"You could almost hear the sequins": Old-time radio listening, 5 November

November 5, 5:05 AMOld-Time Radio ExaminerJeff Kallman

The Big Show: Series Premiere (NBC, 1950)

You are about to be entertained by some of the biggest names in show business. Thus does stage legend Tallulah Bankhead---following the individual self-introductions by the evening's guests: Fred Allen, Mindy Carson, Jimmy Durante, Jose Ferrer, Portland Hoffa, Frankie Laine, Paul Lukas, Ethel Merman, Russell Nype, Danny Thomas, and Meredith Willson---launch NBC's extravagant last-gasp effort at keeping old-time radio variety alive against the rise of television.

BANKHEAD: This is radio, 1950. The greatest stars of our time on one big program. And the most fabulous part about this, darlings, is that every Sunday we will present other stars of the same magnitude. Uh, pardon me if I sound like a name dropper, but, uh, let's look into three or four of the names we've lined up for next week's show: Groucho Marx, Fanny Brice, Jane Powell, and Ezio---Pinnnn-za! (Laughter.)

Well, now, don't just sit there with your mouths open, darlings---I know what you're thinking---you think such a radio show every week is impossible. And I'm sure that, after you hear our first broadcast, you're going to say that show was impossible. (Laughter.) Oh, no---that doesn't sound quite right, does it?(Laughter.)

But NBC says nothing is impossible. All it takes is courage, vision, and a king-sized bundle of dough. Each week, there will be comedy, drama, music, all performed by the biggest stars of the time. Of course, darlings, now and then a clinker may sneak in, but we're going to try---

JIMMY DURANTE: Just a minute, just a minute---I heard that last remark and I resemble it!

And thus launches The Big Show with a classic musical patter routine from the Old Schnozzolla; a show-stopping stage musical condensation from Merman, Lukas, and Nype (including "The Hostess With The Mostest" from Call Me Madam); a classic slip fight between Merman and Bankhead, then Durante and Thomas (You stay outta this, No-Nose!---Durante to Bankhead); music from Carson and Laine; drama from Ferrer; a vintage satire from Fred Allen and Portland Hoffa; and, a rousing show-closing tribute to George M. Cohan (whose death occurred eight years to the day before the show premieres).

With each week's guests introducing themselves, eventually closing each show otherwise by singing Willson's "May The Good Lord Bless and Keep You" sequentially, and Bankhead finishing with a soft-spoken tribute to American armed forces around the world (the show coincides to the Korean War), The Big Show will endure for two full seasons, with individual programs costing as much as $100,000 (huge money for the day) to mount.

Goodman Ace (who has retired from on-air performing to concentrate on writing) heads the show's writing staff of Selma Diamond, Frank Wilson, George Foster, Mort Greene, and even Fred Allen for the shows on which he will appear. Willson serves as both the show's musical director and a periodic on-air foil ("Yes, sir, Miss Bankhead?" becomes a near-running gag between Willson and Dame Tallulah), and Dee Engelbach produces.

As things will turn out, getting the top entertainers in the business to perform proves not necessarily a big headache. And neither, when all is said and done, will the otherwise notorious Dame Tallulah.

That show never paid any money, they worked for practically coolie labour, like $2500 a week. It was a prestige show . . . People wanted to get on it, because it was only one day's rehearsal and the next day you did it . . .

I had other offers to do television shows but I said no, this sounds like something I want to do. I'd never met Miss Bankhead, but I knew the legend that she was. She brought us that. A writer looks for something like that. He's got something there he can spark with.

---Goodman Ace, 1970.

The show will live up, indeed, to Tallulah Bankhead's series-premiere promise. Some of the biggest but also most forward-looking and enduring entertainers of the time will appear on the show. They will include jazz and pop titans Louis Armstrong, Tony Bennett, Billy Eckstine, Benny Goodman, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, and Sarah Vaughan; comic giants Allen, Brice, Gertrude Berg, Bob and Ray, Victor Borge, Ed Gardner, Bob Hope, Martin and Lewis, Phil Silvers, Ed Wynn, and the irrepressible Groucho; actors Ethel Barrymore, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, and Ferrer; opera legends Pinza, Lauritz Melchoir, Robert Merrill, and Jan Peerce; and, legendary French chanteuses Edith Piaf and Lucienne Boyer, for openers.

As if to take television's bull by the horns, the show will also come to feature performers beginning to make the new medium's name---including Milton (Mr. Television) Berle, Imogene Coca, Bob Cummings, Joan Davis, Garry Moore, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Danny Thomas, and Paul Winchell. None of whom or which prevents Fred Allen, on the show's premiere, from delivering his classic wisecrack: "Television is a new medium, and I have discovered why it's called a new medium---because nothing is well done."

The Big Show was not just more grand than most radio shows---it was also more witty, smoothly produced, smart, and ambitious, with an interesting juxtaposition of guests, but it wasn't significantly different. It was just a more lavish, inflated revival of radio's earliest form---the variety showcase; you could almost hear the sequins . . . [but it was] as close to a Broadway show as radio could whip together each week.

---Gerald Nachman, in "We're A Little Late, So Good Night, Folks," from Raised on Radio. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.)

Bankhead---whose ability as an ad-libber and wit in her own right would be enhanced by Ace and company's weekly scripts---will admit in due course that she accepted the chance to host The Big Show because she needed the money, and nearly changed her mind when she feared she'd be little more than a glorified announcer with a name.

Brother, was she ever wrong . . .

Guess what happened? Your heroine emerged from the fracas as the Queen of the Kilocycles. Authorities cried out that Tallulah had redeemed radio. In shepherding my charges through The Big Show, said the critics, I had snatched radio out of the grave. The autopsy was delayed.

---Tallulah Bankhead, from Tallulah. (New York: Harper & Row, 1952.)

Delayed but not, alas, to be denied, at least in terms of The Big Show. NBC will lose an estimated $1 million on their investment (again, in 1950 that is phenomenal money on either side of the ledger), and The Big Show will expire as an ongoing production at the end of the 1951-52 season.

Its ambition will endure and, at its absolute best, provide future listeners with a powerful enough microcosm of some of America's classiest entertainment. Even if some of the performers will find themselves regurgitating work they had done earlier, allowed such an expansive atmosphere many will find those chestnuts coming forth with an unexpected freshness.

At its less than best, however, The Big Show---whose ratings cannot compete with those garnered by The Jack Benny Program and The Charlie McCarthy Show, with which CBS (which had recently raided those shows from NBC) opposes it---will seem to be precisely the way historian John Dunning will describe it: "despite its stated intention not to sound like a star-swamped benefit broadcast, [the show] often sounded precisely like that."

FURTHER CHANNEL SURFING . . . 

Vic & Sade: Vic's Christmas List (NBC, 1941)---Vic (Art Van Harvey) enjoys a quiet game of solitaire until Sade (Bernadine Flynn) finds what she thinks is a rather extravagant Christmas gift list he almost threw in the trash, a list including names she's never heard of. A classic of this show's impeccably calm absurdism. Rush: Bill Idelson. Announcer: Ed Herlihy. Writer/Director: Paul Rhymer.

The Life of Riley:  Piano Lessons for Junior (NBC, 1945)---All it takes for Riley (William Bendix) to hatch that hare-brained idea is Gillis (Conrad Binyon) bragging about his piano-playing kid at lunch. Typical series entry; if you're a fan, you'll love it. Junior: Scotty Beckett. Peg: Paula Winslowe. Babs: Sharon Douglas. Announcer: Ken Niles. Director: Leonard Bercovici. Writers: Leonard Bercovici, Alan Lipscott, Ruben Ship, Robert Sloane.

The Mel Blanc Show: Mel Breaks the New Radio (CBS, 1946)---The day after throwing Mel (Blanc) out for inadvertently breaking his new radio ("It was so beautiful it got me all confused . . . I threw out the radio and plugged in the crate"), Colby (Joseph Kearns) accepts a conciliatory gesture and lets Mel return---on condition he not even think about trying to repair the radio. One of the better entries in this not-too-brilliantly-conceived exercise, but you'll still find yourself unable to resist thinking Blanc wasn't  really that well-suited to carry a regular series compared to his brilliance as a supporting actor. Betty: Mary Jane Croft. Cushing: Hans Conreid. Zookie: Mel Blanc. Announcer: Bud Easton. Director: Joe Rines. Writer: Mac Benoff.

The Henry Morgan Show: The DIscovery of Weather (ABC, 1947)---You'll never hear it examined and discussed quite the way it is here, with Morgan's customary, cantankerously cheerful cheekiness. Gerard: Arnold Stang. Additional cast: Art Carney, Florence Halop, Madeline Lee. Announcer: Jay Stewart. Music: Bernie Green Orchestra. Director: Charles Powers. Writers: Henry Morgan, Aaron Ruben, Carroll Moore, Jr., Joe Stein.

Our Miss Brooks: Indian Burial Grounds (CBS, 1950)---Conklin (Gale Gordon) is in for a rude surprise when he thinks a piece of property he owns may sit on a sacred Indian burial site. Connie: Eve Arden. Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Harriet: Gloria McMillan. Walter: Richard Crenna. Boynton: Jeff Chandler. Stretch: Leonard Smith. Announcer: Bob LaMond. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Writer/director: Al Lewis.