For its first broadcast of the 1956-57 season, the monthly CBS variety anthology Ford-Star Jubilee offered a full-color salute to composer Cole Porter. Opening with (what else?) "Another Opening, Another Show (from Porter's Kiss Me Kate), the 90-minute special featured an all-star cast performing a veritable cornucopia of the songwriter's hits. Highlights included Dorothy Dandridge's renditions of "You Do Something to Me" and "My Heart Belongs to Daddy"; Oklahoma costars Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, dueting on a medley of Porter love songs; dancers Sally Forrest and George Chakiris (still five years away from his Oscar win for West Side Story performing to the tune of "Night and Day"; trumpeter Louis Armstrong, belting out "Blow Gabriel Blow"; and a few Porter comedy numbers, sung by Peter Lynd Hayes and Mary Healy. Also appearing in this live telecast were singer Dolores Gray, actor George Sanders and Cole Porter himself, with a filmed segment featuring Bing Crosby, who was then starring in a movie version of Porter's 1934 Broadway musical Anything Goes. David Rose conducted the orchestra for You're the Top, which currently exists in black-and-white kinescope form.
by Hal Erickson
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