talents more closely here, I have a real appreciation for what he was doing — and how he did it — during a period of profound social change in the U.S. The documentary also offers an opportunity to think through the impact the show had at the time, compared to our current era, where the closest equivalent — the late-night talk show — has lost so much of its cultural relevancy when it comes to showcasing performers to a broad audience. Sullivan's path to TV fame was unintentional. He began as a print journalist in sports. Years later, he would note: 'Sports writers get to be very critical and observant. They can tell you what makes a certain ballplayer click.' Maybe he used some of those same skills when it came to identifying which acts he wanted on his show. Segregation never sat well with him. Using the verbiage of the era, he recalls that when he played baseball in high school, 'there were Negros in the league and some fellows said they would actually not play against a Negro. I always resented (those classmates) very deeply because the Irish had gone through that when we first came.' His parents knew bigotry was wrong. 'They weren't broad-minded, they were just sensible,' is how he puts it. Later, as a sports writer, he covered a college football game played in New York, where the northern school benched its one Black player to appease their opponents from Georgia. Sullivan was disgusted, so he wrote about it. What a shameful state of affairs this is, of a player 'risking his neck for a school that will turn around and bench him because the University of Georgia asks that the color line be drawn.' Sullivan did not mince words: 'If a New York City university allows the Mason-Dixon line to be erected in the center of its playing field, then that New York City university should disband its football season for all time.' He was eventually reassigned from sports to Broadway — the film doesn't explore why, or if that column was the reason — and though Sullivan was unfamiliar with the new beat, it eventually led to gala hosting opportunities, which paved the way for his career in television. He got terrible reviews at first; he wasn't a natural in front of the camera. Not that it mattered. 'I never thought I was the attraction. I just keep looking for the best thing to put on the show.' And that included Black talent. The prevailing idea at the time that 'Negro performers should be barred from TV shows on which white performers appear is both stupid and vicious,' he said. Fifty years after it went off the air, 'The Ed Sullivan Show' is maybe most famous for appearances by Elvis Presley and The Beatles. But the list of Black musical acts Sullivan featured is long and notable, with 'Sunday Best' including clips of Bo Diddley, James Brown, Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson, Cab Calloway, Pearl Bailey, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes. Jackie Wilson singing 'Lonely Teardrops' is a standout and a fascinating example of a singer taking the stage alone, without any visible musicians behind him. No dancers, set, or props either. You don't really see that kind of thing today, and it's remarkable how he establishes a presence with nothing more than his voice and charisma. 'Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan' — 3 stars (out of 4) Where to watch: Netflix
Time Magazine
28-07-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
How Trump's Release of MLK Files May Backfire
This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME's politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. More than a half-century after his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. continues to stoke suspicion—both of his death and of the United States' professed moral footing. With zero warning, President Donald Trump's administration last Monday released almost a quarter-million pages of documents related to the civil rights icon's 1968 assassination over the objections of most of the King family. The effort was a nakedly crass attempt at orchestrating a distraction to the President's own political troubles surrounding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It was also, sadly, continuing a craven tradition that began during King's life of political figures exploiting his moral authority—and ambiguities—for their own means. Scholars so far have found little new in the just-released documents. Much of them appear inscrutable—as they seemed to be written in a code only FBI insiders could decipher. Notably absent from the trove were FBI wiretaps of King. Those are under seal until 2027. Yet the fear among those who follow in King's footsteps is that the files include potentially embarrassing or unseemly details of King's private life. Such revelations stand to do more than possibly diminish King's legacy. They have implications for the U.S. on the foreign stage. In life and now in death, King is an unrivaled symbol of U.S. hypocrisy. Americans' uneven history with civil rights has long been a drag on their government's power to cajole allies and rivals alike to a shared goal. It's why President Harry Trump in 1947 became the first President to speak to the NAACP. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on a humid June Sunday, he made clear he understood the early Cold War would be shaped by how Americans' treated their neighbors. 'It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in the long history of our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to insure that all Americans enjoy these rights,' Truman said. He then made clear, wrapping his 12-minute speech, that he was speaking with purpose: 'When I say all Americans, I mean all Americans.' For the stretch between the end of World War II and the time Vietnam became the dominant story around the world, civil rights in the United States was a popular talking point that foreign diplomats would turn to as a rejoinder. The State Department archives from that era are packed with briefing memos advising how to respond to the one-liner popularized by Moscow and its satellite states: 'But you lynch Negros.' One April 1950 discussion outline for the State Department recognized the challenge bluntly: 'No American problem receives more wide-spread attention, especially in dependent areas, than our treatment of racial minorities, particularly the Negro. Discussion of this problem cannot be evaded, and only by full publicity to improvements in this field can the United States position be put in fair perspective before the bar of world opinion and communist propaganda be discredited.' So potent were the foreign policy worries over race that the Truman administration specifically cited America's 'image problem' in an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the NAACP's Brown v. Board of Education. The best propaganda doesn't require fudging. Few know this better than Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long sought to repurpose Cold War tropes. During a 2018 interview with Fox News, when asked about human rights issues in Russia, Putin responded with a tour of 20th Century U.S. history. 'Haven't Presidents been killed in the United States? Have you forgotten about—well, has Kennedy been killed in Russia or in the United States? Or Mr. King?' he said, adding, 'All of us have our own set of domestic problems.' Efforts to undermine King's platform are not new, and are often aimed at sanitizing his message, which in his later years included an economic- and social-justice agenda that drew the ire of the U.S. government. But the prospect of generating scandalous headlines around King in 2025 would do more than distract—it stands to provide new and useful propaganda to America's enemies. Perhaps the bigger lesson from Trump's latest gambit is this: King remains a global giant that stops the world in its tracks when he speaks, even if against his wishes or without his consent. It was this way when he pushed for civil rights and voting rights, and later against the war in Vietnam and against systemic inequalities. It was this way at the time of his assassination in Memphis, where he was offering support to striking sanitation workers. And it continues to be that way, as the Trump administration, backed into a corner, has little qualms with potentially undermining King's legacy. Indeed, even King's daughter noted the mismatch of releasing hundreds of thousands of potentially embarrassing files on her father in this charged moment. Bernice King posted a black-and-white photo of her father, looking peeved, with the taunting caption: 'Now, do the Epstein files.' Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.
The Independent
14-05-2025
- Climate
- The Independent
Huge volcano eruption caught on camera as ash rains down on villages
This video shows the moment a volcano in the Philippines erupted on Tuesday, spewing a 4.5-kilometre (2.8-mile) ash plume and debris into the sky. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said a moderately explosive eruption occurred at the summit crater of Kanlaon Volcano before dawn, lasting five minutes based on seismic and infrasound data. Ash fell in at least nine villages to the south west of the volcano on Negros island, but no injuries or damage was reported. A level three alert - on a scale of five - that was put in place during Kanlaon's eruption in December remained unchanged. The alert means the volcano is in a state of magmatic unrest.
The Independent
13-05-2025
- Climate
- The Independent
Volcano eruption spews debris into sky as ash falls on villages across Philippines
A volcano in central Philippines erupted on Tuesday, spewing a 4.5-kilometre (2.8-mile) ash plume and debris into the sky as its rumblings were heard nearby. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said a moderately explosive eruption occurred at the summit crater of Kanlaon Volcano before dawn, lasting five minutes based on seismic and infrasound data. "The eruption generated a greyish voluminous plume that rose approximately 4.5 kilometres above the vent before drifting to the south west," the institute's bulletin added. Ash fell in at least nine villages to the south west of the volcano on Negros island, but no injuries or damage was reported. A level three alert - on a scale of five - that was put in place during Kanlaon's eruption in December remained unchanged, with officials keeping a six kilometre (3.7-mile) danger zone off limits. Kanlaon Volcano mapped: The alert means the volcano is in a state of magmatic unrest, with increased chances of short-lived, moderately explosive eruptions that could generate volcanic hazards. Kanlaon also briefly erupted in April. Its eruption in December prompted the evacuation of thousands of villagers to emergency shelters as the volcano continued showing signs of restiveness. The 2,435-metre (7,988-foot) volcano is one of the country's 24 most active volcanoes. In 1996, three hikers were killed near the peak and several others were later rescued when Kanlaon erupted without warning, officials said at the time. The Philippines is located in the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire", a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The archipelago is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms a year, making it one of the world's most disaster-prone countries.
Al Arabiya
13-05-2025
- Al Arabiya
Philippine volcano briefly erupts, belching ash plume into the sky
A restive volcano in central Philippines briefly erupted Tuesday, spewing a 4.5-kilometer (2.8-mile) ash plume and debris into the sky as its rumblings were heard nearby. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said a moderately explosive eruption occurred at the summit crater of Kanlaon Volcano before dawn, lasting five minutes based on seismic and infrasound data. 'The eruption generated a greyish voluminous plume that rose approximately 4.5 kilometers above the vent before drifting to the southwest,' the institute's bulletin added. Ash fell in at least nine villages southwest of the volcano on Negros island, but no injuries or damage was reported. A level 3 alert - out of a scale of five - that was put in place during Kanlaon's eruption in December remained unchanged, with officials keeping a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) danger zone off limits. The alert means the volcano is in a state of magmatic unrest, with increased chances of short-lived, moderately explosive eruptions that could generate volcanic hazards. Kanlaon also briefly erupted in April. Its eruption in December prompted the evacuation of thousands of villagers to emergency shelters as the volcano continued showing signs of restiveness. The 2,435-meter (7,988-foot) volcano is one of the country's 24 most active volcanoes. In 1996, three hikers were killed near the peak and several others were later rescued when Kanlaon erupted without warning, officials said then. The Philippines is located in the so-called Pacific 'Ring of Fire,' a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The archipelago is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms a year, making it one of the world's most disaster-prone countries.
