Dinah Shore ranks as one of the important on-air musical stars of the first two decades of television in the United States. Indeed, from 1956 through 1963, there were few TV personalities as well known as she was. More than any song she sang, Shore herself symbolized cherry optimism and southern charm, and she is most remembered for blowing a big kiss to viewers at the end of her 1950s variety show. As hostess, she sometimes danced and frequently participated in comedy skits, but she was best loved as a smooth vocalist reminiscent of a style associated with the 1940s.

Shore pioneered the prime-time color variety show when The Dinah Shore Chevy Show started in October 1956 on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and ran on Sunday nights until the end of the 1963 season. Sponsored by General Motors, then the largest corporation in the world, Shore helped make the low-priced Chevrolet automobile the most widely selling car up to that point in history.

Shore represented a rare woman able to achieve major  success  hosting  a  TV  variety  show.  In the late 1950s, her enthusiasm and lack of pretension proved so popular that she was four times named to the list of the "most admired women in the world." Her desire to please showed in her singing style, which some purists dismissed as sentimental, but through her recording career she did earn nine gold records. Shore made listeners and later viewers feel good, and beginning with her first broadcasts on radio in the late 1930s and then on television, she was able to remain a constant pres­ence in American broadcasting for more than 50 years. When Fanny Rose Shore was old enough to go to school, in her hometown of Nashville. Tennessee, she found herself taunted for being Jewish in the decidedly non-Jewish world of a segregated Deep South. Undeterred, Shore logged experience on Nashville radio while in college, on her hometown's WSM-AM, best known as the home of the Grand Ole Opry. But Shore was no hillbilly singer, no typical southern belle. She took a degree in sociology at Vanderbilt University, putting herself through college with her radio earnings. Her show's theme song was the Ethel Waters blues­ inspired "Dinah," and Shore changed her name accordingly. The success of her local radio show, Our Little Cheerleader of Song, enabled Shore to move to New York City to try to make it in Tin Pan Alley, then the center of the world of pop music.

Shore, by her own admission, did not have the vocal equipment of Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday, and she never chose to reveal as much of herself in music as did her other idol, Peggy Lee. However, she was persistent. During the late 1930s, having auditioned un­ successfully for such band leaders as Benny Goodman and Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Shore finally hooked up with the Xavier Cugat band. Through the 1940s, she sold a million copies of "Yes, My Darling Daughter," and that recording success was followed quickly by such hits as "Blues in the Night," "Shoo Fly Pie," "Buttons and Bows," "Dear Hearts and Gentle People," and "It's So Nice to Have a Man Around the House." During World War II, Shore sang these songs for the troops in Normandy and for shows at other Allied bases in Europe.

In 1950, Shore made a guest appearance on Bob Hope's first NBC television special. A year later, NBC assigned her a regular TV series that ran until 1956 on Tuesday and Thursday nights from 7:30 to 7:45 P.M. Eastern time, following 15 minutes of network news. This led, in time, to her Sunday night series. Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and NBC corporate chief David Sarnoff loved Shore's conservative vocal choices and middlebrow sensibilities. In retrospect, Shore's famed signature theme song, the catchy Chevrolet jingle, "See the USA in your Chevrolet," accompanied by her sweeping smooch to the audience, was so theatrically commercial it made Ed Sullivan seem subversive and Pat Boone look like a rock star. Shore did best when she played the safe 1950s non­ threatening "girl next door," with no blond (she was born a brunette) hair out of place, no joke offensive to anyone. The outcast of Nashville finally fit in.

The Dinah Shore Chevy Show rarely entered the top- 20 ratings against the Columbia Broadcasting Sys­ tem's (CBS's) General Electric Theater, hosted by Ronald Reagan, which regularly won the time slot. Reagan had a better lead-in from Ed Sullivan. Still, Shore won  Emmy  Awards  for  Best  Female  Singer ( 1954-55), Best Female Personality ( 1956-57), and Best Actress in a Musical or Variety Series ( 1959).

After the Chevy Show, Shore went on to host three daytime television programs: the 90-minute talk show Dinah! (1970-74), Dinah's Place (1970-74), and Dinah and Friends ( 1979-84). Her TV career ended in 1991 on cable TV's Nashville Network with A Conversation with Dinah. By then, she was better known as Hollywood heartthrob Burt Reynolds's "older" girlfriend and as the sponsor of a major golf tournament for women.