She and her husband had the bad luck to make their “Ed Sullivan Show” debut the same night as the Beatles. They bombed. But their careers would recover.
In the decades after they made their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” on Feb. 9, 1964, the comedy team of Mitzi McCall and her husband, Charlie Brill, had a successful career. They performed in nightclubs and on television; both individually and together, they acted on television, in films and onstage.
But that single appearance remained an indelible memory for the couple: It was also the night the Beatles made their American TV debut, and that was all that the screaming young fans in the audience cared about. Their nearly three-and-a-half minutes in the national spotlight came moments before the Beatles returned for their second set. They bombed — in front of 73 million viewers.
“We just about wanted to kill ourselves,” Ms. McCall told The Washington Post in 2004.
“I think it’s hysterical,” Mr. Brill said in a phone interview. “We laid the biggest egg of all time.”
Ms. McCall died on Aug. 8 in a hospital in Burbank, Calif. She was 93. Her death was confirmed by Mr. Brill.
When their manager, Mace Neufeld, told Ms. McCall and Mr. Brill that they were going to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show” — a Sunday night staple that at the time was often a steppingstone to stardom — it seemed like the type of break a young act needed. And when Mr. Neufeld told them that they would be on the bill with the Beatles, Ms. McCall later recalled, “We weren’t really sure who they were.”
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Source: Television - nytimes.com
