Star Time lasted only a few months on the DuMont network, but it was an important variety program for many reasons. Each week in the second half of this hour-long live show, there was a segment called Club Goodman which featured the wonderful Benny Goodman Sextet in long-forgotten jazz performances.
At MacDonald & Associates, a film archive in Chicago, where there exist 16mm kinescopes of one first-half-hour and three second-half-hour segments, the Goodman ensemble performs signature tunes such as "Rose Room," "These Foolish Things," and "I Want to Be Happy."
Second, the co-host of the program was singer-actress Frances Langford. She not only sang pop standards and appeared in production numbers, but she also recreated her shrewish radio character Blanche Bickerson in new weekly skits of "The Bickersons." Her equally-obnoxious husband, John, was played by Lew Parker, an adequate replacement for Don Ameche who portrayed that character only in the radio version several years earlier.
Third, in terms of breaking the traditions of racial exclusion in American broadcasting, Benny Goodman's combo included the masterful jazz pianist, Teddy Wilson, making him one of the first African-American talents to appear regularly on network television.
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