In one of the oddest televised summit concepts, pop singer Dinah Shore in 1961 summoned a quintet of entertainers with a range of ethnic backgrounds or “disabilities" to attend her Chevrolet U.N. In attendance for the NBC special: the blind George Shearing, the “mute" Harpo Marx, African-American Louis Armstrong, Italian-American Tony Bennett and Kay Starr, of Native-American heritage. As for Dinah? A Jewish-American who had polio as a child...
This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
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