Taking part in Ed Sullivan in “Midas Man” — the brand new biopic of Beatles supervisor Brian Epstein — Jay Leno didn’t goal to placed on a “really big show” because the TV legend.
“They didn’t want an impression of Ed Sullivan,” the longtime “Tonight Show” host informed The Submit. “They simply wished somebody who was a TV presenter.
“So I said, ‘I’m gonna get killed because I don’t do an impression.’ But it was OK. I think people understood that I wasn’t trying to [imitate him].”
The movie, which is streaming on Olyn, depicts how The Beatles made their US TV debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Feb. 9, 1964. And the 74-year-old comic, then 13, was one of many document 73 million viewers glued to the tube.
“It’s one of the biggest nights of viewership ever,” he stated. “We were in the TV room, and we had our TV trays, and I think my mom had made pizza.”
However Leno’s father was much less hyped concerning the hoopla surrounding The Beatles.
“So I say to my dad, ‘You know, Pop, The Beatles write all their own music,’ ” Leno recalled. “My father goes, ‘You know something — some guy gives these kids a couple of bucks to go out there and act loony, and you all fall for it.’ That was my dad’s impression of The Beatles. I thought it was the funniest thing ever. It just made me laugh.”
Leno, although, was schooled early on by The Beatles whereas rising up in Andover, Massachusetts.
“My mother is from Scotland, and all her sisters would occasionally go back to Scotland. And one day they came back and brought me some records from the UK, and they were Beatles records,” he stated. “So I was like the first guy in our area to have a Beatles record, and it was, like, a huge deal. It’s not like today, where things get released worldwide all at the same time. People were stunned: ‘How did you get those records?’ ”
Leno took his Beatles fandom past the music.
“I remember one of the stores was selling Beatles wigs when I was a kid, and I bought one,” he stated. “Anything with The Beatles on it sold.”
In actual fact, he continued, “I remember when Lorne Greene had a song out called ‘Ringo.’ Well, people thought it was about Ringo Starr. The record went to No. 1, and it’s not about Ringo Starr, it’s not a Beatles record. But just the name ‘Ringo’ made this song popular.”
In “an age of such innocence,” Leno stated that “The Beatles were kind of acceptable to your parents.”
However the Fab 4 have been additionally the longer term. “The Beatles immediately made Elvis old-fashioned,” he stated.
Finally, destiny would have it that Leno obtained to bond with a sure Beatle.
“Over the years, I got to work with Paul McCartney a couple times. It was really a thrill,” he stated. “And, you know, it’s funny, when I met Paul McCartney, he seemed like he was from another generation. But he was only, like, eight years older than I was.”
For Leno, watching “The Ed Sullivan Show” was a particular ceremony of a technology.
“The thing about watching ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ when I was a kid is when he would come out from behind the curtain, and for a millisecond you saw what was behind the curtain,” he recalled. “You always felt like you were getting an inside look at something.”
It’s “a fascinating time” that Leno will get to revisit in “Midas Man.”
“I mean, just the idea of everybody waiting for a specific time to watch something happen — it doesn’t exist anymore,” he stated. “That’s sort of gone forever.”
