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Jack Benny TV show on DVD? (1 Viewer)

Eric Paddon

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One problem with the Universal VHS set is that it leaves out one important component of Benny's TV shows, and that's the integrated commercial. From his radio days on, Jack always made use of the commercial in a funny, inventive way often as an extension of the show itself and it's unfortunate that we've never been able to see how this was done on the filmed Benny shows that aired in repeats in syndication and on cable (the live shows that have been released on public domain releases will leave them in, but the Shokus version of the Peter Lorre guest show from 1962 is the only instance of a filmed Benny show with ads getting released that I know of).

The only time I have ever seen an official release of a TV program on VHS that left the commercials in for a filmed show (not live) was when Columbia House released the 1952-53 episodes of "Burns And Allen" (the first filmed season) and left the filmed ads for B.F. Goodrich and Carnation in on about half of the programs rather than using the syndicated prints that had a different opening and closing credit sequence.
 

David Von Pein

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The only time I have ever seen an official release of a TV program on VHS that left the commercials in for a filmed show (not live) was when Columbia House released the 1952-53 episodes of "Burns And Allen"
What about Humphrey Bogart's first TV appearance (on the Benny Show) in 1953, where the integrated Lucky Strike ad was incorporated throughout the
"Baby Face Bogart" skit? Was this a "taped for later broadcast" episode, or was it Live? Because I have that episode 3 times on various VHS tapes, and the whole thing is included each time.

There's also the "Liberace" Benny episode with the L. Strike commercial left in (integrated, sort of, in a bit where Don Wilson is examining everyone's cigarettes in a theatre lobby just before the Benny/Liberace concert).
 

Eric Paddon

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Those are live shows released by public domain companies. I'm referring to the filmed shows which constitutes what's been shown in syndicated repeat packages over the years where the entire integrated ad spot is always snipped out.

Benny's TV show was unique in that it was often throughout the 1950s a mixture of both live and filmed shows and not tied to one specific format.
 

David Von Pein

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Anybody ever see Jack Benny's excellent performance (as "Tom Jones") on Ronald Reagan's General Electric Theater on November 28, 1953, in a 30-minute teleplay called "The Face Is Familiar"? This is another Benny great I'd like on DVD some day.

EDIT -- Actually, "The Face Is Familiar" episode *is* on DVD now, thru Shokus.com. However, those DVDs are little improvement over the VHS.
 

Kajs

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Well, I got it, and...ummmm....its ok. I skipped through it and the source doesn't seem too bad, but there is way too much compression, it seems like the "action" is ahead of the pixels, if you know what I mean. It's kind of hard to explain...like say you were looking at Jack's suit, when he moves, the pixels seem to be like seconds behind his movement...they don't shift over, they kind of stay in the same place, I think if there was less compression this wouldn't be a problem. Does any of this make sense?
 

Scott Kriefall

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Yes, the video quality isn't great and is somewhat jumpy or jerky in places. I have an old videotape with the same 3 episodes, and the DVD is an improvement over that.

The content most definitely has not been "Digitally Restored" -- despite the claim to the contrary on the front of the DVD keepcase.
 

Kajs

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I've gotten thru most of this now, and the first episode quality isn't too bad relatively speaking, but the second episode is very jittery the whole way thru, pretty distracting. And the hour long special probably looks the best of the group it even has the Eastern Airlines commericals intact, but at the beginning of the episode Jack mentions that it was a color episode, and here its presented in B&W. Theres a nice Beach Boys performance of "California Girls" and "Barbara Ann" on it, I'm suprised there wasn't some sort of music clearance issue that would cut the performance out.
 

mark-edk

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Jun 28, 2002
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Every "nostalgia tv" dvd I have seen looks really bad: splicy prints, poorly transferred in bad sound. Except for the "1950s TV" series that can be found at Deep Discount DVD. These titles seem to have been mastered from much better sources. They were produced by Carl Amari, who used to run Radio Spirits, the old-time radio company--and they look far better than the PD titles on cheap labels.
 

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