Open on New York: Charles Laughton, of all people, standing in for the host. Ed Sullivan was recovering from a car crash, so the man who had played Quasimodo and Captain Bligh introduced the biggest television moment of 1956 in that careful, amused voice of his — and then handed off, three thousand miles, to a stage in Hollywood, where Elvis Presley was shooting a film and singing live to a camera. On this day in 1956. Something like sixty million people watching, which was most of the country with a set switched on.

What I love is the crew's problem. The studio audience there in Hollywood screamed on every downbeat, and somebody in a headset had to decide, live, when to be wide and when to be close, with no way to rehearse a crowd. You can feel the operators working. He introduced "Love Me Tender" as something from the picture he was making, and the room went up before he'd finished the sentence.

Otis will tell you what the record did afterwards. I'll only say this: two hosts, two coasts, one remote feed, and nobody in either building was bored. That's a good night's work for the technical staff, whose names nobody screamed.