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Hullabaloo (TV series)
Encyclopedia
Hullabaloo is an American musical variety series
that ran on NBC
from January 12, 1965 through August 29, 1966. Similar to Shindig!
it ran in prime time
in contrast to ABC
's American Bandstand
.
, who went on to direct Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special
,
Hullabaloo served as a big-budget, quality showcase for the leading pop acts of the day, and was also competition for another like-minded television showcase, ABC
's Shindig!
. A different host presided each week—among these were Sammy Davis, Jr.
, Petula Clark
, Paul Anka
, Jack Jones
, and Frankie Avalon
—singing a couple of his or her own hits and introducing the different acts. Many people and many bands performed on the show like Dionne Warwick
, The Rolling Stones
, The Yardbirds
, Sonny & Cher
, the Supremes
, Herman's Hermits
, The Animals
, and Marianne Faithfull
. Many early episodes included segments taped in the UK and hosted by Brian Epstein
.
Many of the programs in the series were videotape
d at NBC Studios
in Burbank, California
. Others were taped in New York City
at NBC's Studio 8H (built for Arturo Toscanini
and the NBC Symphony Orchestra
and which would later house Saturday Night Live
) , and in NBC's studio in the Midwood
section of Brooklyn
. Much of the series' color videotaped footage was later dubbed over to kinescope
on film - as such copied in black and white. Only three half-hour episodes are known to exist in their original videotaped form.
, who selected and choreographed the Hullabaloo Dancers. The Hullabaloo Dancers were a team of four men and six women who appeared on a regular basis. Two of them, Michael Bennett
and Donna McKechnie
, went on to achieve considerable fame on Broadway
. Dancer Patrick Adiarte
, who also attempted to launch a solo singing career on the series, went on to play Ho-Jon in the television series M*A*S*H. Another female dancer, model/actress Lada Edmund, Jr. was best known as the caged "go-go girl" dancer in the "Hullabaloo A-Go-Go" segment near the closing sequence of the show. She also had a brief recording career with her singles "I Know Something" and "The Larue." She later appeared (and co-starred with Jon Voight
) in the 1969 film Out of It and in Act of Vengeance released in 1974. Dancer Suzanne Charney
also had some degree of fame on Broadway as the lead frug dancer in Sweet Charity
, reprising her role in the 1969 film
as well. Choreographer and dancer David Winters
went on to direct or produce over 200 shows, specials and films.
. In the 1965-1966 season, Hullabaloo preceded the NBC sitcom The John Forsythe Show
. It was featured opposite the military drama Twelve O'Clock High
on ABC.
and DVD
formats.
Variety show
A variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts, especially musical performances and sketch comedy, and normally introduced by a compère or host. Other types of acts include magic, animal and circus acts, acrobatics, juggling...
that ran on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
from January 12, 1965 through August 29, 1966. Similar to Shindig!
Shindig!
Shindig! was an American musical variety series which aired on ABC from September 16, 1964 to January 8, 1966. The show was hosted by Jimmy O'Neill, a disc jockey in Los Angeles at the time who also created the show along with his wife Sharon Sheeley and production executive Art Stolnitz....
it ran in prime time
Prime time
Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast programming during the middle of the evening for television programing.The term prime time is often defined in terms of a fixed time period—for example, from 19:00 to 22:00 or 20:00 to 23:00 Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast...
in contrast to ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
's American Bandstand
American Bandstand
American Bandstand is an American music-performance show that aired in various versions from 1952 to 1989 and was hosted from 1956 until its final season by Dick Clark, who also served as producer...
.
Overview
Directed by Steve BinderSteve Binder
Steve Binder is an American producer and director. He found success behind the camera on influential TV shows showcasing music, like The T.A.M.I. Show and Hullabaloo...
, who went on to direct Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special
Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special
Elvis, starring Elvis Presley, was the title of a 1968 United States television special. Sponsored by The Singer Sewing Machine Company, it aired on December 2, 1968 on the NBC television network...
,
Hullabaloo served as a big-budget, quality showcase for the leading pop acts of the day, and was also competition for another like-minded television showcase, ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
's Shindig!
Shindig!
Shindig! was an American musical variety series which aired on ABC from September 16, 1964 to January 8, 1966. The show was hosted by Jimmy O'Neill, a disc jockey in Los Angeles at the time who also created the show along with his wife Sharon Sheeley and production executive Art Stolnitz....
. A different host presided each week—among these were Sammy Davis, Jr.
Sammy Davis, Jr.
Samuel George "Sammy" Davis Jr. was an American entertainer and was also known for his impersonations of actors and other celebrities....
, Petula Clark
Petula Clark
Petula Clark, CBE is an English singer, actress, and composer whose career has spanned seven decades.Clark's professional career began as an entertainer on BBC Radio during World War II...
, Paul Anka
Paul Anka
Paul Albert Anka, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor.Anka first became famous as a teen idol in the late 1950s and 1960s with hit songs like "Diana'", "Lonely Boy", and "Put Your Head on My Shoulder"...
, Jack Jones
Jack Jones (singer)
John Allan "Jack" Jones is an American jazz and pop singer. He was one of the most popular vocalists of the 1960s.-Overview:...
, and Frankie Avalon
Frankie Avalon
Frankie Avalon is an American actor, singer, playwright, and former teen idol.-Career:By the time he was 12, Avalon was on U.S. television playing his trumpet. As a teenager he played with Bobby Rydell in Rocco and the Saints...
—singing a couple of his or her own hits and introducing the different acts. Many people and many bands performed on the show like Dionne Warwick
Dionne Warwick
Dionne Warwick is an American singer, actress and TV show host, who became a United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, and a United States Ambassador of Health....
, The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
, The Yardbirds
The Yardbirds
- Current :* Chris Dreja - rhythm guitar, backing vocals * Jim McCarty - drums, backing vocals * Ben King - lead guitar * David Smale - bass, backing vocals...
, Sonny & Cher
Sonny & Cher
Sonny & Cher were an American pop music duo, actors, singers and entertainers made up of husband-and-wife team Sonny and Cher Bono in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple started their career in the mid-1960s as R&B backing singers for record producer Phil Spector....
, the Supremes
The Supremes
The Supremes, an American female singing group, were the premier act of Motown Records during the 1960s.Originally founded as The Primettes in Detroit, Michigan, in 1959, The Supremes' repertoire included doo-wop, pop, soul, Broadway show tunes, psychedelic soul, and disco...
, Herman's Hermits
Herman's Hermits
Herman's Hermits are an English beat band, formed in Manchester in 1963 as Herman & The Hermits. The group's record producer, Mickie Most , emphasized a simple, non-threatening, clean-cut image, although the band originally played R&B numbers...
, The Animals
The Animals
The Animals were an English music group of the 1960s formed in Newcastle upon Tyne during the early part of the decade, and later relocated to London...
, and Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....
. Many early episodes included segments taped in the UK and hosted by Brian Epstein
Brian Epstein
Brian Samuel Epstein , was an English music entrepreneur, and is best known for being the manager of The Beatles up until his death. He also managed several other musical artists such as Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Cilla Black, The Remo Four & The Cyrkle...
.
Many of the programs in the series were videotape
Videotape
A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...
d at NBC Studios
NBC Studios
The NBC Studios in New York, New York is located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, the historic GE Building houses the headquarters of the NBC television network, its parent General Electric, and NBC's flagship station WNBC , as well as cable news channel MSNBC.When NBC Universal relocated,...
in Burbank, California
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....
. Others were taped in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
at NBC's Studio 8H (built for Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...
and the NBC Symphony Orchestra
NBC Symphony Orchestra
The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra established by David Sarnoff of the National Broadcasting Company especially for conductor Arturo Toscanini...
and which would later house Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
) , and in NBC's studio in the Midwood
Midwood, Brooklyn
Midwood is a neighborhood in the south central part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, New York, USA, roughly halfway between Prospect Park and Coney Island. The neighborhood is within Community District 14...
section of Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
. Much of the series' color videotaped footage was later dubbed over to kinescope
Kinescope
Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor...
on film - as such copied in black and white. Only three half-hour episodes are known to exist in their original videotaped form.
Dancers
The show was choreographed by David WintersDavid Winters (choreographer)
David Winters is an English-born American dancer, choreographer, producer, director, screenwriter, and actor. Winters has participated in, directed and produced over 400 television series, specials, and motion pictures...
, who selected and choreographed the Hullabaloo Dancers. The Hullabaloo Dancers were a team of four men and six women who appeared on a regular basis. Two of them, Michael Bennett
Michael Bennett
Michael Bennett was an American musical theater director, writer, choreographer, and dancer. He won seven Tony Awards for his choreography and direction of Broadway shows and was nominated for an additional eleven....
and Donna McKechnie
Donna McKechnie
Donna McKechnie is an American musical theater dancer, singer, actress, and choreographer. She is known for her professional and personal relationship with choreographer Michael Bennett, with whom she collaborated on her most noted role, "Cassie" from the musical A Chorus Line, for which she...
, went on to achieve considerable fame on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
. Dancer Patrick Adiarte
Patrick Adiarte
Patrick Adiarte is an American theater, film and television actor and dancer, known for his portrayal of foreign or Asian characters in various roles in film and television. His roles have included Prince Chulalongkorn in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, college student T.J...
, who also attempted to launch a solo singing career on the series, went on to play Ho-Jon in the television series M*A*S*H. Another female dancer, model/actress Lada Edmund, Jr. was best known as the caged "go-go girl" dancer in the "Hullabaloo A-Go-Go" segment near the closing sequence of the show. She also had a brief recording career with her singles "I Know Something" and "The Larue." She later appeared (and co-starred with Jon Voight
Jon Voight
Jonathan Vincent "Jon" Voight is an American actor. He has received an Academy Award, out of four nominations, and three Golden Globe Awards, out of nine nominations. Voight is the father of actress Angelina Jolie....
) in the 1969 film Out of It and in Act of Vengeance released in 1974. Dancer Suzanne Charney
Suzanne Charney
Suzanne Charney is an American actress and dancer.Charney's first big break came in early 1965, when she was cast as one of the featured dancers in the weekly NBC musical variety series Hullabaloo, which aired until spring of 1966...
also had some degree of fame on Broadway as the lead frug dancer in Sweet Charity
Sweet Charity
Sweet Charity is a musical with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and book by Neil Simon. It was directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse starring his wife and muse Gwen Verdon. It is based on Federico Fellini's screenplay for Nights of Cabiria...
, reprising her role in the 1969 film
Sweet Charity (film)
Sweet Charity, full title of which is Sweet Charity: The Adventures of a Girl Who Wanted to Be Loved, is a 1969 American musical film directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, written by Neil Simon, and with music by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields...
as well. Choreographer and dancer David Winters
David Winters (choreographer)
David Winters is an English-born American dancer, choreographer, producer, director, screenwriter, and actor. Winters has participated in, directed and produced over 400 television series, specials, and motion pictures...
went on to direct or produce over 200 shows, specials and films.
Broadcast history
The series was originally a one-hour broadcast, airing from 8:30 - 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday. In June 1965, it shifted to the 10 p.m. slot (featuring selected repeats of the first season), but three months later, the network cut the show to thirty minutes and moved it to 7:30 p.m. on Monday, where it remained to the end of its run, whereupon it was replaced by the sitcom The MonkeesThe Monkees (TV series)
The Monkees is an American situation comedy that aired on NBC from September 1966 to March 1968. The series follows the adventures of four young men trying to make a name for themselves as rock 'n roll singers. The show introduced a number of innovative new-wave film techniques to series...
. In the 1965-1966 season, Hullabaloo preceded the NBC sitcom The John Forsythe Show
The John Forsythe Show
The John Forsythe Show began as a situation comedy in the fall of 1965 on NBC, but at mid-season it switched to a spy show. In the first phase of the series, John Forsythe appeared as United States Air Force veteran John Foster, who inherited the private Foster School for Girls in San Francisco,...
. It was featured opposite the military drama Twelve O'Clock High
Twelve O'Clock High (TV series)
Twelve O'Clock High or 12 O'Clock High is an American drama series set in World War II. This TV series originally broadcasted on ABC-TV for two-and-one-half TV seasons from September 18, 1964, through January 13, 1967; was based on the motion picture Twelve O'Clock High...
on ABC.
Availability
Highlights of many of the segments have been compiled for release in VHSVHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
and DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
formats.