When the paper hit the stands the Broadway community was agog. Ed’s debut was the talk of the town. Graphic publisher Bernarr Macfadden wondered if Sullivan could be serious: a clean Broadway column? The publisher of Variety, Sime Silverman, reprinted the column in full, with commentary: “Sullivan is well known, if not famous, as a sports reporter. He will become equally so as a Broadway writer if continuing the way he started. The tabloids have been called the trade papers of the racketeers. Sullivan is on a tab.” – an apparent reference to the Daily Mirror claim that he was on the mob’s payroll – “His initial outburst sounds as if he intends to disprove the allegation. It’s a great opening.” Many thought the column’s claim of propriety merely funny, like a Burlesque dancer lecturing on grammar. Some speculated it was the columnist’s standard ploy: to gain readers by starting a feud. Winchell and Sobol, understanding that the jabs were aimed directly at them, were incensed.
The evening after his column’s debut, Sullivan ran into Winchell at the Reuben Delicatessen. According to Sullivan, he himself was talkative and Winchell was quiet, until Winchell asked, “Did you mean what you wrote today?” The freshman columnist soft-pedaled his attack, explaining that he had merely wanted to make a dramatic entrance. Winchell said he accepted this as an apology, at which point it was Ed who took offense. The Sullivan hair-string temper leapt out of the bag. “I got so mad I grabbed him by the knot in his necktie and pulled him over the table, right on top of the cheesecake. ‘Apologize to you?’ I said, ‘you son of a bitch, I did mean you and if you say one more word about it I’ll take you downstairs and stick your head in the toilet bowl.’” In Sullivan’s telling of the story, Winchell then fled the Reuben.
Sobol, in the Journal American, parried Sullivan’s opening salvo by writing a column entitled “The Ennui of His Contempt-oraries.” Referring to Ed, he archly noted, “Empty vessels make the most sound.”
Sobol’s riposte was standard stuff by the rules of the Broadway gossips; throwing barbs back and forth was part of their stock and trade. They were as much performers as the nightclub acts they covered. But for Ed, hypersensitive and in a new situation, it was too much. Sobol’s column enraged him. One evening shortly after it ran, Sullivan ran into Sobol outside a Broadway performance. Ed grabbed his rival columnist and, according to Sobol, bellowed, “I’ll rip your cock off, you little bastard.” Sobol, all of 125 pounds, ducked out of Sullivan’s reach while bystanders held him back.
As if Ed hadn’t vented enough, he also took Sobol to task in his column, writing:
“To my former associates in the field of sports writing, I must report that THIS is a soft touch in an unusually responsive arena…While all my columning contemporaries are fuming and fretting at my invasion, one of them has even carried his personal alarm into the two-column measure of his daily piece. This particular fellow has never had much competition. He’s got it now. I have not decided whether to chase him over the right field fence or the left field fence. This, however, is purely a matter of route, and immaterial.”