Trivia

Elvis Presley's appearance was historic. The show had a 43.7 rating. An estimated 60,710,000 people watched the episode, 82.6% of the TV audience. It remains the largest audience and share in the history of US television.

The New York Times panned the program. Writer Jack Gould opined that Elvis Presley had "injected movements of his tongue and indulged in wordless singing that were singularly distasteful." He went on to claim that overstimulating the physical impulses of the teenagers was "a gross national disservice."

This was Elvis Presley's first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948). While Elvis was in Hollywood filming Love Me Tender (1956), Ed Sullivan was in a New York City hospital, recovering from a near-fatal automobile accident. When guest host Charles Laughton introduced Elvis, he stood in front of a wall of gold records and told the audience, "These gold records, four of them, are a tribute to the fact that four of his recordings have sold, each sold, more than a million copies. And this, by the way, is the first time in record-making history that a singer has hit such a mark in such a short time. And now, away to Hollywood to meet Elvis Presley".