The Ed Wynn Show

For the great Ed Wynn’s birthday this year, I have spruced up my previous post on The Perfect Fool, and add this spotlight on his ground breaking TV variety show.

That he was brave enough to attempt one is a testament to the comedian’s valiant, risk-taking spirit. Wynn had been one of radio’s biggest stars as the Texaco Fire Chief from 1932 to 1937. Then he had the hubris to attempt to fund his own radio network, and lost just about everything. It took him a bit of time to claw his way back. Meantime, television was waiting in then wings. In 1936 Wynn had participated in an experimental TV broadcast for NBC. A dozen years later Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle proved the efficacy of television variety, and so Wynn gave it a go with his own CBS program The Ed Wynn Show, which ran from 1949 to 1950.

The Ed Wynn Show is a wonderful opportunity to experience a version of Wynn’s legendary stage act as audiences had seen it in vaudeville and Broadway revues, full of bizarre and surreal sight gags, puns, and quirky notions, the brilliance of a great clown which his acting turns in films and television never even hinted at. It was also one of the first shows to be broadcast out of Hollywood, which meant that a lot of movie people could be booked. (Some of the shows were also broadcast from New York).

Today classic comedy fans remember The Ed Wynn Show chiefly as the birthplace of Buster Keaton’s career revival. Keaton came on the show and re-created his first screen appearance in 1917’s The Butcher Boy with Fatty Arbuckle, the bit with molasses in a general store. The Ed Wynn Show was also a showcase for the television debuts of The Three Stooges, Groucho Marx, Leon Erroll, Hattie McDaniel, Dinah Shore (soon to have her own wonderful variety show), Robert Clary, and Lucy and Desi. William Frawley was also on! Others who appeared on the show included Eddie “Rochester” Anderson,  Eve Arden, Joe E. Brown,Gloria de Haven, Buddy Ebsen, Mitzi Green,Allan Jones, Frances Langford, Charles Laughton, Peggy Lee, Carmen Miranda,Garry Moore,Cesar Romero, Kay Starr,Gloria Swanson (right around the time of Sunset Blvd), and Vera Vague, among others.

The fact that this important show ended after only one season isn’t a reflection on how it fared. It won an Emmy and a Peabody, and Wynn didn’t leave the variety scene just yet. He wrapped the show in order to become one of the rotating hosts on the Four Star Revue (1950-52), which was less arduous for the aging comedian than a weekly gig. And after that he began to take acting roles in things like Requiem for a Heavyweight,The Diary of Anne Frank,Disney movies, and so forth. In 1958 there came another Ed Wynn Show, but that one was a sitcom.

For more on Ed Wynn go here.

For more on show business history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and keep an eye out for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.