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.

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 Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1979 (WDIV/Detroit)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Retrontario'
Length - 7:10

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.

This 1979 sign-off from Detroit station WDIV begins with the tail end of a segment (presumably public service in nature) called "Classroom". The NAB Television Code slide leads into PSAs for Tel-Law (a public service in Detroit for getting legal advice over the telephone) and the Detroit Institute of Arts, which are followed by a local promo for "First 4 Sports", the station's sports department. 

Next is an Editorial Reply in which the president of the Michigan Beer & Wine Wholesalers Association responds to a recent station editorial about a new bottle deposit proposal. (Fans of "Seinfeld" will now flashback to the episode centering on the Michigan bottle deposit scam.) Editorial replies like this were often seen on TV in this era, and one wonders if this one ever saw the light of day at any time other than right before sign-off.

The ownership/technical voiceover on a curious criss-cross weave "Goodnight" image precedes more PSAs, for the Michigan Heart Association and the Detroit Community Music School. Rabbi Dannel Schwartz then presents a religious segment. The very disco-looking "go 4 it" WDIV logo (with serious neon) appears for a final voiceover "good night" and the intro to the national anthem. The anthem film itself is a quick-cut montage of mostly still images, many of them very "seventies" in nature. The disco-logo returns for a few seconds before the signal cuts out.

TFTP's Monochrome March: "Winky Dink and You" from CBS (mid-1950s)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Mark Mentzer'
Length - 28:33

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!

"Winky Dink and You" is one of the most interesting programs in television history, and it's not clear that there has ever been another program like it. It has been heralded (both when it was on the air and since) as TV's first "interactive" program. Host Jack Barry (of later quiz show scandal--and "Joker's Wild"--fame) and animated sprite Winky Dink led child viewers on a quirky journey involving drawing on their television screen.

Unless the child was especially mischievous, this drawing was done on a clear plastic sheet (referred to as a "magic window") and a special set of crayons that could be ordered through the show (the kit is advertised several times in this episode). The sheet was spread out over the TV screen, staying in place via static cling, and Barry and Winky presented several different images per episode that kids could complete with their crayons. In the episode above, these images include members of Winky's family from his "family album" and an automobile that then goes on a drive against a moving background.

"Winky Dink and You" aired on Saturday mornings on CBS from 1953 to 1957. It was revived in syndication for a few years circa 1970 and was even distributed in home video form in the 1990s--complete with drawing kit.

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's Monochrome March: "You Asked for It" from DuMont (1951)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MeditationsBySharri'
Length - 29:22

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!

"You Asked for It" is a program that defies categorization and which has no real counterpart in today's TV landscape. The title is quite literal in that viewers sent in letters asking for something (an answer to a question, a particular type of guest or presentation) and the show gave it to them--with host Art Baker declaring "You asked for it!"

Airing on the DuMont network from 1950-51 and then ABC until 1959, "You Asked for It" fulfilled hundreds of such requests over the course of its run. In the episode featured here, soldiers get to see pin-up girls act out the pin-up photos they've appeared in, a pair of trained birds do charming tricks, a Hawaiian country music singer performs, and a group of actors from the "Our Gang" comedy shorts has a reunion. Baker interviews each of the former child actors about their lives since "Our Gang" and the actors are also reunited with crew members from their films (plus there is cake!).

Sponsored by Skippy peanut butter, several commercials are included here as well, including one very weird one in which host Art Baker tries to hypnotize the audience into liking Skippy.

TFTP's Monochrome March: "The Steve Allen Show" from NBC (Jul. 1, 1956)

Posted to YouTube by user 'balsamwoods'
Length - 58:23

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 episode of "The Steve Allen Show" is the famous one where Elvis Presley, in one of his first appearances on national television, was forced to sing "Hound Dog" to a hound dog. Steve Allen was famous for denigrating and ridiculing rock music. His disregard for rock--right up until the end of his life in 2000--became a real blind spot for him, as his attempts to (he thought) expose the ridiculousness of the form instead made him look ridiculous. This was the context in which he made Presley serenade the hound dog in this episode.

Allen's prime-time variety show had premiered just a month before this July 1956 episode. He had been host of NBC's "Tonight" since 1954 (the premiere episode of which was featured on TFTP recently), and he did double duty on "Tonight" and this Sunday night variety show until he left "Tonight" in 1957. The Sunday night show competed with the "Ed Sullivan Show" and this booking of Presley was undoubtedly an attempt to score an early ratings victory. (Presley, of course, would soon after make an even more famous appearance on Sullivan's program.)

The episode above begins with a bit between Allen and fellow variety host Milton Berle before going on to a musical number of the song "Picnic", a humorous sit-down interview with then-newcomer Andy Griffith, a viking-themed number by Allen show regulars Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, and a bit by Allen (of questionable taste to us now) where he lampoons an Indian yogi. Allen and guest Imogene Coca play a married couple in a sketch that sends up the "realism" seen in recent Hollywood movies, and finally three-quarters of the way through the episode Elvis makes his appearance.

Presley, after a brief introductory chat with Allen, gamely and in good humor performs "Hound Dog" to the hound dog, wearing a tuxedo to boot. Presley returns, along with Griffith and Coca and host Allen, in a show-closing musical comedy sketch that sends up country and western music.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1978 (KXAS/Ft. Worth-Dallas)

Posted to YouTube by user 'robatsea2009'
Length - 3:31

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.

This sign-off from station KXAS in Ft. Worth-Dallas, Texas, from 1978, starts in the middle of a religious segment called "Day to Day" in which a woman is singing a hymn while a pianist accompanies her. It then shifts to the national anthem, but without any kind of film--the music simply plays over a slide of the KXAS logo. (This qualifies as the least elaborate and most bare-bones national anthem presentation we've seen here at TFTP.)

The KXAS logo is a spiffy number "5" with a star incorporated into the curve of the number (presumably an implied reference to Texas' motto as the "Lone Star state"), and with a smaller version of the late-1970s NBC "N" logo perched next to it. The logo stays on screen for the next portion of the sign-off, which is the ownership/technical voiceover. A brief on-screen message about the station's microwave transmitter link closes the sign-off.

TFTP's Monochrome March: A Whole Month of Black & White Television from the Past!

Posted to YouTube by user 'tvdays'
Length - 0:59

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

For the entire month of March, TFTP will bring you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white! That means that in addition to TFTP's Monochrome Monday, which brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week, all the posts on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in March will also be programs or clips in black & white. ("Sign-Offs Through the Years" will continue its progression through the years on Fridays each week.)

Peter Rabbit Ears in the ABC promo above (from circa 1959) is just a first taste of the monochrome TV from the past that will be featured during the month of March.