Good Evening! Much Love to You All...

Most variety shows were hosted by either singers or comedians ...and then there was Garry Moore.

The Garry Moore Show, "Guests: Florence Henderson and Bill Cosby"
OB: January 14, 1964, 10 p.m. EST, CBS
I was born the day this program originally aired.

I've mentioned before how much I miss old-school variety shows. With a healthy dose of "Be careful what you wish for" (I've said before there's a fine line between warm/entertaining and cheesy/cringeworthy) I'm kind of sad--but understandably, take my own share of responsibility--about why we just don't have them anymore. We live in a more ironic society that is no longer able to appreciate, say, big production numbers--especially those that opened or closed the show; nice, quick "happy talk" between the star and guest that's heavily scripted and very likely rehearsed, yet sounds sincere; and that "goodbye song" at the end.

Like the variety show that contained it, the "goodbye song" is pretty much a lost art. It began in the days of old time radio, when Eddie Cantor, for instance, would end his show with "I love to spend each hour with you..." and it was necessary to signal the end of a program in a non-visual medium. On television, the Lawrence Welk singers would sing to us, "Good night, sleep tight, and pleasant dreams, to you..." (using "Good Night Ladies" in its earlier years), while the Hee Haw gang wished that "our pleasures be many, our troubles be few." Even Donny and Marie had "May tomorrow be a perfect day..." at the end of their show. And of course, there was Carol Burnett, singing to us about how glad she was that we had this time together. But even that one wasn't as iconic as Bob Hope singing "Thanks for the Memories," beginning with his radio show in the 1930s through his TV specials as late as the 1980s.

I'm thinking of all of this as I find out Saturday Night Live and Up All Night alumnus Maya Rudolph will appear in what's being hailed as a "variety special" on NBC in a little more than a week. Produced by SNL's Lorne Michaels, her guests will be Kristen Bell, Andy Samberg, Fred Armisen, Craig Robinson, Sean Hayes, Chris Parnell and musician Janelle Monáe, with Raphael Saaddiq leading the band. The more I think about it, the more likely it'll be a sketch show--a slimmed-down SNL perhaps or a beefed-up Mr. Show. It's probably laughable to think there'll be production numbers--let alone, one that opens the show--and even more ridiculous to think Maya, Kristen, Craig, et. al will be swaying back and forth to a "good night until next time" type song at the end of the show. Then again, it might not be out of the question to expect a format like the ones used by the Smothers Brothers or Flip Wilson, themselves having redefined the genre and making it new again in their own time.

We do know one thing: Maya Rudolph is from one of the two specialties who usually gave us variety show hosts in the golden days of TV. Those were usually either singers (Perry Como, Andy Williams, Dean Martin), or like Rudolph, comedians (Red Skelton, Danny Kaye, Carol Burnett).

And then there's the rather strange, interesting case of Garry Moore.

I first knew of Garry Moore the way he's most likely remembered now: as a game show host. When I was five he began hosting a syndicated revival of To Tell the Truth. Moore's Truth and his earlier I've Got a Secret shows also found themselves rerun a lot on GSN in the 1990s and 2000s, which re-introduced his hosting abilities to a new generation of game show fans. I had no idea for the longest time he ever hosted a variety show. He had fairly short hair, but I had no idea he ever had a crew cut, or that he was actually known for it, even being called "the Haircut."

On the other hand, his variety show has almost never been rerun over the years, and a DVD version was something of a disaster. Moore's 1959, '60 and '61 Christmas shows were placed on a DVD marketed as "The Garry Moore Show Presents a Carol Burnett Christmas," with those last four words being in bigger letters and a big picture of Carol wearing a Santa hat on the cover. Alas, Carol was just a supporting regular on Garry's show, not vice versa, so we didn't see nearly as much of her as the cover art would imply. Plus the shows actually included the original commercials (which were integrated into the show and actually done by Moore and his sidekick, Durward Kirby), but inexplicably on the DVD, the products were electronically blurred and their spoken names were bleeped. So as a result, Amazon.com is full of woefully negative reviews of the release, which was eventually withdrawn from the market for its misleading advertising. Thus, The Garry Moore Show gets introduced to 21st Century America in a somewhat rude and disastrous way.

Moore's prime time variety show is rather interesting to watch now, not exactly the beloved classic of heartwarming memories as, say, those of Dinah Shore, Andy Williams or Carol Burnett. Perhaps that's because Garry doesn't fit so easily into a box. He definitely wasn't a singer; he had roots in comedy, but clearly didn't have the elastic face of Sid Caesar or the pantomime skills of Red Skelton. He was a man who told jokes and occasionally dressed up and did something funny, but he was no comedian. How Garry Moore and his show evolved into what they would become in prime time goes back to the start of his career.

Garry's radio career gets short shrift, to the point his Wikipedia entry barely touches on it. The article even lists his "years active" as 1950-77, as if only his TV work counts for anything. Moore began as an announcer, writer, even actor and comedian, on WBAL in Baltimore in 1937. But in network radio, where Thomas Garrison Morfit III simply called himself "Garry Morfit," he led a career that surprisingly mirrors the one he had on TV: a dual life as a game show host, and variety show host first in daytime, then in prime time.
He was an announcer on the summer radio series The Fitch Bandwagon with "Morfit" as a last name; he also announced on Club Matinee on NBC, which is where host Ransom Sherman held a listener contest that gave him the name Garry Moore. It also united him with his longtime partner Durward Kirby for the first time.

During that time, Moore also hosted a game show, Beat the Band, which may be where TV"s Tonight Show later got the idea for its "Stump the Band" segment. Its original sponsor was Kix cereal, then Camel cigarettes took over. Camel would later team Moore up with legendary comedian Jimmy Durante. Moore was perhaps among the first generation of comedians--like Steve Allen or Henry Morgan, or the comedy team of Bob & Ray, to not come from the vaudeville circuit, but rather worked through the ranks of broadcasting itself. And Moore was a one of a kind entertainer, a broadcaster whose comic skills was just one for a jack of all trades like Moore, and here he was learning comedy at the knee of a classic vaudevillian, Durante.

The two worked together on NBC in what was originally called The Camel Comedy Caravan until Rexall Drugs took over as a sponsor, then it became The Jimmy Durante-Garry Moore Show. The jokes were often corny to the point of vaudevillian (but sometimes also very funny), but the two had a lot of chemistry together as "the Schnozz and the Haircut," and Moore functioned as something of a "funny straight man." Moore even opened the show often with the monologue, before Durante came out and started singing in his trademark, raspy style immortalized 40 years later on the soundtracks of "City Slickers" and "When Harry Met Sally," and in his narration of the "Frosty the Snowman" Christmas special.

And they developed Moore's penchant for sneaking things past the censors. Here's how one of their routines was reportedly scripted:

Durante: Junior, last night I had a date with Jane Russell!
Band: (timpani)
Moore: The Jane Russell?
Band: (timpani)
Durante: Yes, Junior, the Jane Russell!
Band: (timpani)

A censor who didn't know his musical terms approved the script, which apparently made it to dress rehearsal (and supposedly, to the air) in this fashion:

Durante: Junior, last night I had a date with Jane Russell!
Drummer: BOOM! BOOM!
Moore: The Jane Russell?
Drummer: BOOM! BOOM!
Durante: Yes, Junior, the Jane Russell!
Drummer: BOOM! BOOM!

Rather tame to the point of silly now, but in the golden days of radio, that rather heavy-handed reference to Russell's famous physique bordered on scandalous with bawlings-out all around.

And during this time, Moore once again found himself hosting a game show: Take It or Leave It, the game show that gave us the famous catch phrase, "That's the $64 question." The $64,000 Question and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire would reference back to that. And in one of the earliest examples of a sitcom borrowing a game show for a plot, Moore appeared as himself, as Archie the manager played the game on radio's Duffy's Tavern.

Moore got his own show on CBS, reportedly because the network liked how he related to the audience. So the hour-long Garry Moore Show brought Moore back to daytime radio in 1949. CBS brought it to early evenings in 1950, even to prime time at one point, as a summer replacement for Arthur Godfrey, then later on its own. But by late 1951 Moore's show was strictly an informal, five day a week daytime affair. Daytime variety shows were fairly common throughout the 1950s and as late as the mid-1960s; one of Betty White's earliest series was just such a show on NBC. Although still scripted, Moore's daytime show was rather informal, and perhaps a lot funnier than his nighttime shows would be. For one thing, the format was elastic and could be made to fit almost any guest, any idea. It wasn't unusual for Moore, his announcer Durward Kirby and a few others to chat up current affairs, for instance. Each show began with a still graphic of Moore's name between a drawn crewcut and a drawn bowtie--two of his trademarks--as Kirby said, "Hello, network! It's time for the Garry Moore Show!"

It's also where some of Moore's longest running TV gags were born, like the one where he and Kirby dress up as hard-drinking, gossipy old ladies chatting in rocking chairs. They were known as Martha and Jenny.

"So where did he pinch you?"
"Right between the cracker barrel and the rutabagas!"

...then they take a sip of something one of them has in her purse. Lots of drinking humor in those days, and these two old ladies were apparently no exception.

On an early show, we see Garry read off some jokes sent in by viewers--one way to save money on writers, apparently. (It's also an idea Moore was doing as far back as Beat the Band on radio.) Garry also read funny newspaper stories and anecdotes from around the country. One story is about a restaurant owner who posts a note at the entrance, demanding male customers stop asking one of the waitresses her measurements, and posting them in the note instead (42-23-32 or something like that). Moore then joked about the time he dated a woman with measurements around 18-23-32. (Do we still talk about women's measurements like that? We don't? Good.)

There was so much material, and Moore's daytime show was such an unusual show, that an entire book was written about it. "Ladies and Gentlemen--the Garry Moore Show" focused entirely on the 1950-58 run of the show and actually ends when the daytime show does in 1958. There are likely a number of reasons for this: the show was five days a week and live, not once a week and taped like the prime time variety show. So that means a lot more material, a lot more stories about working with live TV. Moore, in particular, always felt he had a special rapport with housewives who were looking for something fun to watch on daytime TV.

While Moore was working five days a week on his daytime variety show, he also hosted yet another game show. Goodson and Todman's I've Got a Secret panel show premiered in 1953, with panelists that included perhaps the greatest game show host of all time (and definitely the most prolific), Bill Cullen, and a fellow radio comedian, Henry Morgan. Unlike Moore, Morgan had an acerbic wit and had regularly ridiculed his radio sponsors at great length.

As Moore continued to host Secret, he made changes in 1958 to cut back a heavy workload that was a good recipe for burnout. So he stopped his daytime show in the summer of 1958, and that fall returned, with his longtime sidekick Durward Kirby, to prime time for an hour a week. This time, although Kirby still did commercials, he was not the show's announcer. He was basically Moore's comic sidekick, a sidekick to a man who himself had been a sidekick to Jimmy Durante only a decade and a half or so earlier.

Considering it had a host (and sidekick) who weren't known for their singing (not that it slowed them down any), The Garry Moore Show was chock brimming full of production numbers and very short comedy sketches. (Perhaps this was also meant to lighten the load of the three-person writing staff, which included Buck Henry of Get Smart and Saturday Night Live fame.) Moore didn't do much in the way of monologues but did talk to the audience on a regular basis. And he knew how to make stars. Don Knotts and Jonathan Winters were on their way up when they guest-starred on his daytime show; in season two, his nighttime show managed to snag up-and-coming character actress Carol Burnett as a series regular, just in time for her to become a major star on Broadway.

Burnett's appearances on the Moore show are funny to watch even now; in one, an obviously horny Burnett interrupts Moore to demand, somewhat monosyllabically, to meet that week's guest star, Robert Goulet. She acts like her desires have rendered her barely able to communicate, much like a man would normally be thought to do in that situation ("Me Jane! Him Tarzan! You Cheetah! You introduce me to Mr. Gou-LAY!"), and the results are hysterical.

But Burnett, her star flying much higher three years later,  left the show in 1962, at a time when she was starring in Broadway's "Once Upon a Mattress." She continued to make guest appearances on Moore's show, and her replacement, Dorothy Louden, appeared to take up the mantle as the funny woman definitely in touch with her libido.

But by 1964, the tightly wrapped format was starting to wear a bit thin. TV Guide critic Cleveland Amory, in particular, let the show have it. He said the skits "wouldn't pass muster in a high school freshman amateur hour," that the show appears to be obsessed in getting guests that have been overexposed elsewhere (and says that week's guest comedian was "apparently forbidden to use new material"), and that musical guests are often picked so as not to provide too much competition for the tuneless Moore and Kirby. Of Kirby, Amory said one recent show had opened with a cardboard cutout of him with "from a dramatic standpoint, no noticeable change." And of Moore, Amory really sharpened the knives: "Average he is and average he will remain. But he is a law unto himself, and if you're looking for something better, good luck."

So, with all of that in mind, I may be looking at the one from the day I was born, out of context. I don't have all of that week's guests' other recent appearances, or a week's worth of variety shows from other entertainers, to compare with it. So what may have looked worn and repetitive in 1964 might look a little fresher in 2014 due to it being taken out of that context. I do know what seemed silly and what didn't, what holds up and what doesn't.

The show begins with a brief blackout of a ladder in a city street. Moore, carrying a large package marked "Fragile" (and wearing his hat that reminded him of one of his heroes, Buster Keaton), watches as a number of people nonchalantly walk under it...without any of the supposed bad luck superstition would otherwise suggest. Instead he walks around it...then trips and falls on the package. Then he props himself up and says, "Gee, I hope it isn't going to be one of those nights"
Here's where we see the show's fully animated open credits. The still graphic from the daytime version appears to come to life, right down to a little man who uses a lawn mower to give the figure its haircut.

...because it's a prime time variety show and it's a bigger deal. And then there's a  big production number.
Every show began with one, and they were well done, to (as I once said about Sing Along With Mitch) almost military perfection. Cleveland Amory said it was one of the few good things about the show. The one that opened the March 1964 broadcast on which Boris Karloff would guest star, was especially well done.

This is where Kirby, Louden and the week's guest stars are introduced. One of them, a five-years pre-Brady Florence Henderson, seems to be really into it, while another one, still-new but already famous standup comic Bill Cosby, appears to be a bit stunned. The whole bunch of them jumping on a merry-go-round borders on cheesy.

The dancers do their thing in front of the merry go round as they all sing "Hey, Look Me Over."

After the number, there's a reprise of the ladder gag, this time with no one walking under it except Moore...then something (I'm guessing a sand bag from the studio rafters) falls on his head.

In what we in today's media would call "multi-platform synergy," Moore references a recent guest on I've Got a Secret. The guest's secret was that he once got a spanking in school from his teacher...and that teacher, Lyndon Johnson, was now President of the United States. Moore uses this opportunity to announce that President Johnson happened to be watching that night, and called his former pupil at the studio to personally invite him to the White House. Moore then announces his own former teacher happens to be in the studio this particular night...at which point Durward Kirby, dressed as Abraham Lincoln, gives Moore a brief spanking.

I can't unsee that.

The first sketch, which Moore sets up himself (apparently since the gag might not be able to stand on its own without an introduction), finds Louden and character actor Bernie West (a series semi-regular, apparently) as two bookstore customers who are dropped off by their spouses. She is looking for cookbooks, he's looking for Greek history, and both run into each other as they voice the tawdry book-jacket descriptions of a stack of cheap, pulp romance novels set up in the middle of the store. ("She brought out the worst in men..." "...a lifetime of thrills in one afternoon..." "...what he saw, he wanted and what he wanted, he took..." "...inside, she was cheap, cheap, cheap...") Their spouses arrive just when the two are about to share an extramarital kiss. It's the acting that makes this particular sketch stand out.

Moore introduces his next guest, saying Bill Cosby was a fast rising comedian who just one year earlier was fullback for Temple University. At this point, Moore says, he's already in nightclubs, TV and records. This is probably what Amory meant when he complained the show sought out guests who were overexposed elsewhere, probably Amory's silliest argument in his whole review.
I don't have Cosby's other appearances in front of me, so I don't know if he's doing material he did elsewhere, but what he's doing is hilarious. In this instance, Cosby talks about athletes who do TV commercials even though they don't speak or read well. He imitates a football player who meets a kid with hair problems, who says "I have bad hair and can't get any girls!" "Yeah and you're ugly too!" the player says back in Cosby's bit. There's a part where Cosby makes fun of razor blade commercials, with a hilarious impression of a lively sportscaster and doofus ball player. "And I seen little tiny hairs growin' on my face, and I said 'uh!'" says Cosby as the athlete. He ends the bit with hilarious impression of a man putting after shave on a razor-burned face.
Cosby, we're reminded, was plugging his new (and as we now know, innovative) comedy album at the time, "Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow...Right!" This is the one my elementary school librarian, Miss Mordecai, used to play for us sometimes, with the hilarious Noah's Ark routines. It's easy to see why Cosby was such a hit, but incredible that it happened at a time when black people were having to fight three times harder for even one of these appearances, or a chance to make a comedy album. I remember seeing a clip of Cosby's appearance on The Jack Paar Show once in which he played a panicked Revolutionary War soldier hurriedly reloading a front-loading musket during the heat of battle.

The next sketch is quite a one-joke letdown after the charisma of Cosby's standup bit.

Durward Kirby is a passionate leading man (is there anything they thought he couldn't do?) who's managed to get Florence Henderson back to his luxury apartment. The sketch is set up as "an agonizing moment of decision" in a bachelor's luxury, high-rise apartment. Kirby's character, Clifford, offers his date a drink, to which she melodramatically says no because "I don't need false courage."
Kirby's character "My dear, are you sure you want to go through with this?" Henderson says "Oh yes, Clifford! Clifford, I'm quite sure!" She makes it clear she doesn't want shades drawn because she doesn't care what people think. He reminds her what they're about to do could be beneath them, since he's the head of a large corporation and she's the editor of "Smart Woman's Magazine." "I'm tired of being so respectable, I want to live a little!" she melodramatically declares. So after all the drama and suggestiveness, then they do the ugly deed: turn on a TV set on which the announcer says, "CBS presents the Beverly Hillbillies!"

Moore comes back out to remind us Henderson is appearing "right around the corner" from his CBS New York studio, in a Broadway musical called "The Girl Who Came to Dinner." She then sings a song from that musical, "The Me Nobody Knows," on the "apartment" set of the previous sketch.
Then Florence, Garry and Dorothy discuss the next number and Garry pretends to be a little hurt that he's not included. Dorothy and Florence sing "The Power of Love" as a comical duet.

And now we're up to the first straight comedy sketch--actually, the only one--of this particular show in which Moore has a starring role. He's seeking a $900 loan for a playroom since his wife is about to have a second child. Kirby plays the monocled loan officer of a bank, and he's just gotten pulled away from a wild party for a stenographer who's about to get married.

The loan officer doesn't want to give the money. "This bank only gives money to rich people," he snaps. "What it is with you little people, breeding like mosquitoes? That is precisely what is wrong with our country's economy now!" Again, Kirby, who originally set out to be an announcer and commercial spokesman, is now a jack of all trades, called upon here to be a villain.

Moore hands him a glass to drink (apparently left over from the party), and the loan officer suddenly gets drunk, tries to sing "Show Me the Way to Go Home," and suddenly becomes "your friendly banker." He gets on intercom, tells his receptionist to "bring me some money" and says no papers are necessary, just a friendly handshake. The receptionist comes in with the money and a cup of strong black coffee, but he creepily wolf whistles her and she runs out. He hands Moore $1,000, and cries when Moore says they'll name the baby after him. Moore gives him the coffee which suddenly sobers him up, and he takes the money back. But Garry won't go home empty-handed, as the loan officer gives him a free calendar.
And now we're up to...the rest of the show, the long, show-closing segment called "That Wonderful Year." Each of these would take a specific year--anywhere from 1905 to a more recent year--and recreate it via song and production number. It was critic Cleveland Amory's least favorite part of this show he hated so much. "As this show has gone on for five years, this means that the lucky number has come up at least three times." And this perhaps gets to the heart of the show's problems: they're all tied to a tight, rigid format that even by 1964, was getting kind of stale.

A forgotten part of an almost-forgotten show, "That Wonderful Year" was so well known in those days, that same year, Gordon and Sheila MacRae can even be seen doing a parody of it on an Ed Sullivan Show that was headlined by the Beatles. And Gordon does a dead-on impression of Garry Moore.
This "That Wonderful Year" segment takes up about a third of the show (some of them were even known to take up half the show, even being interrupted for a commercial), and salutes the year 1956. With the help of a film montage, Moore mentions boxer Floyd Patterson, the film "Marty," the TV shows Playhouse 90 and The $64,000 Challenge, the weddings of Grace Kelly and Margaret Truman, Don Larson's perfect game in the World Series, and of course, Elvis.
The show's choreographer, Kevin Carlisle and his dancers open with a well-done production set to an instrumental version of "Mack the Knife," a hit single in 1956. This was Carlisle's only season as a choreographer, and a lot of his work transcended the TV variety show genre. He was nominated for a Tony for Broadway's "Hallelujah, Baby!" but is best remembered for his TV work...here, on The Dean Martin Show and most especially by my generation as the man who gave us the Solid Gold dancers in the 1980s. He also choreographed Sha Na Na (the series).
Then the cast members (minus Garry) appear one at a time in a hole through some sheet music. First a chorus sings "Around the World," then Durward Kirby sings a snappy "Just in Time." Yes that's right...Durward Kirby sings, in addition to all of his other roles.
Then Bill Cosby shows up just long enough to sing a very quick few notes of "Standing on the Corner." He's followed by Florence Henderson singing "I've Grown Accustomed to Your Face," then Dorothy Louden singing "Be Wise, Be Smart."

Moore then tells us it wasn't just a year for songs of youth, but for songs for older people too. And he mentions Martha and Jenny. Yes, the old ladies Moore and Kirby played on the daytime Garry Moore Show are back, and Moore explains it was quite a year for Martha as she was getting married again and Jenny has invited everyone over for a bridal shower.
Sure enough we see an all-female number, where everyone's singing a song along the lines of "Martha's Getting Married to a Millionaire." It's quite a number but I can't seem to find any records of it anywhere so it may either be an obscure show tune or an original number. We see women dancing around with cloth as Jenny (Durward Kirby) proudly poses next to the bridal gown "she" is making for Martha. So, in an hour, we've seen the man originally hired in the daytime as an announcer and commercial pitchman, sing, dance, act the romantic lead, appear as a villain in a comedy sketch, and work in drag. (Yes, I guess he could really do all these things, and still have time to co-host Candid Camera with Allen Funt and call his lawyer about that pesky Bullwinkle fellow.)
Then "Martha" comes out, and sure enough it's Garry Moore in elderly lady drag. So the next time Cracked.com or the A.V. Club makes a list involving people performing in drag, they really need to include Garry Moore and Durward Kirby as Martha and Jenny. Apparently they did this act a lot and Moore was especially proud of it.

Jenny: Martha, what you got there in the basket?
Martha (pulling out a bottle): I got myself a little anti-freeze from a radiator!

...and here come the drinking jokes.
As Jenny pours it all into the punch bowl, Martha starts calling out, "Apple brandy? Plum brandy? Peach brandy? And a little elderberry wine. I tell you, it's the only way to eat fruit!" Then, Moore breaks into song and dance, singing "Get Me to the Church on Time" from the 1956 musical "My Fair Lady."
As the singing and dancing continues, Jenny hands Martha another glass and says, "One more for the road!" Martha says "Let's make it Route 66, that goes clear across the country!" and then the number finishes. So does the end-of-segment "That Wonderful Year" stinger.
The show ends with Garry bringing Kevin Carlisle on camera to congratulate him for his fine work. Then the regular and guest cast, and all the singers and dancers, get together for the "goodbye" song. This copy of the show is, unfortunately, awkwardly edited, as we're missing the part where Garry says goodbye to the audience. I suspect this is an Armed Forces Television copy and a sponsor reference was deleted ("Good night from the fine folks at Johnson's Wax..."). Normally it would be something like "Be kind to one another and goodbye out there."

At the end of the 1963-64 season, he said those words and meant them. Moore decided to step down from I've Got a Secret and end his variety show. (I've always heard ratings had nothing to do with it, but the show had dropped out of the top 30 and was getting clobbered by the first season of The Fugitive.) Moore took a sabbatical in which he and his wife made a round-the-world trip. In 1966 CBS talked him into making a variety show comeback, with more acts aimed at a younger audience (but with Durward Kirby still at his side). But this new reboot of The Garry Moore Show bombed, opposite Bonanza, and was cancelled in mid-season. The show that replaced Garry's, however, did catch fire and did make a dent in Bonanza's ratings. That show was The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

Some thoughts:

This isn't as well remembered or beloved as other shows of the era. In this case, I thought it was pretty funny during its earlier years...then lost something when Carol Burnett left. It stuck rigidly to a formula that grew old rather quickly. And it was a format that seemed to be built around anyone, not Garry specifically. Garry was at his best when he had time on his hands, time to breathe and perhaps even be a little spontaneous, like on his daytime show and on I've Got a Secret, during the stunt segments. The prime time show's tight format seemed to prevent that.

Garry, however, is more talented than he gets credit for. As I said, he learned in local radio in the 1930s to be a jack of all trades and know how to do everything. That's how a man who's best known as a game show host ends up hosting a variety show (and how the man brought in to announce and read commercials ends up as his comic sidekick...perhaps paving the way for more deadpan actors-turned-comedians like Leslie Nielsen).. Garry Moore was part of the first generation of people who came up through radio itself instead of vaudeville, cutting his teeth alongside Steve Allen and his I've Got a Secret buddy, Henry Morgan, and paving the way for people like Johnny Carson and David Letterman.

Finally, one thing I did like about this show: it had a really nice "goodbye" song.

"We just said hello, and right away,
We have to say so long for awhile,
Before we go, we'd like to say,
We hope you had a laugh or a smile,
We hope to see you soon, so thanks for dropping by,
But for now we're going to say...good-bye!"


Availability: Aside from "The Garry Moore Show Presents a Carol Burnett Christmas," a number of his shows can be found on Youtube. That includes two or three of his daytime shows, and a number of the prime time variety shows from the Burnett years.

Next time on this channel: TV When I was Born visits the 1964 New York World's Fair.