TFTP Game Shows: "Letters to Laugh-In" from NBC (Sep. 30, 1969)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Million Colors of Light 2'

Perhaps one of the most curious spin-offs ever, "Letters to Laugh-In" was spun off of the #1 hit "Laugh-In" that had taken the country by storm in 1968 (and which TFTP featured in a post a couple weeks ago). "Laugh-In" of course was a revolutionary program for its time, both in terms of content (the mainstreaming of the "counterculture") and in terms of form (quickly edited blackout spots assembled in post-production). "Letters to Laugh-In" was somewhat more traditional in format as a game show, although the game play of using applause meters to measure the audience response to jokes sent in by "Laugh-In" viewers was nonetheless unorthodox.

Not that "Letters to Laugh-In" ever got anywhere near the popularity of its progenitor--it lasted only a few months between September and December of 1969 on NBC's daytime schedule. It's interesting to watch now simply for its gaudy production design (borrowed from its parent show), for the lame humor evident both in the jokes that are competing and in the cringe-worthy banter between the celebs, and for the fact that it was ever on the air at all. The fact that it was is a sign of just how big "Laugh-In" was in the late-1960s.

TFTP On This Day: "The Hollywood Palace" from ABC (May 27, 1966)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Hollywood Palace'

It Was 50 Years Ago Today: "Hollywood Palace" was one of the great all-purpose variety shows of the 1960s, an ABC stalwart for most of the decade (from 1964-1970), for most of it anchoring ABC's Saturday night schedule. This episode, aired 50 years ago today on May 27, 1966, is from the program's third season, the season's next-to-last episode.

"Hollywood Palace" was much like the "Ed Sullivan Show" in that it was a true variety show--in addition to sundry musical acts and comedians, the program featured acrobats, puppeteers, clowns, sports figures, and all manner of actors and celebrities. Act after act was packed into each episode--the first quarter of this episode features an opening song by guest host Judy Garland, acrobats The Roselle Troupe (performing an aerial act outside the theater in a parking lot), and two songs by Johnny Rivers (including "Secret Agent Man"). The rest of the show features clown Charlie Cairoli, another song by Garland, comedian Jack Carter, actor/singer Van Johnson, a duet between Garland and Johnson (in clown make-up!), and pantomimists The Black Theatre of Prague.

"Hollywood Palace" did not have a regular host, opting for a different guest host for each episode, although some hosts returned again and again. This episode is the second Garland-hosted one just in this season, and Bing Crosby returned repeatedly in the show's six-year run (including in the next episode after this one, as previewed by Garland at episode's end). This particular episode has as its main sponsor "investor-owned electric and power companies", and so filmed commercials related to the electric industry are sprinkled throughout the first half of the episode.

TFTP Variety: "Laugh-In" from NBC (Feb. 10, 1969)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Anna'

"Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" was a turning point in the TV variety show when it premiered in early-1968. Both in terms of content and in terms of form, "Laugh-In" upended 20-year-old traditions in the genre: its use of sexually-suggestive and permissive humor was part of TV's mainstreaming of the counterculture, while the quick cuts and very short comic bits (assembled through editing in post-production) countered the longer sketches and staging traditionally used in TV variety programs.

Although a departure from the TV variety show as it had been known, "Laugh-In" was massively popular--becoming the #1 show on TV for the 1968-69 and 1969-70 seasons. This episode is from February 1969, when the show was at its peak of popularity and influence. It includes several of the show's signature segments: a party where random guests turn to the camera and recite jokes, the elderly couple on a park bench played by Ruth Buzzi and Arte Johnson, the Fickle Finger of Fate award given by Rowan and Martin, Arte Johnson's wisecracking German World War I soldier, and the show's most well-known bit, the "joke wall" (in which cast members tell short jokes after emerging from small doors opened in a wall painted in "Laugh-In"'s trademark psychedelic colors).

We also see in this episode (from a recording when the series was rerun on cable network Trio in the late-1990s/early-2000s) the classic cast of the show, including hosts Dan Rowan and Dick Martin as well as Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Goldie Hawn, Joanne Worley, Henry Gibson, and Judy Carne, and guest stars Davy Jones (of The Monkees), Greer Garson, and Robert Wagner.

TFTP Variety: "The Jack Paar Program" with Bob Newhart from NBC (May 28, 1965)

Posted to YouTube by user 'StandApartComedy'

Bob Newhart, before becoming an icon of 1970s and 1980s sitcoms, was a stand-up comic best known for his mock telephone conversations. Jack Paar, after his stint as the host of "The Tonight Show" ended in 1962, hosted a prime-time variety show for a few years on Friday nights on NBC.

This clip is a stand-up appearance by Newhart on one of the final episodes of Paar's prime-time show, which ended in June of 1965. In his introduction, Paar exclaims his appreciation of Newhart's comedy, and Newhart provides a bit that was another of his signature types: assuming the identity of a particular kind of character (here a flight attendant) and mining the character's situation for comedy.

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 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 News: KGO News (San Francisco) (Feb. 8, 1965)

Here's a news clip from San Francisco's ABC affiliate KGO-TV from February 8, 1965. Black-and-white video (as opposed to film) clips from the '60s are always interesting because they give us a great glimpse of what TV actually looked like in terms of its visual texture in this period. Watch closely and you can see the switchovers between video sources as the image shifts between newscaster Bob Dunn in the studio and videotaped/filmed story segments (look for the horizontal rolling interference).

The content here is especially interesting, as it includes a lot of reporting and updates on the evolving situation in Vietnam, a conflict that was very much still escalating and still entering the American conscience and consciousness in early-1965. Other reports concern the space program and racial integration (the latter reported from Atlanta by a young Peter Jennings, later the longtime ABC Nightly News anchor). The local commercial for a car dealership that appears midway through is fascinating as well, as it shows the relative simplicity and primitiveness of local ad spots in this period. A straight-ahead pitch delivered by a salesman who is simply sitting at a desk in the studio, followed by a slide with the business name and address, the spot seems ridiculously simple-minded to us now (even for a local commercial).

TFTP Promo: NBC Network Promo for Fall 1967 Morning Shows

This minute-long NBC promo highlights the network's fall 1967 weekday programming.  These, of course, were the now long-lost days when networks programmed this time period themselves (rather than allowing affiliates to run syndicated fare, as happens now), and for the most part the networks filled the mornings with game shows and occasional light variety. 

Featured in this promo are "Snap Judgment" with host Ed McMahon (in this period working the morning and late-night shifts for NBC); "Concentration" with host Hugh Downs (ballyhooed as the network's longest running game show); "The Pat Boone Show," a rather obscure and presumably short-lived variety half-hour starring the pop singer; "The Hollywood Squares," the long-running (and oft-revived) celebrity-centered game show that was near the beginning of its TV life; "Jeopardy" (in its original Art Fleming-hosted incarnation); and "Eye Guess," another fairly obscure show, one of the many game shows hosted by Bill Cullen.

This promo is a delight to watch, partially because its difficult to imagine any network running such a clip now (at least without intended irony).  Multiple images--some stylized drawings, some stylized photos of the hosts of the various shows--cascade in kaleidoscopic fashion across a 3x3 grid of squares that resembles the playing board for the aforementioned "Hollywood Squares."  Accompanying the images is an appropriately jaunty and lighthearted musical score that would be right at home in any of the shows from NBC's fall 1967 morning schedule.

TFTP Variety: "The Hollywood Palace" w/ host Adam West (Oct. 8, 1966)

"The Hollywood Palace" was one of the last big-time all-purpose TV variety shows. Pretty much pure vaudeville, the show featured a succession of unrelated acts (singers, comedians, acrobatic acts, sketches) and a different celebrity guest host each week. It ran from 1964-1970 on ABC, for most of its run on Saturday evenings, and was staged in the ABC Palace Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood (before that, and now again, known as the El Capitan Theater, and now the home of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live).

This complete episode of "The Hollywood Palace" is from Fall 1966 and features Batman's Adam West as host. Late-1966 was the peak of "Batman's" popularity as a fad show and this is exploited in West's opening number. Other guests include Joey Heatherton (probably also at her peak of popularity at about this time), Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Ray Charles and the Raylettes, a pre-beard and pre-counterculture George Carlin, ventriloquist Fred Roby, and stunt performer Danny Sailor (who climbs and does stunts atop a large pole outside the theater).

This appears to be from a master tape of the episode, which is why the timecode appears throughout in the upper right corner. There are also commercials included, with a couple of half-minutes of dead air where the local affiliate would plug in local commercials. Commercials include: Dutch Masters cigars, Efferdent denture cleaner, Diet Delight canned fruit, Pall Mall cigarettes, Philips Milk of Magnesia laxative, Bayer aspirin, Chiffon margarine, and Tareyton cigarettes.