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The “TONIGHT” Show’s Oldest Surviving Color Video…Sept 1, 1964

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Eyes Of A Generation.com

The “TONIGHT” Show’s Oldest Surviving Color Video…Sept 1, 1964

Above is a very rare piece of tape, that survived only because Stan Zabka, a former AD on the show, and a musical guest on this occasion, had a pal roll tape on his segment. A few years ago, he had our friends at DC Video in LA transfer the tape to a digital format.

This was in NBC’s Studio 6B in New York, just three years after Johnny and Ed took over. The cameras were the great RCA TK41s, which for that day and age, made very good color pictures.

As I write this, I am reminded of a story told to me by NBC’s John Pinto, who came to “Saturday Night Live” the year it started, and is now Camera 1, on the crane. John started in the summer, just before the show started, and to give him something to do for a few weeks, NBC sent him to New Jersey, where he spent a whole week bulk erasing “Tonight” show tapes. John said “his heart hurt” every time he hit the button. So glad the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service had archived many years of the show, or all of it would be gone! Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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17 responses to “The “TONIGHT” Show’s Oldest Surviving Color Video…Sept 1, 1964”

  1. Robert Barker

    So….this, and at least 3/4 of the first Super Bowl, were recorded by private parties. Is there a group of collectors out there who might have some of the lost treasures?

  2. Marc Wielage

    BTW, the NBC exec who made the decision to dump the Burbank tapes did so on the assumption that “anything worth saving was already in the TONIGHT SHOW ANNIVERSARY shows,” so that was his justification. Carson was particularly irate and later said he would’ve been glad to pay the $3000-$4000/month vault storage costs outside NBC had they just asked him about it.

  3. Marc Wielage

    Bobby, I knew a tape op at NBC Burbank, and he told me that when he was there in 1973 or 1974, the decision had been made to clear out a tape vault and turn it into office spaces. The tapes included all they had on the West coast for the TONIGHT SHOW. Everything was taken out to a landfill, dumped, and bulldozed. He said none of the tapes could be reused because they were mostly B&W. Maybe there was another warehouse in NJ. There was hell to pay when Fred deCordova found out about it, but it was too late by that point.

  4. Dave Dillman

    The only reason I got tapes of some stuff I directed was because they were on slick back 379 and the station was tossing them in favor of matte back 400 stock. I did convince one boss to no reuse 3/4″ field tape since we often shot b-roll that could be used for other projects without dispatching a crew.

  5. Ted Sodergren

    Not totally on the subject, but I’d almost forgotten the nice, almost pastel pictures that the TK 41’s made. Makes me pretty nostalgic.

  6. Fred Leonard

    Are any of the AFRTS kinescopes from New York/pre-DeCordova era available online? I checked YouTube but couldn’t find any. I worked for AFRTS when I was in the service. We got a nightly abridged Tonight Show on the radio and weekly we got an abridged (or maybe censored would be more accurate) kinescope of one show each week. The kinescoped show was weeks old but the Tonight Show on radio was fairly current and actually the show played well on radio. But if those AFRTS kinescopes are still around, I’d sure enjoy seeing them again.
    Early clips are still available from the prime time retrospective specials but how many times is Ed Ames and the tomahawk going to be funny?

  7. Frank H. Robinson

    “John started in the Summer, just before the show started” which show? 1962 or 1975?

  8. Neil Borrell

    When WOR-TV moved from 42nd Street and 7th Avenue to Secaucus, New Jersey we left behind a dumpster filled with unerased 2″ shows. I was once ordered to have a series I had Produced and Directed erased when there was a question about the ownership of a clip that had been broadcast.

  9. Bob Johanson

    It was 1964 I belive, was in NY, got a call from TOPS to report to the Carson show to do video control on a B&W camera, was a Alpo commercial with Ed MacManus seems it cost more to use a color camera.

  10. Greg Dunstan

    Very cool, I was one day old when this was shot. I’m Australian but was in the US and saw Carson’s last show live, I don’t recall the date but almost felt privileged to be a part of it. One of those moments that most people remember where they were.

  11. Darren Thornton

    Didn’t a viewer save the Ed Ames clip? I thought it got shown in color on an anniversary special. Steve Allen said most of his Tonight Shows got destroyed for the shelf space. There were some programs he’d thrown in the fire himself. But many great episodes also got lost. Johnny Carson’s last show began with audio and stills from the first show. Few thought there’d be interest in seeing these programs again. Thankfully we have sme of them.

  12. Tom Williamson

    I worked for a station that had a low end Of ethics system that used Panasonic decks that played S-VHS tapes. They chose it specifically because of tape cost

  13. John Bettini

    The brilliance of the corporate executives who were penny pinching to reuse tape, is astonishing!!!

  14. Derek Toten

    My old boss was a station engineer and later director at an NBC affiliate. He was literally among those that built the station in 1947 and was there for the transition from film to tape. When I asked him the same thing about all the years of local broadcast history that were erased in re-using video tape, he told me that the station invested in tape partly on the basis of the cost savings of re-using tape. Tape erasure and re-use wasn’t a bug in the system, it was a highly touted feature!

  15. Shawn Mullins

    So cool.

  16. Jeremy Butler

    Watching this, I’m struck by how Johnny Carson is constantly in motion. I think of him as a cool, collected guy; but now I’m wondering if he actually felt nervous and uncomfortable doing the show.

    Of course, he was a famously private person off-camera…

  17. Peter Sullivan

    & John Pinto is still here @ NBC. Fortunately there is not too much video tape here that needs to be erased!

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