Even Jackie Gleason made career mistakes.
The original "Great One", well before Dwayne Johnson, as The Rock, began calling himself that nearly 40 years later, presided over a one-&-done novelty game show, You're in The Picture, which aired in January 1961 on CBS.
The idea was simple in concept. Four celebrities would insert their faces into pictures, and, without looking down at the drawings, had to figure out what the pictures were. Unfortunately, the execution was lacking. The reviews were SO bad (How bad were they?), that the show was cancelled in short order, although, as you'll see, Gleason was allowed to return the following week to explain the debacle as best as able.
Liggett & Myers (L & M Cigarettes) & Kellogg's, with Dennis James doing the shilling, were the sponsors. Gleason did the in-show shill for L & M himself.
Both episodes were restored by the Paley Center in New York, and uploaded by Musicom Productions.
This, I think, might've begun the association between Gleason and announcer Johnny Olson, unless he was already working on Gleason's variety show. We know Johnny was the announcer when The Jackie Gleason Show moved to Miami for its final years. We have a black & white, pre-Miami episode we just located, that we hope to bring in soon.
2 comments:
Right on the spot about Johnny Olson's association with Jackie Gleason beginning with You're In The Picture.
According to Johnny Olson: A Voice In Time, by Johnny's protege Randy West, Gleason's producer hired Olson for Picture and Gleason liked his warm-ups so much that from then on, Olson warmed up every TV show Gleason did for the next fifteen years.
When Jackie moved his show to Miami Beach, he personally arranged to fly Johnny to Florida every week, just for the day, and then back to New York for all his other announcing gigs (and at Jackie's own expense).
The book I mentioned above is from Bear Manor Media; you can likely find it online from Amazon and other vendors (it's a bit expensive, but hey, it's 400 pages (index included) ...).
Jackie's wasn't the only variety show Johnny Olson did. He had his own (Johnny Olson's Rumpus Room), and, in the 70's, was the announcer for Clifton Davis & Melba Moore's short-lived show, also for CBS.
Now, if I can get hold of the Rumpus Room.........
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