When the Cincinnati Museum Center celebrates “1950s Day” next month, the city’s biggest TV stars will be showcased in the Scripps-Howard Newsreel Theater in grainy black-and-white.
Just as they appeared 70 years ago on tiny first-generation television sets.
Bob Shreve, Ruth Lyons, Bob Braun, Dotty Mack, Rod Serling, Kenny Price, “Uncle Al” Lewis and Captain Windy will be featured during a five-hour marathon of 1950 Cincinnati TV classics on Saturday, May 3.
“I want to show that special time when TV was brand new, to show people what it was like back then,” says Arabeth Balasko, the museum center’s curator of photography, prints and media.
Television came to Cincinnati in 1948 on WLWT-TV, a year before WKRC-TV and WCPO-TV. Cincinnati’s first TV stars spent the early 1950s figuring out how to fill hours of live programming with comedy sketches (The General Store with Shreve and Willie Thall); variety shows (Melody Showcase); music shows (Midwestern Hayride); pantomime programs (Paul Dixon Show, Dotty Mack Show); talk shows (Lyons’ 50-50 Club); and drama (The Storm). Here’s a clip from the 1951 Melody Showcase screened last October:
“I’m trying to show things people haven’t seen before. There are so many awesome things I keep finding,” says Balasko, a West Virginia University graduate who didn’t know much about Cincinnati’s rich broadcasting history before joining the museum staff three years ago.
“It’s fun to see these early shows. People were in six or seven shows. They were hillbillies one minute, and then they were doing Romeo & Juliet,” Balasko says.
“The General Store was basically ad-lib. All they had was a time sheet (run down list) saying what they had to do at what time,” she says.
Lyons also did her iconic live noon weekday show on WLWT-TV without a script for 17 years.
This will be Balasko’s second classic TV showcase in six months. Her Oct. 25 screening wasn’t well publicized, so she’s doing her best to get the word out for the May 3 lineup. Her goal is to get all of the shows from her two screenings on the Museum Center’s YouTube channel.
For now, her tentative May 3 lineup includes a few repeats from October: Clips from WLWT-TV’s 1951 Sunday night Melody Showcase with Bill Nimmo, part of a 1951 Lyons’ 50-50 Club show, and a promotional film called WLW: The Nation’s Station. She also will replay a complete half-hour episode of WKRC-TV’s 1952 The Storm drama series called “No Gods To Serve” written and hosted by Serling.
Balasko says that unseen digitized programs and photos from the Museum Center vault in May tentatively will include:
- A 1990 Cincinnati On The Air look back at WLWT-TV’s The General Store comedy from the early 1950s starring Shreve and Thall. Host Bill Myers interviews Charlie Vaughan, local TV pioneer and former WCET-TV president, about 1950s TV.
- A 1990 Cincinnati On The Air retrospective on WCPO-TV’s Dotty Mack Show starring Mack, Braun, and Colin Male pantomiming to records for the ABC network in the mid-1950s.
- Clips from WCPO-TV’s Uncle Al Show in 1958 with Al and Wanda Lewis, Roger the Robot, cardboard cut-out airplanes, and the “Hokey Pokey.”
- A 1957 Midwestern Hayride with host Dean Richards and the Lucky Pennies band, Kenny Price and the Hometowners, and Bonnie Lou.
“I’m trying to do things people haven’t seen before,” says Balasko. “There will be some surprises. Let's Just say there will be surprises.”
The 1950s will be celebrated at Cincinnati Union Terminal Day with vintage cars and poodle skirts. The staff has compiled a 14-page “1950s Day dressing guide” for clothing, shoes, hair, accessories, makeup, and more.
When Union Terminal was remodeled to house the Museum Center in the late 1980s, many local TV veterans and the Cincinnati-owned television stations donated historic videotapes to the Cincinnati Historical Society. More old TV shows and films from the museum's Moving Image Collection will be shown in October for Balasko’s second annual “Archives Day” celebration during National Archives Month, she says.
Many of the videotapes were transferred to CDs, although the process wasn't perfect. “Some have poor sound quality, and the video is kind of jumpy,” she says. Her goal is to transfer them to the MP4 format.
Balasko also says that about 98% of the Museum Center’s vast audio archives have not been digitized. The collection includes Ruth Lyons’ Collect Calls from Lowenthal’s; WLW’s overnight Moon River music show; Kroger’s 1940s Hearts in Harmony soap opera; Burger Waltz Time sponsored by Burger Beer; Kay Irion’s WSAI-AM Bluebird Club talk show; Your Sons at War stories and interviews from World War II; and The Studio A Coffee Club variety show from the H. & S. Pogue department store.
“There is a lot of awesome stuff I will get digitized,” she says.
