Tuesday, July 13, 2010

JCC of Middlesex County, NJ

I had a thoroughly enjoyable time appearing at the Jewish Community Center in Edison, New Jersey last week. It was a great pleasure meeting with and speaking with the attendees—and hearing about their recollections of early television.

During the presentation, I showed some videotape, made from kinescopes of Your Hit Parade. One of the kinescope segments was of the end of a Hit Parade telecast from 1952, featuring the program’s singers and dancers; they sang the show’s closing theme song, “So Long for a While”:

So long for a while,

That’s all the songs, for a while,

So long to Your Hit Parade, and the tunes that you picked to be played.

So long…

As the video of the theme song played, a number of people in the JCC audience sang along with it. It was a very lovely moment—hearing the audience members sing the song, so many years after the program left the air.