Bonanza!
 

I agree!

When I get to see Bonanza on a 21" color I expect it will be just as great as it might have been if I'd seen it when it first aired.

That reminds me... Steve, I sent you a couple private messages about your set. Thanks, John

do any of those technicolor prints still exist, and if so why don't they release them on dvd

Technicolor prints
 

There is a telecine colorist on one of these threads discussing the transfer of films, old video tape, to new formats to sell or use for many other purposes. He would know for certain but I expect, based on other examples, that at least one excellent Technicolor print would be available for most every episode. I suspect much more of anything you could think of is likely to be somewhere.
I suspect there has been little attention given to give the consumer a quality product for many DVD's but I have heard many are remastered very well.
Has anyone seen transfers where they frame in too much and we loose stuff from the sides and top and bottom. I have and it frustrates me very much!
I do wish to see Bonanza as it would have been seen originally. Did it start in '67? Were all episodes color? I think they were.

Bonanza started its run on NBC in color September 1959. They aired from film. I don't think they would have produced it in Technicolor there was no reason to. I know in the 80's new video tape was made from them for the Family channel on a Rank flying spot telecine at AME Hollywood. They would look much better then the did when first aired.

They were 35mm Eastman prints. I got that from Republic Pictures, formerly National Telefilm Associates / NBC Films. We used to see both Bonanza, and Get Smart with the NBC peacocks on the beginnings of the prints. We cut them off, as we were not an NBC station, and threw the peacocks away!! Sure wish I had kept them. I do still have a couple of them on Eastman 16mm film that have faded a bit.

Technicolor could not make just one print of a title to be cost effective. There would be several trial/answer prints printed to be checked before a Technicolor run was done. The more prints made, the less Technicolor prints cost.
Many TV commercials were printed in IB Technicolor as late as the early 1970's, when Technicolor shut down its dye-transfer labs. I remember lots from General Foods, especially, from the mid -60's.

I worked in Television from the early 1970's-to 1990. I worked with people from all of the major TV film companies.

BONANZA! remastered on DVD
 

It's been a while since this thread began but I thought I'd jump in now to mention that CBS Paramount released season one (1959-60) of BONANZA on DVD in region 1 in 2009. The episodes all begin w/the original 1957 version of the NBC Peacock and end with the "This has been a color production of the NBC television network" snake logo.

The eps look magnificent -- newly transferred to digital Hi-Def from 35mm interpositive prints or negatives. You can read the hat size on the brim of Pernell Roberts' hat and see wrinkles in Dan Blocker's leather vest!

I highly, highly recommend this DVD set to all early color television enthusiasts (and BONANZA fans, who probably already have it).

Yes, "Bonanza" looked great on Sunday nights over NBC. As I recall they had a mix of TK-26 (vacuum-tube 3V) and TK-27 (solid state 4V) film chains up in telecine when I was at Burbank in 1970.

Film shows always looked awful if they were recorded and then played back with the original low-band tape machines (too much head banding and herringbone), so film was run directly to air for quite a while. After the high-band machines made their appearance, it was much harder to distinguish a tape copy from a film chain.

The western I would like to see again in color is "Tales of Wells Fargo," which only had its last season in color. I understand there are some DVDs available. Has anyone seen any of these? I would especially like to see if they retained those bright red bumper stills going in and out of the commercial breaks.

I have not seen the season one dvd set but was told they look amazing , however when they did the second season i was told they got cheap and just used the older transfers , not they look bad but the new ones will blow you away... btw i have some 16mm episodes of Bonanza and a couple are on the Eastman LPP color film that is a low fade or no fade color film , the color is outstanding , no reddish look , oh and here is a weird , i have the two part episode that was part of the lost episodes package and CBN refused to show it back when , the film doesn't have lost episodes on the titles , that was video inserted, title escapes me at the moment , it is about the mormons , anyway part 1 is eastman and reddish and getting more red as time goes by but part 2 is the LPP color and looks great , the flaw with that print of part 2 is there is a couple minutes edited out for more commercial time and it was never put back or placed at the end of the reel like some stations would do , so that was a take it as you can get it kind of thing, now if i could only get my hands on the second season Hawaii Five-O episode that was banned and not included in the dvd set , as long as it is watchable i wouldn't care the source , just as long as it doesn't have that multi copied look that gives one the feeling you put a fish bowl in front of the screen and you are viewing it through the bowl..... btw i wanted to add that i don't know what tv land does or how they do it but when they time compress ( speed up ) various shows it dulls up the image a little , takes away resolution , this was like this before it went digital and now being compressed digitaly on cabl it looks even worse.

mike

I seem to remember that in 1965, NBC's Rockefeller Center studios in New York (also the home of WNBC-TV/4) phased out their TK-26 chains - whose picture quality was without peer, for the time - in favor of TK-27's, which John Hafer in other posts spoke of the downgrade in picture quality upon the change (he specifically mentioned Flipper, but the change doubtless would have been noticed on Bonanza and other NBC shows that originated from film). I don't know if it was from Burbank or 30 Rock that filmed showings of Bonanza first aired, perhaps you can apprise me - or were two different prints struck, one for being run in New York, the other in Burbank?

But Burbank (and presumably KNBC/4) wasn't the only NBC outpost to have a combo of TK-26's and TK-27's as of 1970; so did their Chicago O&O, WMAQ-TV/5.

Speaking of Technicolor and Dragnet, In my collection I have a Mitchell BNCR movie camera. Any one familiar with Mitchells?? It is 35mm and they only made 364 of them in their 40+ year of production. At one time, almost 95% of all Hollywood movies were shot with a Mitchell. Martin Hill of NC has the largest movie camera collection perhaps in the world. He also has the Mitchell build orders and my camera, serial #244 was sold to Mark VII productions. Remember at the end of every Dragnet episode the arm and the hammer stamping "MARK VII"?? Mine still has the Universal Studios property stickers along with CBS and Republic stencils on the film magazines. Universal would lease out studio space when Mark 7 was through for the day.

All of the Lucy shows and most all TV sitcoms to include Bonanza and most westerns were shot with a Mitchell. Mine shot Dragnet, Adam12, Emergency, The Munsters and other CBS sticoms. Panavision took over when Mitchell went out of business and with the theory that if you don't sell and only rent, you will stay in business!

I Love Lucy was shot with a threesome of Mitchell BNC's. Dont know if Desilu bought them, leased them, or what. I've seen one 35mm Mitchell camera. They were built like a tank!

bonanza looked awesome on our philco roundie back in the day.my uncle had a ctc 7 and we watched it on that also.the scenery was breathtaking.i currently catch it on my ctc15.still looks impressive.that show was made for color crt television.it looks terrible on my sony lcd and my infocus projector.

Bonanza was made for the roundie. The titles and everything were ment to be seen on the round screen.

I watch it on my CTC-10C, too.

Network feeds
 

As I recall from working at Burbank, the NBC network was organized so that New York fed a "round-robin" coaxial loop that covered the Eastern and Central time-zones (long before satellites).

Burbank, in the case of film shows, would run a pair (main and protection) of its own prints for the Pacific network. There were many fewer stations in the Mountain time zone, so they were left to delay, I think, the New York feed on their own.

In one of my visits upstairs to telecine, I was shown that the protection prints were sometimes on 16mm film. I don't know whether this would have been true on a major show like Bonanza, however. The main prints were 35mm, of course.

In the case of shows pre-recorded on tape, four original tapes were usually made; two for New York and two for the West. Before high-band recording, the specific tape-machine head-wheel-panel that had recorded each tape was also sent to assure the best playback quality.

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