TFTP's Monochrome March: "The Steve Allen Show" from NBC (Jul. 1, 1956)

Posted to YouTube by user 'balsamwoods'
Length - 58:23

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

This episode of "The Steve Allen Show" is the famous one where Elvis Presley, in one of his first appearances on national television, was forced to sing "Hound Dog" to a hound dog. Steve Allen was famous for denigrating and ridiculing rock music. His disregard for rock--right up until the end of his life in 2000--became a real blind spot for him, as his attempts to (he thought) expose the ridiculousness of the form instead made him look ridiculous. This was the context in which he made Presley serenade the hound dog in this episode.

Allen's prime-time variety show had premiered just a month before this July 1956 episode. He had been host of NBC's "Tonight" since 1954 (the premiere episode of which was featured on TFTP recently), and he did double duty on "Tonight" and this Sunday night variety show until he left "Tonight" in 1957. The Sunday night show competed with the "Ed Sullivan Show" and this booking of Presley was undoubtedly an attempt to score an early ratings victory. (Presley, of course, would soon after make an even more famous appearance on Sullivan's program.)

The episode above begins with a bit between Allen and fellow variety host Milton Berle before going on to a musical number of the song "Picnic", a humorous sit-down interview with then-newcomer Andy Griffith, a viking-themed number by Allen show regulars Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, and a bit by Allen (of questionable taste to us now) where he lampoons an Indian yogi. Allen and guest Imogene Coca play a married couple in a sketch that sends up the "realism" seen in recent Hollywood movies, and finally three-quarters of the way through the episode Elvis makes his appearance.

Presley, after a brief introductory chat with Allen, gamely and in good humor performs "Hound Dog" to the hound dog, wearing a tuxedo to boot. Presley returns, along with Griffith and Coca and host Allen, in a show-closing musical comedy sketch that sends up country and western music.