The Original Amateur Hour
The Original Amateur Hour is an American
The show is a progenitor of later, similar programs such as Star Search, American Idol and America's Got Talent.
Format and notable contestants
The format was almost always the same. At the beginning of the show, the talent's order of appearance was determined by spinning a wheel. After it was announced how many episodes the current one marked (the final broadcast on CBS being the 1,651st), the wheel was spun. As the wheel spun, the words "Round and round she goes, and where she stops nobody knows" were always intoned. (From the late 1950s forward, the wheel was gone: it was symbolized by flute arpeggios as Ted Mack invoked the traditional phrase.)
Various acts, sometimes singers or other musicians, quite often
As the show gained markets outside New York, Mack would give the address ("Box 191 Radio City Station") where viewers could send their postcards; he did this after every act. The winners were invited to appear on the next week's show. Three-time winners were eligible for the annual championship, with the grand-prize winner receiving a $2000 scholarship.
Ted Mack ensured that the show was very fast-paced. Despite the program's title, it was generally only a half-hour show, the only exception to this rule being from March 1956 to June 1957 on ABC, when it was expanded to an hour.
Some contestants became minor celebrities at the time, but few ever became really big show-business stars, like the six Ebe Sisters, whose fame was short-lived. The two greatest successes of the show's television era were
Other future celebrities discovered on the show include
During World War II, some in the American armed forces believed that someone involved with the program was a Nazi sympathizer because after many episodes aired, an American naval vessel would supposedly be sunk. The claim was that coded information was passed out in the course of the broadcast. Some accused Bowes himself, but none of these accusations could ever be proved. Bowes was one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's closest friends and was personally responsible for having the swimming pool constructed at the White House when FDR was in office. As the years went by, the audience for this program aged as well. The Sunday-afternoon version of the series, which aired on CBS in the 1960s, was invariably sponsored by Geritol and other patent medicines manufactured by their long-time sponsor, the J. B. Williams Company, best known for Aqua Velva after-shave lotion ("There's something about an Aqua Velva man!") and Lectric Shave pre-shave lotion.
History
Radio years
Bowes started the radio show on
The official archives of The Original Amateur Hour and the rights to the original programs and related material are now owned by Fisher. He has donated the radio recordings and television films and tapes to the Library of Congress, and has compiled a DVD collection of highlights from the series.
Television debut (1948–1954)
The television debut came on January 18, 1948 on the
The series is one of only six shows—the others were
The Original Amateur Hour finished at #27 in the
Move to other networks (1955–1970)
The show moved to
The final show was broadcast on September 27, 1970.[4]
Revival on The Family Channel (1992)
In 1992 Albert Fisher revived the program (as The New Original Amateur Hour) on cable television network The Family Channel (now Freeform) hosted by weatherman Willard Scott. This revival lasted one season, in spite of its popularity and high ratings.
It featured the debut of highly successful and famous Backstreet Boys member
See also
- List of programs broadcast by the DuMont Television Network
- List of surviving DuMont Television Network broadcasts
Notes
- ISBN 978-0823083152. Retrieved 22 March 2020.
- ^ "ClassicTVguide.com: TV Ratings". classictvguide.com.
- ^ "Original Amateur Hour Will Be Dropped by CBS", AP report in Lancaster (PA) New Era, November 2, 1970, p44
- ^ "Library of Congress Amateur Hour Collection". loc.gov.
Bibliography
- David Weinstein, The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television (Philadelphia: ISBN 1-59213-245-6
- Alex McNeil, Total Television, Fourth edition (New York: ISBN 0-14-024916-8
- Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, Third edition (New York: ISBN 0-345-31864-1