Original Amateur Hour

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The Original Amateur Hour was an American television program from the medium's early days. It is a progenitor of later, similar programs such as Star Search and American Idol.

The Original Amateur Hour was essentially a televised continuation of Major Bowes' Amateur Hour which had long been a radio staple from 1934 to 1946. The television debut came on January 18, 1948 with Ted Mack as the new host. Mack had served as one of Bowes' assistants during the program's radio days. The regular staff for the show included Lou Goldberg (aka Lewis Graham); Lloyd Marx, musical director; accompanist Dotty Marx, his wife; and Jack Hoins, writer/producer, all of whom were with the show for Mack's entire tenure. The show regularly travelled to other cities across the US and made at least two trips to Europe for the USO. In the early '50's the show went to Washington, DC for a memorable benefit featuring contestants from Congress and the Truman administration.

The series is the only show to have appeared on all four networks of TV's "Golden Age". It was originally broadcast weekly on the (now-defunct) DuMont Television Network before moving to NBC in October 1949 where it remained until September 1952. NBC then hosted it from April 1953 to September 1954.

The show moved to ABC (October 1955 to June 1957), then returned to NBC (July 1957 to October 1958). It then ran from May 1959 to October 1959 on CBS, before returning to ABC for a last prime-time run from March 1960 to September 26, 1960. Even then the show wasn't finished; it ran on CBS for 11 years on Sunday afternoons beginning on October 2, 1960 before being cancelled for good after the final broadcast on September 27, 1970.

The format was always the same. At the beginning of the show, the talent's order of appearance was determined by spinning a wheel. After it was announced how many episodes the current one marked (which counted back into the radio days, so the numbers eventually got into the thousands), the wheel was spun. As the wheel spun, the words "Round and round she goes, and where she stops nobody knows" were always intoned. (From the late 1950s forward, the wheel was gone: il was symbolized by flute arpeggios as Ted Mack invoked the traditional phrase.

Various acts, sometimes singers or other musicians, quite often vaudeville fare such as jugglers, tap dancers, baton twirlers, and the like, would perform, with the audience being asked to vote for their favorites by postcard or telephone. The winners were invited to appear on the next week's show. Many winners were invited back for several weeks.

Ted Mack ensured that the show was very fast-paced. (Despite the program's title, it was generally only a half-hour show, the only exception to this rule being from March of 1956 to June of 1957 on ABC, when it was expanded to an hour.)

Some contestants became minor celebrities at the time, but few ever became really big show-business stars. By far the two greatest successes of the show's television era were Gladys Knight, then only a child, and Pat Boone, singing sweet ballads or occasional "covers" of songs which had been written and recorded by black artists which were then largely unknown to the show's predominantly white (some would say "white bread") audience. In fact, Boone's appearances on the show probably caused the closest thing that it ever had to a scandal. After he had appeared, and won, for several weeks, it was revealed that he had appeared on the popular CBS Television show Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, meaning that he was technically not an "amateur" singer. He was removed from the program, but by then his fame was assured.

The greatest fame ever achieved by anyone appearing on the show was that achieved by Frank Sinatra, who appeared on the show during its radio days in 1937. Interestingly, during World War II it was widely rumored among the U. S. Armed Forces that someone involved with the program was a Nazi sympathizer, "proof" being that shortly after many of the programs, an American naval vessel would supposedly be sunk; this was allegedly due to coded information being passed out in the course of the broadcast of the program. Some went so far as to accuse Bowes himself; obviously nothing of this sort was ever conclusively proven. As a matter of fact, Bowes was one of President Roosevelt's closest friends and was personally responsible for having the swimming pool constucted at The White House when FDR contracted polio. As the years went by, the audience for this program aged as well; the best proof of this was that the CBS Sunday afternoon version of the 1960s was invariably sponsored by Geritol, and the program will be permanently linked with this product in the minds of many viewers.

That this exact format could have been truly timeless may have been proven in 1992. That year, the program was revived on cable television's Family Channel (now ABC Family), hosted by weatherman Willard Scott. This revival lasted one season in spite of its popularity and high ratings, and also featured the debut of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter.