shows that have been destroyed (2 Viewers)

[AndyMcKinney]

Doctor who?? Aw, shoot! They shoulda asked me! My Aunt Lucy has the whole run tucked away in a storage bin, back of her trailer!

I can't believe I'm saying this, but it wouldn't surprise me if there's at least one Doctor Who fan out there who would actually believe what you just said (or feel it worth following up!).

 

[Ethan Riley]

But she...she does! And she had all of Dad's Army and season one of the Avengers too! But those are gone now, because she accidentally tossed a lit cigar and poof! They were gone. The Doctor Who films survive, but they're a little scorched.

 

[Gary OS]

All this talk about the missing Doctor Who episodes reminds me that I really ought to give Fox a call about the four missing Charlie Chan films I have in my basement.


Gary "bummed about not getting more Troughton, but not surprised this was more than likely a hoax" O.

 

[Nebiroth]

I always feel sick to my stomach when I think of those wonderful Patrick Troughton stories which took so much time, effort and talent to write and make, being thrown out by the BBC as so much worthless rubbish. There is so little left of the Second Doctor stories and what we have is not of the best. Even at fifty I;m too young to have seen them with anything but the vaguest memories - I'm fairly sure I have recollections of the "heartbeat" from Fury and definitely remember the end of his final story, The War Games, but apart from that nothing.

For one glorious moment it seemed that the 50th Anniversary might bring us the doscover of "wonderful things". Now all we'll get is Matt Smith shouting, jumping about and waving the bloody sonic about and I would put it past them to inflict more River Song and the comedy trio of the Lizard, the Sontaran and the Chamber Maid upon us yet again - and, oh look, a magic reset at the end, quelle surprise.

 

[actionsub]

The CBS run of Merv Griffin was wiped. All but maybe 30 Joey Bishop talk shows are gone as ABC regularly used to donate their 2-inch tapes to colleges for tape stock. That's where the few that survive were recovered. Most of American Bandstand prior to 1976 is gone. Most of That Was The Week That Was is gone. Many episodes of Hootenanny are unaccounted for. The prints of Don't Call Me Charlie supposedly were destroyed in a fire in Arizona so except for a couple of episodes that show is gone. The majority of the live episodes of both Mama and The Goldbergs don't exist, likewise other live early shows like Meet Millie and My Friend Irma. Most Jack Paar and Steve Allen Tonight Shows are gone. Lots more if I thought about it for a while.

If "Don't Call Me Charlie!" was lost in a fire, that means "Hennesey" is probably gone too; as producer Don McGuire had kept prints of his shows in a tight grasp.The Joel McCrea western series "Wichita Town" is gone except for seven or eight episodes as well.

 

[actionsub]

I'm pretty sure "Guns of Will Sonnett" was rerun on CBN in the mid '80s.

As for your other comment, were you talking of "The Avengers" or "Police Surgeon" only having a single episode existing? If the former, a second episode (Girl on a Trapeze) was discovered at UCLA (of all places), plus an extract from Hot Snow.

Guns of Will Sonnett were being rerun on either Antenna TV or MeTV as recently as last year.

 

[Neil Brock]

If "Don't Call Me Charlie!" was lost in a fire, that means "Hennesey" is probably gone too; as producer Don McGuire had kept prints of his shows in a tight grasp.The Joel McCrea western series "Wichita Town" is gone except for seven or eight episodes as well.

Hennesey is a completely different story entirely. For one thing, it changed ownership several times. In the 70s it was owned by Leo Gutman, then sold to a company called Andrews and Assoctiates, which also owned a TV station in Providence, R.I. Subsequently that station and all of its assets, including Hennesey, was bought by NBC, which is the current owner. That aside, there's also a complete set of prints and negatives of every episode that reside at the UCLA archive. Doubtful that anyone will ever do anything with the show again, but it does exist in its entirety.

As for Wichita Town, that show is owned by Walter Mirisch, a very successful retired film producer. The amount of money that would be offered to license a show like that wouldn't be worth spending five minutes on for someone with that much money. He probably makes more a day on his investments on his hundreds of millions.

 

[oldtvshowbuff]

Hennesey is a completely different story entirely. For one thing, it changed ownership several times. In the 70s it was owned by Leo Gutman, then sold to a company called Andrews and Assoctiates, which also owned a TV station in Providence, R.I. Subsequently that station and all of its assets, including Hennesey, was bought by NBC, which is the current owner. That aside, there's also a complete set of prints and negatives of every episode that reside at the UCLA archive. Doubtful that anyone will ever do anything with the show again, but it does exist in its entirety.

As for Wichita Town, that show is owned by Walter Mirisch, a very successful retired film producer. The amount of money that would be offered to license a show like that wouldn't be worth spending five minutes on for someone with that much money. He probably makes more a day on his investments on his hundreds of millions.

If you want to see a single episode of "Wichita Town", Timeless has it in the Classic Westerns Collection: Stories From The Outlaw Trail. It is titled "The Frontiersman" starring Gene Evans, an unsold pilot with a sales presentation by Evans himself. The transfer is excellent and you'll find it on disc six. Four Star filmed all of the Wichita Town episodes for Mirisch-McCrea Productions.

 

[Neil Brock]

From the book, Inventing Late Night, which is about the original Steve Allen Tonight Show:

As much as Allen cherished his Tonight years, he was equally pained that little recorded evidence of those years survives. "My four years of the Tonight show were burned, if you can believe it. And on purpose, not that they were deciding to burn Tonight Show things. But the idiot who was in charge of the network storage facility in New Jersey - he decided that he was running short of shelf space. That was his rationale."

The majority of Jack Paar's Tonight shows and nearly all of the first decade of Johnny Carson Tonight shows suffered a similar fate.

Sid Caesar was lucky. NBC destroyed all of their copies of Your Show of Shows but he had it in his contract that he got a copy of every show. And he has them all - all 450 hours.


Just a personal note. NBC also tossed all of their 35mm copies of You Bet Your Life, amongst many other things the discarded, including almost every World Series game from 1948 to 1968, with the odd surviving game after. The first WS that exists on color tape in its entirety, with no gaps, innings missing, etc. is 1976.

 

[Jack P]

Just to clarify the point on the World Series broadcasts, they are mostly but not fully intact from 1969 on and break down this way as far as the NBC color tape masters go.

1969-Games 3,4,5 (Games 1 and 2 exist as CBC B/W Kinescopes)
1970-Game 5 (Games 1 through 4 exist as CBC B/W Kinescopes)
1971-Games 1,2,6,7. The middle games only exist in partial form.
1972-Only Game 4 in full and a near complete Game 5. The MLB Vault has partials for all other Games except 7. There is a compilation clip tape with highlights from all seven games that originated in Canada.
1973-Only Game 1. We have near completes for Games 2, 3, and 7. Smaller partials for Games 4 and 5 and nothing of Game 6. However 1973 is the earliest year of World Series telecast footage recorded off-air by a home taper using a "Cartridgevision" device and some other sections of the games such as Game 6 survive from these recordings. This same Cartridgevision taper incidentally also recorded the entire Game 5 of the 1973 NBA Finals which was restored and aired on MSG Network a few months ago showing the clinching game of the last championship of the New York Knicks.
1974-All complete except for Game 5 which is missing the first couple innings and the last couple innings and postgame.
1975-99% complete. Only a small inconsequential part of Game 5 is missing.

The CBC preserved in full in B/W all games of the 1965 and 1968 World Series.

 

[Jack P]

Add one 80s game show now confirmed as lost, "Dream House" which aired 1983-84 on NBC. All tapes destroyed in a flood.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Just to clarify the point on the World Series broadcasts, they are mostly but not fully intact from 1969 on and break down this way as far as the NBC color tape masters go.
1975-99% complete. Only a small inconsequential part of Game 5 is missing.

The CBC preserved in full in B/W all games of the 1965 and 1968 World Series.

I figured '75 was almost entirely intact, since it got one of those complete World Series box sets from A&E.

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

Add one 80s game show now confirmed as lost, "Dream House" which aired 1983-84 on NBC. All tapes destroyed in a flood.

I remember reading elsewhere on this board about a flood that had destroyed some of Warner Bros.' film materials in 1994. This wouldn't have been the same flood that had destroyed all the "Dream House" tapes, would it?

 

[DeWilson]

Sid Caesar was lucky. NBC destroyed all of their copies of Your Show of Shows but he had it in his contract that he got a copy of every show. And he has them all - all 450 hours.

I thought a single episode was missing, wasn't The Paley Center looking for it for years?

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

Jack, were the Dream House tapes victims of the same flood as many of Warner Bros. film materials in 1994?

 

[Jack P]

Don't know about the specifics of when the flood was or which archive had the materials. I know that a flood caused by the Northridge Earthquake in January 1994 did destroy some holdings of MGM's including the stereo tracks for the score to "Hallelujah Trail" (and they didn't discover this until a decade later when while searching for the score for "Hawaii" they found a mislabeled box of damaged beyond repair tapes that turned out to be the missing stereo tracks for "Hallelujah Trail". Ultimately just one two minute cue was salvaged to be included on a CD with a reissue of the LP for "Trail").

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

Wikipedia alleges that the show was a production between Don Reid Productions/Group W/Lorimar Television.

 

[Jack P]

Yeah, Don Reid who created and packaged the original 1968-1970 "Dream House" which ran on ABC was part of the revival, but I couldn't recall the Lorimar part.

 

[Statskeeper]

It still shocks me that the networks didn't flag tapes that may have been of interest. Like Joan Crawford filling in for her daughter on "Love of Life". You would have thought that someone at CBS would have flagged the 4 episodes for posterity, or made a copy or kinescope for Miss Crawford as a thank you.

As far as early home videotape setups went it was relatively expensive. I've seen ads for the Sony equipment from Christmas 1966. Depending on what accessories came with the recorder (such as a monitor) it would cost between $695-$1000. It doesn't sound like a lot today, but at that time the average car was around $3000-$4000 thousand. (Hey I was only 6 months old at the time so I couldn't have begged for one then!)

 

[Silverking]

Here in the UK we have lost an awful lot of our TV heritage ,not just Dr Who which comes off well in comparison to these crime style shows from the 50's to the 70's -

'Murder Bag' 68 episodes all lost - evolved into 'Crime Sheet' 24 episodes , only one survives & further evolved into 'No Hiding Place' an hour long show which constantly topped the ratings - of 236 shows , 210 are lost & 4 incomplete.

'Shadow Squad' - 175 of 179 lost

'Knight Errant' - 73 of 75 lost

'Dixon of Dock Green' - ran for over 20 years -385 of 436 missing & 18 incomplete.

'Z Cars' - a groundbreaking show in the UK - oF 799 shows 457 missing, 8 incomplete & 49 survive on inferior formats.