Did old local TV programs like "Million Dollar Movie" develop your interest in Classic movies? (1 Viewer)

[RBailey]

My interest in classic films began at an early age back in the late fifties and sixties. Each of the three network TV stations in Columbus, Ohio had a great lineup of movies.
The NBC affiliate had the RKO packages (with the C & C titles), the ABC station had the Warner Brothers pictures and the CBS affiliate had that huge Paramount group of films distributed by MCA plus the Laurel & Hardy shorts.

 

[Matt Hough]

The CBS affiliate in Charlotte (WBTV) used to program their own Monday movie night (7:30-9:00 p.m.) called The Best of Hollywood preempting CBS' usual slate of shows (this was in the late 1950s through the mid-1960s). The shows that CBS had on then would then show up on Sunday afternoon. I can remember you'd have to watch something like Gilligan's Island and Mr. Terrific on Sunday afternoon from 5:00-6:00 p.m. because they'd be preempted by the station's own movie (usually from a Warner Bros. syndication package; it's where I saw almost all of Doris Day's musical output during her tenure there). They eventually stopped doing it, but they claimed they made more money from their own generated local ad revenues during that 90 minutes than the money they got from the CBS network for showing the shows in that time.

 

[Walter Kittel]

Don't know how 'classic' the films are, but I have a lot of fond memories of watching 'creature features' on Saturday afternoons on a relatively small B&W television that were broadcast from one of the local affiliates (CBS I believe). Films like...

The Monolith Monsters, Valley of Gwangi, 20 Million Miles to Earth, When Worlds Collide, The Amazing Colossal Man, and many more.

- Walter.

 

[David Weicker]

I've moved the discussion. My question for you is there any local TV station that you watched that helped peek your interest in classic movies?

see post #33

 

[Mysto]

When I was a young lad there wasn't much content during the day and a lot of old b movies were shown on all three of our channels. I fondly remember all of the lovely British mysteries. I love the B's and mysteries to this day.

Later a TV station (CKLW) opened in Windsor Canada and broadcast to the Detroit market. The movie maven was actor Bill Kennedy (Bill Kennedy's Showtime 1956) and he showed many classic movies and had an endless knowledge of them that he shared. Later he moved to a Detroit station but kept basically the same format. Here he is with our second scary movie theater host Sir Graves Ghastly.
(Kennedy was the voice for the opening of the original TV show Superman)

 

[Robert Crawford]

Don't know how 'classic' the films are, but I have a lot of fond memories of watching 'creature features' on Saturday afternoons on a relatively small B&W television that were broadcast from one of the local affiliates (CBS I believe). Films like...



- Walter.

IMO, a movie can be a classic film even if it's not a great film. Watching "The Crawling Eye" or "Fiend Without a Face" on Chiller Theater broadcast on WPIX-11 in Metro NYC were classic movie experiences for me. The same with watching the great movie "King Kong" (1933) or good movie "Mighty Joe Young" (1949) on the "Million Dollar Movie" when it was showing on WOR-9 in Metro NYC.

 

[Robert Crawford]

One thing I failed to realize when I was a kid or I just plain forgot is how much these movies were cut playing on these local TV programs. For many of them, I didn't watch the uncut version until I got into home theater forty years ago. And, don't get me started with the aspect ratio issue on what we missed with these movies filmed in widescreen formats being shown on those tube televisions.

 

[BobO'Link]

I've moved the discussion. My question for you is there any local TV station that you watched that helped peek your interest in classic movies?

Absolutely. We had 2 channels (Memphis) that ran movies very regularly. One had the "Million Dollar Movie" and another had "Dialing for Dollars." Both ran every weekday. In addition, one of them ran a war movie every morning. Add to that the late night horror host program ("Fantastic Features" with Sivad - local to our region - ran Friday and Saturday nights and for a while on Saturday evening in the hours leading up to Prime Time) and movies *every* Saturday afternoon - all afternoon on those two channels - and you had a formula where you could see hundreds of movies, shorts, and newsreels.

One of the stations was owned by a movie buff and had a huge library. I was told that they purchased their own copies of all the films they ran. They even showed movies that were a year or less out from theatrical distribution - uncut. That was the same station where I saw the original Tarzan the Ape Man and Frankenstein - both unedited (yes, they had the nude scene of Jane swimming and the one where the monster throws the little girl into the stream - those aired on Saturday afternoons). I can remember the first time I saw both of those in edited form and wondered what happened to those scenes. I saw Mel Brook's The Producers and Bye Bye Birdie, among dozens of other newer films, on that station (and never knew they were "new" releases). For decades I never found anyone who'd heard of The Producers, much less had seen it.

The station with the huge library ran a movie every night in late night. They were also the first in the area to go 24 hours and ran movies in the overnight hours - often commercial free (and no promos/PSAs either). They ran the Charlie Chan movies and many other early movie series in those hours. Those lasted into the 90s before the dreaded infomercial took over those hours. When I got a VCR in the mid 80s, I'd set it to record some of those overnight movies and watch them the following evening and also to build my own library of classic movies.

Because of those Saturday afternoon movie marathons I saw Passing Parade and other newsreel features. Laurel and Hardy were run on Saturday afternoons as were Abbott and Costello, the Andy Hardy series, the Ma & Pa Kettle series, Francis the Talking Mule, the Martin & Lewis films, and many more. The Three Stooges and The Little Rascals were run every afternoon on a local host kid's show which also ran the Looney Tunes cartoons.

I never knew I was being educated in "classic" movies, just that I saw hundreds of movies over the years and liked much of what I saw.

It was all due to TV still being relatively new and stations having a need to fill all those hours of air time that wasn't being filled by the networks at that point (there were Soaps but not that many and not all of them were aired). It's something that mostly went away in the late 70s due to the proliferation of cable and networks taking more and more time away from the local affiliates.

 

[RBailey]

One thing I failed to realize when I was a kid or I just plain forgot is how much these movies were cut playing on these local TV programs. For many of them, I didn't watch the uncut version until I got into home theater forty years ago. And, don't get me started with the aspect ratio issue on what we missed with these movies filmed in widescreen formats being shown on those tube televisions.

A good example is the Martin & Lewis film PARDNERS, a spoof of westerns. I never knew that there was a prelude to the modern day scenes with Dean and Jerry playing their fathers. I was shocked when I bought the DVD and found the opening sequence.

 

[RBailey]

Here's a great example of how local TV handled the showings of movies. This is a complete copy of the WUAB Afternoon Movie hosted by Jon Lanigan, a disc jockey in Cleveland, Ohio. The movie is THE SOUTHERN STAR, a 1969 Columbia Picture with George Segal and Orson Welles. Lanigan was very funny and did a daily quiz contest with people calling in and trying to win prizes. This is fun to watch for Lanigan's antics, the cheesy production and the commercials. What's not fun to watch is how wretched the 16mm print of the film looks. Enjoy!

 

[Garysb]

In the 1970's Boston's WCVB Channel 5 had "The Great Entertainment" hosted by Frank Avruch .The Great Entertainment" aired after the late news at 11:30 PM Saturday and Sunday . They had the 30's, 40's, and 50's MGM packages. The movies were uncut .

 

[BobO'Link]

Our local PBS channel (shoutout to Channel 44!) was a great source. They ran a lot of series films late nights on Saturdays (double feature) and also on Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons. You could always count on a Charlie Chan or a Sherlock Holmes on the late show and Saturdays/Sundays was always Blondie, Andy Hardy, Shirley Temple or Deanna Durbin. They'd run them straight through in weekly installments and then movie on the the next 'subject." Best part of all was NO commercials (it was PBS!) and they usually ran uncut.

Late Friday nights was "Uncle Ted's Ghoul School" (which Bill O'Reilly, believe it or not, got his start writing, lol) which showed a lot of Hammer titles and other less prestigious horror movies of varying quality. Uncle Ted wore a Shriner's fez and could usually be counted on to have imbibed a few before airtime but he was a very nice man when I met him.

They printed an advanced schedule and sent it to you if you were a member (paid them money, thanks mom!) so I thought I was the DEAL because I got to see what was coming up without having to wait for the weekly TV guide to arrive in the mail. They infamously scheduled a showing of MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM in the Friday night late show spot and I waited WEEKS for it, so excited to finally see it. It comes the day and there it is, in BLACK & WHITE! They obviously didn't realize it was a color movie and had the color knob turned down to avoid the pink strobe we used to get on black and white NTSC video (Lucy Ricardo's patterned dresses were the worst.) It wasn't until about 10 minutes before the end that they realized it was in color and it suddenly BLAZED up for the finale. Lol. They were really great days!

Technically they turned off the "colorburst" process which carries the color information. In the 60s-80s that was SOP any time a color station aired a BW program due to the issues you mentioned on ILL - moire/color strobing on those thin lines and to be sure BW *was* BW and not off colored (some BW prints didn't quite look BW). You could tell it was active as a commercial's first half second might be BW due to cross fading between the burst off/on sources. We could selectively turn it off so it'd be off on the film chain (with the BW program) but on for the video taped commercials.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Long before David Letterman came along, the CBS affiliate in NYC WCBS Channel 3 had "The Late Show" followed by "The Late, Late, Show" and then "The Late, Late, Late Show". I've been a night owl most of my life so I spent many nights watching old movies on those movie programs back in the day.

 

[RobertMG]

Long before David Letterman came along, the CBS affiliate in NYC WCBS Channel 3 had "The Late Show" followed by "The Late, Late, Show" and then "The Late, Late, Late Show". I've been a night owl most of my life so I spent many nights watching old movies on those movie programs back in the day.

WABC 4:30 movie - Search Videos

www.bing.com

They used to air King of Kings 1961 over 3 days then Ben Hur over 4 days!

 

[Robert Crawford]

WABC 4:30 movie - Search Videos

www.bing.com

Yup, that's another one I used to watch after school.

 

[David_B_K]

In Houston, I saw most of the classic movies (Bogart, Flynn, Bette Davis, Fonda, Cooper, John Ford, Tyrone Power, et al) on The Late Show. This ran every night on KHOU Channel 11 (the CBS affiliate). They had their own theme song. On Wednesdays thru Saturdays, The Late Show was followed by The Late Late Show. They used the theme from From Russia With Love as the theme music. At some point, the same channel started The All Night Friday Movie. These would run until the Saturday sign on programming started. The Friday all night movies were usually linked by stars, like all Abbott and Costello, all Hope/Crosby Road movies, all Audie Murphy westerns, etc.

KPRC Channel 2 (NBC affiliate) often ran movies on Saturday afternoons. This was where I saw a lot of Marx Bros, W.C. Fields, et al.

KTRK, the ABC affiliate actually had a Million Dollar Movie. This ran in the afternoon between 3:00 and 5:00. They tended to show later movies than The Late Show, like late 50's to late 60's. Because of the finite time slot, these movies were more prone to be cut if they were longer than 100 minutes. I think their theme music was from Ice Station Zebra. KTRK also showed a movie at 10:30 Saturday night. This was where I first saw Rio Bravo.

The UHF channels (39 & 26) had limited movie libraries. They had a lot of dubbed foreign films, like Steve Reeves' Thief of Bagdad, Last Days of Pompeii, and other sword and sandal movies with actors I've forgotten. Alexander the Great, The Naked Prey and Zulu were often in the rotation, and I think I watched Zulu every time it was on. I think the most often repeated movie was Terror of the Tongs (also known as Confessions of an Opium Eater). These films ran at 8:00 PM weeknights and in the mornings around 11:00.

I am fortunate that so many of the classic movies were so frequently shown in the period from the late 60's to late 70's, when I saw them many times on these channels.

 

[EricSchulz]

I grew up (mostly) in Chicago in the late ’60s. Channel 9 (then the local independent station that became Superstation WGN) had two shows that greatly influenced my love of movies. On Sunday afternoon it was “Family Classics“ which showed the movies made from classic books like War of the Worlds, Treasure Island and Moby Dick. Fun fact: my dad built the same ship that was on Frazier Thomas’s bookshelf! The second show, more importantly, was “Creature Features” on Saturday night. My dad was born in 1923 and he grew up watching the Universal classics and more. I’d go to bed after dinner and dad would wake me up just before it started. I didn’t always stay awake for the whole movie but it certainly shaped my love for all things horror!

 

[Matt Hough]

Friday nights here found Shock Theater which ran Hammer films, the Universal monsters, later the 1950s creature features, and then sci-fi like Rocketship X-M.

After those ran their course, it was Mystery Theater which gave us the Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto, and any related mysteries they could find (it's where I first saw Dead of Night).

Sunday afternoon was Jungle Theatre which offered Tarzan, Jungle Jim, and Bomba in endless loops. After years of those, they began Shirley Temple Theater.

Oh, the memories.

 

[SeanSKA]

Channel 11 (WPIX) had "The Miracle on 34 St" They always showed it over Thanksgiving weekend. I thought of it as a Thanksgiving movie growing up. WNBC TV had the 1950's MGM films which they showed cut up in the 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM movie time slot. Films like "Singin' In the Rain" with half the songs missing.

"North by Northwest" was a favorite on Channel 4 (WNBC). They either ran it on their 4;30 movie slot, usually over 2 days, or they had a late Sunday night film slot also

 

[SeanSKA]

WPIX had the Goldwyn library too, that's where I saw The Bishop's Wife for the first time, they ran it every XMAS Eve early evening about 5pm! Always an event seeing Pride Of The Yankees and Best Years Of Our Lives aired! Channel 9 also had 20th Century Fox and some Universal 30's horror! Those were the days before the barbarian shows like Springer and Maury Povitch ruined daytime TV.

Yes, "Dead End" was a favorite of theirs , also "The Westerner" along with "The Little Foxes" and a bunch of Danny Kaye flicks