TeleTales #35…Oldest Complete MLB Color Broadcast, 1967

Hopefully this will bring some warmth our friends in Boston!

Above is the September 30, 1967 game between Boston and Minnesota at Fenway Park. This was one of the closest pennant races in the American League ever with the Twins one game ahead of Boston and Detroit on the last weekend of the season.

The game was covered by WHDH with RCA TK41s. At the start, you can see Boston’s mayor with VP Hubert Humphrey from Minnesota, Senator Ted Kennedy and what looks like Sen. Mike Mansfield from Montana, who was Senate Majority Leader at the time. Thanks to Alec Cumming for sharing this. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

Source

NBC Television Network: July 1, 1948

For a bit of perspective on how much things have changed, here is a map of NBC’s network in the middle of 1948. At the time, there were only seven stations, with nine to be added in 1949.

Of course the NBC Radio network was much bigger and was coast to coast, but AT&T was the driving force in where and when television could go. TV took coaxial cables or microwave relays and all that had to be built or laid. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

Source

TeleTales #31…Covering Football In 1949 vs Now

With the Super Bowl looming, take a look at the difference in camera placements with 53 cameras in use this year. Below you’ll see the placement of the 4 RCA TK30s ABC used to cover a game at The Los Angeles Coliseum in 1949.

My how times have changed! Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

Source

January 28, 1956…Elvis Makes His First Network TV Appearance

http://www.elvispresleymusic.com.au/pictures/1956_january_28.html

When Jackie Gleason brought his half hour, filmed version of “The Honeymooners” to CBS in the 1955-56 season, he decided to produce the half hour lead in show too. For that, he chose The Dorsey Brothers, Jimmy and Tommy, with their great bands, and called the production “Stage Show”.

Like the live Gleason shows of the past and future seasons, it originated at CBS Studio 50…now called The Ed Sullivan Theater.

On this particular Saturday night, Elvis Presley made his first ever network television appearance and you can see this rare performance at the link above. This is a photo from that night and CBS legend Pat McBride is behind the camera.

Elvis was paid $1,250 for each of the six ‘Stage Shows’ on which he appeared. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

Source

TeleTales #29…The First Handheld Color Camera Use, ABC

At the link is a clip from November 11, 1967 showing the camera in use by ABC at the UCLA – USC game in Los Angeles.

ABC had modified the Ampex creation which, as seen below, was meant to include their portable VR 3000 video tape recorder. Instead, they have taken the case and put a modified camera control unit in the backpack and cabled it to the truck. Later, they came up with a small wireless transmitter for the Ampex rig. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

Source

In the bottom photo, we see the back of the game board in NBC Studio 8G, which is game board unit C. I think there were at least three game boards, units A, B and C which were loaded before the show and wheeled into place as the show progressed. On the set there was a curtain that covered the board.

Notice the white cloth tabs on the back of each door: those were used to pull the $ amount card out of the way to reveal the question card. Above is the question card and all of the heavy paper cards in the squares had red cloth tabs attached to the top of them. When a contestant picked a subject and then a $ amount, the stagehand behind the board grabbed the small wooden handle at the top of the metal door and pulled the top back slightly, grabbed the tab and pulled the white tab to remove the $ amount card and expose the question card.

The back of the door was spring loaded and snapped back holding the question card in place. After the question was answered, that question card was removed leaving a solid blue one in its place. Thanks to Glenn Mack for the photos and to Mark Ogden for the workings of the board. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

Source

“NBC Studio 1H”…Hurely’s Bar

As you can see in the photo below, Hurley’s Bar (which opened in 1892) was just a half a block away from NBC’s studio entrance, making it the nearest watering hole for everyone from stars to stage hands. It became the favorite for radio, television, newspaper and sports celebrities as well as tourists and midtown workers.

The old-fashioned saloon atmosphere, as well as the convenient location in Rockefeller Center, made Hurley’s a favorite. Liz Trotta noted “You never knew who would be standing next to your lifting elbow at Hurley’s. Jason Robards, Jonathan Winters, jazz musicians from the local clubs and the ‘Tonight’ show, starlets, football players, the lot.”

Johnny Carson made the Hurley name nationally familiar while he did his show live from Rockefeller Center. It was the bar in all of his Ed McMahon drinking jokes. David Letterman did several on-air visits to the bar. NBC technicians haunted the place so regularly that among themselves it was known as Studio 1-H.

Hurley’s was known as a place where status was left at the door. Mayor John Lindsay stopped in once, only to be hissed by the patrons. When Henry Kissinger and two bodyguards got noisy, they were ejected by the bartender “for rowdy behavior.”

But this is only half of a great “David & Goliath” story.

The bar had been here since 1892 and had always done well, even during prohibition when a florist shop was used to disguise the bar and it’s new back door.

In 1930, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. had begun aggressively buying up a staggering twenty-two acres of midtown property, right in the middle of Fifth Avenue’s most exclusive district, for a seemingly implausible project: Rockefeller Center. One by one he purchased buildings from Fifth to Sixth Avenue between 48th and 51st Streets. In the stranglehold of the Great Depression, none but the city’s wealthiest property owners could resist the offer to convert real estate to cash.

None except John F. Maxwell, grandson of John F. Boronowsky who owned the three story building at the opposite end of the block from Hurley’s and, of course, the feisty Irishmen themselves. In June 1931 Maxwell sent word to Rockefeller that he would not sell “at any price.”

Construction had already began on the gargantuan Art Deco complex of nineteen buildings on May 17, 1930. The block of 49th to 50th Streets, Sixth Avenue to 5th Avenue was eventually demolished, leaving only the two brick Victorian buildings standing on opposite corners of a devastated landscape.

The RCA Building—70 stories tall—rose around Hurley’s, diminishing the bar building only in height. But nothing in New York City is permanent and in 1979 Hurley Brothers and Daly was sold. Journalist William Safire spoke for New Yorkers in an article mourning the loss. The mahogany bar was removed to a Third Avenue restaurant and, as Nancy Arum wrote in her letter to New York Magazine that year “a pretend old-fashioned bar now stands where the real old-fashioned bar once was.”

The pretend old-fashioned bar took the name Hurley’s and, most likely, tourists never noticed the change. But proximity, tradition, or habit still brought the Rockefeller Center workers and celebrities into the bar until September 2, 1999. That night owner Adrien Barbey served the last glass of beer in the bar that had stood at Sixth Avenue and 49th Street for 102 years.

Today, Hurley’s is a bakery and the building at the other end of the block is a 9 West store. The 1931 photo on the right shows 6th Avenue with it’s elevated train (yellow). Hurely’s is in the red circle and 46th Street is in aqua. The other building left standing on the 6th Avenue corner is the space that is now a 9 West store. The 11 story NBC studio building is just behind Hurley’s.

Source

January 25, 1915…The First Transcontinental Phone Call Made

100 years ago today, Alexander Graham Bell (shown below) in New York placed a call to his long time assistant, Thomas Watson in San Francisco at 4 PM Eastern time. The second transcontinental call to San Francisco was made at 4:30 over an even greater distance from Jekyll Island, Georgia, which had to be routed through Boston.

Source