TV Flashback: ‘Tony Orlando And Dawn’ Debuted On CBS On This Day 50 Years Ago

At a time when multiple variety-themed television series aired in primetime, the arrival of Tony Orlando and Dawn with Tony Orlando and backup vocalists Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson signaled the start of a three season run on CBS. It premiered on July 3, 1974.

Flash to the 1973-74 TV season and primetime was already populated with The Carol Burnett Show, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, The Dean Martin Show and The Flip Wilson Show (not to mention The Mac Davis Show, The Bobbie Gentry Show, The Hudson Brothers Show, and The Dean Martin Comedy World that summer). This affable trio, which stepped in after The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour concluded for the season, featured the same formula. Specifically, comedy sketches, musical numbers, and the sarcastic back-and-forth banter between Orlando, Hopkins and Wilson.

While never a Top 10 rated hit, Tony Orlando and Dawn did well enough to warrant a renewal for the 1974-75 TV season as a midseason replacement. Flash to November 1974 and the variety hour returned to the Wednesday 8 p.m. ET hour in place of the short-lived high school-set drama Sons and Daughters (with Gary Frank pre-Family and Glynnis O’Connor).

Tony Orlando and Dawn, of course, made their musical mark with the singles Knock Three Times, Candida and Tie a Yellow Robbon Around the Old Oak Tree, which spent 11 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart in 1973. And the group continued their string of hit singles during their variety show’s run, including He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You) and Cupid.

Ranked No. 25 overall in primetime in that first full season (tied with the one season CBS comedy Paul Sand in Friends & Lovers), Tony Orlando and Dawn returned for season two. But facing heavy-hitters The Bionic Woman on ABC and family drama Little House on the Prairie on NBC put a dent in the audience. By the third - and final - season, Tony and Orlando and Dawn, now airing in the Tuesday 8 p.m. ET hour, was retooled as The Tony Orlando and Dawn Rainbow Hour. Unfortunately, facing the then top two rated shows in primetime, ABC sitcoms Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, marked the conclusion of the CBS variety series.

Ironically, Telma Hopkins teamed with Laverne & Shirley’s Cindy Williams for the ABC sitcom Getting By from 1993-94. Post-Tony Orlando and Dawn, Hopkins also co-starred in the comedies Bosom Buddies (opposite Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari), Gimme a Greak (opposite Nell Carter), ABC’s “TGIF” entry Family Matters, and Half & Half on the now defunct UPN network, among other titles.

Joyce Vincent Wilson, meanwhile, continued touring as a musical artist. And Tony Orlando performed primarily as a solo singer, he appeared on Broadway, and he made occasional appearances on television. In 1990, Orlando received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

On this day, 50 years after debuting, we remember Tony Orlando and Dawn as one of the many entries in the variety category.