The Carroll Levis Talent Shows
Carroll "Mr Star-Maker" Levis was a Canadian born TV and radio personality who
presented a television and radio show called "Star Search" (or possibly "Search
for a Star"). He also was the organizer for a complementary touring stage show which served as a
profit-making venture in it's own right and a talent search for the TV
show. The stage show toured the country continuously usually staging
two shows nightly, from Monday to Saturday, for a week in well-established
theatres in major towns. On Sundays, theatres were normally closed to the
public but private auditions were held to select acts good enough to appear in
front of the public during the forthcoming week.
The format of the shows were firstly six or seven professional "warm-up" acts
(singers, comedians, acrobats etc.) followed by an interval and then the
talent contest itself. Five or six acts would perform, and then the result
would be determined by a "clapometer" which measured the volume of
applause for each act after they gave a brief resume of their earlier
performance. The shows lasted nearly two-hours, and although Carrol Levis
does not seem to have been at each one personally (a Master of
Ceremonies took charge) they were sometimes introduced by a celebrity.
Jackie Collins introduced the 1958 show in Manchester.
Winners were given the chance to appear on the TV or radio shows, but
first had to get through a sequence of local and regional heats and
finals. Johnny and the Moondogs, for instance, did not win the contest
at the Liverpool Empire Theatre but did well enough to qualify for regional
finals in Manchester, as apparently did Billy Fury.
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Submitted on April 6, 2002
