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Broadway Open House
''Broadway Open House'' is network television's first late-night comedy-variety series.Terrace, Vincent (2011). ''Encyclopedia of Television Shows, 1925 through 2010''. McFarland & Company, Inc. . P. 138. It was telecast live on NBC from May 29, 1950, to August 24, 1951, airing weeknights from 11pm to midnight. One of the pioneering TV creations of NBC president Pat Weaver, it demonstrated the potential for late-night programming and led to the later development of ''The Tonight Show''.McNeil, Alex. ''Total Television: a Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present''. Penguin, 1985. Hosts The show was originally planned to be hosted by comic Don "Creesh" Hornsby (so named because he yelled "Creesh" often). Hornsby had been brought into the variety show business by Bob Hope, whose topical humor would serve as the basis for most of the late-night talk shows that would follow. One week before he was to begin hosting, the 26-year-old Hornsby suddenly contracted poli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dagmar (American Actress)
Virginia Ruth "Jennie" Lewis (née Egnor; November 29, 1921 – October 9, 2001), known professionally as Dagmar, was an American actress, model, and television personality. In the 1950s, she became one of the first major female stars of television, receiving much press coverage. Early life Egnor was born in Yawkey, West Virginia, and went to high school in Huntington, West Virginia, where she was known as Ruthie. She attended Huntington Business School and worked at Walgreens as a cashier, waitress, sandwich maker, and soda jerk. After her marriage to Angelo Lewis in 1941, she moved to New York, where he was a naval officer, stationed at Navy Ferry Command on Long Island. Broadway Egnor adopted Jennie Lewis as her stage name (taken from her real-life married name, Virginia Lewis). To keep herself busy, she became a fashion photographer's model, and in 1944, other models encouraged her to audition for comedians Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson. Although she had no show business exper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Hornsby
Don, don or DON and variants may refer to: Places *County Donegal, Ireland, Chapman code DON *Don (river), a river in European Russia *Don River (other), several other rivers with the name *Don, Benin, a town in Benin *Don, Dang, a village and hill station in Dang district, Gujarat, India *Don, Nord, a ''commune'' of the Nord ''département'' in northern France *Don, Tasmania, a small village on the Don River, located just outside Devonport, Tasmania *Don, Trentino, a commune in Trentino, Italy * Don, West Virginia, a community in the United States *Don Republic, a temporary state in 1918–1920 *Don Jail, a jail in Toronto, Canada People Role or title *Don (honorific), a Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian title, given as a mark of respect *Don, a crime boss, especially in the Mafia , ''Don Konisshi'' (コニッシー) *Don, a resident assistant at universities in Canada and the U.S. *University don, in British and Irish universities, especially at Oxford, Cambridge, St An ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz saxophonist, band leader and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. Parker was an extremely brilliant virtuoso and introduced revolutionary rhythmic and harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. Primarily a player of the alto saxophone, Parker's tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber. Parker acquired the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career on the road with Jay McShann. This, and the shortened form "Bird", continued to be used for the rest of his life, inspiring the titles of a number of Parker compositions, such as "Yardbird Suite", "Ornithology", "Bird Gets the Worm", and "Bird of Paradise". Parker was an icon for the hipster ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider (October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966), known professionally as Lenny Bruce, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, and satirist. He was renowned for his open, free-wheeling, and critical style of comedy which contained satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a Posthumous recognition, posthumous pardon in 2003. Bruce paved the way for counterculture-era comedians. His trial for obscenity was a landmark of freedom of speech in the United States. In 2017, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine ranked him third (behind Richard Pryor and George Carlin) on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time. Early life Bruce was Jewish, born Leonard Alfred Schneider in Mineola, New York, Mineola, New York (state), New York. He grew up in nearby Bellmore, New York, Bellmore, and attended Wellington C. Mepham High School. According to his biography, during part of his high school years, he lived at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara Nichols
Barbara Marie Nickerauer (December 10, 1928 – October 5, 1976), known professionally as Barbara Nichols, was an American actress who often played brassy or comic roles in films in the 1950s and 1960s. Early life and career Nichols was born Barbara Marie Nickerauer to George and Julia Nickerauer and was raised in Queens, New York. Early in her career, Nichols was a showgirl when a club owner offered her a much higher salary to become a striptease performer. She declined the offer, keeping her focus on becoming an actress. She began modeling for cheesecake magazines in the late 1940s and eventually was considered a minor rival to Marilyn Monroe. On Broadway, she appeared in the 1952 revival of '' Pal Joey'' (she also appeared in the 1957 film version) and in ''Let It Ride'' (1961). In the mid 1950s, she moved to Hollywood and began appearing in showy supporting roles in A-films, such as ''Miracle in the Rain'' (1956), ''The King and Four Queens'' (1956), ''The Naked and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sketch Comedy
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is used widely in variety shows, comedy talk shows, and some sitcoms and children's television series. The sketches may be improvised live by the performers, developed through improvisation before public performance, or scripted and rehearsed in advance like a play. Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their work from a "skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke (or "bit") while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character, or situation. definition 3b, Merriam-Webster online. Retrieved 5/4/2019 History Sketch comedy has its origins in |
DuMont Television Network
The DuMont Television Network (also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont Television, simply DuMont/Du Mont, or (incorrectly) Dumont ) was one of America's pioneer commercial television networks, rivaling NBC and CBS for the distinction of being first overall in the United States. It was owned by DuMont Laboratories, Allen B. DuMont Laboratories, a television equipment and set manufacturer, and began operation on June 28, 1942.Weinstein, David (2004). ''The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television'', p. 16. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. . The network was hindered by the prohibitive cost of broadcasting, a freeze on new television stations in 1948 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that restricted the network's growth, and even the company's partner, Paramount Pictures. Despite several innovations in broadcasting and the creation of one of television's biggest stars of the 1950s—Jackie Gleason—the network never found itself on solid fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cavalcade Of Stars
''The Jackie Gleason Show'' is the name of a series of American network television shows that starred Jackie Gleason, which ran from 1952 to 1970, in various forms. ''Cavalcade of Stars'' Gleason's first variety series, which aired on the DuMont Television Network under the title ''Cavalcade of Stars'', first aired June 4, 1949. The show's first host was comedian Jack Carter, who was followed by Jerry Lester. Lester jumped to NBC in June 1950 to host the late-night show '' Broadway Open House'', and Gleason—who had made his mark filling in for William Bendix as the title character on the first television incarnation of ''The Life of Riley'' sitcom—stepped into ''Cavalcade'' on July 15, 1950 and became an immediate sensation. The show was broadcast live in front of a theater audience, and offered the same kind of vaudevillian entertainment common to early television revues. Gleason's guests included New York-based performers of stage and screen, including Bert Wheeler, Smit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pat Weaver
Sylvester Laflin "Pat" Weaver Jr. (December 21, 1908 – March 15, 2002) was an American broadcasting executive who was president of NBC between 1953 and 1955. He has been credited with reshaping commercial broadcasting's format and philosophy as radio gave way to television as America's dominant home entertainment. His daughter is actress Sigourney Weaver. Early life and education Born in Los Angeles, Sylvester Laflin Weaver Jr. was the son of Eleanor Isabel (née Dixon) and Sylvester Laflin Weaver. His brother was comedian Doodles Weaver. Weaver was of Scottish descent (possibly Clan MacFarlane), as well as of Ulster-Scots, Dutch and early New England ancestry. He was related to Matthew Laflin, an American manufacturer of gunpowder, businessman, philanthropist, and an early pioneer of Chicago. Both were descendants of Charles Laflin, a gunpowder manufacturer, who came to America in 1740 from Ulster, Ireland, settling at Oxford, Massachusetts. Charles Laflin and his family wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Alda
Robert Alda (born Alfonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo; February 26, 1914 – May 3, 1986) was an Italian-American theatrical and film actor, a singer, and a dancer. He was the father of actors Alan and Antony Alda. Alda was featured in a number of Broadway productions, then moved to Italy during the early 1960s. He appeared in many European films over the next two decades, occasionally returning to the U.S. for film appearances such as '' The Girl Who Knew Too Much'' (1969). Early life Alda, an American of Italian descent, was born Alfonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo in New York City, the son of Frances (née Tumillo) and Antonio D'Abruzzo, a barber born in Sant'Agata de' Goti, Benevento, Campania, Italy. (D'Abruzzo is a toponymic surname.) He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York in 1930. Career He began his performing career as a singer and dancer in vaudeville after winning a talent contest, and moved on to burlesque. Alda is known for portraying ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henny Youngman
Henry "Henny" Youngman (16 March 1906 – 24 February 1998) was a British-born American comedian and musician famous for his mastery of the " one-liner", his best known being "Take my wife... please". In a time when many comedians told elaborate anecdotes, Youngman's routine consisted of telling simple one-liner jokes, occasionally with interludes of violin playing. These depicted simple, cartoon-like situations, eliminating lengthy build-ups and going straight to the punch line. Known as "the King of the One-Liners", a title conferred to him by columnist Walter Winchell, a stage performance by Youngman lasted only 15 to 20 minutes but contained dozens of jokes in rapid succession. Early life Youngman was born to Russian Jews Yonkel Yungman and Olga Chetkin in Whitechapel, in the East End of London, England. His family moved to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, when he was a child. He grew up in New York City, and began as a comedian after he had worked for years at a print s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin And Lewis
Martin and Lewis were an American comedy duo, comprising singer Dean Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis. They met in 1945 and debuted at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 25, 1946; the team lasted ten years to the day. Before they teamed up, Martin was a nightclub singer, while Lewis performed a comedy act lip-synching to records. They performed in nightclubs, and, starting in 1949, on radio. Later they branched out into television and films. In their early radio days they performed as ''Martin and Lewis'' but later became hugely popular as ''Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis''. These full names helped them launch successful solo careers after parting. Nightclubs In 1944, Dean Martin met a young Jerry Lewis at the Glass Hat Club in New York City, where both men were performing. Martin and Lewis debuted at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 25, 1946, when Lewis suggested to the club owner that Martin would be a good replacement for the scheduled singer who was unavailable. The duo was n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
