TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "School House" from DuMont (Mar. 22, 1949)

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'zigoto'
Length - 26:05

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

Although little-known today (except among those well-versed in TV history), from the late-1940s through the mid-1950s there was a fourth national TV network, the DuMont network. DuMont Laboratories was an electronics firm founded and run by inventor Allen DuMont, and the DuMont network was an offshoot of his television set manufacturing business. Many of the programs DuMont aired were a little eclectic, even peculiar, compared to the other networks. "School House" is one of those programs.

Sort of a hybrid between a musical variety show and a sitcom, "School House" is set in a high school classroom where Kenny Delmar presides as the professor. Several students from his class--which includes later notables such as Wally Cox and Arnold Stang--sing, dance, juggle, and recite poetry in the episode above, the only known surviving episode, which aired on Mar. 22, 1949. (The series aired for only a few months between January and April of 1949.)

Part way through the episode, there is a very interesting ad for DuMont television sets, although it is entirely within the setting of the show's classroom. Wally Cox and another student have wandered over to a large console television that happens to be stationed at the side of the classroom, and Cox pontificates to Delmar and the class (and, of course, the viewers) about the qualities of the DuMont TV set.