The popular show lasted more than a decade and is remembered fondly by many who grew up in Dayton during that era.
How it started
Cal Mayne, representing Dorothy Lane Market, called television producer Jim Smiley and asked him to meet two youngsters representing Junior Achievement.
“The two young entertainers and their parents had approached Mayne about doing a 13-week amateur show for Junior Achievement,” Smiley once told the Dayton Daily News. “And I tried my best to talk him out of it.”
The show first aired in the fall of 1955, appearing every Saturday night at 6 p.m.
Mayne and Dorothy Lane sponsored the Rising Generation show for many years and he frequently appeared on the show to offer help and encouragement to the young participants.
Early success
The show started modestly under the Junior Achievement banner.
The first emcee for the show was Beverly Frye, who at the time was a 16-year-old Fairmont High School senior.
One of the highlights of the show in the beginning, Smiley recalled, was the fact that winners were selected every 13 weeks and rewarded with trips to New York, auditions and a hi-fi record player.
Over the last two weeks of the 13-week cycle, 11 acts were presented during all-winner shows. Out of those came the grand champion.
The show’s success led Smiley to expand the show to other markets. He created short runs in Chicago, Cleveland and Indianapolis.
Smiley left Dayton to run the Chicago show, which went under the same title and format.
Marion Gange
Marion Gange took over producing, directing and hosting the Dayton show in its second year.
Gange had played with the Ina Ray Hutton’s Orchestra, one of the area’s best-known all-girl bands in the mid 1930s.
In the 1940s, Gange was the “swingingest gal guitarist of her time,” according to a 1972 DDN story. She was also honored as one of the “Gibson Girls,” sponsored by the Gibson Guitar Company.
Gange’s background as a talented guitarist and professional musician, along with her experience in the entertainment industry, made her a key figure in bringing the show to life.
Of the long-running Rising Generation show, Gange once said, “It was one of the most stimulating and pleasant associations of my life...working with so many talented youngsters and the entire crew at WHIO.
“And Cal Mayne ... what high enough praise can be given to this inspiring gentleman?”
Gaining in popularity
By the middle of 1956, the show was on the eve of completion of its second 13-week cycle and was enjoying its best ratings.
After the second 13-week season wrapped up, it was decided to air the show year-round, which meant a wider search was needed to find extra amateur talent outside of Junior Achievement participants.
Opened up to the public at large, the only restriction was that the age of the performers had to be between 13 and 19 years. Auditions were held on Mondays at 7 p.m. at the WHIO studios. All you had to do was show up for a tryout.
Martin Sheen
Martin Sheen is one of the biggest celebrities from Dayton, and he has said in the past the show gave him his start.
Sheen once told the Dayton Daily News his break in Dayton came in 1958.
“I tried to tell people, ‘Look, I don’t sing, I don’t dance. What am I gonna do? So I decided to reach some passages from the Bible,” he told a reporter in 1964.
“But there was a wonderful man sponsoring that show: Calvin Mayne, who put on the program for his Dorothy Lane supermarket. Out of the show, and through him, I won an audition for CBS in New York.”
He got his break in 1960 with a part in “The Connection,” an off-Broadway show. He then got a series of television roles in 1961 that got him moving.
Coming to an end
In October of 1966, the show started being aired in color.
In 1968 the show took a break to work out a new format for the program but before returning it had been canceled by WHIO.
The talent show had a short run on Channel 16 out of Kettering before calling it quits later that year.
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