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#10655: TEX AND JINX SHOW: TEX MCCRARY AND JINX FALKENBURG

1951-01-08, WNBC, min.

TEX AND JINX Radio & Television BROADCAST HISTORY:

April 22, 1946- February 27, 1959.

WEAF (WNBC, WRCA), New York weekdays at 8:30 A.M. until 1954; at 1:00pm,1954-1955; then at 6:30 and 10:35pm until July 31, 1958, moving briefly to WOR, broadcasting at 2:15pm.

In addition to the Kollmars (Dorothy Kilgallen and husband Richard Kollmar) and the Fitzgeralds (Pegeen and husband Ed Fitzgerald), another well-recognized New York couple, newlyweds Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg, added their own bread-and-bacon banter to the local airwaves between 1946 and 1959. Their gabfest, initially Hi Jinx but later revised to Tex and Jinx, was beamed over WEAF which was subsequently re-lettered WNBC and later WRCA. In limited doses, the flagship outlet of the National Broadcasting Company transmitted Meet Tex and Jinx to the whole country during 1947 and 1948.

Tex and Jinx devoted most of their airtime to lofty and noble concepts, visitors and sidebars. Tex and Jinx [on WEAF-WNBC-WRCA] were interviewing Bernard Baruch, Margaret Truman, or Ethel Waters…. McCrary built the show on the assumption that the early morning audience was not stupid, as programmers generally assumed; that people in general had fresher minds and were more open to serious topics at the beginning of the day.”

Their joint radio venture began in April 1946 just 10 months following their nuptials (June 10, 1945). Launched as a breakfast feature, the series later shifted to afternoons and finally into the evening hours before departing the ether a dozen years afterward. They were branded by one journalist “Mr. Brains and Mrs. Beauty.”

In early 1947 NBC put them on its television network as a portion of a Sunday evening quarter-hour dubbed Bristol-Myers Tele-Varieties. “The McCrarys were naturals for TV,” wrote a reviewer, “with their combination of friendly chatter, interviews, and features.” That summer the web awarded them an exclusive Sunday night half-hour format under the appellation At Home with Tex and Jinx. A decade later, in the 1957-58 season, the duo hosted a daytime NBC-TV showcase, The Tex and Jinx Show.

When hepatitis sidetracked Falkenburg in 1958 from their broadcast commitments, McCrary carried on solo on their radio show for another couple of years. In the 1980s, however, the couple separated, remaining on genial terms. McCrary died in New York on July 29, 2003 and Falkenburg expired just 29 days later in the same city, on August 27, 2003.

NOTE::
The scores of TEX AND JINX SHOWS archived by Archival Television Audio, Inc. were originally obtained as original 16" Electronic Discs from Barry Farber, producer of the show (1957-1959), in 1960 after he had begun his own career in front of the mike at WINS Radio. These discs were subsequently transferred to 1/4" reel to reel tape, and then disposed. These broadcasts are rare and represent the largest known collection of TEX AND JINX extant broadcasts in the world.

Today's Headlines: Daily Worker criticizes Senator Taft on Korea,
twists his arguments to suit editorial tastes, review of new film, "Halls Of Montezuma," on-the-spot premier at New York City's Roxy Theater of the film, celebrities interviewed include, the Duke of Windsor, Elsa Maxwell, soprano Gladys Swarthout, Marilyn Maxwell, Colonel Courtney Whitney, United States Air Force, Basil Rathbone, Gertrude Lawrence, Mrs. Franklin D.Roosevelt, FDR Jr, Faye Emerson, Skitch Henderson, Buddy Rogers, Gene Tierney.
Today's Guest: Gertrude Lawrence, actress.

#10977: ED SULLIVAN SHOW (TOAST OF THE TOWN) 15TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW

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1963-06-23, CBS, min.

           June 20, 1948 - May 30, 1971

ED SULLIVAN SHOW, THE, (TOAST OF THE TOWN)
Television's longest-running variety series. Originally, titled, TOAST OF THE TOWN, the name of the series changed on September 18, 1955, to THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW. Most remembered for introducing many stand-up comedians, and musical acts, including The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, The Beatles. 

 Most of the 1,087 broadcasts, encompassing 10,000 performers, have been archived. The major exceptions are the first half-year of shows circa 1948 of which a few kinescope excerpts survive.
 
The ED SULLIVAN SHOW was a spectacular show-case that for twenty-three years entertained the American family. In its prime, more than thirty million viewers, young and old, tuned in at the same time to view popular culture.  

Host Ed Sullivan celebrates 15 years on CBS with film clip segments of previous shows featuring guests Julie Andrews, Louis Armstrong, Jack Benny, Fred Astaire, Richard Burton, James Cagney, Art Carney, Maurice Chevalier, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Walt Disney, Jimmy Durante, Henry Fonda, Clark Gable, Jackie Gleason, Robert Goulet, Topo Gigio, Oscar Hammerstein 11, Helen Hayes, Sonny King, Burt Lancaster, Shelley Winters, Johnny Wayne, Charles Laughton, Jack Lemmon, Gertrude Lawrence, Ethel Waters, Raoul Walsh, Sophie Tucker, Rod Steiger, Red Skelton, Phil Silvers, Richard Rodgers, Frank Shuster, Elvis Presley, Cole Porter, Gina Lollabridgida, Robert Mitchum, Maya Plisetskaya, Moiseyev Dancers.

#960: A 1960'S RADIO BROADCAST ADDITION: WORLD OF MUSICAL COMEDY: STORY OF GERTRUDE LAWRENCE