from WIKIPEDIA: Dinah Shore (born Frances Rose Shore February 29, 1916 - February 24, 1994) was an American singer, actress, and television personality. She was most popular during the Big Band era of the 1940s and 1950s.
After failing singing auditions for the bands of Benny Goodman and both Jimmy Dorsey and his brother Tommy Dorsey, Shore struck out on her own to become the first singer of her era to achieve huge solo success. She enjoyed a long string of over 80 charted popular hits, lasting from 1940 into the late '50s, and after appearing in a handful of films went on to a four-decade career in American television, starring in her own music and variety shows in the '50s and '60s and hosting two talk shows in the '70s. TV Guide magazine ranked her at #16 on their list of the top fifty television stars of all time. Stylistically, Dinah Shore was often compared to two popular singers who followed her in the mid-to-late '40s and early '50s, Doris Day and Patti Page.
Soon after she arrived in New York in 1937, Dinah Shore made her first television appearances on experimental broadcasts for NBC. Twelve years later, In 1949 she made her official television show debut on the Ed Wynn Show and also made a guest appearance on Bob Hope's first television show in 1950. After being on many other people's television shows, she got her own, The Dinah Shore Show in 1951. She did two fifteen minute shows a week for NBC. She won her first, of many, Emmy awards for the show in 1955. The show was sponsored by Chevrolet. The sponsor's theme song ("See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet") became the singer's signature piece.
In 1956 she hosted a monthly series of one-hour full-color spectaculars as part of NBC's "Chevy Show" series. These proved so popular that the show was renamed "The Dinah Shore Chevy Show" the following season, with Dinah becoming the full-time host, helming three out of four weeks in the month. Broadcast live and in NBC's famous "Living Color," this classic variety show was one of the most honored and popular of the 1950s and early 1960s and featured the television debuts of many great stars of the era, such as Yves Montand and Maureen O'Hara, and featured Dinah in now-classic performances alongside Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra and Pearl Bailey. "The Dinah Shore Chevy Show" ran through the 1960-61 season, after which Chevrolet dropped sponsorship and the show continued for two more seasons as a series of monthly broadcasts sponsored by "The American Dairy Association" and "Green Stamps." Simply called "The Dinah Shore Show," Dinah's guests included Nat "King" Cole, Bing Crosby, Jack Lemmon, and a very young Barbra Streisand. Over twelve seasons, from 1951-1963, Dinah Shore made 125 hour-long programs and 444 fifteen-minute shows.
Dinah famously ended her televised programs by throwing an enthusiastic kiss directly to the cameras (and viewers) and exclaiming "MWAH!" to the audience as if to be extending a kiss to everyone in gratitude for being with her. It was always said by Frank Sinatra that, "Dinah blows the best kisses!"
