October 28, 1956, 70 years ago: Millions of young people's fears over getting the recently-approved polio vaccine are wiped out: Their hero got it, and he got it on the biggest show on TV.
Ed Sullivan initially said he wouldn't put Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show, because of his sexually suggestive onstage moves. But after Ed's competitor, Steve Allen, brought Elvis on, and got huge ratings, Ed realized that could no longer ignore the appeal of the man already being called "The King of Rock and Roll." As the title of one of his greatest-hits albums said, Fifty Million Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong.
Ed would end up putting Elvis on his show 3 times. It was only on the 3rd one, on January 6, 1957, that he was famously shown only from the waist up. I have a separate entry for that post.
The polio virus had been ravaging America for years, and approximately 60,000 children were infected annually. In 1955, hope arrived with the public announcement that Jonas Salk's vaccine had been declared safe for distribution to the public.
But despite the literally crippling effects of the virus, and the promising results of the vaccination, many Americans simply weren't getting vaccinated. In fact, when Elvis first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, immunization levels among American teenagers were at an abysmal 0.6 percent.
You might think that the threats of death and paralysis would be enough to motivate people to get vaccinated. Yet, convincing people to get a vaccine is a challenging endeavor, as the 2020-21 COVID pandemic would later prove. Intuitively, it seems like it would be wise to have doctors and other health officials communicate the need to receive the vaccine. Or, failing that, we might just need to give people more information about the effectiveness of the vaccine itself.
Those aren't winning strategies today, and they weren't back in 1956. What did prove successful was Elvis getting the vaccine in front of millions. In fact, after he publicly did so, vaccination rates among American youth skyrocketed to 80 percent after just six months. Kids all over America were answering the vaccine with impressions of Elvis: "Well, uh, uh-huh!"
Contracting poliomyelitis as an adult, like Franklin Roosevelt did before becoming President, had been rare. But so many kids got it that it became known as "infantile paralysis." John F. Collins got it in 1955, just as the vaccine was first being released to the public, during a campaign for City Council in Boston. Having to use a wheelchair didn't stop him from being elected Mayor in 1959 and 1963.
Prominent Canadian politicians Paul Martin Sr. and Paul Martin Jr. got it separately, and survived it, the latter serving as Prime Minister from 2003 to 2006. His predecessor, Jean Chrétien (1993-2003), has physical challenges that suggest he may also be a polio survivor, although he has never claimed to be one, attributing them instead to Bell's palsy.
Jerome Felder, a polio survivor, wrote songs under the name Doc Pomus, including several of Elvis' hits. His song "Save the Last Dance for Me" was based on reality: He was unable to dance with his wife, Willi Burke, so he would take her to dances, and let her dance with anyone, as long as she came home with him. She always did, from their marriage in 1957 until their divorce in 1966.
Bill Cullen, who, between serving as host and panelist, appeared on more TV game shows than anybody, was a polio survivor. Like Elvis in his 3rd Sullivan appearance, he was usually only shown from the waist up, because he was self-conscious about his limp. Hockey star Bill Gadsby contracted the disease in 1952, but it was during the off-season, and by the start of the next season, he had recovered, and went on to be elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Wilma Rudolph recovered from childhood polio to win 3 Gold Medals in sprinting at the 1960 Olympics in Rome.
In a weird coincidence, Donald Sutherland, who played Hawkeye Pierce in the film version of M*A*S*H, and Alan Alda, who played the character on TV, were both polio survivors. Alda became a close friend of violinist Itzhak Perlman, who contracted the disease at age 4, and, through his television appearances, is, as of October 28, 2022, the living celebrity most visibly affected by the nearly-eradicated disease.
Other celebrities, alive as of the abovementioned date, who survived polio as children include singers Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Donovan and Neil Young; actors Mia Farrow and Joe Bob Briggs, director Francis Ford Coppola and one of his Godfather actors, Gianni Russo; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell; Olympic figure skating Gold Medalist Tenley Albright, golfer Jack Nicklaus, and Heisman Trophy winner and U.S. Army General Pete Dawkins.
