TV History

Durante’s Signature Sign Off…Who Was Mrs. Calabash? The most revered part of Jimmy’s show was the finale when he would slowly fade away walking through a succession of spotlights, pausing in each one to either look down or look back at the audience (see the video clip below). He did this after bidding farewell,…

Baseball Rights $$$, 1961 There is a great enlargeable graph in this story that shows, team by team, the amount they were paid for TV and Radio broadcast rights for the season. Interestingly, WGN did all the Cubs & Sox games in color and WLW-T did a lot of color too. The figures will…

Technically Speaking…The Dumont 124 IO Camera Finally! Thanks to 51 year TV veteran Bill Freiberg of KTRK in Houston TX, who started with Dumont equipment, we finally know some of secrets that had been lost for so long on these cameras. Below is his letter to me and a photo of a Dumont 124B…

1 Minute Radio-Canada Color Promo” 1968 Thanks to former CBC engineer Serge Bordeleau for sending this. It was shot on film at the IBC building ( Expo67). Fast montage showing talent and equipment including the RCA TK42. Publicité québécoise du bon vieux temps de Radio-Canada mettant en scène de l’équipement technique, un mime et…

Remembering David Frost British journalist David Frost, who was best known for his interview with former President Richard Nixon, died on Saturday, his family said. The veteran broadcaster was 74. During his 50-year career not only were there plenty of heavyweight interviews – Frost sat down with seven US presidents and six British prime…

Remember ‘Mr. Peepers’? This photo was taken by Mike Mathews’ mother in 1952 while in the audience of the live show in NBC Studio 8H. After it’s first year, production moved to the Century Theater on Seventh Avenue. The series starred Wally Cox and was not scheduled to air in the fall of ’52,…

David Letterman…First Monologue, First Show February 1, 1982, Late Night premiered with a cold opening featuring Larry “Bud” Melman delivering lines as an homage to the prologue of Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, followed by Letterman coming out on stage behind a group of female dancers – the peacock girls. After a brief monologue, the very…

David Letterman…Last Monologue on NBC This is classic! Wait till you see David and Paul ice skate! Enjoy… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NnrXKxOHkw The Last Episode of “Late Night with David Letterman”. Guests: Tom Hanks and Bruce Springsteen. Source

A Rare Surviving Technicolor Camera There were never many of these…I think no more than 30 or so world wide and some of those were rebuilt for other color processes. This camera is in the collection of my friend Carey Williams in Chicago and is valued around $50,000. It is known to have been…

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It was part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Here is one of the many cameras from every network covering the event. NBC’s Chicago O&O, WNBQ had a big…

The Burns & Allen Show…1950-1958 Their radio show started in 1936 but by 1950, it was time to move to television. When ‘The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show’ began on CBS Television October 12, 1950, it was an immediate success. The show was originally staged live before a studio audience and during its…

The Great Fred de Cordova Fred joined ‘The Tonight Show’ at age 60 and left the show at age 82, but he covered a lot of ground before that! After his graduation from Harvard Law School in 1933, he worked in the Shubert Theater organization and directed stage shows for the next ten years.…

Did You Know This? Before the factoid, take a look at this great one minute clip from Studio 1 in Burbank with TK44s. Producer Fred de Cordova sat off camera at the end of the guest sofa and had a “go to commercial” button at his chair that lit a signal light in the…

Leo And Jackie In 1965, ABC provided the first-ever nationwide baseball coverage with weekly Saturday broadcasts on a regional basis. Each Saturday, ABC would broadcast two 2 p.m. games and one 5 p.m. game for the Pacific Time Zone. Merle Harmon, Chris Schenkel, Keith Jackson, and on occasion, Ken Coleman served as ABC’s principal…

‘The Mickey Mouse Club’ 1955-1960 The Mickey Mouse Club was was first televised from 1955 till 1960 on ABC, featuring a regular but ever-changing cast of child performers. Reruns were broadcast by ABC on weekday afternoons during the 1960s, right after American Bandstand. The series ran on ABC Television for an hour each weekday…

‘Caesar’s Hour’…1954-57 After ‘Your Show Of Shows’ ended it’s four year run, Imogene Coca was offered her own show…a half hour on NBC that ran from 1954-1955. Sid Caesar replaced Coca with Nanette Fabray. The already great writing staff including Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner added Woody Allen and Larry Glebarth. “The Commuters” was…

Early Marconi Color Testing I suspect this experimental color camera is from around 1954. It is the predecessor to Marconi’s BD 848 which appeared around 1957 and was built along the lines of the RCA TK41. Around 1947 Marconi entered an agreement with RCA to build modified versions of the TK 30 which became…

They’ve Created A Monster! Literally! Here’s a shot inside Universal’s special make up lab. The designer of the approved Gill-man was Disney animator Millicent Patrick, though her role was deliberately downplayed by makeup artist Bud Westmore, who for half a century would receive sole credit for the creature’s conception. Jack Kevan, who worked on…