Jimmy Durante & Pat Cooper – Hollywood Palace – January 11, 1969

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The Hollywood Palace is an hour-long American television variety show that was broadcast weekly (generally on Saturday nights) on ABC from January 4, 1964, to February 7, 1970. Originally titled The Saturday Night Hollywood Palace, it began as a midseason replacement for The Jerry Lewis Show, another variety show, which had lasted only three months.

It was staged in Hollywood at the former Hollywood Playhouse (where Lewis’ series had originated, temporarily renamed “The Jerry Lewis Theater” from September through December 1963) on Vine Street, which was renamed the Hollywood Palace during the show’s duration and is today known as Avalon Hollywood. A little-known starlet named Raquel Welchwas cast during the first season as the “Billboard Girl”, who placed the names of the acts on a placard (similar to that of a vaudeville house).

 

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Unlike similar programs such as The Ed Sullivan Show, the series used a different host each week. Among the performers and hosts on the show were Bing Crosby (who made the first and the most appearances as guest host: 31 in all, including his family on several of the annual Christmas shows), Jimmy Durante, Dean Martin, Liberace, Frank Sinatra, Milton Berle, Sammy Davis Jr., Sid Caesar, Peter Lawford, The Rolling Stones, Groucho Marx, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Tony Bennett, Judy Garland, Jimmy Durante, The Supremes, Ginger Rogers, The Temptations, Dusty Springfield, Phyllis Diller, Elizabeth Montgomery, and many others.

(Martin’s hosting was a bit ironic, given that the slot had been vacated by his ex-partner Jerry Lewis. Martin himself alluded to this in the March 7, 1964, episode, thanking Jerry for “building me this theater”. He enjoyed the gig enough to subsequently agree to star in his own variety series, The Dean Martin Show, which premiered on NBC in the fall of 1965 and ran for nine years.)

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