Marilyn was a bright, witty, articulate woman. You don't enthrall the amazing men she had in her life by being nothing more than an enticing walk, blonde hair and a wispy voice.

Steve Allen told Bob Costas a story about his Tonight Show once, and the night that he has Sandburg on. It wasn't the original plan, but Allen ended up clearing the deck (all 90 minutes) for an all-Sandburg show. He told Lincoln stories. He played the banjo. It sounded like one of those transcendent TV moment, but no clips...just Steve and Bob conjuring up the moment out of thin air.

And then Steve gently but firmly twisted the knife when he mentioned why there were no clips: NBC's kinescope of the episode was junked decades ago because some employee was told to clear some storage space, and wasn't too discriminating about how he accomplished the job.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that some audio archivist was rolling tape that night and just forgot about it, or a clever dumpster diver was waiting at the other end of the trash chute on that fateful day, but the possibility seems almost as remote as...oh, I dunno, finding the full version of Metropolis.

Wait a minute...

Hello Roger,

We've been engaged in the making of a film, "The Day Carl Sandburg Died" for more than five years, and are currently wrapping up permissions and rights before a film festival and PBS release. There are indeed relatively few moments of Sandburg reading poetry on film/tape and to the best of our research the Tonight Show does not exist, quite a loss indeed.

But we are fortunate to include some other wonderful (and expensive) clips of Sandburg from the Ed Sullivan show and others television appearances in our film. We cannot post them on-line due to restrictions in the licensing about that, but the film itself include numerous examples.

Surprisingly there is in fact, no recorded audio or video version of his famous poem "Chicago"...

I welcome you and your readers to see the blog and web page about our film and I look forward to screening it soon in the great state of Illinois.

Paul Bonesteel, director
The Day Carl Sandburg Died