| The Ken Murray Show | |
|---|---|
 Title screenshot from October 14, 1950 episode. | |
| Genre | Variety |
| Starring | Ken Murray |
| Narrated by | Nelson Case (announcer 1950-52) |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| Original release | |
| Network | CBS |
| Release | January 7, 1950 – June 21, 1953 |
The Ken Murray Show was an American music and comedy television show on CBS Television hosted by Ken Murray that ran from 1950 to 1953. [1]
An established entertainer and vaudeville regular, Murray had hosted comedy and variety series on CBS radio in the past. But his Blackouts racy stage variety show ran in Hollywood for years in the 1940s and made him quite popular before the TV show debuted in January 1950. Anheuser-Busch was the primary sponsor. It began as an every-other-week show broadcast from 8-9pm on Saturday nights, alternating with the 54th Street Revue . [2] [3] [4] The show became weekly in the fall of 1950, and ran in that format through the end of the 1951–52 season in June 1952.
The New York-based show featured popular guest stars and had an elaborate Hollywood and Vine set, and a large cast of singers and female dancers. Murray would open the show and do transitions between bits, often with a cigar in hand. Darla Hood (best known as Darla in Our Gang as a child actor) was a regular in 1950–51. Laurie Anders began as one of the "Glamourlovelies" women of the show and emerged as a featured player after performing the song I Like the Wide Open Spaces and getting instant impact. [5] [6] [7] The inclusion of many "glamorous"-looking women on the show was in keeping with Murray's formula for Blackouts. A young Stanley Kubrick photographed the show's mass audition for "beautiful girls - no experience necessary" for Look magazine in 1950. [8]
The show opened with a scene of the sponsor's Budweiser Clydesdales galloping along and pulling an Anheuser Busch wagon. [9] Live commercial segments during the show would include Murray and a guest drinking Budweiser. [10]
Episodes often had a dramatic scene from a play as one segment. For example, the first episode of the show on January 7, 1950. had a scene from the popular 1949 play Death of a Salesman , with the Broadway actors Gene Lockhart and Alan Hewitt from the ongoing show playing their roles. [11] [12] [13] [14]
A tentative plan to move the show to Tuesday nights in late December 1952 was rejected, thinking it would be unfair to Murray to have to move from his established Saturday slot to compete with Milton Berle and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. [15] Instead, the show returned in February 1953 in a 30-minute format on alternate Sunday nights at 9:30pm, switching weeks with The Alan Young Show under the joint title of Time to Smile. [5] [16] This last season, which ran from February to June 1953, was broadcast from Hollywood. [17] [18] [19] [20] The Time to Smile format and content got mixed reviews at best, and the show was dropped by its sponsor after the season, in favor of a new show, The Man Behind the Badge . [21] Anheuser-Busch also bought the St. Louis Cardinals in early 1953, so cutting the show's sponsorship fee may also have been related to that purchase. [22]
Marilyn Monroe's first ever appearance on television occurred on the show in March 1953, a segment filmed at the premiere of Call Me Madam . [23]
The Nielsen ratings (the service's TV ratings debuted in 1950) rated the show as the 28th most watched show for the 1950–51 season (fall 1950-spring 1951). [24]
The show was nominated for the Emmy for Best Variety Show, losing at the 3d Emmy Awards in January 1951 to The Alan Young Show . The show was the first to win a Freedom Foundation Award. [25]
Labatt Brewing Company Limited is a Anheuser-Busch InBev-owned brewery headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1847, Labatt is the largest brewer in Canada.
Milton Berle was an American actor and comedian. His career as an entertainer spanned over eight decades, first in silent films and on stage as a child actor, then in radio, movies and television. As the host of NBC's Texaco Star Theatre (1948–1953), he was the first major American television star and was known to millions of viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and "Mr. Television" during the first Golden Age of Television. He was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in both radio and TV.
The year 1955 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events during 1955.
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Darla Jean Hood was an American child actress, best known as the leading lady in the Our Gang series from 1935 to 1941. She was born in Leedey, Oklahoma, the only child of music teacher Elizabeth Davner, and James Claude Hood, who worked in a bank.
The Alan Young Show is an American radio and television series presented in diverse formats over a nine-year period and starring English-born comedian Alan Young.
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Lux Video Theatre is an American television anthology series that was produced from 1950 until 1957. The series presented both comedy and drama in original teleplays, as well as abridged adaptations of films and plays.
Ken Murray was an American comedian, actor, radio and television personality and author.
Patricia Ann Sheehan, also known as Patricia Sheehan Crosby, was an American actress and model. She was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for October 1958 and a contract player for NBC.
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Harold Leonard Block was an American comedy writer, comedian, producer, songwriter and television personality. Although Block was a highly successful comedy writer for over 15 years, today he is most often remembered as an original panelist of the television game show What's My Line? who was fired from the show in its third season, reportedly for inappropriate on-air behavior. Block is a controversial figure in the history of television, denounced by some, while praised by others as a writer and for contributing to the original success of What's My Line?
"Here Comes the King" is a well-known advertising jingle written for Budweiser, whose slogan is "The King of Beers." Budweiser is the flagship brand of the Anheuser-Busch brewery.
The Dinah Shore Show is an American variety show which was broadcast by NBC from November 1951 to July 1957, sponsored by General Motors' Chevrolet division. For most of the program's run, it aired from 7:30 to 7:45 Eastern Time on Tuesday and Thursday nights, rounding out the time slot which featured the network's regular evening newscast, which, like all such programs of the era, was then only 15 minutes in length.
Anheuser-Busch, a wholly owned subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, is the largest brewing company in the United States, with a market share of 45 percent in 2016.
The Buick Circus Hour is an American television series which aired from 1952 to 1953 on NBC. It was a variety series with a circus theme. It was a 60-minute show, 52 or so minutes minus ads. As the title suggests, it was sponsored by Buick. Archival status is not known, but the debut episode appears on the Internet Archive.
In 1950 the Mutual Broadcasting System acquired the television and radio broadcast rights to the World Series and All-Star Game for the next six years. Mutual may have been reindulging in dreams of becoming a television network or simply taking advantage of a long-standing business relationship; in either case, the broadcast rights were sold to NBC in time for the following season's games at an enormous profit.
The RCA Victor Show is a 1950s American television program broadcast on NBC that eventually became The Dennis Day Show. It began on November 23, 1951, and ended on August 2, 1954.
