Texaco Star Theater
The roots of Texaco Star Theater were in a 1930s radio hit, Ed Wynn, the Fire Chief, featuring the manic "Perfect Fool" in a half-hour of vaudevillian routines interspersed with music.
Wynn's ratings began to slide and the comedian lapsed amidst personal and professional crises, and the show ended in June 1935.
The show's cast featured young singers Bobby Breen and Deanna Durbin, announcer Jimmy Wallington, who read the commercials for Fire Chief gasoline, Harry Park, and bandleader Jacques Renard.
Texaco Star Theater (spelled Theatre for most of the radio show's run) was first broadcast on October 5, 1938, and it continued on the air until June 26, 1940.
During the almost two-year span, Una Merkel, Irene Noblette, Charlie Ruggles, and Ned Sparks appeared as comedians.
Kenny Baker also remained for the first two seasons, his previous role with Allen's "rival" Jack Benny serving for a number of situations, although his role was greatly reduced by 1942, partly because Baker had become difficult to manage, particularly after a controversial performance of "Ave Maria" sung in German weeks after the United States officially entered World War II.
Allen was forced to leave the show in 1944 due to hypertension; he returned with a different sponsor on NBC, while staying with and further refining his half-hour format a year later.
Texaco Star Theater's next hosts included James Melton (1944–1947), Tony Martin (1947–1948), Gordon MacRae (1948), Jack Carter (1948), and Milton Berle (1948–1949).
[6] He was a smash once the new full season began, Texaco Star Theater hitting ratings as high as 80 and owning Tuesday night for NBC from 8 to 9 p.m.
In some cases, this led to a surprising degree of self-consciousness about TV itself—Texaco's original commercial spokesman, Sid Stone, would sometimes hawk his products until driven from the stage by a cop.
(Berle did, however, contribute his part to the making of a rock and roll legend: in his final season, he opened his stage to Elvis Presley amid the beginning of the hip-swiveling singer's international popularity.)
He began losing many of his former fans, who preferred when he kept things more unpredictable, and it would be years before his kind of manic balance would find a television home again.
