TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "The General Electric Theater" from CBS (Dec. 18, 1955)

Posted to YouTube by user 'HORDE'
Length - 29:17

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

Everyone knows that Ronald Reagan, America's 40th president, had been an actor. But that doesn't mean its not still a little jarring to see him actually act, as in this episode of "The General Electric Theater". "GE Theater", which Reagan was also host of for its entire run from 1953 to 1962, was an anthology drama in which a different story with different actors appeared each week. The early years of TV had many such shows, although "GE Theater" was one of the few remaining by the end of its run in the early-1960s.

This 1955 episode of "GE Theater" is entitled "Let It Rain", and in addition to Reagan it features a very young Cloris Leachman. Reagan plays a journalist who has stopped off in the southern small-town where Leachman's character lives. The journalist ends up trying to debunk a local legend about a Civil War-era sword that was lodged in a tree trunk, while also carrying on a love affair with Leachman. (It's especially jarring to see Reagan in these romantic scenes.)

The episode is typical of early-TV anthology series: only a handful of characters, just a few locations (all of them sets on a soundstage), and stories that tended towards the personal and intimate--all of which worked well with the smaller budgets and smaller screen of early television.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1988 (WYES/New Orleans)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Chris Hadley'
Length - 5:06

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.

For the second week in a row, "Sign-Offs Through the Years" brings you a public television sign-off--this time from New Orleans PBS station WYES and the year 1988. The sign-off sequence begins with a closing title slide from the movie showcase "Starlight Theatre", followed by an underwriting credit for Bookstar, a local bookstore. Next is a program promo for a musical program, "Echoes of the Big Bands with Merv Griffin", and after this is the ownership/technical voiceover, on miscellaneous images of WYES's facilities. This is followed by a piece with piano instrumental music and various nighttime images of New Orleans from the air. Closing out the sign-off is a national anthem film (with a cappella vocals), an element not always found in public TV sign-offs.

TFTP Variety: "Jack Benny's Bag" from NBC (Nov. 16, 1968)

Posted to YouTube by user 'balsamwoods'
Length - 1:01:39

Jack Benny's long-running weekly sitcom (a continuation of his long-running radio program) ended in 1965, and for the remainder of his career until his death in 1974 Benny did occasional TV specials. The above program is one of the early such specials, with a theme lampooning youth counterculture of the late-1960s, entitled "Jack Benny's Bag".

Like a lot of old-line comedians, Benny was pretty clueless when it came to the counterculture he was lampooning. In most cases of mainstream TV treatment of counterculture, including here, some garish colors, some psychedelic imagery, some youth-oriented clothing, and some tossed-off slang was thought to do the job.

In "Jack Benny's Bag", though, the counterculture elements are mainly window-dressing. Benny himself wears either a tuxedo or a regular suit throughout most of the special, and there is little of substance regarding the counterculture. (The one sketch that does treat it is a groan-worthy parody of the film "The Graduate" where Benny-as-Benjamin-Braddock enters through an arch that is a large mock-up of Mrs. Robinson's famous leg.) A pair of hippies appears near the beginning to collect payment for painting Benny's house (he assumed given their values that they'd do for free); Benny's Maxwell car, in which he makes his first appearance, has been painted in psychedelic designs, as has the stage backdrop; and that's about it.

Guests abound, including Dick Clark, Lou Rawls, Phyllis Diller (who portrays Mrs. Robinson in the "Graduate" sketch), Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, Eddie Fisher, and Benny's own former supporting player Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. (Rochester appears with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon as their "Odd Couple" characters in the special's cold opening.) Sponsored by Texaco, the special includes a few filmed commercials for that product, and a group of young girls in Texaco "Fire Chief" costumes appear with Benny in a couple of segments.

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken (1968/1971/1981)

Posted to YouTube by user 'chicagofilmarchives' (top), 'Bionic Disco' (middle), 'robatsea2009' (bottom)
Length - 1:06 (top), 1:04 (middle), 0:30 (bottom)

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

These three commercials from fast-food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken all feature the iconic red-and-white-striped KFC bucket. In the first commercial, from 1968 and the only of the three to also feature the actual Colonel Sanders, the Colonel puts wheels on the bucket to demonstrate its portability. (Was take-away food still that much of a novelty in the 1960s?) Commercial number two (from '71) uses the bucket as a punchline: a mother has served KFC chicken at dinner with her daughter's new boyfriend and passed it off as her own cooking, until little brother barges into the dining room wielding the bucket. Finally, the third commercial, from 1981, displays the bucket prominently upfront--a KFC employee fills and displays a bucket--before going on to show numerous groups of people eating fried chicken--out of KFC boxes.

TFTP On This Day: "Action News" from WPIX/New York (May 8, 1980)

Posted to YouTube by user 'NewsActive3'
Length - 32:18

It Was 38 Years Ago Today: Station WPIX has a history that goes back to the late-1940s, and until the mid-1990s it was one of New York City's independent TV stations. (In 1995 it became a WB affiliate and later an affiliate of The CW, which it remains today.) This late local newscast from WPIX is from May 8, 1980, 38 years ago today.

Featured news stories include reports on Cuban refugees, the aftermath of an aborted Iranian hostage rescue mission launched by President Carter, the funeral of Yugoslavian leader Tito, controversy surrounding New York City medical official Michael Baden, a local teen who interviewed former President Richard Nixon, and comedian Bob Hope's efforts to help with the Iran hostage crisis. In sports are reports on the NY Islanders in the NHL playoffs, baseball scores for the young 1980 season, basketball scores from the NBA playoffs, and local horse-racing results. Towards the end of the newscast is a report about the controversy surrounding the PBS program "Death of a Princess".

The newscast recording includes the commercial breaks and within the breaks are ads for Potamkin Cadillac (a local car dealership), two different Black & Decker products (garden hoses and step stools), Seven Seas salad dressing, Citizen and Corum watches, Oldsmobile Cutlass autos, Waterpik Shower Massage shower heads, Micom word processors, Exxon information systems, Kaufman - The Carpet Experts, Energizer batteries, and Gravely lawn and garden tractors.

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 Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1987 (KTCA/Minneapolis-St. Paul)

Posted to YouTube by user 'mjanovec'
Length - 3:21

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.

Here is a 1987 sign-off (from Saturday, October 17, 1987, to be exact) from Minneapolis-St. Paul public TV station KTCA. (Several months ago, TFTP featured another sign-off from KTCA from just a few years after this one.) After the end of the end credits (and some underwriting announcements) from an episode of "Austin City Limits" is a long ownership/technical voiceover that includes images and title slides from quite a few then-current public TV programs produced by KTCA. This is followed by a credit scroll that lists the roster of KTCA station employees, then by color bars.

TFTP Game Shows: "Get the Message" from ABC (c. mid-1964)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MatchGameProductions'
Length - 21:35

"Get the Message" was one of a number of "clue-guessing" games that were in vogue in the early-1960s after the success of "Password". (TFTP featured another one, "The Object Is", in a recent post.) Hosted at the time of this episode by Frank Buxton (later replaced by Robert Q. Lewis), "Get the Message" itself wasn't much in vogue--it only lasted for about nine months in 1964.

Two three-person teams--one regular contestant and two celebrities on each team, one team all men and the other all women--competed in guessing a "message" (a name, a title, a phrase, etc.). (The celebs here are Howard Keel and Orson Bean on the men's side and Peggy Cass and Phyllis Newman on the women's side.) The two celebs each wrote a one-word clue that were given to the regular contestant who would try to "get the message" based on those clues. The guess alternated until one side solved it. First side with three correct guesses won the game and got to proceed to a bonus game where the regular contestant gave clues to the celebrities.

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercial Block from 1972

Posted to YouTube by user '31Mike'
Length - 5:34

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

This commercial block from 1972 features ads for GE television sets, Superior motor homes, Goodrich tires (with two separate, but very similar, ads), Colt 45 malt liquor, the Yellow Pages (with football player Bart Starr), Alka Seltzer, Taconis tobacco, and New York Life insurance. Also included is a bumper slide promo for ABC's "The Odd Couple".

TFTP Variety: "Solid Gold" from syndication (Jul. 12, 1986)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Michael Pannoni'
Length - 49:13

"Solid Gold", which was syndicated from 1980-1988, is from a genre of TV program that doesn't really exist anymore today--the weekly music countdown show. These programs highlighted the top charting pop songs of the week, sometimes by having the original artist sing them but just as often by featuring a stable of singers or dancers in re-enactments of the songs.

"Solid Gold" usually had dancers do a brief dance routine for the thirty seconds or so of a song that was featured when the original artist was not performing it. Sometimes these routines bordered on the ridiculous, like here with the John Mellencamp song "Rain on the Scarecrow" that features one dancer in a rhinestone scarecrow costume. In this episode, counting down the top ten songs for the week of July 12, 1986, the original artists performing are The Bangles for "If She Knew What She Wants" (#8) and Falco for "Vienna Calling" (#5). And when we say "perform", of course we mean "lip-sync".

Often there would be "performances" by artists that did not have songs in the week's top ten. Here that includes Smokey Robinson, a-ha, Patti Austin, and Kenny Loggins. There are also in this episode segments that seem a little random, such as regular people on the street lip-syncing to the Huey Lewis and the News song "The Heart of Rock and Roll" and a short dance segment based on jukebox hits of the past.

For the record, here's the entire top ten countdown featured in this episode of "Solid Gold": #10 - "Mothers Talk" by Tears for Fears; #9 - "Who's Johnny" by El DeBarge; #8 - "If She Knew What She Wants" by The Bangles; #7 - "Nothin' at All" by Heart; #6 - "Rain on the Scarecrow" by John Cougar Mellencamp; #5 - "Vienna Calling" by Falco; #4 - "There'll Be Sad Songs to Make You Cry" by Billy Ocean; #3 - "Crush on You" by The Jets; #2 - "Move Away" by Culture Club; and #1 - "On My Own" by Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald (sung by the show's host, Dionne Warwick).