Musical Chairs (1955 TV series)

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This article is about the 1955 game show Musical Chairs. For the 1975 series of the same name starring Adam Wade, see Musical Chairs (1975 TV series) .

Musical Chairs is the title of a short-lived game show hosted by Bill Leyden and featuring voice actor Mel Blanc, composer Johnny Mercer, and orchestra leader Bobby Troup as regular panelists. Troup’s band, the Troup Group provided the music for the series, often with the assistance of the Cheerleaders singing group or members of the panel itself. The show was a 1955 summer replacement series on NBC (from July to September) after a successful two-year run in Los Angeles.

The program followed a format that was pioneered by the long-running radio program Information Please (which itself became a summer replacement TV series for CBS in 1952). Viewers were encouraged to mail questions about music to the network in an attempt to challenge the knowledge of a four-person panel (the three regular panelists plus a guest). The questions that Leyden read on the air to the panel could involve any aspect of music, from composing to performing to words, music, and arrangement. Individual panelists may be called to imitate the singing or playing style of well-known performers.

No score was kept in Musical Chairs as the panelists were not in competition with each other (in fact, collaborations between panelists were not uncommon): viewers who submitted questions that stumped the panel were awarded 21-inch televisions from RCA, the parent company of NBC at the time.

Musical Chairs disappeared from the airwaves after the airing of its eleventh episode on September 17, 1955. Host Bill Leyden moved on from his first television network series to the game show that established him as a household name in America for the latter half of the 1950s: It Could Be You.


[edit] References

  • Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present (2003) ISBN 0-345-45542-6
  • TV Guide Guide to TV 2006 (2006) ISBN 0-7607-7572-9
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