page_title: The Chesterfield Supper Club
section_title: Radio
hierarchical_section_title: The Chesterfield Supper Club / Radio
caption_attribution_description: English: Promotional caricatures of Perry Como and Jo Stafford for The Chesterfield Supper Club, as part of the NBC Parade of Stars promotion. Copyright details This drawing is part of the 1947 NBC Parade of Stars network promotion. There were 56 drawings in the entire package, one representing each of the NBC Radio Network shows on the air at the time. The collection was made available in a portfolio. The artwork was used by NBC for promotion of both its radio network and the personalities who were part of the radio shows on it in 1947. The drawings were made available to the media and were used in print ads, as "car cards" (ads in buses and transit cars) and billboards, as well as point of purchase displays where sales of physical products were involved. They were also prominently displayed in the RCA Building and NBC Radio. Come See Your Fave NBC Star In Caricature Billboard 13 September 1947 NBC To Use Disk Series For Annual Promotion Billboard 19 April 1947 When NBC filed for copyright on these drawings, they did not copyright all of them as a folio but as individual works of art. Some of them were renewed in 1975, while others were not, leaving some of the folio as still under copyright and other caricatures from this portfolio as not renewed (now free use). Further complicating this is that there appears to be more than one work of art for some personalities. It is not known whether the second work was ever seen by the public. NBC appears to have filed for copyright and apparently asked Sam Berman to execute another caricature, which was also then copyrighted. List of Parade of Stars copyright renewals by title: pages 9-10 This image is not on the renewal list.
context_page_description: The Chesterfield Supper Club is an NBC Radio musical variety program, which was also telecast by NBC Television.
context_section_description: The Chesterfield Supper Club began on December 11, 1944, as a 15-minute radio program, airing at 7 pm weeknights on the NBC Radio Network. This musical variety show was sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes and featured live musical performances. Perry Como initially hosted The Chesterfield Supper Club five nights a week. Initially, Como's female singer was Mary Ashworth.
  The idea for the radio show originated with Doug Storer, who was then an advertising executive with the Blackman Company.  Storer had heard Perry Como on his non-sponsored CBS radio program and believed he would do well in a radio show of the type he was proposing.  Storer recorded a demo of the radio show with Como as its host and Mitchell Ayres and his Orchestra providing the music. He took the recording to the advertising agency that handled the Chesterfield cigarettes account.
  The agency was enthusiastic about the program's format, but did not want Como as its host.  The singer the agency preferred was under contract and would need to be released from it before he could accept a job on the new radio program.  They asked Storer to get the singer released from his contract.  Storer, who was still of the belief that the new show needed Como as its host, did not go through with the advertising agency's request. He received a call from the agency some weeks later, asking about the singer's contract and saying their new program would make its radio debut in about one week's time. Storer told them the right man for the radio show was the one who had made the demo recording-Perry Como.  Chesterfield's advertising agency did not have time to do anything but sign Como as the host of the show.
  During the first year, Como was backed by the Ted Steele Orchestra, followed by the Lloyd Shaffer Orchestra at the end of 1945 until 1948. With John Klenner, Shaffer and Steele composed the show's theme song, "Smoke Dreams." Roy Ringwald's "A Cigarette, Sweet Music and You" was also used on the show as a musical theme. The Satisfiers vocal group was also part of the program; they also made many records with Como.
  Beginning on the show's second anniversary, he hosted the show on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, while Jo Stafford was the host on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Stafford returned to California shortly after becoming a co-host of the program.  She began her twice-weekly broadcasts from Hollywood in November 1946, backed by her future husband, Paul Weston. Stafford's Hollywood "Club" broadcasts featured the vocal group The Starlighters; in 1947 she recorded her version of the show's theme song, "Smoke Dreams", with them.
  One of the regular features was a "Hollywood Star of the Week" contest where an actor or actress would be featured as a "guest star" singing a song and the listening audience would guess the star's identity for prizes. The "mystery star" contest continued when the show appeared on television.
  The broadcasts of April 5, 1946, made from a TWA plane at an altitude of 20,000 feet, are believed to be the first network radio broadcasts from an airplane. Jo Stafford, Perry Como, and the entire staff made the flight. There were two mid-air Supper Club broadcasts: one at 6 pm and another at 10 pm for the West Coast. A total of three flights were made; an earlier rehearsal flight for reception purposes was also made. In addition to the cast and the band's instruments, there was also a small piano on board. The three stand-held microphones brought onto the plane turned out to be less useful than expected. The cast then resorted to hand-held microphones, but the plane's cabin pressure made them very heavy and difficult to hold after a few minutes.
  Less than two months after the airborne Supper Club broadcasts, Chesterfield had an idea to take the program on a week of remote broadcasts: flying into Washington, DC for the Monday show, to London, for the Wednesday one and winding up with the Friday night show in Havana. The plan appears to have fallen from favor when it was learned that the taxes which would have been imposed on the Shaffer orchestra as foreign music
caption: Sam Berman caricature of Como and Stafford, 1947.
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