The cameras you see here are what RCA referred to (this first color camera design) as the Princeton Cameras, as they were designed and built at the RCA Laboratory in Princeton NJ.
In the rare photo above, we see singer Gladys Swarthout, performing for the dignitaries during the color test, just before “KFO” was scheduled to air on October 10, regardless what the back note says.
Below is the special half hour color presentation of the broadcast as captured on kinescope in New York. The notes on the video are good too if you click the watch on youtube button at the lower left corner.
On this day in 1949, NBC broadcast “Kukla, Fran & Ollie”, live and in color from their Washington DC studio at The Wardman Park Hotel.
The 15 minute show was usually done in Chicago, and in black and white, but RCA had brought them to town for a week of experimental demonstrations to congress and the FCC. That week, each day was filled with short color demonstrations that included all kinds of on-camera talent in the closed circuit broadcasts.
The only people that would have been able to see it in color were there, and at RCA Princeton, but not a single comment was ever received from the viewing public about the color image broadcast to their home sets, which certainly goes a long way in proving the system’s “compatibility”.
If you are lucky, you learn something new every day, and today, we are all lucky! I had no idea that what you are about to read and see here ever happened, but thanks to yesterday’s post on the first mobile units, we have fascinating new images and video to share.
Thanks to David Breneman and James Freeman, we now know that there was indeed a mobile unit in service at the 1936 Berlin Olympics…BUT…not in the classic sense, of being equipped with live electronic video cameras shooting the action.
Instead, the German unit was an “intermediate film” television apparatus, which I had never heard of either.
It works this way…a normal cinema camera, mounted on a transport van, initially records the footage on film, which is sent down the camera’s light tight pedestal into the van. There, the film is immediately developed inside the van and then run through a flying spot scanner camera (so called because it moved a focused beam of light back and forth across the image), and electronically converted from a negative to a positive television image. Scenes from the just developed film could be broadcast with a delay of about a minute.
In this video, you can see the Telefunken cameras and the Berlin van, with an animated diagram of how it works. The photos include a shot of the van, a diagram of the operation, US champion Jessie Owen and a Telefunken Canon camera, and at the end a few seconds of film shot by the van top camera.
John Logie Baird began developing the process in 1932, borrowing the idea of Georg Oskar Schubert from his licensees in Germany, where it was demonstrated by Fernseh AG in 1932 and used for broadcasting in 1934.
The BBC used Baird’s version of the process during the first three months of its then-“high-definition” television service from November 1936 through January 1937, and German television used it during broadcasts of the 1936 Summer Olympics. In both cases, intermediate film cameras alternated with newly introduced direct television cameras.
The intermediate film system, with its expensive film usage and relatively immobile cameras, did have the advantage that it left a filmed record of the program which could be rerun at a different time, with a better image quality than the later kinescope films, which were shot from a video monitor.
Television tubes developed by Farnsworth and Zworykin in the United States, and by EMI in England, with much higher sensitivity to light, made the intermediate film system obsolete by 1937.
I had no idea that motion picture film could be developed that fast, which brings up all kind of questions about NBC’s mad dashes to get kinescope film turned around for rebroadcast on the west coast.
Now…back to Berlin. In addition to the mobile unit camera, three state-of-the-art Iconoscope cameras are also used, among them Telefunken’s ‘Olympic Cannon’, which earns its nickname due to the large lens. There was also a single Fernseh experimental camera there using the Farnsworth Image Dissector tube.
There was a built in control room in the stadium, which fed the coverage to two special lines that went directly to the Berlin TV tower for broadcast. Therefore, there was no need for an electronic television remote unit, in the classic sense.
These cameras broadcast eight hours of moving images per day. There are 75 television sets in Berlin, most of them in the 27 public television parlors. There are two other parlous in Potsdam and Leipzig. At the time, the television broadcasts are sensational events for the audience. But they are barely comparable with today’s public viewing: the screens on the television sets are barely larger than a modern tablet PC display. Thanks for all the help in bringing interesting new information to light! -Bobby Ellerbee
Here, we will see very rare color home movie footage of Colgate hosts Martin & Lewis, Abbott & Costello and Eddie Cantor all arriving at The El Capitan Theater, also a rare color rehearsal shot of Dean and Jerry – plus kinescope footage of the sketch that night. But that’s not all!
Let’s start with this Archive of American Television, Emmy Legend interview with Jerry talking about the Colgate days, and how he and Dean always beat Ed Sullivan.
Next up, in a rare happening, three of the five (rotating weekly) hosts of “Colgate Comedy Hour” are caught in a color home movie arriving at The El Capitan Theater for rehearsal of the celebration of the 100th episode show. Most likely, Hope and O’connor were doing their part in New York, as the show not only rotated hosts, but origination cities.
NBC’s El Capitan Theater was the west coast home of “The Colgate Comedy Hour”. Just before NBC leased it in 1952, Richard Nixon’s “Checkers Speech” was filmed here. In the fall of ’63, ABC bought the theater and renamed it “The Jerry Lewis Theater” which is where his ill fated 13 week show was done from. By January of ’54, this had become “The Hollywood Palace” and was where the show of the same name came from. In late 1964, this is where ABC’s first live color came from. When the fall sesaon of Place debuted, it was before 4 RCA TK41 color cameras. The control truck and cameras were on lease from RCA. In late ’65, a new control room was built with all Norelco equipment. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
March 19, 1953 and March 19, 1954…Red Letter Days For Compatible Color
On March 19, 1953 RCA and NBC’s new multimillion dollar, experimental color facility at The Colonial Theater went online. Work began in the fall of 1952 with some stage renovation and then the installation of the new control and equipment rooms.
The Colonial was equipped with four prototype RCA TK40 color cameras and chains, an all color telecine system, all kinds of new experimental lighting fixtures, monitors and tons of new synchronizing equipment.
The Colonial remained an experimental color facility until Thursday, December 17, 1953. That day, the FCC gave it’s approval of compatible color which made the Colonial the center of NBC’s color universe.
Without The Colonial, a year long string of firsts, that followed, would not have been possible. That sting started with a bang just 14 days later!
On January 1, NBC put their two new color mobile units (seen above) in service with the first ever coast to coast colorcast of The Rose Parade from Pasadena, California. In 22 color capable cities, it was seen in color, but in glorious compatible black and white everywhere else. The Colonial served as a master control center.
February 16, 1954: NBC transmitted the first newscast in color… “The Camel News Caravan”, including the first integration of 16-mm color film into a live program, was done at The Colonial.
On March 4, 1954, the first shipments of RCA TK40s, and associated studio equipment was made from RCA’s plant in Camden, N.J. This was after two years of testing of the TK40 prototypes at NBC’s Colonial Theater.
Exactly one year after The Colonial went online, on March 19, 1954, the first colorcast of a boxing match from Madison Square Garden, was presented by NBC and was compatible color’s first ever sports event broadcast. The main event pitted Philadelphia middleweight Joey Giardello against Willie Troy.
March 25, 1954: Production of RCA’s first commercial color TV sets, the CT 100s, equipped with a 15-inch picture tube began at Bloomington, Indiana.
June 25, 1954: NBC made the first network transmission of 35-mm color film, on “The Mrs. USA” program from The Colonial.
July 8 – Aug. 19: NBC aired the first network color series, “The Marriage”, a situation comedy with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, from The Colonial.
July 15, 1954: RCA announced development of a new and improved 21-inch color kinescope with a picture area of 255 square inches.
Finally, NBC’s second major color facility came on line. On September 12, 1954, NBC presented the first of many 90 minute color spectaculars with the broadcast of “Satins and Spurs” starring Betty Hutton. That was the first production from NBC’s new Brooklyn Studio I.
September 15, 1954: RCA demonstrated its new 21-inch color picture tube and a simplified color TV receiver.
Oct. 14 – Dec. 30: “The Ford Theatre” was the first sponsored color film series to be presented in color on a regular basis. It was broadcast on The Colonial’s color telecine equipment.
November 28,1954: First two-hour color production of a Shakespeare play, “Macbeth” on “The Hallmark Hall of Fame” was done at Brooklyn I.
December 1, 1954: RCA began commercial production of color TV sets with a new 21-inch picture tube. Quite a year, wouldn’t you say? Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
March 7, 1955…Behind The Scenes Of NBC’s “Peter Pan” Debut
A full course on “flying”, audio tricks and NBC Brooklyn Studio 1
NBC’s “Producer’s Showcase” was a series of 90 minute color “spectaculars” that aired every fourth week, beginning October 18, 1954 under the supervision of producer/director Fred Coe.
“Peter Pan” was the seventh episode, but the most memorable of all. Broadcast live, from NBC’s Brooklyn 1 color studio, 1954’s Tony Award winning Broadway musical entered a generation’s heart forever on this day in 1955.
The show was produced directed by the man who directed the Broadway show, Jerome Robbins, seen here “flying” with the star, Mary Martin.
Presenting the show for television brought many technical challenges, and chief among them was how to hear Martin sing as she performed the flying sequences. To overcome the problem, NBC modified a few of the new Shur Vagabond wireless mics with a stronger transmitter. Martin’s mic was hidden under her blouse, and the transmitter was attached to her bra under her left arm. The antenna was made into her belt, and receiving antennas were built into the floor of the set.
Less than an year later, NBC repeated the performance in January, 1956 and again…it was done live as videotape was not even introduced until April of that year. There are some remnants of the original b/w kinescope recordings around, but to illustrate both, how this would have looked in color, and, transition into our lesson on how the cast was “flown”, here is color clip from the third and final 1960 videotaped presentation of the show.
Peter Foy was the man responsible for the “flying” effect that all of us, of a certain age, remember with great fondness. Flying one person gracefully is an art…flying four at a time is magic!
Below is a rare four page interview with Foy that discusses the finer points of how it is done.
The color photo here is an interior shot of what was NBC Brooklyn 1, taken in 2015. Inside Studio 1, looking toward 14th Street, we see this grand old lady being re-purposed into a civic center.
The elephant door leads to Brooklyn 2, and at one time the two metal bars above it, helped support Mary Martin’s “Peter Pan” flying rig.
So much great history from here…gone, but not forgotten. By the way, the famous Esther William swimming pool is buried under the floor in this studio, but would be behind us, against the back wall on 13th Street.
The first few seasons of “The Cosby Show” were done here and moved when NBC sold it in the mid 80s. The property was eventually sold to JCS Studios who operated the facility until they went out of business around 2013. Below is a set of diagrams of the property and to help your perspective, 13th Street is at the top and 14th Street at the bottom. Avenue M is on the left (NBC’s former front entrance) and Locust Ave. is on the right. I’ve also added an annotated aerial photo to help your placement. http://eyesofageneration.com/nbcs-former-brooklyn-studios/
Brooklyn 1 was NBC’s second color studio, with The Colonial Theater being their first. The facility debuted September 12, 1954 with NBC’s first color spectacular, “Satin & Spurs” starring Betty Hutton. At the end of that show, Steve Allan did a four minute piece on the studio facility that you can see at this link.
At this link is the 27 page CBS publication presented at the 1955 NAB Convention.
This was the first and only color facility CBS had on the east coast until The Ed Sullivan Theater (Studio 50) came on line with Norelco color on October 31, 1965. Television City also had four RCA TK40 color cameras, and later added four TK41s, before going to Norelco in the summer of ’65.
Except for it’s history, or a single mention of the RCA TK40 color cameras, every thing you could possibly want to know about the facility is there, including pictures and diagrams.
Since today is the anniversary of Walter Cronkite’s last day as anchor of “The CBS Evening News” on March 6, 1981, it reminded me of the one and only time he did the news from Studio 72. That single color test broadcast was August 19, 1965. In a publicity photo at Studio 72, we see Walter with Howard K. Smith and Douglas Edwards in front of a TK40.
In March of 1957, “Cinderella” was broadcast in color from Studio 72 to an audience of 100 million, but most of them saw it in black and white, just as we will see this kinescope clip from the show.
In the clip, Julie Andrews is in the starring role, and Edie Adams is playing the Fairy Godmother. At 2:20, we get the first of the special effects as the pumpkin turns to a coach. Crude by today’s standards, but the dissolve shot is spot on.
As great as the facility was, it sat empty most of the time as CBS did not do a lot of color shows, and the bulk of their colorcasts came from Television City. Occasionally the network used it for big stage productions, but the signals were sent out minus the color burst, and was seen in black and white.
After CBS left, this theater/studio was taken over by Reeves-Teletape and was the original home of “Sesame Street”. Enjoy and SHARE! -Bobby Ellerbee
March 2, 1951…Desilu Empire Begins With The “I Love Lucy” Pilot
On March 2, 1951, the pilot episode for “I Love Lucy” was shot at the CBS Columbia Square Studios on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. It was shot with three RCA TK30 Image Orthicon cameras and recorded via kinescope. When Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball saw the playback of the kine film, they knew then and there what they wanted to do.
CBS and the prospective sponsors for the show wanted it to be produced in New York. Arnaz and Ball knew that if they did it that way, they would have to do the show live, and the west coast would have to see a kinescope playback.
Ball, having already achieved stardom in films, did not like the way the show would look to her friends in Hollywood. This was the major determining factor in the decision to shoot the show on film in Hollywood. Due to union contracts, CBS could not shoot a film production in it’s television studios, so, in order get the show on the air, Ball and Arnaz would have to become the producers and do it “off the lot”.
Here is the first few minutes of the pilot recorded at Columbia Square.
This would be the start of Desilu Productions and give Desi and Lucy a lot more control of the content, AND…a film library that could later be syndicated, leased or sold. Had the show been done in New York, it would have gone the way of so many other great shows that are now lost to us as many kine libraries were dumped along the way.
The kinescope of the pilot was thought lost until a 16mm copy was discovered in the effects of Pepito Perez. His estate provided the film to CBS, and the network aired it in April 1990, almost exactly 39 years after it was made. Perez is the famous Spanish clown that appears in this pilot.
Writers Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll, Jr. had worked with Ball on “My Favorite Husband” and had also written the Ball-Arnaz vaudeville routine that set up the pilot. They knew exactly how to exploit Ball’s personality and mastery of physical comedy.
At this link is a wonderful six part Emmy TV Legends interview from the Archive of American Television with both Bob Carroll and Madelyn Pugh. Just under the video frame, there is a box with tabs on the top with names like Highlights, Interview, Shows, People, etc. Click the Interview tab and at the top of Part 3, they describe bringing the show to television. http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/madelyn-pugh-davis#
Now, back to the pilot. The episode takes place on only two sets: the Ricardo’s living room and the nightclub where Ricky performs. This is the first iteration of the premise that would drive the show’s spectacular 194-episode run: A TV producer is coming to see Ricky perform. Lucy wants to be part of the act. Hilarity ensues.
Fred and Ethel Mertz don’t appear in the pilot, which allows a couple of extra minutes for Arnaz to perform with his band. The plot has it that Ricky has booked Pepito the Spanish Clown to appear with him at the club that night. When Pepito suffers a laugh-out-loud accident, Lucy dons his costume and takes his place at the nightclub, performing a comical routine with a trick cello. Ball and Arnaz had been married for a decade and had polished their routine during the road tour, and their timing is superb.
Ball was five months pregnant at the time the pilot was produced, which was concealed by layered costumes, including an absurdly large bathrobe.
The hit radio show starring Ball, “My Favorite Husband” ended its run a month after the “I Love Lucy” pilot was produced and the TV show was picked up by tobacco giant Philip Morris. In October 1951, seven months after the pilot was shot, “I Love Lucy” debuted on CBS, launching Ball into a quarter-century TV career that remains in broadcast rotation to this day.
Several of the gags used in the pilot were recycled into ”The Audition,” which was Episode 6 of the first season and in the second season, Pepito the Spanish Clown (Pepito Perez, an international star and close friend of Arnaz) returned to the show in “Lucy’s Show-Biz Swan Song.”
There is yet another interesting twist to this pilot story…the director!
This Lucy pilot was directed by Ralph Levy. You may not know the name, but you know his work. Among other things, Ralph Levy directed the “The Jack Benny Show”, “Burns And Allen”, “The Ed Wynn Show” and many more. In the 1950s and ’60s, he was CBS’s directing star.
Levy was the network’s first choice to direct “I Love Lucy”, but he begged off: he knew he already had his hands full with Benny, Burns and Allen.
Levy won his first Emmy for his work with Jack Benny and his second Emmy two years later for the first “Bob Newhart Show”, which was a weekly half-hour of stand-up comedy and variety.
Levy also directed the pilots of “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Green Acres”, and two seasons of “Petticoat Junction”…all for his friend Paul Henning, one of George Burns’ writers who had since become a successful producer.
Ralph later attempted to do dramas…programs like “Hawaii Five-O” and feature films, but somehow, his heart was not in these projects: he missed the live audiences that early television and the theater had provided.
Levy spent several years in England in the 1970s, working for BBC Television, and taught TV production classes at Cal State Northridge and Loyola Marymount University. He retired to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1981. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
The History Of The Ampex Owned…Video Tape Center, Part 3 of 3
America’s First Commercial Television Production Facility
A few years ago, our friend Tom Coughlin traveled to Minnesota to comb the 3M archives as part of his ongoing research into the history of America’s first, and most innovative commercial tele production facility. Tom is a professor or journalism, but his deep interest here is also personal as his dad was a longtime staff member at Videotape Center as well. This is the final chapter of three fascinating installments. -Bobby Ellerbee
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In order to free up space on the loading dock (which also doubled as a parking spot for the remote truck) between January and April 1967, the TK-41c cameras were taken off the truck and installed temporarily at Videotape Center while the Norelco cameras were being installed. Studio A had three Norelcos running in April, and Studio B’s cameras arrived in May. By May 15, 1967, the RCAs were back on the truck and ready for sale to ABC–despite M-G-M not actually owning, but only leasing the contained equipment, and having to make monthly payments to RCA through to 1969.
The minutes of the board meetings from the 1965-1967 time period provide an interesting snapshot of the independent video production industry at the time. Reeves was heavily promoting their video pod production system to advertising agencies and film production houses for one-off TV shoots on video. According to a report from Engineering Director Don Collins to the board (meeting minutes from July 1966), while NBC and ABC owned remote trucks, CBS did not. Reeves Sound Services owned six Ampex 2000 (color, high-band) videotape recorders and two plumbicon cameras with three more on order. Reeves used Norelco cameras that were impeccably maintained, but the remotely recorded video frequently had dropouts and poor signal quality, also there were complaints of communication problems between the set and the tape room. For much of second half of 1966 while Videotape Center was upgrading the tape room, they had no high-band recording or color tape editing capability and used Reeves’ video services extensively.
Other competitors included Tele-tape, which had leased the Little Theater to produce the Merv Griffin Show for Group W, and was in the process of leasing a former CBS studio at 81st St. and Broadway. Tele-tape was based in Chicago, and had recently taken over Jam Handy (an industrial film production company), a merger that was more expensive and less lucrative than they had anticipated. They had 90 people working in New York, 17 in Chicago, owned seven videotape machines and had six more on order. Lewron, a Baltimore-based company, had purchased a building in New York City and was slowly building it out as a TV studio. On the West Coast (Videotape Center had a Los Angeles office and was ready to send the Leo truck to the coast if work calls came) Technicolor had a two camera video truck.
The engineering department had taken over the operation of Telestudios “TVola” editing system which was offered to the public in 1966, which offered offline editing using a 16mm film kinescope with videotape timecoding applied.
Clients from the 1965-67 time frame include: ABC, who leased Studio C to shoot the soap opera, “The Nurses”, and had rented studio space for “Campy’s Place” and the “Jimmy Dean Show”.
During the 1966-1967 television season, Videotape Center’s tape room edited and duplicated “Password” for syndication (the show was produced at CBS in Hollywood). Thirty to forty percent of the tape room’s post-production work was being shot elsewhere. TV specials produced at Videotape during that time period include “St. Joan” (a Hallmark Hall of Fame production that aired on NBC), “An Enemy of the People” (an NET Playhouse production for public television), and “A Case of Libel” a TV production of a popular Broadway show, produced by David Susskind that aired on ABC. For TV commercial work, Videotape employed two staff directors, Hal Stone, and Adrian Riso, and commercials produced during that time period included spots for S&H Green Stamps, National Airlines, Gillette, Arnold Bread, Tang, Stridex, Goodyear Tire, Dutch Masters Cigars, Johnson and Johnson Petroleum Jelly, Papermaid Products, and Xerox.
Equipment purchases during this timeframe include an Ampex VR-3000 (compact 2” videotape recorder) for use on the Leo truck during times when the videotape truck was leased to a different client. In June 1967, they purchased a HS-100 disc recorder to do slow motion and freeze frames in the tape room. Also the last remaining RCA TK-60 black and white camera, which was being used for slates, countdowns and superimpositions, was replaced with an Ampex BC-300.
In March 1967, ABC’s cancellation of “The Nurses” precipitated a cash flow crisis, and the management decided to close Studio C indefinitely, and look into the possibility of renting the space out to Fordham and Columbia University, who at the time wanted to move into the Lincoln Center neighborhood.
3-M’s board designee John B. Lanigan motioned in 1967 that the board of directors should give RKO the three-year advance notification that was required in their lease of W. 67th St. in order to shut down Videotape Center. He cited a number of reasons—the mission of the company (to popularize the use of video tape for TV commercial production) had largely been fulfilled; Videotape Center was consistently being outbid by other companies (Tele-tape and Reeves, principally), and had higher expenses than it’s competitors.
Also cited–the cultural differences between the 3-M and M-G-M directors, and what they considered acceptable business practices.
To run-out the final three years of the RKO studio lease as well as to liquidate the equipment assets, Lanigan negotiated with Avertel, a Toronto-based video tape house run by Ormand Collier, and Reeves Sound Services, who had offered $5 million to take over the business. Also Western Video Industries, a production studio based in a former NBC studio at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles (that coincidentally owned three stages and a remote truck) had also expressed interest in Videotape Center. The final proposed sale agreement was negotiated in the later part of 1968, with Avertel and Reeves both counter offering and bidding against each other. On November 11, 1968, Harold Reeves announced that Reeves agreed to purchase all the outstanding Videotape Productions stock from MGM and 3-M for an undisclosed price. With the deal, Reeves had acquired two television studios worth of production equipment, and a lease on a building that would run out in Summer 1970.
It appears that the Leo remote truck, at the time on lease to ABC, was not included in the deal, and in March 1968 both M-G-M and 3-M were contacted by RCA who expressed concern that the sale of Videotape Center would create a situation of increased possibility of default on the lease payments. Lanigan’s response to the situation was to alert the M-G-M directors of RCA’s concerns, and subsequently contact RCA and ask for their assistance in selling the equipment (presumably to ABC). Under Reeves ownership, the facility continued to operate, doing business both as Videotape Center, and Reeves Lincoln Square Studios. In April, 1970, Broadcasting Magazine (p 104) announced that ABC was negotiating to purchase the Reeves facility at 101 West 67th St. for approximately $3 million in cash. According to the article, the sale included a substantial part of the equipment that was installed there, and the deal was expected to close during the month subject to the approval of the ABC board of directors. Over the summer of 1970, the ABC signs went up on the building—from then on the facility was known as TV-18/19.
Shown here, the VTC TK41s shooting an “Up With People” special, the 67th Street property as ABC’s TV 18/19 and a Westinghouse commercial shoot with Betty Ferness.
Television & The Presidential Inaugurations…Part 1
President Harry Truman’s January 20,1949 inauguration was the first to be televised to the 2,000,000 sets in use in the US, but television did not reach the west coast until Truman’s 1952 speech from San Francisco was telecast.
In the photo, the raised platform is for the radio reporters, newsreel cameras, and two pool TV cameras, with at least one more live camera in use on the ground, and perhaps more. I think this was the only televised part of the day, with no live TV coverage attempted on the parade portion.
Here are some mass media firsts associated with covering the inaugurations over the centuries.
First ceremony to be reported by telegraph: James Polk, 1845.
First ceremony to be photographed: James Buchanan, 1857.
First motion picture of ceremony: William McKinley, 1897.
First electronically-amplified speech: Warren Harding, 1921.
First radio broadcast: Calvin Coolidge, 1925.
First recorded on talking newsreel: Herbert Hoover, 1929.
First television coverage: Harry Truman, 1949.
First live Internet broadcast: Bill Clinton, 1997.
In 1937, Franklin Roosevelt took the oath of the Presidency for the second time, but for the first time on January 20th. The 20th Amendment changed the date from March 4 to January 20 when it was ratified in 1933.
This article includes A MUST READ, FIRST HAND ACCOUNT from one of NBC’s veteran cameramen, Frank Vierling. His story starts 68 years ago today, on his first day, January 6, 1949, and gives us details of the little known NBC mobile camera units used INSIDE 30 Rockefeller Plaza, in studios that were still radio studios!
The Birth and Rebirth of Studio 3A
By Frank Vierling, with thanks to Joel Spector
I was hired and reported for work on January 6, 1949. All new engineering hires had to pass through Whitney Baston’s studio audio operations class. I was assigned to Kinescope Recording, for about a month, waiting for a new class opening. Following Mr. Baston’s class I worked a few studio shows before being assigned to the TV Field group where the mobile units were, garaged in Long Island City.
Field had two mobile units, each equipped with three camera chains. Unit 1A’s gear was color coded blue and Unit 1B’s was Yellow. (These units covered sports, but were mostly used to televise shows from the theaters NBC was acquiring, but had not yet equipped permanently).
A third set of cameras (the Green Gear) was stored in Rock Center and moved to different studios as programming required.
Only two studios, 8G and 3H had their own cameras. The Green Gear covered the NBC Symphony from 8H, Perry Como in 6A and Milton Berle in 6B, among others.
On a 1949 Saturday, still a member of TV Field, I was part of a crew assigned to work in NBC Studio 3B. We moved the Green Unit (in house) equipment to 3B and set up for Jon Gnagy’s show “You Are an Artist”. John hosted the very first “learn to draw” show on TV.
Following Gnagy, one camera was pushed across the hall into Studio 3A for “Story Book Time.” An actress, dressed in a Little Bow Peep costume, read and turned pages of a giant story book. (This was TV’s first use of 3A although technically it was just an extension of 3B.)
Before we broke for lunch, Leon Pearson did a noon news spot. While we were on our lunch break, Studio 3B was set up for the prime time “Phil Silver’s Arrow Shirt Show,” which was followed by a Pearson news spot at 11.
After the Pearson news spot, we moved the gear and set up Studio 6A for Sunday morning’s Horn & Hardart “Children’s Hour,” hosted by Ed Herlihy. With little sleep and short turnaround we were back in for the Sunday broadcast day. In addition to the “Children’s Hour,” we did “Leave It to the Girls,” with Maggi McNellis in 6B (cameras pushed across the hall). The cameras returned to 6A for the “The Meredith Wilson Show” and sign off news with Leon.
The Birth of TV in 3A.
Sometime in 1949 Field received three new camera chains. At first, it was thought they were to replace or add to our Field equipment. We soon found they were bound for studio 3A. The gear was coded RED. With the Red Gear, 3A became the third TV Studio. A variety of shows originated from 3A, a few I worked were “Morton Downey’s Mohawk Rug Show” and “The Roberta Quinlan Show”, the sitcom “Henry Aldrich” (“Coming Mother”), “Who Said That?” and “Date in Manhattan”. – Frank Vierling
Many thanks to Frank for capturing that great history and Joel Spector for sharing it. This photo shows the NBC Green Unit in use on one of the first “Texaco Star Theater” broadcasts from Studio 6B. Notice they lit the show with only a dozen scoops. The Green Unit’s camera control units were mounted on rolling carts and were always set up in the sound lock hallways of each studio.
The signals eventually wound up in Master Control, but just where the director, TD and switcher was is not known. I know that later, but still before TV control rooms were added, some TV people were in the radio control rooms of these studios. Perhaps they had a portable video board, or the signals went to the control rooms of either Studio 3H or 8G which were real TV studios. I’ll try to find out from Mr. Vierling, who’s in his 90s now. -Bobby Ellerbee
December 27, 1947…”Howdy Doody” Debuts EXCLUSIVE VIDEO
Thanks to Burt Dubrow, America’s top Howdy expert, WE ARE ABOUT TO SEE SOMETHING MOST HAVE NEVER SEEN…THE ORIGIANL HOWDY PUPPET ON ONE OF THE EARLIEST SHOWS RECORDED!
This kinescope is only 21 minutes long, and most likely was done as a test of the new kinescope system introduced by RCA and Kodak in September 1947. Sometime in April of 1948, the month this was shot, three new RCA TK30 cameras replaced the three big silver RCA A500 Iconoscope cameras in Studio 3H where this was done. This could either be one of the last Iconoscope shows or one of the first Image Orthicon shows. Given the many dub generations this is away from the original, it is hard to tell what cameras may have been in use, but it looks like Iconoscope to me, as the TK30 was more crisp.
The actual date of this show is not known, but is most likely from Tuesday, April 6, 1948, which would be the first Tueday show after the birth of David Eisenhower on March 31, who’s birth is featured in the newsreel. The baseball score is from a spring training game as the regualar season did not start until April 20.
At this link, you will find the “Early History Of Howdy Doody”, that Burt Dubrow helped me write a couple of years ago, and it is packed with information you will not find anywhere else.
A few notes to help you “see” the history in this. (1) When the show started, it ran only on Saturday afternoon from 5 till 6, but after about 6 weeks, the show began a Tuesday-Thrusday-Saturday schedule from 5 till 6. On the 11th show, Howdy announced he was going to run for President of the Kids of the USA. (2) The show was origianlly called, “Puppet Playhouse” featuring Frank Paris’ “Toby At The Circus” puppet troupe, and on the first show, which Bob Smith was the host and MC for, there was no Howdy puppet, as there was no time to make him, but Howdy was heard! He was in a desk drawer and to bashful to come out.
I mention these points because the first thing I noticed was the opeining title is now “Howdy Doody Time”, which is finally proof that the name changed long before many other sources say it did. It probably happend when the show went to 3 days a week, which would be about the second or third week of February 1948…possibly February 10th or 17th. Also, the Howdy for President banner is up. By the way, this would be the first show of the day, as only a test pattern preceeded the show, and when it eneded at 6, there was not another show until 7:15, so there was another hour and fifteen minuets of test pattern.
When the show starts, notice not only the look of the first Howdy (built by Frank Pairs), but also how different the voice Bob uses for Howdy is. Remember, the voice was developed for the original “Tripple B Ranch” radio character named Elmer, who became Howdy Doody after the kids started calling him that becuase of his greeting of “Well, howdy doody everybody”.
Notice also that the kids are seated in a way that they can only see Bob and Howdy on the monitors, and not at the desk…since Bob was not a ventriloquist, he moved is lips when he voiced Howdy, so it was best to hide that as much as possible. That kind of set up, with his back to the kids when Howdy was talking, continued for the life of the show.
At 13:45, when they go to what would later become the “peanut gallery” the kids are sitting on two, four seat “horses” which were brought over from the place Howdy was born, “The Tripple B Ranch” radio show. It was a kids quiz show and the contestants sat on these glorified sawhorses…when one of the kids got a wrong answer, they were “bucked off” the horse.
At 15:03, there is a really special moment! A clown comes in with peanuts for the kids, which seems to catch Bob off guard as he says “Who you?” and then, recovers after a second or two and says thanks “Robbie”. This is most likely the first time assistant stage manager Robert “Bob” Keeshan (Clarabell) had ever worn anything other than street clothes on the set while handing things to Bob Smith. Before the Clarabell costume, it is known that Director Roger Muir had gone to NBC’s wardrobe department for something to dress Keeshan in, and this classic operatic style clown suit was probably thier first try.
Many thanks agian to Burt Dubrow for letting us see this rare and historic clip from his collection. I hope you enjoyed this very special few moments with the original Howdy on this, the 69th Anniversay of what would later become America’s first daily televison program, and the world’s first daily color television program. It was also the first program to log over 1,000 episodes. Since this is the only place to see this video, please share it! -Bobby Ellerbee
December 24,1951…Behind The Scenes Inside NBC Studio 8H
1st “Hallmark Hall Of Fame”…1st “Amahl And The Night Visitors”
This story has two parts. Below the 3 photos of the RCA TK41s shooting this production at NBC Brooklyn, is an interesting first hand account from a TV magazine writer who was there, pointing out the production obstacles they needed to overcome to present the debut of what would become two enduring programs.
The above the photos story starts here with some notes on the historic aspects of what was about to happen.
At 9:30 PM on December 24, 1951, in NBC Studio 8-H, the first opera ever written expressly for television went live on the air. The sponsor for the NBC holiday spectacular was Hallmark Cards. This was their first venture into television and this lead to the development of the now famous “Hallmark Hall Of Fame” series.
Above is the kinescope recording of the original 1951 production. The show was done live each year for many years till video tape came along. In 1954 it was done in color at NBC Brooklyn, and in ’63, finally recorded on color video tape at the Brooklyn facility. In the photo at the top of this page, we see one of the four monochrome cameras used on the show in 8H shooting the child lead, Chet Allen. The cameraman is NBC’s first studio cameraman, Albert Protzman who was hired in 1936.
Below is a description of that night in 8H from TV Party Magazine by Mitchel Hadley. The full article is at this link. -Bobby Ellerbee http://www.tvparty.com/xmas-amahl.html
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Christmas Eve in Studio 8H
The scene was a dramatic one – and, par for the course for early television, far from ideal. For one thing, although 8-H was the largest television studio in America, it wasn’t nearly large enough for the cast, crew, and musicians. The result, among other things, was that singers and orchestra would have no direct contact with each other. The orchestra was located in Studio 8G…the conductor could see the action on the set via the monitors while the singers would hear the music piped in through speakers in the studio.
Up in the control room would be Director Kurt Browning. At his disposal were four cameras – three inside the “hut” where Amahl and his mother lived, and one outside – and three boom microphones, one between each camera. His “control” was far from absolute, however; union rules of the era prevented the director from speaking directly to the cameramen, requiring him to go through the technical director to communicate his instructions. Such an arrangement was a recipe for disaster, especially for a live broadcast. Menotti was no stranger to the challenges of television, though, and he and Browning worked closely on the camera script, ensuring that there would be no spare gesture, no extraneous movement that would throw an actor out of frame.
The cumbersome equipment of the time would also prove to be a challenge, as Browning recalled in a 1994 interview. “As I remember, I had pedestal cameras which weighed four to five hundred pounds and a dolly camera that weighed another seven to eight hundred pounds. Movement was limited, however, for “once you got over a 90mm lens, you couldn’t move the camera because the movement registered on the camera and you would lose focus almost immediately.”
On the set itself the cast, after a month of preparation and anticipation (but only four actual days in the studio), was ready.
When the camera light winked on at 9:30, viewers saw a blurred image of church bells, followed by a title card announcing that the following program was presented by Hallmark. It is often stated that the actress Sarah Churchill hosted that first broadcast, since she subsequently served as host of Hall of Fame for the first couple of years, but in fact it was Nelson Case, host of NBC’s Armstrong Circle Theater, who greeted the audience. (Amahl was, in fact, being presented in Armstrong’s regular Tuesday night time slot.) After a solemn, if overlong, introduction, Case presented Menotti, who stood on a set in front of a fake fireplace decorated with garland, the Bosch painting hanging over the mantle.
Speaking from notes and in Italian-accented English, Menotti said he hoped that parents had allowed their children to stay up late for the broadcast, since the opera had been written for them and “I don’t want you to be like those awful parents who insist on playing with their children’s toys.” He then introduced the people who had helped make Amahl possible, asking them to join him on camera since the audience “won’t see [them] while the opera goes on”: Browning, who “photographed this opera the way I saw it in the windows of my imagination,” Schippers, who “captured the sounds of my childhood,” and set designer Eugene Berman, “who designed the sets that come straight out of my own heart.”
As a series of handwritten slides (taking a moment to come into focus) introduced the cast and crew, the overture began in the background – a tender, moving melody that soon gave way to the sound of a pipe. The camera dissolved to a star high in the sky, and then slowly panned down to a young boy playing the pipe. Amahl and the Night Visitors had begun.
Here it is worth noting that the broadcast features a fascinating attempt at a primitive “special effect.” Menotti wanted the approach of the Kings to suggest a journey of a great distance. The entrance of the Kings began, therefore, with only their voices being heard. While Amahl and his mother lie sleeping, the camera zoomed in on a close up of Rosemary Kuhlmann. Then, using her back as a movie screen, a pre recorded film of the Kings’ entry was projected.
Browning then cut to a shot of Kuhlmann from a different angle, while the lyrics “the shepherd dreams inside the fold” were sung – suggesting, subtly, that the Kings might be nothing more than a dream. It was a complex effect, sophisticated for the time, especially for live television. It’s not known how many times this effect was used in subsequent broadcasts of Amahl; by 1955 it had been replaced by a simple cut from the inside of the hut to the outdoor set.
December 22, 1931…First Empire State Broadcast & TV Test History Update
On this day in 1931, NBC made it’s first experimental television broadcast from the new Empire State Building transmitter.
Since the story of RCA’s early television transmission test sites is a bit muddled, I am taking this opportunity to clarify a few things with new research.
RCA’s first experimental television transmissions are reported to have begun in 1928 on station W2XBS at 7 Van Cortlandt Park area in the Bronx. The images were produced by a GE made Alexanderson mechanical disc camera.
My research has lead to new information that no one else includes. It appears that within a few months, testing moved to 411 Fifth Avenue, a few blocks south of NBC’s 711 Fifth Avenue HQ. The two hour nightly broadcasts made from there began March 22, 1929. At this link is an article about the 411 building with the very detailed television part in the lower third of the article. http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-unique-1915-no-411-fifth-avenue.html
In early 1930, the Alexanderson camera and transmission equipment was moved to the Roof Garden Theater on the top floor of the New Amsterdam Theater Building, transmitting 60 line pictures in the new 2-3 mHz band allocated to television.
Those locations, are where the famous 13 inch Felix the Cat figure, made of paper mache, was placed on a record player turntable and broadcast using a mechanical scanning disk to a scanning disk receiver. The image received was only 2 inches tall.
Early in 1931 RCA’s W2XBS began to transmit from the RCA/NBC headquarters at 711 5th Avenue. The image of the actor with the Alexanderson camera is thought to be at the 711 building.
The Empire State Building was completed in May of 1931, and RCA leased the 85th floor for a studio and transmitter location for experimental television broadcasts. RCA, through its broadcasting division NBC, applied to the Federal Radio Commission on July 1, 1931 for construction permits for the sight and sound channels of a television station, which were issued on July 24, 1931.
The call sign W2XF was issued in December 1931 for the sight channel of that station on an assigned frequency of 44Mc. The sound channel of the TV station was separately licensed as W2XK for a 2.5Kw transmitter to operate on 61Mc. Both transmitters were located on the 85th floor and used separate vertical dipole antennas.
In early 1933, the mechanical scanning disc camera was still in use, but experiments on an electronic receiving tube were underway with the early kinescope images appearing green (like an oscilloscope) as only green phosphor was available. It would be a few years before white phosphor was discovered and used in kinescopes. More on this story soon.
In 1936, the Empire State Building’s tall tower like structure was added as a mooring mast for blimps. The winds proved to be too strong and there were several near accidents in mooring tests, but it did make for a great new antenna mount.
By the way, the last known sighting of the historic Alexanderson mechanical camera was in a display at the RCA Pavilion at the 1939 Worlds Fair. -Bobby Ellerbee
“The Big Picture” Presents….Television In The Army
Remember “The Big Picture” series? Here is their half hour show on how the Army uses TV, from the early ’50s. Given that there are RCA TK11 cameras here (as well as the older TK30s), this has to be sometime after 1952.
At the Production Center, they are making training films, via kinescope and in the field, I noticed the dual remote units still have the same configurations as the early NBC/RCA units with one unit for camera control and the other for transmission.
The small turret camera in the middle of this is, I think, a small Dage model. Near the end, they take us to an airborne camera that looks a lot like the old Iconoscope models used in WW II for guided ordnance and recon. On the ground, RCA’s Walkie Lookie mini cam is use too. -Bobby Ellerbee
“Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In”…Three Backstories Rolled Into One
(1) Fun (2) Editing on film and videotape (3) The Editor, Art “Jump Cut” Schneider
There is not a better way to illustrate how “Laugh In” was done than to start with this embedded blooper reel, which will be fun and instructive at the same time. As you watch these outtakes on kinescope film, notice the man in the at 1:25 mark with Marcel Marceau (the pantomime king) is the show’s creator George Schlatter.
Believe it or not, the show was simultaneously recorded on black and white kinescope film and color video tape. Using the kinescope footage, Art Schneider (the videotape editor) and George Schlatter cut the show together the way they wanted it to be seen on the air. Only when that process was complete could Art begin to edit the color videotape.
With an average of 400 edits per episode, which no other show had ever attempted, editing “Laugh In” was in a league by itself…as was the editor. As a matter of fact, when Art left NBC after the second year of the show, it took 7 editors to replace him.
To give you and idea how hard it was to edit videotape in those days, here is Art Schneider editing with a Smith Block at NBC. The video will start at the part that features Art, but the whole thing is very good.
Below is a 1989 article from “WRAP Magazine” on Art…
For Art Schneider, A.C.E., it was one of the most memorable moments in his life. Bob Hope was taping a 1965 comedy special
at NBC and Schneider, Hope’s videotape editor since the late 1950s, was standing offstage when Hope called him out. “Most of you don’t know what goes on behind the scenes during the editing of our show,” began Hope. “We have a man in the basement … who fixes all our mistakes, and we’d like to honor him tonight with the annual Bob Hope Show Crossed Scissors Award for Jump Cutting Above and Beyond the Call of Duty”.
To many in the industry, Schneider has always been known as “Jump Cut,” the editor’s editor, racking up screen credits and awards almost since the beginning of television. As an NBC staff engineer from 1951 to 1968, Schneider edited over 500 variety shows, documentaries, music specials, series and news programs, winning four Emmys in the process. His work helped define the medium.
From the start, Schneider’s modus operandi has been to edit quickly, efficiently and seamlessly. To improve video editing in the ’50s-a cumbersome process, which involved the hand-splicing of tape, he worked with his colleagues at NBC to develop the first offline editing process as well as an early time-code system. As chief editor of the network’s “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In” in the late ’60s, he was notorious for his organization and imagination.
“To edit ‘Laugh In’, we had to adapt the technology to our concepts and not vice versa,” says Creator and Producer George Schlatter. “At the time, video editing was primitive and considered a technician’s job. Art helped change that. It became an artistic job.”
Schneider’s ambitions once lay elsewhere. When he was 18 and a model-airplane enthusiast, he entered the University of Southern California with the goal of becoming an aeronautical engineer. He explains, however, that he couldn’t master the math required for the field. “I changed my major three times before I finally settled on cinema studies,” he recalls. “There’s not much math in that.”
Schneider soon found he had a knack for cutting film, and it was during his senior year that a professor introduced him to an NBC executive searching for a film editor. “The job they offered was simple-editing leaders onto kinescopes, but they didn’t want to spend the time training beginners how to edit,” recalls Schneider. “They wanted someone who already knew how to do it.”
A four-hour job interview led to what would be a 17-year career at the network. Although eventually he became the network’s supervising editor, he began as a “Group 2 Engineer”, hand splicing videotape and film, and operating kinescope machines and cameras because the term “editor” was not officially sanctioned by NBC until the ’60s.
Schneider worked constantly, averaging 40 to 50 shows a year and racking up such credits as 51 Bob Hope shows, three critically acclaimed Fred Astaire programs, and specials starring Judy Garland, Pat Boone, Milton Berle and Jack Benny. “My USC training in cinema really helped,” he says-particularly for specials, “which were tricky. You couldn’t just grind them out like you might on a series. The star wanted to put the best foot forward.”
In 1967, Schlatter, a former colleague from NBC’s Colgate Comedy Hour, approached him with the ‘Laugh In’ pilot. “I thought it had a funny name and a pretty thick script,” Schneider recalls, “but I said, ‘Fine, I’ll do it.’ ” The script was four inches thick, to be exact, and, at a time when 80 edits an hour for video was considered excessively complicated, Laugh-in weighed in at about 400. “It was a gargantuan task,” says Schlatter, “and ‘Laugh In’ may have been the first show on TV whose editor was recognized for the contribution he brought to the whole.”
With its quick blackouts, short sketches and zany music pieces, Laugh-in was an editor’s nightmare. Schneider, with Schlatter at his side, spent three weeks of 20-hour-a-day edits to produce the pilot. “At the end of the first assembly [which took five days], George didn’t like what he saw. He sat back and cried, ‘What have I wrought?’ ” recalls Schneider, who wound up recutting the program five times. “After the fifth, George was satisfied, but I was still bothered by something that didn’t quite click. I couldn’t sleep, thinking about it.” Then, as he lay in bed, he had an inspiration:
He would add a tag scene after the closing credits…a discarded piece of footage of Arte Johnson as a Nazi saying, “Verrrry interesting.” Not only did Schlatter love the touch, the bit became a catchphrase of the series.
In 1968, Schneider left NBC to form, with Schlatter, Burbank Film Editing (where he continued to work on ‘Laugh In’). Schneider left in 1970 to work at CFI, where he stayed until 1976 and helped develop the first CMX 300 on-line editing system. From there he freelanced on a variety of projects, including off-net hours for syndication and documentaries on pollution. In addition, he served on the board of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences; became a member of the SMPTE education committee; and began writing (over 50 articles) and lecturing on his profession.
“To be successful,” Schneider concludes, “you have to be very, very dedicated. And you have to work your butt off.”
On this day in 1956, at Television City, CBS made broadcast history when they achieved the first ever videotape delay of east coast programming. The show was ‘The Evening News With Douglas Edwards’, and after recording the live feed coming down the network line from New York, the program was played back three hours later for the west coast.
In the photo, we see CBS Engineer John Radis at the Ampex VRX-1000 recording the show. Just in case, a kinescope of the newscast was rolled simultaneously, but fortunately, it was not needed.
This VRX-1000 is one of only 16 hand-built machines Ampex rushed to produce after debuting the VTR eight months before.
It would take over a year for CBS New York to get videotape machines due to a huge backlog, even though the networks got priority. In early 1958, 14 VR 1000 went into service at CBS Grand Central. NBC too had the bulk of their machines on the west coast but both CBS and NBC had two VTRs in New York which were mostly used for testing and engineering purposes.
This historic machine was retired in 1978. Early on, it had been fitted with RCA color modules as Ampex and RCA traded technology rights. RCA had developed color recording in 1954 and allowed Ampex to use it if they would allow RCA to use the Qaud recording head. -Bobby Ellerbee
Tomorrow, we’ll see how digital editing works, but today…this is a great history of how television’s need for time shifting, and delayed broadcast for time zones encouraged the development of kinescope and videotape recording.
This is well done and told in layman’s terms so everyone can understand the very interesting paths the process of recording and editing video have traveled. -Bobby Ellerbee
Trace the history of modern day film editing – starting with electronic engineers developing solutions for capturing and editing television through to the fi…
FANTASTIC!…First TV Demonstration Of Multi Track Audio Tape Recording
In this 1953 kinescope from “Omnibus”, Alistair Cooke hosts Les Paul and Mary Ford in a recreation of their 1951 hit “How High The Moon”. The song not only topped the ‘Top 40’ charts, but the ‘R&B’ charts too, which was another first.
Although Les and Mary had released a few other multi tracked songs, which were well received, those were done with discs and not tape. Using the disc method was difficult and tedious, with one track at a time being added as the previous compilation of tracks was played back and re-recorded with each new part.
In 1947, Bing Crosby brought Les an Ampex 200 tape recorder to play with, and the rest is history. I am attaching two excellent links that go into great detail about the process and the string of discoveries, so make sure you take a look and a listen.
http://www.les-paul.com/timeline/sound-on-sound/
At the bottom of this page, there is an embedded video of Les recording “Brazil” on the discs, and when the pop up screen appears, click the play button at the bottom and the + and – controls to add or remove tracks.
Finally, this clip came to my attention while watching the great PBS series “Soundbreaking” which has so far aired 4 of the 8 episodes (nightly) and I can’t wait for the rest.
By the way…notice in this video clip, the whole thing starts out with a prop given credit for the way the recording system works. That part is pure Les Paul. He was a joker and all around great guy. ENJOY and SHARE! -Bobby Ellerbee
Television’s 1st Prime Time Season; 1948…With My Detailed Notes
This is just amazing…what you will see here are some of the first shows to run in the first real TV season, with all four networks in operation…NBC, CBS, ABC and Dumont. Back then, “networks” with live feeds, were basicly a handful of stations in the northeast, with outlying affiliates able to take shows via kinescope, which is how these clips survived. Oh, and the only network programming was from 7 – 10 PM.
Live network coverage was about to expand though, as an NBC VO announces at the start of this, that the midwest network links will be open and operating by Christmas, 1948.
“The Gay Nineties” show was on ABC on Wednesday nights from 8 – 8:30.
At 1:50 we see some of an early “Texaco Star Theater” with Milton Berle from NBC’s newly converted Studio 6B. This was the first show to come from 6B after it was converted from radio to television June 8, 1948. The woman with the great laugh is Milton’s mother who was at every show.
Just after that is “The Ed Wynn Show” which NBC did as a remote from The New Amsterdam, before it was converted in 1951.
At 3:32, “The Admiral Broadway Revue” was the first television show produced by Max Leibman, and starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca…this is the forerunner of “Your Show Of Shows”, and both were done at The International Theater at 5 Columbus Circle.
More rare footage starts at 4:44 with the intro of “The Fireball Fun For All” starring Olsen and Johnson. This ran one season, and was one of the first shows to come from CBS Studio 52. The assistant director is the legendary CBS director Ralph Levy in his second ever TV job. Levy went on to direct Jack Benny, Burns And Allen and the Lucy pilot. Levy’s first AD job was on the first show done at Studio 52, a summer show called “The 54th Street Revue” that ran eight weeks.
There’s more history at 6:10…”The Chesterfield Supper Club” starring Perry Como, was the first television show to broadcast from NBC Studio 6A. The studio was not converted officially till May 19, 1950. When this was shot, 6A was still a radio studio with a three camera remote unit and very few lights, which you notice here.
More history at 6:50! This is “The Fred Waring Show” from CBS Studio 41 at Grand Central, and this aired on Sunday night, just after “Toast Of The Town” with Ed Sullivan, which then came from Studio 51, The Maxine Elliott Theater.
Remember the opening announcement about the midwest network link up? “Your Show Time” had premiered on NBC’s East Coast stations in September 1948, and began to include NBC’s Midwest stations on January 21.
“Armchair Detective” was a Dumont show done at WABD.
At 9:06 notice the producer title…William Boyd. Boyd was Hopalong Cassidy, and a very smart showman! This show was an hour long and aired on NBC Friday nights at 8, starting in 1949.
“The Lone Ranger” debuted on ABC in September of 1949 and aired at 7:30 Wednesday nights.
Remember the Hungry Jack Biscuit commercials with the “Hungry…Hungry Jack” call? Here’s where it came from…the opening of “The Aldrich Family” at 10:23. This was on NBC at 7:30 Sundays.
At 10:55, one of television’s biggest shows appears…”The Goldbergs”, which was on CBS, and came from Studio 42 at Grand Central. This started in 1949, and aired Monday nights at 9:30.
Just after that is another huge CBS show, “Mama” which also started in 1949 and aired Friday nights at 8, against “Hopalong Cassidy” on NBC.
“The Ruggles” began on ABC, November 3, 1949 – a month after the radio hit “The Life of Riley” had moved to television on NBC, and interestingly, that is the next clip…but if you were expecting William Bendix as Riley, surprise…Riley is played by Jackie Gleason! This was his first starring role.
At 13:10 we see the open for “Suspense” which aired on CBS from ’49 till ’54. It was on Tuesday night opposite “The Life Of Riley”.
Finally, the last clip is from “Studio 1”. It was a big hit, and an important early anthology series on CBS, which debuted in September of 1948, and ran 10 seasons ending in 1958. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
From February 16, 1949 until October 25, 1956, John Cameron Swayze hosted the 15 minute, week night NBC network news broadcast. The show was done from Studio C in the NBC Uptown Studios building on 106th Street, near Park Avenue.
In this photo from 1949, notice a few things. First, the exaggerated angles the cameras used to shoot him, early on. Second, notice the work-around pan heads on the pedestal cameras.
These are first generation pedestals, made for the RCA Iconoscope cameras that fed the camera cable inside the center column. The pan head for those Iconoscope cameras was not suitable for the much heavier RCA TK30s we see here, and the new friction heads and Mitchel style high hat mounts were not the same size as the column. That meant they had to weld a flat piece to the top to the column and attach these three leg mounts, until the new Houston Fearless TD 1 pedestals were put into Studio C.
This was the first NBC news program to use NBC filmed news stories rather than movie newsreels, which is why the NBC Television News Department was also located at the Uptown Studios. In December of 1948, NBC bought the 11 story studio building from Pathe, who had two huge film processing labs just next door. This was done with an eye toward using Pathe as a distribution partner in getting the NBC Kinescopes processed and shipped.
This live anchor news show, that aired at 7:45 weeknights, grew out of a show that started the year before. Launched on February 16, 1948, by NBC, “Camel Newsreel Theater” was a 10-minute program that featured Fox Movietone News newsreels, with John Cameron Swayze providing off camera voice-over for the series.
The following Monday evening, October 29, 1956, “The Camel News Caravan” was replaced by “The Huntley-Brinkley Report”. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had word passed to NBC’s White House correspondent that the president was displeased by the switch. Ike later grew to like Chet and David. -Bobby Ellerbee
