This was posted in
2010 during the Labor Day Weekend, which has always made me think of Jerry Lewis
and his Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy. I’m probably not alone in this, as
most of us baby boomers were raised with the TV on and our families tuning in
to the show; if only to see how much money was coming in.
So, this is my memory of
the telethon’s history and the tear my family actually participated; collected
money and brought it to the hotel in Manhattan where the telethon was being
held. It was pretty exciting stuff to a 10 year old.
I remember when the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon was a
local, one station affair broadcast from the Americana Hotel in New York City.
This year is being touted as the 45th Annual Telethon, but I can tell you that
this is incorrect.
The telethon began in 1956, with Jerry Lewis and his
partner, Dean Martin, hosting a show on WNEW-TV in New York. They raised
$600,000 to benefit the newly found Muscular Dystrophy Association of America.
Again in 1957 and 1959, Jerry did two more shows, which he began calling
“telethons.” These were the days when TV actually went off the air at about 1
or 2 in the morning, so the telethon was a huge event. I remember getting up in
the middle of the night to see if it was really still on! And upon waking in
the morning it was the first thing I checked.
Another aspect of those early telethons, which I found
fascinating, was that at night pledges came in from faraway places such as
Connecticut and even Philadelphia! The TV signal during the daylight hours was
very short range, but at night I could pick up Channel 3 in Philadelphia. I
suppose they had discovered the same thing about signals from New York.
When I was 10; and this would be 1964; my parents, along
with my brother and I, collected for MDA and then went to the Americana to join
in the long line waiting to dump their donations in the big carts that were set
up inside the hotel hallway on the ground floor. I believe it was just outside
the doors to the space that was being used for the Telethon. The 1966 Jerry
Lewis MDA Telethon was the first to be held on Labor Day weekend and the first
to raise more than $1 million.
The Telethon has grown larger over the years. I believe
the 1966 date for today's so-called 45th Telethon represents the date of the
first broadcast from New York that was linked to other cities, like
Philadelphia. Eventually the Telethon left WNEW in New York for WOR-TV and then
finally moved to Las Vegas. But nothing will ever compare to the close knit
feeling of those first few years when one little station in New York gave birth
to this annual event.
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