To all of you who have been so kind as to visit KINESCOPE HD, we offer our best wishes for the Holidays and for the New Year ahead!
Thanks for your time, your interest and your commitment to classic television.
It is appreciated!!!
Our Holiday gift to you is a musical masterpiece that spans the decades from 1986 to 2010 and crosses network lines from NBC to CBS.
Here are two video versions of a virtuoso performance from 2011 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, the incomparable Darlene Love, singing her 1963 hit, CHRISTMAS BABY.
It has been a Letterman tradition since she first performed the seasonal, fan favorite on NBC-TV'S LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN IN 1986. She reprised her rocking rendition for th 25th time on CBS-TV'S LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN on Friday , December 23, 2011.
We hope she's there to do it LIVE for another millennium or two!!!
First, from the BERNDIGGITYDOG YOU TUBE site, we have the "economy-sized" version from 1986 and then from BOYIN747 YOU TUBE site,the sprawling, brassy 2010 edition.
Have a wonderful Holiday, and Happy New Year and Enjoy!!!!!
For three decades, on two television networks,a Yuletide video visit from singing star Perry Como was an American Christmas tradition.
The affable , singing barber from Canonsberg, Pennsylvania was already a major recording artist when he began hosting THE CHESTERFIELD SUPPER CLUB, one of the first "simulcast" programs , that aired LIVE on both CBS Television and Radio.
His success on that fifteen minute program,which aired three nights a week , led him to his own one hour, weekly, variety program on NBC-TV. PERRY COMO'S KRAFT MUSIC HALL , which was produced in LIVING COLOR, was first broadcast from Broadway's Ziegfeld Theater and then moved to NBC's cavernous Brooklyn Studios. It was one of televisions most watched programs in the 1960's.
A reserved and reverent Holiday guest in millions of American homes, his Christmas specials were a warm and wholesome celebration of the season.
Here from the CUPASAURAS YOU TUBE site, is a rare recording of the entire Christmas Night edition of Perry Como's CBS-TV series, THE CHESTERFIELD SUPPER CLUB. Enjoy!!!!
One of television first heroes, world-weary, L.A.P.D detective Joe Friday, saw his world in black and white.
So did the millions of loyal viewers who followed his weekly adventures in crime fighting on the nascent NBC Television Network in the early 1950's.
They didn't just observe the absolutes of good and evil or right and wrong through Friday's eyes , but they watched television's first, true, police procedural,DRAGNET in silvery, shadowy, monochrome images transmitted by their friendly, hometown NBC station.
But, on Christmas Eve 1953, NBC network engineers and programmers joined with DRAGNET's producer-director-star, Jack Webb and his production company , MARK VII, to offer select viewers a holiday present that rivaled the lights and ornaments on their Yuletide trees in hue and palette.
The December 24, 1953 episode of DRAGNET,chronicled the theft of an aged, plaster statue of the infant Jesus in a Nativity scene, from a Los Angeles, Roman Catholic church. The show was consistent with the hit series production values in its use of tight shots, terse dialogue and, for the time, fast pace to convey the daily, methodical, and sometimes minute, challenges confronting a police officer investigating a case.
But this edition of DRAGNET, entitled THE BIG LITTLE JESUS, was different from all that had come before and none that would air until the second run of the durable series debuted on NBC-TV in 1967.
This episode aired on NBC in COLOR.
No, not LIVING COLOR.
That branding and it's attendant peacock animation would not be introduced until September of 1957, when NBC first gave viewers the 'bird' on YOUR HIT PARADE.
No,this Holiday special was broadcast in RCA COMPATIBLE COLOR.
That phrase assured the millions of video viewers with B&W receivers that they could also watch the tinted tale of the minature, missing Messiah without having to spend approx. $500,the 1953 equivalent of buying a late-model,used car or the down-payment on a middle class home, for the purchase of a color television set.
Plus,this program aired a scant, few weeks after the Federal Communications Commission endorsed the RCA ( then the parent company of NBC )system of electronic color television, over a mechanically driven color technology proposed by NBC's mortal, corporate rival,CBS. The timing of this broadcast brought, both, focus and immediacy to RCA and NBC efforts in color programming and receiver sales that could not be ignored.
The episode in question was the first episode of a regularly scheduled, network, filmed series to be photographed and broadcast in color.It was repeated often and re-produced for the second run of the DRAGNET series with many of the same cast members.
Re-titled as THE CHRISTMAS STORY,the Peacock Network aired it on December 21, 1967.In this version, veteran character actor, Harry Morgan played Webb's partner in crime-solving.
While the color negative of the 1953 version is , apparently, hard to find, we have posted , below, from theNOLOGORECORDS YOU TUBE site, the complete BIG LITTLE JESUS episode of DRAGNET. Enjoy!!!!
Multiple award winner and Broadway star Mary Martin was also one of television's earliest luminaries.
As incandescent and energetic on the small screen, as she was on the Broadway stage, Ms. Martin, may be best known to video viewers for her high wire performance as PETER PAN.
She achieved new, theatrical heights when NBC-TV brought J. M. Barrie's wondrous flight of fantasy to young viewers, LIVE and in LIVING COLOR in 1955 and again in 1960.
Here , in a raucous, rollicking , B&W clip from a 1953 revue on NBC, posted on the TOLDES YOU TUBE site, Ms. Martin makes a fast and furious fashion statement in song and dance with an able assist from the unseen Don Pardo. Enjoy!!!
My name is Paul Gluck ( aka PAGEONE ) and while I have been working in Television for over 30 years, I have watched Television for my entire life.From the very first, monochrome images of Dave Garroway on the TODAY SHOW that I saw flickering across the screen of my parents 21",blond wood, Zenith console TV, to the vibrant video of SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL blazing across the LCD flat panel in my living room, I have always loved television. I have worked as a production assistant,a writer, an assignment editor, a producer,an executive producer, an executive editor,a news director and a station manager. My fascination with the medium , the programs we create and the people who produce that content, grows with each & every day. KINESCOPE HD is a site dedicated to classic television, creative content production and vintage performances on video. I hope you share my love of television.If you do, share your thoughts on the programs we post.Enjoy!!!!!
(PHOTO BY OUR TV PAL,BRAD NAU)
