Lost TV shows

(RE: 1950's Dragnet)

I mean, you would think it would have turned up on Nick At Nite and / or TV Land at some point in the last 30+ years, right? The color 1960's version of the show has been on TV plenty of times.

 

I remember watching the reruns ...probably late 60's. Cool show..."out of the blue of the western sky...

I enjoy watching Seahunt now. I remember watching the reruns as a kid...again late 60's.

Both shows offered a bit of originality...one revolved around air, the other about sea so a bit different than the standard fare.

 

yup, sometimes it makes no sense. : )

 

loved the show back then, but today it looks prehistoric!

 

Sorry, it must have been a misremembered fragment. Good on UCLA.

 

I have heard that the Kukla, Fran & Ollie segments of "The CBS Children's Film Festival" are gone.

Anyone know the status of "Captain Kangaroo?"

 

Jack Webb had all of his elements destroyed in the 70s because he got tired of paying the storage. Vidiot can post more details as he was involved in the destruction. Why he couldn't have donated them somewhere, I've no idea. UCLA hadn't really begun heavily preserving TV until the late 70s when Dan Einstein took over the archive and Paley (Museum of Broadcasting then) may not have existed yet, useless as they are. They were actually heavily syndicated until the mid-60s but were withdrawn when the color episodes went into production. I'm pretty sure that they all exist in the Universal vaults but they have no interest in doing anything with them, due in no small part to the fact that the first 100 are PD.

 

There also was the Universal vault fire several years ago. Supposedly, film and TV wise, they lost a lot of video masters (and some shows produced on video like "Don Adams Screen Test" are reportedly gone) but 35mm negatives were said to be safe. But we likely will never know specific details.

If they were never transferred to 1-inch video for syndication or cable (which the 1950s "Dragnet" may not have been, since they were withdrawn back in the 16mm era), they'd be unlikely to go to the expense of re-transferring them.

(Music archives are apparently a different story, with much more lost, but again, details unverified.)

 

This is unfortunate that so many episodes are still lost, but I was very happy that any were found (and released) at all because I'd wanted to see the show for years.

 

Wow... That's really, really sad. I'm a little surprised that Jack Webb would let something like that happen.

 

The show is interesting and entertaining and I think it had a great deal of potential. I would have liked to see Rhoda develop as a character, moving away from the passive character we saw in the series.

I read somewhere that one of the things that worked against the show is that they had the wrong male lead and that a more serious actor would have worked better than Bob Cummings. I do think that Cummings came across too humorously in the series.

 

There's been some old ATV Midlands tv rediscovered, nice to see Ollie Beak and Tinga & Tucker puppets near the end!

 

Jack Chertok wanted Bob Crane for the role and it would have been a better show. But CBS forced Cummings to be cast. He was a total pain in the ass and he and Newmar hated each other. Also, he got into a big fight because he wanted to reprise his stupid Grandpappy character from Love That Bob, with Cummings as his supposed grandfather, although as old as Cummings was, his grandfather would have been about 100 years old. The story goes that Chertok wouldn't allow it leading to Cummings to quit the show. Although scheduled against Bonanza, who knows if anything would have made a difference.

 

One actress who appeared in one of the episodes of the 1962-63 Benny Hill sitcom-anthology, Caron Gardner, was later in the "Dirty Vicar" sketch of S03E13 of Monty Python's Flying Circus - which also featured a cameo from David Hamilton who was involved in some early Thames Hill shows.

 

"MB" (as it was known 'initial'-ly) was originally founded in 1976. But yeah, for the most part . . .

 

The one daytime soap that escaped wiping was Days of Our Lives and The Doctors. I believe that these 2 shows were the exception, not the rule in terms of wiping.

 

Shows I watched that appear nowhere that I know of-

Valentine's Day- tony franciosa sitcom

20th Century- read an earlier post but I remember this being on film, not videotape.

Hollywood and it's Stars (or the stars)...the episode on Fabian was great...as I remember.

Joey Bishop late night talk show...esp circa 1967-68 ....all I can dredge up is about 3 minutes. The battle of the bands against the Osmonds one night was hilarious.

Never Too Young....however I personally get if it was wiped. But there were some nice band segments.

All the Joe Pyne shows. Other than the 3 or whatever that are around.

What's the deal with The Name of the Game cropping up from time to time but WITHOUT three of the best episodes if its three years?

At the time that Honey West was on the air, there were two......two...different sitcoms about inept superman-type super heros (years before greatest american hero or whatever). I think one was on nbc and one maybe cbs. They were both awful....just terrible. Can't remember the name of either one...suppose they're lost?

 

This show has been on YT; I've seen several episodes. The one about monster movies is very fondly remembered by the horror revival generation.

Do you know what other bands did the show?

Restoration of infamous Joe Pyne talk show (video geeks & Zappa fans take note)

The Name of The Game: 1968-71

Captain Nice

Mr Terrific

 

Those don't look like the super hero shows. I'll have to dredge around. They each had a look/feel similar to My mother the car.

 

Oh, no, I'm only involved with preservation -- I don't destroy any TV shows or movies or shorts or commercials or anything. I have heard of cases where things got thrown out or erased by accident, but I was never part of it.

I don't know the story of Jack Webb's older shows being thrown out or preserved, but I know the ones directly owned by Universal have been saved and all still exist and were digitally remastered, going back to the Dragnet '67 series (which ran through 1970). I'm surprised Webb wouldn't just pick up the phone and give his old 1950s show to UCLA's TV archives or something and take the tax write-off.

 

Until Dan Einstein took over the UCLA Film and Television Archive and turned it into the largest and best in the country, they had a very small collection. Webb discarded his materials in the mid-70s from what I understand, prior to even the extremely overrated and highly flawed Museum of Broadcasting coming into existence. Sorry that I attributed the estruction to you but I recall seeing someone posting that they were involved in the process. I thought that it was you but obviously not.

 

I'm dredging up a couple old posts because I'm now up to early 1963 in my What's My Line watching. I feel like I'm waiting around for Kennedy to be assassinated.

December 30, 1962 is an interesting show because of Ray Nitschke and Vaughn Meader. Whereas the former would go on to easy induction into the Hall of Fame (as well as a few more championships), the latter's career would come to a screeching halt in less than a year (through, of course, no fault of his own). I believe his record, First Family, was the fastest selling record ever up to that point (ultimately eclipsed by none other than the Beatles). In December 1962, he was a recording superstar. By December 1963, he was entirely washed up as an entertainer. He was toxic. By 1965 Meader was broke. On the evening of November 22, 1963 Lenny Bruce decided to go forward with his show. He reportedly went on stage, and after a long pause said (as a serious observation rather than a joke): "Boy, Vaughn Meader is f*cked". Quite true.

O man, place not thy confidence in this present world . . .

 

still the best! The Honeymooners Lost Episodes...

 

I liked Mr. Terrific better than Captain Nice! but they were both fun...that Little Blue Pill! LOL.

 

Wow, I consider myself a long-time fan of Lenny, but I'd never heard that story before. I wonder if anyone in Lenny's audience laughed.