The Music of Our Lives

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"Music is my life and my life is music. Anyone who does not understand this is not worthy of god."

Wolfgang A. Mozart

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Sometime in 1779 — 235 years ago — Wolfgang Mozart composed "Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra." The 23–year–old Mozart was on a tour of Europe when he composed it while dabbling with the sinfonia concertante genre.

In a brilliant example of how art transcends media, the composition was mentioned in William Styron's "Sophie's Choice." After being molested by a stranger on the subway, Sophie heard "Sinfonia Concertante" on the radio, and she was taken back, in her mind, to her childhood in Poland, lifting her spirit.

A writer for the New York Mirror once wrote that Mozart was the Shakespeare of music. "As long as the immortal bard is read," wrote the author (whose identity is lost to history), "Mozart will live in the admiration of mankind."

That's an appropriate comparison. Shakespeare wrote about the human condition, and Mozart's music has been the soundtrack for countless lives.

"Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra" is but one reason why Mozart is my favorite composer; anyone who wants to know more needs only to listen to it.

The First Movie to Sweep the Major Oscars

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"I want to see what love looks like when it's triumphant. I haven't had a good laugh in a week."

Peter (Clark Gable)

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There may have been movies that premiered before this date in 1934 that could be classified as screwball comedies.

But the genre really began to gain popularity when "It Happened One Night" premiered on this date in 1934. For all intents and purposes, I suppose, the screwball comedy was born 80 years ago today. (As a comedy, the American Film Institute ranks it eighth all time.)

And its influence can be seen in numerous movies in the decades that followed, even though the screwball comedy's heyday was in the 1930s. The blueprint for the genre — a headstrong, runaway heiress gets hooked up with someone, frequently a reporter, who can gain something from the relationship — has shown up in various forms over the years.

"Roman Holiday," for instance, had a runaway princess (Audrey Hepburn) in the company of a reporter (Gregory Peck) who needed a scoop to revive his career.

That, in a nutshell, was the plot of "It Happened One Night." (There were a few differences, but not many.)

But, because it was so different from other movies in the still–emerging motion picture art form, it didn't enjoy the enthusiastic support of some of its principal participants. Claudette Colbert, for example, had worked with director Frank Capra before, and the experience had not been pleasant. She wasn't going to work with him again, but she relented on the conditions that her pay be doubled and that her work on the project be done in time for her to take a planned vacation.

Capra claimed that Clark Gable was hesitant to participate in the project as well.

And Capra himself reportedly said it was "the worst picture in the world."

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Ellie (Claudette Colbert): I'll stop a car, and I won't use my thumb!

Peter (Clark Gable): What're you gonna do?

Ellie: It's a system all my own.

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Thus, it caught just about everyone by surprise when "It Happened One Night" became the first movie to sweep Best Picture, Best Actor (Gable), Best Actress (Colbert), Best Director (Capra) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Riskin) at the Academy Awards. It was a feat that would not be duplicated for more than 40 years — until 1975, when "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" won all five Oscars.

Modern movie viewers who have watched other movies from the 1930s undoubtedly will notice that "It Happened One Night" was more daring than its contemporaries, and there is a good reason for that. "It Happened One Night" was made just before enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code (also known as the Hays Code for Will Hays, Hollywood's censor–in–chief of the day) began.

Consequently, there was more of a sense of freedom in "It Happened One Night" than there was in most of the screwball comedies of the 1930s. Certainly, there was more bare skin than one sees in most movies from that decade. No nudity, but scenes in which skin — like Gable's bare chest and Colbert's bare leg — was shown.

In other movies of the '30s (and for decades after), you rarely, if ever, saw an unmarried couple sleeping in the same room, much less the same bed (even married movie couples didn't do that).

Gable and Colbert didn't sleep in the same bed, but they did sleep in the same room.

And they used a clever strategy for maintaining their individual privacy — they hung a blanket between the beds.

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Peter (Clark Gable): Remember me? I'm the fellow you slept on last night.

Ellie (Claudette Colbert): You needn't concern yourself about me. I can take care of myself.

Peter: You'll never get away with it, Miss Andrews.

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I never understood the objections that some actors had to the quality of the script. I thought it was smart, clever.

To be fair, some movie stars who turned down the roles that ultimately went to Gable and Colbert claimed that the actual script in the movie was not the same script they had been shown.

Be that as it may, there was an undeniable chemistry between Gable and Colbert in "It Happened One Night," and that more than anything else made it such an appealing movie.

The story transcended global politics — both Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler were said to be fans of "It Happened One Night."

They weren't the only ones. Before "It Happened One Night" swept the Oscars, it swept the country. It was a smash hit for Columbia Pictures. Made for an investment of $325,000, it earned $2.5 million at the box office.

It's hard to imagine a better return on your investment in 1934.

Otis on Four Wheels

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"I never realized when I was elected county sheriff that the main requirement for this high office was to be read up on Grimms' Fairy Tales."

Andy (Andy Griffith)

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As town drunks go, Otis (Hal Smith) on the Andy Griffith Show wasn't bad. He was usually pretty good–natured. He didn't seem to be abusive or despondent. He was almost childlike, hardly a threatening presence.

But on this night 50 years ago, he represented a genuine threat to the well–being of every citizen in Mayberry. For it was in the episode that aired on this night in 1964 that Otis appeared to be on the verge of buying a car.

Andy and Barney (Don Knotts) had no idea what Otis planned to do, only that he was going to buy something he had had his heart set on for a long time. It was so important to him that he asked Andy and Barney to wake him up at 8 a.m. the next day.

After waking Otis at the appointed time and seeing him off, Andy and Barney speculated about what Otis had in mind — right up to the time that Otis drove up to the courthouse and honked the horn to get their attention.

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Andy demanded to know if Otis had a driver's license.

"Oh, sure," he replied. "I've had one for years. Just never had a car before to use it on."

Barney was aghast.

"It's bad enough having a plain old town drunk," he told Andy, "but now we got a mechanized one. ... As of this minute, we are living in a disaster area!"

Barney tried to take steps to prevent that disaster by giving Otis a driver's test, but that didn't work, and Andy told Otis he could leave.

"Send a man out there with a deadly weapon," Barney said. "See if I care."

Andy told Barney he could follow Otis around during his first weekend on wheels if it would make him feel better, and Barney jumped at the chance.

"He won't even see me," Barney assured Andy. "I'm an old hand at stakeouts. I'll just melt into the shadows, and he won't have the faintest notion I'm within 100 miles."

Well, that isn't exactly the way it was, but Barney did find Otis passed out drunk on (not in) his car, which he believed validated his concerns.

When Barney asked if Andy could imagine what would have happened if Otis had managed to get behind the wheel, Andy suggested that there might be a way to make that work in their favor.

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They took the unconscious Otis back to the courthouse, put him in his cell and pretended that he had been killed in a car accident. The idea was to scare him into giving up driving.

"If only he hadn't tried to drive in that condition," lamented Andy. Otis tried to get their attention, but Andy and Barney both acted as if he wasn't there.

It turned out that Otis had sold his car before taking his first drink. He didn't even have the keys. He regarded the whole thing as a "nutty nightmare" and confided that "I have 'em all the time."

The episode was noteworthy in the series for the fact that only three people — Andy Griffith, Don Knotts and Hal Smith — had speaking lines in it.

Beyond that, it was a clever, funny and — dare I say it? — sweet entry in the annals of the Andy Griffith Show.

It showed the lengths to which some people will go to protect their friends. Well, the supposed lengths. To be honest, I'm not convinced that there were any people then who would go to such lengths, and I am even less convinced that there are people like that today.

But there were people like that in the Mayberry universe.

Archie's Brush With Food Poisoning

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Food poisoning was the topic of the All in the Family episode that aired 40 years ago tonight.

Gloria (Sally Struthers) was sick with the flu and didn't feel like eating the beef and mushroom stew that Edith (Jean Stapleton) had prepared. When Archie (Carroll O'Connor) got home, he was hungry and wouldn't wait for Mike (Rob Reiner) so Archie wolfed down a helping of the stew. Edith said she had had a big lunch at a women's meeting at the church so Archie ate alone.

When Mike arrived, however, he bore the distressing news that a brand of canned mushrooms had been recalled because it caused food poisoning. Mike and Edith thought that no one in the Bunker household should eat any more of the stew until they could be sure of the brand; Edith had thrown out the empty cans and didn't remember what the brand was.

"Oh, my, I hope I ain't poisoned you, Archie," Edith said when she heard about the recall.

Since no one knew the brand of the mushrooms Edith had used in the stew, they couldn't be certain. So, to be on the safe side, the Bunkers made a mad dash for the emergency room.

All except Gloria.

It's one of my favorite moments in the series' history. After all four Bunkers had exited the house, Mike brought Gloria back in a few seconds later and admonished her: "You can't go to the hospital. You're sick!"

At the hospital, Archie got frustrated with the admitting nurse's questions, something with which just about anyone who has ever been hospitalized will sympathize. The nurse asked Archie his mother's maiden name.

"She's dead!" he replied. "What do you gotta know that for?"

Edith gave the nurse the information she had requested, then Archie told her, "I'll tell her you asked for her when I see her in a few minutes."

When the doctor saw Archie, he couldn't be sure if Archie had food poisoning. The symptoms might take awhile to show up. To be on the safe side, Archie wound up getting a shot. Always looking to make a quick buck, Archie began plotting a lawsuit against the company that canned the mushrooms, and he instructed Gloria to contact the Jewish law firm that had represented him previously.

Then Edith came in, having stopped at the market on the way home to pick up some ice cream for Archie. She had more than ice cream with her. She had news. She hadn't use the tainted mushrooms in her stew after all. She had remembered a pink–and–yellow label, just like the product that had been recalled, but the label on the mushrooms Edith purchased was actually pink with a yellow sticker that identified it as a sale item.

Obviously, the lawsuit fell through.

That left Archie with, in his own words, "a lot of that anti–toxin dope cruising through my system looking for some disease to attack!"

A sympathetic Mike gave Archie a pat on his arm — bad move, considering that was the arm that got the inoculation.

'Stagecoach' Was About Images

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"Well, there are some things a man just can't run away from."

The Ringo Kid (John Wayne)

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(1939 is widely regarded as the greatest year ever for the motion picture. Ten movies were nominated for Best Picture that year, and today I take a look at the first of those 10 movies to hit the theaters.)

As in most genres, the movie western has many icons. John Wayne is certainly one of them.

In fact, the Duke is probably the first image that comes to mind for most people when they think of big–screen cowboys. And he made a lot of westerns in his life, many of them in the 1920s and 1930s.

But it is the one that made its debut 75 years ago, John Ford's "Stagecoach," that really launched his career.

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Ford, too, had made many westerns, but "Stagecoach" was his first since the introduction of "talkies." I suppose he had made movies in just about every other genre, but, for some reason, he hadn't directed a western with sound. Maybe he regarded it as more of a risk to his reputation.

(That's kind of hard to rationalize, but, really, what other explanation could there be? After Ford made "Stagecoach," he went on to make classic westerns like "The Searchers," "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "Fort Apache," "My Darling Clementine" and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," among others.)

Wayne made his initial appearance in the movie when a stagecoach, eastbound from Arizona to New Mexico, picked him up after it came across him carrying his saddle after his horse had gone lame. Wayne's character, the Ringo Kid, was a fugitive from justice, and he wasn't so much picked up as he was taken into custody by a cavalry lieutenant who was on board.

Actually, it was sort of illogical that Ringo should be taken into custody on that particular stagecoach, which was occupied by a rather unsavory group — a prostitute (Claire Trevor), a banker (Berton Churchill) who was embezzling $50,000 from his bank, a whiskey salesman (Donald Meek), an alcoholic doctor (Thomas Mitchell) and a gambler (John Carradine). About the only respectable passenger was the pregnant wife of a cavalry officer (Louise Platt).

The rest of the movie was about the various hazards the stagecoach encountered on its journey. A subplot was the budding romance of Wayne's character and Trevor's character.

I've heard it said that an authentic country music song has at least one of a certain list of elements — drinkin' or guns or pickup trucks or prison or trains or Mom. The more the better, I suppose.

I guess it is that way with a western movie. I'm not a diehard fan of the western. But if that comparison is valid, then "Stagecoach" pushed all the right buttons.

It had horses and Indians and gunfights. There was a spine–chilling scene in which Wayne's character (played in the scene by stuntman Yakima Canutt) walked along the team of running horses to retrieve reins that had been dropped by Andy Devine when his character was shot, even a showdown on a town street in the Old West.

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Speaking of which ...

I imagine that most moviegoers in 1939 weren't very well traveled. Air travel was still an emerging technology in those days, and the nation didn't have the extensive highway system it has today. My guess is that most Americans had no idea that there were places in this country that looked like the region in which "Stagecoach" was set.

Ford often used existing locations in his films. When moviegoers saw "Stagecoach," they saw the sprawling landscape of Monument Valley on the Utah–Arizona state line. Ford returned to the area several times, helping to make Monument Valley what most moviegoers imagine when they picture the Old West in their minds.

So Ford's movie entertained and educated at the same time. Escapism at its finest.

I watched this movie again for the umpteenth time two weeks ago when it aired on the opening day of Turner Classic Movies' annual salute to the Academy Awards, "31 Days of Oscar." It was shown, appropriately, on a Saturday afternoon, and I allowed my thoughts to wander to what it must have been like to be a boy in 1939, watching John Wayne in cowboy movies in a darkened theater.

By the time I came along, Wayne was the definition of what it was to be a cowboy. But that really began 75 years ago today.

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"Stagecoach" is said to be one of the most significant movies ever made. It has been further said that Orson Welles watched it dozens of times prior to making "Citizen Kane."

Part of what made it so important was the performance of Mitchell, who had quite a year in 1939. Most movie scholars will speak of 1939 in reverent tones, and it was an exceptionally good year for movies. It was also a good year for Mitchell, who was a supporting actor in three of the movies that were nominated for Best Picture — "Stagecoach," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "Gone With the Wind."

Mitchell was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in "Stagecoach" — and won it, too — but he could just as easily have been nominated for either or both of the other two.

Strangely, though, 1939 seems to have been the peak of Mitchell's career; although he kept making movies until his death in 1962, he wasn't even nominated for his performance as Uncle Billy in the now–classic Christmas movie, "It's a Wonderful Life."

Patriarch of 'The Waltons' Passes Away

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It's becoming depressingly routine.

Here we are, not quite halfway into February, and celebrities are dying at an alarming rate. The month began with the news of Maximilian Schell's death, which was quickly followed by Philip Seymour Hoffman's death.

A few days later, it was Shirley Temple, followed by Sid Caesar.

And now, Ralph Waite, the father on The Waltons, is dead at 85.

I remember watching The Waltons when it was on during prime time, and I tried to think of an episode that summarized Waite's character, but I couldn't come up with one.

What comes to mind when I think of Waite as John Walton Sr. is not a particular episode but the steadiness of his character within the context of the series, always there for his family, ready to offer advice but not insistent upon it.

He was probably the ideal father, supportive of his children, whatever they wanted to do. He was a faithful husband and a dutiful son. He didn't draw much attention to himself.

Oh, I'm sure there must have been an episode or two when the spotlight was on Daddy Walton. I just don't remember now what it was. Maybe it was a conversation he had with John Boy when he was facing some sort of crisis. The series really was about John Boy, after all. He was the aspiring writer, the young man with his life stretching out in front of him.

But there were episodes in which John Boy wasn't the focus, and it is possible that there was one about John Sr.

He was the only adult in the cast who didn't win at least one Emmy during the series' nine–year run. Richard Thomas, Michael Learned, Ellen Corby and Will Geer were all winners; I'm not even sure Waite was nominated.

Perhaps that is appropriate. When The Waltons was slated to come on the air in 1972, Waite was reluctant to audition for it. He was a stage actor, and he didn't want to be locked into a TV series that might run for several years — even though CBS seemingly tried to make the show fail, scheduling it opposite two popular programs on the rival networks.

His agent persuaded him to do it, telling him he could make a little money before the show was canceled. He wound up staying with it for nine years, demonstrating the kind of personal commitment to his work that his character had to his family.

Outside of his acting career, Waite, a liberal Democrat, sought election to the U.S. House from California three times in the 1990s; he lost each time.

I suspected that he might have won if he lived in another part of California. The southern California district leans Republican even though the state has voted for Democrats for president six straight times. It was represented for a time by Republican Sonny Bono, and Waite lost both the special election and the general election following Bono's death in 1998.

A Salute to Shirley Temple

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The news that Shirley Temple had died during the night brought back many fond memories of my grandmothers.

Temple was a child star when my parents were children, and I always had the impression that my parents — well, my mother, at least — saw many of her movies. I frequently heard my maternal grandmother humming Shirley Temple songs as she went about her daily business.

I remember my grandmother humming "On The Good Ship Lollipop" as she hung up the laundry on the clothesline in her back yard, and when I was small, she used to sing "Animal Crackers In My Soup" to me — often when she actually did give me animal crackers to eat, with or without soup.

Temple matured into a beautiful teenager who still retained some of that girlish appeal, but she outgrew her movie career. I guess she was typecast as a little girl.

When she was 9, a British film critic wrote that "[h]er admirers — middle–aged men and clergymen — respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well–shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire."

Imagine writing such a thing about a 9–year–old girl! Perhaps she was too provocative for the time; anyway, she retired from movies when she was in her 20s.

She turned her attention to other pursuits, primarily raising a family. She dabbled in television, but her main preoccupation outside her home was a career in politics.

Temple was 85 when she died. She had great–grandchildren. Obviously, she had changed a lot from the little girl of my grandmother's day.

And, for that matter, I have no real memory of seeing her in a movie. To my knowledge, I have only seen her in clips. I do know the sound of her voice when I hear it — but doesn't everyone?

To most, it may seem she lived a charmed life, but it did have its speed bumps along the way. She was 17 when she married for the first time. The marriage ended five years later, and Temple re–married less than two weeks later, acquiring the last name of Black by which she was known as she pursued her political ambitions. The marriage lasted 54 years — she called it the love of her life — until his death in 2005.

A conservative Republican, Temple served in various diplomatic capacities under three Republican presidents — Nixon, Ford and George H.W. Bush.

That was not how she made what I think was her most important contribution as an adult. Forty years ago, she went public about having been diagnosed with breast cancer and having undergone a modified radical mastectomy.

She was one of the first prominent women to speak openly about the affliction. Others have come along since — Nancy Reagan had a mastectomy while she was in the White House — but my memory is that Temple and Betty Ford were the ones who first brought public attention to the disease.

I have known some women — and even a man — who were stricken with breast cancer, and I have been grateful, on those occasions, that Shirley Temple shared her experience with the world.

We will never know how many lives were saved by that unselfish act.

Niles in the Spotlight

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The episode of Frasier that premiered on this night in 1999 is hardly my favorite.

In fact, as its title — "Three Valentines" — suggests, it is actually three vignettes, two of which I don't particularly like.

The one I do like has almost no dialogue. It featured Niles (David Hyde Pierce) in some of the best purely physical comedy I have seen. Good physical comedy needs no dialogue, and Pierce could convey so much about his character in the ways he moved and the things he did. He didn't need words.

I have had the audacity (in the opinion of some) to compare Pierce's performance to the best of Dick Van Dyke or Don Knotts, both of whom I admire very much. I understand where my friends are coming from, but I still think the comparison is justified.

Quite simply, Niles had been given use of his brother's apartment to entertain a Valentine's Day date. He was at his fastidious best, spotting a (mostly imperceptible) wrinkle in his trouser leg and setting about pressing it before his date arrived. But he got distracted by the meal he had cooking in the kitchen, and the trousers began to smolder after being under the iron too long.

The episode's other two vignettes simply weren't very amusing. In one, Frasier kept getting mixed signals from his companion about whether she was open to more than a kiss at the evening's end. In the other, Daphne and Martin were dealing with romance issues while dining together at a restaurant.

But Niles had the stage all to himself — except for Eddie, who watched Niles intently and barked occasionally. And Niles certainly was a sight to see.

He tried to press his trouser leg, but he noticed an errant thread. Distracted by the thread, he put the iron down on his trousers and went off to find scissors to cut the thread. (One of the hilarious touches was how Niles' childhood training kicked in as he retrieved the scissors, deliberately slowing down so as to be sure not to run with scissors and reversing the way he was holding them so the sharp end pointed down — no doubt as his mother had instructed him when he was a little boy.)

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He still succeeded in cutting his finger, producing some light bleeding, but, once again, Niles' childhood training kicked in, and he passed out frequently from supposed loss of blood.

Eventually, he accidentally set fire to his brother's couch and tried to put it out — but he just couldn't manage the fire extinguisher.

So he fell back on a pot of pasta from the kitchen, dousing the flames but filling Frasier's apartment with smoke.

Niles tried to get rid of the smoke by opening the door, but he caught a glimpse of his cut finger, remembered his blood loss and collapsed on the floor while Eddie ate the pasta in the couch cushion.

Game over.

Niles Crane's Honor

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I've always enjoyed the episode of Frasier that made its debut 20 years ago tonight.

Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and Maris' marriage was beginning to show signs of the cracks that would lead to a full–scale breakup a few years later. Acting on his brother's advice (which was actually inspired by a conversation with Roz), Niles tried to spice up his love life with a little sexual role playing.

Niles chose to dress as a swashbuckling pirate — wearing pantaloons that looked like they might have been worn by the mascot for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He had been chased from the house after an unpleasant confrontation with the maid that was witnessed by Maris, then, after spending the night at Frasier's, he called Maris to try to reconcile. But it turned out she had been "so shattered by the experience she had to fly to her favorite spa to contemplate the future of our marriage," Niles reported.

Acting on his father's advice, Niles decided to make a romantic dinner to make up with Maris — and Daphne (Jane Leeves) volunteered to help — but the fates conspired to mess things up. When Daphne arrived, she had just broken up with her boyfriend, and Maris was being detained by a storm.

Niles and Daphne were alone together in Niles' sprawling mansion.

It was still fairly early in the series, but folks who had been watching it already knew that Niles had feelings for Daphne, feelings of which Daphne would remain unaware for several years. They were feelings that had largely been confined to relatively harmless flirtation in previous episodes; it seems to me this was the first time that Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) actually believed those feelings might really bubble over from worship from afar into something else.

"It's a recipe for disaster!" Frasier told his father. "You've got a vulnerable woman and an unstable man in a Gothic mansion on a rainy night. The only thing missing is someone shouting 'Heathcliff!' across the moor."

So Frasier and his father went out into the storm to rescue Daphne.

Meanwhile, Niles and Daphne were having a heart–to–heart talk that was really quite deep and profound — even if their conversation was being conducted on two different levels.

"Love is a funny thing, isn't it?" Niles said to Daphne. "Sometimes it's exciting and passionate, and sometimes it's something else, something comfortable and familiar — that newly exfoliated little face staring up at you from across the breakfast table, sharing a laugh together when you see someone wearing white after Labor Day."

Frasier didn't know that Niles had managed to keep his behavior under control, and he burst in on them, intent on preventing the disaster he anticipated. Daphne was offended.

"You have some nerve to imply that your brother would do anything so deplorable!" Daphne scolded Frasier, explaining that Niles had just made "a beautiful speech about how much he loves his wife, how he cherishes her excruciating little face and how they laugh at white people."

Well, it was something like that.

As Frasier fans know, Niles and Daphne ended up together later in the series. If you allow your mind to wander to those later years when you watch this episode today, you will miss the point — that Niles was committed to his relationships. He was dedicated to it even though he longed for Daphne.

By the time TV audiences met him, Niles' marriage probably was already doomed to fail. The unseen Maris was a spoiled wealthy woman, selfish and demanding. She was the subject of many jokes, and she was a source of endless anxiety for him, but Niles was true to her until it was clear that she was no longer committed to him.

Niles had his own share of problems, but infidelity was not one of them. He deserves credit for being a positive role model. We have so few today.

The Beatles' First Appearance on Ed Sullivan

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"Tonight, the whole country is waiting to hear England's Beatles."

Ed Sullivan
Feb. 9, 1964

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The Ed Sullivan Show introduced America to many performers who went on to become icons, bestowing a kind of legitimacy on them, but, even for a show on which that was routine, today is the 50th anniversary of something that was truly special — and is still regarded as a milestone in the story of U.S. culture — America's introduction to the Beatles.

Lots of people — including Sullivan himself — expected it to be a repeat of the Elvis Presley experience. Elvis made his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show to much media fanfare nearly eight years earlier, but it wasn't his first appearance on American TV. He had previously been on shows that were hosted by Steve Allen and Milton Berle.

Fifty years ago tonight, however, was the Beatles' very first live appearance on American television, and it drew an audience of 73 million — a number that has been exceeded several times since but was a record at the time.

The Beatles played five songs in their Ed Sullivan Show debut. They sang "All My Loving," "Till There Was You" and "She Loves You" in the first half of the show, then they played "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" in the second half.

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A two–hour CBS special, "The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles," will be shown tonight at the same time as the original show. I plan to watch it. I wonder if it can capture the Beatles' "endearingly goofy" personae, to quote Andrea Peyser in the New York Post.

I work with college journalism students, who do seem to appreciate the Beatles' music, but I don't think they fully grasp what happened 50 years ago today, and I am skeptical that a TV program will change that.

"It is almost impossible to convey to anyone under 50 the immense impact and import of that event," writes Mark Hendrickson in Forbes, "because nothing comparable to it has ever happened."

That about says it all.