BOOTLEG FILES 888: “Broadway Open House” (1950-51 television series that pioneered the concept of late-night television).
LAST SEEN: Two extant episodes are online.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: A combination of music rights issues and a low survival rate of kinescoped episodes.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Probably not.
The other day, I was scanning through social media and I came upon a posting from a news organization with a headline that read something like “Jimmy Kimmel Rips Trump’s Economic Proposals” – and under the headline was a picture of the obnoxious late-night host squinting and scowling while he was reading his agitprop from a TelePrompter. My reaction to this was negative – really, who wants to end their day watching a painfully unfunny late-night host bloviating for the zillionth time about his hatred of Donald Trump? Then, another thought hit me. We all know where late-night television is today, with its emetic hosts spewing far-left political commentary before engaging in vapid faux-interviews with the current line-up of dreary talent. But I wanted to know where late-night television began and what yesteryear’s audiences enjoyed at the end of their days. The answer: it began in 1950 with a show called “Broadway Open House,” and the story of its rise and fall is nothing short of astonishing.
When television first took root in American households, network programming ended by 11:00 p.m., with locally offerings taking the overnight hours. In April 1950, NBC announced that it was selling airtime between 11:00 p.m. and midnight to Anchor Hocking, a glassware company that provided beer breweries with bottles. Under this deal coordinated by NBC producer Sylvester “Pat” Weaver, Anchor Hocking would sponsor a live revue show during that time slot and redistribute the advertising time during the show to brewery clients in a set-up that Billboard described as “local cut-in announcements plugging the beers according to the appropriate distribution.
NBC saw this unlikely opportunity as a chance to introduce a young comedy performer named Don Hornsby. The 26-year-old Texas-born Hornsby gained a popular following in the Los Angeles area for a wildly surreal nightclub act that involved music, magic, acrobatics, surreal humor and audience participation. Hornsby’s shows could run as long as five hours without a break – he would eat bananas and potato chips while on stage to stay fueled – and he delighted audiences by yelling out “Creesh” throughout his performance. Sadly, there is no film footage of Hornsby in performance, but the write-ups and still photos from his act give the impression of Olsen and Johnson mixed with Ernie Kovacs.
Hornsby gained a fan in Bob Hope, who advocated on his behalf at NBC. The network believed the energetic young funnyman would be perfect as the host of its new endeavor, which would run weekday evenings under the title “Broadway Open House.”
Tragically, Hornsby contracted polio and died one week before “Broadway Open House” was scheduled to premiere. Rather than trust the show to a single performer, NBC opted to split the hosting duties between a pair of old-school comics who already captained shows in the still-new medium – Morey Amsterdam was given the Monday and Wednesday hosting duties while Jerry Lester was the star on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights.
“Broadway Open House” premiered on May 29, 1950 with the rotating host set-up. Six months into the run, Amsterdam was abruptly fired. It is unclear why Amsterdam was let go – and since no copies of his episodes are known to survive, we cannot say whether his departure was due to on-screen quality or off-screen problems. Jerry Lester took over the hosting duties of “Broadway Open House” for the full week.
At the moment, there is a kinescope of only one extant episode of Lester’s “Broadway Open House” available for YouTube viewing (from January 30, 1951), while another extant episode is on the Internet Archive (from December 14, 1950). If the surviving full episodes (which you can see below) are any indication, “Broadway Open House” was everything that today’s late-night programming is not – incredibly fast-moving, spontaneous, wacky, borderline chaotic and wholly original.
“Broadway Open House” was mostly (but not entirely) improvised on the spot. In the YouTube-available episode, Lester shrugged off a few dud jokes by acknowledging to his studio audience that the evening’s production was not rehearsed. As a result of the lack of intense preparation, the show had a zany vibe as the cast screwed up their lines, cracked each other up, or began ad-libbing into different directions than the intended premise.
It was also very much an on-the-cheap effort – when vocalist David Street comes out to sing, he carries a large potted palm to put behind him to give the impression of a scenery change. The skits rarely had specific sets, and most of the cast usually gathered close together at center stage, with three or more people bunched on camera at one time.
The tall and handsome Street served as a decent foil to the short and manic Lester, who surrounded himself with such unlikely sidekicks as the mischievous accordionist Milton Delugg (who usually carried his instrument and began playing to enliven the shenanigans), the tap dancer Ray Malone (who spoke in a screechy voice reminiscent of Jerry Lewis’ act) and announcer Wayne Howell (who did the straight man bit to Lester’s comedy). A singing quartet called the Mello-Larks (consisting of three men and a woman) would offer a musical interlude and sometimes get involved in the skits, but the most striking member of the ensemble was a statuesque model known by the mononym Dagmar. She wore low-cut strapless black gowns and a large mane of blonde hair, and she was supposedly the show’s singing star – with the joke being that she never sang. Initially, she sat on a stool and smiled while watching the other performers, but over time she was incorporated into the skits as the dumb blonde character who slaughtered the language in a vain attempt to appear sophisticated. She joined Lester in deadpan poetry and dramatic readings, where she maintained a droll and dignified demeanor while towering over the diminutive Lester, who reeled off one-liners while grinning and popping his eyes upwards in her direction.
Lester was a bizarre presence – he was always very eager to please and energetic to the point of exhausting his viewers. He insisted to his audience, “Just call me Bean Bag” – it was never explained why he wanted that nickname – and often went off the stage with a microphone to interact with those who came out to see “Broadway Open House” in person. In the episode on YouTube, Lester and a visiting furrier offer mink coats to be modeled, with Lester bringing up several women from the audience to join the on-stage female talent in trying on the lush apparel.
The beauty of “Broadway Open House” is how fresh and spirited it is – especially compared to today’s excessively stage-managed late-night fare. Lester and his crew were confident in their abilities that they didn’t need an army of writers to create their jokes – and they had the smarts to know when something wasn’t clicking and the ability to think fast to come up a remark or gesture to save their skits. Unlike Jimmy Fallon, Lester was comfortable enough with himself that he didn’t need to be constant center of attention. And even better, “Broadway Open House” was a joyous show without a mean fiber in its fabric – compared that to Kimmel or especially Colbert with their miserable contempt for anyone who doesn’t agree with their politics. (I would add Greg Gutfeld to that mix, but his show is just before the late-night time slot.)
“Broadway Open House” didn’t rely on guest stars, although some unexpected one-shot appearances were made along the way, including jazz great Charlie Parker in a rare network appearance and a young Lenny Bruce when his material was still clean and safe.
Sadly, the fun couldn’t last forever and “Broadway Open House” began to lose steam as it approached its first anniversary on the air. Lester was burned out by having to perform five live hour-long shows every week, each with new material, and he wanted to transition to a less hectic schedule. There were also rumors that Lester became jealous when Dagmar became more popular with audiences. Lester left the show in May 1951 and attempts to keep it going with Dagmar as the host didn’t work. NBC eventually pulled the plug on “Broadway Open House” in August 1951 and would not attempt another late-night entertainment show until Steve Allen was picked to host “The Tonight Show” in 1954.
Lester’s star faded very quickly after “Broadway Open House” ended, while Dagmar briefly had her own late-night series before becoming a ubiquitous guest on variety, talk and game shows during the 1950s and early 1960s. Milton Delugg enjoyed a long career as a composer and performer, returning briefly to late-night television in the 1960s as the musical director for Johnny Carson’s version of “The Tonight Show.”
“Broadway Open House” was broadcast live in the Northeast and Midwest and recorded on kinescope to be shown in other parts of the country – this was before live television was seen coast-to-coast. But the survival rate of the kinescopes is not great. The Paley Center for Media in New York City has some episodes in its collection, but to date there has been no home entertainment anthology of the surviving productions. This could be due to music clearance issues, the visual quality of the kinescopes or the lack of knowledge that too many people have about “Broadway Open House.”
If the episodes below are any indication, keeping “Broadway Open House” out of sight is a mistake – it is a marvelous antique and a historically invaluable achievement in television history.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
Listen to Phil Hall’s award-winning podcast “The Online Movie Show with Phil Hall” on SoundCloud and his radio show “Nutmeg Chatter” on WAPJ-FM in Torrington, Connecticut, with a new episode every Sunday. His new book “100 Years of Wall Street Crooks” is now in release through Bicep Books.