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In Melbourne Tonight - 500th Show
Title:
In Melbourne Tonight - 500th Show
NFSA ID
736553
Year
1959
Courtesy
Nine Network
Kennedy sings a self-penned ditty '500 Times, 5 Nights A Week' commemorating the 500th edition of In Melbourne Tonight, which aired on GTV9 on 3 April 1959.
The song broadly covers the history of the show and good-naturedly name-drops many of the key IMT regulars of the time: singers Dorothy Baker and Bill McCormack, 'Barrel Girl' Panda Lisner and comic actor Joff Ellen.
At this point, IMT was still only seen by audiences in Melbourne through GTV9. Graham's national exposure to interstate audiences did not commence until February 1960 with the introduction of The Graham Kennedy Show, produced separately to IMT. The national show was initially screened in Sydney on ATN7 in 1960, the formal creation of the Nine Network not occurring until after TCN 9 owner Sir Frank Packer had purchased GTV 9 in August 1960.
Speaking to the TV Times in 1979, IMT producer-floor manager Tom Miller said of these early days, 'No one in TV ever did as much homework as Graham. Everything was planned. In those days he was getting a lot less than $100 a week. I know – I negotiated his first contract. People don’t realise how hard he works. He makes it look easy. Nobody works harder than Graham.'
Notes by Simon Smith
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.