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Stars of other media who didn't quite make it on television

B

bpatrick

We may have done this one before, but a number
of stars of movies, radio, music, and nightclubs
haven't scored a hit when they tried television.

On this list, I do not include television icons like
Lucy or Gleason who had one failure among multiple
successes. And even though some of the shows
mentioned lasted more than one season, none was
a monster hit.

Anyway, some who tried and came up short:

Frank Sinatra (The Frank Sinatra Show, CBS 1950-52,
ABC 1957-58)

Bing Crosby (The Bing Crosby Show, ABC 1964-65)

Sammy Davis Jr. (The Sammy Davis Jr. Show NBC 1966,
Sammy And Company syndicated 1975-77)

Judy Garland (The Judy Garland Show CBS 1963-64)

Jerry Lewis (The Jerry Lewis Show ABC 1963, NBC 1967-69)

Jimmy Stewart (The Jimmy Stewart Show NBC 1971-72,
Hawkins CBS 1973-74)

Henry Fonda (The Deputy NBC 1959-61, The Smith Family
ABC 1972)

Shirley MacLaine (Shirley's World ABC 1971)

Anthony Quinn (The Man And The City ABC 1971)

Tony Curtis (The Persuaders ABC 1971-72, McCoy NBC 1976
I think)

Richard Widmark (Madigan NBC 1972-73)

Lana Turner (The Survivors ABC 1969)

Others?
 
How about Nat "King" Cole? His NBC (I think) variety show only lasted a season, but that was (so I've heard) due in large part to several of NBC's southern affiliates refusing to carry it.

Actually, "Sammy & Company" did live on, sort of...as the inspiration for "The Sammy Maudlin Show" on SCTV.

If you include stand-up comics in the ranks of nightclub performers, a few whose TV shows were flops include David Brenner ("Snip"), Andrew Dice Clay ("Bless This House"), and Jeff Foxworthy ("The Jeff Foxworthy Show")...Admittedly, those are a little iffy because much of those guys' success was due at least partly to TV exposure.

One old time movie/recording star whose TV show did moderately well was Doris Day...Her sitcom ran for 3 or 4 years, didn't it?

Also, before "My Three Sons", Fred MacMurray was primarily considered a movie star, no?
 
Forgot about Nat King Cole. His show was
on NBC; I know that not one NBC affiliate in
North Carolina carried it. WSB Atlanta did, but
dropped it before the network did.

I should also add Pat O'Brien (the actor, not
"The Insider"). His "Harrigan And Son" lasted
one season on ABC (1960-61) and was replaced
by "The Hathaways" with Peggy Cass and the
Marquis Chimps. He was so angry he never did
another series.

And Gene Kelly didn't make it in a television version
of "Going My Way" (ABC, 1962-63), although co-star
Dick York went on to something bigger: a little show
about a mortal man married to a witch.

Nightclub comedians do count. Didn't Paul
Rodriguez flop in an ABC sitcom called "A.K.A.
Pablo"?

Doris Day's show lasted five years, although
it never garnered much above a 31 or 32 share,
just enough in those days to warrant a renewal
(or as one CBS exec put it, the network always
seemed to come up a half-hour short each year,
so her show would be renewed).

And I would hardly say Fred MacMurray flopped:
"My Three Sons" lasted 12 years.
 
How about Nat "King" Cole? His NBC (I think) variety show only lasted a season, but that was (so I've heard) due in large part to several of NBC's southern affiliates refusing to carry it
Click to expand...

As far as I know, the problem with the Nat King Cole show was not a lack of viewers and/or affiliates. It was due to the fact that the network could not secure enough sponsors. No money for the network, no show for us. What a shame. Nat was an amazing talent.
 
He did, in fact, say that Madison Avenue, and
not the South, was keeping him off television.
I suspect that another factor that didn't help
was his competition at 7:30 (ET) on Tuesday
nights; "Cheyenne" and "Sugarfoot" alternated
on ABC, while "Name That Tune" was on CBS.

Two more names that come to mind, both familiar
to moviegoers in the '40s and both of whom struck
out in the 1966-67 season: Ann Sheridan ("Pistols
'n' Petticoats," although she passed away before
the show left the air--it probably wouldn't have
been renewed anyway) and Jean Arthur ("The Jean
Arthur Show," about a mother-and-son tandem of
lawyers).

And how can I forget Phyllis Diller ("The Pruitts Of
Southampton/The Phyllis Diller Show" on ABC in
1966-67, "The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show" on NBC
in 1968)? Or Tammy Grimes, whose self-titled ABC
sitcom lasted a grand total of four weeks in 1966?
 
We may have done this one before, but a number
of stars of movies, radio, music, and nightclubs
haven't scored a hit when they tried television.
Click to expand...

How about Geena Davis? Her 2005 ABC-TV series was cancelled in it's first year even though she won a lot of critical acclaim.
 
Oops!!! Didn't mean to imply that Fred MacMurray flopped on TV. Interesting note..."My Three Sons" premiered the same year he co-starred in the 1960 Best Picture winner "The Apartment", in which he played a guy who was about as far from Steve Douglas as you could get!

Lana Turner was mentioned a couple posts ago...Late in her career, she popped up as a regular on "Falcon Crest".

I brought up a few stand-up comics whose weekly TV shows failed, and didn't even think of the biggest example...Richard Pryor's variety show that was cancelled after a month of battling the censors in 1977.
 
Mickey Rooney is another film star who couldn't make it on TV. 3 times as a matter of fact. The Mickey Rooney Show(1954-1955, NBC), Mickey(1964-1965, ABC) and One Of The Boys(1982, NBC). One Of The Boys also starred future stars Dana Carvey, Nathan Lane, and Meg Ryan in supporting roles with Carvey playing Mickey's grandson and Ryan playing Carvey's girlfriend.
 
Speaking of Dana Carvey, while he was successful on SNL, his own sketch show on ABC lasted, what, six weeks? I think the censors contributed more to its demise than the ratings or lack thereof.

Heather Graham has been successful in movies, but "Emily's Reasons Why Not" practically got yanked before the first episode even finished airing.

As far as more recent radio people go, Rush didn't have much luck in translating his radio show to TV and he flamed out quite spectacularly as a football commentator, Mark and Brian have tried to break into TV a few times, but it never worked, and O&A flopped so hard with the XFL pregame show that they didn't get asked back for week 2.
 
Lana Turner also starred with George Hamilton on The Survivors which was ABC's attempt to get another prime time soap opera going after Peyton Place was cancelled. It lasted only one season from 1969 to 1970.

And speaking of George Hamilton, besides The Survivors, he also appeared in a couple of more flops, Paris 7000 in 1971 and his own talk show with ex-wife Alana Stewart(also ex-wife of Rod Stewart) in the mid 1990's.
 
Chevy Chase, who got his notoriety from his one season on Saturday Night Live back in 1975 and did ok with movies, failed miserably with his talk show, The Chevy Chase Show, which lasted 4 weeks back in 1993.

And speaking of failed talk shows, Ervin "Magic" Johnson, while not a "star of other media", couldn't use his success as a sports star to become a successful talk show host. "The Magic Hour" was a failure on Fox in 1998.
 
[quote If you include stand-up comics in the ranks of nightclub performers, a few whose TV shows were flops include David Brenner ("Snip"), Andrew Dice Clay ("Bless This House"), and Jeff Foxworthy ("The Jeff Foxworthy Show")...Admittedly, those are a little iffy because much of those guys' success was due at least partly to TV exposure.
[/quote]

Joan Rivers, a stand up comic and permanent fillin for Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, jumped to Fox to attempt Fox's first late night talk show in 1986. She was replaced not long after. One of her replacements, who went on to have his own syndicated talk show for about 5 years, was Arseniooooooooooooooooooo Hall.
 
Would this count?

Brad Pitt was a regular on Dallas during the late 80's(either the 1988-1989 or 1989-1990 seasons), but I do remember Brad being on Dallas.
 
Two others from Music, Jo Stafford, who was the number one female artist from in the first half of the century (1900-1950) probably best known for her 1955 hit "You Belong To Me."

One of radios biggest and funniest comedians Fred Allen. Allen is such a great example of a failed career. He is hysterical when I listen to his old time radio shows but when you look at him you just get mad for some reason. The same jokes he tells on TV are just not funny. It's something about Fred Allen he did not transfer well over to TV from radio.
 
How about DJ Rick Dees?

Love him or hate him, he has been around a long time as a radio DJ, but he hd no success when ABC gave him a late-night TV talk show.
 
Mark said:
One of radios biggest and funniest comedians Fred Allen. Allen is such a great example of a failed career. He is hysterical when I listen to his old time radio shows but when you look at him you just get mad for some reason. The same jokes he tells on TV are just not funny. It's something about Fred Allen he did not transfer well over to TV from radio.
Click to expand...

...actually, even though Allen joked about his "failure" in TV, it wasn't so much that as his gradually failing health (both hypertension and heart problems) that led him to quit radio and pull back on his work load. In fact, he quit radio twice because of the high blood pressure, the first time in 1943 and then again in 1949; his work after that, especially on NBC Radio's "The Big Show" and CBS' "What's My Line?," were strictly occasional positions (even though he was scheduled to appear on "What's My Line?" the night after he died)...
 
WMC2006 said:
Chevy Chase, who got his notoriety from his one season on Saturday Night Live back in 1975 and did ok with movies, failed miserably with his talk show, The Chevy Chase Show, which lasted 4 weeks back in 1993.

And speaking of failed talk shows, Ervin "Magic" Johnson, while not a "star of other media", couldn't use his success as a sports star to become a successful talk show host. "The Magic Hour" was a failure on Fox in 1998.
Click to expand...
Pat Sajak was pretty much a flop with his own late night talk show on CBS in the late eighties/ early ninties. Didn't he leave "Wheel of Fortune" in order to host his late night talk (snoozefest) show and his replacement wasn't successful, either? Or am I thinking of someone else?

Also, Nathan Lane's attempt at a television sitcom was pretty much a flop, only lasting a few weeks.
 
Elliott Gould is another film star(M*A*S*H) who couldn't have a TV career of his own with E/R in 1984-1985 and another show(it was a comedy that featured Dee Wallace Stone playing his wife) that was on CBS that lasted a few months in the late 1980's.

Paul Lynde is another person who couldn't handle a TV show of his own with The Paul Lynde Show in 1972-1973 on ABC and when he replaced James Whitmore on Temperatures Rising in 1973 and became the main star of that show which only lasted a few months before Cleavon Little became the main star for the last version of the show in the summer of 1974.
 
Although Chevy Chase has been quite successful
in movies, his first national exposure was on television
("Saturday Night Live"), so he was already a television
star of sorts before his ill-fated talk show. Same with
Pat Sajak, known primarily as a television personality
("Wheel Of Fortune"); how many people know he was
a DJ on Armed Forces Radio in Vietnam?

As for Fred Allen, he was never comfortable in a big
television studio; he always said he preferred the
relative intimacy of a radio studio. He flopped on
a show called "Sound-Off Time" in 1951, and the
game/talent show "Judge For Yourself" in 1953.
Steve Allen (no relation) once said that if Fred Allen
had had a show similar to Arthur Godfrey's or Garry
Moore's he might have been a big hit.
 
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