Black Baseball’s Rich Legacy - NY Times
Performers loved Hinchliffe crowds and came out to please 'em: Abbott & Costello headlined in '41 with Benny Leonard and Abe Greene, and again in '44 and '47, among other appearances. Costello, a Paterson native whose films never failed to invoke the name of his hometown (and who performed his famous "Who's on First?" skit standing with Bud in front of a scrim of the "Paterson Silk Sox"), was a stadium devotee and a great crowd-pleaser.
Other stars, some doing wartime Victory Bond benefits , included Dick Jurgens (1942) and Ted Huesing (1943), Huesing opening to a crowd of 5000. That same year Henny Youngman delivered "139 one-liner 'knock-outs' to a capacity crowd." In 1947 the Andrews Sisters sang to no less than 7000 people!
In July 1946 Dumont Network TV made sports history at Hinchliffe with the first New Jersey telecast of an athletic event: the semi-finals of the News-PBA Diamond Gloves Championships over Station WBAD (Channel 5). But, in the long run, it was competition with TV, 
along with the increasing flight of working and middle-class Americans to the suburbs, that made events like these a less and less significant part of Paterson's cultural life. The Great Falls Festivals of the early '70s, sparked by a spirit of preservation, urban revival, and nostalgia, briefly checked this drift. Among the great featured events held in the stadium during this era was one of Duke Ellington's last concerts in 1971.
Please let us know if YOU remember other major events we haven't mentioned here! Write info@hinchliffestadium.org