The Chase and Sanborn Hour
Encyclopedia
Standard Brands
Standard Brands was formed in 1929 by J.P. Morgan with the merger of:*Fleischmann Company*Royal Baking Powder Company*E. W. Gillett*Widlar Food Products Company*Chase & Sanborn Coffee Company...
' Chase and Sanborn Coffee
Chase & Sanborn Coffee Company
Chase & Sanborn Coffee is an American coffee company established in 1862 in Boston, Massachusetts. It claims to be the first coffee company to pack and ship roasted coffee in sealed tins....
, usually airing Sundays on NBC from 8pm to 9pm during the years 1929 to 1948.
The series began in 1929 as The Chase and Sanborn Choral Orchestra, a half-hour musical variety show heard Sundays at 8:30pm on NBC. When Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond...
became the show's star, he received a record-breaking salary of $5000 a week. Violinist David Rubinoff
David Rubinoff
David Rubinoff, also known as Dave Rubinoff, was a popular violinist who was heard during the 1930s and 1940s on various radio programs playing his $100,000 Stradivarius violin. He also performed in theaters, clubs and schools, and he gave several concerts at the White House during the 1940s...
(September 13, 1897 – October 06, 1986), became a regular in January 1931, introduced as "Rubinoff and His Violin."
With Chevalier returning to Paris, Eddie Cantor
Eddie Cantor
Eddie Cantor was an American "illustrated song" performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor and songwriter...
was chosen as his replacement and the new 60-minute program, The Chase and Sanborn Hour, was launched September 13, 1931, teaming Cantor with Rubinoff and announcer Jimmy Wallington. The show established Cantor as a leading comedian, and his scriptwriter, David Freedman
David Freedman
David Freedman was a Romanian-born American playwright and biographer who became known as the "King of the Gag-writers" in the early days of radio....
, as “the Captain of Comedy.” When Jimmy Durante
Jimmy Durante
James Francis "Jimmy" Durante was an American singer, pianist, comedian and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s...
stepped in as a substitute for Cantor, making his first appearance on September 10, 1933, he was so successful that he was offered his own show. Then the world's highest paid radio star, Cantor continued as The Chase and Sanborn Hours headliner until November 25, 1934.
With a new format, The Opera Guild, hosted by Deems Taylor
Deems Taylor
Joseph Deems Taylor was a U.S. composer, music critic, and promoter of classical music.-Career:Taylor initially planned to become an architect; however, despite minimal musical training he soon took to music composition. The result was a series of works for orchestra and/or voices...
, began December 2, 1934, Sundays at 8pm, on The Chase and Sanborn Hour, and that concert series continued until March 17, 1935. Major Bowes' Amateur Hour had the slot from March 24, 1935 until September 11, 1936, followed by Do You Want to Be an Actor?, with Haven MacQuarrie, broadcast from January 3, 1937 until May 2, 1937, a series that continued Sundays at 10:30pm as a half-hour show from December 5, 1937 until February 20, 1938.
Edgar Bergen
Meanwhile, Chase and Sanborn found a gold mine with a wooden dummy when Edgar BergenEdgar Bergen
Edgar John Bergen was an American actor and radio performer, best known as a ventriloquist.-Early life:...
and Charlie McCarthy began an 11-year run, starting May 9, 1937. Initially this incarnation of the program also featured as regulars master of ceremonies Don Ameche
Don Ameche
Don Ameche was an Academy Award winning American actor with a career spanning almost sixty years.-Personal life:...
, singers Dorothy Lamour
Dorothy Lamour
Dorothy Lamour was an American film actress. She is best remembered for appearing in the Road to... movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope .-Early life:Lamour was born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Carmen Louise Dorothy...
and Nelson Eddy
Nelson Eddy
Nelson Ackerman Eddy was an American singer and actor who appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclubs. A classically trained baritone, he is best remembered for the eight films in which he costarred...
, and (for the first few weeks) comedian W.C. Fields, accompanied by a different guest star each week. Perhaps the most infamous of the latter was Mae West
Mae West
Mae West was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades....
, whose appearance on the program of December 12, 1937 was highlighted with a sexually suggestive "Adam and Eve" sketch that caused a public outcry and resulted in West being banned from the radio airwaves for many years thereafter.
Beginning January 7, 1940, the regular cast apart from Bergen and McCarthy were dropped and the show was cut to a half-hour and retitled The Chase and Sanborn Program. Also beginning in 1940, the program would go on hiatus for a number of weeks each summer. CBS would fill its airtime with a different substitute show each year; these included The Bishop and the Gargoyle (1940), What's My Line?
What's My Line?
What's My Line? is a panel game show which originally ran in the United States on the CBS Television Network from 1950 to 1967, with several international versions and subsequent U.S. revivals. The game tasked celebrity panelists with questioning contestants in order to determine their occupations....
(1941), Star-Spangled Vaudeville (1942), Paul Whiteman
Paul Whiteman
Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader and orchestral director.Leader of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s, Whiteman's recordings were immensely successful, and press notices often referred to him as the "King of Jazz"...
Presents (1943), The Gracie Fields
Gracie Fields
Dame Gracie Fields, DBE , was an English-born, later Italian-based actress, singer and comedienne and star of both cinema and music hall.-Early life:...
Show (1944), The Frances Langford
Frances Langford
Julia Frances Langford was an American singer and entertainer who was popular during the Golden Age of Radio and also made film appearances over two decades.-Birth:...
Show (1945), and Alec Templeton
Alec Templeton
Alec Templeton was a Welsh composer, pianist and satirist.Templeton was born in Cardiff, Wales. Blind from birth, he studied at London's Royal Academy.-Radio:...
Time (1946-47). In the fall of 1948 Chase and Sanborn announced that it would terminate its contract with Edgar Bergen at the end of the year. The remaining Bergen/McCarthy programs eschewed guest stars in favor of regular sketches featuring Don Ameche and Marsha Hunt
Marsha Hunt (actress)
Marsha Hunt is an American film, theater, and television actress who was blacklisted by Hollywood movie studio executives in the 1950s.-Career:...
as The Bickersons
The Bickersons
The Bickersons was a radio comedy sketch series that began in 1946 on NBC, moving the following year to CBS where it continued until 1951...
. In 1949 Bergen went to CBS
CBS Radio Network
The CBS Radio Network provides news, sports and other programming to more than 1,000 radio stations throughout the United States. The network is owned by CBS Corporation, and operated by CBS Radio ....
, with a new weekly program (The Charlie McCarthy Show) sponsored by Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
.
Although the series ended December 26, 1948, it was followed by a compilation show on NBC, The Chase and Sanborn 100th Anniversary Show (November 15, 1964), assembled by writer Carroll Carroll and narrated by Bergen. This became an annual event with The Chase and Sanborn 101st Anniversary Show (November 14, 1965), a Fred Allen
Fred Allen
Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it...
tribute, followed by The Chase and Sanborn 102nd Anniversary Show (November 13, 1966), which turned out to be the last of the series.
Listen to
- The Chase and Sanborn Hour with Eddie Cantor (excerpts)
- OTR Network Library: The Chase and Sanborn Hour (six 1937-46 episodes)
- W.C. Fields, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy's first show for the Chase And Sanborn Hour 1937-05-09 (01) Guest - Ann Harding - with a new introduction