The NBC Comedy Hour | |
---|---|
Genre | Television comedy |
Directed by | Herbert Kenwith [1] |
Presented by | Leo Durocher; Gale Storm; various |
Starring | Jonathan Winters, Gale Storm, Pat Sheehan, [2] Stubby Kaye, Shecky Greene, Stan Freberg, and Hy Averback |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 1[ citation needed] |
No. of episodes | 18[ citation needed] |
Production | |
Running time | 60 minutes |
Production company | NBC [1] |
Original release | |
Network | NBC |
Release | January 8citation needed] – June 10, 1956 [ citation needed] | [
Related | |
The NBC Comedy Hour was a comedy show that ran on NBC in the first half of 1956, intended to be a replacement for The Colgate Comedy Hour.[ citation needed]
Leo Durocher hosted the show in January, and Gale Storm from February until April 8; from April 22 on, hosts were called in per episode. Comic Jonathan Winters was a more frequent face than any of the hosts; he appeared in 17 of the 18 episodes. Stan Freberg was also a guest 6 times. Topical comedian Mort Sahl's network debut was on the Comedy Hour. A group of acting chimpanzees named The Marquis Chimps performed parodies of movies in 3 episodes.[ citation needed]
The show was a critical and ratings failure:[ citation needed] Variety stated "A more poorly conceived, routined and paced outing would be difficult to imagine." [3] It was cancelled in June, having already been pre-empted 4 times in 5 months.[ citation needed] [3] It was succeeded by The Steve Allen Show, whose reputation became a marked contrast to that of The NBC Comedy Hour.[ citation needed] The Paley Center for Media has several episodes of the series in their archives.