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 of new variety shows with rural appeal: "The Johnny Cash Show" (1969-1971), "The Jim Nabors Hour" (1969-1971), "The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour" (1969-1972) and "Hee Haw" (1969-1992). Entertainers with less successful variety shows in the 1960s include Judy Garland and Sammy Davis Jr. In 1970 and 1971, the American TV networks, CBS especially, conducted the so-called "rural purge", in which shows that appealed to more rural and older audiences were cancelled as part of a greater focus on appealing to wealthier demographics. Many variety shows, including long-running ones, were cancelled as part of this "purge," with a few shows (such