The Original Amateur Hour With Ted Mack: Part 3
The Original Amateur Hour With Ted Mack: Part 3
The series is one of only six shows to appear on all four TV networks during the Golden Age of Television…the others were The Arthur Murray Party; Down You Go; The Ernie Kovacs Show; Pantomime Quiz; and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. The television debut came on January 18, 1948 on the DuMont Television Network with Mack as the host and was broadcast live weekly, at 7 PM Sunday evenings on DuMont until September 25, 1949. The show then moved to NBC Television in October 1949 where it remained until September 1954.
From October of 1955 till June of ’57, the show aired on ABC, then returned to NBC (July 1957 to October 1958). It then ran from May 1959 to October 1959 on CBS, before returning to ABC for a last prime-time run from March 1960 to September 26, 1960. Even then the show wasn’t finished—it ran for another decade as a late-Sunday-afternoon feature on CBS, beginning on October 2, 1960.
Many long-running CBS shows were cancelled in 1970-71 because they attracted viewers of an older demographic. However, Ted Mack beat CBS to the punch and terminated the Original Amateur Hour of his own volition. The final show was broadcast on September 27, 1970 giving the show a 22 year run. This photo is of the show at NBC and is courtesy of Albert Fisher…long time producer of the show.
This looks like it could have been shot in Studio 8H due to the high ceiling and the abundance of floor space. If not, it may have been shot in one of NBC’s New York theater venues; the Colonial or the Hudson. I know it’s in New York because the camera at right has a WNBT sign on it.
And of course it started on Radio as “Major Bowes Amateur Hour”
Ernie Kovacs!
The one other thing may of us also remember, was the show’s sponsor, the J.B. Williams Company, makers of Geritol, Serutan, Sominex, Aqua Velva and Williams Lectric-Shave.