October 1, 1952…’This Is Your Life’ Debuts On NBC

‘This Is Your Life’ had its genesis in radio as a good natured gesture on the ‘Truth or Consequences’ show in 1946. General Omar Bradley asked Ralph Edwards to do something to help returning World War II veterans, especially paraplegics. He said they were depressed and reluctant to see anyone, including their families. Ralph’s ingenious solution was to profile a returning hero on his radio program, which created a “voice” for all veterans. Lawrence Tranter was selected as the first honoree. His story was told by surprising him with people from his past – family, friends, school teachers, and others in an emotion-filled episode. Knowing Tranter had ambitions to be a watch repair technician, the show arranged for him to attend the Bulova School of Watchmaking in New York.

‘This Is Your Life’ began its official TV run on October 1, 1952 with the life of Laura Stone Marr, mother of actor Milburn Stone who we best remember as “Doc” on Gunsmoke. An instant hit on NBC, the show virtually stopped America in its tracks every Wednesday night and ran till 1961.

This was among the first NBC series to originate from California, so in order to get this on the air in the east in early prime time the show had to start in late afternoon with a kinescope broadcast for the west coast. The reason the east rarely ran a kine was that most of the nation’s population was there…the most viewers got the best quality.

The photos below are from the 1958 Francis Farmer episode and were taken by the father of Jim Early. Thanks to Jim for sharing them with us as these are the only known color photos of the show. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

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A-MAZE-ING: Live Television

This NYC shot is a stark contrast to the way live production changed once bigger studios, like the ones at Television City, allowed horizontal staging…sets, all in a row that allowed crews and cameras to move side to side on the stage.

This photo could possibly be from the newly converted CBS Studio 50, which is now home to David Letterman. It was converted from radio to television in 1950 and this shot from the catwalk shows three RCA TK10s within 6 feet of each other ready to shoot three different scenes on this maze like set. The production is the 1950 “Studio One’ presentation of ‘The Scarlet Letter’. In 1950, ‘Studio One’ won an Emmy for Best Kinescope.

Notice the low camera in the top left is shooting into the rear of a fireplace opening and soon, will give us an image of one of the characters putting wood on the fire from inside the fireplace, but first the camera on the other side of the wall has to move. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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A Special 4 Star Whammy…Carson And Three Top Cartoon Voices

First off, the lead segment of this 1955 kinescope of ‘The Johnny Carson Show’ on CBS is some of the best quality I’ve ever seen. The last part with Johnny as a reporter is more typical of kine quality, or lack there off.

Johnny’s wife is played by the great June Foray who as we all know by now was most famous for her roles as Rocky and Natasha on ‘The Adventures Of Rocky And Bullwinkle’.

In the clip’s Bonus Footage section, we get to see Sara Berner as the older lady in the French sketch. Among other things, she was the voice of Andy Panda, Chilly Willie and Jerry The Mouse who was Fred Astaire’s animated dancing partner in ‘Anchors Aweigh’. Like June Foray, she did hundreds of other voices in MGM and Warner Brothers cartoons.

John Stephenson plays a news man here, and is probably best known as Fred Flintstone’s boss…Mr. Slate. He also did a lot of voices on ‘Scooby Doo’ and ‘Johnny Quest’. Stevenson also shared the narration duties on ‘Dragnet’ with George Fenneman. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDd1TU-Paa0

June Foray making a rare on-screen appearance on the Johnny Carson show on CBS some time around September 1955 and sounding very much like Rocky the Flying S…

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Remembering Lauren Bacall…Her Television Debut

This photo of Bacall, Fonda and Bogart was taken at NBC Burbank on May 30, 1955 during the dress rehearsal of a ‘Producer’s Showcase’ presentation of “Petrified Forest”…this was Lauren Bacall’s first appearance in a live television drama.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riylfh_9ir8
At the link is a rare kinescope of that performance. This, the only known copy, was given to The Paley Center For Media by Bacall herself in 1990.

‘Producer’s Showcase’ was NBC’s vehicle for their celebrated 90 minute color “spectaculars” which included 37 productions from 1954 till 1957. The most famous of these would be ‘Peter Pan’. This was the eleventh edition of this monthly series and may have been the first one done from the west coast.

It was directed by Delbert Mann and starred Bacall, Henry Fonda and Humphrey Bogart in what would also be his first appearance in a live television drama. Jack Klugman, Richard Jaeckel, and Jack Warden played supporting roles.

If you’ve ever seen “Key Largo”, you’ll instantly recognize the similarity of the story lines of escaped convicts taking over, in this case, a dessert dinner as opposed to a Florida Keys hotel. Enjoy and share. – Bobby Ellerbee

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Ultra Rare…Behind The ‘Laugh In’ Joke Wall, Photo & Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFksUB9gWyk
First, there is an “extra special” blooper at the 1:30 mark of this great ‘Laugh In’ joke wall blooper reel. By the way, the first person you see is Producer George Schlatter, with the bead.

This is the only known photo of this famous ending portion of the show that gives us a look at how it was staged. I think ‘Laugh In’ came from NBC Burbank Studio 3, but over the years, could have been done in more than one location there.

Although this was a color show, notice the blooper reel is in black and white and here’s why. This was one of the first weekly shows to be shot and edited on color videotape, but it was still a hand splicing task back then. The best way to edit the show was to also make a kinescope of the live taping and first, edit the kine film. The cuts were very fast and it took the editors about five or six weeks to get each episode ready for air. Enjoy and share!

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The NBC 8G Studio Cameras…One Of Television’s Rarities

NBC’s official grand opening date for 8G, their second ever studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza is listed as April 22, 1948. Actually, television had been coming from 8G long before that while it was still designated a radio studio.

The first show ever to come from 8G was also television’s first variety show…’Hourglass’, which debuted May 9, 1946. Later that year, ‘Let’s Celebrate’ was done here as a one time show on December 15, 1946 with Yankee’s announcer Mel Allen as host.

‘The Swift Show’ (a Swift Company sponsored game show), and ‘Americana’ (a game show about American history) started here in 1947.

With the RCA TK30 planned release date of late 1946, I have often wondered why the NBC engineers built these cameras to use in 8G but recent research put a new face on this and answers a few big questions.

NBC knew television had to grow fast after WW II, but there were still war related shortages, like phosphorus for kinescope screens and military embargos on technology like the Image Orthicon which was used in guidance systems. Believing that new cameras would come more slowly than RCA was planning on delivery, NBC engineers knew they had to have more than the cameras in 3H to work with. On the sly, the got four RCA Image Orthicons and four seven inch kinescopes for the VF and started to work building a camera I call the NBC ND-8G. The ND was an NBC engineering code that stood for New Development.

I think these cameras were actually ready for use by the spring of 1946. ‘Hourglass’ debuted from 8G on May 9, 1946 which was six months before the TK30 scheduled release in October. NBC got their first four TK30s in late June, just in time for the Billy Conn – Joe Louis rematch at Yankee Stadium.

I don’t think 8G, as a radio studio, had built in audience seating like 6A, 6B and 8H, but it was thankfully three times the size of NBC’s only other television studio, 3H. “Radio Age” states that 8G could handle four consecutive shows, which meant the often fifteen minute and half hour shows, with only one small set, could be staged one after the other from different walls of the studio.

Below we see the cameras in action on ‘The Philco Television Playhouse’ which originated in 8G beginning in October of 1948. Notice the camera peephole in the wall covered by a painting. Enjoy and share!

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A Real Rarity…’Amos ‘n’ Andy’ Television Screen Test, 1950

Before ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy’ came to CBS Television in 1951, it had been a huge hit on radio and aired from March 19, 1928 to November 25, 1960. Charles Correll (Andy), and Freeman Gosden (Amos and Kingfish) were the creators and voices of all the characters…170 of them.

The rare video here is a 1950 kinescope recording of a screen test
of Correll and Gosden in blackface. In the last few minutes of the reel, you can see them giving different profiles to the camera to see if they are convincing, which they are not. This was probably done at CBS Columbia Square studios in Hollywood.

Gosden and Correll were very protective of their creation and wanted to play the roles on TV, but that was not in the cards. They even considered voicing the main characters and letting the stage actors lip sync their parts.

In their hearts, they knew that a couple of white guys could not pull this off on television, but they gave it a try. Fortunately they had been smart enough to keep an eye out for the right characters to play the TV roles and had been taking notes on actors for four years.

Alvin Childress was cast as Amos, who was the original main character in 1928, but by the late ’30s, the Kingfish character had become the main character, along with Andy. Tim Moore, who played Kingfish and Spencer Williams who played Andy were coaxed out of retirement to play the lead rolls.

There were a few “firsts” associated with this show’s radio and television history. ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy’ is thought to be the first ever syndicated radio show: although it was broadcast on NBC for many years, it was also sold to independent stations and delivered on 78 rpm discs. The television show went into production at Hal Roach Studios and began filming with three cameras several months before ‘I Love Lucy’ began filming and is considered one of the first sit coms to be filmed with three cameras. ‘Burns & Allen’ also did this, but live television had been doing three camera shows for years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqw6FV3SeDw

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‘All In The Family’…Some Interesting History

Well, these pictures of the cast arriving at Television City settles one thing…it was definitely after September of 1973 when the set moved to Metro Media Studios. I can’t find a firm date, but I think the show moved at the end of the 1975 season.

I understand the reason for the move was that Norman Lear had so many shows in production at NBC, CBS and ABC, that shuttling between the shows was driving him crazy. Metro Media heard about this and offered Lear all seven stages of their Metro Media Square facility and he took them up on the offer and moved them all under one roof.

I’m not sure if this is true, but it is widely reported that when the show’s first pilot was done in New York in 1968, it became the first time a sitcom in the US used videotape as a recording device. Most sitcoms were either done on film or were performed live and kinescoped. Videotape editing was still done with a razor blade and Smith Block back then.

Did you know that Harrison Ford was offered the part played by Rob Reiner? Or that Reiner had to audition three times before Lear chose him? By the way…”Meathead” was the name Lear’s father called him when he was upset with him.

When CBS started rerunning the show during the day in 1975, it was edited by three minutes to allow more commercial time. Norman Lear was unhappy with the editing and offered to pay for the commercial time that would have been lost by showing it uncut, but CBS declined his offer. That I know of, this is the first mention of 7 minutes of spots in half hour show. 4 minutes was the prime time rule.

Although Edith Bunker’s singing voice left a lot to be desired, Jean Stapleton’s didn’t. She was classically trained and had many singing parts on Broadway.

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‘The Honeymooners’…The Classic 39

The first Honeymooners sketch was done live, October 5, 1951 as part of Dumont’s ‘Cavalcade Of Stars’ show which Jackie Gleason had become the host of in June 1950. It was only six minutes long, but started something that lasts till this day.

Gleason’s Dumont show did quite well and CBS noticed! They brought Jackie and company to Studio 50 in July of 1952 and the rating soared on the Saturday night, hour long, live broadcast. As Honeymooners sketches became more popular, they got longer and could run up to 30 or 45 minutes.

In 1955, Gleason told CBS he wanted take a break from the live show, but wanted to continue a half hour version of the Honeymooners. Gleason still had friends at Dumont and they had told him about the new Dumont Labs Electronicam that shot live video and 35 millimeter film simultaneously.

Gleason had been impressed by the way ‘I Love Lucy’ was produced and wanted to do film, but keep the live aspect of the show. The Electronicam was perfect for this. A kinescope recording was made of the live presentation, which was switched like a regular live show, but in editing, if a camera had a better angle on a scene, they were able to use that instead of the original shot.

All 39 episodes of The Honeymooners were filmed at the DuMont Television Network’s Adelphi Theater at 152 West 54th Street in Manhattan, in front of an audience of 1,000. Episodes were never fully rehearsed, as Gleason felt that rehearsals would rob the show of its spontaneity. The shows were shot on Saturday nights at 8 and by 9, Jackie was headed to Toots Shores or 21.

Gleason and company went back to live television in 1956 because Jackie felt the quality of the longer Honeymooners scripts was petering out. The 39th and last original episode aired on September 22, 1956. In explaining his decision to end the show, Gleason said, “the excellence of the material could not be maintained, and I had too much fondness for the show to cheapen it”. One week after The Honeymooners ended, ‘The Jackie Gleason Show’ returned live to Studio 50 on September 29. Soon after, so did The Honeymooners sketches. Enjoy and share.

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