The award-winning variety series originating from the stage of the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem. Features the hottest stars in music and comedy, "Amateur Night" competition for adults and “Apollo Kids” for children 13 and under. Hosted by comedian Rudy Rush, featuring KiKi Shepard.
The weekly syndicated television program, It’s Showtime at the Apollo began its successful 15-year run in 1987, but the show’s beginnings reach all the way back to 1913. That was the year that Hertig and Seamon’s Music Hall opened on 125th Street in New York City as a venue for vaudeville acts.
And so it was for 20 years until the theater was sold and re-named Apollo after the Greek god of light, music and wisdom. Vaudeville acts were replaced with primarily black entertainment and on a Wednesday night in 1935 the theater hosted the very first Amateur Night.

Host Kiki Shepard

Over the next 35 years Amateur Night winners included Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Pearl Bailey, The Jackson 5 and Stevie Wonder. During that same period the Apollo Theater underwent several ownership changes. It was allowed to deteriorate and was fixed-up more than once. Finally, after years of steadily losing money, it closed in 1977.
The building was vacant and slipped into an increased state of disrepair until 1980 when it was purchased by media mogul Percy Sutton who, as a Harlem native, longed for a return to the neighborhood’s heyday and saw the Apollo – and more specifically, Amateur Night – as his means to an end.
Sutton had the theater refurbished in its old style and on May 5, 1985 Amateur night returned to the Apollo theater. Within 2 years, through Sutton’s Inner City Theater Group, a television show based around Amateur Night – It’s Showtime at the Apollo – was born.
The rest, as they say, is history. See for yourself.......