The Original Amateur Hour

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
1950 trade advertisement

The Original Amateur Hour is an American

Ted Mack, when the show was brought into television in 1948.[1]

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

jugglers, tap dancers
, baton twirlers, and the like, would perform, with the audience being asked to vote for their favorites by postcard or telephone. The telephone number JUdson 6-7000 was on a banner at the bottom of the screen for viewers to call.

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

, meaning that he was technically not an "amateur" singer. He was removed from the program, but by then his fame was assured. At twenty-three, Boone was hosting his own variety show on ABC, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, which aired from 1957 to 1960.

Other future celebrities discovered on the show include

Jose Feliciano (in 1962), Irene Cara (in 1967) and Tanya Tucker (in 1969). Louis Farrakhan appeared in 1949 playing a violin, under his birth name Louis Wolcott. Future child actor Roger Mobley appeared with an older brother and older sister in a musical trio. Future comedian Robert Klein appeared as part of a doo-wop singing group, "The Teen Tones." The greatest fame attained by anyone appearing on the show was that achieved by Frank Sinatra
, who appeared on the show during its radio days with "The Hoboken Four".

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

ABC Radio
, where it ran until 1952. When Mack assumed the host duties, his position in the field was taken by Albert Fisher.

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

Truman administration
.

The series is one of only six shows—the others were

NBC Television
in October 1949 where it remained until September 1952. NBC then hosted it from April 1953 to September 1954.

The Original Amateur Hour finished at #27 in the

Nielsen ratings for the 1950–1951 season.[2]

Move to other networks (1955–1970)

The show moved to

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.

football doubleheaders. The network announced the show's cancellation on November 2, as Geritol dropped its sponsorship of the series, one of the last vestiges of the Golden Age where single-series sponsors were more common.[3]

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

Nick Carter. This was a catalyst for other child stars including Elizabeth Byler, who starred in October Sky, Ernest Goes to Camp, and Other Voices, Other Rooms, and Summer Pulley, who went on to become a cast member of Disney Channel's The Mickey Mouse Club, Nickelodeon's Clarissa Explains It All and the 1989 film Parenthood
. The show also revived the practice of counting the number of the original episodes, with the first being show number 1,652 and the last, show number 1,664.

See also

Notes

  1. . Retrieved 22 March 2020.
  2. ^ "ClassicTVguide.com: TV Ratings". classictvguide.com.
  3. ^ "Original Amateur Hour Will Be Dropped by CBS", AP report in Lancaster (PA) New Era, November 2, 1970, p44
  4. ^ "Library of Congress Amateur Hour Collection". loc.gov.

Bibliography

External links