Variety show Stan Laurel revisited his music hall days when he performed at the "Royal Variety" show. In the United States, former vaudeville performers such as the Marx Brothers, George Burns and Gracie Allen, W. C. Fields, and Jack Benny honed their skills in the Borscht Belt before moving to talkies, to radio shows, and then to television shows, including variety shows. Variety shows were among the first programs to be featured on television during the experimental mechanical television era. Variety shows hosted by Helen Haynes and Harriet Lee are recorded in contemporary newspapers in 1931 and 1932; because of technical limits
Variety show season or less in the 1970s include Captain & Tennille, The Jacksons, The Keane Brothers, Bobby Darin, Mary Tyler Moore, Julie Andrews, Dolly Parton, Shields and Yarnell, The Manhattan Transfer, Starland Vocal Band, and the cast of "The Brady Bunch". Entertainers with variety-based TV specials in the 70s include The Carpenters, John Denver, Shirley MacLaine and Diana Ross. By the late 1970s, nearly every variety show had ended production, in part because of audience burnout; the highest-rated variety show of 1975, "Cher", was only the 22nd-most watched show of the year.. By the early 1980s, the few new variety shows