Marilyn Monroe’s First Television Appearance…September 13, 1953
In the Comment section below, you’ll see the gift Jack Benny gave Marilyn for appearing on his show. She was reluctant and didn’t really want to do it because on live television, to many things could go wrong, but the “gift” helped, as did the studio executives who saw this as a great promo for her new movie “Gentlemen Prefer Blonds” which went into general release in August of ’53.
This was the first show of Benny’s fourth season and having lost thirty percent of his audience in the third season, he was anxious to step up the guest star power. It worked and the ratings zoomed.
As an interesting side note on this clip, which is part of a sketch called ‘The Trip To Honolulu’, the pretty (but chubby) blond we see at the start is Barbara Pepper. Barbara was a good friend of Lucille Ball’s and was the person Lucy wanted to play the part of Ethel Mertz. Enjoy and share!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vhQqJXJz-o
On September 13, 1953 The Jack Benny Show episode with Marilyn Monroe aired on CBS. I really enjoy this episode! Marilyn is such a sweetheart and did a great…
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