This thread got me to thinking. In the 70s, it seemed like everybody had a variety show on TV. The networks were handing them out like candy. Hell, I’m pretty sure I had a variety show for a couple of episodes.
Anyway, let’s see if we can come up with a list of all the celebrities (often B-and C-listers) who hosted variety shows in the 70s. (60s and 80s bleed-over is OK.)
I’ll start with The Jim Stafford Show, hosted by Jim Stafford, best known for a handful of novelty hits (“Spiders and Snakes,” “Wildwood Weed,” e.g.)
Maybe I’m checking the thread earlier enough to pick some low-hanging fruit, but I personally remember seeing Donny and Marie Osmond, and The Captain and Tennille. Also The Muppet Show.
Okay let’s go to the lesser known ones:
Keane Brothers (11 year olds famous for, uh, being 11)
Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis (from the Fifth Dimension)
Starlight Vocal Band
Manhattan Transfer
Gladys Knight
Most of these were summer replacement shows. Wonder why the networks liked variety shows in that season.
Here are two variety shows (forgot their actual show names). One great, one best left in the vaults:
1975 Manhatten Transfer
1976 Starland Vocal Band
I watched MT’s show when it first aired back in 1975. Great stuff almost entirely consisting of the quartet’s singing. I avoided SVB show like the plague.
(btw, i’m a “longtime listener, first time caller”. this is my first post. hope it was done correctly.)
Howard Cosell actually hosted the “first” Saturday Night Live, which was on ABC. It was a completely different show from the NBC icon, which came shortly afterwards.
I don’t know if I never saw it, or just repressed it, but The Brady Bunch Hour. From Wikipedia, it seems to have been a show where the Bradys had a variety show, so it was kind of meta, but had the variety show skits, so i think it counts.
I’m sure that no one will be surprised that Wikipedia has a list of American variety shows although they’re not all from the 1970s. (Remember The Don Knotts Show? I didn’t, but then I was about five when it aired in 1970-71.)
I watched and enjoyed The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show on Saturday mornings in the mid-seventies, though I can only remember one bit (and truth be told, I can’t absolutely guarantee it was actually from that show - the seventies are a bit of a blur):
The Hudsons are singing a pseudo-Latin love song, with Brett (or whoever was the “zany” one) directly singing to a hot Latina with his brothers as backup:
Brett: I like your eyes.
Backup: I like your eyes.
Brett: I like your lips.
Backup: I like your lips.
Brett: Would you like my teeth? [shows her one of those novelty clacking-teeth toys, she walks away in disgust, he shrugs and puts the teeth back in his pocket, sings the rest of the song with his brothers]
Remember back when people used to remember things?