TFTP On This Day: "Marty" on "Philco-Goodyear Playhouse" from NBC (May 24, 1953)

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'zigoto'
Length - 50:54

It Was 65 Years Ago Today: "Marty" is one of the most-celebrated programs of the live-drama era of early television (sometimes referred to as the "Golden Age" of TV). In the mid-1950s, for a period of approximately five years, before filmed TV programs made largely in Hollywood had taken over network TV schedules, live dramatic TV plays, presented anthology-style from New York, were a celebrated mainstay of American television. And this period was kicked off by "Marty", which originally aired 65 years ago today, on May 24, 1953.

"Marty" aired on the "Philco-Goodyear Playhouse", one of many live anthology shows on the networks throughout the Fifties. It was written by Paddy Chayefsky, who would go on to a celebrated TV and film writing career, directed by Delbert Mann, and produced by Fred Coe, one of the leaders of the live TV drama movement. Marty is played by Rod Steiger, who also would go on to a celebrated career, and the woman Marty meets (referred to only as "the Girl") is played by Nancy Marchand.

Marty is a bachelor who lives with his mother, works as a butcher, and has begun to settle for a life of loneliness as he approaches middle age. He is convinced that women are uninterested in him and that he is (as he calls himself) a "fat, ugly little man". This changes when he meets the Girl at a "lonely hearts" dance hall, and by the end of the hour-long drama they seem to have a glimmer of a chance at a happy relationship together.

There were several things that made "Marty" so groundbreaking in 1953. One was simply the raw acting talent of Rod Steiger; he would go on to lend that talent to such landmark films as "On the Waterfront" (1954), "The Pawnbroker" (1964), and "In the Heat of the Night" (1967), and to become a leading practitioner of "the Method". Another was Chayefsky's writing that dramatized mundane yet inherently dramatic events in the lives of regular people; the play was lauded for the way that it utilized dialogue that seemed like everyday conversation. The story of "Marty" was celebrated by 1950s culture, and it became an Oscar-winning story when adapted to film in 1955.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "All-Star Revue" from NBC (Feb. 14, 1953)

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'HappySwordsman'
Length - 56:57

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

In the fall of 1950, NBC launched a new variety show called "Four Star Revue"; the name derived from the four rotating hosts--Ed Wynn, Danny Thomas, Jack Carson, and Jimmy Durante. With the beginning of the show's second season in the fall of 1951--and an expanded roster of rotating hosts--the program's name was changed to "All-Star Revue". The episode above, hosted by singer Perry Como, is from the show's third season and originally aired on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1953.

The episode begins with a rather lengthy and elaborate musical number that has Como arriving at his office and being attended to by a large group of chorus girls, servants, deliverymen, even a shoeshine boy. The rest of the episode features comedy sketches with Joan Blondell, Ben Blue, and Patti Page; songs by Page ("How Much is That Doggie in the Window?"), Como ("You'll Never Walk Alone" from the play "Carousel"), and Page and Como duetting ("Side by Side"). There is also a very strange sketch near the middle in which Como and his kids tour an art museum in which the paintings all come to life and the figures in the paintings do short commercials for sponsor Pet Milk.

TFTP's Monochrome March: "Ding Dong School" from NBC (1953)

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'Robin_1990'
Length - 29:33

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!

"Ding Dong School" was an early children's program that laid the groundwork for later programs such as "Romper Room", "Sesame Street", and especially "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood". Airing on NBC from 1952 to 1956, "Ding Dong School" was hosted by the matronly Frances Horwich (referred to on-screen as "Miss Frances"). Horwich was an educator who would later become NBC's head of children's programming.

This 1953 episode seems typical of the series. For its entirety, Horwich sits on a stool in front of a neutral backdrop and for each segment (including commercials) interacts with objects of various kinds that are wheeled in and out on carts. Miss Frances methodically blows bubbles from a bubble pipe, reads a storybook with a crib full of baby dolls by her side, makes commercial pitches for Kix cereal, the show's sponsor, and makes animal shapes out of a folded handkerchief.

Throughout Horwich maintains a presentational style the likes of which would later become the hallmark of Fred Rogers on his program--and for which Horwich in "Ding Dong School" serves as a precursor and perhaps an inspiration. First, she addresses the TV camera as if it is the child viewer; she looks directly into the camera as if making eye contact with a child and speaks to it as if conversing with a child. Also, her tone of voice is soothing and mellifluent, very easy on the ears. This style of address and her style of program is one that clearly had some influence on later kids' TV, and in this way "Ding Dong School" is a pioneer of children's programming.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "Love of Life" from CBS (Mar. 20, 1953)

Posted on Internet Archive's Classic TV collection by user 'Classic_TV_and_Radio_Fan'
Length - 14:26

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

The soap opera (or daytime serial) was one of the earliest genres transferred from radio to television. In the early years of television, these programs were only 15 minutes in length, as they were in radio. The plots of early soap operas were typically pretty simple, with conversation scenes in simple locations dominating individual episodes (not entirely different from how soap operas have been constructed in all the years since).

This episode of the CBS soap opera "Love of Life" (which aired from 1951 through 1980) features only three scenes, all pertaining to a runaway young boy. First, we see a detective and a school headmaster arguing about the runaway in the headmaster's office, before switching to the boy's home where his mother and a couple of other women fret about the boy's disappearance. Finally, we see the boy himself and his fellow runaway as they attempt to hitchhike by the side of the road, with (implied) unfortunate results.

At the beginning and end of this 1953 episode, we also get to see several commercials. First, a short spot for Aerowax floor wax, with a handy price comparison to other leading brands. Then there is a commercial for Chef Boy-Ar-Dee canned pasta, at a time when the actual Chef in question was still a living, breathing person. At the end of the episode are two more commercials, one for Anacin pills and one for Heet liniment.

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.