Officially, it was known as The Ford Show, as in, its sponsor, the Ford Motor Company. Perhaps fittingly, despite no connection to the owners of the automobile giant, singer Tennessee Ernie Ford was the series host for its 5 year run (1956-61) on NBC, the last three seasons airing in color.
For a time, the emphasis was put on the star himself, hence renaming it The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, or, alternately, The Ford Show Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, which will be the case with the sample video we have found.
The show's writers included future icons Norman Lear and Danny Arnold. Another writer, Roland Kibbee, later developed Robert Wagner's spy series, It Takes a Thief, for ABC. The guests were the usual suspects, the likes of Kate Smith, Johnny Cash, and, in this installment, George Gobel.
Man, hearing Paul Frees' voice coming out of Charlie Brown's mouth was weird. Frees had been working with Bill Melendez's studio producing commercials featuring the Peanuts characters for Ford, roughly around the same time this show was in production. Of course, you know that when Charlie, Linus, and friends began their run of specials, four years after this series ended, it was for first CBS, then ABC, but not for NBC. Go figure.
And, yeah, this, I think, was one of the first series where Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin had worked together, well before they struck out on their own in the 70's.
No rating.
For the record:
ReplyDeleteNorman Lear and Bud Yorkin had been working together as far back as the '50s - on The Colgate Comedy Comedy Hour with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
Lear had another writing partner back then: Ed Simmons, who years later was Carol Burnett's head writer for a decade.
And it was Bud Yorkin who brought Jerry Lewis together with the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation for the telethons - but that's another story ...
Well, I did say "one of the first".....
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