‘The Colgate Comedy Hour’…Live From The El Capitan Theater
‘The Colgate Comedy Hour’…Live From The El Capitan Theater
NBC’s studios at Sunset and Vine in Hollywood were built in 1938 for radio and didn’t have much space for big television productions. Taking a cue their brothers in New York, they began to do remotes from local theaters. One of these theaters was the El Capitan which many of us know better as The Hollywood Palace.
With the advent of the cross country AT&T television connection in early 1952, NBC and CBS started doing some shows from Los Angeles because this gave them a new pool of stars to work with. Many movie stars didn’t want to do television…fist because it was live and television and second, because they would have to go to New York.
I don’t know if NBC ever installed a control room at The El Capitan but they did this show from there, and others, for five years so I suspect they did. Anyone know?
As you’ll hear Jerry Lewis say in the next post, ‘The Colgate Comedy Hour’ rotated hosts as not to burn them out. The show rotated coasts as well with some coming from The International Theater (home of ‘Your Show Of Shows’) in New York and some from The El Capitan. A few were done from Chicago with Jan Murray as the host.
Ironically, the theater was also named The Jerry Lewis Theater for about six months just before his disastrous ninety minute Saturday night talk show on ABC in 1963. That lasted just thirteen weeks and in a panic to fill the time, and the theater they just bought, ABC developed ‘The Hollywood Place’.
Just to clarify… The El Capitan (on Hollywood) was also known as the Hollywood Paramount not the Hollywood Palace. The Hollywood Palace (on Vine) was the Hollywood Playhouse. It was named the Palace when they taped the ABC Hollywood Palace there. It was also the Jerry Lewis Theatre at one time.
Before NBC used it for television, CBS used the Hollywood Palace as a radio studio for “My Favorite Husband” with Lucille Ball, and “Granby’s Green Acres” with Gale Gordon presaging Eddie Albert’s role in the similarly-named TV series. I would imagine they built some kind of control room in the theater.
Jerry wrote an excellent book called “Dean and Me: A Love Story”. Fans of Martin and Lewis need to check it out. They were as big as The Beatles before anyone had heard of The Beatles.
They really did a great job with Art Deco!
View from inside of NBC Radio City Hollywood Studios at Sunset & Vine. Photo from the Snooks Higgins Collection.
Here’s NBC’s Radio City West at Sunset and Vine in Hollywood