The NBC Comedy Hour

The NBC Comedy Hour was a comedy show that ran on NBC in the first half of 1956, intended to be a replacement for The Colgate Comedy Hour.

The NBC Comedy Hour
Jonathan Winters, a host of The NBC Comedy Hour (1956)
Genre	Television comedy
Directed by	Herbert Kenwith[1]
Presented by	Leo Durocher; Gale Storm; various
Starring	Jonathan Winters, Gale Storm, Pat Sheehan,[2] Stubby Kaye, Shecky Greene, Stan Freberg, and Hy Averback
Country of origin	USA
Original language	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	18
Production
Running time	60 minutes
Production company	NBC[1]
Release
Original network	NBC
Picture format	NTSC Black-and-white
Audio format	Monaural[1]
Original release	January 8 (1956-01-08) – June 10, 1956 (1956-06-10)
Chronology
Preceded by	The Colgate Comedy Hour
Followed by	The Steve Allen Show

Leo Durocher hosted the show in January, and Gale Storm from February until April 8; from April 22 on, hosts were called in per episode. Comic Jonathan Winters was a more frequent face than any of the hosts; he appeared in 17 of the 18 episodes. Stan Freberg was also a guest 6 times. Topical comedian Mort Sahl's network debut was on the Comedy Hour. A group of acting chimpanzees named The Marquis Chimps performed parodies of movies in 3 episodes.

The show was a critical and ratings failure: Variety stated "A more poorly conceived, routined and paced outing would be difficult to imagine."[3] It was cancelled in June, having already been pre-empted 4 times in 5 months.[3] It was succeeded by The Steve Allen Show, whose reputation became a marked contrast to that of The NBC Comedy Hour. The Paley Center for Media has several episodes of the series in their archives.