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 elements, particularly musical performances and comedy sketches. The most obvious difference between shows such as "Saturday Night Live" and traditional variety shows is the lack of a single lead host (or hosts) and a large ensemble cast. "SNL" has used different guest hosts ever since its inception. Televised talent shows have a variety show element, in that they feature a variety of different acts. Examples of talent shows that feature entertainers from a broad variety of disciplines include "Star Search", which had a run in the 1980s in syndication and a run on CBS in the early 2000s during the