Tom Jones had a variety show that won a Golden Globe. The Hudson brothers had a show, and Bill Cosby had two. One of the Cosby variety shows introduced the world to Lola Falana!
I dunno, sometimes we sit and watch together. Not as much, though, as we used to, and IIRC, TV viewership is slumping anyway.
Speaking of Red Skelton’s sign-off message: does anyone remember the humble, almost plaintiff line – something like, “If our show has brought one moment of happiness into your home, we have fulfilled our goal”. It seemed very genuine – he lived to make people laugh.
And a-way we go!
For a long time, Bob Hope kept coming on with a special every few months that pretty well fit the Variety Show pattern.
Didn’t the Lawrence Welk show survive into the 90s on PBS?
I haven’t seen many variety shows, but those I have seen were invariably dull as dishwater.
“Only in reruns,” as Damon Killian would say. The last show (of which I have a copy), was taped in 1982.
I remember part of the Hudson Brothers’ Show.
"No thanks, we’re trying to cut down.
Rrrrr."
I think I can still do that routine.
Nobody has yet mentioned The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, surely a contender for worst ever variety show.
I remember really liking the Hudson Brothers, but for the life of me I can’t remember a thing about the show. What were there more famous talents and sketches?
All I remember about Tom Jones is that he’d open the show singing, “Love is like candy on a shell…”
Can you imagine today’s music stars carrying a show? It doesn’t seem likely…
“Live, from Mile 8, it’s the Eminem show!”
“Yo, Motherf*ers, kiss my a!”
<applause>
Doesn’t it kind of live on in ethnic programming? I’ve thought more than once that Sabado Gigante looks like something time-ported from 1958, what with the skits, singalongs, and occasional product plugs by Don Francisco himself.
The reasons this works probably track what others have mentioned. Ethnic networks haven’t yet sub-fragmented to the extent English-language programming has been carved up (though maybe as more specialized ethnic networks emerge, a la Hispanic music channels, the appeal of seeing enthusiastic but not very polished lounge-act-type singers on a variety show will wane). Also, English speakers have had 50 years of television saturation in which to get jaded about “corny” formats, whereas some emerging markets still probably find it wondrous enough just to have the shows in their language at all.
Sort of like how Bollywood gets away with ridiculous musical set pieces bursting out at every turn in their movies, when for the most part this has been on the decline in American film for decades.
Well that snip was from a running gag in which an eight-year-old boy in a three piece suit would arrive in the middle of the sketch. He was supposed to be the Executive Producer. He would give the Hudson Brothers orders and then offer them some disgusting thing from his pocket. The Hudsons would reply in unison:
“No thanks,” and snap their fingers, and then:
“We’re tryin’ to cut down,” and slap their left hands across the tops of their right hands.
Then the “executive producer” would extend his arm from his waist towards the Hudson Brothers. They would all lean back and say “Rrrr” in unison. The we’d cut to a performance of “So You Are a Star,” or some other Hudson Brothers “hit.”
I also have to recommend The Smothers Brothers Show, both the original 1967 version and the later version they had a few years ago.
They had a good musical guest, would do comedy skits and music with the guest and just themselves, and pure comedy sections. They would occasionally do a monolog with a social or political theme to it, a little soapbox, but something you could identify with.
One thing they did on both incarnations of their show was occasionally have a guest actor do a “dramatic reading”. Sometimes it would be a fairly big or well known actor, other times a charactor actor you had seen a million times but never knew their name. The actor would come out on stage, alone, no costume, no scenery, no explanation before hand. They would recite some prose or poetry or tell a story by being all the charactors. By the time their four or five minutes was through, you had completely forgotten they were an actor you had seen before and were entirely caught up in the story they told.
To go out on a bare stage and mesmirize an audience in only a few minutes with only your voice and your heart - how incredible is that!