For almost no reason, I’ve been trying to think of the name of a TV variety/talk show host from maybe 50 years ago.
For a long time … like maybe 3 years … I’ve had this picture in my head of this guy — but no name.
I’m not even sure why I wanted to know. It’s just one of my oldest memories, from somewhere back in the 1966-1970 range. My mother watching this daytime variety show during the summer, in black and white, hosted by a formally dressed older man I was comfortable with back then (probably because she watched it many times).
When I had that thought, I tried to recall the name, and I could not. I was quite certain that I had known it, and that a memory would eventually return. It didn’t.
I called my mom, in her late 80’s at the time. She had no recollection. She did note, correctly, that she didn’t watch that sort of thing much. And I agreed: maybe that’s why I remember it at all, because it was out of character for her. She pushed old hosts of The Today Show on me, but I kinda’ know she didn’t watch that until she was sending me to elementary school at 8:30 five days a week … plus it was in color. So it wasn’t Hugh Downs or Frank McGee or even Joe Garagiola.
I went through the names I did remember. Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas … no … older than that. Art Linkletter, Ed Sullivan … no … but that was more like the era … just not that famous. We got more obscure (at least for me) … Jack Benny … George Gobel … Danny Kaye … Danny Thomas … Alan Funt … but no, the names and faces paired up nicely in my memory for all of them.
Of course, I ran off to the internet. Surprisingly, that got me nowhere. I guess no one has curated the right sort of list for what I was looking for. (In retrospect, I probably ran across the name in some of the bigger lists, but it didn’t ring a bell).
I more or less gave up. But, you know how this sort of thing goes. It nagged at me.
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This morning I saw the headline that Diahann Carroll had passed away. I know who she is, but I was not a fan. But I clicked the article open … you know … something to read while drinking coffee. And there it was:
And then she won several times on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts program, where she first billed herself as Diahann Carroll.
The memory I’ve had is this guy:

Arthur Godfrey.
No wonder my mother didn’t remember: he didn’t have a variety/talk show of his own in that era: he was already past his prime.
He hosted Your All-American College Show in 1968. (Never heard of it). That doesn’t seem like something my mother would have watched anyway. Plus, it was also in color for at least part of its run.
He was also in the rotation as host of The Hollywood Palace in 1966. Wikipedia says that was mostly scheduled on Saturday night, so that doesn’t seem right. But it was in black and white at the time.
He also was a guest host on The David Frost Show several times from 1969-71. This show was in black and white at the start of its run. And back then, David Frost was a really big deal.

This show was daily, so that points to a scheduled time during the day. And it premiered about 2 months before I started kindergarten.
So I think that’s it. One of my oldest memories, from when I was 5, is my mother puttering in my parents bedroom, with Arthur Godfrey on the TV. And now the internet homes in very tightly … he guest-hosted The David Frost Show, in black and white, on July 22, 1970.
FWIW: that makes it not really one of my oldest memories. It’s just foggier. By then I’d finished kindergarten, and I do have a few dozen memories from that point or earlier. I don’t know about you, but the volume of my clear memories starts to really ramp up from second grade onwards.