When was the last time you saw a Sur­re­al­ist (or even just a sur­re­al­ist) painter appear on nation­al tele­vi­sion? If such a fig­ure did appear on nation­al tele­vi­sion today, for that mat­ter, who would know? Per­haps sur­re­al­ist paint­ing does not, in our time, make the impact it once did, but nor does nation­al tele­vi­sion. So imag­ine what a spec­ta­cle it must have been in 1950s Amer­i­ca, cra­dle of the “mass media” as we once knew them, when Sal­vador Dalí turned up on a major U.S. tele­vi­sion net­work. Such a fab­u­lous­ly incon­gru­ous broad­cast­ing event hap­pened more than once, and in these clips we see that, among the “big three,” CBS was espe­cial­ly recep­tive to his impul­sive, oth­er­world­ly artis­tic pres­ence.

On the quiz show What’s My Line?, one of CBS’ most pop­u­lar offer­ings through­out the 50s, con­tes­tants aimed to guess the occu­pa­tion of a guest. They did so wear­ing blind­folds, with­out which they’d have no trou­ble pin­ning down the job of an instan­ta­neous­ly rec­og­niz­able celebri­ty like Dalí — or would they? To the pan­el’s yes-or-no ques­tions, the only kind per­mit­ted by the rules, Dalí near­ly always responds flat­ly in the affir­ma­tive.

Is he asso­ci­at­ed with the arts? “Yes.” Would he ever have been seen on tele­vi­sion? “Yes.” Would he be con­sid­ered a lead­ing man? “Yes.” At this host John Charles Daly steps in to clar­i­fy that, in the con­text of the ques­tion, Dalí would not, in fact, be con­sid­ered a lead­ing man. One con­tes­tant offers an alter­na­tive: “He’s a mis­lead­ing man!” Few titles have cap­tured the essence of Dalí so neat­ly.

The artist, show­man, and human con­scious-alter­ing sub­stance lat­er appeared on The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view. Host­ed by the for­mi­da­ble CBS news­man well before he became one of the faces of 60 Min­utes, the show fea­tured a range of guests from Aldous Hux­ley and Frank Lloyd Wright to Eleanor Roo­sevelt and Ayn Rand. In this broad­cast, Wal­lace and Dalí dis­cuss “every­thing from sur­re­al­ism to nuclear physics to chasti­ty to what artists in gen­er­al con­tribute to the world,” as Brain Pick­ings’ Maria Popo­va describes it. A curi­ous if occa­sion­al­ly bemused Wal­lace, writes The Wall­break­ers’ Matt Weck­el, “asks Dalí such gems as ‘What is philo­soph­i­cal about dri­ving a car full of cau­li­flow­ers?’ and ‘Why did you lec­ture with your head enclosed in a div­ing hel­met?’ ” But they also seri­ous­ly dis­cuss “the fear of death, and their own mor­tal­i­ty,” top­ics to which Amer­i­can air­waves have hard­ly grown more accom­mo­dat­ing over the past six­ty years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí Gets Sur­re­al with Mike Wal­lace (1958)

Sal­vador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Sur­re­al­ism, the Gold­en Ratio & More (1970)

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

Q: Sal­vador Dalí, Are You a Crack­pot? A: No, I’m Just Almost Crazy (1969)

Sal­vador Dalí Explains Why He Was a “Bad Painter” and Con­tributed “Noth­ing” to Art (1986)

Sal­vador Dalí Goes Com­mer­cial: Three Strange Tele­vi­sion Ads

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Andy Warhol adored tele­vi­sion and, in a way, con­sid­ered it his most for­ma­tive influ­ence. While his paint­ings, silkscreens, and films, and the Vel­vet Under­ground, might be all the lega­cy he might need, Warhol, more than any­thing, longed to be a TV per­son­al­i­ty. He made his first con­cert­ed effort in 1979, launch­ing a New York pub­lic access inter­view show. In one of the show’s 42 episodes, Warhol sits in almost total silence while his friend Richard Berlin inter­views Frank Zap­pa.

But Warhol hat­ed Zap­pa, and hat­ed him even more after the inter­view. When he talked to and about sub­jects he liked, he could be par­tic­u­lar­ly chat­ty, in his dead­pan way: see, for exam­ple, his inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock, whom he great­ly admired, or ear­ly eight­ies Sat­ur­day Night Live spots for NBC and lat­er eight­ies MTV vari­ety show. In Warhol’s much ear­li­er 1965 appear­ance on the Merv Grif­fin show, above, long before he made TV pre­sen­ter a pro­fes­sion, he appears with the stun­ning­ly charis­mat­ic Edie Sedg­wick, his beloved muse and orig­i­nal super­star, and he choos­es to say almost noth­ing at all.

Sedg­wick does the talk­ing, inform­ing the host that Andy, unused to mak­ing “real­ly pub­lic appear­ances,” would only whis­per his answers in her ear, and she would whis­per them to Grif­fin. It’s an act, of course, but the per­for­mance of a per­sona that hid an even more shy, retir­ing char­ac­ter. In a text­book irony, the artist who ush­ered in the age of self-pro­mot­ing influ­encers and invent­ed the super­star could be about as engag­ing as a house­plant. Sedg­wick, on the con­trary, is char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly enthralling.

Known as “girl of the year” in 1965, the Cal­i­for­nia socialite had defect­ed from her priv­i­leged sur­round­ings to live in Warhol’s world. The two “fell in love pla­ton­i­cal­ly but intense­ly,” Karen Lynch writes at Blast mag­a­zine, “and their mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial rela­tion­ship became the talk of the town.” Grif­fin intro­duces them as “the two lead­ing expo­nents of the new scene. No par­ty in New York is con­sid­ered a suc­cess unless they are there.” This was no hyper­bole, though the audi­ence doesn’t know who they are… yet.

Sedg­wick explains how they met at the Fac­to­ry, where she arrived the pre­vi­ous year with her trust fund to intro­duce her­self and join the scene. She more or less takes over the inter­view, sell­ing Warhol’s super­star myth with elo­quence and wit, and she seems so much more like today’s art stars than Warhol (who even­tu­al­ly gives a few one-word answers), and has arguably had as much or more influ­ence on Gen Y and Z cre­ators. Sedg­wick was “more than aspi­ra­tional stereo­types allow,” writes Lynch, and more than the fact of her untime­ly death at 28.

One online artis­tic state­ment of this fact, Edie’s Farm, a site for “coun­ter­fac­tu­al cur­rent events,” sup­pos­es that Sedg­wick had sur­vived her drug addic­tion and anorex­ia and con­tin­ued mak­ing art (and giv­ing make­up tuto­ri­als) into the 21st cen­tu­ry, imag­in­ing her as her young self, not the woman in her 70s she would be. “Maybe no one’s ever had a year quite as amaz­ing as my 1965,” the fic­tion­al Sedg­wick says. “I loved Andy and his Fac­to­ry. But it was­n’t a sus­tain­able life for me”—a trag­ic irony impos­si­ble to ignore in watch­ing her oth­er­wise impos­si­bly charm­ing per­for­mance above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness