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shows that have been destroyed (1 Viewer)

Gordberg

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I'd like to make my first ever contributon to this forum by mentioning the BBC's "Adam Adamant Lives!" - series/season 2, of which only 2 episodes still exist.
 

Brian Himes

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While I am not 100% sure but I heard that the pre-syndicated year of Soul Train (70) is either lost or destroyed. If it does indeed still exist, it may only be a few scattered episodes since the show aired live during this period.

I assume that the entire syndicated run from 1971 to 2006 still exist intact.
 

DeWilson

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Brian Himes said:
While I am not 100% sure but I heard that the pre-syndicated year of Soul Train (70) is either lost or destroyed. If it does indeed still exist, it may only be a few scattered episodes since the show aired live during this period.

I assume that the entire syndicated run from 1971 to 2006 still exist intact.
Not only intact,but aired in Japan over a decade ago .
 

Mike Frezon

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Gordberg said:
I'd like to make my first ever contributon to this forum by mentioning the BBC's "Adam Adamant Lives!" - series/season 2, of which only 2 episodes still exist.
Gordon:

Welcome to the HTF! :welcome:

Hope we hear more from you!
 

jimmyjet

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what is the difference between 16 mm and 35 mm film ?

from what i gather, original filming was done with 35 mm, and then working copies are on 16 mm, which apparently is not as good as 35 mm ?
 

John Hermes

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jimmyjet said:
what is the difference between 16 mm and 35 mm film ?

from what i gather, original filming was done with 35 mm, and then working copies are on 16 mm, which apparently is not as good as 35 mm ?
Most filmed shows were shot in 35mm. New York and Los Angeles network stations would usually run 35mm prints for their time zones. 16mm prints were made for some stations. Syndicated prints would usually be 16mm, although I remember KTLA (Channel 5) in L.A. ran 35mm Big Valley shows in syndication.
 

Mark Y

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DeWilson said:
What was lost in the vault fire were working copies, copies used for syndication - all the "lost" shows and films stll exist in in master storage off-lot.

The studio just doesn't want to go through the expense of mastering shows and films from the 35mm elements with little marketable value. Also, the costs to do transfers (The highly inflated fees the studio charges itself) makes is cost prohibitive for any licencer to get the rights.This is why they've gone looking for 16mm prints in other storage vaults that can be transferred "off the shelf" and licensed out to say TIMELESS- which has been done on several recent releasesTIMELESS in the past, for their early MCA Release, would buy 16mm prints from the collectors and dealers of shows they have licensed to save costs - A Brilliant Idea - I know one dealer who sold 100's of 16mm hours and half hours TV prints that TIMELESS has released.The sets would be far less complete,or with more episodes of lesser quality if it wasn't for these prints. The shows represents every MCA show they released. Not complete runs sadly, but good chunks of many series, as well as fill-in episodes they couldn't find from other sources.



Again, see above comment


Well, the MY LIVING DOLL situation is well know (Rumor is they found more episodes recently) but I've not heard of the Webb situation.


Nope, still save in the master-vaults untransfered.


About 2 years of WHAT'S MY LINE? (1952-1953) No longer exist (about 100 odd shows) along with 16 other episodes after that - not a bad survival rate with a show running 1950-1967. Even with color shows existing only as B&W - they still exist. That's the point.Every show was kinescopes - live or tape. What's missing is shows that were lost (supposedly around the time of the 1974 retrospect special) or destroyed as with the missing two years which is why G&T started making show they got the prints.



Metromedia was the successor to DuMont,and I'm not sure how ABC got involved into all of this.Gleason DID NOT save any of the DuMont "Honeymooners", what exists is due to what's been found at UCLA ,and from a private collection. He didn't start saving shows till his move to CBS, it was in his contract as his DuMont contract didn't give him owmership of his shows.



He could have easily saved his shows on 3/4 U-Matic tapes (2 per week wouldn't have killed his budget) but didn't - lack of forsight by the "Johnny Carson of Horror Hosts".
Some of Son Of Svengoolie was saved, but not all. The story I've heard is that Rich Koz had a friend at WFLD (where the show was produced) who called him up and told him he better get down here because they're throwing them in the dumpster. A bunch were recovered, but I don't know how many. I'm told that there have been occasions when a movie runs short on his current show, they sometimes have used "classic" clips from his older shows.
 

Mark Y

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derosa said:
Likely not a popular title, so many won't care, but the Second season ofthe animated series "the Archie's Comedy Hour" from 1969 was butchered.Missing are Archie's song segments, bridges and teasers, likely gone forever.The DVD sets have PAL speed up, and the shows are chopped into syndicatedprices, and released on separate sets as Sabrina & Groovie goolies.In general, multi-segment anthology type animated shows that aired in a blockhave faired very poorly on DVD. The experience of watching them as airedhas been destroyed.
The 1969-70 season (under the title The Archie Comedy Hour) is indeed a mess. There is an Archies website run by a guy known as WindsorBear, and on his forum he explained in great detail what happened. This was the season that introduced Sabrina The Teenage Witch. The following season, Sabrina was spun off onto another show, Sabrina And The Groovie Goolies. Later on, they were split into two separate shows. And you are correct, some material got lost in the shuffle. For The Archie Comedy Hour, the longer cartoon segments (featuring The Archies and Sabrina) ended up as part of Sabrina The Teenage Witch. Other segments took place in the "funhouse" where the characters do short skits, tell jokes etc. They expanded this format the following season when the show was retitled Archie's Funhouse. The "funhouse" segments from The Archie Comedy Hour ended up being recut into half-hours and had the openings and closings from the later Archie's Funhouse series added to them. (Confused yet?) A real mystery is what happened to the song segments from the 1969-70 season. All the songs from the first season (Archie, 1968-69) and third season (Archie's Funhouse, 1970-71) remain but the musical segments from the 1969-70 season appear to be mostly gone. Only two ("Sugar Sugar" and "Jingle Jangle," which happen to be the Archies' biggest hits) made it to the Archie's Funhouse DVD set, and those survived because they were played on The Ed Sullivan Show. Even when reruns of the various Archie series were syndicated in the mid-1970s, the Season 2 songs were not intact -- for those shows, they re-edited the visual portions and dubbed on newly-produced "spoken songs" with Dallas McKennon's voice as the cartoon Archie. I have no idea why (since, again, songs from other seasons were left intact). Meanwhile, more Sabrina segments (featuring the Groovie Goolies) were produced for Sabrina And The Groovie Goolies. So when they started to release all this stuff on DVD, the Groovie Goolies half-hours came out as one collection, while Archie's Funhouse (1970-71) was released as a complete series set with some (but not all) the "funhouse" segments from The Archie Comedy Hour (and the two songs mentioned above) as extras. Most (but not all) of the Sabrina cartoons (with the Archies from The Archie Comedy Hour and the Groovie Goolies from Sabrina And The Groovie Goolies) were released as Sabrina The Teenage Witch: The Complete Series, which wasn't really 100% complete. The Sabrina set also has one half-hour episode of The Archie And Sabrina Surprise Package (a retitled cutdown of the 1977 series The New Archie/Sabrina Hour) as an extra.

The opening titles of The Archie Comedy Hour exist in silent form.

Hanna-Barbera's Banana Splits may not survive 100% intact either. Aside from the first season shows being cut into half-hours, for the second season the "Danger Island" serial chapters, cartoons and apparently song segments were repeats, but the rest of the live-action bits with the Banana Splits were new. These new segments didn't make the cut for the US syndicated series (though some definitely did appear in some internationally distributed half-hour versions of the show later) but apparently, the surviving 35mm master films are all cut into separate segments. Most of the Season 2 stuff is unaccounted for.
 

Gordberg

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Mike, thank you very much as I've been merely a reader here for several months now & learned quite a lot. I really doubt I could contribute too much around here, as it isn't exactly a common subject here in Israel.

As I don't intend to highjack this topic, I should also mention some episodes of You Bet Your Life exist no more, and it's quite the miracle of having most of the episodes survive due to the work of Groucho's grandson Andy. To the best of my knowledge, only ONE episode of Dark Shadows isn't available nowadays in its' original form, it exists only as an audio.

I'll give it a mention even though I really doubt it counts: the last unproduced episode of 1983's cartoon Dungeons & Dragons was made as a radio play.
 

AndyMcKinney

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I'm not sure if this was mentioned, but the very first Super Bowl broadcast was aired on two networks (CBS and NBC, due to it being AFL/NFL), and both of them wiped their tapes! OF course, the NFL filmed the game for their own archives, but the TV telecasts (with play-by-play, etc) doesn't exist in full (a colour videotape of the 1st, 2nd and 4th quarters was discovered a few years ago).

many other early sporting events were wiped or otherwise not retained. Most (but not all) World Series games before 1975 are incomplete.

By the way, in response to my comment on the colour What's My Line CBS episdoes: though a B/W kinescope of a programme made in colour does mean that the episode isn't "completely" missing, the original colour version of the episode is still considered by many (including me) to be "lost" and worth being recovered (I read elsewhere about 3/4 of the colour WML?s were actually recorded onto colour tape first--not live--and also onto B/W film, just that the tapes were later junked).

I know most Dark Shadows fans would like to see the missing colour episodes turn up and see those as "lost" (though not as "lost" as the one that only exists on audio). That's certainly how most of us Doctor Who fans have felt about the B/W only Pertwee episodes, though, thankfully, technology has allowed most of those episodes to be nicely-restored to colour now.
 

Brian Himes

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AndyMcKinney said:
I know most Dark Shadows fans would like to see the missing colour episodes turn up and see those as "lost" (though not as "lost" as the one that only exists on audio).
This is one of the many things that makes Dark Shadows unique. It is one of the few (perhaps only) daytime soap prior to 1978 to have survived 99.99% intact. If it hadn't been for the syndicated reruns that began in 1975, the show could have been destroyed years ago.

I would be more interested in having the one trully lost episode be found before the missing color masters are found. I just know that the lost episode is out there somewhere. It's probably in the hands of a collector. It has always been my suspicion that the tape was stolen from the vault for some reason. Since that episode only aired the one time in 1971, I really don't think it was misplaced. The container it was stored in exists, so at one time it did contain the tape. Perhaps one day it will turn up.
 

Jack P

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AndyMcKinney said:
I'm not sure if this was mentioned, but the very first Super Bowl broadcast was aired on two networks (CBS and NBC, due to it being AFL/NFL), and both of them wiped their tapes! OF course, the NFL filmed the game for their own archives, but the TV telecasts (with play-by-play, etc) doesn't exist in full (a colour videotape of the 1st, 2nd and 4th quarters was discovered a few years ago).

many other early sporting events were wiped or otherwise not retained. Most (but not all) World Series games before 1975 are incomplete.

By the way, in response to my comment on the colour What's My Line CBS episdoes: though a B/W kinescope of a programme made in colour does mean that the episode isn't "completely" missing, the original colour version of the episode is still considered by many (including me) to be "lost" and worth being recovered (I read elsewhere about 3/4 of the colour WML?s were actually recorded onto colour tape first--not live--and also onto B/W film, just that the tapes were later junked).
Actually, a home recording of the CBS broadcast of Super Bowl I on a primitive video tape machine is now confirmed to exist and has been restored by the Museum of TV/Radio. But the NFL has not been able to work out a deal with the original taper to obtain it for marketing purposes.

Years ago I once wrote a letter to Gil Fates, the executive producer and asked why videotapes of WML had not been preserved by Goodson-Todman considering that they did so for the syndicated run of the show and also retained the original B/W videotapes of the nighttime Password show from 1962-1965. He wrote back and said it was a matter of economics because CBS only charged them $10 for a kinescope print and that was more economical from their standpoint. That didn't explain why the Password videotaes survived (Though that show Fates was not involved with). A single nighttime To Tell The Truth hosted by Bud Collyer exists in color videotape format (April 24, 1967) and there are many B/W and color videotapes of the daytime To Tell The Truth from 1965-1968 (along with a year of color daytime Password from 1966-67 but those episodes alas were cut down for syndication in the late 60s prior to the ABC revival). No color tapes of the CBS network version of "I've Got A Secret" are known to exist.

These are the World Series broadcasts that exist.

1952 (Yankees-Dodgers) Games 6 and 7
1955 (Dodgers-Yankees) Game 5 partial
1956 (Yankees-Dodgers) Game 2 (partial), Game 3 (2nd and 3rd innings missing), Game 5 (Larsen's perfect game; missing first inning)
1957 (Braves-Yankees) Game 3 near complete and partial Game 6
1960 (Pirates-Yankees) Game 7, found in Bing Crosby's cellar
1961 (Yankees-Reds) partials of Games 3, 4, 5
1963 (Dodgers-Yankees) Game 3. Has not surfaced in collectors market
1965 (Dodgers-Twins) All 7 games complete from CBC kinescopes
1968 (Tigers-Cardinals) All 7 games complete from CBC kinescope
1969 (Mets-Orioles) Games 1 and 2 B/W kinescopes from CBC; Games 3-4-5 oldest color videotape WS games extant
1970 (Orioles-Reds) Complete. Games 1-4 B/W CBC kinescopes; Game 5 in color tape quality
1971 (Pirates-Orioles) Games 1-2-6-7 complete, Games 3-4-5 partial only. All in color
1972 (A's-Reds) Game 4 only game complete. Game 2 and Game 5 mostly intact to near complete. Partials and fragments only for Games 1-3-6 and NOTHING of Game 7
1973 (A's-Mets) Complete Game 1; Game 2 near complete but missing last inning; Game 3 likewise; Game 4 and Game 5 small partials; Game 6, just small amounts from a Cartridgevision home recording; Game 7 near complete but cuts off in TOp 9th. Last out recovered from Peabody Archives compilation reel.
1974 (A's-Dodgers) All complete except Game 5 missing final inning and first couple innings.
 

AndyMcKinney

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Jack P said:
Actually, a home recording of the CBS broadcast of Super Bowl I on a primitive video tape machine is now confirmed to exist and has been restored by the Museum of TV/Radio. But the NFL has not been able to work out a deal with the original taper to obtain it for marketing purposes.

Years ago I once wrote a letter to Gil Fates, the executive producer and asked why videotapes of WML had not been preserved by Goodson-Todman considering that they did so for the syndicated run of the show and also retained the original B/W videotapes of the nighttime Password show from 1962-1965. He wrote back and said it was a matter of economics because CBS only charged them $10 for a kinescope print and that was more economical from their standpoint. That didn't explain why the Password videotaes survived.
Is it possible they were being saved for potential use as re-runs and/or syndication (like later happened with the color ones)?
 

AndyMcKinney

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Brian Himes said:
This is one of the many things that makes Dark Shadows unique. It is one of the few (perhaps only) daytime soap prior to 1978 to have survived 99.99% intact. If it hadn't been for the syndicated reruns that began in 1975, the show could have been destroyed years ago.

I would be more interested in having the one trully lost episode be found before the missing color masters are found. I just know that the lost episode is out there somewhere. It's probably in the hands of a collector. It has always been my suspicion that the tape was stolen from the vault for some reason. Since that episode only aired the one time in 1971, I really don't think it was misplaced. The container it was stored in exists, so at one time it did contain the tape. Perhaps one day it will turn up.
Is it perhaps also possible one reason for high survival rate of Dark Shadows episodes is down to it being an "outside" production (Dan Curtis rather than ABC), and that Curtis might have even had a say in whether they were preserved or not (maybe ABC didn't have sufficient rights to wipe/destroy independently-produced shows without that company's permission, while they could, it would seem, do as they wish with shows they owned outright).

I, too, think the completely missing episode is a higher priority, but it is probably a much less likely recovery. Why? Firstly, because ABC stopped making back-up kinescopes by the time that episode aired. That is why there was no B/W print of it. I guess about the only chance of it turning up (assuming the master was destroyed and not just mis-filed/missing) would be if a school or library happened to record it on one of the early pre-VCR tape machines (like UCLA did with stuff like ABC Password). The likelihood of an institution happening to record during that specific week is small, but not out of the realms of possibility (I assume Jim Pierson has probably contacted the likes of UCLA and other big institutions who did this sort of recording). Far stranger things have happened (like the first-season Avengers "Hot Snow" discovery at UCLA, which would seem impossible since season one was never sold to the USA).
 

Jack P

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AndyMcKinney said:
Is it possible they were being saved for potential use as re-runs and/or syndication (like later happened with the color ones)?
Possible, which might also explain why B/W daytime To Tell The Truth videotapes were being saved from as early as late 1965 and not just color daytime tapes of 1967-68. Goodson may have considered a syndication repeat deal for these daytime TTTT shows before they were able to sell the syndicated version.

The color night Passwords from 1967 were also part of the syndication package and exist only in the hacked 22 minute form. I have a B/W kinescope of one 1967 night show along with the color syndicated version and it usually meant cutting out contestant interviews and chat with at least one of the celebs (game play was never cut).
 

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What about the Bob Barker -Truth or Consequences or Garry Moore TTTT stuff? Both were from the early-mid 70's. Did they survive?
 

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Two of the later 70's series I'm wondering about are Liar's Club and Make Me Laugh. I can't say I've heard one thing about either since about 81.
 

Jack P

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The Garry Moore TTTT is intact except for its first season and has aired on GSN though a higher number of shows from 1970-1973 aired than the later years.

Liars Club was produced by Ralph Andrews, and very few of his shows are extant. While reruns of the first year of Liars Club hosted by Bill Armstrong aired on USA in the 80s, we don't know if the tapes exist any longer.
 

Brian Himes

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AndyMcKinney said:
Is it perhaps also possible one reason for high survival rate of Dark Shadows episodes is down to it being an "outside" production (Dan Curtis rather than ABC), and that Curtis might have even had a say in whether they were preserved or not (maybe ABC didn't have sufficient rights to wipe/destroy independently-produced shows without that company's permission, while they could, it would seem, do as they wish with shows they owned outright).

I, too, think the completely missing episode is a higher priority, but it is probably a much less likely recovery. Why? Firstly, because ABC stopped making back-up kinescopes by the time that episode aired. That is why there was no B/W print of it. I guess about the only chance of it turning up (assuming the master was destroyed and not just mis-filed/missing) would be if a school or library happened to record it on one of the early pre-VCR tape machines (like UCLA did with stuff like ABC Password). The likelihood of an institution happening to record during that specific week is small, but not out of the realms of possibility (I assume Jim Pierson has probably contacted the likes of UCLA and other big institutions who did this sort of recording). Far stranger things have happened (like the first-season Avengers "Hot Snow" discovery at UCLA, which would seem impossible since season one was never sold to the USA).
I do know that NBC has been adamant that they did not destroy anything that they didn't get prior permission from the owners to destroy. ABC could have been in the same boat. So yes, Curtis many not have given permission to destroy any Dark Shadows tapes, but depending on when ABC destroyed their stuff (I've heard anything before 1978 is gone) Dark Shadows was probably safe due to the series being in syndication as of 1975.

As for the one trully lost episode, it is just amazing that an audio recording of that episode exists. I'm still holding out hope that it will turn up eventually.
 

AndyMcKinney

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Frank Soyke said:
Two of the later 70's series I'm wondering about are Liar's Club and Make Me Laugh. I can't say I've heard one thing about either since about 81.
As was said previously, the Bill Armstrong-hosted season of Liar's Club was rerun on USA in the mid '80s (more than once). I never saw a Ludden episode (or any earlier Serling ones) during that run.

Wasn't a Rod Serling episode released as bonus content on either a Twilight Zone or a Night Gallery DVD release?

As for Make Me Laugh, it was rerun either on CBN or (more likely) USA during the mid '80s as part of their afternoon game show block (probably back-to-back with The Gong Show). I saw many, many episodes of MML during '85-86 after school. To this day, I recall one really funny Murray Langston/Unknown Comic joke that took almost the whole minute for him to tell, about Hell, a concrete floor, a wooden floor, and cow manure.
 

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