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Notes
1 Goodyear-OXO and Raleigh Cigarettes, Advertisement for The Original Amateur Hour de Mexico, in Variety; Hazel Bishop, Inc., Advertisement for The Original Amateur Hour, in Variety.
2 See Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006).
3 Advertisement for The Original Amateur Hour in Variety (1957 January 9).
4 La Hora Internacional extended the representation of the musical stage as a site of opportunity, which had historical roots across the mediums of theatre, film, radio, and television. For example, we see this extension in the marriage of “Floradora Girls”—the chorus girls in the 1900 musical Floradora—to millionaires and European royalty and in the evolution of the narrative thematics of 1930s’ Hollywood backstage musical. In addition to The Original Amateur Hour, other televised amateur competitions, on both national and local networks, like The Horace Heidt Show and Freddy Martin’s “Band of Tomorrow,” further entrenched the notion of the stage as a space of consequence for singers, dancers, and musicians. See Forman, One Night on TV is Worth Weeks at the Paramount: Popular Music on Early Television.
5 For an analysis of Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour, see Melnick, “Reality Radio: Remediating the Radio Contest Genre in Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour Films,” in Film History.
6 See, for example, Ted Mack, “Impact of Int'l Talent Exchange Via ‘Original Amateur Hour'” in Variety (1957 January 9).
7 Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad, pp. 219–20.
8 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 17.
9 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 19.
10 See Huck Jr., Modern Mexico, p. 292; Anderson and Chakars, Modernization, Nation-Building, and Television History. For the prior history of US–Mexico business relations, see Moreno, Yankee Don’t Go Home! Mexican Nationalism, American Business Culture, and the Shaping of Modern Mexico, 1920–1950.
11 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 17.
12 Ibid.
13 Hall, “Zoomar: Frank G. Back and the Postwar Television Zoom Lens,” in Technology and Culture.
14 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 17.
15 The producers’ gracious treatment of Azcárraga continued as indicated by an advertisement on January 9, 1957, in Variety for La Hora Internacional that reads, “We salute Don Emelio [sic] Azcarraga who had the foresight and vision to bring this great idea into being in Mexico.”
16 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 17.
17 "La Hora Internacional Del Aficionado, Third Program," Amateur Hour Collection, Box 18.
18 In his analysis of The Original Amateur Hour, John Caldwell argues that the show emphasized the working class identities of the contestants in order to heighten their “class aspirations” and that this process was part of the aesthetic posturing and self-consciousness of the show itself. Caldwell, Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television, pp. 34–5.
19 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 20.
20 Letter from Thomas S. Hunter to Harry K. McWilliams (1956 December 24), Amateur Hour Collection, Box 17.
21 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 17.
22 Ibid.
23 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 20.
24 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 85.
25 For example, Murray Forman describes the differences between the domestic settings of The Dinah Shore Show and the set designs of “refined urban leisure” on The Perry Como Show (Forman, One Night on TV, pp. 131–3).
26 McAuley, Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre, p. 5.
27 “Original Amateur Hour,” Variety (1957 June 26).
28 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 18.
29 Sutherland, “Variety, or the Spectacular Aesthetic of American Liberal Democracy,” Doctoral Dissertation.
30 Fein, “New Empire into Old: Making Mexican Newsreels the Cold War Way,” in Diplomatic History, p. 715.
31 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 16.
32 In a letter to Mack dated September 25, 1957, a disgruntled employee who had been fired from the show for reasons of “dishonesty” threatened to publicly question the process of how votes were counted (Amateur Hour Collection, Box 17).
33 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 17
34 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 18.
35 Saldaña won three consecutive broadcasts of The Original Amateur Hour and as a result, earned the chance to sing at Madison Square Garden. While in New York, he also auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera’s radio program, Auditions of the Air. See, “Marco Antonio Triunfó en Nueva York,” in La Prensa.
36 Escobar, Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900–1945.
37 Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity; Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America.
38 La Prensa (1957 March 23), Amateur Hour Collection, Box 20.
39 Amateur Hour Collection, Moving Image Section, Library of Congress.
40 Amateur Hour Collection, Moving Image Section, Library of Congress.
41 Amateur Hour Collection, Moving Image Section, Library of Congress.
42 Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America, p. 111.
43 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 19.
44 Ibid.
45 Amateur Hour Collection, Moving Image Section, Library of Congress.
46 Amateur Hour Collection, Box 17.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Desirée J. Garcia
Desirée J. Garcia is Associate Professor in the Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies Program and an affiliate in Film and Media Studies at Dartmouth College. She is the author of The Migration of Musical Film: From Ethnic Margins to American Mainstream (Rutgers University Press, 2014). She has also published articles on musical film and musical performance in Film History, the Journal of American Ethnic History, and Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies. She holds a B.A. in History from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Boston University.