TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "The Arthur Murray Show" from DuMont (Oct. 22, 1950)

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'zigoto'
Length - 29:26

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

Although not widely remembered today, Arthur Murray was a huge cultural presence from the 1930s through the 1950s due to his franchised chain of dance studios and then his television programs. By the end of the 1930s, Arthur Murray Studios had begun to establish a presence in most major American cities, and it's safe to say that by the time his TV program started in 1950, around the time of the above episode, that "Arthur Murray" had become synonymous with dance instruction in the U.S.

Murray's TV show aired for a decade between 1950 and 1960, at different times on all four networks and at different lengths ranging from 15 minutes to 60 minutes. For almost all of its run the show was called "The Arthur Murray Party", except for the year-and-a-half that it was on the DuMont network, when it was simply called "The Arthur Murray Show".

In the clip above, which is the second half of an hour-long episode from October of 1950, from during the show's DuMont run, we see host Kathryn Murray, Arthur Murray's wife and business partner, vivaciously usher guests and dancing couples in and out of the spotlight. (Curiously, Arthur Murray himself does not appear in this half-episode; it's not clear whether or not he appeared regularly.) Actors Reginald Gardiner and Beatrice Lillie guest star on this episode and both appear in comedy bits (Lillie alongside a very young Carl Reiner).

The entire program comes off more or less like an infomercial for Arthur Murray Dance Studios, as the chain of studios and the lessons available therein is mentioned several times throughout. This includes one segment with a dancing couple who had had just two Arthur Murray Studio dance lessons!

TFTP Kids: "The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show" from CBS (1974)

Posted to YouTube by user '70's Kids'
Length - 28:10

"The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show" is one of the more interesting shows--at least visually--from the 1970s live-action kids' show trend. The Hudson Brothers were a family musical act (those were also very popular in the Seventies) that had been around for about a decade by 1974, and the Brothers (Bill, Brett, and Mark) were just coming off of a prime-time summer variety show (those were also very popular in the Seventies). The summer show, titled simply "The Hudson Brothers Show", had aired in July and August, and just a week after its end, on September 7, 1974, "The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show" premiered on Saturday mornings (running until the following August).

Like many shows of the genre, the "razzle dazzle" consisted of brightly colored, somewhat psychedelic sets and costumes, a madcap sensibility to the songs and sketches, and a supporting cast of comical entertainers. The episode above includes several musical numbers, one with a troupe of acrobats jumping and flipping around using props such as a bathtub and a barber's chair. A couple of non-musical comedy sketches appear as well, one with a child network vice-president and another with a bear-costumed private-eye ("Sam Bear", a take-off of Sam Spade with noirish office complete with ceiling fan and blond moll).

There are commercials (most of them for toys of the 1970s) included in the commercial breaks in this copy of the episode, but they appear not to be original to the broadcast and inserted after the fact.

TFTP Variety: "Jack Benny's Bag" from NBC (Nov. 16, 1968)

Posted to YouTube by user 'balsamwoods'
Length - 1:01:39

Jack Benny's long-running weekly sitcom (a continuation of his long-running radio program) ended in 1965, and for the remainder of his career until his death in 1974 Benny did occasional TV specials. The above program is one of the early such specials, with a theme lampooning youth counterculture of the late-1960s, entitled "Jack Benny's Bag".

Like a lot of old-line comedians, Benny was pretty clueless when it came to the counterculture he was lampooning. In most cases of mainstream TV treatment of counterculture, including here, some garish colors, some psychedelic imagery, some youth-oriented clothing, and some tossed-off slang was thought to do the job.

In "Jack Benny's Bag", though, the counterculture elements are mainly window-dressing. Benny himself wears either a tuxedo or a regular suit throughout most of the special, and there is little of substance regarding the counterculture. (The one sketch that does treat it is a groan-worthy parody of the film "The Graduate" where Benny-as-Benjamin-Braddock enters through an arch that is a large mock-up of Mrs. Robinson's famous leg.) A pair of hippies appears near the beginning to collect payment for painting Benny's house (he assumed given their values that they'd do for free); Benny's Maxwell car, in which he makes his first appearance, has been painted in psychedelic designs, as has the stage backdrop; and that's about it.

Guests abound, including Dick Clark, Lou Rawls, Phyllis Diller (who portrays Mrs. Robinson in the "Graduate" sketch), Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, Eddie Fisher, and Benny's own former supporting player Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. (Rochester appears with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon as their "Odd Couple" characters in the special's cold opening.) Sponsored by Texaco, the special includes a few filmed commercials for that product, and a group of young girls in Texaco "Fire Chief" costumes appear with Benny in a couple of segments.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "All-Star Revue" from NBC (Feb. 14, 1953)

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'HappySwordsman'
Length - 56:57

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

In the fall of 1950, NBC launched a new variety show called "Four Star Revue"; the name derived from the four rotating hosts--Ed Wynn, Danny Thomas, Jack Carson, and Jimmy Durante. With the beginning of the show's second season in the fall of 1951--and an expanded roster of rotating hosts--the program's name was changed to "All-Star Revue". The episode above, hosted by singer Perry Como, is from the show's third season and originally aired on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1953.

The episode begins with a rather lengthy and elaborate musical number that has Como arriving at his office and being attended to by a large group of chorus girls, servants, deliverymen, even a shoeshine boy. The rest of the episode features comedy sketches with Joan Blondell, Ben Blue, and Patti Page; songs by Page ("How Much is That Doggie in the Window?"), Como ("You'll Never Walk Alone" from the play "Carousel"), and Page and Como duetting ("Side by Side"). There is also a very strange sketch near the middle in which Como and his kids tour an art museum in which the paintings all come to life and the figures in the paintings do short commercials for sponsor Pet Milk.

TFTP Comedy: "The George Burns Special" from CBS (1976)

Posted to YouTube by user 'balsamwoods'
Length - 50:35

George Burns was 80 years old at the time of this CBS special in 1976. He'd been in show business for decades, including in the pioneering TV sitcom he starred in with his wife Gracie Allen in the 1950s and which was featured on TFTP back in January. This special (his first since 1959, as he notes in his opening monologue) came as he was making a bit of a comeback due to his Oscar-winning performance in the film "The Sunshine Boys" in 1975--and as he settled into the final phase of his career, which was mainly a schtick on his increasingly advancing age.

Much of the special consists of Burns standing and puffing on his cigar while offering quips (many of them about his increasingly advancing age) and short renditions of old-timey musical numbers in his syncopated spoke-sung style. These are punctuated by all the other segments of the special: his introduction of the Osmond Brothers, who lip-sync a song; his playing straight man to Madeline Kahn, who takes the ditzy female role that Gracie Allen had played; his banter with Walter Matthau (again with Burns playing straight man); his interplay with Johnny Carson, who comically attempts to provide Burns with an opening act for his special; and his introduction of Chita Rivera, who sings "All That Jazz" from her hit Broadway show "Chicago".

TFTP's Monochrome March: "Cavalcade of Stars" from DuMont (Oct. 26, 1951)

Posted to YouTube by user 'WABDtv'
Length - 49:48

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!

"Cavalcade of Stars" started in June of 1949 on the DuMont network as a garden-variety early TV variety show--with dancers, singers, comedy sketches, and rotating hosts. Starting in July of 1950, one of those rotating hosts -- soon to become the show's only host -- was comedian Jackie Gleason. Gleason had been kicking around Hollywood for a number of years by 1950 and had appeared the previous year in the first version of the "Life of Riley" TV sitcom. "Cavalcade of Stars" would become the vehicle by which Gleason rocketed to stardom in TV comedy.

By fall of 1952, Gleason had been snapped up by the more prestigious CBS and "Cavalcade of Stars" moved over to the Tiffany Network, renamed "The Jackie Gleason Show". But before that, Gleason had a couple of solid seasons on DuMont as his star rose, and this episode is from the middle of that period, October of 1951. Most of Gleason's famous characters originated on the DuMont show, including Charlie Bratten ("The Loudmouth") and Reggie Van Gleason (both of which appear in the above episode), as well as the Honeymooners--which had appeared for the first time a few weeks before this episode aired.

This episode, after a brief monologue from Gleason (and his signature line "And away we go!"), begins with a dance number by the June Taylor Dancers, followed by a song from Georgia Gibbs. Gleason does a magic act which is followed by a musical/dance number called "Hangin' Around With You". The Loudmouth makes his appearance (with Art Carney's Clem Finch supporting) followed by a pair of songs. The show closes with a long sketch (that includes a comic musical performance) featuring Reggie Van Gleason, a character that lampoons upper class pretensions.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom" from ABC (Feb. 13, 1958)

Posted to the Internet Archive by user 'HappySwordsman'
Length - 25:45

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

Pat Boone was a major star and recording artist from the mid-1950s through the early-1960s, and while he has been known more in recent years for his conservative religious and political views, he was a big part of the popular music scene at the time of this episode from his ABC variety show.

"The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom"--which aired on ABC from October of 1957 through June of 1960--was one of a number of half-hour musical variety shows that were found in prime-time in the mid- to late-1950s. This episode, a Valentine's Day episode from February of 1958 (that aired on the same night as the Jack Benny 40th Birthday Celebration TFTP featured last week), features guest stars Gina Lollobrigida and Jimmy Dean. Pat banters with Lollobrigida, offering some pidgin-Italian that she playfully claims sounds like Hungarian, before later singing "That's Amore" with her. Jimmy Dean comes on and he and Pat sing a country song about "tater pie".

The program was sponsored by Chevrolet, of course, and near the opening Pat and his chorus offer a rousing round of the "See the USA in your Chevrolet" jingle. The rest of the Chevy ads from the episode--including one with Roy Rogers that Pat introduces--are unfortunately not in this copy of the program.

TFTP On This Day: "Shower of Stars" w/ Jack Benny's 40th Birthday from CBS (Feb. 13, 1958)

Posted to YouTube by user 'What's My Line?'
Length - 59:20

It Was 60 Years Ago Today: For most of his career, comedian Jack Benny had an ongoing gag in which he was perpetually 39 years old. It was foundational to Benny's entire comic persona--as important as his supposed miserliness. On this day sixty years ago, February 13, 1958, CBS broadcast this all-star episode of the "Shower of Stars" variety show in which Benny finally celebrated his 40th birthday.

The program opens with an extended red carpet sequence in which a parade of guests arrives for the show. The rest of the first half of the program consists of a series of sketches and musical numbers in which various current and former Benny show cast members, including Benny himself, prepare for the evening's festivities. In the process, cast members genuflect at the stations of Benny's comic persona: his cheapness, his poor violin playing, and of course his longevity as a 39-year-old.

"Shower of Stars" was sponsored by the Chrysler Corporation, and a few extended Chrysler ads are presented during breaks in the program. In addition, Chrysler references are worked in at a few other points in the program itself--most memorably with Jack's bathrobe that has Chrysler's "The Forward Look" motto embroidered on its back and tail fins pasted onto its sides.

The second half of the show takes place at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub (actually a set). More musical numbers punctuate testimonials given by selected guests. Benny himself takes over as emcee of the proceedings, which culminate with the entire ensemble, joined by the studio audience, singing "Happy Birthday" to Jack.

For what it's worth, Jack Benny's actual birthday was on February 14, the day after this special aired. He turned 64.

TFTP On This Day: "The Dinah Shore Show" from NBC (Jan. 10, 1952)

Posted to YouTube by user 'balsamwoods'
Length - 14:50

It Was 66 Years Ago Today: This episode of "The Dinah Shore Show", originally aired 66 years ago today, is a good example of two different things: first, of the early career of Dinah Shore, a television icon who had a broadcasting career (in radio and TV) that spanned forty years from the early-1940s until about 1980; and secondly, of the type of fifteen-minute music program that was common in the earliest period of TV from the late-1940s through the 1950s.

Dinah Shore had a singing career that went back even earlier than her broadcasting career, and in the early years her TV programs, including the one featured here, consisted mostly of music. By the mid-1950s, her show (now expanded to sixty minutes) had become a full-fledged variety show. At the beginning of the 1970s, she shifted mostly away from music to daytime talk-show hosting.

At the time of this 1952 episode, her show was only fifteen minutes long, and this was a fairly common program-length at the time for music shows that aired on the early fringe of prime-time. These programs often aired twice a week and alternated in the same timeslot with another fifteen-minute program that aired on two other nights of the week. For instance, during the 1953-54 season, Dinah's show aired on NBC from 7:30-7:45 Eastern on Tuesdays and Thursdays and alternated with "Coke Time with Eddie Fisher" that aired at the same time on Wednesdays and Fridays.

This episode, atypically for most of these fifteen-minute programs, actually has a loose storyline in which Dinah is put up for an audition that then leads to a screen test, with the two performances making up the bulk of the episode. At the time of this episode, Dinah's longtime sponsorship by Chevrolet autos (her later variety show was titled "The Dinah Shore Chevy Show") had already begun, and there are opening and closing Chevrolet segments with a mid-show commercial inserted as well.

Christmas at TFTP (On This Day Edition): "The Dean Martin Christmas Show" from NBC (Dec. 21, 1967)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Deano Martin'
Length - 51:29

It Was 50 Years Ago Today: Dean Martin had one of the top variety shows on TV for a whole decade from the mid-1960s straight into the mid-1970s. This gave him a whole career on his own after he broke up with comedy partner Jerry Lewis in which Martin became one of America's top singers. This Christmas special, aired on this day in 1967, fifty years ago today, represents Martin at the peak of his popularity as a singer and as a television star.

Martin was also famous, of course, as a member of the 1960s "rat pack" that included his pal Frank Sinatra. This yuletide episode of Martin's show is a holiday merger of the Martin and Sinatra families, as both men include their entire, rather large, families in a program that is packed full of songs, holiday and non-holiday in nature, sung by various combinations of the members of the two families.

Included are Nancy Sinatra singing a Christmas-themed version of her 1966 hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'"; Nancy and Dean's daughter Gail Martin singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"; a group song by Dean and Frank along with Nancy and Gail; another group song by Dean and Frank along with Dean Jr. and Frank Jr.; a version of "Do Re Mi" (from "The Sound of Music") with Dean and Frank along with their other daughters Deana Martin and Tina Sinatra; a long medley by Dean and Frank of many of their collective hits; and another long show-closing medley of Christmas songs by different members of the combined brood that included "There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays", "Let It Snow", "The Christmas Song", "White Christmas", "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", "Deck the Halls", "Joy to the World", and "Silent Night".

Christmas at TFTP: "The Andy Williams Christmas Show" from NBC (Dec. 18, 1966)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Cost Ander'
Length - 43:43

Andy Williams was a top variety show star of the 1960s, with a weekly variety show on NBC for most of the decade. This is his Christmas episode from December of 1966.

The program is a family affair, as Williams' three brothers, wife Claudine Longet (a French singer), and parents are all featured. Andy's first claim to fame was as a part of a vocal quartet with his brothers, and the Williams Brothers (clad in green from head to toe) sing a medley of Xmas songs here. The Osmond Brothers (including a very young Donny of "Donny and Marie" fame), regulars on Williams' variety show, perform a lengthy and elaborate choreographed musical number in a stylized candy factory with a red-and-white peppermint theme. And Andy performs a couple of numbers at the piano in his (soundstage set) living room.

The Christmas tunes featured here include "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" (which opens the show with Williams' and companions "riding" in an old-fashioned auto against a green-screen wintery background), "We Need a Little Christmas", "The Christmas Song" (one of the songs sung by Williams at the living room piano), "Winter Wonderland", and a show-closing "Silent Night" sung by Williams against a stained-glass backdrop.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "Art Linkletter's House Party" from CBS (Aug. 21, 1961)

Posted to YouTube by user 'historycomestolife'
Length - 11:27

Art Linkletter is one of the towering figures of the first twenty years or so of American television. Along with a few other figures, such as Arthur Godfrey, Garry Moore, and maybe a couple of others, Linkletter was a versatile television personality who utilized his easygoing and affable manner in an array of programs in the 1950s and '60s.

"Art Linkletter's House Party" was the centerpiece of his presence on American TV for all those years. A daytime variety program on CBS from 1952 until 1969, "House Party" started out as a radio program in 1945, and Linkletter continued to host the radio version as well through most of the TV program's run (until 1967). The program was kind of a grab bag of segments, including Linkletter chatting with a guest on stage about an activity, interviewing audience members about oddities, and Linkletter's most famous feature "Kids Say the Darndest Things" in which he interviewed small children to humorous results (and which resulted in a couple of very popular books in the late-1950s/early-1960s era).

The clip above, the first ten minutes or so of a "House Party" episode from 1961, in about the middle of the show's run, has examples of the first two types of segments mentioned above. First, Linkletter converses on stage with a dentist who has spearheaded a dental mission to "primitive" Madagascar. (The conversation is groan worthy today due to its outdated perspective on the culture found there.) Then, Linkletter ventures into the audience to talk briefly with several different audience members.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "Admiral Broadway Revue" from NBC/DuMont (Feb. 4, 1949)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Sid Caesar: Your Show of Shows / Caesar's Hour / Admiral Broadway Revue'
Length: 54:06

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week.

The "Admiral Broadway Revue" is famous now for being the first TV show that featured Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca together, before their legendary comedic partnership on "Your Show of Shows". It so happens that the program is also a great example of the TV variety show of the late-1940s--with a mix of comedy and music presented in a "revue" style format (defined by the Google as "a light theatrical entertainment consisting of a series of short sketches, songs, and dances").

The show only aired for about six months in the first half of 1949 (January to July), in an unusual arrangement in which it aired simultaneously on NBC and on the DuMont network. The episode featured here is the second one broadcast, and it features early performances by Caesar and Coca in the types of comic roles they would frequently portray later on "Your Show of Shows" (which started the following year, in 1950). Caesar plays a Russian busker who gets into a spat with a young couple, then a professor who demonstrates several different language dialects (prefiguring one of his most well-known later schticks); Coca plays a woman scientist and a comical torch singer. (The two do not appear together in this episode; that would happen for the first time later in the run "Admiral Broadway Revue".)

Caesar and Coca are far from the whole show, though, and there are a number of song performances in this episode, as well as a closing number that includes several kinds of circus acts. Like other variety shows of this era (and in contrast to a show like Milton Berle's "Texaco Star Theater") "Admiral Broadway Revue" did not have a permanent host, instead relying simply on the succession of acts--and an announcer introducing them--to maintain the forward motion of the program.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "Texaco Star Theater" from NBC (Spring 1949)

Posted to YouTube by user 'TheShootingstar31'

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program every Monday morning to kick off the week.

This week's inaugural Monochrome Monday goes back to the beginning of commercial TV with a 1949 episode of one of the earliest TV classics, Milton Berle's "Texaco Star Theater". This was the first blockbuster TV series, the popularity of which helped to establish the very medium as a viable form of home entertainment (and gained Berle his famous moniker "Mr. Television").

This episode (from spring of 1949, less than a year into the show's run) features the customary opening and closing jingles sung by the "men of Texaco"; Berle's introductory monologue dressed as an ancient Roman; a fantastic acrobatic trio; Chinese-American movie star Keye Luke (with whom Berle engages in some unfortunate--but for the time, characteristic--stereotyped ethnic humor); a song by Ethel Merman, followed by a sketch with her and Berle as early motorists; tap dancer Teddy Hale; and a show-closing extended series of performances by several different singers and composers highlighting popular standards of the day.

It's a great specimen of the classic variety show of the early TV era--a blend of comedy and music (but also with things like acrobats and tap dancers in the mix), the single sponsor's ads worked into the program itself (as well as its title), the somewhat rough-edged feel of a live weekly TV program, and a broad and boisterous style that played well on the small screens of early television sets.

TFTP Signs-On for June: Station Sign-On (w/ "Carolina Calling") from WBTV/Charlotte, NC (c. 1959)

Every first of the month, TFTP signs-on with a classic station sign-on sequence, to launch another month of Television from the Past...

Posted to YouTube by user 'iblefty1951'

This is maybe the oldest station sign-on sequence available out there on the interwebs: a late-1958 or 1959 sign-on from Charlotte, North Carolina, CBS affiliate WBTV that includes the first few minutes of legendary local program "Carolina Calling".

This clip begins with a customary voiceover of ownership and address information, over images of the station's studio and transmitter and a few varieties of station logo. This is followed by the image of an alarm clock (reading 7 o'clock) going off, the opening to "Carolina Calling".

"Carolina Calling" was a morning variety show, with music from Arthur Smith and his band the Cracker Jacks, with the kind of information we've come to expect from morning shows--weather conditions, etc.--sprinkled into the banter between songs. The show was a TV extension of the show by the same name that Smith had been involved with on radio in Charlotte.

Professional video taping systems (invented in 1956) only became available to local stations in the middle to latter part of 1958, and WBTV was reportedly one of the first to get one--thus dating this video-taped clip to circa 1959.

TFTP On This Day: "The Hollywood Palace" from ABC (May 27, 1966)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Hollywood Palace'

It Was 50 Years Ago Today: "Hollywood Palace" was one of the great all-purpose variety shows of the 1960s, an ABC stalwart for most of the decade (from 1964-1970), for most of it anchoring ABC's Saturday night schedule. This episode, aired 50 years ago today on May 27, 1966, is from the program's third season, the season's next-to-last episode.

"Hollywood Palace" was much like the "Ed Sullivan Show" in that it was a true variety show--in addition to sundry musical acts and comedians, the program featured acrobats, puppeteers, clowns, sports figures, and all manner of actors and celebrities. Act after act was packed into each episode--the first quarter of this episode features an opening song by guest host Judy Garland, acrobats The Roselle Troupe (performing an aerial act outside the theater in a parking lot), and two songs by Johnny Rivers (including "Secret Agent Man"). The rest of the show features clown Charlie Cairoli, another song by Garland, comedian Jack Carter, actor/singer Van Johnson, a duet between Garland and Johnson (in clown make-up!), and pantomimists The Black Theatre of Prague.

"Hollywood Palace" did not have a regular host, opting for a different guest host for each episode, although some hosts returned again and again. This episode is the second Garland-hosted one just in this season, and Bing Crosby returned repeatedly in the show's six-year run (including in the next episode after this one, as previewed by Garland at episode's end). This particular episode has as its main sponsor "investor-owned electric and power companies", and so filmed commercials related to the electric industry are sprinkled throughout the first half of the episode.

TFTP Variety: "Laugh-In" from NBC (Feb. 10, 1969)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Anna'

"Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" was a turning point in the TV variety show when it premiered in early-1968. Both in terms of content and in terms of form, "Laugh-In" upended 20-year-old traditions in the genre: its use of sexually-suggestive and permissive humor was part of TV's mainstreaming of the counterculture, while the quick cuts and very short comic bits (assembled through editing in post-production) countered the longer sketches and staging traditionally used in TV variety programs.

Although a departure from the TV variety show as it had been known, "Laugh-In" was massively popular--becoming the #1 show on TV for the 1968-69 and 1969-70 seasons. This episode is from February 1969, when the show was at its peak of popularity and influence. It includes several of the show's signature segments: a party where random guests turn to the camera and recite jokes, the elderly couple on a park bench played by Ruth Buzzi and Arte Johnson, the Fickle Finger of Fate award given by Rowan and Martin, Arte Johnson's wisecracking German World War I soldier, and the show's most well-known bit, the "joke wall" (in which cast members tell short jokes after emerging from small doors opened in a wall painted in "Laugh-In"'s trademark psychedelic colors).

We also see in this episode (from a recording when the series was rerun on cable network Trio in the late-1990s/early-2000s) the classic cast of the show, including hosts Dan Rowan and Dick Martin as well as Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Goldie Hawn, Joanne Worley, Henry Gibson, and Judy Carne, and guest stars Davy Jones (of The Monkees), Greer Garson, and Robert Wagner.

TFTP Variety: "The Jack Paar Program" with Bob Newhart from NBC (May 28, 1965)

Posted to YouTube by user 'StandApartComedy'

Bob Newhart, before becoming an icon of 1970s and 1980s sitcoms, was a stand-up comic best known for his mock telephone conversations. Jack Paar, after his stint as the host of "The Tonight Show" ended in 1962, hosted a prime-time variety show for a few years on Friday nights on NBC.

This clip is a stand-up appearance by Newhart on one of the final episodes of Paar's prime-time show, which ended in June of 1965. In his introduction, Paar exclaims his appreciation of Newhart's comedy, and Newhart provides a bit that was another of his signature types: assuming the identity of a particular kind of character (here a flight attendant) and mining the character's situation for comedy.

TFTP Variety: "The Hollywood Palace" w/ host Adam West (Oct. 8, 1966)

"The Hollywood Palace" was one of the last big-time all-purpose TV variety shows. Pretty much pure vaudeville, the show featured a succession of unrelated acts (singers, comedians, acrobatic acts, sketches) and a different celebrity guest host each week. It ran from 1964-1970 on ABC, for most of its run on Saturday evenings, and was staged in the ABC Palace Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood (before that, and now again, known as the El Capitan Theater, and now the home of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live).

This complete episode of "The Hollywood Palace" is from Fall 1966 and features Batman's Adam West as host. Late-1966 was the peak of "Batman's" popularity as a fad show and this is exploited in West's opening number. Other guests include Joey Heatherton (probably also at her peak of popularity at about this time), Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Ray Charles and the Raylettes, a pre-beard and pre-counterculture George Carlin, ventriloquist Fred Roby, and stunt performer Danny Sailor (who climbs and does stunts atop a large pole outside the theater).

This appears to be from a master tape of the episode, which is why the timecode appears throughout in the upper right corner. There are also commercials included, with a couple of half-minutes of dead air where the local affiliate would plug in local commercials. Commercials include: Dutch Masters cigars, Efferdent denture cleaner, Diet Delight canned fruit, Pall Mall cigarettes, Philips Milk of Magnesia laxative, Bayer aspirin, Chiffon margarine, and Tareyton cigarettes.