When TV stars brought their shows onstage at the Wisconsin State Fair
The Wisconsin State Fair is a TV magnet. For the next two weeks, you can count on Milwaukee television news crews to comb State Fair Park in West Allis for every possible angle, from cream puff etiquette to kids raising bunnies.
For many years, State Fair attracted more than TV news crews — it pulled in TV stars, too.
In the 1950s and ’60s, state fairs like Wisconsin’s were logical destinations for celebrities looking to promote their shows. But they didn’t just make appearances; they took the stage, often in character.
Roy Rogers, who with his wife, Dale Evans, made the jump from B-movie celebrity to TV stardom in the 1950s, brought his Western-themed show to the fair several times, drawing 112,936 people to the fair in 1958.
“It’s real nice to to meet all you little cowboys and cowgirls,” Rogers told the mostly young State Fair crowd, according to Loren H. Osman’s story in the Aug. 16, 1958, Milwaukee Journal. “Thanks for your swell support of our television shows.”
The 1964 State Fair had members of the casts of TV’s two top-rated shows.
Donna Douglas, Max Baer and Irene Ryan — rerun-watchers know them as Elly May, Jethro and Granny on “The Beverly Hillbillies,” television’s most-watched show at the time — headlined a grandstand show for the first five nights of the 1964 fair, performing as the Clampetts on a bill that also included bluegrass legends Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, who played their show’s theme song.
Meanwhile, Dan Blocker, who played Hoss Cartwright on “Bonanza,” TV’s No. 2 show at the time, and Lorne Greene, Cartwright patriarch Ben on the CBS drama, reprised their characters for eight — yes, eight — rodeo shows.
The 1969 fair’s entertainment included, among other TV notables, an animal show with several famous TV critters, including Gentle Ben the bear and Jambo the lion. The latter was a last-minute replacement for Clarence, the cross-eyed lion from TV’s “Daktari”; Clarence died less than a month before the fair started.
One of the biggest TV stars to play the fair in the 1960s was Johnny Carson. The “Tonight Show” host was the headliner the last two nights of the 1968 State Fair.
Carson set attendance records, drawing overflow crowds to the fair’s grandstand — a record 46,000 people over two shows, according to The Journal’s Douglas D. Armstrong in a story published Aug. 16, 1968.
“Good heavens,” Carson said when he reached the stage and saw the crowd. “I have never played to an audience this size in my entire life.”
It didn’t hurt that 1968 was the first year of the fair’s experiment of having free admission to grandstand shows. So many people tried to get in that fair officials closed the gates an hour before the show was to start because the stands were already packed.
Armstrong noted that some of the people who came after that took seats in the bleachers 200 yards away.
When Carson spotted them, he said, “You people down at the end — how do you like the Ohio State Fair?”