WHAT TIME IS IT , BOYS & GIRLS?? NO, IT'S ASTAIRE TIME - NBC-TV - CIRCA SEPTEMBER 25, 1960

Network Television in 1960, occasionally, offered optimism and elegance among the endless array of cops and cowboys.

As we entered the kinetic sixties, there were  approx.52,000,000 TV sets in a country with a population of 179,323,175.

While weekly Prime Time took us to courtrooms and  crime scenes , the sheriff's office and the surgical suite, some special programming could meet the standards of excellence set by video visionaries like Frank Stanton and  Pat Weaver.

CBS would showcase Leonard Bernstein's NY Philharmonic concerts for young people.

ABC offered the innovative, if  Kafka-esqe ,comedy of Ernie Kovacs.

NBC's Chet Huntley and David Brinkley guided voters and viewers  into President John Kennedy's Camelot.

But the apex of  television as an art form ,that year, was a vibrant, captivating  hour of song, dance, music and comedy in LIVING COLOR called , simply ,ASTAIRE TIME.

The sophisticated hour was the third and final installment in a trilogy of terpsichorean fun
starring and produced by the legendary star of stage, screen, radio and nightclubs,  Fred Astaire.

His first effort, 1958's AN EVENING WITH FRED ASTAIRE, won every major accolade and was the first musical program to be shot in filmic style and edited on  COLOR videotape.

The 1959 sequel , ANOTHER EVENING WITH FRED ASTAIRE was also celebrated by viewers , professionals and critics, alike.

1960's ASTAIRE TIME, featured Astaire's dance partner, Barrie Chase, plus Jazz legends Count Basie and Joe Williams.

It was directed  with a by iconic,  producer/director Greg Garrison, whose career credits include THE BUICK-BERLE SHOW and THE DEAN MARTIN SHOW.

Choreographer Hermes Pan , one of Astaire's favorite collaborators in cinema, brought a deft and sweeping look to dance numbers.

Here, from the AMPOPFILMS YOU TUBE site, is ASTAIRE TIME.

Enjoy!!!

LEGENDS OF LAUGHTER IN PRIME TIME - GROUCHO ROASTS JOHNNY CARSON - NBC-TV - CIRCA 1968

In the "swingin' sixties," the creative team at NBC's KRAFT MUSIC HALL decided to offer viewers something hipper than the than country-western balladeers, Broadway crooners and recipes for caramel apples that were a staple of the long running, high budget, weekly hour of music & comedy.

They struck a deal to bring a sanitized, but star-studded version of the FRIARS CLUB's off the record and off color "roasts" of the most famous and infamous names in show business.

In 1968, Johnny Carson, at the zenith of his TONIGHT SHOW career, and spending more time in divorce court  that most lawyers, was the target and one of his own  comic heroes: the one, the only Groucho Marx, took lethally funny aim.

From the BERNIE OWEN YOU TUBE site, here is an excerpt of THE FRIARS ROAST JOHNNY CARSON on  THE KRAFT MUSIC HALL.

Enjoy!!!

THAT WAS THE GENIUS THAT WAS - THE PASSING OF SIR DAVID FROST (1939-2013)

How many television professionals could effortlessly alternate between aggressively interviewing the  most interesting and powerful people on Earth and satirizing them in acerbically comic performances?

The late Sir David Frost did just that for almost six decades.

The international media impresario died suddenly, yesterday, leaving an amazing legacy in video.

David Parradine Frost, the son of a Minister, was a Knight in his native England UK and  a true Citizen of the World.

He was in the second wave of Television broadcasters. Frost was one of those who learned their craft in front of  the camera as the medium evolved and matured, not behind the microphone in radio studios, as had their predecessors. His work resonated with British Baby Boomers, who were questioning the values and institutions that their parents saved in World War Two.

Frost forged a new genre in Television as the point man on the BBC's groundbreaking, comedy program, THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS in the 1960's. He also hosted a subsequent, abortive, American version on NBC.  While the show was rejected, Frost was embraced by stateside audiences.

A charter member of the international Jet Set, in the 1970's , Frost personified the frequent flyer. He hosted a daily, syndicated  talk show for GROUP W BROADCASTING, based in New York, and actually commuted to the UK to star in a weekly interview program.

Like Playboy's Hugh Hefner, his most intimate, personal relationships made global headlines. He exemplified the MOD sensibilities of the immediate, post-MAD MEN era. He produced and hosted television shows in America, The UK and Australia. He also produced films and wrote books.

For this smart, savvy, multi-national, multi-media, multi-tasker, life, like television, was a global affair.

David Frost will best be remembered for eliciting a long-awaited apology for the Watergate affair from disgraced, former President Richard Nixon, during a landmark series of interviews he conducted with Mr. Nixon in 1976. That tense exchange was, itself, chronicled in a Broadway show and an Academy Award nominated film.

Frost began his storied career as a child of the burgeoning television generation and lived to be a respected, recognized elder statesman of international media.

Here, from ABC NEWS is David Muir with a remembrance of  Sir  David Frost. R.I.P.

 

HOW LUCY SAVED THE WORLD EVERY WEEK - MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE PILOT - CBS-TV - SEPT. 17, 1966

 

Television's Queen of Comedy bet her kingdom to give American Television two of its greatest dramatic hours.

In 1966, the mighty CBS Network resumed its annual ritual of convincing and cajoling TV's reigning redhead,Lucille Ball, to continue with her hit series on the TIFFANY NETWORK, THE LUCY SHOW.

This was a complex negotiation , each year, because they were dealing with two Lucy's.

One was the driven and demanding actress, who rehearsed every LUCY SHOW script until it looked like it was spontaneous to the large and loyal audience.

But, in addition to her comedic career, the "other" Lucy was the president of DESILU STUDIOS, the production company that she and her ex-husband, video visionary and pioneer producer, Desi Arnaz, founded in the early 1950's to launch I LOVE LUCY.

Here's a brief historical detour:

In the 1950's and 1960's, DESILU was to television , everything that MGM was to the movies in the 30's and 40's. No surprise. Both Ball and Arnaz  had started their Hollywood careers acting  in feature films. They actually met at RKO STUDIOS, which they purchased and folded into DESILU in 1957. DESILU was a small studio with the biggest hits on the little screen.

Most of their work landed on CBS. It was a prolific and profitable partnership.

But , back to 1966...

To keep Lucy on the air and in the fold, CBS offered a financial incentive that was tailor-made for a studio executive. Because of her show's formidable ratings ( high, but not I LOVE LUCY high), she was given a "development" fund. It was her choice to invest in the production of pilot episodes for new DESILU series, or keep the money for herself.

She elected to invest in DESILU's future and with it in two unique pilots. One was for NBC and  was described by its creator, Gene Roddenbery as "WAGON TRAIN  to the stars."

That show was STAR TREK.  Do I need to say more?

Producer Bruce Geller had a different, but intriguing, vision for another show that would have the intensity and action of  sophisticated "heist" films like RIFIFI or TOPKAPI, but set in the shadowy world of espionage against an international backdrop. DESILU took it to CBS.

It was called MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE.

Both pilots , shot in COLOR, made their way to the Fall 1966 Prime Time Schedule. Both made television history and both left amazing legacies that manifested themselves  in feature films.

The legend and lore of STAR TREK fills volume after volume.

The heritage of  MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE, like the operatives who work for the Impossible Mission Force, has a lower profile.

The terse and tense exposition of the show changed the architecture of  action dramas on television. The stories were meticulously crafted and often had to be written backwards to make sense. It was well known that in the late 1960's President Lyndon Johnson was one of the show's biggest fans. The show had a pace and a presence that was Spartan but suspenseful. Propelled by Lalo Schifrin's pulsating theme and eccentric casting ( Wally Cox as the point-person in a Spy caper?:) , the show ran from 1966 to 1973 on CBS.

Here, from the DON FOLEY you tube site, here is the 1966 Pilot for MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE.

Enjoy!!!


   

THE KING OF COMEDY AS A STAR OF DAVID - JERRY LEWIS IN THE JAZZ SINGER - NBC-TV - CIRCA 10/13/59

Nobody could ever accuse Jerry Lewis of comedic cowardice.

His life and career are a testament to the risks and rewards of working in the Funny Business.

At what may have been the zenith of his career in the late 1950's, when he was globally adored by children and adults, coveted by Paramount Pictures, where the films he produced and in which he starred broke box office records,when he was in high demand by nightclubs and television networks, he decided that it was time to take a dramatic star turn on NBC-TV'S LINCOLN MERCURY STAR TIME.

Lewis, along with video veterans,  producer Ernest D. Glucksman ,Director Ralph Nelson and writer Oliver Crawford crafted an updated version of the classic Al Jolson film, the first talking picture, THE JAZZ SINGER  for the anthology series.

Co-starring with Anna Maria Alberghetti, Molly Picon, Eduard Franz , Joey Faye and Del Moore, Lewis brought his own  unique talents to a modernized telling of the Sampson Raphaelson story of a performer who faces a moral choice between his Father and his Faith or Stardom and Success.

It was recorded at NBC Burbank on 2 inch, COLOR  videotape and manually edited. The production design and detailed sets seem to stand the test of time. You judge the performances.

Here , from the Joao Antônio Franz dos Santos YOU TUBE site, is THE JAZZ SINGER.

Enjoy!!!

02:56 UTC - THE MOMENT THAT THE WHOLE WORLD WATCHED HISTORY UNFOLD ON TELEVISION - THE MOON LANDING - ALMOST EVERY BROADCASTER ON EARTH - 7/20/69

 

 

Tonight , billions of people around the globe will look up at the night sky and ,  perhaps, they will notice the Moon, glowing in among the stars.

 

A comparative fraction will stop to recall that on this date in 1969, at 10:56 PM EDT, 02:56 UTC, and 109420 into the mission of APOLLO 11, Commander Neil Armstrong descended the ladder from

The Lunar Module EAGLE to become the first human being in history to set foot on another celestial body.

 

It was the night that Americans walked on the Moon.

 

At that electrifying moment on that steamy summer night, 44 years ago, an estimated 600 million people  watched television in homes and churches and bars and union halls and in parks and on beaches. Television took us from the launch pad , to mission control , to the white house and to the Moon.

 

Video Viewers  who watched through the night, saw  the grainy, jittery images of Armstrong , who, sadly,  passed away in 2102  and  Lunar Module Pilot ,Buzz Aldrin ,on television as they surveyed the Sea of Tranquility. Aldrin called the Moon a place of "magnificent desolation."

 

The third member of the APOLLO 11 team, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins orbited the moon , as his partners walked it's surface. For a period, as he guided the ship around the dark side of Earth's only , natural satellite, he was out of communications contact with his colleagues and with NASA's Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas

 

In the hours that followed the amazing moonwalk, citizens of the world put aside their  political, religious and social differences to celebrate the realization of a dream as old as mankind.

 

I have not heard much on this 44th anniversary of this daring , dazzling accomplishment, which fulfilled the mandate of a martyred President .It was  John Kennedy who set the goal of putting a man on the moon  before end of the 1960's.The American Lunar landing all but ended the so-called RACE FOR SPACE, with , what was then the worlds only other Super Power, the Soviet Union.

 

Tonight, we should take a moment to honor those who walked the powdery lunar landscape, reflect on this superlative achievement and wonder when mankind can reach for its most noble dreams and the stars , again.

 

Here , from the ZELCO321 YOU TUBE site, is an excerpt of ABC NEWS coverage of this wondrous moment.

 

Enjoy!!!

  

 

BROADWAY COMES TO TELEVISION CITY - JACK BENNY IN SHOWER OF STARS - CBS-TV - CIRCA 10/6/55

 

 

 

"FROM TELEVISION CITY IN HOLLYWOOD..." is one of the most familiar and famous phrases ever spoken on TV.

That simple, declarative statement has been a clarion call for CBS viewers since the Tiffany Network's Los Angeles Broadcast Facility opened its doors ... and the cavernous studios behind them ... in 1952.

One of the most prolific and proficient production centers in the history of the medium, TV City has been home to drama, comedy, sci-fi, music, soap operas, game shows , news , commercials and every other genre in video.

Even though CBS was vanquished by mortal rival NBC in the 1953 battle to set the technical standard in COLOR television, there was a time in the mid-1950's that CBS experimented with tinted TV, using RCA equipment.

At least two stages in the CBS complex at 7800 Beverly Boulevard in L.A's Fairfax section were outfitted with lumbering  RCA TK-41 Cameras and supplemental lighting equipment required for polychromatic  production.

A wide range of shows on the CBS schedule were produced at Television City in , what CBS branded as, FULL COLOR between 1954 and 1958.

In 1959, CBS scion William Paley decided that he would no longer spend his money buying equipment from  his long-time competitor, RCA/NBC's David Sarnoff.

CBS shut down regularly scheduled, COLOR programming until the Fall of 1966, when all three of America's major broadcast networks delivered their prime-time programs in COLOR.

But reflecting on the mid-fifties at CBS, CHRYSLER'S SHOWER OF STARS is a prime example of the CBS COLOR STRATEGY.

A monthly  mix of music, comedy and variety, usually hosted by the incomparable Jack Benny, it alternated with CHRYSLER'S CLIMAX, a series of suspenseful dramas and mysteries.

While both shows were produced LIVE at Television City, SHOWER OF STARS was offered as a CBS COLORCAST,  once a month.

Here from the SCREENSTAGEANDSONG YOU TUBE SITE , is a  warm and wholesome comedy, based on a Broadway hit. Jack Benny does his monthly start turn, with a versatile cast in TIME OUT FOR GINGER.

Enjoy!!!