"HAZEL BUYS A COLOR TV" complete rare color NBC episode, November, 1961..

yes, exactly...pick up the DVD box set it worth every penny and if you don't remember it in color you'll have a blast watching it with your children!

 

Used to love T C as a kid.

 

I wonder why it only lasted one season...

 

It's somewhat interesting to note that a number of the shows discussed in this thread all aired on a couple of days of the week in the fall of 1961. The Wednesday-Thursday schedule:



Note that the "color" TOP CAT and THE JOEY BISHOP SHOW aired opposite each other (assuming your ABC affiliate even had color capability - ours did in Philly) on Wednesday evenings. And HAZEL aired the following night.

Harry

 

all the Color we wanted in the NYC area back then.

 

30 episodes...that's at least 2-3 years worth of show today! even back then we had more bang for the buck...I guess T.C. wanted more money! and they canned the show!

 

I had all the Tinykins Marx micro TOP CAT figures back in 1962! I treasured them. Wish I still had them as they are expensive today on ebay!

 

Man, you ain't kiddin'.

 

Is this color version available on the First Season DVD set in this color version?

 

The Virginian was a show from this era that was like this. They had a lot of cast changes over the eight year run, with a lot of people leaving for various reasons (pay disputes, wanted to do something else, died, etc.) and they almost never even tried to explain the sudden disappearance of previously central characters. The main man himself though, James Drury, stayed with the show for the whole 8 year run. Starting in 1962 they made more than 220 90-minute (75 minutes w/o the commercials) mini Western movies in color, with major guest stars (Bette Davis, Jack Warden, Leonard Nimoy, Vera Miles, etc) and location photography. The Virginian had, I think, the biggest budget of any show on TV in 1962: $350,000, which would be about $3 million today—if you could even make a show like that...

The first episode of the second season explains the tragic back story of Trampas, played by Doug McClure, who also stayed with the show for the whole run.

 

Fun thread. I am in the category of remembering picking shows to watch because they were in color. We got our color TV in 1964 (Yankee Cardinal world series). I seem to recall that it cost my mother $400; a real extravagance. Bonanza and Disney wide world of color are the ones that come to mind. I could not afford a color set myself until 1984.

 

my grandparents had a color TV...I watched a lot of Color TV over at their house! only a few blocks away! it was great!

 

No...

 

Don't forget that "The Adventures Of Superman" was filmed in color for several seasons back in the
fifties............
"Beginning in 1954, producer Whitney Ellsworth ordered that the show be shot in color, even though its first-run broadcasts were still being transmitted in black and white. By the time a large number of TV fans owned color sets (and were clamoring for color programming), Adventures Of Superman had banked 52 episodes’ worth of a guy in a bright red-and-blue suit, leaping tall buildings in a single bound. "

 

I own all the DVDs and remember the show in B&W...

 

I believe by the last season, each episode of Lost ballooned to about $4.5 million! The average cost for a 1-hour network shot today is about $2 million-$3 million. Cable shows like Breaking Bad and Dexter are slightly lower, but edge up another 5%-10% every year due to cast raises (but they only shoot 12 episodes a year).

Hazel was a weird show, but I do remember watching it as a kid. My parents had to explain to me that Shirley Booth was an extremely gifted Broadway actress, but it must have been a comedown for her to play a wisecracking maid (no matter how much NBC paid her).

 

You can't just throw them old ones away like Kleenex

 

No, TVs back then were not as disposable like they seem to be today. Those big console jobbies were built to last - and last they did. People weren't in a hurry to get rid of their fine furniture, especially if the TV in it was still working, black & white or not. As long as the TV repairman could keep it going, it was worth keeping.

So the switch to color was a lot longer process than, say, the switch to digital. I think it was sometime in the mid '70s that TV GUIDE finally stopped putting next to shows and began indicating black & white instead in an effort to reduce clutter in the magazine.

Harry

 

Hazel used to always piss me off as a kid. It was loosely termed a comedy, but it seemed like Hazel ended up getting her feelings hurt and crying every other episode. If I had a housekeeper, I'd just want them to shut up and clean something.

 

An episode of HIGHWAY PATROL and a Christmas episode of DRAGNET were in color in the mid-1950's. Also SCIENCE FICTION THEATER, THE CISCO KID and THE LONE RANGER.

 

"HAZEL - What'l..." The YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement.

 

And Superman! At least from the third season on.



But in truth, filmed color TV shows were very rare prior to 1966. NBC had some, but they were shooting lots of B&W all the way through 1965.

It's funny how TV turned to color right around the same time that the music business started turning from mono to stereo...