‘All In The Family’ Weekly Run Down…

Here’s a great television artifact from of of it’s biggest shows. As you can see, the show taped on Tuesday nights, which I think stayed constant at both Television City and Metromedia. Enjoy and share!

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By Request…The Ampex NAB Poster By MAD Artist Jack Davis

Every once in a while, people ask me to post this and since we’ve been on the edge of Ampex land the last few days, here is the biggest and best image I can find of this. I think this was given out at the NAB back in the 70s.

In 1944, the Ampex Electric and Manufacturing Company was formed by Alexander M. Poniatoff in San Carlos, California. The name AMPEX consists Poniatoff’s initials…AMP, with with the EX added as an abbreviation for “excellent” to form the unique name.

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The Ampex Senior Class…1956 – 1961

This 1961 ad from Ampex shows the first six videotape machine models they made…machines that changed the world. Here’s the lineup from left to right: 1956, the VRX 1000…1957, the VR 1000…1959, the VR 1000B…1960, the VR 1001A…1961, the VR 1000C and also from 1961, the VR 1002. Enjoy and share!

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‘Concentration’…NBC, August 25, 1958 – March 23, 1973

The original network daytime series, ‘Concentration’, appeared on NBC for 14 years, 7 months. With 3,796 telecasts, this was NBC’s longest running game show. Hugh Downs was the original host and served from ’58 till ’69. During this time, Hugh was also Jack Paar’s side kick on ‘Tonight’ and in ’62, he was the new anchor on ‘Today’ when Dave Garroway left. In ’85, The Guinness Book Of Records recognized Hugh Downs for holding the record for the greatest number of hours on network television.

It’s anybody’s guess as to where this photo was taken because ‘Concentration’ had a lot of homes, but the daytime version was always inside 30 Rock. From ’58 till ’65 Studio 3A was home. 1965 till 1967, it was 3B, and 8G from ’67 till ’73. This was the last show on the NBC roster to go color and that happened November 7, 1966.

There were two short lived night time versions…one was hosted by Jack Barry in 1958 for four weeks from Studio A at NBC’s 67th Street location, which was where the ‘Home’ show was done. The second primetime version was April to September of ’61 from the Ziegfeld Theater on Monday nights with Bob Clayton as host.

When Downs left in ’69, Bob Clayton took over, but three months later Ed Mcmahon hosted for six months during Clayton’s leave of absence for an illness.

The Barry – Enright produced shows ended in ’73, but six months later, the show was back on NBC as a Goodson – Todman syndicated production from the west coast with Jack Narz as host and ran till ’78. Art James was the original announcer. Enjoy and share!

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The Secret To Voicing ‘Porky Pig’ In 30 Seconds…Amazing!

Thanks to our friend Randy West, here is the current voice of ‘Porky Pig’, Bob Bergen unpacking the voice pattern that Mel Blanc perfected. Watching this is like learning to sing “The Name Game” by Shirley Ellis.

Porky Porky bo borky, banana fanna fo Forky, fe fi fo Forky, Porky!

For more on Bob, go to his Bio…http://www.bobbergen.com/bio.htm
Enjoy and share!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXC_j5QB6v8

From the documentary, “I Know That Voice.” Bob Bergen, voice actor for “Looney Toons.” Mel Blanc was, without question, a genius. But this guy, the way he ha…

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY…COMMERCIAL TELEVISION! 73 Today!

At 1PM, July 1, 1941, NBC’s WNBT in New York became America’s first commercially licensed television station to go on the air. At 2:30 PM, CBS owned WCBW became the second.

On June 24, 1941,both the NBC and CBS stations were licensed and instructed to sign on simultaneously on July 1 so that neither of the major broadcast companies could claim exclusively to be “first.”

However, WCBW did not manage to sign on the air until 2:30 p.m., one full ninety minutes after WNBT. As a result, WNBC inadvertently holds the distinction as the oldest continuously operating commercial television station in the United States, and also the only one ready to accept sponsors from its beginning.

The first program broadcast at 13:00 EST in the sign-on/opening ceremony featured the playing of “The Star Spangled Banner”, followed by an announcement of that day’s programs and the commencement of NBC television programming.

On its first day on the air, WNBT broadcast the world’s first official television advertisement before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The announcement for Bulova watches, for which the company paid $9.00, displayed an NBC/RCA test pattern modified to look like a clock with the hands showing the time. The Bulova logo, with the phrase “Bulova Watch Time”, was shown in the lower right-hand quadrant of the test pattern while the second hand swept around the dial for one minute. Enjoy and share!

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A New Can Of Worms…’The Price Is Right’ NBC Studio Locations

Frankly, I had always thought ‘The Price Is Right’ debuted in color from the Colonial Theater in 1956, but that is not quite right. It now appears the show (daytime) debuted from The Hudson Theater in black and white, however…the primetime version did debut from The Colonial, but that was in 1957. Here’s the rundown of dates and studios for the daytime show….

Hudson Theater 1956 – ’57 (b/w studio)
Century Theater 1957 – ’58 (b/w studio)
Colonial Theater 1959 (color studio)
Ziegfeld Theater 1960 (color studio)
Colonial Theater 1961 – 63 (color studio)

‘The Price Is Right’ prime time version always originated in color from The Colonial Theater from 1957- 63. The daytime show was in black and white from ’56 till ’62 and went color in it’s last year. Although the daytime show had come from NBC color facilities as early as 1959 and was usually shot with RCA TK41s, it was broadcast in b/w, which was not uncommon in the late 50s and early 60s. Thanks to David Schwartz for his help with this.

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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

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Johnny Carson Desk…Sold for $35,000 (Click Images To Enlarge)

In October of 2005, this Carson desk sold at auction for $35,000. It was one of around five different desks used on the show and as mentioned on the photo was thought to have been on the set from 1974 till 1981. Here is the auction description…

“The top has a gold formica finish. The inside is carpeted in shag with a “hidden” slide-out tray on which Carson placed his ashtray so it would not be seen by the television audience once it became unfashionable to smoke on the air. This vertically grained rosewood finish desk is really not very large — approximately 60″ x 31″ x 21″

The two pencils shown here were also auctioned but I don’t know what they went for. These were specially made for the show and had erasers on both ends so Johnny could drum along with the band at his desk more easily.

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The Very First Hanna – Barbera Cartoon…’Ruff & Ready’

This is the very first episode of ‘Ruff & Ready’. It aired on NBC December 14, 1957 and was the first cartoon ever produced by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera’s new company.

Ruff (the cat) was voiced by Don Messick, and Reddy was voiced by Daws Butler. Messick also narrated.

New Mexico native William Hanna and New York City born Joseph Barbera first teamed together while working at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio in 1939. Their first directorial project was a cartoon entitled ‘Puss Gets the Boot’ (1940), which served as the genesis of the popular ‘Tom and Jerry’ series of cartoon theatricals.

Hanna and Barbera served as the directors and story men for the shorts for eighteen years. Seven cartoons of the series won seven Oscars between 1943 and 1953. In 1955, Hanna and Barbera became the producers in charge of the MGM animation studio’s output. Outside of their work on the MGM shorts, the two men moonlighted on outside projects, including the original title sequences and commercials for ‘I Love Lucy’.

MGM decided in early 1957 to close its cartoon studio. Hanna and Barbera, contemplating their future while completing the final ‘Tom and Jerry’ and ‘Droopy’ cartoons, began producing animated television commercials.

During their last year at MGM, they developed a concept for an animated television program about a dog and cat pair who found themselves in various misadventures. After they failed to convince MGM to back their venture, live-action director George Sidney, who’d worked with Hanna and Barbera on several of his features – most notably Anchors Aweigh in 1945 – offered to serve as their business partner and convinced Screen Gems, the television subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, to make a deal with the animation producers. Screen Gems took a twenty percent ownership in Hanna and Barbera’s new company, H-B Enterprises, and provided working capital. H-B Enterprises opened for business in rented offices on the lot of Kling Studios (formerly Charlie Chaplin Studios) on July 7, 1957, two months after the MGM animation studio closed down. The rest, as they say, is history! Enjoy and share!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQKU9ChKUFU

Visit www.cartoons-forum.org to get retro cartoons of many cartoon studios,such as Disney,Hanna-Barbera,Ruby-Spears,Filmation, etc. You can also be part of o…

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Behind The Scenes Of ‘Wonderama’…WNEW

This 6 minute clip takes us into the control room with Sonny Fox as our host some time in the early 60s. From 1944 till 1958 this was WABD, Dumont’s flagship station in New York, but in ’58 it became WNEW. There is classic Dumont TV equipment everywhere.

‘Wonderama’ was a popular children’s program that ran for three hours on Sunday mornings on the Metromedia-owned stations from 1955 to 1986, Besides NYC, it ran in five other markets…WTTG in Washington D.C., KMBC-TV in Kansas City, KTTV in Los Angeles, WXIX-TV in Cincinnati, and WTCN-TV in Minneapolis – Saint Paul.

In February of ’55, the Dumont network shut down, but their TV stations continued as independents. In May 1958, DuMont Broadcasting changed its name to the Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation in an effort to distinguish itself from its former corporate parent and the corporate name change to Metromedia came in 1961. Enjoy and share!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfo5wCwai2Q

Sonny takes his young viewers into the control room of his Sunday morning WNEW-TV program to see how a television show is made. Check out the 1950s DuMont br…

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The Very First “Made For Television” Cartoon…’Crusader Rabbit’

The concept of an animated series made for television came from animator Alex Anderson, who worked for Terrytoons Studios. Terrytoons turned down Anderson’s proposed series, preferring to remain in theatrical film animation, which opened the door for him to team up with Jay Ward.

The main difference between producing cartoons for movie audiences vs television audiences is money, effort and volume. Since television eats creative effort a lot faster, more episodes have to be done but for financial and production reasons, shortcuts have to be taken for television animation.

In a 20 second clip, a theatrical cartoon could require anywhere from 700 to 1000 drawings. These first cartoons made for television used only about 250 to 300 drawings per 20 seconds. To help with the lack of movement, a narrator was used.

In early 1947, Anderson approached Jay Ward to create a partnership—Anderson being in charge of production and Ward arranging financing. Ward became business manager and producer, joining with Anderson to form “Television Arts Productions” in 1947.

They tried to sell the series to the NBC television network, but the network did not go with it. Although NBC did not telecast ‘Crusader Rabbit’ on their network, it did buy the show for it’s owned and operated stations and allowed the series to be nationally syndicated.

Below is the first episode of ‘Crusader Rabbit’ which made it’s television debut on September 1, 1949 on KNBH in Hollywood. WNBC-TV in New York continued to show the original Crusader Rabbit episodes from 1949 through 1967, and some stations used the program as late as the 1970. Enjoy and share!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3hHQvkUhJo

Jay Ward’s Crusader Rabbit – Crusade 1 / Episode 1. Like to see more?

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Fans Of Animation Will Love This Page! Rare Early Cartoons…

The link will take you to a Library Of Congress page that features restored early animation. Here, you can see some of the first claymation stop motion, the first rotoscope films of Max Fleischer’s ‘Koko The Clown’ which combines live action and animation, and more. The clip here is two minute fragment from 1921 of ‘The Centaurs’, which is notable for it’s particular quality of line and movement way ahead of its time…done twenty years before Disney would reach such heights with Fantasia. Enjoy and share!

http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-centaurs-a-fragment-1921/

The Centaurs, a Fragment (1921)

The only surviving fragment of Winsor McCay’s now lost The Centaurs, produced in 1921 by Rialto Productions.

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