General Hospital: Complete First Season?? (1 Viewer)

[Eric Paddon]

The 50s Honeymooners were part of a weekly prime time series much easier to preserve than a daily show.

 

[obscurelabel]

The 39 episodes of The Honeymooners that most people are familiar with were originally aired as a separate series (apart from Gleason's variety show) during the 1955-1956 season and were shot on 35mm film. Skits with the familiar characters were also performed on Gleason's variety shows both before and after this; a number of these earlier episodes, on kinescopes, have been aired in syndication. The Honeymooners continued to be featured occasionally on Gleason's show well into the sixties, and I believe one entire season was devoted to "all Honeymooners" ... I seem to remember them winning a trip around the world and performing musical numbers(!).

Just for some perspective about the costs of preserving tv shows in the early days, when Desi and Lucy wanted to shoot I Love Lucy show on 35mm film, the network said ok, if YOU want to put up the additional $5,000 per show that this would cost (huge amount of money in the early 50s of course). I believe Desi agreed if he and Lucy would retain ownership of the show after the initial airings. Since the nature of the tv business at that time was to air once (most shows were live) with the revenue coming from advertising, CBS agreed. When Desi was later able to sell the show (on good looking 35mm film) in syndication he and Lucy made many millions.

Also, I have read that the cost of early video tapes, holding one hour of content, was about $600 in the mid-sixties (probably the equivalent of several thousand dollars today) so there was a lot of pressure to re-use tapes as much as possible.

 

[Chris:L]

Well, apparently I Love Lucy looks quite nice on DVD.

 

[Eric Paddon]

And because of that cost cutting measure of recycling tape, this is what is lost to us forever among other things:

The Tonight Show, 1954-1970 covering the Allen, Paar, and first eight years of Carson.

Major League baseball telecasts and World Series telecasts prior to 1969. Likewise for the NFL and first two Super Bowls.

Daytime game shows, soap operas etc. Nighttime game shows like "What's My Line?" etc. were preserved on kinescope, but even primetime game shows that aired in color no longer exist in a color format.

Evening newscasts prior to August 1968 when Vanderbilt University started recording them on their own.

The trail is endless, and frankly tragic.

 

[Jon_Are]

Well, you got it half-right.

Jon

 

[Chris:L]

Someone back in 1963 had to have recorded it off of ABC

 

[Eric Paddon]

Considering that VCRs were a decade away from being available, not likely at all.

 

[Dane Marvin]

Some older General Hospital episodes might be in the public domain. I say this because Mystery Science Theater 3000 used to riff on episodes of the show before they would do the feature (it served as a replacement for the old hygiene films when they ran out of those).

 

[Charles Ellis]

Here's the real story. The UCLA TV archive has every show from show #1 (April 1, 1963) to about 1972 on B/W kinescope, all donated by ABC, so I presume ABC kept their copies. The problem is that ABC didn't save its color videotapes of GH (which went to color in 1967) until it went to an hour in January 1978. UCLA does have a few archived 1971-73 color shows which it taped off the network feed, but those tapes are not for public viewing - rats!! I wonder if ABC knows of the existence of these shows- I learned this from surfing the UCLA archive website.

There has been talk of a "SoapNet Classic" channel which would show classic reruns of soaps from the ABC archives. Believe it or not, Procter & Gamble has been even worse at archiving its shows! "Edge of Night" has color tapes from 1978-84 for syndication. Since that show and "As The World Turns" were live from 1956-75, a lot has been lost. The same with "Another World" to a degree- there are some 1975-76 color shows available at the Museum of TV & Radio, but that show wasn't regularly archived until 1980!!! However, I do understand that there are earlier tapes from the 70s for "Guiding Light" and "Search for Tomorrow"!

The only way we can see soaps from prior to 1978 in color is if they were made by an independent production company. That's why "Dark Shadows", "Ryan's Hope", and the Columbia Pictures-produced shows "Days of our Lives" and "The Young and the Restless" exist more or less intact from day one. "Dark Shadows" has already been released in its entireity on VHS and is on DVD month after month!


Personally, with "Dallas" coming to DVD this fall, I'd love to see Fox release "Peyton Place" and "Dynasty"!!

 

[Eric Paddon]

A rare exception of a partial vintage "As The World Turn" episode that still exists in original broadcast tape quality is what was aired on 11/22/63 before it was interrupted for bulletins on President Kennedy's assassination. The CBS News Archives preserves material starting with the beginning of the "As The World Turns" broadcast. One whole segment aired, then there was an interruption during the second segment. They returned to the soap in mid-stream just prior to the halfway break for station ID and during a commercial went back to coverage and stayed with it for the next four days.

 

[Charles Ellis]

At the Museum of TV & Radio you can see the uninterrupted 11/22/63 kinescope used for the Western time zones!

 

[Eric Paddon]

If "As The World Turns" aired live then how could a kinescope have been made for the western time zone when that part of the country never saw any of the broadcast?

 

[Charles Ellis]

Simple- the kinescope was from the CBS control room at the studio where ATWT was being taped. A 16mm camera filmed the images off a monitor in the control room as the show was being broadcast live. The now famous cut-in to announce the report of a shooting at the Dallas motorcade was done electronically from the CBS News studio, which was at another location. So, at studio "A", ATWT was airing live with a kinescope being recorded in the control room, but meanwhile, the main feed of the broadcast was being sent through to the main CBS studio, and that's where the News Division cut in. That cut-in only affected the Eastern time zones, as the Western half of the US would only see an uninterrupted kinescope recorded earlier that day. Please remember that A) half of the stations in the US didn't have videotape machines at that time, and B) there IS the time difference (you didn't expect the actors to do the show TWICE for the East and West Coasts, did you?)

 

[Eric Paddon]

No, I didn't expect them to do it live twice, my point was that why would the kinescope have been made since the West Coast never saw ATWT that day. I appreciate the clarification.