{"id":39038,"date":"2023-03-03T00:01:09","date_gmt":"2023-03-03T05:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=39038"},"modified":"2023-03-03T08:28:33","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T13:28:33","slug":"the-bootleg-files-once-upon-a-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/03\/the-bootleg-files-once-upon-a-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Once Upon a Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 824:<\/strong> \u201cOnce Upon a Tour\u201d (1972 TV special designed to boost the career of Dora Hall). <\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube. <\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> A brief VHS video release.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> A music rights clearance issue coupled with an overwhelming degree of obscurity. <\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Utterly unlikely. <\/p>\n

During the 1970s, a series of variety specials turned up on independent TV stations around the U.S. that revolved around a singing-dancing-joking septuagenarian named Dora Hall. If you born after the 1970s passed into the history books, there\u2019s an excellent chance you never heard of Dora Hall. And if you were around during the Decade That Good Taste Forgot, there\u2019s an equally excellent chance that Dora Hall\u2019s name does not ring that proverbial bell.
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She was born Dorothy Myrtle Donahoe and her birth is usually attributed to the year 1900, although it was possible she was born earlier. When she was 10, she made her show business debut as part of a vaudeville song-and-dance act. She later performed as part of a vocal trio called The Harmony Maids that reportedly entertained the U.S. soldiers before they shipped out for World War I, but at 18 she retired to marry Leo Hulseman, who worked for the Dixie Cup Company.<\/p>\n

Hulseman believed that he could a better job with disposable cups and in the 1930s he started Solo Cup Company. This venture was wildly successful, with Hulseman\u2019s product line running the gamut from the paper cups attached to water coolers to the red Solo cups sold on college campuses and at sports arenas. <\/p>\n

By 1962, Mrs. Hulseman wanted to move beyond her station as a mother and grandmother and return to her show business roots. And thanks to her husband\u2019s millions, she resumed her singing career with a series of records under labels that her husband financed. Unfortunately, the newly christened Dora Hall made little impact on the music industry \u2013 her only single to chart was a 1962 tune \u201cHello Faithless\u201d that somehow reached #39 on the Chicago station WLS\u2019 Top 40 list for one week before disappearing into obscurity.<\/p>\n

Solo Cup Company tried to bring the musical charms of Dora Hall to the masses by including her 45 rpm records in packages of Solo Cozy Cups. (See the below photo.) But that ingenious gimmick didn\u2019t propel the aging songstress to stardom. In 1972, Hulseman put up $400,000 to produce a one-hour television special that would not only showcase Dora Hall\u2019s singing, but also her dancing and sense of light comedy. <\/p>\n

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The resulting \u201cOnce Upon a Tour\u201d feels like two shows running at once. One show is a typical silly\/campy 1970s-style TV special with B-list stars trying to be hip and relevant, and the other show is Dora Hall living her dream of being in the Hollywood spotlight. <\/p>\n

\u201cOnce Upon a Tour\u201d opens at a bus stop in tiny Prairieville, Kansas, where a bus pulls in for a stop. Rosey Grier is the bus driver and he alerts his passengers that they are stopping for a brief rest \u2013 except for one woman sitting by an open window, the bus appears to be empty. Dora Hall runs to the bus carrying a suitcase and proclaiming that she was there to take the bus to Hollywood. As luck would have it, Prairieville is the only stop on the bus, which is heading straight for Hollywood.<\/p>\n

Once in the entertainment capital, Dora Hall joins a tour of a television studio. Rich Little is the tour guide and he takes his visitors past rehearsal halls where Phil Harris, Frank Sinatra Jr. and the mononym pop star Oliver are practicing their songs. During the tour, Dora Hall daydreams about appearing with the famous entertainers \u2013 she joins the singers plus Little in a medley of songbook standards and 60s pop tunes \u2013 and also imagines herself performing in her own solo numbers. And speaking of going solo, an eagle-eyed viewer can spot Solo Cozy Cups placed at various locations throughout the studio.<\/p>\n

The genuine surprise about \u201cOnce Upon a Tour\u201d is that Dora Hall was genuinely charming and, with the right material, could sell a number with style and pizazz. The peak of the production is a song and dance number that she performs with another old-time vaudevillian, the great Ben Blue. Dressed in Blue\u2019s trademark shabby suit and hat, the unlikely leading lady matches Blue in the dance steps while purring a bluesy number about his supposedly feckless concept of fidelity. It\u2019s a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the special keeps putting its cast into segments where they are vocally ill-suited. Dora Hall should not be singing \u201cBlue Suede Shoes\u201d and \u201cHey Jude,\u201d Rich Little should not be tasked with singing \u201cRocky Raccoon\u201d and Frank Sinatra Jr. should not be steamrolling through \u201cHappy Together\u201d sounding like a second-rate imitation of his father\u2019s distinctive vocalizing. A few comic segments, with Little doing a horrible Dean Martin imitation and Blue leading an incompetent chorus in pop-gospel tunes, is not helped by canned laughter and applause on the soundtrack.<\/p>\n

This production was shot in the summer of 1970 and throughout 1971 Hulseman tried to interest the three major networks \u2013 ABC, CBS and NBC \u2013 in \u201cOnce Upon a Tour\u201d with the guarantee that Solo Cup Company would cover the commercial sponsorship for the production. All three networks turned him down, so in January 1972 he arranged for the production to be syndicated to independent stations around the country as a prime time special. During the 1970s, these stations mostly offered old movies, reruns of classic shows, local sports and syndicated talk shows for their prime-time line-up, so having a fully sponsored original variety special \u2013 even one as wobbly as \u201cOnce Upon a Tour\u201d \u2013 was a good business proposition as a one-off happening. <\/p>\n

There was no great interest from the public in \u201cOnce Upon a Tour,\u201d but Hulseman used his millions to produce several additional Dora Hall specials that were sold into syndication with Solo Cup Company sponsorship during the 1970s. These specials would later be packaged in the early 1980s as VHS videos sold with the company\u2019s disposable cups.<\/p>\n

Dora Hall recorded several more records \u2013 including a disco collection! \u2013 before retiring at the end of the 1970s. When she passed away in 1988, her death went unnoticed by the entertainment media.<\/p>\n

Incredibly, some people fondly recalled Dora Hall\u2019s efforts and some of her television work can be found on YouTube in unauthorized postings. Since it is impossible imagine anyone working to clear the music rights to the songs in her specials while restoring the production to a 4K level, these YouTube selections will have to serve as Dora Hall\u2019s thin slice of show biz immortality.<\/p>\n