Barney McNulty is credited with producing the first cue cards for a
national TV show in 1949. McNulty wrote out the first cue cards for
The Ed Wynn Show (1949), one
of the first national TV shows to originate in Hollywood, while working
as an usher at the CBS studios in Columbia Square, Hollywood. He went
on to form "Ad-Libs", a company that produced cue cards for such
performers as
Bob Hope,
Milton Berle,
Lucille Ball,
Jack Benny,
Fred Astaire,
Orson Welles and many others.