TFTP's Monochrome Monday (Special On This Day Edition): "What's My Line? at 25" from ABC (May 28, 1975)

Posted to YouTube by user 'What's My Line?'
Length - 1:26:57

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

We bring you this special edition of Monochrome Monday with a program that was partly in color, but was celebrating a show that was in classic black & white for the almost all of its 17 year run: "What's My Line?"

It Was 43 Years Ago Today: "What's My Line?" stands among the most important shows ever in the game show genre--the program, which aired on CBS from 1950-1967 and then in syndication until 1975, helped establish the popularity and venerability of the TV game show. Right as "WML" was going off the air in 1975, this program, "What's My Line? at 25"--originally airing 43 years ago today on May 28, 1975--appeared as a retrospective of its quarter-century history.

Airing as an installment of the ABC late-night umbrella series "Wide World of Entertainment" (after CBS passed on the special), "What's My Line? at 25" features the three individuals most responsible for the show's success: producer Mark Goodson, host John Charles Daly, and panelist Arlene Francis. Goodson, Daly, and Francis moderate the special by sharing some of their memories but also by introducing dozens of clips from over the years.

Celebrated in the special are the panelists who guessed contestants' jobs (including Fred Allen, Steve Allen, Woody Allen, and others not named Allen, such as Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf, and Francis herself); the many celebrity "mystery guests" and some of the shenanigans (such as fake voices) they used to trick the panel; some of the more interesting "lines" (or occupations) guessed by the panel; and a look back at the hairstyles worn on the show by Arlene Francis.

TFTP has featured "What's My Line?" a few times in the past, including the premiere episode from 1950 (which was also the premiere post for TFTP back in 2014), a commercial for longtime "WML" sponsor Remington-Rand (introduced by Daly), and early panelist Fred Allen's first appearance (with Buffalo Bob Smith and Howdy Doody as mystery guests!).

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1990 (WLBT/Jackson, MS)

Posted to YouTube by user 'jacky9br'
Length - 8:29

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.

As we enter the 1990s in "Sign-Offs Through the Years", here is is a somewhat longer sign-off sequence from Jackson, Mississippi, NBC affiliate WLBT. It begins with a few promos: for "Saturday Night Live" (which was in its 15th anniversary season) featuring guest host Rob Lowe and Dana Carvey in full church-lady dress; for the NBC Sports presentation of The Players Championship golf tourney; and for local WLBT 3 News. These are followed by two PSAs, for a women's shelter called New Life for Women and for the Special Olympics.

A "Sanford & Son" promo slide precedes a very strange ownership/technical voiceover. After a title card with a personal dedication for the sign-off (something mischievous master control operators would sometimes slip in), a segment begins playing with special effects and the title "Purple Haze" with audio of the band Winger doing a cover of the Jimi Hendrix song of the same name. Midway through this clip, a brief ownership/technical voiceover is heard.

The sequence is capped off  by a very nice national anthem film that features local/regional images of Mississippi, including several shots of a rainbow-striped hot air balloon with the name of the state emblazoned on it.

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 Will Return After These Messages: Mountain Dew Commercials from the 1980s

Posted to YouTube by user 'haikarate4'
Length - 2:29

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

Awhile back TFTP featured the evolution of Mountain Dew ads from the 1960s through the 1980s. Here are some more Dew commercials from the 1980s, after the beverage's outdoor, extreme sports image had been mostly established.

The first ad features teenagers cliff-jumping into a river, to the jingle refrain (and slogan) "Give me a Dew!" Ad #2 shows teens in a contest of pushing each other off of a log across a river to the same refrain. The third commercial, with more of a country music tone, shows a somewhat older (but still youthful) crowd engaged in off-road monster truck races, with the jingle and slogan "Dew It Country Cool!" (Someone still ends up getting pushed into the water by the time it's done.) Ad #4 uses the same slogan and jingle, this time with cardboard boat races. The final Mountain Dew ad in this block is another with the "Dew It Country Cool!" jingle/slogan, and here the kids are waterskiing--behind a horse running along the shore!

TFTP Cable: Miscellaneous Clips from The Weather Channel (1990)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Bryan Farr'
Length - 7:56

This set of clips from The Weather Channel from 1990 is mostly a series of title graphic sequences showing what the introductory titles to different kinds of segments looked like. Segment titles include "Local Weather", "Weather & You", "Pacific Regional Forecast", "Special Presentation", "Today's Forecast", and "International Weather".

Because of the then-current build-up in advance of the 1991 Gulf War, presumably for the benefit of the families of service members, there is also a title graphic for a segment called "Mideast Weather" (in a suitably Arabic-looking font).

In addition, there are some more prosaic graphics (just plain white text on a blue background) of local weather reports and a somewhat choppy sequence near the end of various Weather Channel personalities in the opening seconds of weather reports. Much of the material in this set of clips, including the local weather report mentioned above, comes from the cable system in Elmira, New York, from Thursday, October 11, 1990.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "The Big Record" from CBS (May 14, 1958)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MattTheSaiyan'
Length - 29:01

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

"The Big Record" was a musical variety show that aired on CBS for about a year in 1957 and 1958. Singer Patti Page hosted what started as an hour-long series but was cut back to a half-hour midway through its run. There were some similarities to a show like "Your Hit Parade" in that currently-popular songs were featured, although "The Big Record" had no countdown.

The episode above, from May 1958, features singer Bill Hayes, singer Helen Forest, Harry James and his orchestra, and a female singing group called the Deftones, the winners of a high school talent competition. Page sings several numbers, the Deftones make their TV debut, Hayes belts out a song in a sailor's suit, and James and his orchestra provide a few tunes, to one of which Forest adds the vocals. A couple of filmed commercials for sponsor Oldsmobile also appear, introduced by Page.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1989 (KOMO/Seattle)

Posted to YouTube by user 'robatsea2009'
Length - 4:15

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.

Our 1989 sign-off is from Seattle station KOMO. It begins with a brief religious segment called "A Note of Faith", which unlike most such segments is merely a slide with voiceover. This is followed by a station editorial about children's TV viewing habits. Next comes the ownership/technical voiceover on a still of the KOMO-TV logo (they were them, to paraphrase KOMO's slogan). As a border station with a sizable Canadian audience (and similarly to other stations in the same circumstances), KOMO played "O Canada" (the Canadian national anthem) in addition to "The Star-Spangled Banner", and those two songs close out the sign-off sequence.

TFTP Late Night: Early Clips from "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" from NBC (1962/1964)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Sir Raymond Bell' (top), 'Johnny Carson' (bottom)
Length - 0:34 (top), 1:11 (bottom)

As part of TFTP's continuing series of posts on the history and evolution of "The Tonight Show" (see here, here, here, and here), these two clips feature moments from the first couple of years of Johnny Carson's tenure as the show's host. There is very little footage that remains from these years, as NBC destroyed copies of pretty much all of the episodes from Carson's first decade as host.

The first (very brief) clip above is from a little over three months into Carson's stint, in about late-December of 1962, and relates to Johnny's best moments to that point as "Tonight Show" host. The second clip (from the official Carson Productions archive) is from a 1964 episode in which Zsa Zsa Gabor rips Johnny's pants off in a sketch that has Carson doing a now-questionable impression of a Charlie Chan-like character (with a joke about Zsa Zsa from a much later episode thrown in at the end).

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercial Block from NBC (Sep. 22, 1967)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Gray Flannel Videos'
Length - 3:05

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

This block of commercials that aired on September 22, 1967, on NBC includes ads for Aerowax floor wax; Aero Shave shaving cream; Campbell's Chicken with Rice Soup, Chicken Noodle Soup, and Chicken & Stars Soup (with some ultra-Sixties animation); Sta-Puf fabric softener ("The Wrinkle Reducer"); and Sta-Flo Spray Starch. (Spelling "stay" without the "y" was very popular in the '60s.) At the very end, for just a couple of seconds, is the "snake" logo used by NBC throughout the 1960s--complete with the NBC chimes.

TFTP Game Shows: "Queen for a Day" from NBC (c. 1960)

Posted to YouTube by user 'NewQueenForADay'
Length - 8:50

"Queen for a Day" is a legendary program (airing from 1956-1964, and on radio before that) that seems of questionable taste to us now today. Four female housewife contestants each told the story of their circumstances, which were sometimes of impoverishment or affliction. Then audience response, measured by an applause meter, selected one of them as "Queen for a Day" (with accompanying prize package, of course).

Host Jack Bailey interviewed the women with a tone that was charmingly folksy but paternalistic and often patronizing. The set of clips above is from an episode with a circus theme, and the irony of the show's tendency to regularly have a circus atmosphere seems lost on those involved. The winner here gets a watch, a new washing machine and oven range, a record player, and a Spiegel catalog gift certificate.