Radio Forerunner Of Gong Show
ecthompsonmd
April 11, 2008
I read the following in E.L Doctorow’s novel World’s Fair, which is an account of growing up in New York City in years just before American entrance into W.W. II — ” …Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour, a radio program. Aspiring musicians were contestants on the program, and if they were no good, Major Bowes would ( bang a gong) to stop their performance. It made you laugh even though it could not have been funny to whoever it was who might have been rehearsing for weeks to be heard on the radio and hoping to win a professional contract from
