The Colgate Comedy Hour

'Colgate Comedy Hour' was a first-rate comedy-variety series, performed live from New York City and featuring some of the biggest names in American show business at the time. The series was sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive, a 'health and beauty aids' company which had established a healthy presence in the sponsorship of entertainment since the early days of radio. In the 1940s, Al Jolson had starred in a weekly radio show sponsored by Colgate Tooth Powder, but he mistakenly kept identifying the sponsor as 'Colgate Toothpaste': a different product altogether, which was sponsoring a different radio show at the time.

Apart from its excellent entertainment value, the Colgate Comedy Hour is also important for a technological reason. The episode broadcast live on 22 November, 1953, hosted by Donald O'Connor, was the very first colour tv broadcast. Prior to this, all colour tv transmissions had been closed-circuit only.

I've been lucky enough to see five episodes of this golden age of TV pioneer. The high powered talent was only part of a top notch production. Two of those shows featured Abbott and Costello, who can be seen doing their "Who's on First?" routine and interacting with horror film legend Boris Karloff. The other three are Martin and Lewis shows, and actually made me laugh out loud more than a half century later, their work was that good. In fact, what's obvious from those shows is that there's a lot of ad-libbing going on, and the two seem like they're absolutely having the times of their life. If you find that DVD (the sleeve advertised two shows but actually contains three, all with original commercials, I found it for a dollar at a Dollar General store...talk about a buried treasure!) look for the bit part where Jerry teases two NBC studio cameramen. A true gem. And fans of old TV commercials won't be let down, either, by the catchy jingles and nice animation for Colgate toothpaste, Palmolive soap and shave cream, Halo shampoo or Fab detergent.

This series shows what should still be there today: honest humor, charm, joy in life and a lot of craziness of the kind that makes life more beautiful. A classic that you can probably enjoy at all times.

Another one of the earliest shows I've watched, I of course didn't finished this in it's entirety, which ran for over 200 episodes across 6 seasons from 1950 - 1955 live on NBC. Sponsored by the toothpaste Colgate (and other products), the comedy hour aired Sundays at 8PM and held that primetime slot for each year it ran. Dropping most talk-show aspects of the late night talk show, and keeping the music and comedy performances just more of them, the show was similar to many surrounding it at the time, but came to great success from the quality of the acts it brought on, from Martin & Lewis to Abbot & Costello. The DVD collection I watched featured performances from the latter, including their famous "Who's on first?" bit, as well as Frank Sinatra, Eddie Fisher, Eddie Cantor, and Victor Borge. All quite funny to see, the DVD unfortunately was more highlighted bits rather than full episodes, I turned to YouTube for a couple of those but being a live taped show in the 50s the quality remaining (physically of the tapes, not the material) is not great, and at times hard to watch. Aside from a throw-away reference in an I Think You Should Leave sketch I doubt many will have even heard of this show, and that's fairly fair. If you're really into television history, then for sure, check it out.

The Colgate Comedy Hour of Nov. 22, 1953 was the first telecast of the NBC compatible color system, the FCC reversed it's ruling in December making the NBC system the approved color system. The cast and some of the company was flown from LA to New York to broadcast the program from the Colonial Theater which had color broadcasting capabilities for NBC. There were no color facilities at that time on the West Coast. Just prior to the show starting a man comes on stage an announces that the following program is in NBC Compatible Color and those with B&W sets can still view the program on their B&W sets at home.