The Arthur Murray Party
| The Arthur Murray Party | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Variety show |
| Directed by |
Barry Shear Burt Shevelove |
| Presented by |
Arthur Murray Kathryn Murray |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Jack Philbin |
| Camera setup | Multi-camera |
| Running time | 15 min/30 min/60 min |
| Release | |
| Original network |
ABC DuMont CBS NBC |
| Picture format |
Black-and-white Color |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | July 20, 1950 – September 6, 1960 |
The Arthur Murray Party is an American television variety show which ran from July 1950 until September 1960. The show was hosted by famous dancers Arthur and Kathryn Murray, and was basically one long advertisement for their chain of dance studios. Each week the couple performed a mystery dance, and the viewer who correctly identified the dance would receive two free lessons at a local studio.
The Arthur Murray Party is notable for being one of the few TV series—the others were Down You Go; The Ernie Kovacs Show; Pantomime Quiz; Tom Corbett, Space Cadet; and The Original Amateur Hour—broadcast on all four major commercial networks in the 1950s during the Golden Age of Television. It may, in fact, be the only series which had a run on all four networks at least twice.
The show was set up like a large party, with Kathryn hosting a variety of guests, from sports stars to actors or musicians. Murray dance studio instructors would help Kathryn and Arthur to show their guests how to perform a particular dance step. At the end of the show, the couple would perform a Johann Strauss waltz.
The dancers often dressed in elegant clothing, which could cause amusing problems at times. In one surviving episode (February 15, 1954), available on Internet Archive, the well-dressed female dancers are heard squealing with teenage-like excitement at guest star Johnnie Ray. Buddy Holly and The Crickets performed "Peggy Sue" on a December 1957 telecast, also preserved on a kinescope.
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Wikipedia