62 Years Ago Yesterday…’The Guiding Light’ Debuted
62 Years Ago Yesterday…’The Guiding Light’ Debuted
June 30, 1952 is the day ‘The Guiding Light’ came to CBS television. It’s first TV home was in CBS Studio 56 at Liederkranz Hall on East 58th street, where two of the four studios there had Dumont cameras. After the consolidation of production into the CBS Broadcast Center and colorizing in the mid 60s, Liederkrantz was closed, but ‘TGL’ was a big show so CBS moved it to a facility of it’s own…Studio 65, The High Brown Theater on 26th Street, which had upstairs and downstairs studio floors.
The black and white photo is from September of ’52 in Studio 56. The two color photos are from Studio 65. The studio shot was taken in the basement and the control room and bigger studio were on the first floor. Occasionally, actors would have to race from one floor to the other to make appearances in the same scene.
‘The Guiding Light’ was created by Irna Phillips, and began as an NBC Radio serial on January 25, 1937. On June 2, 1947, the series was moved to CBS Radio. Even after it’s television debut, the show would continue to be broadcast concomitantly on radio until June 29, 1956. The series was expanded from 15 minutes to a half-hour in early 1968, which is probably when the move from 56 to 65 occurred. The show expanded to a full hour on November 7, 1977. The series broadcast its 15,000th televised episode on September 6, 2006.
On April 1, 2009, it was announced that CBS had cancelled ‘Guiding Light’ after a 72-year run due to low ratings. The show taped its final scenes for CBS on August 11, 2009, and its final episode on the network aired on September 18, 2009. On October 5, 2009, CBS replaced Guiding Light with an hour-long revival of ‘Let’s Make a Deal’, hosted by Wayne Brady. ‘Guiding Light’ stands as the fourth longest-running program in all of broadcast history.
At the link is a full 15 minute episode from March 4, 1953 when the show as just 9 months old. The Duz commercial is live and the pitch man is the show’s announcer Hal Simms. The Ivory commercial appears to be on film. Thanks to Gady Reinhold for the color photos. Enjoy and share!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTUMbA3SGt0
Fluorescent banks worked well in black and white, but the standard bulbs have a color spectrum that caused havoc with color television reproduction. Kinoflo found a way around that. Lighting makers are having similar problems now balancing LED instruments.
And I thought Kinoflo invented the whole fluorescent light deal.
My mom was an avid Guiding Light viewer, so I remember the characters from this era. The “Dick Grant” character being talked about in the first scene was played by James Lipton, now host of “Inside the Actors Studio.”
GL moved to the EUE/Screen Gems studios(listed as “New York Production Center” in the credits) on East 44th street sometime in late 1988(after 20 years at Himan Brown Studios,which CBS must have leased,as it was listed in the credits as “Recorded at the CBS Broadcast Center” back then). Rachael Ray & Wendy Williams currently tape in the old Himan Brown Studios(now called Chelsea Studios) In September 2005,they moved back to CBS Broadcast Center into studios 42 & 45(until the show ended in 2009)