Even if you are not a professional actor, musician or variety entertainer, it isn't too hard to end up on TV today. If you can't actually audition for and win a spot on a reality show, or get your house or your restaurant on some cable real estate or road food series, or be interviewed right in the big house for one of MSNBC's prison schlockumentaries, you can always record yourself displaying your unique talent and post yourself to YouTube, where you might go viral. These days, the bar for entry to the world of televised entertainment is only as low as your personal standards.
Evidence to the contrary, it was actually quite difficult to get on network television in the 1970s — but if you had a certain kind of hit record at that time, CBS might have given you a variety show. The Starland Vocal Band had a CBS variety show (for six weeks), and so, briefly, did the Hudson Brothers. Bill, Mark, and Brett Hudson (née Salerno) were three real brothers from Oregon whose career as a teen-appeal pop act peaked in 1974, the year they released a few songs that made it into the top 30 (assuming you were not a regular reader of 16 magazine, "So You Are a Star" and "Rendezvous" are tunes you might remember if you were an attentive American Top 40 listener or a small-market DJ). That was also the year the brothers starred in two CBS television series: The Hudson Brothers Show in prime time, and The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show, which aired on Saturday mornings and is now available on DVD.
Highlights of the nighttime iteration (selected, we suspect, from that material which could be cheaply cleared) are excerpted in this set. The prime time series featured the brothers performing musical numbers, in short sketches, and in slapstick closely modeled on the Marx Brothers in general and so blatantly, as in a bit entitled "Groucho, Harpo, Chico & Karl," that Groucho (still alive at that point) could have had a case. Did 11- or 12-year-old kids even know who the Marx Brothers were? Yes, because their movies were shown on local TV, and because their parents knew Groucho, etc. as icons — and because, 30 years ago, families had shared experiences of pop culture that were still more parent-driven than kid-driven. Not that there weren't plenty of Disney films and bubblegum pop acts, but children knew and grew to love or hate the cultural references of their parents and older relatives alongside their own; kid culture was a presence, but it did not dominate the popular culture the way it often does today.
Article comments
1 - John Lee Rickenbacker
Nice article. I do not remember these guys exactly, except for vague memories of the Marx Brothers routines. Surely the main reason it was harder for no names to get on TV then was because of the much smaller total capacity -- only so many hours to fill on three networks.
Spot on regarding the shared cultural experiences. Too many parents now sitting down with their tweens only to watch Fairly Odd Parents, etc. Where is today's Bill Cosby, Jack Benny, or Carol Burnett?