A General Questions About Oldies TV Shows? (1 Viewer)

[andrew markworthy]

If you think that's bad, then wait til you hear what the BBC did ... [If you are remotely sensitive to the desecration of art, stop reading now]

Forget games shows. Until the late 1960s, the BBC gleefully erased plays (including specially commissioned works by famous contemporary playwrights), concert recitals (classical and pop), early episodes of Dr Who, interviews with the great and the good, etc, etc. Ostensibly this was to save money (the tapes once erased could be re-used) but I suspect it was simply bureaucracy gone mad. E.g. it's on record that Peter Cooke tried to save many of his early programmes from erasure by offering to buy replacement tapes, but he was turned down because it was against company policy. Thanks to this idiotic piece of pennypinching, there are large chunks of television history that have been lost for ever.

 

[JeffWld]

A batch of kinescopes exist from the Paar era, however all too few. You can thank Jack Paar's garbage collector for a lot of them (as the legend goes).

A recent article also announced the discovery of a Jack Paar Tonight Show segment on 2" tape-the only known videotape footage to have survived. If I remember correctly, it was about a 15-minute segment.

 

[JeffWld]

A variation of that story applies to U.S. shows. In a number of cases, NBC, CBS or ABC offered producers the opportunity to take back their shows before they were erased. Unfortunately, these producers declined because they saw little rerun potential, didn't want to pay huge storage costs to retain them, and simply didn't care because they had moved onto other projects.

 

[Charles Ellis]

The mention of Ernie Kovacks reminds me of the great struggle his widow Edie Adams went through to save those ABC tapes, as some were already being destroyed shortly after his death in 1962. And let's not forget the stuff he did for other networks, too. It's only because of Ms. Adams that the Kovacks legacy is here to stay.

Along with game shows, one of the great tragedies of TV preservation is the erasing of thousands of soap opera episodes from the 60s-80s. Do you know that ABC doesn't have a single color tape of General Hospital prior to 1978? And this show has been on the air since 1963, and went to color in 1967. There are B/W kinescopes for each episode from Episode #1 (4/1/63) to the late 60s, which by then was being videotaped in color. As for the 70s- a few late kinescopes, but no color tapes in the ABC archives prior to 1978. A similar situation occurs with ABC's All My Children (some kinescopes and a few color tapes exist prior to 1978), and One Life To Live (likewise).

It's even worse with the Procter & Gamble soaps. A lot of their productions were done live (As The World Turns and The Edge of Night finally went to tape in 1975), and since kinescopes were no longer being made after the early 70s, there are huge gaps in the P&G archive.

The lucky ones were shows that were independtly produced (Dark Shadows, Ryan's Hope) or made by a major TV production house (Sony/Columbia TV's Days of our Lives, The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful). All those shows are roughly 99 to 100 perecent complete from their debut episodes, with Days having the largest archive from its 1965 debut, and yes, it was taped in color from the start. Days has the enviable luxury of using color flashbacks for today's episodes going back forty years!

I would love to see a tape of Joan Crawford's infamous appearance on The Secret Storm, or John Travolta as a delivery boy on The Edge of Night. Or Johnny Carson's 1964 appearance on The Doctors, and Ann Sheridan's appearances on Another World in 1965. I'd also love to see Tommy Lee Jones and Laurence Fishbourne on One Life to Live from the early 70s, or Mark Hamill's TV debut on General Hospital circa 1973. But guess what- all the above performances are presumed to be lost to time.

Everyone makes a fuss over lost films and the restoration of Hollywood film classics of the Silent and "Golden" Eras, why not the same effort for TV shows prior to 1980?

 

[Ron Lee Green]

There is some hope. Some of the old soap operas may exist in private collections. I remember talking to Marie Wallace, a former soap star on the soap, The Secret Storm, and she told the director would sometimes give--or sell?--the kinescopes to the actors for use in their acting portfolios.

 

[Charles Ellis]

I've known Marie for the past 20 years (mostly thru her appearances at the Dark Shadows Festivals) and she's a great gal. BTW, she was on Somerset, not Secret Storm, and yes, what she said is true- as far as the actors from NBC's Another World and its spinoff Somerset are concerned.

The procedure was to give the actor a color kinescope of a particular episode or scene. Marie owns one of a fabulous scene she did on Somerset in the early 70s. I do know that back in '96 there was a TV special on the history of soaps and a clip of Another World's most legendary duo of the 1970s Steve & Alice Frame was needed. Since there were no AW tapes from 1970-75 in the Procter & Gamble archive, it was thru actress Jacqueline Courtney (who played Alice from 1964-75) that a 1975 color kinescope clip was provided for the special. I don't know if this color kinescope technique was also done at CBS or ABC, but it was done at NBC.

Yes, there are a lot of soap personnel who do own rare kinies and tapes the networks don't have. For instance, even though Dark Shadows has been preserved, several cast and crew members have owned kinies over the years. The same can be said of longtime cast and crew members of soaps from the 1950s- 1970s. I only wish they'd donate copies to places like the Museum of TV & Radio for preservation.......

 

[Tony J Case]

Actually, thats not quite the case - at least as far as Doctor Who was concerned:

(From the Who A&V FAQ -)

1960's and early 70's Doctor Who was usually videotaped for transmission and telerecorded from these videotapes for BBC Enterprises, for overseas sale purposes. At this time the only formal archive was the BBC Film Library, whose mandate was to keep programmes made on film. This was interpreted somewhat loosely: for example, episodes such as The Crusade 3 and The Enemy of the World 3 were found when the film library was re-catalogued in 1978. These episodes were originally recorded on videotape but were held by the library as 16mm film recordings, probably because viewing prints circulating through other BBC departments were returned to the film library by default (being film copies) even though they did not originate there, but from the BBC Enterprises master telerecording negatives.

The important point is that the library – which is often referred to as "the archives" – did not concern itself with videotapes in any way, as these came under the jurisdiction of the BBC Engineering Department until 1978. (In 1978 the Engineering Dept. videotape library was merged with the film library to become the BBC Film and Videotape Library – Engineering then became Television Recording and ultimately Post Production).

After a sixties programme (for example, Doctor Who) had been broadcast, the master videotape would be given to Engineering, who maintained a small library. They would make a telerecording of it for BBC Enterprises if Enterprises thought it had overseas sales potential. After the telerecordings had been made the tapes would be placed in the Engineering Department videotape library. In about 1967, tapes from the Engineering Department library (for which there was no mandate) began to be wiped to make way for newer programmes, although not until the production teams and BBC Enterprises had indicated "no further interest". By 1978, so many tapes had been wiped by Engineering that not a single videotape of any Doctor Who story prior to The Ambassadors of Death episode 1 was still held in their library.

The original contracts with the writers, actors and their unions dictated how long BBC Enterprises could sell a programme abroad for - typically 5 to 7 years after its first UK transmission. These contracts also controlled how many UK repeats a programme could have (a great concern on the part of the actors' union Equity, which in hindsight seems slightly quaint and charming, was that there would be so many repeats that their members would have no new work once technology to record television productions matured during the 1950s). When these rights ran out, BBC Enterprises saw little point in keeping their film copies - they had limited storage space and it seems they thought the Film Library was keeping everything. The Film Library in turn believed that Enterprises was responsible for archival duties and that the Film Library therefore only needed to retain selected episodes of the many BBC programmes produced during their existence.

It is unclear how much communication occurred between these two departments and whether Enterprises was aware that they were destroying the only copies of many shows, after the original videotapes were wiped by Engineering. Whilst BBC Enterprises' permission was needed to wipe the videotapes, once again the extent of internal communication in what must have been a very busy department is not accurately known - since they thought the Film Library was keeping material, Enterprises may not have bothered to correlate the authorisations for tape wiping with their later destruction of the film recordings. Whatever, from about 1972 to 1977, BBC Enterprises destroyed or attempted to destroy all the negatives and prints they had of episodes for which the sales rights had expired.

So you see it was a case of the right hand not knowning what the left hand was doing.

 

[Michael Alden]

This is completely false. Sid Caeser has every Your Show of Shows as well as the follow-up series, Caeser's Hour, save one missing episode. Don't know where you heard this but it is untrue.

 

[Brian Himes]

Katherine Lee Scott also has a kinescope copy of one of her episodes of Dark Shadows. I don't know which episode, but she does have one. She mentions it in one of her books. It wasn't given to her for her portfolio, she just asked for a kinescope copy of the episode and they gave it to her. By now, I'm sure, it is known which episode she has and it may have been used when Dark Shadows was released on VHS. However, if they still had the original master tape of that episode, then Katherine's kinescope copy would not have been used.

It's kind of interesting to note, but the first color episode of Dark Shadows was originally broadcast in black & white. The first color broadcast episode of Dark Shadows states at the beginning of the episode 'The following program, Dark Shadows is now being broadcast in color.' However, the first color broadcast of Dark Shadows is now only seen in black and white becasue the color master tape was lost. So, for 25+ years, an episode that was originally seen in black and white is now seen in color and the first originaly broadcast color episode is only seen in black and white but still states that the show is in color. Just another little funny tidbit on Dark Shadows.

 

[Charles Ellis]

Brian, due to the relative expense of videotape in the late 60s-early 70s, the practice for most soaps then was to show the episode on air once, and then erase the tape after a few months for reuse. It is a fact that this was done with All My Children prior to 1978, and also with the other ABC soaps, with Ryan's Hope as an exception as it was independtly produced from 1975-81, whenupon ABC bought the show outright. By then, the network had begun to save all their post- 1978 soap opera tapes for worldwide syndication purposes.

I know all about the DS kinescope situation- I've been involed in DS fandom for over 20 years!!

About the NBC tape erasure debacle- two heartbreaking stories. First, in 1973 NBC offered Smith-Hemion Productions the chance to take back the original color master video tapes of Hullabaloo, and in one of the most boneheaded decisions ever, Smith-Hemion said no- and that's why there are only a few color Hullabaloo tapes left while all other episodes are in kinescope form.

The other big disaster that among the news tapes that NBC erased was the videotape masters to the 1961 JFK Inaugural- which was taped IN LIVING COLOR!!! And it was one of the few times people got to see President Kennedy on color TV! Arrrggghhh!

 

[Brian Himes]

I've been involved for quite a few years now, but not 20 years. I did watch the show when our local ABC affliate started reruning the show in 1975, but I didn't remember much about it. I never forgot it, but I didn't remember much other than Barnabas. It did stick with me for years, but until it came out on VHS I never had the chance to rewatch it. There's something about the show that you just can't forget it. It is one of my all time favorite shows and I'm so glad all but one episode survives.

 

[MishaLauenstein]

I remember a few years ago a story about Milton Berle asking NBC for the master tapes to his shows because he wanted to release them on VHS or DVD or something.

NBC said they didn't have them.

Berle pointed out that his contract with NBC had stated that NBC was to house the masters for Berle.

NBC started a more exhaustive search.

That's the last I heard of that story, but I believe that I have seen some Berle material advertised recently, so I assume NBC eventually found their secret climate-controlled archive room.

 

[Steve...O]

Misha, the version of the Berle story I heard is that they weren't found and Berle ended up suing because of the destruction. Some kinoscopes do survive, but apparently they represent only a fraction of his total output.

Looking at the Berle DVDs on Amazon it appears that most are collections of episodes from the 1953-1954 season.

A darn shame that so little is left from the man who probably did more to sell TV sets in those early days than anybody.