Rare…CBS Studio 52 Spec Sheets From 1961

At one time, the CBS production office had a big book listing all their studios, complete with diagrams of the stage and all the technical specifications. Thanks to Gady Reinhold, we get to see these pages on Studio 52 from the 1961 edition.

Having just seen this studio in the IGAS video post just before this should make this a lot more interesting. A lot of CBS game shows came from here including ‘I’ve Got A Secret’, ‘To Tell The Truth’, ‘What’s My Line’, ‘Password’ and several soap operas eventually came from here including ‘Love Of Life’. ‘The Arthur Godfrey Show’ and ‘Arthur Murray’s Dance Party’ also came from 52.

I think the first television shows done here may have been ‘The 54th Street Revue’ directed by Ralph Levy in late 1949. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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October 15, 1973…’Tomorrow’ Debuted On NBC

The only way to remember this great show is to remember what made it great…Tom Snyder. On the event of his death in 2007, here are remembrances from Brian Williams, Jay Leno and David Letterman. Incidentally, Letterman’s NBC show replaced ‘Tomorrow’.

‘Tomorrow’ followed ‘Tonight’ With Johnny Carson and started as a 60-minute series which aired only four nights a week, Monday through Thursday, in order to accommodate the weekly shows ‘Midnight Special’ (1973–81) and SCTV (1981–82) in that time slot on Fridays. It was originally broadcast from the NBC studios in Burbank, but relocated to New York in December 1974 when Snyder took on additional anchor duties for NBC News and the network’s flagship station, WNBC-TV. Our friend Joel Tator who directed the show started with Tom in LA, went with him to NYC and returned with him to LA.

In June 1977, the show returned to Burbank until 1979, when Snyder once again began originating from 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
On September 16, 1980, when ‘Tonight’ was shortened to 60 minutes, ‘Tomorrow’ was scheduled at 12:30 Eastern and lengthened to 90 minutes, a format that lasted until its cancellation 16 months later. In February 1982, NBC replaced ‘Tomorrow Coast-To-Coast’ with ‘Late Night With David Letterman’. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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October 15, 1951…’I Love Lucy’ Debuts On CBS, Tribute 3 Of 4

Rare Color Footage…In Context

As you saw in the pilot episode post just before this, the script from the pilot was rewritten and was used as Episode 6, Season 1 with the title “The Audition”. In the closing curtain call here, we even see Pepito again briefly.

Although photos and filming by anyone on the set was prohibited, somehow, someone in the audience the night of October 12, 1951 managed to get these few minutes of color film, which is expertly edited into footage from this episode.

I have posted all of today’s videos before, but now for the first time, with all of them together, there is a greater context for you to see the linkage between them. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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Original Stick Figure Intro… this is a video lesson on the first of television’s most famous shows.

Before the “satin heart” intro that almost everyone on the planet has seen, the show’s entire six years of first run episodes used the animated stick figure opening that you will see below. The opening familiar to most viewers, featuring the credits superimposed over a “heart on satin” image, was created specifically for the 1959–67 CBS daytime network rebroadcasts.

For the original run of the show, the episodes opened with animated matchstick figures of Arnaz and Ball making reference to whoever the particular episode’s sponsor was. Here’s a surprise…these sequences were created by the animation team of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who declined screen credit because they were technically under exclusive contract to MGM at the time. More to come! Enjoy and Share! -Bobby Ellerbee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rpAUhbARY

i Love Lucy Clip

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In The Beginning…There Was The Smith Block

Thanks to John Schipp, here’s a 1965 photo showing the Smith Block in action. The editor is thought to be Peter Groom and the location, NBC New York.

The first show known for extensive use of video tape editing was ‘Rowan And Martin’s Laugh In’, which debuted on NBC in January of 1968, but there was a pilot done in mid ’67. I have heard that it took six weeks to edit each episode, but on the bright side, a few new curse words were created in the process. They too were created by splicing. I think GDMF and MFSOB were the top two.

This was a devilish combination of art and science and very tricky business. If you want to know more about just how it was done, take a look below. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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This opens on the empty stage of CBS Studio 59 which is also known as The Mansfield Theater at 256 West 47th Street. Our host, Garry Moore shows us the stage and takes us outside where we see CBS Studio 62 across the street and back into the theater via the front door with a stop in the control room and then on back to the stage. This is the show’s 7th Anniversary episode. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTfjSbk8tdU

The 7th anniversary episode opens with a tour of the theater on 47th Street.

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Remembering Ed Sullivan…September 28, 1901 – October 13, 1974

It was 40 years ago today that we lost Edward Vincent Sullivan. Gone, but not forgotten! Bobby Ellerbee

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The First Ever CBS Television Series…’Tonight On Broadway’

There is not very much information on this show, but here’s one thing we know for sure…the CBS remote trucks in New York got a workout. Each week, it was broadcast from the theater in which the featured Broadway show was playing…not a television theater or studio.

‘Tonight on Broadway’ was the first series to be broadcast over the newly formed CBS Television Network. It was a weekly half hour program that aired from 1948 to 1950. The debut was April 6, 1948, featuring the original Broadway cast of the musical ‘Lend an Ear’ and aired from 7 till 7:30 Sunday nights. Some list ‘Mr. Roberts’ on April 20 as the debut. Two months later on Sunday nights at 8, ‘Toast Of The Town’ with Ed Sullivan debuted.

The host was drama critic John Mason Brown, who had worked for the New York Evening Post and The Saturday Review. Usually, an abbreviated scene from the show was included along with an interview of the cast members and it was all live and on location with a live audience at a different theater each week. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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A Look Inside ‘Sunday Morning’, And CBS Studio 45

This is a story I posted a few days after my visit to The CBS Broadcast Center in early May. There are many great comments and add on’s at this link, so I’m pasting it here. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=673957542641798&id=189359747768249

Inside ‘CBS Sunday Morning’

This has always been one of my favorite shows. There is a line in a Lionel Richie song that says it all…”easy like a Sunday morning”, and that’s just the way it feels. Actually, that’s the foundation it was built on; to be like the magazine section of the Sunday paper, taken in at a leisurely pace with your morning coffee.

The show has been on since January 29, 1979 and that’s proof that the ‘Sunday Morning’ formula works. The program was created by Robert Northshield and it’s original host Charles Kuralt. The current host of the show is Charles Osgood, who took over duties from Kuralt upon his retirement on April 3, 1994, and has since surpassed Kuralt’s tenure as host. Both are perfect hosts.

This set is located directly across from something we saw here yesterday, the ‘Inside Edition’ greenscreen set in Studio 45 at the CBS Broadcast Center, which is a just over 3000 square feet. When ’60 Minutes’ first began, it shared space with ‘Captain Kangaroo’ and I think it was in this studio.

I’ve always wondered about the show’s trumpet theme. I had always thought the opening was played on a coronet which is smaller than a regular trumpet, but it’s actually played on a piccolo trumpet, which is smaller than a cornet.

The show’s theme is the trumpet fanfare “Abblasen”, attributed to Gottfried Reiche. A recording of the piece on a baroque trumpet by Don Smithers was used as the show’s theme for many years, until producers decided to replace the vinyl recording with a digital of a piccolo trumpet by former ‘Tonight Show’ musical director Doc Severinsen. The current version is played by Wynton Marsalis. I can hear it now, can you?

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The Theater And Secrets Of…’I’ve Got A Secret’

IGAS began at CBS Studio 59, The Mansfield Theater at 256 West 47th Street, which is now the Brooks Atkinson Theater. Below are photos of the theater in the CBS days and now. Studio 59 also hosted another huge CBS hit…’What’s My Line’ and from that show, came IGAS. Here’s the full story as detailed by Mark Evanier on his great Old TV Tickets.com site. http://www.oldtvtickets.com/

‘What’s My Line’ was one of the most popular shows on TV when two out-of-work comedy writers, Howard Merrill and Allan Sherman, created a not-dissimilar show which they called ‘I Know A Secret’. They took their creation to the producers of WML, Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, who immediately informed them it was a copy of their program. Sherman, displaying the ingenuity that would later catapult him to stardom as a singer of song parodies, replied that “People are going to start imitating your show whether you like it or not. You might as well do it and make the money.” Amazingly, Goodson and Todman saw the wisdom in this and bought the idea.

When ‘I’ve Got A Secret’ went on CBS a year later, it was an immediate disaster, in part because Goodson-Todman had tried too hard to differentiate it from ‘What’s My Line’. It had an awkward courtroom set in which the panelists would walk up and interrogate the contestants seated in a witness stand. After the first broadcast, Goodson ordered the set scrapped and a new one built which would be a mirror-image of the WML set. Also after the first broadcast, one of the show’s two sponsors cancelled so for the remainder of its first season, Secret only aired every other week, alternating with ‘Racket Squad’.

By the end of the year, the producers had gotten most of the bugs out of IGAS and it built up enough of a following to return to weekly status. The show had many things going for it. The program staff (mainly Allan Sherman, until he got himself fired in 1958) was fearless about trying different things and taking risks. On WML, the panel was prim and proper and dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns…and if the contestant’s secret occupation was that he shot apples off someone’s head, you never got to see him do it. On IGAS, the game would be followed by him shooting an apple off some panellists noggin. The show, though broadcast live, was willing to be wildly unpredictable with its odd stunts and clever “secrets.”

The producers also managed to eventually assemble a great panel, anchored by Bill Cullen and Henry Morgan, two of the wittiest men in television. They were good opposites: Cullen was cheery and optimistic; Morgan was acerbic and if something on the show was silly, likely to say so. The women changed from time to time but included Jayne Meadows, Faye Emerson, Betsy Palmer and Bess Myerson, all of whom were quite charming. Best of all, the show had Garry Moore as its host. A great ad-libber, he could handle any disaster…a fact which no doubt encouraged the producers to try more daring segments. Moore did a terrific job of keeping the game moving and setting up the panelists to be funny. It all made for a great weekly party, right up until 1964.

That year, CBS programming was in the hands of a man named Jim Aubrey who was known for his ruthlessness. “The Smiling Cobra,” as some called him, cancelled The Garry Moore Show, the other show Moore was doing for CBS, in such a nasty confrontation that Moore decided to also give up the game show and retire.

Steve Allen was selected as his replacement on IGAS and he kept things afloat for three more seasons…but the chemistry wasn’t the same. Allen dominated the show more than Moore had, and you could sometimes sense that he and Henry Morgan weren’t getting along well. Also, since Steverino lived in California and commuted to New York to do the program, they began doing two shows every other week — one airing live that night, one taped to air the following week. -Mark Evanier

Enjoy and share! Bobby Ellerbee

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This is the first of several backstage videos from IGAS that I’ll be posting here this week. It opens on the empty stage of CBS Studio 59 which is also known as The Mansfield Theater at 256 West 47th Street.

By the 2:00 mark, the stage will be completely set for the show…actually, the did it in :17 seconds. One surprise to me is that Gary Moore’s desk is on the left side of the stage…I had always thought he was on the right and the panel on the left.

As you’ll see on this Fifth Anniversary show, they have quite a talented crew, as many of them will perform for us. Cameraman Lee Tanner is, to me, the best dancer, but there is quite a range of talent here which makes for a better crew.

I was going to add the detailed drawings and specs of Studio 59 that I have from the 1961 CBS Studio Book, but when the show moved to Studio 52 in 1960, CBS gave up the lease. They had used the studio from 1950 till 1960. In September 12, 1960 it became The Brooks Atkinson Theatre and is still in use as legitimate theater. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pah5FDfcjA

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