Ed Bowes at 62 and getting making over a million dollars a year.
MAJOR BOWES' ORIGINAL MONEY MACHINE
Edward J. Bowes was a wealthy 45 year old San Francisco real estate man when he arrived in New York City in 1919 with legendary showman Samuel A. (Roxy) Rothafel and plans to construct the elaborate, 4,000 seat Capitol Theater at the corner of 51st and Broadway in Times Square. To publicize their new showplace Rothafel inaugurated The Capitol Family Broadcasts on WEAF/New York on November 19, 1922, while Bowes took the lower profile job of running the theater, demanding that its employees address him by his retired Army Reserve title, “Major.”
Both men were successful. Roxy, in particular, became famous with his two hour Sunday night broadcasts which became the highlight of WEAF’s broadcast week. In 1924, Loews, Incorporated, bought The Capitol as the New York showplace for its MGM films. Roxy moved on to front a group that built the Capitol’s rival Roxy Theater in Times Square and eight years later, Radio City Music Hall. Meanwhile, Bowes remained at the Capitol, a Loew’s Vice President with Roxy’s radio program on his hands - a program that would become one of NBC’s first network offerings in late 1926.
Two characteristics became immediately evident: Bowes was determined to make Major Bowes’ Capitol Family his own program and he considered all the talents appearing with him to be merely support to his starring role. This was never clearer than when Bowes demanded to see all of his “family’s” script material ahead of time and stole the best lines for himself. The Capitol Family’s popularity finally ran thin and in 1931 it was moved back to Sunday mornings at 11:00 a.m. ET for its final five years.
Loew’s had also purchased a New York radio station in the mid-1920’s, WHN, and located it at the company’s State Theater in Times Square. Near the end of The Capitol Family’s run in 1934 Bowes began experimenting with a local program based on an amateur talent concept created by WHN producers Perry Charles. and Fred Raphael. Bowes simply took over the show because he could.
Tuesday night’s WHN Amateur Hour was similar in content to Sunday’s National Amateur Night on CBS, but not in presentation. The WHN program was presented as a competition determined by telephone and telegram vote, unlike to the CBS show which was played for laughs. Humor wasn’t necessarily the Bowes style but naming the new effort, Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour - that was more like it.
The program had no elaborate trappings to showcase Bowes’ amateurs - simply a piano and Bowes sitting at a table with his ever present wheel of fortune which he spun at the beginning of every broadcast, reciting “Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows…”
The format called for the human interest angle of contestants’ telling their stories to Bowes and the suspense of a loud gong that could be struck by Bowes at any time during a contestant’s performance that suddenly ended the act - much like an audio hook. Bowes often followed the gong by muttering his catch-phrase, “All right, all right.” It was his way of moving the show along while expressing a degree of condolence to the contestant he had just dispatched.
Outrageous and unsubstantiated ratings success was claimed for Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour on WHN, but in a sophisticated media market like New York, only the desperate would believe such stories - desperate as in NBC and Standard Brands.
Eddie Cantor was first major star to jump between networks. He began the 1934-35 season anchoring NBC’s Sunday lineup at 8:00 with The Chase & Sanborn Hour, averaging a whopping 47.0 Crossley rating in October and November. Cantor left the show in December and reappeared on CBS in February in the same Sunday 8:00 timeslot - with his show reduced to half an hour. Although he lost 25% of his NBC audience in the switch, the comedian still generated an enviable 37.1 average rating during his first three-months on CBS.
John Reber, director of broadcasting at Standard Brands’ advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson, was hailed as a programming genius. With support from NBC programming chief, John F. Royal, Reber’s staff created some of Network Radio’s top hits, including the immensely popular Cantor show. The pair also concocted one of the biggest turkeys in Network Radio history.
When Cantor left NBC in December, 1934, vaudeville was out and Verdi was in. The comedian was replaced by The Chase & Sanborn Opera Guild - famed operas abridged and sung in English. The Fat Lady sang quickly for the show - it only survived for 13 weeks. When their over-estimation of public taste became obvious in the ratings, Reber and Royal again went searching for a way to recapture Sunday night supremacy for Standard Brands. They didn’t have to look far because Bowes was openly offering his Original Amateur Hour for network sale at $3,500 to $5,000 an episode.
Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour was given a shot at the Chase & Sanborn Hour on March 24, 1935. Bowes simply left WHN and defied the station to do something about it. The NBC show was an immediate success, splashing into the Crossley/CAB tabulations with a 31.1 rating in April, increasing to a 36.5 in May and closing out the season with a 40.1 in June.
The haughty host and his amateurs remained on the air over the summer to keep the show’s momentum going into the next season. The maneuver paid off in 1935-36 as The Original Amateur Hour became the first program to remain America's highest rated show for all ten months of a season. But Bowes wanted more than just radio success.
Bowes and his friend, automotive mogul Walter Chrysler, had been talking about the possibilities offered by the program and put together a package with Bill Paley at CBS that appeared to be a winner for all concerned - except Standard Brands and NBC - when Bowes informed them that his last show would be on Sunday, September 13, 1936, and his first show for Chrysler on CBS would be four nights later.
The Amateur Hour’s ratings plunged by over 43% in the transition, but its 21.3 was still strong enough to put it in the country’s Top Three programs and make it the Number One show on Thursday night. In addition, Bowes launched the first of his touring units of past contestants from his radio show into theaters around the country. He would eventually have 18 companies of 20 to 25 performers producing over $15,000 a week for the home office on top of the $15,000 to $20,000 of Walter Chrysler’s money generated by the radio show. Add to that RKO’s series of six short films, Major Bowes’ Amateur Parade, royalties from assorted merchandise and it’s estimated that Bowes enjoyed several $2 Million years in the late 1930’s.
Then things got ugly...
Newsweek was first to report that The Original Amateur Hour was attracting a flood of Depression-poor strangers from all over the country into New York City. They all thought that they had the talent to escape poverty if they could only land one of the 20 weekly contestant slots on The Original Amateur Hour which would lead to a glamorous career with a Major Bowes touring unit. The news magazine reported that the show was receiving 10,000 applications a week but could only handle 500 auditions. Doormen were told to weed out the crowd by looks, to disqualify any acts not suited for radio and to automatically turn away any blind or handicapped applicants as Bowes didn’t want them playing on listener sympathies. But these represented a tiny minority of the massive crowd.
Looking down from his office window at the mob of would-be contestants outside his doors Bowes was quoted as saying, “Look at those poor boobs down there.”
The magazine reported that in just one month during this period 1,200 rejected applicants from The Original Amateur Hour had applied for emergency food and shelter in New York City. Conveniently overlooking what brought them to New York in the first place, Bowes responded, “A big percentage of our applicants are on the relief rolls already. If we can only get a few of them off, we have accomplished a little something.”
How little was another matter. Selected contestants were offered jobs with the show’s touring companies that paid an average of $50 a week and train fare between cities. Other than that, the amateurs turned small time vaudevillians were on their own - room, board and living expenses for less than ten dollars a day. The Original Amateur Hour’s most famous alumnus, Frank Sinatra, signed up for one of these tours, but dropped out as soon as he saw how Bowes was taking advantage of his star-struck performers.
Radio Guide magazine sneaked another talented singer into the audition process of the show in 1936. He reported passing two auditions before meeting Bowes at a third. A stenographer was also present at the third to record the singer’s replies to Bowes’ questions about his background. Another audition followed in which he was given a script and told that it would be his pre-performance conversation with Bowes and to read it exactly as written.
The final formality was a legal release giving Bowes a one-year option on the singer’s services and prohibiting any reference to the show when attempting to get outside work but awarding Bowes 15% of any compensation he received because of it.
The contestants were escorted to a cafeteria meal on the afternoon of the show and back to the studio again by bodyguards who never left their sides for the course of the evening. The broadcast, complete with its “gonged” performances, was reported by the singer to be timed to the second. There was obviously nothing spontaneous about The Original Amateur Hour.
Nevertheless, ratings continued to slide for the program. In 1937-38, General Foods and NBC introduced the Fanny Brice-Frank Morgan variety show Good News loaded with MGM stars opposite The Amateur Hour and it erupted to a 16.6 against Bowes’ 19.4. The next season, Good News overtook the amateurs 16.9 to 16.6. The see-saw went back and forth for the next four seasons until 1942-43, when trains and busses no longer flooded New York with contestants and former Amateur Hour tour performers found better paying work in defense plants and USO troupes. Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour was cut to half an hour and dropped out of Thursday‘s Top Ten.
A year later the show took the biggest fall of the season, losing 25% of its audience and a full 50% in three seasons. The former Number One program finished the season in 71st place with less than half of Bing Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall rating. The question became how long Chrysler Corporation - with nothing to sell to the public but its name for the remainder of World War II - would remain the sponsor of Major Bowes’ fading show.
Ed Bowes pulled the plug himself before the end of the 1944-45 season and his Original Amateur Hour faded into broadcast history. He died eleven months later at age 71. Childless and widowed by actress Margaret Illington in 1934, Bowes left most of his wealth to charity. He donated funds and land to the Catholic church and donated the three acre Bowes estate to the Lutheran Church. The Major Bowes Lutheran Retreat Center continues to operate today in Ossining, New York..
Talent shows continued to survive. After World War II the genre made a comeback with two major programs, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, a Top Ten show for five seasons, and Horace Heidt’s Youth Opportunity Program, And former Bowes assistant Ted Mack revived The Original Amateur Hour in 1948 for a four season, partially simulcast encore run on ABC.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
Edward J. Bowes was a wealthy 45 year old San Francisco real estate man when he arrived in New York City in 1919 with legendary showman Samuel A. (Roxy) Rothafel and plans to construct the elaborate, 4,000 seat Capitol Theater at the corner of 51st and Broadway in Times Square. To publicize their new showplace Rothafel inaugurated The Capitol Family Broadcasts on WEAF/New York on November 19, 1922, while Bowes took the lower profile job of running the theater, demanding that its employees address him by his retired Army Reserve title, “Major.”
Both men were successful. Roxy, in particular, became famous with his two hour Sunday night broadcasts which became the highlight of WEAF’s broadcast week. In 1924, Loews, Incorporated, bought The Capitol as the New York showplace for its MGM films. Roxy moved on to front a group that built the Capitol’s rival Roxy Theater in Times Square and eight years later, Radio City Music Hall. Meanwhile, Bowes remained at the Capitol, a Loew’s Vice President with Roxy’s radio program on his hands - a program that would become one of NBC’s first network offerings in late 1926.
Two characteristics became immediately evident: Bowes was determined to make Major Bowes’ Capitol Family his own program and he considered all the talents appearing with him to be merely support to his starring role. This was never clearer than when Bowes demanded to see all of his “family’s” script material ahead of time and stole the best lines for himself. The Capitol Family’s popularity finally ran thin and in 1931 it was moved back to Sunday mornings at 11:00 a.m. ET for its final five years.
Loew’s had also purchased a New York radio station in the mid-1920’s, WHN, and located it at the company’s State Theater in Times Square. Near the end of The Capitol Family’s run in 1934 Bowes began experimenting with a local program based on an amateur talent concept created by WHN producers Perry Charles. and Fred Raphael. Bowes simply took over the show because he could.
Tuesday night’s WHN Amateur Hour was similar in content to Sunday’s National Amateur Night on CBS, but not in presentation. The WHN program was presented as a competition determined by telephone and telegram vote, unlike to the CBS show which was played for laughs. Humor wasn’t necessarily the Bowes style but naming the new effort, Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour - that was more like it.
The program had no elaborate trappings to showcase Bowes’ amateurs - simply a piano and Bowes sitting at a table with his ever present wheel of fortune which he spun at the beginning of every broadcast, reciting “Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows…”
The format called for the human interest angle of contestants’ telling their stories to Bowes and the suspense of a loud gong that could be struck by Bowes at any time during a contestant’s performance that suddenly ended the act - much like an audio hook. Bowes often followed the gong by muttering his catch-phrase, “All right, all right.” It was his way of moving the show along while expressing a degree of condolence to the contestant he had just dispatched.
Outrageous and unsubstantiated ratings success was claimed for Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour on WHN, but in a sophisticated media market like New York, only the desperate would believe such stories - desperate as in NBC and Standard Brands.
Eddie Cantor was first major star to jump between networks. He began the 1934-35 season anchoring NBC’s Sunday lineup at 8:00 with The Chase & Sanborn Hour, averaging a whopping 47.0 Crossley rating in October and November. Cantor left the show in December and reappeared on CBS in February in the same Sunday 8:00 timeslot - with his show reduced to half an hour. Although he lost 25% of his NBC audience in the switch, the comedian still generated an enviable 37.1 average rating during his first three-months on CBS.
John Reber, director of broadcasting at Standard Brands’ advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson, was hailed as a programming genius. With support from NBC programming chief, John F. Royal, Reber’s staff created some of Network Radio’s top hits, including the immensely popular Cantor show. The pair also concocted one of the biggest turkeys in Network Radio history.
When Cantor left NBC in December, 1934, vaudeville was out and Verdi was in. The comedian was replaced by The Chase & Sanborn Opera Guild - famed operas abridged and sung in English. The Fat Lady sang quickly for the show - it only survived for 13 weeks. When their over-estimation of public taste became obvious in the ratings, Reber and Royal again went searching for a way to recapture Sunday night supremacy for Standard Brands. They didn’t have to look far because Bowes was openly offering his Original Amateur Hour for network sale at $3,500 to $5,000 an episode.
Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour was given a shot at the Chase & Sanborn Hour on March 24, 1935. Bowes simply left WHN and defied the station to do something about it. The NBC show was an immediate success, splashing into the Crossley/CAB tabulations with a 31.1 rating in April, increasing to a 36.5 in May and closing out the season with a 40.1 in June.
The haughty host and his amateurs remained on the air over the summer to keep the show’s momentum going into the next season. The maneuver paid off in 1935-36 as The Original Amateur Hour became the first program to remain America's highest rated show for all ten months of a season. But Bowes wanted more than just radio success.
Bowes and his friend, automotive mogul Walter Chrysler, had been talking about the possibilities offered by the program and put together a package with Bill Paley at CBS that appeared to be a winner for all concerned - except Standard Brands and NBC - when Bowes informed them that his last show would be on Sunday, September 13, 1936, and his first show for Chrysler on CBS would be four nights later.
The Amateur Hour’s ratings plunged by over 43% in the transition, but its 21.3 was still strong enough to put it in the country’s Top Three programs and make it the Number One show on Thursday night. In addition, Bowes launched the first of his touring units of past contestants from his radio show into theaters around the country. He would eventually have 18 companies of 20 to 25 performers producing over $15,000 a week for the home office on top of the $15,000 to $20,000 of Walter Chrysler’s money generated by the radio show. Add to that RKO’s series of six short films, Major Bowes’ Amateur Parade, royalties from assorted merchandise and it’s estimated that Bowes enjoyed several $2 Million years in the late 1930’s.
Then things got ugly...
Newsweek was first to report that The Original Amateur Hour was attracting a flood of Depression-poor strangers from all over the country into New York City. They all thought that they had the talent to escape poverty if they could only land one of the 20 weekly contestant slots on The Original Amateur Hour which would lead to a glamorous career with a Major Bowes touring unit. The news magazine reported that the show was receiving 10,000 applications a week but could only handle 500 auditions. Doormen were told to weed out the crowd by looks, to disqualify any acts not suited for radio and to automatically turn away any blind or handicapped applicants as Bowes didn’t want them playing on listener sympathies. But these represented a tiny minority of the massive crowd.
Looking down from his office window at the mob of would-be contestants outside his doors Bowes was quoted as saying, “Look at those poor boobs down there.”
The magazine reported that in just one month during this period 1,200 rejected applicants from The Original Amateur Hour had applied for emergency food and shelter in New York City. Conveniently overlooking what brought them to New York in the first place, Bowes responded, “A big percentage of our applicants are on the relief rolls already. If we can only get a few of them off, we have accomplished a little something.”
How little was another matter. Selected contestants were offered jobs with the show’s touring companies that paid an average of $50 a week and train fare between cities. Other than that, the amateurs turned small time vaudevillians were on their own - room, board and living expenses for less than ten dollars a day. The Original Amateur Hour’s most famous alumnus, Frank Sinatra, signed up for one of these tours, but dropped out as soon as he saw how Bowes was taking advantage of his star-struck performers.
Radio Guide magazine sneaked another talented singer into the audition process of the show in 1936. He reported passing two auditions before meeting Bowes at a third. A stenographer was also present at the third to record the singer’s replies to Bowes’ questions about his background. Another audition followed in which he was given a script and told that it would be his pre-performance conversation with Bowes and to read it exactly as written.
The final formality was a legal release giving Bowes a one-year option on the singer’s services and prohibiting any reference to the show when attempting to get outside work but awarding Bowes 15% of any compensation he received because of it.
The contestants were escorted to a cafeteria meal on the afternoon of the show and back to the studio again by bodyguards who never left their sides for the course of the evening. The broadcast, complete with its “gonged” performances, was reported by the singer to be timed to the second. There was obviously nothing spontaneous about The Original Amateur Hour.
Nevertheless, ratings continued to slide for the program. In 1937-38, General Foods and NBC introduced the Fanny Brice-Frank Morgan variety show Good News loaded with MGM stars opposite The Amateur Hour and it erupted to a 16.6 against Bowes’ 19.4. The next season, Good News overtook the amateurs 16.9 to 16.6. The see-saw went back and forth for the next four seasons until 1942-43, when trains and busses no longer flooded New York with contestants and former Amateur Hour tour performers found better paying work in defense plants and USO troupes. Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour was cut to half an hour and dropped out of Thursday‘s Top Ten.
A year later the show took the biggest fall of the season, losing 25% of its audience and a full 50% in three seasons. The former Number One program finished the season in 71st place with less than half of Bing Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall rating. The question became how long Chrysler Corporation - with nothing to sell to the public but its name for the remainder of World War II - would remain the sponsor of Major Bowes’ fading show.
Ed Bowes pulled the plug himself before the end of the 1944-45 season and his Original Amateur Hour faded into broadcast history. He died eleven months later at age 71. Childless and widowed by actress Margaret Illington in 1934, Bowes left most of his wealth to charity. He donated funds and land to the Catholic church and donated the three acre Bowes estate to the Lutheran Church. The Major Bowes Lutheran Retreat Center continues to operate today in Ossining, New York..
Talent shows continued to survive. After World War II the genre made a comeback with two major programs, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, a Top Ten show for five seasons, and Horace Heidt’s Youth Opportunity Program, And former Bowes assistant Ted Mack revived The Original Amateur Hour in 1948 for a four season, partially simulcast encore run on ABC.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com