Broadway Open House
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Broadway Open House was television's first late-night variety and talk show, on the NBC. It was originally to be hosted by comic Don "Creesh" Hornsby, but he died of polio two weeks before the premiere broadcast; his replacements, hosting different nights each week, were Morey Amsterdam and Jerry Lester. A regular guest was Jennie Lewis as her popular character Dagmar.
The program was developed by Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, a programming vice-president at NBC who had started his career as a production assistant on the similar Fred Allen radio show Town Hall Tonight in the 1930s. After this series' fifteen-month run, from 29 May 1950 to 24 August 1951, Weaver further developed his ideas on a local show over NBC's New York station starring Steve Allen, which eventually took to the network in 1954 as The Tonight Show. Due to this connection, Broadway Open House is considered a predecessor to Tonight, and some TV history reference books consider Tonight to be a continuation of this earlier program.
The theme song was "It's Almost Like Being in Love."