Variety Show Vault

The Hollywood Palace was a successful ABC-TV variety show that ran on Saturday nights from 1964 to 1970. This was one of the first variety shows on TV to feature a different host each week. The Les Brown Orchestra was the house band for most of the show...

The Dean Martin Show was a big hit.  It ran for 264 episodes from 1965 to 1974. Dino was already an established media star in 1964:  movies, concerts, hit recordings and more.  But it was TV where his appeal really came shining through...

  Country singer Jimmy Dean was one of the most popular entertainers on television.  Although he appeared on many other programs as a guest, he also hosted several variety shows of his own.  His earliest was in 1957.  The Jimmy Dean Show (also known as Country Time) was one of the first major network television shows to welcome a whole host of popular country artists to the national television aud

Andy Williams was a major prime time player with his own variety show which ran from 1962 to 1971, one of the longest of any of this type of show. The hour was filled with comedy sketches and music and a whole host of guest stars made their way to Andy's stage:  Pearl Bailey, Johnny Cash, Raymond Burr, Buddy Hackett, Connie Francis, Roy Rogers, Johnny Mathis...

Flip Wilson was one of the most popular comedians of the late 1960s and 1970s.  He was given his own variety show on September 17, 1970.  It was a hit and ran for four years (94 episodes). He brought many of his zany characters on the show with him, including his famous Geraldine act...

The Kraft Music Hall began on radio and continued on TV right up through the 1970s. Perry Como became the permanent host in 1959 and later (after he left) they employed revolving guest hosts (see Ed McMahon above).  The Music Hall was consistently a hit with viewers...

Sonny and Cher were television's favorite married couple.  Well, for a couple of years anyways. They blazed on to the TV scene in 1971 with their variety show.  They made quite a pair, that is for sure.  Short, funny looking  and musically challenged Sonny made the perfect straight man to glamorous and super talented wife Cher...

This is the first of which will be a recurring Sunday feature on our website.  We all loved the old variety shows of our youth.  There were dozens of them.  Not any more. Well, every Sunday we will take a look at one of them right here on our website...