shows that have been destroyed (1 Viewer)

[Neil Brock]

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

I believe you're right. I was quoting from the Allen book which is likely wrong about that.

 

[MatthewA]

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.

Considering she was drunk, I imagine a lot of people would have liked to forget it. Then that book came out...

Even so, movie stars of Joan Crawford's caliber almost never did TV, and certainly not soap operas. That alone made it historically significant, regardless of the circumstances.

 

[MartinP.]

LETTERS TO LAUGH-IN

I know that one episode is on youtube, but I wonder if the three months of shows of this
NBC daytime series (that was on opposite Dark Shadows) is still around?

 

[Jack P]

NBC destroyed all their daytime game shows from the 60s and almost all of their 70s ones. Only the occasional random episode here and there survives (some of them recorded by UCLA) but the earliest NBC daytime game shows known to be intact in full because the production company kept the tapes is (unfortunately) "The Gong Show". Then after that, you have "Card Sharks".

A number of daytime 70s Hollywood Squares shows might survive among the stash found in 2001, but we only saw one NBC show aired on GSN (and 15 nighttime shows from 1968).

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

And then, of course, let's not forget the rumor that NBC continued destroying game shows well into the 80's (i.e. the daytime $ale episodes from before September 1988). Just about all the Goodson/Todman games, from Card Sharks and beyond (with the exception of Mindreaders) exists.

Even now I am still baffled by this rumor, considering that every episode of Scrabble (also from Reg Grundy Productions) exists. Hopefully, the only reason just those episodes of $ale and the Syndie ones were shown on USA was because they only converted those from analog-to-digital, and not something much worse.

Jack P, did you ever see either 70's or 80's version of $ale of the Century? The original had actor Jack Kelly, from Maverick, as host (who was later replaced by Joe Garagiola).

 

[Jack P]

Do we even know all of Scrabble exists? I never saw the first season episode (which had a slightly different scoring format) on USA though I'll admit I didn't catch the reruns often.

The 70s SOTC was before my time (my first year where I experienced game shows was age 5 in 1974 and it was eerie to find in GSN reruns *specific* episodes of "Match Game", "Now You See It" and later syndie HSQ and LMAD that I remembered seeing between age 5 and 7; I was even lucky to have seen the last ABC "Password All Stars" when it first aired and have a "memory refresher" when that episode surfaced in collectors hands). OTOH, I caught SOTC from the beginning and remembering what an airhead original model Salli Julian was and how glad I was that she got axed rather fast.

The 70s Goodson-Todman shows that we know are lost are (1) ABC Password, but for a tiny handful of episodes (2) The Better Sex (again but for a handful) (3) Mindreaders (not even a random episode appears to exist in the G-T vault and we have just two off-air recordings that have surfaced) and probably (4) Showoffs.

The only *completely* intact Bob Stewart shows from the 70s are the nighttime $25,000 Pyramid (unless the tapes were destroyed after 1985; a Long Island station aired repeats up to then) and the last of his New York based shows "Pass The Buck" from 1978. $20,000 Pyramid is intact from June 1978 to the end of its run in June 1980 (though there are evidently some random episodes missing even within that bracket; all other episodes of this show earlier than that that exist are off-air recordings, many by contestants).

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

Scrabble does indeed exist. I saw a clip from the first episode in master quality on YouTube, and many episodes, which originally aired from 1984 to 1989 aired on USA.

 

[Jack P]

Well the first episode does exist in trade circles in what I think is a great quality off-air recording from 1984, so that doesn't confirm I think whether or not the vault copies still exist for that period.

 

[Neil Brock]

NBC destroyed all their daytime game shows from the 60s and almost all of their 70s ones. Only the occasional random episode here and there survives (some of them recorded by UCLA) but the earliest NBC daytime game shows known to be intact in full because the production company kept the tapes is (unfortunately) "The Gong Show". Then after that, you have "Card Sharks".

A number of daytime 70s Hollywood Squares shows might survive among the stash found in 2001, but we only saw one NBC show aired on GSN (and 15 nighttime shows from 1968).

Maybe the 2-inch tapes were wiped or tossed out but there are black and white kinescopes of many of them at Library of Congress. Just off the top of my head, there are multiple episodes in the collection there of Say When, 1960s Match Game, Let's Make A Deal, Concentration among others. Not like full runs but at least a dozen or more of these. Since GSN abandoned old shows, its not likely these will ever be seen but at least they exist.

 

[Brian Himes]

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.

Actually, Christina Crawford was on the CBS soap, The Secret Storm and Joan Crawford filled in for her daughter on that show.

There is an audio recording on Youtube of one of the episodes featuring Joan Crawford. She doesn't appear on the episode until about half-way through. I didn't listen to all of it, and she did sound drunk.

As for making a copy for Joan as a thank you, I'm sure that would have been a disaterous idea. It has been pretty well documented that Joan was a bit ashamed of herself for that incident and it was better left forgotten.

 

[Jack P]

The number of kinescopes at the Library of Congress of 60s game shows is somewhat limited and hardly approaches the full level of the runs.

This link from a defunct website (retrieved from Internet Archive) confirms the total of extant 60s MG at 11 episodes including the pilot. GSN aired two episodes from 1964 while the pilot was released in the BCI set.

http://web.archive.org/web/20050828182514/http://www.matchgame.org/episodeguides/matchgame/exist.html

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

You probably already know this, Jack, but I'll mention it anyways:

The earliest-circulating episode of The $20,000 Pyramid comes from the week of March 1, 1976. Anne Meara & Nipsey Russell were guests. I find it interesting, mostly because several traces of the original red/orange color scheme were still there. Over in the syndicated market, an episode of The $25,000 Pyramid with Bill Cullen aired with Michele Lee & Dick Clark as guests. In addition to Cullen referring to Dick's show as The $10,000 Pyramid, both of Dick's episodes were taped in the Spring of 1975 due to bicycling. Back then, the set was still red/orange all over.

Were there any syndicated game shows before satellite broadcasting that weren't bicycled?

I also heard someone say he had the very first episode of The $20,000 Pyramid in fairly poor quality, but I've yet to see proof of that.

 

[Jack P]

Yes, I know about the March 1, 1976 episode because I was fortunate to obtain a copy from the contestant who won that day, Sue Dolleris, and who had her apperance taped at the time. Sue is also responsible for the only known extant episode of another destroyed game show "Shoot For The Stars" (1977) when she taped her appearance there (two pilots for that show exist and were aired by GSN).

All syndicated game shows back in the 70s were bicycled all the way to 1980 or therabouts I think. This is why in 1978 for instance, some markets carrying "To Tell The Truth" would still be airing episodes hosted by Garry Moore who had been gone two years at this point and why Joe Garagiola couldn't directly acknowledge the final episode taped because some markets would continue to air the show another year. I even have memories of seeing syndicated episodes of Hollywood Squared with Wally Cox, but I know these were airing at least 1 to 2 years after his death since I was not quite four years old when he actually died and I first saw these at age five or six.

The Friday episode of the first week of the $10,000 Pyramid (with the second ever win at the bonus round) is available on YouTube, uploaded by the contestant who again managed to get it taped back then (albeit in B/W tape quality). The only contestant recordings older that that which circulate (and are also on YouTube) are the four episodes of Michael Russnow on "Split Second" (1972).

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

BTW, here are the first-two taped episodes of Cullen Pyramid in master quality:

 

[Jack P]

It's too bad GSN never obtained the rights to air the whole runs of Cullen Pyramid, which I think were tied up by the fact that Viacom was the original syndicator, making them separate from the daytime Stewart shows which are owned outright now by Sony/Columbia. A similar reason I think also explained the lack of reruns of the 1981 "$50,000 Pyramid" (the last incarnation aired from New York) though over 30 of these circulate from off-air tapings (almost one-third the entire run).
The oldest individual game show episode that still exists in original videotape quality and is complete is a September 1960 episode of the ABC daytime version of "Beat The Clock" which was saved beacuse it shows a bonus stunt for $20,100 (a high total in the post-scandal days) being won after the stunt had gone 51 weeks without being won (and with $100 added each day). A lone episode of Bud Collyer's follow-up ABC daytime game show from 1961, "Number Please" also exists in pristine videotape quality. 1960s actress Nancy Kovack is a model on both of these shows.

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

And having seen the first two-taped episodes of Cullen Pyramid, I believe the way they taped the show, was they would tape 30 episodes a year, 6 in each taping session, and have six different celebrities (three male and three female) appear twice in the same session. And it would be over a three-month period (from 1975-1978, Syndicated tapings took place from April to June). I believe these episodes were taped on the same day as the first two:

Anita Gillette & William Shatner
Anita Gillette & Robert Culp
Betsy Palmer & Robert Culp
Betsy Palmer & Tony Roberts

The reason for the later-than-normal syndicated tapings in the first year was because the decision to launch a Syndicated edition was made after production moved from The Ed Sullivan Theater to the Elysee Theater, seven weeks into its ABC run.

 

[Statskeeper]

Sorry for getting the soaps mixed up. I've heard the audio on YouTube, and she did sound drunk. But you still would have thought that someone would have saved those tapes, if only for laughs (like a blooper reel).

"A Man Called Shenandoah" lost 5 of 34 episodes somewhere along the way. That's a filmed series, and you would have thought all the films or tape transfers were stored together.

 

[Adam_S]

I've heard a rumor that a few shows of very recent vintage (last three years) are just completely gone because someone accidentally deleted them from the harddrives/servers, and no tape copy had been made. one of the big three networks too, but not the sort of show that gets released on dvd. apparently the producers, who had pushed the tapeless workflow, were said to have said, "What do you mean it's GONE?"

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

I freakin' hate tapeless if that's true. Whose genius idea was it? To replace tapes with something awful?

 

[John Karras]

I freakin' hate tapeless if that's true. Whose genius idea was it? To replace tapes with something awful?

Tapeless or tape becomes irrelevent if the people charged with the custody of the material are irresponsible.