Radio: Rotating Comics

Patting his hands and batting his banjo-eyes, 58-year-old Eddie Cantor last week skipped through the Colgate Comedy Hour (Sun. 8 p.m., NBCTV) and his first appearance on television. Though surrounded by bright young people from current Broadway shows, Cantor looked as durable and sentimental as ever. He re-enacted skits from musicals of the ’20s and sang such old favorites as Ain’t She Sweet? and Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me. Headlined Variety: “Cantor Sock in Debut … Vet Showman a TV Natural.” A twelve-city Hooper survey rated Cantor eleven points higher than CBS’s competing Toast of the Town, long a runner-up to TV’s perennial No. 1 attraction, Milton Berle.

To NBC, Cantor’s success proved the merit of a rotating plan devised to lure hesitant, big-name comedians onto television. Since few of the comics are eager for the grueling test of a weekly series, the Colgate Comedy Hour (sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive-Peet) allows Cantor to alternate with Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, Fred Allen and Bobby Clark (Clark, in turn, will alternate with Bob Hope). NBC will use the same technique on a new series starting next month which will star, in rotation, Ed Wynn, Danny Thomas and Jimmy Durante.

Appearing on TV no oftener than once a month, each comic gets more time for preparation of material, two weeks of rehearsal instead of one, and fewer pressure headaches. “It makes particular sense,” says Executive Producer Sam Fuller, “because some of these gentlemen are not as young as they used to be.”