September 21, 1963…”The Jerry Lewis Show” Debuts On ABC
This is a strange tale, but you’ll love the video of Jerry riding the crane and singing.
You would have thought that one of the worlds top comedians would have been a natural hit, but the show only ran 13 weeks. ABC originally had high hopes for Lewis’ live, two-hour Saturday night variety series. They signed the comedian to a 5-year contract for a reported $35 million. The network also purchased the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles and re-christened it The Jerry Lewis Theater, after spending over a million dollars to renovate and equip it with 4, RCA TK60 black and white cameras, and a new control room.
“The Jerry Lewis Show” premiered on September 21, 1963, but by Thanksgiving, it was apparent that the show was a failure. In a scramble for a mid season replacement, ABC hired Nick Vanoff to produce a new show. Vanoff, in turn, hired William O. Harbach to help him develop the series. They hurriedly came up with the concept of “The Hollywood Palace”.
The final “Jerry Lewis Show” aired on December 21, 1963, and The Hollywood Palace premiered on January 4, 1964. The Palace took over the first hour of Lewis’ old time slot. The second hour was given to the local affiliates for their own local and syndicated programming. The old El Capitan Theater was once again re-named, this time as “The Hollywood Palace.”
The video will start a segment from the Lewis show where he climbs aboard the crane to sing “Birth Of The Blues”. This is a rare clip, so enjoy! -Bobby Ellerbee
(Clip source: https://youtu.be/XtL4K9srXwQ?t=21
1)
Here’s a two-page excerpt from “The Worst TV Shows Ever” By Bart Andrews with Brad Dunning (E.P Dutton Publishers, 1980).
I worked for Nick Vanoff in the 1980s, and he was an interesting man. He made a fortune doing the post on HEE HAW, and also did extremely well in real estate in LA, as well as owning Complete Post for about 15 years.
Really, two hours of Jerry Lewis is a bit much.
I couldn’t take a live 2 hour show with Jerry Lewis. Even as a kid I could see that Jerry was a jerk Dean was the better part of that duo.
Part of Jerry’s Hubris was thinking people really WANTED to hear him sing. He had that novelty record with Rock A Bye Your Baby, and he though he was Dean. I remember watching the show when I was a kid. It was like death. He was definitely not the cool personality that succeeds long term on TV. Jerry is great, in small doses.
Also, opposite Jerry was Gunsmoke on CBS and The Saturday Night Movie on NBC. Tough to compete against.
…Bobby ..didn’t Jerry utilize the ABC engineering staff’s shoulder portable ” Frankenstein ” camera ?, the camera ABC Sports used ? .. I use to watch Jerry’s show and I recall seeing it used a few times ..Jerry always enjoyed interacting with the camera guys, and I’d bet they were displeased, to an extent.
My YT channel. 🙂
I am still looking for video of episode 7 where they had the live premiere of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”, and he interviewed most of the actors from the film, a few at a time, and he showed many clips from the movie, including a lot of the ending. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0904670/?ref_=ttep_ep6
Martin Short’s brilliant Jerry Lewis impression from SCTV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxqqs_2LdPo