In my previous post, I referred to the three featured singers on Kay Kyser's network TV show, the College of Musical Knowledge, when the program began airing on NBC in 1949.
Here, below, is a photo of the three singers (from left to right): Michael (Mike) Douglas, my mother, Sue Bennett, and Liza Palmer.
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| Michael Douglas, Sue Bennett, and Liza Palmer |
The three pictures in this post were part of a group of photographs--publicity photos for Kay Kyser's program--which I purchased several years ago on ebay. Later, I saw one of the pictures in a newspaper story, published in advance of Mr. Kyser's December 1, 1949 premiere broadcast--a picture in which Michael Douglas, standing on stage with Mr. Kyser, is wearing the same sport coat and bow-tie seen in the above image. And so I am guessing that many (and perhaps all) of the photos I purchased are from November of 1949, when the program was in rehearsals for its December debut.
I believe all of the pictures were taken at New York City's International Theatre, at Columbus Circle, from which the Kay Kyser program was broadcast. The theatre--which through the years had been, alternately, a legitimate theatre, and a movie house--had, in 1949, been refurbished by NBC to accommodate television productions. In late February of 1950, a few months after the Kay Kyser program went on the air, Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows would begin its broadcasts from the theatre as well.
(The meaning of the above picture--clearly taken in some off-stage area of the theatre--is the following: the clock, which the three singers are looking at, indicates it is just prior to 9:00--which was the time the hour-long Kay Kyser program was telecast each Thursday night. The implication of the photo is that the singers were about to go on-the-air.)
The second photograph, below--in which my mother and Liza Palmer, I will note, are wearing the same outfits as in the first photograph, above)--is one I have posted before. It appeared in a January 1950 issue of TeleVision Guide magazine (the precurser to TV Guide), and featured (left to right) my mother; Merwyn Bogue, better known by his stage name, Ish Kabibble (Kay Kyser's longtime comedian/"stooge"--as well as a cornetist, and sometimes-vocalist, in the Kay Kyser Orchestra); and Liza Palmer.
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| Sue Bennett, Merwyn Bogue, and Liza Palmer |
The last photo, below, is of three of the show's other performers. At the center of the picture is Ben Grauer, the show's announcer during its first season. Mr. Grauer had for years been one of radio's best-known announcers, reporters, and commentators--and he then moved into television in its early years. In 1948, the year presidential conventions were first seen on TV, Mr. Grauer and John Cameron Swayze anchored the telecasts on NBC.
In addition to his role as the announcer on the Kay Kyser TV show, he also appeared in sketches on the program--and engaged in on-air interplay with Mr. Kyser:
"How you Ben, Grauer?," Mr. Kyser would ask.
"Okay, Kyser," Mr. Grauer would reply.
In the photograph seen here, Mr. Grauer is flanked by two singers from the five-member vocal group, The Honeydreamers; the group was featured each week during the first season of Mr. Kyser's TV show. At the left of the photo is Sylvia Textor; Marion Bye is at the right side of the picture.
The vocal group was led by Ms. Textor's husband, singer and arranger Keith Textor. Marion Bye was married to another singer in the group, Bob Davis.
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| Sylvia Textor, Ben Grauer, and Marion Bye |
The fifth singer in The Honeydreamers was Lew Anderson--who, beginning in 1954, would play Clarabell the Clown on NBC's Howdy Doody Show. (Clarabell had previously been portrayed by Bob Keeshan--who would later become a television legend, as Captain Kangaroo--and by Bobby Nicholson.) Mr. Anderson appeared as Clarabell until the Howdy Doody program went off the air in 1960. He never spoke on the program--until the show's final episode, in which he looked into the television camera and said, simply (and sadly), "Goodbye, kids."
When Liza Palmer left the Kay Kyser program in March of 1950, she was replaced, as a featured singer, by Sylvia Textor--who continued to sing, as well, with The Honeydreamers.
Ms. Textor and The Honeydreamers, however, left the Kay Kyser show after the end of the program's first season.
(Pictures of NBC-TV's Kay Kyser's College of Musical Knowledge, © NBCUniversal, Inc.)
