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January 13, 1957…Dinah And The Colonial Theater TK40 Cameras

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January 13, 1957…Dinah And The Colonial Theater TK40 Cameras

The Colonial Theater was NBC’s first color facility. A few seconds after this video’s start point, the first camera we see is the TK40 in it’s original configuration…notice there are no vents on the viewfinder housing. The Colonial was the only NBC theater with TK40s and these are the original four pre production/prototype cameras that were delivered in November of 1952. Production in Camden would not start till April of 1954 with only 25 TK40s built before a quick switch to the TK41 later that year.

Once the crane camera comes into view, notice it has a vented viewfinder housing, but it is still a TK40. My long study of The Colonial’s cameras has always made me wonder why they left one TK40 with the original un-vented VF cover. RCA supplied the updated, vented cover to TK40 owners once the TK41s went into production in 1954.

Usually, Dinah’s show came from Burbank, but for some reason, they are in NY for a couple of weeks. Dinah’s one hour show ran on NBC from October of ’56 till May of ’63 and was always in color. Bob Banner was the producer. -Bobby Ellerbee

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8 responses to “January 13, 1957…Dinah And The Colonial Theater TK40 Cameras”

  1. Val Ginter

    I saw her show from the Sullivan in, I think, 1976. My mom called me and told me she saw me in the audience while Dinah sang a song from Oliver. Actually, I called my mom regarding the play-date.

  2. Alan Kline

    Love the cardboard extensions on the viewfinder hood!

  3. Robert Barker

    I’ve often wondered about black and white kinescopes of a color program. Often the milkiest, unfocused b&w kinescopes seem to be of programs that were broadcast in color. It makes me wonder if they simply put a black and white kine camera in front of a color monitor. It would have seemed smarter to kine it in front of a monitor transmitting black and white. I think this is what brought about the invention of the lenticular color kinescope, that temporary stop gap before color videotape. But since we’re not even sure if there are any examples out there, or a machine that could play them, we might not ever know. (We will, someday. Hell, they found ‘Ugly Doody’.) A good example, I think, of crappy b&w kines from color programming is Jack Paar. All of the Jack Paar material you see is on b&w kine, but we know the last few years of his version of the Tonight Show was in color, as was his follow up program on NBC on Friday Nights. And almost all of the kines look terrible.

  4. Tom Williamson

    Very interesting as always!

  5. Dave Miller

    Of course it’s a New York show … your announcer is Don Pardo! I suspect NY origination to schmooze General Motors management, NBC brass, ad agencies and so forth.

  6. Don Bayley

    It was interesting to see what happened when they shot into the lights.

  7. Curtis Bohl

    Was the show broadcast in color, or did they just disable the color burst and transmit in monochrome?

  8. Greg Shannon

    That’s some pretty brave directing there. Great stuff.

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