TFTP's Monochrome March, On This Day: "The Object Is" from ABC (Mar. 26, 1964)

Posted to YouTube by user 'WarioBarker88'
Length - 28:44

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

It Was 54 Years Ago Today: Early-1960s TV saw many game shows with a clue-guessing format that tried to capitalize on the popularity of "Password". "The Object Is" is a short-lived example of those game shows, and this next-to-last episode of the program aired 54 years ago today on March 26, 1964.

Like others of the clue-guessing subgenre of TV game show, on "The Object Is" a celebrity guest was paired with a regular contestant, with two such teams competing against one another. (The celebrities here are actress Joan Caulfield and comedian Stubby Kaye.) One member of the team tried to guess the identity of a famous or legendary person from a clue given by the other in the form of an object associated with that person. (For example, in this episode the clue "bearded clock" is given for the person "Father Time".)

The game-play seems to proceed smoothly enough, but it must not have been too compelling to viewers, because the show only lasted for about three months, from Dec. 30, 1963 until Mar. 27, 1964. Dick Clark, although already well-known to audiences as the long-time host of "American Bandstand", was making his game-show hosting debut with "The Object Is".

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1981 (HBO)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MicroJow'
Length - 2:27

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

TFTP's Sign-Offs Through the Years has stuck mainly to broadcast stations that are major network affiliates. But this week we are featuring a cable network sign-off--from the era in which cable networks actually signed-off for the night. TFTP featured a 1979 sign-off for HBO a while back, and the 1981 sign-off here features the same exact "bedtime" film at the very end of it.

The animated "bedtime" film consists of images pertaining to things one would do before turning in for the night--setting an alarm clock, turning out lights, pulling window shades, and the like. The film is preceded by a series of promos for "HBO Weekend", including the movie "Alien" (on Friday), a concert program with country music star George Jones (on Saturday), and the movie "Coal Miner's Daughter" (on Sunday).

TFTP's Monochrome March: Local Newscast from KCMO/Kansas City (Oct. 1959)

Posted to YouTube by user 'KCTVFive'
Length - 5:18

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

This brief clip is from Kansas City station KCMO (now KCTV) and consists of part of the local newscast from a day in October of 1959. Anchor Harold Mack reports several stories, including a local case in which a teen poisoned her parents, a local industrialist who had died, and a Future Farmers of America convention taking place in Kansas City. An ad for sponsor Maxwell House coffee appears, with a jar of Maxwell House sitting on Mack's news desk at the end of the clip.

TFTP's Monochrome March Will Return After These Messages: Sugar Crisp cereal ads from the 1950s

Posted to YouTube by user 'Vintage Fanatic' (top), 'spuzzlightyeartoo' (bottom)
Length - 1:31 (top), 0:50 (bottom)

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

And every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. Monochrome March will return after these messages...

These two Sugar Crisp cereal ads from the 1950s feature three bear mascots that are precursors of the cereal's later smart-aleck bear from the 1970s. The first commercial, done with traditional animation, is a western saga set in a saloon and featuring a stand-off between a good guy and a bad guy--but how bad can a guy be if he likes to eat Sugar Crisp? The second ad portrays the three bears in stop-motion animation style as they assist a little boy and girl in enjoying their Sugar Crisp. Both commercials suggest that Sugar Crisp can be eaten as a meal, as a snack, or as candy, a rather peculiar set of suggestions it would seem to us now.

TFTP's Monochrome March: "See It Now" w/ Edward R. Murrow on CBS (Mar. 9, 1954)

Posted to YouTube by user 'KD'
Length - 25:50

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

Edward R. Murrow is perhaps the most legendary newsman in radio and television history. And his attempt to report on and expose the malfeasance of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the mid-1950s is one of the things that made him legendary. This 1954 episode of Murrow's "See It Now" is where he did most of his work in exposing McCarthy--with a huge assist from McCarthy himself.

The bulk of the episode consists of film and audio clips of McCarthy making various statements about the supposed threat of communism in America, often juxtaposed with other clips where he contradicts himself. Murrow introduces the clips and provides framing statements at the beginning and end of the program, but for the most part he lets McCarthy's own words do him in. Murrow's statement at the end of the program has become famous for blaming the state of American politics for the problem of McCarthy, quoting Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar": "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars but in ourselves."

In the following weeks, McCarthy asked for and got a chance for rebuttal to Murrow's presentation in this episode, to which Murrow provided a further response. Ultimately, McCarthy's downfall was the result of his censure in the U.S. Senate in December of 1954, a result that this episode of "See It Now" probably helped to hasten.

TFTP's Monochrome March: "Cavalcade of Stars" from DuMont (Oct. 26, 1951)

Posted to YouTube by user 'WABDtv'
Length - 49:48

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

"Cavalcade of Stars" started in June of 1949 on the DuMont network as a garden-variety early TV variety show--with dancers, singers, comedy sketches, and rotating hosts. Starting in July of 1950, one of those rotating hosts -- soon to become the show's only host -- was comedian Jackie Gleason. Gleason had been kicking around Hollywood for a number of years by 1950 and had appeared the previous year in the first version of the "Life of Riley" TV sitcom. "Cavalcade of Stars" would become the vehicle by which Gleason rocketed to stardom in TV comedy.

By fall of 1952, Gleason had been snapped up by the more prestigious CBS and "Cavalcade of Stars" moved over to the Tiffany Network, renamed "The Jackie Gleason Show". But before that, Gleason had a couple of solid seasons on DuMont as his star rose, and this episode is from the middle of that period, October of 1951. Most of Gleason's famous characters originated on the DuMont show, including Charlie Bratten ("The Loudmouth") and Reggie Van Gleason (both of which appear in the above episode), as well as the Honeymooners--which had appeared for the first time a few weeks before this episode aired.

This episode, after a brief monologue from Gleason (and his signature line "And away we go!"), begins with a dance number by the June Taylor Dancers, followed by a song from Georgia Gibbs. Gleason does a magic act which is followed by a musical/dance number called "Hangin' Around With You". The Loudmouth makes his appearance (with Art Carney's Clem Finch supporting) followed by a pair of songs. The show closes with a long sketch (that includes a comic musical performance) featuring Reggie Van Gleason, a character that lampoons upper class pretensions.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1980 (WVTV/Milwaukee)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MicroJow'
Length - 7:59

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

The whole first half of this 1980 sign-off from Milwaukee independent station WVTV consists of late news delivered in voiceover on a slide reading "News Final". Many stations--of those that even had a news segment as part of their sign-off--used the same technique of simply having an announcer read news over a still slide.

The remainder of the sign-off has a short film of a hymn, the ownership/technical voiceover, and a curious treatment of the national anthem. An image of the American flag is superimposed on a chromakey image of the map of the United States, as the lyrics for the anthem appear below the map in "bouncing ball" style (so viewers who didn't know the words would be able to follow along?).

TFTP's Monochrome March: Ernie Kovacs as Wolfgang von Sauerbraten (1950s)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Kovac Corner'
Length - 2:46

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

Ernie Kovacs is a favorite at TFTP (see here, here, and here) so this is a Monochrome March special look at another of Ernie's classic characters, Wolfgang von Sauerbraten. Kovacs combined the German Oktoberfest-inspired costume (and moustache) and a mostly indecipherable German accent with the shtick of being a disc jockey to create some farcical humor.

Kovacs did this at a time when Germany was just re-emerging after the horrors of World War II, and he probably helped to re-establish some of these elements of a more benign image for German culture. Although the lampooning of ethnic characteristics can be seen as questionable today, seeing Kovacs portraying von Sauerbraten is a great window into his style of comedy.

TFTP's Monochrome March Will Return After These Messages: Westinghouse ads from CBS (Apr. 2, 1951)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MattTheSaiyan'
Length - 7:04

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

And every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. Monochrome March will return after these messages...

Here are all of the Westinghouse commercials from an April 1951 episode of CBS' "Studio One". In the first ad, Westinghouse celebrity spokeswoman Betty Furness demonstrates an electric dishwasher, an appliance that was still quite a novelty in the early-1950s and that was certainly not commonplace. (Note how she has to explain how to load dishes into the dishwasher, the model being demonstrated a top-loading drawer-style machine.)

The second ad features Furness showing off a frost-free refrigerator/freezer. She explains in some detail the process of automatic defrosting (where does that melted frost water go?) to those viewers who might wonder how such a thing is possible. The third and final Westinghouse ad, without Furness, is not for any particular appliance or product but is rather a general promotion of Westinghouse's research and development activity in the area of ultrasonic sound waves.

TFTP's Monochrome March: "The Tonight Show" w/ guest host Jerry Lewis from NBC (Jul. 2, 1962)

Posted to YouTube by user 'givethechanceakid'
Length - 18:26

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

After Jack Paar left the "Tonight Show" in early-1962, there was an interim period of several months before new host Johnny Carson could begin due to previous contractual commitments Carson had. During this period, guest hosts filled in using the Paar "Tonight Show" set and personnel, including sidekick Hugh Downs and bandleader Skitch Henderson. The clip above is from one of those interim episodes, from July of 1962, hosted by comic Jerry Lewis.

"The Tonight Show" was ninety minutes long in those days and was much more freewheeling and loose in structure--tendencies that are loudly on display in this Lewis-hosted episode. Large chunks of the episode are devoted to Lewis and Downs playing memory games, an avocation of Lewis's. The first part of the clip above shows Lewis guessing the items (written on a chalkboard) that had been compiled from audience suggestions in the previous segment. Then, Lewis recites items from a list he had put into a sealed envelope.

Lewis finally introduces a guest, fellow comic Jack Carter, and the two engage in frantic banter and horseplay before settling down into what at least resembles an interview. (It's not long before this breaks out again into horseplay and antics.) The general melee of this clip and the episode it came from represents perhaps Lewis's lack of commitment to the program, as a transient guest host, or perhaps Lewis was just unable to contain himself, but this episode represents a high point in the lack of structure in early television.