The King's historic Ed Sullivan shows arrive on DVD

Elvis Presley

In 1990, rock filmmaker and archivist Andrew Solt took a big gamble. He put everything on the line to purchase the rights to the complete archive of Ed Sullivan television shows.

'Sullivan was the big reach', says Solt, who bought the collection from the broadcasting legend's family. 'It was very scary, to be honest with you. I borrowed a lot of money -- every penny it cost I had to borrow and, fortunately, it's worked out'.

Since then, Solt, head of the Los Angeles-based SOFA Entertainment company, has gone on to great success developing projects that include the landmark, 10-part 1995 documentary series, The History of Rock 'n' Roll, as well as continuing to purchase properties, like the entire run of 1970s staple 'Don Kirshner's Rock Concert'.

But the 1,045-hour Sullivan archive is his focus. 'It's phenomenal what's in there', says Solt. 'We've produced 130 half-hour shows for cable and syndication, 13 hours for CBS, and done another 15 hours for home video and DVD'.

During rehearsal, Elvis and Ed Sullivan discuss the upcoming performance.

The jewels in the Sullivan crown, however, are the three shows Elvis Presley appeared on in late 1956 and early 1957.

Prior to 1956, Presley had largely been a curious regional phenomenon burning up Southern stages and airwaves.

His signing to RCA that year and subsequent appearances on the Dorsey Brothers, Milton Berle and Steve Allen shows set the table for his bow on the top-rated and highly influential Sullivan CBS variety show.

Elvis' Sept. 9, 1956, appearance -- a program hosted by actor Charles Laughton, subbing while Sullivan recovered from an auto accident -- was a cultural watershed.

Viewed by a record 72 million Americans, Presley's loose, louche performance -- sandwiched in between spots by acrobats The Brothers Amin and pet performer Toby the Dog -- caused a seismic shift in the country's cultural zeitgeist.

It remains one of the most significant moments in television history.

Remarkably, despite its historical value, the bulk of the material from the Presley/Sullivan shows had never officially been released in any form.

'In fact, the full shows hadn't been seen since their original broadcast', says Solt. 'People had seen moments from some of the songs, but the full context of these programs was never known. So that was the challenge and the whole fun of doing a project like this'.

With the critical and commercial success of his 2003 DVD release of the complete broadcasts of the Beatles' appearances on Ed Sullivan, Solt was able to persuade the Elvis Presley estate to go ahead with the project.

He began work in late 2004 getting together the elements for Elvis: The Ed Sullivan Shows, a three-disc package that was released late last month via Image Entertainment.

Chief among the challenges in putting together the Presley set was improving the quality of the Sullivan source material. From its debut -- originally as 'Toast of the Town' -- in 1948 until 1958, Sullivan's show was filmed on kinescope.

Prior to the development of videotape, live television programs were saved with a specially modified camera that would film the show off a TV monitor. This typically meant that the resulting kinescopes were of less-than-stellar visual quality, and prone to considerable image loss over time.

In 2005, Solt was approached by Kevin Segura, president of RerunMedia, an Oregon-based company that specializes in kinescope processing.

Using a proprietary digital process called LiveFeed that works to improve images frame by frame, Segura managed to give the Sullivan shows a visual cleanup so dramatic it's almost shocking.

'I was amazed by the quality of the samples he gave back to us', says Solt.

'It was a 30 or 40 percent improvement over anything that's been seen. There was better contrast, definition, depth of field, the outline was better -- and not just on Elvis but the Jordanaires and D.J. Fontana, and Scotty Moore and Bill Black'.

In total, it took Segura nine months to complete the process for all three shows. Meanwhile, Solt worked on clearing rights to all the music, as well as amassing the bonus material (which includes archival interviews with Sullivan producer Marlo Lewis, the earliest known footage of Elvis performing at a daytime show in Houston and a collection of Presley confidante Jerry Schilling's home movies.)

Solt says he has more Presley DVDs in the works, including an upgrade of Elvis: The Great Performances -- a three volume documentary series from the early '90s that he produced.

Solt plans on remastering the discs and adding bonus material and reissuing the discs after the rights revert back to his company in early 2008.

Buy Elvis: The Ed Sullivan Shows

Three DVDs, including complete shows, bonus materials and liner notes by author Greil Marcus. Running time: 179 minutes. 5.1 Surround Sound and Mono.

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