Eyes Of A Generation Camera Collection…Part 1 Of 3

A few have recently asked to see my camera collection again, so here are 13 of the 16 cameras I have up and on display here at my home. This is the Camera Room with 3 more spilling into the Florida Room which are not seen here. The 3 you don’t see are in Part 3 and include my RCA TK30 on it’s HF Panoram Dolly. a working Sony BVP 360 camera and chain and a Sony BVP 900. More details on the photos. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

Oh yeah, to see the detailed history on most of these, go here.

https://eyesofageneration.com/camera-collection/

A few have recently asked to see my camera collection again, so here are 13 of the 16 cameras I have up and on display here at my home. This is the main camera room with 3 more spilling into the Florida room which are not seen here. The 3 you don’t see are include my RCA TK30 on it’s HF Panoram Dolly. a working Sony BVP 360 camera and chain and a Sony BVP 900. More details on the photos. Enjoy!

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The Story Of ‘The Hallmark Hall Of Fame’…

If you want a story told right, let ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ tell it. From a few years back, here is their look back at one of television’s most watched and awarded programs ever. Did you know that over 25% of all of the Academy Award winners have appeared on Hallmark?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mCi0c68Mus

For nearly 60 years, the Hallmark Hall of Fame has entertained viewers with award-winning programming. Correspondent Cynthia Bowers takes a look…

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Marilyn Monroe….’Person To Person’ April 8, 1955

At the clip above, we start with photographer Milton Green walking through the living room we see in the photos. While he’s walking toward the kitchen where Marilyn is waiting, he is talking live with Edward R. Murrow via the new Shur “Vagabond” wireless microphone.

The Vagabond was the first broadcast quality wireless mic and you can see Marilyn holding the unit in her hand before the CBS technician helps her put hide it under her clothes. What a great gig!

In the second photo below, we see a truly rare sight. As she poses with the ‘Person To Person’ crew, there are two new RCA TK11/31s behind them. The rarity is the striped banding around the top. Usually, this was only done with the TK10 and TK30.

In case you don’t know, the banding is actually a very clever grayscale camera chart. Early on, the settings on the black and white cameras tended to drift and some “on the fly” adjustments were needed, but that required a test pattern or grayscale chart. As a quick fix, the CBS NY engineering department came up with these grey and white alternating bands and put them on all their cameras so that all you had to do for a quick alignment was shoot the camera next to you.

This worked well on the TK10s and TK30s because they didn’t have handles like the TK11/31. With the handles in the way, the shot was blocked and effectiveness of this arrangement was diminished. When the new TK11s arrived, they put the banding on but after a few months, stopped adding it, so only a few of the new TK11s were banded and actually, with the new updates onboard, drifting was not as much of a problem as it had been with the older TK10s and 30s.
Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

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Audrey Meadows…Her Television Debut With ‘Bob & Ray’

After appearing on the Broadway stage with Phil Silvers in ‘Top Banana’, Audrey and her friend Cloris Leachman each got a casting on NBC’s ‘Bob And Ray’ television show in 1951. At the link above, you’ll see her as Linda Lovely…a recurring role she played on the popular weekly show.

On September 20, 1952, ‘The Jackie Gleason Show’ debuted from CBS Studio 50, or what is now known as The Ed Sullivan Theater. Although Gleason had been doing Honeymooners sketches since late ’51 on Dumont’s ‘Cavalcade Of Stars’ show, Pert Kelton, who had played the part of Alice Kramden, was not a part of the show when it moved to CBS.

Kelton’s husband had been labeled a communist and, by association, she too had wound up on the dreaded “Black List”. A new Alice had to be found, and Meadows went for an audition. Gleason had seen her as Linda Lovely and thought she was good, but too glamorous. Meadows heard about this and a few days later auditioned again under another name but this time, with no makeup and a dressed down look. The rest, as they say, is history.

In this photo above, the production crew at Studio 50 runs over some basics with Meadows a few days before the CBS debut. Among those basics…which lens to look at. The taking lens on the RCA TK30 was the top center. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

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‘I’ve Got A Secret’…The 1976 Primetime Fiasco

In 1976, CBS decided to revive this perennial favorite as a summer replacement in their primetime lineup, and if it did well, they would consider it for a longer run. Unfortunately, it was up against ABC’s wildly popular ‘Happy Days’, and only four episodes aired from June 15 till July 6, 1976. Not even a dead cat bounce in the ratings.

Above is one of two pilot episodes shot 9 months before the June debut. Both pilots aired and only two other newer episodes were taped in Studio 43 at the CBS Broadcast Center in NY, which we see in this rare photo. This video starts with the slate, about 30 seconds of pre roll dark and voices and then…it’s Rodney Dangerfield and he’s got a secret!

The host was Bill Cullen, who was a long-time panelist on the show, and on the new panel was another veteran, Henry Morgan. Richard Dawson, Elaine Joyce and Pat Collins rounded out the rest of the panel. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

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What you are about to see is the seed that grew into a forest. This single clip has been cited by Ernie Kovacs, Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, Rowan & Martin and Monty Python as the root of the comedic arts taking on the very medium by which it is being relayed.

Here, the “fourth wall” is not only broken, but gleefully demolished by a comedy team that few in our generation have ever heard of… Olsen And Johnson.

It’s near impossible to describe what happens here, so you’ll have to watch it, and you be glad you did because this is the first time in the history of moving images that this has been done…and it’s done quite well given the technology of the time. Among other firsts you’ll see here, this could also be the first “move within a movie” overlay of characters “off screen” talking to characters “on screen”.

This is from the film ‘Hellzapoppin’ from 1941, which was based on the long running Broadway play of the same name that starred Olson and Johnson. They wrote the play and are legendary for their volume and range of material. They were famous from the 1920s through the early 50s, but having played more on vaudeville and Broadway stages, their legacy is not a lasting as their contemporaries, like Laurel And Hardy or The Marx Brothers who were mostly film stars.

The setup for the brilliant technical manipulations of the film begins with The Three Stooges own Shemp Howard playing the part of a projectionist having a fight. The premise is that this is happening in the very theater that each audience is seeing this movie. This has the effect of taking the audience out of spectator mode and making them participants in the experience.

The consequences of the disturbance in the projection room are played out on the big screen in a way no one had ever seen before and a lot of gags from the film spilled over into the Warner Brothers cartoons of the era. I have yet to see the entire film, but after seeing this, I can’t wait! Enjoy and SHARE! – Bobby Ellerbee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouLlA6IQZGI

[From “Kovacs Corner” on YouTube.com] – Returning to what I believe was a great influence on Ernie Kovacs’ comedic style is the zany 1941 film “Hellzapoppin’…

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Don Pardo On NBC’s Studio 8H…Remembering It’s Grandeur

At the link is a very unique perspective on how Studio 8H has changed since the days of radio by none other than NBC best eye witness, Don Pardo.

Below, I have included a diagram of how the 8th floor was laid out in the original 1933 floorplans. When it was built, it was more commonly referred to as “the Auditorium Studio”.

8H was not converted to television until January 30, 1950 but inhouse remotes were done from here as early as November of 1943 with Iconoscope field cameras. Those were ‘The Voice Of Firestone’ radio-TV simulcasts, as is the event in the two photos that are from a 1949 simulcast. Studio 8G was converted in ’48 and the four camera inhouse mobile unit here was switched in the 8G control room.
Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

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Unaired NBC Pardo Tribute Tape From 2004…

This is very good and features bits I have never seen before. There’s even a clip of Pardo dropping in on Letterman announcer Bill Windel, and much more. This appears to be from an NBC party in celebration of Don’s 60 years with the company which would have been in 2004. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

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What Makes These Two Video Clips So Unusual? Read On!

Part of the answer is Gene Roddenberry, who was born 93 years ago today.

The other part of the answer is ‘The Lieutenant’ which was the first show Roddenberry wrote and produced. That’s where he first met “Spock and Uhura”…Leonard Nimoy and Nichole Nichols. At the embedded link, you see Nimoy in Episode 22, and at this link, you’ll see Nichole Nichols in her first ever television appearance in Episode 1.

By the way, the lady in the Nemoy clip is Roddenberry’s soon to be wife…Majel Barrett who he married in ’66 after a divorce from his first wife.

‘The Lieutenant’ ran on NBC in the fall of 1963 but only lasted one season. Roddenberry had always loved science fiction, so in 1964 he developed the idea of a new series about space exploration — “a Wagon Train to the stars,” as he described it — and shopped it around to several studios, most of which were uninterested.

Desilu Productions finally expressed an interest, and NBC agreed to run it after two pilots were done. ‘Star Trek’ debuted September 8, 1966. His new wife, Majel Barrett, provided the voice for the Enterprise’s computer. Ratings were never great, and it only aired for three seasons, but it was a huge success in syndication, and has since spawned an animated series, four spin-off live-action TV series, 11 feature films and a worldwide army of “trekkies”. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fxJdxL3NJs

(Season 1, Episode 22) In the Highest Tradition http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0631545/ creator :Gene Roddenberry

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August 19, 1906…The Father Of Electronic Television Was Born

108 years ago today, Philo Taylor Farnsworth was born in Beaver, Utah and by age 14, he had worked out the principles for the Image Dissector tube which occurred to him while plowing back and forth on the family farm.

The video at this link was done by his great granddaughter, Jessica Farnsworth and is full of rare color film of some of Philo’s first demonstrations in San Francisco and Philadelphia and is well worth the ten minutes it takes to watch.

The photo below was taken after Farnsworth’s only appearance on the technology he created. In June of 1957, he was a guest on ‘I’ve Got A Secret’ and this clip is loaded to start at the beginning of his segment. http://youtu.be/3cspYZyGp1A?t=13m21s

The lady is his wife and assistant, Pem Farnsworth. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

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