Four Star Revue
Season 1 - 1950-1951

Jimmy Durante finds "the lost chord" in his premiere telecast on Four Star Revue.

Like The Colgate Comedy Hour, Four Star Revue started out with four rotating hosts - Ed Wynn, Jack Carson, Jimmy Durante, and Danny Thomas. But unlike its sister show, Revue managed to maintain much more consistency in hosts throughout most of its first season. It wasn't until after Jimmy Durante had completed his obligation of eight episodes in May that any substitutes were needed, and regular Danny Thomas and non-regular Jackie Gleason stepped in to fill the open slots. (Durante had originally contracted for nine episodes but begged out of the last one, reportedly because the show originated from New York and he was homesick for Hollywood.)

Though TV was still an infant in 1950, Ed Wynn already had a year's experience in the medium, having hosted his own show on CBS the previous season. He brought over most of his usual schtick, including the "perfect fool" persona, the outlandish costumes, wacky inventions, and bedtime setting while the credits rolled. It was a step up for him, or at least an easier job, since he was called upon to do only an hour once a month, instead of half an hour every week. "He was temporarily reprieved from losing his audience through overexposure, which is the danger that haunts every comic on a weekly series," explained Wynn's son Keenan in his book Ed Wynn's Son. "Now the props and gags had to be trotted out only once every four weeks." It worked for while, but the repetitious formula would eventually wear thin.

With his Make Room for Daddy sitcom still a few years away, Danny Thomas was not yet a full-fledged star, but by the start of his Four Star Revue stint, had shown enough potential as a night club entertainer that critics foresaw good things for him. Things were rocky at the start before he reached an accommodation with the new medium. In the early episodes, Thomas would often be paired with comedian Julie Oshins. By the end of March 1951, he was featuring a couple of new regulars who caught on quickly with viewers. Kay Starr was a promising young singer who would hit it big a few years later with the song "Wheel of Fortune." Playing Danny's daughter, lovable tyke Bunny Lewbel allowed the comic to show his softer side (something he'd have a chance to develop more fully on Make Room for Daddy).

The darling of critics, as well as the viewing audience, Jimmy Durante came on like gangbusters on television. "A lovable, energetic, ungrammatical and gloriously rebellious soul who, with a twinkle in his eye, carried on his one-man travesty on culture," wrote Jack Gould of The New York Times. "Never did he let television get in his way; with Durante it was a case of the new medium making the adjustment to his way of life." Durante's malapropisms ("What a catastrostroke!") and catch phrases ("Everybody's tryin' to get into the act!") had endeared him to the millions who had seen him in movies or listened to him on radio. While other TV comics suffered from material that got stale over time, Durante's boundless enthusiasm kept his fresh. From the start, the format was pretty much the same: open with "Start Off Each Day With a Song" (punctuated by frequent pauses for jokes and foolish goings on), plunge into the audience and carry on with a "plant" there, sing a number with his beautiful chorus girls, do a segment in the old Club Durant with singing and strutting partner Eddie Jackson, close with the song "Goodnight, Goodnight, Goodnight" and the farewell, "Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are."

A success on radio, Durante had been persuaded to move into television by his manager, friend, and ex-vaudeville partner Lou Clayton (who along with Durante and Eddie Jackson had made up Clayton, Jackson, and Durante). It was sound advice, because the move not only won Jimmy critical and popular success, but a Peabody Award in 1950 and an Emmy in 1953. Durante wanted to include Clayton on his show, just as he did Jackson, but Lou passed away on September 12, 1950, less than two months before Jimmy's debut on the new medium.

Jack Carson was a well-respected character actor with a wide range of roles in movies like Mildred Pierce (1945) and A Star Is Born (1954). He starred in a series of films with Dennis Morgan, as well as in his own radio series before moving into television. More comic actor than comedian, Carson assembled a capable ensemble cast to help with the comedy, including actress/singer Lola Albright (his future wife), Betty and Jane Kean, the team of Bob Sweeney and Hal March (Harry Morton on Burns and Allen, host of The $64,000 Question), comic dancers The Honey Brothers, chronic inebriate Jack Norton, and Billy Sands (later of Sgt. Bilko, Car 54, and McHale's Navy). But perhaps Carson's greatest asset was brilliant comedy writer Nat Hiken, who wrote book shows, i.e., comedy bits and songs that were centered around a plot or premise. It wasn't an entirely new idea, but it was successful in differentiating Carson from the other Revue hosts.

In 1950, it wasn't yet possible to broadcast coast-to-coast, so Four Star Revue, like most live shows, originated from New York (with viewers in other time zones watching a delayed kinescope). At the start of the season, Ed Wynn was the only host to use the Center Theatre (formerly a venue for ice shows but recently converted to a TV studio) at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. The others at first declined to follow suit because of the theater's huge 3700-seat capacity, fearing that the audience wouldn't have a good view of the stage and might not laugh at the appropriate moments. But when NBC installed a television monitor there in January 1951, the problem was solved and Durante, Thomas, and Carson relocated.

TV set manufacturer Motorola opened the season as sole sponsor of the show, but cut back after 13 episodes. In January, they began sharing sponsorship with Pet Evaporated Milk and Norge refrigerators, each paying a third of the cost. Four Star Revue cost $50,000 a week to produce, compared to only $17,500 for its CBS competition, (Arthur) Godfrey and Friends. But according to the Videodex ratings service, Revue reached an average of 2,339,000 homes, while Godfrey's homes totaled 3,519,000. That worked out to a cost of $6.89 per viewer for Revue, compared to $1.46 for Godfrey. With figures like that, it's not hard to see why sponsors balked.

Copyright 2007 by Jim Davidson. All Rights Reserved.