Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round.
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.
They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother when they said that man could fly.
They told Marconi wireless was a phony. It's the same old cry.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Welcome back to 100 Years of Television. This is episode number 23, countdown number 84. Mr. Television for 100 weeks that started in October 2025. This podcast is going to recall the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television and video.
The countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027, the 100th anniversary of the day television as we know it was was invented.
I'm Paul Shatzkin, author of the Boy who Invented Television, the definitive biography of Philo T. Farnsworth, who invented the world's first all electronic television system.
In the last episode, we witnessed the birth of cable TV in the remote reaches of the Pacific Northwest in 1948.
Today we're going to meet Mr. Television.
Mendel Berlinger was in show business almost since his birth in 1908.
Mendel spent his adolescence on vaudeville stages and burlesque houses and found roles as a child actor in silent films.
He insisted for years that he'd been cast in the Perils of Pauline starring Pearl White in 1914, a groundbreaking film that pioneered the cliffhanger format of serialized storytelling that became popular in both cinema and television.
While still only 12 years old, Mendel Berlinger decided his growing ambition required a more ethnically palatable stage name.
In 1920, he became Milton Berle and continued to refine his stage Persona on radio, in nightclubs and in movies through the 1930s and 40s.
His name was familiar when NBC started migrating much of its radio programming to television.
Like so many of the prominent corporations of the era, the Texas Company, AKA Texaco, was a client of the J. Walter Thompson ad Agency and an enthusiastic beneficiary of JWT's One Sponsor radio programming model.
NBC's Texaco Star Theater began as a radio variety show in 1938.
It was originally hosted by Adolphe Monjou and later by other stars including Fred Allen, whose sharp satirical style made him one of the most famous radio comedians of the era.
JWT had a hand in talent selection for all the programs it created.
In the summer of 1948, when Texaco star Theater began a trial run on television, Milton Berle was given a guest host slot along with other well known comics like Henny Youngman and Maury Amsterdam.
But audience response to Burl was so Overwhelming that NBC and JWT decided to make him the permanent emcee. When the program started its regular run that fall, JWT's one sponsor model for television truly hit its stride with Texaco Star Theater.
The brand was seamlessly woven into the show with commercials and uniformed Texaco service attendants who cheerfully welcomed viewers and reinforced Texaco's neighborly public image. Burrell's elastic face, flamboyant costumes and rapid fire comedy were perfectly suited to the new medium.
Television needed a breakout star, and it wasn't long before Milton Berle started calling himself Mr. Television.
Airing live on Tuesday nights, Texaco Star Theater became a national phenomenon.
Burl's willingness to do anything for a laugh made the show television's first must see tv.
Often dressed in drag and engaging in physical slapstick with jokes that were corny and just a little brash, Mr. Television came through the glass screen with kinetic connection between showman and audience.
Milton Berle's often manic stare into the camera lens made viewers feel like he was in their living room.
The Mr. Television handle was no exaggeration. By 1949, Texaco Star Theater was drawing as much as 80% of the viewing audience, astonishing numbers even in an era with few alternatives. TV sales doubled to more than a million units in 1949, a surge often attributed directly to Milton Berle's popularity.
Texaco Star Theater also served as television's first launchpad for a whole new generation of entertainers.
Jackie Gleason and Tony Bennett first appeared before American audiences through Milton Berle's TV cameras.
Acts that had once toured the vaudeville circuit found new life on television thanks to Texaco's Star Theater.
The show provided exposure to entertainers who would go on to long careers and even if their names have faded today.
And the show's variety format provided the blueprint for later hits like the Ed Sullivan show and Sid Caesar's yous Show of Shows.
Texaco Star theater ran until 1953, after which the show continued in various incarnations.
Sponsors changed, the show was renamed and the Milton Berle show continued through 1956.
Burrell himself later acknowledged that his reliance on vaudeville gags and broad comedy lost their appeal as the medium matured and his audience began to look elsewhere for amusement. The reign of Mr. Television came to an end when NBC pulled the plug after the season in 1956.
Still, Milton Berle continued to be a fixture on television for decades.
He was a frequent guest on late night talk shows. He remained active on the comedy circuit and was a top draw in Las Vegas well into the 1960s, he toured nationally, did USO shows overseas, hosted specials, and made cameo appearances, often poking fun at his own legacy.
Milton Berle made his final television appearance in July 2000 when he appeared on an NBC special, Cannon and Two heads are better than none at the age of 92, when he moved on to the great television studio in The Sky On March 27, 2002, at the age of 93, Milton Berle's legacy was instrumental in proving that television was something more than an extension of radio.
By the time he signed off from his own show, television had become its own kind of art form with its own rhythms, rituals and stars.
His embrace of the camera, his instinct for physical comedy, and his ability to hold an audience through the cathode ray tube laid the groundwork for the future of televised entertainment.
Drag routines, slapstick and a dose of Catskills kitsch may have been what television needed to get a toehold with American audiences and Texaco Star Theater helped establish the network variety show as a staple of the weekly schedule. Over the decades that followed, stars like Red Skelton, Dean Martin, the Smothers Brothers, Sonny and Cher and Carol Burnett followed in the trail blazed by Mr. Television, Milton Berle.
This brings us to the end of number 84 in the countdown of the top 100 milestones in the first 100 television.
Stay tuned for the next episode when we witness the dawn of unscripted television more than 50 years before Survivor or the Apprentice.
Thanks for listening to 100 Years of Television, a two year countdown to the centennial of television on September 7, 2027. For more, just aim the gizmo of your choice to 100 years TV.
This podcast was written, recorded, edited, engineered and uploaded by me, Paul Schatzkin and is a production of Farnovision.com if television was invented by somebody named Farnsworth, why don't we call it Farnovision?
[00:09:09] Speaker A: They all said we never would be happy. They laughed at us and ha.
But ho ho ho, who got the laughs right now?
