shows that have been destroyed (1 Viewer)

[The Obsolete Man]

The first season of The Avengers, is either totally or mostly lost. I have seen the first episode with Ian Hendry, and it is a totally different series. The opening credits, totally different, and Patrick Macnee plays a much more sinister character than his devil may care John Steed of the RIgg/Blackmon years.

Mostly. Some episodes still exist.

Also gone from the BBC Library are half of the second season of Dad's Army, most of the black and white run of Till Death Us Do Part, The final four episodes of the first Quatermass series...

 

[ScottRE]

Two full episodes of the first year of The Avengers survive and the first act of the pilot episode. The rest of the season was lost.

Anyone know about Branded? The butchered syndicated episodes are on DVD, and I had heard that's all that remains of the Chuck Connors series.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Other than the fact that she was Mrs. Chuck Woolery at the time, Jo Ann Pflug had no connection to the original Wheel Of Fortune.
...

Only two episodes of "It Takes Two" are known to exist. If you were an NBC daytime show prior to 1978, your chances of being saved were very poor. OTOH, CBS daytime shows of the 70s have fared reasonably well since CBS was still holding onto the tapes when the production companies finally decided they needed to keep their own copies (hence why the Goodson-Todman library has "Now You See It" but not ABC Password).

Wow. I would have sworn that I remember Jo Ann Pflug as a letter-turner on the early years (not even as a temporary stand-in to Susan Stafford?). Somehow my adolescent mind has played with my memory. I guess that's not without precedent!

Too bad about It Takes Two. I guess it would be difficult to expect those episodes would ever see the light of day.

 

[Jack P]

Jo Ann Pflug was on "Match Game" a lot in the 70s and some other game shows as a celeb player, but no, no stand-in work on WOF during the Susan era.

One of the two "It Takes Two" episodes is on You Tube. This is the link to Part 1.



One other notable 60s NBC game show lost to the ages but for a handful of episodes is "You Don't Say" (though most of the 1964 nighttime run probably does exist in kinescope format).

 

[Neil Brock]

The CBS run of Merv Griffin was wiped. All but maybe 30 Joey Bishop talk shows are gone as ABC regularly used to donate their 2-inch tapes to colleges for tape stock. That's where the few that survive were recovered. Most of American Bandstand prior to 1976 is gone. Most of That Was The Week That Was is gone. Many episodes of Hootenanny are unaccounted for. The prints of Don't Call Me Charlie supposedly were destroyed in a fire in Arizona so except for a couple of episodes that show is gone. The majority of the live episodes of both Mama and The Goldbergs don't exist, likewise other live early shows like Meet Millie and My Friend Irma. Most Jack Paar and Steve Allen Tonight Shows are gone. Lots more if I thought about it for a while.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

1. Urban legend or not, the fact that it's only the Woolery era that was wiped out remains highly suspicious and the matter of Merv and Chuck parting on acrimonious terms is well-known.

2. There are indeed a lot more I could have listed but I was citing the best examples only. In point of fact, daytime HSQ may not be as wiped out as we first thought because the stash of tapes recovered in 2002 did include a number of daytime shows but GSN never chose to license those for airing (other than a "Storybook Squares" special from 1977) so there are obviously more shows in existence of that title than the others noted.

3. Also, ABC Pyramid is intanct from June 1978 to the end of its run in June 1980 (1978 shows aired on GSN in 1997).

1. Do you have any proof that Sajak's daytime run exists in full, though? I know that when you see clips of his early shows, they're always the same ones. I'm pretty sure that at least a number of pre-Vanna episodes are gone, including ones in the "new hostess tryout weeks". Also, presumably, Woolery's mid '78 and prior episodes would've mostly been wiped by NBC, not Griffin. If they are mostly gone, I'd say NBC and/or Griffin probably felt (like most other networks/production companies did) that there would be no reason to keep all the daytime episodes, and game show reruns were almost unheard of anyway and not seen as something that would be in-demand). Economics is the more likely reason these would've been wiped, not "revenge".

2. Again, do you have any proof that a substantial number of daytime episodes were found in that Squares stash, other than just people's guesswork? (I'd seriously like to know). All that I've heard "for sure" is that the 1968 Prime-Time run was found, as well as the syndicated run (and despite the number of episodes in that run, it's possible that multiple copies of the syndication tapes could've been in that warehouse rather than ever tape being a "unique" episode). The fact that a single 1970s Storybook Squares was aired doesn't necessarily mean that a a large number were found. It's more likely that any daytime episodes found were random, or at least not a large consecutive run.

3. That may be true, but that's only two years worth, while more than five years worth (March 1973-May 1978) were destroyed.

 

[Jack P]

When the HSQ episodes were found, the reports were that a substantial number of episodes were found, and not a mere 150 that GSN ultimately aired. I have seen clips of 70s daytime episodes used in at least one or two game show clip specials post-2002 that were not aired on GSN, and it makes logical sense that GSN would not have wanted to license a large number of shows with "staggered" game play. My point was that more clearly exists of the run compared to other titles like Fleming Jeopardy that are almost all gone but for a handful of shows.

I'm certain that economics mattered to Merv on some levels, but keep in mind, he was also the kind of man who cared about the fact that his own talk show from the CBS years had been wiped, and who also took the time to preserve what he could of his talk show from the 60s (prior to the CBS run) so it's not as if he was unmindful of the fact that an "economics" decision of that nature also could easily be dictated by what he considered worthwhile from a historical standpoint.

ABC Pyramid began in 1974 incidentally so that's four years almost gone. Most of the CBS $10,000 Pyramid is also gone except for three weeks of shows from October 1973 taped in California (aired by GSN), while the Friday show of the debut week was recorded by the contestant (and is on You Tube and has the second ever win at the Winner's Circle) plus a June 1973 home recording as well. There are also about two dozen home recordings and two salvaged archival ABC Pyramids for the period 1976 to April 1978.

 

[jimmyjet]

most seem to be game shows, and such. but i had no idea that bbc and other networks would be so dumb as to deliberately destroy the stuff.

i thought we were losing stuff to disintegration, and at least the one fire.

not to stupidity.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

When the HSQ episodes were found, the reports were that a substantial number of episodes were found, and not a mere 150 that GSN ultimately aired. I have seen clips of 70s daytime episodes used in at least one or two game show clip specials post-2002 that were not aired on GSN, and it makes logical sense that GSN would not have wanted to license a large number of shows with "staggered" game play. My point was that more clearly exists of the run compared to other titles like Fleming Jeopardy that are almost all gone but for a handful of shows.

On that old, excellent resource for the show, classicsquares.com (especially when we all thought everything pre-1978 was destroyed), it was reported that the number of shows discovered could have been as many as 3,000, or "only" as many as about 600. If the latter number is true, that would likely just be the syndicated run, the 1968 prime-time run, and maybe a smattering of random daytime episodes. If the higher figure is true, then a substantial run of daytime shows would also be there.

I guess it depends if there were "3,000" tapes (or episodes of shows) found, whether all of them were HSQ, or if they included other Heatter-Quigley shows, such as Gambit or High Rollers. No one has ever said conclusively what exactly was found in that warehouse.

One source said that GSN had a pool of 650 episodes to choose from, and when they agreed to air the show, bought the rights to air 150 of those. Then, while they were doing the digital conversion/restoration of the episodes, screened them for "political correctness", so if they found something they thought of as objectionable, they simply picked a different one.

Thought they had rights to 150 shows, some viewers claim that they actually only ran between 125 and 130 (the guy who taped them for me said he got all but two or three of them for me, but I've never counted up how many tapes he sent, though there were many).

I don't know if the single episode aired in the "50 Greatest Shows" marathon was a previously-unseen one or just a rerun from the previously-shown GSN package.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

most seem to be game shows, and such. but i had no idea that bbc and other networks would be so dumb as to deliberately destroy the stuff.

i thought we were losing stuff to disintegration, and at least the one fire.

not to stupidity.

well, we can certainly say that now, with the benefit of hindsight, but we must remember that at that time (the late 1960s), things were quite different: for a start, home video was still far from being a reality, so there was no "market" for old TV outside of reruns.

Also, in the UK, the actors union Equity had fought with the TV companies over recording (and repeating) televised productions. Although Equity could not prevent recording altogether, it was able to add standard clauses to its members' contracts that stipulated that recordings could only be repeated a set number of times within a specific timeframe (usually just a couple years or so), and the fees payable for further use beyond that were deliberately so high that broadcasters would consider it unjustifiable to spend so much money repeating an old programme rather than making a new one. This is one reason why there were multiple BBC productions of one-off plays (like "Alice in Wonderland"), as it was less expensive to produce a new version than to negotiate fees for a repeat.

So, with repeats limited, and high fees for re-negotiation, coupled with no home video industry to sell to the public, the UK television companies had these big, bulky 2" tape reels sitting on shelves that they couldn't do anything with. Add in the same reasons US broadcasters wiped stuff (expensive cost of tapes + storage), and you can see why they did it.

As for material that was sold overseas (that was transferred to 16mm prints by BBC Enterprises, not the archives), that material was routinely junked when contracts with writers and actors for international sale expired. Since broadcasters worldwide were abandoning black-and-white for colour, it wasn't seen as worthwhile to negotiate extending these agreements, as there just wasn't as much demand for black-and-white.

Even when home video became a reality around 1976, home cassettes were expensive, and most people paying that kind of money for a tape spent it on movies. There weren't really a whole lot of TV show home videos before the 1980s, and by that time, TV companies had (mostly) stopped junking their archived programming.

So, in hindsight, a really dumb decision, but if you think of the time in which the decision was made, it's really easy to see why they did it.

 

[jimmyjet]

thanks for the informative reply !!

i guess that is where the old saying comes from (hindsight is 20/20)

 

[BobO'Link]

well, we can certainly say that now, with the benefit of hindsight, but we must remember that at that time (the late 1960s), things were quite different: for a start, home video was still far from being a reality, so there was no "market" for old TV outside of reruns.

Also, in the UK, the actors union Equity had fought with the TV companies over recording (and repeating) televised productions. Although Equity could not prevent recording altogether, it was able to add standard clauses to its members' contracts that stipulated that recordings could only be repeated a set number of times within a specific timeframe (usually just a couple years or so), and the fees payable for further use beyond that were deliberately so high that broadcasters would consider it unjustifiable to spend so much money repeating an old programme rather than making a new one. This is one reason why there were multiple BBC productions of one-off plays (like "Alice in Wonderland"), as it was less expensive to produce a new version than to negotiate fees for a repeat.

So, with repeats limited, and high fees for re-negotiation, coupled with no home video industry to sell to the public, the UK television companies had these big, bulky 2" tape reels sitting on shelves that they couldn't do anything with. Add in the same reasons US broadcasters wiped stuff (expensive cost of tapes + storage), and you can see why they did it.

As for material that was sold overseas (that was transferred to 16mm prints by BBC Enterprises, not the archives), that material was routinely junked when contracts with writers and actors for international sale expired. Since broadcasters worldwide were abandoning black-and-white for colour, it wasn't seen as worthwhile to negotiate extending these agreements, as there just wasn't as much demand for black-and-white.

Even when home video became a reality around 1976, home cassettes were expensive, and most people paying that kind of money for a tape spent it on movies. There weren't really a whole lot of TV show home videos before the 1980s, and by that time, TV companies had (mostly) stopped junking their archived programming.

So, in hindsight, a really dumb decision, but if you think of the time in which the decision was made, it's really easy to see why they did it.

That's very interesting about the BBC and performance fees/rights.

In the US lots of programs were wiped simply because of the expense of video tape even though it was less expensive than producing the same program with film stock. In the US video tape was sold to the networks as a less expensive way of producing many recurring programs, especially daytime fare which saw few, if any, reruns. Tape the show, air the show, use the tape again at a later date to save money. I'm sure there were some prime time programs done on video tape but I really don't recall it being in wide use for weekly TV until the 70s. The station I worked for used tape for almost all local originating programs and kept none beyond the initial airing unless the program owner payed for the tape or it was one of the bi-annual news "specials". Few did and then stored them in less than good conditions (the station wanted *way* too much for on-site storage) which made replay at a later date virtually impossible.

 

[JMFabianoRPL]

You'll never see many local versions of Romper Room. At least (W)WOR-TV in New York reused tapes.

Does anyone know how much if any of late PA kiddie host Sally Starr's work exists on tape still?

 

[Brian Himes]

In regards to the Hollywood Squares, I have 103 episodes of the 1971-78 Nighttime Syndicated run that GSN aired. I missed one episode that I know of so that would bring the episode count to 104 that aired on GSN. Add in the one Storybook Squares, and the 12 1968 Prime Time (GSN did not air any more than 12 of the 1968 Prime Time run) and the total that GSN aired comes to 117 that I have in my collection. When I was taping these shows, I almost managed to get through the entire run twice before GSN pulled the show all together. I was just a few episodes away from getting the one episode that I missed. Of those 117, 3 of those I got from other collectors who taped them from the GSN run. So, GSN wasn't consistant with how many episodes they actually aired.

I do believe that GSN at first aired close to 150 episodes. Close to the end of their run I believe they did pare that down to an even 112 (which are the 112 that I managed to tape). In the end I got 100 of the 1971-78 Nighttime Syndicated and 12 of the 1968 Prime Time versions.

As to how many were found, I don't believe that 3000 were found. I think it was closer to 400 or so. Of those 400, there would be at least 312 episodes of the 1971-78 Nighttime Syndicated run plus the 36 1968 Prime Time run. So that's a total of 348 episodes that we know of that were found (the vault that these were found in was the vault of the syndicated distributor, Filmways that was then purchased by Orion Television and then purchased by MGM). Also that stash would include any other Heatter-Quigley shows that Filmways would have been the distributor for (Gambit, High Rollers).

I do know that only 2 episodes of the Heatter-Quigley show The Magnificent Marble Machine exist and one of those is an off the air home recording. The other episode is in one of the many TV museums like the Paily Center in LA.

Everything from 1970-77 of All My Children only exist in kinescope form. It is also believed that most of ABC's early daytime soaps only exist in kinescope.

Virtually gone are all of the very first years of The Edge of Night becuase the show was broadcast live. While the shows were filmed for local stations in case of pre-emption, those films should have been sent back to the studio after use. The studio then destroyed them.

I think it is a pretty safe assumption that just about all three networks destroyed most of their daytime and late night programming upto about 1978. While most of their Prime Time shows were preserved intact. Of course there is the occasional occurance of fire and time that would have gotten to some of their Prime Time shows but I believe that for the most part the Prime Time shows are preserved.

 

[Jack P]

GSN actually aired a total of 15 NBC primetime shows from 1968. I have all of those accounted for from the GSN airings. In terms of 1971-1978 syndicated nighttime shows, my files reveal 131 different episodes from GSN airings which combined with the 1 Storybook Sqaures show makes 147 confirmed shows aired on GSN.

There were only approximately 30 NBC night shows made (usually two episodes with the same panel and then the respective episodes aired many weeks apart; this in fact caused one show that taped prior to LBJ dropping out of the presidential race to have its answer blotted out when it aired after LBJ dropped out since the question centered on who would be managing his re-election campaign).

CBS as mentioned, was better in terms of preserving their daytime game shows starting in 1972 when CBS started airing game shows again after a four year absence. This is why "Price Is Right" is fully extant from the beginning (though Bob Barker refused to allow many episodes to air on GSN because of fur coat giveaways) along with the 1974-75 show "Now You See It' and of course all of "Match Game." In the late 90s, a vault at WCBS also revealed the existence of the entire 1972-1975 CBS daytime run of "The Joker's Wild" and the first few months of this run did ultimately air on GSN (They also found the short-lived game show from 1975 "Spin Off" but unfortunately this was never licensed for GSN airing which raises the question of whether the tapes were preserved after they were rediscovered!)

 

[Brian Himes]

GSN actually aired a total of 15 NBC primetime shows from 1968. I have all of those accounted for from the GSN airings. In terms of 1971-1978 syndicated nighttime shows, my files reveal 131 different episodes from GSN airings which combined with the 1 Storybook Sqaures show makes 147 confirmed shows aired on GSN.

Bummer! Then I am missing 31 of the episodes that GSN aired. I'd love to get those 31 episodes for my collection. I just know that the second 'Beaver Face' episode is among those 31 I didn't get.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Would anyone know if the short-lived NBC daytime game show "It Takes Two" (hosted by the venerable Vin Scully) exists in any form?

Completely gone.

Its important to consider that there is quite a bit of disinformation as to what got wiped and when (particularly in regards to NBC). Up until 2006 it was believed that no color tapes of ABC Password existed whatsoever, then suddenly two episodes turned up. The same goes with the original Jokers Wild, believed wiped until the entire run was found in a vault at WCBS.

Tape junkings seem to have stopped in general circa-1978, a bit earlier with CBS.

 

[Jack P]

Not "completely" gone since as noted, two episodes do exist. The one linked to YT, and the Chicago Museum of Broadcasting has a second one that can be streamed through their website.

 

[Neil Brock]

I remember years ago a friend of mine was trying to pull some Hollywood Squares episodes and the story he had gotten was that when they dubbed all of the 2-inch tapes over to another format (1-inch maybe), they never bothered to copy the air dates onto the new tapes and all of the tapes had the dub dates on them instead. So there was no way they could find the shows by when they aired without putting every tape on a machine.

 

[DeWilson]

Were you thinking of the Universal vault fire of five years ago?

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.

I heard something about Hec Ramsey, but I don't recall over whatJames

Again, see above comment

I've heard the 35mm masters of MY LIVING DOLL are MIA, as well as some Jack Webb-produced TV shows.

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.

Supossedly "Tales of Wells Fargo" Season 3, 4 and 5 was a victim of the Universal Fire.

Nope, still save in the master-vaults untransfered.

The last season of CBS What's My Line? colour episodes are missing (only B/W kinescopes of them were made), so once the master videotapes were wiped, the colour for those episodes disappeared (also, I think about one out of every four WML? episodes went out "live" and wasn't taped at all, just kinescoped in B/W, so maybe 1/4 of the colour ones were never preserved in colour anyway).

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.

Out of 20,000-plus episodes of shows produced by the DuMont network, there are only 300-400 surviving today, mainly because ABC assumed ownership of them in the early '70s, and decided the empty warehouse space (for their own programming) was more valuable than what was on all those DuMont film reels.

Most of what survived was Jackie Gleason's Honeymooners sketches from his variety show, and those only survived because he had them preserved himself. If the only copies had been in the DuMont library, they'd have ended up in the East River along with (almost) everything else produced by DuMont.

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.

'Son Of Svengoolie'. I spoke with Rich Koz(Sven) a couple years ago about the possability of his classic horror host shows coming to dvd. He said although he would have loved to see that happen, all the tapes were thrown in the dumpster after his show was cancelled. What a shame. If I were the janitor of that tv station I would have saved every last show of his.

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".