As we've been saying here, there's no way to know how many comedy teams popped up in the fifties trying to be "The next Martin and Lewis" even while America was still loving the original duo. The list of just the match-ups that made it onto Ed Sullivan's show was pretty long and it was probably less than 1% of all the acts that tried to emulate Dean and Jerry.
The team of Tommy Noonan and Peter Marshall made it to Ed's stage…and yes, that's the same Peter Marshall who hosted the Hollywood Squares game show for a long time. The clip below is from December 16, 1951 and the show was then called The Toast of the Town. It didn't become The Ed Sullivan Show until 1955.
Noonan and Marshall were related. Tommy's half-brother (the actor John Ireland) was married to Peter's sister (the actress Joanne Dru). The team started in the late forties about the time Martin and Lewis were getting big. Dean and Jerry, by the way, performed on the first episode of Toast of the Town in 1948.
Noonan and Marshall didn't appear together all the time. Both pursued separate careers on and off throughout the fifties and the best surviving example of their work as a pair is probably The Rookie, a 1959 movie directed by George O'Hanlon (the voice of George Jetson). It was supposed to be the first in a string of Noonan and Marshall comedies and the string ended with that one film. If you ever see it, you'll know why…but don't ever see it. Even the presence in the cast of Julie Newmar and Joe Besser couldn't save it.
Tommy and Peter stopped appearing together a few years later. Marshall continued his singing/acting career and did quite well. Noonan produced and starred in a couple of B-Movies that got attention because "name" actresses like Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren appeared in them, sans wardrobe. He also became a punch line in a lot of jokes about how many times he was married. The actual number, often inflated for comedic effect, was five.
Noonan passed away in 1968. Marshall is still going strong at the age of 95. Here they are on with Ed…
