Dennis Day Show ?

[Mike]

i was unaware until now that dennis day had a tv show of his own. i receive a monthly list of rare and obscure movies & tv shows from a guy named marty in ohio. when i saw this entry i looked at the club video library and saw a dennis day show listed. i presume this "new release" dvd with a dennis day show with guest billy barty is one and the same as on the club video library?

http://www.marketworks.com/StoreFrontPr ... =241118224

marty sells a lot of rare and obscure movies and tv shows, as i mentioned. i previously got an old "GE theater" dvd from him with gisele mackenzie in a dramatic role as a schoolmarm which i hadn't seen anywhere else. click the categories to see more. there are a lot of old tv shows that i had never heard of before. i have ordered from marty several times and received excellent service.

[shimp scrampi]

There are a few discussion topics on Dennis' TV show one page back in this forum. I think Alpha is the actual manufacturer of this disc. I'm tempted to check it out.

[Yhtapmys]

There are a few discussion topics on Dennis' TV show one page back in this forum. I think Alpha is the actual manufacturer of this disc. I'm tempted to check it out.

O.P.E.D. McNulty, Dennis Day To You, Launches TV Show
By TERRY VERNON
[Feb 8, 1952]
Owen Patrick Eugene Dennis McNulty is a whale of a lot of name and just wouldn't fit into a headline or on a theater marquee . . . so you now have Dennis Day.
About the time that Kenny Baker decided to leave the Jack Benny radio program, Dennis was a pre-law student at Manhattan College in New York and was set to attend Fordham's law school. He earns more money now than he would probably pocket as a lawyer . . . and has more fun doing it.
Dennis recorded a song and was paid $75 for doing it. This record was sent to Benny and that was almost the clincher that changed a lawyer into an actor-singer-comedian. During the final auditions, Benny called "Oh, Dennis," and out of the waiting crowd piped a voice, "Yes, please," and Benny knew he had a replacement for Baker.
Since that fateful day the voice of Dennis Day has become as familiar as that of your nearest relative, that is, if you own a radio.
He started his own show after he left the U. S. Navy and called it "A Day In the Life of Dennis Day." It was on the NBC net for five years. He closed it to prepare a show for television.
His new show on TV will be on alternate Friday nights at 10 p.m. over KNBH (4). He'll be on the weeks Ezio Pinza is off and vice versa.
With him in TV will be Verna Felton, who has portrayed his mother on radio for all these years. She is now past 61 and has been in show business since she was eight years old.
His new TV show will be a situation comedy, but writers Parke Levy and Stanley Adams have worked in several songs for Dennis and his new "Cinderella" discovery, Kathy Phillips. Kathy was selected from hundreds of applicants when it became apparent that the actress who portrayed Dennis' radio girl friend was to become a mother.
The choice was narrowed down to four girls and the final decision was in favor of Kathy for the part in the TV series. She has had no experience in radio or TV, and her only stage work was in her San Francisco high school drama class plays.
Owen Patrick Eugene Dennis McNulty ... Day, is expected to be as great a hit on TV as he has been in radio and that says a lot.
- - -
DENNIS DAY—The befuddled romantic comedy character of radio fame. Dennis Day, starts a new day on TV when his RCA-Victor show is flashed from Hollywood to New York. We'll see it via hot kinnie at 10 p. m. on KNBH (4). Day's show will alternate with Ezio Pinza's program from New York. Hanley Stafford, for 16 years the radio father of Baby Snooks, will portray an NBC executive who auditions Day on this first show.
Verna Felton and Kathy Phillips will be featured.

Dennis Day Predicts Less Sex On T V
[By Bob Thomas]
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 8, (AP) — Dennis Day, whose television show makes its debut tonight, predicts home viewers will be getting less plunging necklines and racy stories in the future.
"Sex has got to go, as far as TV is concerned," he remarked as he paused between strenuous rehearsals. "Sex was exploited during the early days, when TV was trying to gain attention. You still see quite a bit of it; I hear some comedians telling stories that make me blush.
"But I think the industry is growing up. It doesn't need sex any more. Furthermore, if the shows won't cleaned up, TV will be inviting censorship from outside sources, which would be bad.
"So far, the only censoring has been done by the individual performers and packagers of shows. I think they and the networks now realize that they will have to avoid any criticism about program material."
Sticks By Theories
Day has stuck by these theories in his selection of a co-star for his show. He considered a couple dozen singers, including many glamorous types. He pased them up for a demure unknown, Kathy Phillips. A San Francisco girl with little experience except singing with a band, she is the "girl next door" type rather than the usual TV siren.
"I picked her for two reasons," Day explained. "First of all, she fits the story. The part calls for a girl who lives next door, and I'd look pretty silly playing my kind of character opposite some sexy glamor girl.
"Also, I wanted the kind of a girl who would appeal to a family audience. I realize from watching my kids that a large part of the TV audience consists of children."
The bashful tenor has been working feverishly on the TV show, which will be "a variety show with a story line." He finds the new medium much tougher than the movies, in which he has lately been active at 20th-Fox.
As for radio, he expressed the exact sentiments of Bob Hope and Marie Wilson: "compared to TV, radio is like stealing money."
"For the Jack Benny radio, show, I rehearse a half-hour on Saturday and work about two hours on Sunday," he remarked. "All I have to do is keep up with the lines main the script. But in TV, I have to work on the script, memorize it, rehearse it over and over, remember camera angles and a thousand other things."
Day will do seven TV programs until the summer layoff, alternating on Friday nights with the Ezio Pinza show. In the fall, the Day program may be on every week. In that case, he will want to do it on film inntesd of live, as it is done now.
"My show would be 200 per cent better on film," he commented. "You can get perfection on film, whereas a great deal is left to chance when you do a live show. Unfortunately, the costs go up when you film a program. It costs about $10,000 more, because of the added expense of cameramen and film. But I think it's worth it. The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz show has proved that."
Day dropped the saddening news that this will probably be the last season of the Jack Benny radio show. Sponsors no longer want to pay big money for radio, he explained. Day will be able to make occasional appearances on Benny's TV show, which reportedly will start in the fall on a fortnightly basis.

Transcribed by Yhtapmys