Today we treat of two separate but very much related topics of roughly equal obscurity. I can't recall which one I learned about first, but we start with comedienne Donna Jean Young (1936-2010) because May 29 was her birthday. And this will be one of those happy occasions where Travalanche is your best, very nearly ONLY source of centralized info.
As the 1969 record album cover above more than suggests, Young was a performer very much associated with East McKeesport, Pennsylvania, about a dozen miles outside Pittsburgh. The record's available on Youtube, and mighty enjoyable. She occupies an interesting niche. She plays a very childlike, wide-eyed squeaky voiced woman, sort of dumb/crazy/innocent, but with an edge underneath the performance and in the writing that indicated that she was actually hip and with the times. She's kind of like a small-town Goldie Hawn, mixed with a '30s cartoon, and a goofy facial expression reminiscent of Ollie from Kukla, Fran and Ollie. Her heyday lasted almost exactly a decade, from 1966 through 1976. She was very much in demand throughout the entire period, on the variety and talk shows of Dean Martin, Woody Woodbury, Merv, Mike Douglas, and Johnny Carson, and on game shows like Hollywood Squares. She was added to cast of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In for the 1972-73 (the end of its original run).
Young started out in Greenwich Village clubs in the late '50s. Broadcaster John Harris Sheridan claims to have dated her at one point. From what I can glean, her original stage partner, husband, writer and manager was a guy named Bucky Searles. In the early '80s she remarried and moved to Australia, where she lived for the rest of her life.
But her last major American tv gig ought to be of interest to our readers:
I first became aware of Vaudeville (1975-76) from an ad in an old TV Guide. There were 13 episodes of this syndicated variety show, and Donna Jean Young was the only performer who was in every single show. As this ad shows, Milton Berle, the Wiere Brothers, and Nick Lucas were among the guests. Others included Red Buttons, Cab Calloway, Jack Carter, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Carl Ballantine, The Nicholas Brothers, Morey Amsterdam, Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows, Rudy Vallee, Henny Youngman, Willie Tyler and Lester, and scores of others, most with a background in vaudeville or the variety arts. The only credited writer is a guy named Mort Green, whose resume was genuinely excellent: he created the show Make Me Laugh, wrote and produced the 1974 holiday special Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, and wrote for and/or produced the variety shows of Red Skelton, Perry Como, and Andy Williams among other things.
Vaudeville seems to have been very much in the spirit of The Hollywood Palace, The NBC Follies, and Dean Martin's Golddiggers -- a nostalgic re-creation of the old vaudeville energy, updated (every so slightly) for contemporary sensibilities. This one came out the same year as The Sunshine Boys. I was ten years old at the time, and a TV junkie, and this whole thing was very influential on me. Ironically, I don't think I ever saw this particular show, though. As I said, it was syndicated by Metromedia, successor company to the old Dumont Network. Some of Metromedia's related shows included The Merv Griffin Show and Star Search. Here in New York they seem to have aired it on Channel 5, which was WNEW at the time. I'd like to get my hands on some episodes now!
For more on vaudeville and variety history, please see my book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. And please stay tuned for my next book Vaudeville in Your Living Room: A Century of Radio and TV Variety, coming November 2023.
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