Musical Chairs (1955 TV series)
Encyclopedia
Musical Chairs was a short-lived NBC game show
Game show
A game show is a type of radio or television program in which members of the public, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering questions or solving puzzles usually for money and/or prizes...

 that ran from July 9 to September 17, 1955; The host was Bill Leyden
Bill Leyden
William "Bill" Leyden was a World War II veteran serving in the Marine Corps and a television game show host and announcer who emceed six game shows, including It Could Be You , Your First Impression , and You're Putting Me On...

 and the series featured voice actor Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...

, composer Johnny Mercer
Johnny Mercer
John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others...

, and orchestra leader Bobby Troup
Bobby Troup
Robert William "Bobby" Troup Jr. was an American actor, jazz pianist and songwriter. He is best known for writing the popular standard " Route 66", and for his role as Dr...

 as regular panelists.

Troup's band, the Troup Group, provided the music for the series, often with the assistance of the Cheerleaders singing group or members of the panel itself.

The show was a Summer replacement series on NBC after a successful two-year run in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

.

Format

The program followed a format that was pioneered by the long-running radio program Information Please
Information Please
Information Please was an American radio quiz show, created by Dan Golenpaul, which aired on NBC from May 17, 1938 to April 22, 1951. The title was the contemporary phrase used to request from telephone operators what was then called "information" but is now called "directory assistance".The series...

(which itself became a Summer replacement TV series for CBS in 1952). Viewers were encouraged to mail questions about music to the network in an attempt to challenge the knowledge of a four-person panel (the three regular panelists plus a guest). The questions that Leyden read on the air to the panel could involve any aspect of music, from composing to performing to words, music, and arrangement. Individual panelists may be called to imitate the singing or playing style of well-known performers.

No score was kept in Musical Chairs as the panelists were not in competition with each other (in fact, collaborations between panelists were not uncommon); Viewers who submitted questions that stumped the panel were awarded 21-inch televisions from RCA, the parent company of NBC at the time.

Cancellation

Musical Chairs disappeared from the airwaves after the airing of its eleventh episode on September 17. Host Bill Leyden moved on from his first television network series to the game show that established him as a household name in America for the latter half of the 1950s: It Could Be You
It Could Be You (US game show)
It Could Be You was a television game show produced by Ralph Edwards Productions in the late 1950s in the United States, broadcast daily in the weekday daytime schedule for five years 1956-61, and weekly in the evening on-and-off over three years 1958-61...

.

Episode status

Only one episode is known to exist - Episode #6 (August 13), featuring Helen O'Connell
Helen O'Connell
Helen O'Connell was an American singer, actress, and dancer.Born in Lima, Ohio, O'Connell joined the Jimmy Dorsey band in 1939 and achieved her best selling records in the early 1940s with "Green Eyes", "Amapola," "Tangerine" and "Yours"...

as a guest panelist.
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