Television
The Morey Amsterdam Show ran on CBS television from December 1948 to March 1949 and on DuMont from April 1949 to October 1950. Among Morey's regular guests was a song-and-dance man named Art Carney. The cigarette girl was future author Jacqueline Susann, wife of the producer of the show, Irving Mansfield. Jazz musician Johnny Guarneri led the band.
In 1950, he briefly hosted the comedy-variety show, Broadway Open House, television's first late-night entertainment show, on NBC. One of the pioneering TV creations of NBC president Pat Weaver, it demonstrated the potential for late-night programming and led to the later development of The Tonight Show. The show was originally to be hosted by comic Don "Creesh" Hornsby (so named because he yelled "Creesh" often), but he died of polio two weeks before the premiere broadcast. Hornsby's replacements, hosting different nights each week, were Amsterdam (Monday and Wednesday) and the raucous Jerry Lester (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays), the brother of character actor Buddy Lester. However, Amsterdam soon exited the show, leaving Lester the sole host.
In February 1952 he made his dramatic television debut on an episode of the DuMont Television Network series Not for Publication. In 1957, he appeared as Jack Connors in the third episode entitled "The Three Pretenders" of the syndicated television sitcom, How to Marry a Millionaire, with Barbara Eden and Merry Anders.
In 1958, he appeared as saloon manager Lucien Bellingham in the 15th episode of the second season of the Western Have Gun, Will Travel entitled "The Moor's Revenge".
His best-known role was as comedy writer Buddy Sorrell on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966), a role suggested for him by his friend Rose Marie, who also appeared on the show. Amsterdam wrote lyrics for the show's theme song, which were never heard on the air, but have been performed by Dick Van Dyke in concert. Van Dyke sang those lyrics on the October 23, 2010 edition of the NPR show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!.
Amsterdam was an occasional panelist on Match Game and the short-lived Can You Top This? during the 1970s. He appeared as a small-time criminal in several episodes of the soap opera The Young and the Restless in the 1990s. Amsterdam and Rose Marie later appeared as panelists on The Hollywood Squares and guest-starred together in a February 1996 episode of the NBC sitcom Caroline in the City (his final television appearance).
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Famous quotes containing the word television:
“We cannot spare our children the influence of harmful values by turning off the television any more than we can keep them home forever or revamp the world before they get there. Merely keeping them in the dark is no protection and, in fact, can make them vulnerable and immature.”
—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
“Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)