The Big Show

November 5, 1950 – April 20, 1952 · 57 broadcasts

NBC's lavish 90-minute variety spectacular (1950-52), the network's grand answer to television, presided over by the imperious Tallulah Bankhead with Meredith Willson's orchestra. Each week a who's-who of stage, screen and radio -- Fred Allen, Groucho Marx, Ethel Merman, Jimmy Durante, Bob Hope -- traded songs and barbs.

History & Overview

Premise and format

NBC built The Big Show as radio's biggest possible answer to television: ninety minutes every Sunday evening, roughly eight marquee guests a week, a full orchestra, and a sixteen-voice chorus, all of it held together by Tallulah Bankhead ^{c1 c2}. The billing was not modest -- the show promised the biggest names in show business, drawn from stage, film, concert, radio and television alike ^c3 -- and the ninety minutes were filled accordingly: songs, dramatic sketches, comedy routines, novelty turns and tribute segments, plus, in the first season only, dramatized excerpts from recent movies (season two swapped those for scenes from current Broadway hits instead) ^c4. Two rituals bracketed every broadcast. Bankhead opened by introducing the night's guests herself, in alphabetical order, and closed the roll the same way; the hour and a half then ended, except on tribute nights, with the whole company singing a line each of Meredith Willson's own composition "May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You," followed by Bankhead wishing Godspeed to the servicemen hearing the broadcast overseas through the Armed Forces Radio Service ^c5.

Origins

The show was built defensively. NBC had just watched William Paley's CBS talent raids carry off Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and Amos & Andy, and Pat Weaver -- the network's television chief, handed radio as well -- answered with a Sunday-night blockbuster he called "NBC's Sunday Spectacular at Six" ^{c6 c7}. It doubled as a commercial experiment: The Big Show was the first broadcast under NBC's new sponsorship plan, Operation Tandem, in which advertisers bought participations across five top evening programs rather than owning a full time slot outright, no more than three sponsors to any half hour, marketed under the banner "Five Show Festival" ^c8. Bankhead herself was an unlikely choice to anchor it -- she had never carried an ongoing series, took the job mostly for the money, and worried she would be no more than a glorified mistress of ceremonies -- but she ended up substantially shaping the show's direction, and the ad-libbed friction between her and the visiting comedians became its defining texture ^c9.

Broadcast history

Season one ran from 5 November 1950 to 6 May 1951; season two from 30 September 1951 to 20 April 1952 ^c10. Fifty-seven broadcasts survive in the log, only thirty-four of them carrying an episode title ^c11. The second season opened overseas -- London on 30 September, Paris on 7 October -- and individual later broadcasts still originated from Hollywood, including one where the regular announcer stayed behind in New York and a transcribed commercial stood in for him ^{c12 c13}. Sponsorship shifted between the seasons: RCA Victor and Anacin backed the show from its first broadcast, and by season two Grams can reconstruct the segment-by-segment sponsor map in detail -- Reynolds Metals holding the first half hour outright, the middle half-hour open to Tandem advertisers, and the last carrying Liggett & Myers and Whitehall for the full season plus several one-night sponsors ^{c14 c15}.

People and casting

Bankhead hosted every broadcast; Meredith Willson conducted the orchestra and the sixteen-voice chorus and wrote or arranged much of the program's music, including its own sign-off song, with the chorus itself led by Max Teer in season one and by choral director Ray Charles (a different Ray Charles from the singer) in season two ^c16. Goodman Ace held the head-writer's chair across the run, backed by a rotating staff that at various points included Welbourn Kelley, Frank Wilson, Mort Green, Selma Diamond, George Foster and Joel Murcott ^c17. Fred Allen, with his own program off the air, effectively became a house fixture: he joined the writing staff outright on 4 February 1951, writing his own segments and advising on the rest, and Dorothy Parker contributed material for individual broadcasts as well, including the play that gave the second broadcast its title ^{c18 c19}. Dee Engelbach directed and produced the whole run, under NBC producers James Harvey in season one and James Haupt in season two, with Ed Herlihy announcing most broadcasts and Jimmy Wallington covering the Hollywood nights ^{c20 c21}. On the guest side, Allen -- so often paired with his wife and stage partner Portland Hoffa that the two could have passed for regular co-hosts -- turned up on 24 of the 57 broadcasts, more than anyone else, with Groucho Marx a distant second at six ^{c22 c23}. British singer Vera Lynn joined as a guest during the London broadcast and became a season-two regular from January 1952, her first extended visit to the United States ^c24.

Significance and legacy

The Big Show is remembered today as network radio's last grand gesture -- the medium spending lavishly to prove itself the senior partner at precisely the moment it no longer was, what critic Gerald Nachman called "a more lavish, inflated revival" of radio's own variety tradition ^c25. Critically, it delivered: Bankhead herself recalled emerging from the run as "the Queen of the Kilocycles," and the radio editors of America voted her their 1951 Woman of the Year, an honor announced live on the air ^c26. Its clearer legacy, though, is on television: Dee Engelbach carried the same big-cast variety-spectacular idea forward into All Star Revue, which reunited several Big Show names later that same year and gave Bankhead a rotating hosting slot -- an early instance of the "spectacular" programming Pat Weaver would make NBC television's signature move ^c27.

Production

The show spent like nothing else on radio: individual broadcasts reportedly ran close to $100,000, and the two-season total loss to NBC has been put at roughly $1 million, which is how Ramsburg comes to call it Weaver's costliest miscalculation ^c28. Some of that expense showed in details a cheaper show would have skipped -- a printed program guide handed out every week, and music that was, more often than not, composed or arranged specifically for that broadcast rather than pulled from a library ^c29.

Context and controversies

None of that spending fixed the actual problem, which was never the show itself but its slot. The Big Show went out directly against the programs NBC had just lost -- the premiere drew a 5.7 rating, climbed to an 8.0 peak the following month, and still finished the first season dead last in its own ninety-minute window at a 5.5 average ^c30. Season two slipped further, to 5.2, and NBC cancelled the show that April; too few advertisers were willing to pay for the cost, and Jack Benny's own program, opposite it the whole time, saw to the rest ^c31. (One small wrinkle survives in the record: Wikipedia and the Haendiges log disagree slightly on the first season's exact time slot, though the disagreement resolves cleanly if the log's header description is read as reflecting only season two ^c32.) NBC filled the vacated hour and a half with three half-hour programs instead of one replacement in kind ^c33.

Odd bits

The show's best-remembered line came on its own premiere, when Fred Allen -- at that moment headlining radio's most expensive attempt to hold the line against television -- cracked that television is called a new medium because nothing on it is well done ^c34. That same broadcast built its running joke around a fictional Allen program called "The Pinch Penny Show," which is where the episode's own title came from ^c35. Small, specific moments recur throughout the run: Fanny Brice's Baby Snooks taking an acting lesson from Bankhead on the second broadcast while Groucho Marx coached an opera star through a Broadway standard ^c36; Phil Foster's running joke, sustained across several January 1952 broadcasts, that his mother wanted him to marry Bankhead ^c37; a full mystery-drama sketch built around a wrongly colored muffler ^c38. And there is an open irony in the record itself: Martin Grams's research once treated these broadcasts as effectively lost, only for him to later report that every one had since turned up on the original transcription discs -- a discovery this show's own holdings have not yet caught up with, since only thirty of the fifty-seven currently circulate ^c39.

Reception

The gap between critical and commercial reception is, in the end, the whole story of the program. Bankhead's Woman of the Year honor and her own recollection of herself as radio royalty sit right alongside two straight losing seasons and a finish in last place within its own time period ^c40. Ramsburg drives the point home with one specific comparison: of every program on the air against it, the only one The Big Show ever managed to out-rate was a struggling half-hour detective show that had already lost more than half its own audience ^c41. The definitive account of all this remains Martin Grams's full-length book on the program and Bankhead's radio career, which reprints her original talent contract and covers the short-lived television version -- material this research pass has not yet had the chance to read ^c42.

Cast & Creators

The Big Show ran on the strength of one hostess and a rotating cast of guests large enough that most of them appear once, get a credit, and never come back -- 178 distinct names turn up in the broadcast log across the run, and the premise of the show was exactly that churn. A handful of names carried real weight behind the scenes and in front of the microphone every week.

Tallulah Bankhead presided over all 57 broadcasts as hostess, monologist and sketch lead -- the job that made her, in her own words, "the Queen of the Kilocycles." Meredith Willson conducted the orchestra and chorus as musical director and wrote or arranged much of the show's music, including its own sign-off song, "May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You." Dee Engelbach directed and produced across both seasons, and Goodman Ace held the head-writer's chair the whole run.

Fred Allen was the show's most frequent guest by a wide margin -- 24 of 57 broadcasts -- and, with his own program off the air, effectively joined the staff as a writer from February 1951, scripting his own segments and consulting on the rest. He appeared often enough alongside his wife and stage partner Portland Hoffa that the two could have passed for the program's regular co-hosts; her own broadcast credits run to five, bookending the run from the premiere to the finale. Ed Herlihy announced most broadcasts, with Jimmy Wallington covering the nights that originated from Hollywood. Vera Lynn, Britain's wartime "Sweetheart of the Forces," joined as a guest on the London broadcast that opened season two and became a series regular that following January, during her first visit to the United States.

Behind them sat a working company of frequent guests who each returned often enough to count as familiar faces without ever carrying a page of their own here: Jimmy Durante (ten broadcasts), Joan Davis and George Sanders (eight each), Ethel Merman (seven), Groucho Marx (six, including three broadcasts shared with Allen -- the first season's finale and the last two of the run), and Ed Gardner, who turned up both as a guest performer and, on one broadcast, brought his own Duffy's Tavern characters over to share the stage entirely.

• Tallulah Bankhead — Hostess, all 57 broadcasts
• Meredith Willson — Musical director
• Dee Engelbach — Producer-director
• Goodman Ace — Head writer
• Fred Allen — Most frequent guest (24 broadcasts); joined the writing staff 1951-02-04
• Ed Herlihy — Announcer (primary)
• Jimmy Wallington — Announcer (Hollywood broadcasts)
• Vera Lynn — Guest, then series regular from 1952-01-06 (7 credited broadcasts)
• Jimmy Durante — Guest (10 credited broadcasts)
• Joan Davis — Guest (8 credited broadcasts)
• George Sanders — Guest (8 credited broadcasts)
• Ethel Merman — Guest (7 credited broadcasts)
• Groucho Marx — Guest (6 credited broadcasts)
• Portland Hoffa — Guest (5 credited broadcasts)
• Ed Gardner — Guest (4 credited broadcasts)

Sources & Citations

Primary Sources

• The Big Show episodic log (Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs) — otrsite.com
• The Big Show (NBC Radio) (Wikipedia) — en.wikipedia.org
• The Big Show - Single Episodes (OTRR) — archive.org

Notes

1. NBC built The Big Show as a 90-minute Sunday-evening broadcast with roughly eight marquee guests a week, a full orchestra, and a sixteen-voice chorus. en.wikipedia.org, martingrams.blogspot.com
2. Tallulah Bankhead hosted every broadcast, and her voice became inseparable from the program's identity. en.wikipedia.org, otrsite.com
3. The title was literal: each week's roster was promoted as drawing the biggest names in show business from stage, film, concert, radio and television. martingrams.blogspot.com
4. The format mixed songs, dramatic sketches, comedy routines and tribute segments; season one also carried dramatized movie excerpts, which season two replaced with scenes from current Broadway hits. martingrams.blogspot.com
5. Bankhead opened each broadcast introducing guests alphabetically and closed the roll herself; except on tribute nights, the show ended with the company singing Meredith Willson's 'May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You' before Bankhead signed off to servicemen listening via the Armed Forces Radio Service. en.wikipedia.org
6. The program was an NBC in-house package, built defensively after the network lost Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and Amos & Andy to CBS in William Paley's talent raids. jimramsburg.com, martingrams.blogspot.com
7. Pat Weaver, NBC's television chief given charge of radio as well, conceived the show as a Sunday-night blockbuster to blunt the ratings damage, calling it 'NBC's Sunday Spectacular at Six.' jimramsburg.com
8. The Big Show was the first program under NBC's new sponsorship plan, Operation Tandem, in which advertisers bought participations across five top evening programs rather than owning a full time slot, capped at three sponsors per half-hour segment; the group was promoted as the 'Five Show Festival.' martingrams.blogspot.com
9. Bankhead had never carried an ongoing radio series before, took the job largely for the money, and feared being no more than a glorified mistress of ceremonies -- but became substantially involved in the show's direction, and her ad-libbed friction with guest comedians became its signature. en.wikipedia.org
10. Season one ran 5 November 1950 to 6 May 1951, Sundays 6:00-7:30pm ET; season two ran 30 September 1951 to 20 April 1952, Sundays 6:30-8:00pm EST. en.wikipedia.org, otrsite.com, martingrams.blogspot.com
11. The Haendiges log records 57 total broadcasts, of which only 34 carry episode titles; Grams independently confirms 20 April 1952 as the final broadcast. otrsite.com, martingrams.blogspot.com
12. Season two opened on the road: the 30 September 1951 broadcast originated from the London Palladium and the 7 October 1951 broadcast from Paris, both transcribed overseas. martingrams.blogspot.com, oldtimeradiodownloads.com
13. Individual nights also originated from Hollywood; the 4 November 1951 broadcast is one such, with the Reynolds Metals commercial supplied by transcription so announcer Bert Cowlan could still be heard reading it from New York. martingrams.blogspot.com
14. First-season sponsor participations included RCA Victor, Whitehall Pharmacal's Anacin, and Liggett & Myers's Chesterfield; the surviving recordings confirm RCA and Anacin from the premiere. en.wikipedia.org, oldtimeradiodownloads.com
15. In season two, Reynolds Metals held the 6:30-7:00 segment outright, 7:00-7:30 was Tandem-available, and 7:30-8:00 carried the Tandem sponsors -- Liggett & Myers and Whitehall all season, American Chicle from 28 October 1951 -- plus one-night buys from Western Union, Buick and Elgin. martingrams.blogspot.com
16. Tallulah Bankhead hosted every broadcast; Meredith Willson served as musical director throughout, composing and arranging much of the show's music including its sign-off song, with a sixteen-voice chorus led by Max Teer in season one and by choral director Ray Charles (not the singer of the same name) in season two. otrsite.com, en.wikipedia.org, martingrams.blogspot.com
17. Goodman Ace was head writer across the run -- named as such by the Fred Allen Wikipedia article, which quotes Ace's own account to biographer Richard Lamparski -- with a wider staff including Welbourn Kelley, Frank Wilson, Mort Green, Selma Diamond, George Foster and Joel Murcott. en.wikipedia.org, martingrams.blogspot.com, martingrams.blogspot.com
18. Fred Allen joined the writing staff formally on 4 February 1951 -- an NBC press release called it his first time writing for a series other than his own -- writing the segments he appeared in himself and consulting with Ace on the rest. en.wikipedia.org, martingrams.blogspot.com
19. Dorothy Parker also wrote for specific broadcasts; her play 'Here We Are' was staged 27 January 1952, and a Parker monologue titled 'Sentiment' gave the second broadcast its title. martingrams.blogspot.com, oldtimeradiodownloads.com
20. Dee Engelbach directed and produced the program across its whole run; James Harvey was the NBC producer in season one, James Haupt in season two. martingrams.blogspot.com, martingrams.blogspot.com, otrsite.com
21. Ed Herlihy was the primary announcer, with Jimmy Wallington covering the Hollywood broadcasts and Bert Cowlan reading the Reynolds Metals copy in season two. en.wikipedia.org, otrsite.com, martingrams.blogspot.com
22. The program averaged about eight name guests a week; Fred Allen, appearing so often with his wife and stage partner Portland Hoffa that Wikipedia judges the pair could have passed for regular co-hosts, was credited on 24 of the 57 broadcasts, more than any other guest. martingrams.blogspot.com, en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org
23. Groucho Marx, the other guest the show leaned on for ad-libbed comedy, appeared six times, including the first season's finale and the closing two broadcasts of the run. en.wikipedia.org, otrsite.com
24. British singer Vera Lynn, the wartime 'Sweetheart of the Forces,' first appeared on the London broadcast of 30 September 1951 and became a series regular from 6 January 1952, during her first visit to the United States. martingrams.blogspot.com
25. The Big Show is remembered as network radio's last grand gesture -- spending lavishly to prove it was still the senior entertainment medium at the moment television was overtaking it; Gerald Nachman, quoted on Wikipedia, called it 'a more lavish, inflated revival' of radio's variety format. en.wikipedia.org
26. Bankhead wrote that she emerged from the show as 'the Queen of the Kilocycles,' and in January 1952 the radio editors of America, polling through Radio and Television Daily, voted her Woman of the Year in Radio, announced on-air on the 6 January broadcast. en.wikipedia.org, martingrams.blogspot.com
27. Producer-director Dee Engelbach carried the variety-spectacular format to television with All Star Revue, debuting 11 October 1952 with several Big Show veterans including Groucho Marx and Meredith Willson, with Bankhead among its rotating hosts through April 1953 -- an early instance of the NBC television 'spectacular' doctrine Pat Weaver built around the idea. en.wikipedia.org
28. Individual episode budgets reportedly reached roughly $100,000, with NBC ultimately reporting a loss of about $1 million across the two seasons; Ramsburg calls it Pat Weaver's 'biggest and most expensive blunder in Network Radio.' en.wikipedia.org, jimramsburg.com
29. A printed program guide was distributed each week, and the music was largely bespoke -- scored, bridged and often composed specifically for that broadcast rather than pulled from a stock library. martingrams.blogspot.com
30. The show's problem was scheduling, not quality: it aired opposite the very programs NBC had lost in the talent raids, and the premiere drew a 5.7 rating, peaked at 8.0 the following month, then finished the first season dead last in its own 90-minute period at a 5.5 average. jimramsburg.com
31. Season two sagged further to a 5.2 average, and NBC cancelled the program in April 1952; Wikipedia agrees the causes were too few advertisers for the cost and Jack Benny's competing program opposite it. jimramsburg.com, en.wikipedia.org
32. There is a mild source conflict on the first-season time slot: Wikipedia gives 6:00-7:30pm ET while the Haendiges log header describes the whole run flatly as 'Sundays 6:30-8:00pm' without distinguishing seasons; Grams independently confirms 6:30-8:00pm EST for season two only, consistent with reading the Haendiges header as season-two-shaped rather than as an outright contradiction. en.wikipedia.org, otrsite.com, martingrams.blogspot.com
33. After cancellation, NBC filled the slot with three half-hour programs: Dimension X, The Amazing Mr. Malone, and You Can't Take It With You. en.wikipedia.org
34. On the premiere, Fred Allen delivered one of his best-known lines about the new medium -- that television is called a new medium because nothing on it is well done -- while headlining radio's own most expensive attempt to hold television off. en.wikipedia.org
35. The premiere's running conceit was a fictional Allen program called 'The Pinch Penny Show,' a takeoff on an unnamed target, which supplied the broadcast's own title, 'Pinchpenny Goes to Hawaii.' oldtimeradiodownloads.com, otrsite.com
36. On the second broadcast, Fanny Brice's Baby Snooks took an acting lesson from Bankhead, and Groucho Marx coached Ezio Pinza through 'Some Enchanted Evening.' oldtimeradiodownloads.com
37. Comedian Phil Foster ran a recurring bit across consecutive January 1952 broadcasts about his mother wanting him to marry Tallulah Bankhead. martingrams.blogspot.com
38. The 6 January 1952 broadcast staged John Collier's 'Midnight Blue' with Claude Rains and Bankhead, a murder-mystery sketch resolved by the wrong shade of blue on a muffler. martingrams.blogspot.com
39. Martin Grams, whose two blog posts originally documented what were then the show's 'lost' broadcasts, later reported that every episode had since been located and was being transcribed from the original discs -- a discovery this show's own holdings do not yet reflect, since only 30 of the 57 broadcasts currently circulate. martingrams.blogspot.com
40. Contemporary critical reception was strong while commercial reception was weak, and the gap between the two is the story of the program: Bankhead's Woman of the Year honor and her own 'Queen of the Kilocycles' line sit against back-to-back losing seasons and a last-place finish in its own time slot. martingrams.blogspot.com, en.wikipedia.org, jimramsburg.com
41. Ramsburg notes one indignity precisely: Charlie Wild, Private Detective, a struggling Wildroot-sponsored half-hour that had lost more than half its audience, is by his reckoning the only program in the history of the medium that The Big Show managed to beat in the ratings. jimramsburg.com
42. Martin Grams devoted a full book, The Big Show: Tallulah Bankhead and Her Radio Career, to the program and Bankhead's radio career; it reprints her original 1950 NBC talent contract and covers the 1953 television revival, but has not been read for this research pass. martingrams.biz