April 20
BE HAPPY, GO LUCKY DAY
Your Hit Parade, starring Kay Thompson, Charles Carlyle, Gogo DeLys and Johnny Hanser, was first broadcast on radio this night in 1935. A youngster named Frank Sinatra would later be part of the program as a featured vocalist. Your Hit Parade stayed on the radio airwaves for 24 years.
Snooky Lanson (seen here on the right) would later host the program when it made the transition from radio to TV. Other long-time regulars on the TV version were (left to right): Russell Arms, Gisele MacKenzie and Dorothy Collins. They were the lucky ones who got to present the top seven songs each week.
Since many songs stayed on the list for weeks on end, these vocalists had to invent new ways to present the hit parade. On April 24, 1959, Your Hit Parade died. The regulars just didn’t fit with the new rock ’n’ roll hits. Imagine, if you can, Snooky Lanson singing Hound Dog.
The original title of the radio show was, Lucky Strike Hit Parade, sponsored by, you guessed it, Lucky Strike cigarettes. The cigarette company continued to sponsor the TV show (those were the days when cigarette companies sponsored lots of TV shows); and the opening theme song was Be Happy, Go Lucky.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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