TFTP's Monochrome March Will Return After These Messages: Miscellaneous Commercial Block from the 1950s

Posted to YouTube by user 'MattTheSaiyan'
Length - 12:25

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...

This block of commercials from the 1950s features (among other products) cigarettes, bread, autos, and soap products. There are ads for Palmolive bar soap (for the "schoolgirl complexion look"), Snickers candy bars (an animated look at the layers of a Snickers bar), Jello Instant Pudding, and Spic & Span cleaning solution. There are three different Camel cigarette ads--two of which are animated, one with a lion tamer and lion, the other featuring water skiing. There are also three different Sunbeam bread ads--and only one of them is the same as those TFTP featured a few weeks ago.

As we begin to wrap up this year's Monochrome March, it's worth considering how different these ads are from those we are familiar with today. To begin with, they're much longer; a couple of the ads here clock in at around two minutes. Animation was much more prevalent in ads from the 1950s and '60s; animation is almost never used in commercials now. And there is an unmistakable air of innocence to many of these ads--a girl jump-roping to sell Sunbeam bread, clean-cut teenagers featured in the Palmolive ad. Heck, even in the cigarette ads the worst thing going on is whether or not the cigarettes will irritate your throat.

Maybe, in that era, things really were more black and white.

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: 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: Sunbeam Bread ads from the 1950s/60s

Posted to YouTube by user 'MattTheSaiyan' (top), 'Vintage Fanatic' (bottom)
Length - 1:11 (top), 1:03 (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...

Here's a pair of black-and-white commercials for Sunbeam bread from the monochrome era of the 1950s and '60s. The first ad features two animated figures, a jump-roping little girl and a Sunbeam baker (complete with the puffy hat). A fairly obnoxious jingle plays, seemingly sung by the girl and baker as female and male voices alternate. "Sunbeam energy" is the theme of the ad, as a title with this message is superimposed on live-action images of Sunbeam bread.

The second ad takes the "sun" in Sunbeam literally, with a parable of a sunbathing fellow who is unconvincingly said to have "vim, vigor, and vitality" from eating Sunbeam bread. He frolics with his family, picnicking on the beach (sandwiches made with Sunbeam bread, natch) and playing with a beach ball with his daughter.

TFTP Signs-On for June: Station Sign-On (w/ "Carolina Calling") from WBTV/Charlotte, NC (c. 1959)

Every first of the month, TFTP signs-on with a classic station sign-on sequence, to launch another month of Television from the Past...

Posted to YouTube by user 'iblefty1951'

This is maybe the oldest station sign-on sequence available out there on the interwebs: a late-1958 or 1959 sign-on from Charlotte, North Carolina, CBS affiliate WBTV that includes the first few minutes of legendary local program "Carolina Calling".

This clip begins with a customary voiceover of ownership and address information, over images of the station's studio and transmitter and a few varieties of station logo. This is followed by the image of an alarm clock (reading 7 o'clock) going off, the opening to "Carolina Calling".

"Carolina Calling" was a morning variety show, with music from Arthur Smith and his band the Cracker Jacks, with the kind of information we've come to expect from morning shows--weather conditions, etc.--sprinkled into the banter between songs. The show was a TV extension of the show by the same name that Smith had been involved with on radio in Charlotte.

Professional video taping systems (invented in 1956) only became available to local stations in the middle to latter part of 1958, and WBTV was reportedly one of the first to get one--thus dating this video-taped clip to circa 1959.

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Miscellaneous Commercials from the 1950s

Posted to YouTube by user 'MattTheSaiyan'

Here's an assortment of commercials from the 1950s, not from any one commercial block but just a miscellaneous grouping.

Commercials from the 1950s do not resemble later commercials in a variety of ways. They were often presented as inserts in the program, by an announcer or even a cast member associated with the program (most shows at this time had a single sponsor); they could be much longer (some of the ads in this block clock in at over a minute); and they are often much more demonstrative in nature, showing the product in use.

Products in the commercials in this block (in the order they are seen): Kodak Brownie cameras, Coca-Cola (a Thanksgiving-themed ad), Betty Crocker cake mix, Olde English Peanut Brittle, Carnation Evaporated Milk, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee spaghetti sauce, another ad for Coca-Cola (a football-themed one), Dodge automobiles, Ivory Soap, and Dodge auto dealers (this last one a spiffy animated ad--cartoon ads were prevalent in the '50s and into the '60s).

TFTP Kids: "Quiz Kids" from NBC (1951)

Posted to YouTube by user 'ClassicTVShows'

"Quiz Kids" was a renowned program that aired on both radio and TV throughout the 1940s and 1950s and gave inspiration to a generation or two of youngsters. Several children ranging in age from 12 to 16 formed a panel to which the moderator asked challenging questions sent in by viewers/listeners based on various areas of knowledge. The child panelists were regulars who rotated on and off of the panel for extended periods of time, thus fostering viewer/listener identification and familiarity. This is why many of the questions asked seem to hint at familiarity with the particular child on the part of the letter writer asking the question.

"Quiz Kids" was on radio on NBC from 1940 to 1953 and on TV on NBC and CBS simultaneously from 1949 to 1953, returning for a brief run in 1956. For most of this time, the program was sponsored by Alka Seltzer, thus the commercials for that product included here. The producer of the show was Louis G. Cowan, who would go on to produce the massively popular "$64,000 Question" on CBS in the mid-1950s, success that he would then parlay into the presidency of CBS for a short time before stepping down amid the quiz scandals of the late-1950s. At the time of this "Quiz Kids" episode in 1951, the show's host was Joe Kelly; "Kukla, Fran, and Ollie" host Fran Allison is subbing for him in this episode, which she addresses in a statement near the end of the episode.

"Quiz Kids" had a long-lasting influence on television, inspiring every high-school quiz challenge program that has appeared since, mainly by local stations drawing on children in their local area. Quite a few national versions or extensions of the program were tried over the years as well, and the program even was the inspiration for the quiz program and related characters in the Paul Thomas Anderson film "Magnolia".

TFTP Game Shows: "Shadow Stumpers" from WAAM/Baltimore (c. early-1950s)

Posted to YouTube by user 'ClassicTVshows'

From the days when local stations produced programs for their local audiences in genres such as the game show, "Shadow Stumpers" is a fascinating example of a game show premise and of game play specifics very unlike other game shows, before or since.

Aired on WAAM (now WJZ) in Baltimore, and hosted by Brent Gunts, who was apparently sort of an impresario of local Baltimore TV, the show has a delightfully quaint pace and tone. Two families compete by guessing what an object is from a silhouetted shadow of the item; points are given for each correct guess, but that's mostly beside the point, as the purpose here is to showcase the wholesome family members (especially the kids) and highlight the interchanges between Gunt and family members. A family living-room set further enhances the tone.

Before program syndication became prevalent and networks took over almost every spare hour of a local affiliate's schedule, local stations used to produce programs in many genres--weekday talk shows, afternoon teenage dance parties, kids' programs--but relatively few ever attempted a local game show (outside of the high-school knowledge bowl variety, at least). "Shadow Stumpers" is one of those rare attempts.

The YouTube posting of this episode is labeled as being from 1962, but this is a mislabeling, as the program aired in Baltimore from approximately 1949 until 1953.

TFTP Game Shows: "What's My Line?" w/ debut of Fred Allen as panelist, from CBS (Aug. 15, 1954)

Posted to YouTube by user 'What's My Line?'

"What's My Line?" was one of the most durable and popular prime-time game shows of the 1950s and 1960s (it ran from 1950-67, with a syndicated version then continuing until 1975). The four-person panel (which from early in the show's run included Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Bennett Cerf) guessed the profession/vocation of contestants, with one celebrity mystery guest (for which the panelists were blindfolded, so as not to recognize the person) thrown into each episode.

The show was thought to have hit its stride only around the time of this episode, the first with fourth panelist Fred Allen, the great radio comedian. Allen had a legendary wit that is evident in his exchanges here, and although he never really adapted well to television, his run as a "What's My Line?" panelist may be his TV high-point.

This episode's mystery guest, "Buffalo" Bob Smith, host of the iconic "Howdy Doody" kids show (that was in the heart of its 1947-60 TV run at this time), has some fun with Allen, too, at one point doing a Fred Allen impression as one of his voice-disguising gambits. (Mystery guests usually disguised their voices as well, so panelists wouldn't be able to ID them that way.) Overall, in addition to being a landmark episode with Allen's debut, it's a good example of a typical mid-1950s "What's My Line?" episode.

TFTP Drama: "The Guiding Light" (Apr. 9, 1953)

Posted to Internet Archive's Classic TV Collection

"The Guiding Light" was a very long-running and venerable TV soap opera, on the air on CBS for over 55 years between 1952 and 2009 (after 15 years on radio before that). This episode, a 15-minute one following the standard soap opera length at the time, is from April 1953, the show's first year or so on TV. Although watching old episodes of TV soap operas can have a disconcerting effect--being dropped into the middle of stories for which you have no context or understanding of what happened previously--they are nonetheless fascinating to look at (perhaps for this very same reason).

The entire episode consists of only two conversations: a young man (played, incidentally, by James Lipton of "Inside the Actors' Studio" fame) talks to a doctor about getting a divorce he doesn't really want; a pregnant woman and a little boy (who seem not to be related, or to really even know each other) have an encounter. Without any context, we have no idea what the characters' story lines are, and so we are forced to concentrate to a great extent on the form: characters sitting around, at a table or in a sitting room, having conversations in which story lines are advanced by millimeters. Soaps were shot and broadcast live at this time, so we can watch them now knowing that these were like little plays in which the actors performed in real time, at the same time that they were being watched by viewers.

Soap operas are so named because they started out with soap companies as their sponsors back in the radio days, so we are not surprised to see that soap brands Ivory soap and Duz laundry detergent are the sponsors here.

TFTP Will Be Back After These Messages: Commercials for TV Guide (1950s/1960s/1969/1980-81)

Posted to YouTube by user 'tapthatt2012' (first & third clips) and 'Diamond Pleshaw' (second clip)

TV Guide was once the most popular magazine in America. As a testament to just how central television was to American culture through the late-1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, TV Guide magazine had the highest circulation of any magazine in the country. This, of course, was an era before onscreen interactive program guides or availability of TV schedules via the Internet (not to mention before such things as DVRs and video-on-demand). Apart from daily or weekly listings in newspapers, if people wanted to have a schedule of TV programming, they had to rely on TV Guide.

These TV Guide commercials span this period of the late-1950s through the 1970s. We begin (in the first clip) with a one-minute spot from the early-1960s that extolls the virtues of TV Guide and gives some visual examples of the subjects covered in that era. Then, a series of shorter spots shows actor Michael Ansara from "Broken Arrow" in circa 1957, the stars of "Naked City" from circa 1960, and writer-director of "Noah's Ark" (and "Dragnet") Jack Webb from circa 1956.

In the succeeding clips are some additional TV Guide ads from 1969 and the early-1980s. First, a 1969 ad featuring Glen Campbell, who had one of the biggest shows that year with his "Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour", a huge variety show hit. Finally, a couple of ten-second ads from 1980 and 1981, the first highlighting the new Fall 1980 TV season, the second the Ronald Reagan presidential inauguration.
 

TFTP Variety: "Coke Time with Eddie Fisher" (Sep. 29, 1954)

Posted to Internet Archive's Classic TV Collection

Eddie Fisher is a name that not many people today would recognize, but he was a major A-list celeb in the 1950s; he was as famous for his wives as he was for his singing--he was one of Elizabeth Taylor's husbands after having been married to Debbie Reynolds (with whom he was the parent of "Star Wars" star Carrie Fisher). This post features a complete episode of Fisher's show "Coke Time".

"Coke Time" was Fisher's main star vehicle for a good chunk of the 1950s, running from 1953 to 1957 on NBC. Each episode of the twice-weekly series (as in the one featured here) had Fisher simply singing three or four songs, with few frills and little staging, punctuated with a commercial or two for Coca-Cola. "Coke Time" is a good example of a program that had the sponsor's name in the name of the show, which was, of course, very common in the late-1940s and 1950s.

The show is also a good example of a program type that would disappear by the end of the 1950s but which was fairly widespread at the time: the 15-minute-long musical variety show, a program type in which Perry Como and Dinah Shore were likewise featured at different times in the '50s. The quarter-hour show was used for genres other than music (such as news and interview shows), but the combination of genre and length was an easy one to fill with a a handful of songs and call it a show.

TFTP Special: TV Test Patterns (1950s/1960s)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MSTS1'

For today's Labor Day holiday, we've got a post that will give the normal old TV clips the day off. This is not a TV program clip per se, but it is a type of TV content from the past that was very prevalent in TV's early days and has completely disappeared now: the TV test pattern.

Test patterns were used by television engineers to make sure that the transmitted and televised image being broadcast was adequate from a technical standpoint. This is why these test patterns have the patterns of lines of different thicknesses and lengths, the concentric circles, the areas of different gradations of shading--so that engineers could tweak settings and make adjustments prior to a station signing on for the broadcast day.

The test patterns featured here are reproduced from versions found in print books, but since they were a stationary element they are more or less as viewers would have seen them on the air. Test patterns would have appeared for anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours before the station actually signed on with programming (which in the early days of TV may not be until mid-morning, midday, or even in the earliest days early-evening). Most test patterns had call letters or some other identifying mark for the station, as can be seen in most of the test patterns featured in this clip; these are all from varying periods in the 1950s and 1960s.

TFTP Will Be Back After These Messages: TVs from the Past -- Early Television Set commercials (1950/1954)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MattTheSaiyan'

In watching old TV commercials, it's always interesting to see what the sellers of products thought buyers were interested in, interests that then became the selling points in the ads themselves. Based on these two commercials for television sets, one from 1950 and the other from 1954, potential TV set buyers were really worried about how well a TV set could show close-ups.

The first ad, for a 1950 Westinghouse TV, has something called an "electronic magnifier" that you could somehow overlay on the screen to take a TV image and magnify it. The fact that they don't actually show this feature in operation and that the images they show of wrestlers are clearly not authentic images off of a TV screen should have made potential buyers of this set a little wary. The peculiar shape of the screen on this set is a good example of just how different early TV sets were from the ones that viewers became used to just a few years later.

The second TV set ad is from 1954, and by this time apparently there were already some people who were ready to replace their first TV set with an upgraded model. So the RCA television set being advertised is shown to have a much better ability to show close-ups than earlier TVs with smaller screens. A 21" inch set was a large screen in those days, and you can see why compared to the older 10" set! The price comparison between the 1950 set and the 1954 set in these ads is interesting, too, and shows the way in which technology improves and becomes cheaper at the same time; the 1950 Westinghouse model has a retail price of $259.95, while the much bigger and better 1954 RCA set is only $199.95.

TFTP Comedy: "Kovacs on the Corner" (1952)

Posted to Internet Archive

Ernie Kovacs was one of the great geniuses of early television comedy. He had a relatively brief but wide-ranging career--as a talk-show host, game-show panelist and host, morning-show host, and comedian--before dying prematurely in a car accident in 1962. This clip is a complete episode of a very short-lived Kovacs series called "Kovacs on the Corner", which was on NBC on weekday mornings for just three months in early-1952.

"Kovacs on the Corner" featured Kovacs in a slightly more laid-back style than that for which he is best known. Kovacs' pioneered a style of visual comedy on television that was not seen before or much since, utilizing sight gags, technical tricks unique to TV, and absurdism to create comedy. Here, in "Kovacs on the Corner", he is much more subtle and situational in his comedy. The "corner" of the title is a city neighborhood corner that comprises the show's sole set and on which Kovacs--assisted by singer and future wife Edie Adams--encounters different characters of the type one might meet on a street corner (policemen, street sweepers). Several musical numbers are featured, showing the easy facility with which early TV comedy shows crossed over into musical variety and back again.

Kovacs does show glimpses of his legendary humor here. A segment called "Swap Time" in which two ordinary people swap odd items (a torn bowler hat for an eight-pound block of ice) offers Kovacs the opportunity for some clever ad-libbing. An advertisement spoof in which Kovacs and Adams pitch "food" (holding a brown sack with the word "food" written on it) is a trenchant critique of TV commercials that foreshadows his later comedy. Although this episode is not typical of Kovacs' later comedy, it is both a good peek into his early career and a good example of a particular type of early musical/comedy variety show.

TFTP Comedy: "The Buster Keaton Show" (1950)

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'Emperor'

Buster Keaton was, of course, one of the greatest silent film comedians, rivaled by only Charlie Chaplin in popularity and artistry. Lesser known is Keaton's television career, which started soon after the launch of commercial TV and included many TV commercials and a few different regular series. This program, "The Buster Keaton Show", was the first of his forays into weekly TV, and it ran for awhile in 1950 on Los Angeles' KTTV (at a time when the national networks were not yet completely built out, especially to the west coast, and when local stations, especially in large cities like L.A., produced much of their own prime-time programming). It was a short-running series, and this is reputed to be the only episode that survived.

Typical Keaton slapstick is featured here, although of course not up to the quality of his classic silent films. The storyline (such as it is) involves Buster training in a gym for an insurance physical, a premise that is really just an excuse for him to get himself into instances of physical comedy related to exercise (e.g., a rowing machine, boxing ring, exercise clubs, stretching, etc.). Although perhaps of a somewhat different quality considering that it involves Buster Keaton, this episode is not a bad example of the kind of sketch comedy that would be prevalent throughout the 1950s.

TFTP Promos: NBC Network Promo (Jul. 19, 1957)

Posted on YouTube by user 'MattTheSaiyan'

This fascinating NBC promo gives a glimpse of how networks promoted their programs in the late-1950s. Likely because of the difficulty at the time of editing together film and videotape clips (the latter was a brand new technology in 1957)--and the fact that many shows were still broadcast live, and thus would have no clip footage to edit into a promo--the promos were mainly still images with an announcer's voiceover. There is no way of knowing for sure, but it's possible that the voiceover may have been done live as the promo was airing, although it's equally likely that it was prerecorded (since this promo seems to have survived with soundtrack intact).

This is for NBC's Saturday night line-up in mid-1957, which consisted of the "Julius LaRosa Show" (LaRosa, of course, had famously been fired on the air by Arthur Godfrey in 1953), "George Sanders Mystery Theatre" (an anthology program hosted by movie character actor George Sanders that lasted a single season of 13 episodes), and "Encore Theatre", yet another anthology drama that at this time consisted of repeated episodes of the anthology program "Ford Television Theatre".

The anthology drama was a TV genre common in the 1950s, as common as sitcoms and police procedurals are today, and that has pretty much completely disappeared now. They featured new stories with a different cast every week and had no ongoing cast members or dramatic premise, with each week being a new mini-play of sorts; some had ongoing hosts, like George Sanders here, but others merely had a sponsor's identity or a generic title (like "Encore Theatre" here) to provide continuity. Eventually, we'll get around to posting some episodes from anthology dramas of the 1950s here on TFTP!

TFTP Will Be Back After This Message: UNIVAC Computer commercial from "What's My Line?" (Feb. 5, 1956)

The first post for TFTP a couple of weeks ago was the debut episode of the panel game show "What's My Line?". This first commercial to appear on TFTP is one from the run of "What's My Line?", which for a number of years had as a sponsor Remington Rand, maker of UNIVAC computers. This 1956 commercial for UNIVAC is fascinating for several reasons: it is lengthy (much longer than we've become used to in recent years); it has an explanatory quality that was once common in commercials as late as the 1980s; it features John Charles Daly, WML's host, providing an introduction to it in the program, also once a common practice that has long since (mostly) disappeared; and it provides a really interesting glimpse at 1950s era computers!

TFTP Game Shows: "What's My Line?" debut episode (Feb. 2, 1950)

As TFTP's inaugural post, here is the debut episode of the venerable and legendary CBS panel game show "What's My Line?" Airing on Sunday, February 2, 1950, this was the first of what would be 17 years of live episodes that anchored the last half-hour of CBS's Sunday-night prime-time schedule through all of the 1950s and most of the 1960s ("WML" would go on to air for another 8 years, until 1975, in syndication).

"What's My Line?", for those unfamiliar with it, was one of the earliest "panel" game shows, a sub genre that dominated TV game shows through the 1950s and much of the 1960s. Four celebrity panelists asked yes or no questions designed to give them clues for guessing a contestant's occupation (or "line"). The final contestant was the "mystery guest", a celebrity that the panelists would likely recognize on sight thus requiring them to wear blindfolds (and the mystery guests to use often humorous fake voices).

We see in this episode host John Charles Daly (who would host for "WML"'s entire 17-year run) and longtime panelist Dorothy Kilgallen (who stopped appearing only upon her death in 1965). Yet to appear at this point were the other longtime panelists Bennett Cerf and Arlene Francis, although both would soon join Daly and Kilgallen in guessing the lines of hundreds of contestants for the better part of two decades.