October 18, 1964: Jackie Mason vs. Ed Sullivan

October 18, 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson gives a speech from the Oval Office on this Sunday night, interrupting TV programming. He speaks on various topics: The Vietnam War, the coup the displaced Nikita Khrushchev from power in the Soviet Union, and China developing an atomic bomb. He manages to convince Americans that things aren't as bad as they look, and he helps his campaign for a term of his own.

One result of this speech is that, on CBS, The Ed Sullivan Show can't do a full hour. So, when a regular, comedian Jackie Mason, comes on, making his 13th appearance on the show, Ed, sitting off to the side on a stool as usual, and a stickler for time even under normal circumstances, holds up two fingers, to tell Jackie he's got only two minutes to do his act.

But Jackie doesn't know that this is what the two fingers means. And he runs long. Ed keeps showing Jackie two fingers. The studio audience can see this, and they're laughing at this, not at Jackie's jokes. The people watching at home can't see it. As Jackie explained years later, "They only know one thing: This Jew is dying!" At one point, Jackie says, "Huh? Anybody? I told 30 jokes so far, you could pick one!"

Finally, Jackie points offstage, and says, "He keeps showing me fingers, this guy!" Then he says, "Let me show you some of my fingers!" And he thumbs his nose at everyone. That, alone, might have gotten him in trouble. As he finishes his act, he starts pointing at various people, and appears to make some sort of gesture at Ed. The camera can't quite pick it up, but Jackie knows he's in trouble, and runs offstage, stage left. Ed, sitting stage right, gets off his stool, walks out, and is visibly furious.

During the commercial break, Ed accuses Jackie of giving him a middle finger, an obscene gesture, usually taken to mean, "Fuck you." To this day, when someone does it on TV, the image gets blurred out.

Jackie not only denies making the gesture in question, he insisted to the end of his life that, up until that moment, he had never heard of the gesture. He was 36 years old, Ed was 63, and both had grown up in New York: Who did Jackie think he was trying to fool?

Ed banned him from the show. For 2 years, Jackie couldn't get on TV anywhere. Finally, they met at an airport, and smoothed things over. On September 11, 1966, Jackie appeared on the show again, and eventually made 20 appearances.

But Jackie's career didn't get back to its previous prominence until 1986, when his one-man show The World According to Me! became a hit on Broadway. He remained an elder statesman of American comedy until his death in 2021.

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October 18, 1964 was a Sunday. These NFL games were played:

* The New York Giants lost to their arch-rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles, 23-17 at Yankee Stadium.

* The Baltimore Colts beat the Green Bay Packers, 24-21 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

* The Detroit Lions beat the Chicago Bears, 10-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The Minnesota Vikings beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, 30-10 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The football version of the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Washington Redskins 38-24 at the 1st Busch Stadium (formerly the last Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis.

* The Cleveland Browns beat the Dallas Cowboys, 20-16 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

* And the Los Angeles Rams beat their arch-rivals, the San Francisco 49ers, 42-14 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

And in the American Football League:

* The Buffalo Bills beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-22 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium

* The San Diego Chargers beat the Denver Broncos, 42-14 at Balboa Stadium in San Diego.

* The night before, Saturday, the New York Jets beat the Houston Oilers, 24-21 at Shea Stadium.

* And the night before that, Friday, the Boston Patriots and the Oakland Raiders played to a tie, 43-43 at Fenway Park in Boston. It remains the highest-scoring tie in pro football history.

Baseball season had ended 3 days earlier, when the St. Louis Cardinals beat the New York Yankees in Game 7 and won the World Series.

There was 1 game in the NBA: The Cincinnati Royals beat the San Francisco Warriors, 117-108 at the Cincinnati Gardens. Jack Twyman scored 31 points, and Oscar Robertson scored 21. For the Warriors, Tom Meschery scored 28, and Wilt Chamberlain was holding out at the start of the season, and did not play until October 31. The Warriors traded him to the Philadelphia 76ers the following January.

The NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action:

* The New York Rangers and the Toronto Maple Leafs played to a tie, 3-3 at the old Madison Square Garden.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins, 3-1 at the Boston Garden.

* And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 3-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.