Admiral Broadway Revue

Did You Know?

• Marge and Gower Champion performed dance numbers on the show.
• Writers for the program included Lucille Kallen and Mel Tolkin.

Overview

The hour-long Admiral Broadway Revue, hosted by Sid Caesar and co-starring Imogene Coca, was directed by Max Liebman and broadcast from New York City's now-demolished International Theatre. Each episode wove music, comedy, guest stars, and lavish production numbers around a single theme, like cross-country or night life. Admiral, a TV manufacturer competing with RCA and DuMont, sponsored the series. When demand for Admiral's television sets outstripped factory capacity, the company canceled the show to invest those funds in expanding production. The final episode aired on June 3, 1949. Liebman, Caesar, and Coca later worked together on NBC's Your Show of Shows, which premiered on February 25, 1950.

Episode and script status

If you wanted to watch Admiral Broadway Revue at home, Video Dimensions put episodes out on videocassette. The Paley Center has 18 kinescope recordings of the show, while UCLA holds just one. In 2000, a forgotten closet at New York City Center was opened, revealing boxes of Liebman’s papers. Those boxes contained many scripts from the series, and reports at the time said they were headed to the Library of Congress for researchers.