"My Living Doll"? (1 Viewer)

[John DeAngelis]

Just wanted to say Hello to all and I'm still hunting for usable prints of My Living Doll in order to issue a volume 2 for 2013.

Good luck in your print search! This past week, I finally started watching Volume 1 and I'm especially enjoying what Julie Newmar brings to her role. Beyond her obvious beauty, she is extremely talented and funny too!

 

[Chertok Television.]

Julie Newmar is reason number one to find these shows..we all have known she is a great talent..but her work on this short lived show is a revelation..she is beyond brilliant !
And Julie as a person is such a joy and force of life..to know her is to be better for it..she is adorable on and off screen.
So I will continue to ask and search the world for the final 15 shows because it's just that wonderful because of Julie.

 

[ChrisALM]

I very much enjoyed the My Living Doll Volume 1 set and am looking forward to more episodes. It would be great to find all of the remaining 15.

 

[John DeAngelis]

Julie Newmar is reason number one to find these shows..we all have known she is a great talent..but her work on this short lived show is a revelation..she is beyond brilliant !...

She's also a great pianist! Watch her play in the Beauty Pageant episode! Wow!
http://julienewmar.com/videos/living-doll0-plays-piano/
PS: The video quality of this clip is not very good and is in no way representative of how this or any other My Living Doll episode looks on the DVD.

 

[Charles Ellis]

Just what is missing- is it the entire remainder, or is it a question of finding quality prints of episodes? Any chance the show was exported abroad?

 

[Chertok Television.]

From Greenland to Australia to Germany and beyond the search of over seven years has left no stone unturned..so you bet I have..the real hope was the release of these 11 would shake loose more shows..so far a couple of dead ends and almost there's.
I'm still looking 24-7 so I hope they will appear soon..for all of you to enjoy with another batch of amazing special features.

 

[Neil Brock]

I think at this point the prospects would have to be considered bleak at best. You never know what might be buried in an unmarked crate somewhere but I think it would just have to be considered a miracle for anything to turn up.

 

[BobO'Link]

I guess what gets me most is I just can't wrap my head around the concept of stuff like this being thrown out. In my world it's a simple case of "Money was spent to product a series/film and no matter how good or bad it may be it has *some* worth as a historical document and a archival copy needs to be kept by someone even if no one seems interested." But then I'm a pack rat and keep *lots* of stuff others would throw out because you never know... Hopefully there's someone like me out there who has copies hidden away "just in case".

 

[Chertok Television.]

All I have seen in the last seven years leads me to think at least four complete sets of prints made it out to collectors, a recent contact confirmed he "had" the last five shows..but they were sold before I started my search seven years ago.
So is it a simple search..no it's not..do I have a strong feeling these shows will turn up..I really do and as soon as they do I will make them available..don't give up hope..I will find these films at some point.

 

[PatrickGoodluck]

I admire your determined and positive attitude in searching for these missing shows. I'm rooting for you all the way!
I was amazed and grateful when Vol. 1 was released on dvd and to find that there were that many shows found. It was considered a "lost" show amongst collectors for many years.
At least you know for sure that the last 5 shows "exist" somewhere. That's enough to give us hope for now.

 

[Chertok Television.]

[member='chertok tv']

Well it's been a while since I posted anything but I will say every day the search continues for My Living Doll, at present I have a agent in south America looking for prints and several other places..
I was not joking when I said that the search will not stop until the entire run surfaces..it will as I will not give up until that second volume is on the shelf.

 

[maskedmala]

Good luck!

 

[DeWilson]

[member='chertok tv']

Well it's been a while since I posted anything but I will say every day the search continues for My Living Doll, at present I have a agent in south America looking for prints and several other places..
I was not joking when I said that the search will not stop until the entire run surfaces..it will as I will not give up until that second volume is on the shelf.

Besides South America, Where else was the show sold overseas? Wouldn't there also be a chance located prints might be dubbed into local languages?

 

[Neil Brock]

Besides South America, Where else was the show sold overseas? Wouldn't there also be a chance located prints might be dubbed into local languages?

What good would that do? At some point, the reality is that Chertok was telling the truth when he said that he had the elements destroyed. No different than what Jack Webb did with his failed series that no one wanted, like Pete Kelly's Blues and Noah's Ark. The thing that we as fans and lovers of television fail to understand is that to these people, the shows are nothing more than product. They have no emotional attachments to them and if they perceive them to have no monetary value, then they think nothing of discarding them. They aren't historians, collectors nor caretakers of our heritage, they are simply businessmen plain and simple, and if all they are doing is paying storage fees with no sales potential, then to them its no different than tossing out 20 year old trash.

 

[DeWilson]

What good would that do? At some point, the reality is that Chertok was telling the truth when he said that he had the elements destroyed.

The point is why search for shows that might turn out to be dubbed versions - sure it would be nice to have something for the missing shows, but there would be no commercial value. Unless they go and re-dub them back into English

But serious, it might be time to close the door on this series. As you said, Chertok most likely did destroy the elements he had, and CBS Radford's set was either discarded or damaged in one of the Earthquakes. Unless there's a forgotten bonded vault holding elements, there is little hope. Mind you I don't think there's been a more comprehensive search for episode than for MY LIVING DOLL.



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[Ian K McLachlan]

What about the search for missing Doctor Who episodes DeWilson?

 

[JoeDoakes]

They have no emotional attachments to them and if they perceive them to have no monetary value, then they think nothing of discarding them. They aren't historians, collectors nor caretakers of our heritage, they are simply businessmen plain and simple, and if all they are doing is paying storage fees with no sales potential, then to them its no different than tossing out 20 year old trash.

I think that's a good point. I recall reading that Roy Rogers had an archive of most of his stuff, but sold it to a collector in the 1950s. He later regretted it, and said he didn't think anyone would care.

 

[DeWilson]

What about the search for missing Doctor Who episodes DeWilson?

What about them? This is a different situation.

The difference between this and the BBC, is there is a paper-trail. of what was known and not-known to have been returned,reported destroyed or bicycled to another broadcasters (one or two sets of stories could service several countries in several regions)

The overseas countries where episodes were found - Nigeria was the last country to get any Hartnell sales, Africa was the last country to get Troughtons, Cyprus was instructed to hold on to the episodes they had until instructed by BBC Enterprises to bicycle them onto the next broadcaster in the region (which they had with the first 4 stories) and then the civil war happened and the remaining episodes were never recalled (and several lost when a station was destroyed), and TV Asia's records were incomplete due to a fire. The episode of "The Celestial Toymaker" found at ABC-Australia was not a story print they used, but a print sent to them by mistake from an overseas broadcaster than rather to BBC's Sydney Sales office.

The "missing episodes" found in the U.K. over the last 35 years can be traced back to the Australian returns in 1975 that "went missing", or from Enterprises stocks discarded at the same time when they discarded them.

Again, important to point out that there were only three sets of prints struck per story in most cases (Especially after the first 81 episodes) and no complete story has been returned by a collector, only broadcasters.

At this point the search of Africa is winding down with no sign of the two Troughton's still missing they bought ("Abominable Snowman" and "Wheel in Space") sold to Nigeria (They were still playing these so they were not part of any of the mass recalls in the early 1970's) or Any of the missing or existing) episodes sold of Ethiopia in 1971/1972, the last country to air "Marco Polo", "Reign of Terror" , and "Crusades". (No record of what happened to the prints from this point)


"My Living Doll" had far,far less international sales (Did it even sell to AFRTS?) and was a short lived show.

 

[DeWilson]

I think that's a good point. I recall reading that Roy Rogers had an archive of most of his stuff, but sold it to a collector in the 1950s. He later regretted it, and said he didn't think anyone would care.

Well, clearly he kept some sort of elements as he continued to sell the show in television past the end of the network run, and the repackaged shows that UPA put out edited with generic openings and end pieces done by Roy in the 1980's

 

[Sky King]

Not to venture from the topic of this thread, but after reading the difficulty of locating entire runs and best possible elements for My Living Doll, I now know why my favorite Chertok program Sky King, will probably never look any better than it presently does. The original elements have been destroyed. Why would anyone is his right mind, throw out the original elements to any property be it video or audio ?

I'm reminded of what ABC did to the DuMont library...cheap bastards didn't want to pay for storage so they threw most of DuMont's film library into the east river in the 1970's.