TV History

50 Years From CBS Television City…Part 3, The Variety Shows The Variety Show segment has two parts and this is the link to the second part. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShnIw82D5js Tom and Dick Smothers are the hosts of this segment and we start with their great show with a rundown of their production week which puts them…

50 Years From CBS Television City…Part 2, The Talk Shows The Talk Show segment has two parts and this is the link to the second part. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fWWdxFiQFA The first segment, hosted by Craig Kilborn features great footage from Art Linkletter, Merv Griffin, Dinah Shore, Mike Douglas and more. The second part starts with Merv…

50 Years From CBS Television City…Part 1, The Soap Operas CBS dedicated its new $7 million Hollywood production and office facility, Television City, on November 15, 1952. This special with Carol Burnett as host aired in April of 2002. As you’ll see as we go, this was done during the Hitachi period at TVC…

Just For Fun! Can You Guess What’s Going On Here? Hint: this is somewhere under the rainbow! Source

This is where Lester Holt anchors the weekend edition of NBC’s ‘Nightly News’ show. This is Media Room 1, which is one of four small studios inside Studio 6E, otherwise known as the Global Media Center. The control room for all four is right next door. This was the main news desk used by…

Judy Garland…March 5, 1967, ‘What’s My Line’ At the end, Judy mentions “Valley Of The Dolls” which puts this show and Jack Paar’s visit with her about the same time, as that was mentioned in the Paar audio posted yesterday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIiCtk9NW_k The great Judy Garland on What’s My Line (March 5, 1967) Enjoy! 🙂…

Just Amazing! A Parade Of 50 Years Of CBS Stars! Part 2 It is extremely rare to see the founder and chairman of CBS on television, but here is William S. Paley along with Walter Cronkite closing the week’s festivities with about a hundred of America’s best known faces. The long pan of stars…

More “SUPER” Rarities… So many people liked yesterday’s post, I thought we’d look deeper. ‘The Adventures Of Superman’ ran from 1952-58 and was a syndicated show sponsored by Kellogg’s. The show’s first two seasons (episodes 1–52, 26 titles per season) were filmed in black-and-white; seasons three through six (episodes 53–104, 13 titles per season)…

Judy Garland…Jack Paar’s Storytelling At It’s Best Aside from Television City, the other part of our Memorial Day Weekend special features include the great, Judy Garland. This is a very rare audio recording made by Jack Paar about a day he spent with Judy in Hollywood. Paar is a legendary storyteller and this is…

Ultra Rare! RCA TK40 Prototype Color Camera…November 1952 Since posting this a year or so ago, new details on the first use of this camera have surfaced. As you remember, a few months back, I published the first and only timeline history of the NBC New York Studios. While doing that research, a tiny…

‘Superman’…Rarities From Radio & Television This is Superman’s “flying pan” which was used by George Reeves in ‘The Adventures Of Superman’, that many of us grew up watching. After a few falls from wire suspension, on which was fairly serious, the pan was developed for Reeves to lay in and tilting and rolling was…

NBC Director Max Schindler’s Day….November 22, 1963 At the link is our friend Max Schindler’s account of the arrival of President Kennedy and President Johnson from Dallas. He was the director sent to cover the arrival for NBC in Washington, and as it turns out, for CBS and ABC too, as his truck was…

December 21, 1958…’Dancing: A Man’s Game’ With Gene Kelly NBC’s great ‘Omnibus’ program, which I remember well, was a wide ranging show that on one Sunday afternoon included a half hour segment conceived, written and narrated by Gene Kelly. Assisted by the top names in sport, like Mickey Mantle, Sugar Ray Robinson and Johnny…

Quite Rare: Barbara Walters…The Lucy Interview, 1977 This is the only known full presentation of Walters’ famous interview with Lucille Ball. Unfortunately, there are not many surviving interviews with Lucy, and none as in depth or as deep as this one. This is Barbara at her best! Enjoy and share. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQR5BzN4EKg Along with having…

‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’…Full Pilot Episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBrhKRBxDLw&ab_channel=thegoldenagetvandmoviechannel This is part of the text from the Emmy Legends story on the pilot show called ‘Head Of The Family’ that starred Carl Reiner as Rob Petrie. Read on… Back in the summer of 1958, Carl Reiner, already an established writer and supporting actor on Sid…

Spoiler Alert…They Weren’t Really In Casablanca, OR Outside! Just for fun, here’s a shot of the final scene of ‘Casablanca’ filmed around August 2, 1942. The whole picture was shot on the Warner back lot except for the sequence showing Major Strasser’s arrival, which was filmed at Van Nuys Airport, and a few short…

This Rare Color Photo Reveals More Than You Know! There are two other photos like this, but this is the only color version. Each description of these similar images eludes to a “studio tour”, and show 1930 era visitors being shot by an RCA field camera and seeing themselves in a monitor. These photos…

History’s Most Infamous Game Show Footage…’Twenty One’ This show was done live from NBC Studio 6B, Wednesday night, November 19, 1956. This was the fourth and final round of play on ‘Twenty One’ between Charles Van Doren and Herb Stempel. The other three were tie games…21 to 21. The video is Qed to the…