Old-Time Ballroom
television series

Old-Time Ballroom was an Australian television variety series which aired on Melbourne station ABV-2 and Sydney station ABN-2 on Saturdays. It originally aired for a four-episode series in September 1959. The program aired an additional series starting December 1959, which ran through to January 1960. It may however have had an additional series in 1961 or later years of the early 1960s.
It was briefly replaced on the schedule by The Saturday Show. The series itself occupied the time-slot previously held by Saturday Party.
Aired live, the series presented a mix of ballroom dancing and music, with each episode featuring the ABC Melbourne Dance Band. Guests who appear during the first series included juggling act The Muracs, Joean Clarke, Clive Hearne, singer June Hamilton, singer Geoff Brooke, singer Des McGee, singer Pat Grierson, trapeze artist Nicky Colcos, dance-caller Bert Cartledge, singer Irene Hewitt, singer John Kelly, and novelty act Tex Glanville.
It is not known if any of the episodes are still extant, given the erratic survival rate of the Australian series of the era. At least one episode is held by the National Film and Sound Archive, along with a second item which may be an episode of the series.
“Old-Time Ballroom” enters the record as television series. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Old-Time, Ballroom and television can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Old-Time Ballroom” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Old-Time, Ballroom and television provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17019238. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1960 and 1961.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Old-Time Ballroom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.