1961 NBC "Tinted" Color Programming?
 

A Northwest broadcast historian, Craig Adams has uncovered some info that I have not heard of before, that some 1961 NBC "color" broadcasts were only "tinted".... He states:

"The only mention found was in a short article in "The Oregonian", August 23, 1961. It would be interesting to know if the person who released the information below was later chastised:

[MORE COLOR PLANNED] "NBC is gearing to not only expand the number of color series next Fall but also to inject some color into its black and white series. Scheduled tint filmings are three Joey segments and three Wagon Train episodes."

There were in fact six episodes of each that premiered in the tinted format in the 1961-62 season. Interesting enough, the tinted episodes repeated, were scene in back & white later in the season. An indication the ploy had not been successful. "

Anybody here have any info on these "tinted" programs? Did NBC use a sepia peacock?

jr

I think tinted means only CERTAIN episodes were shot in full color and the rest of the series were in black and white.

It don't make sense to use a bunch of expensive equipment to make a show appear in sepia tinted monochrome on color sets.

If NBC used this dodge at all to make certain programs appear to have been filmed in color, it was probably just a stopgap measure until the network completed its full-color conversion in the mid-1960s. I personally have no idea just when NBC actually began 100-percent colorcasting (aside from seeing their "Full-Color Network" promos), as my family did not even have color TV until some time in the '70s.

Never heard of this. Sounds like BS to me, but wouldn't put it past RCA/NBC...

This. The color filming and broadcast of only certain episodes of otherwise black & white series goes way back to the fifties, particularly by NBC. Likewise there are examples of the odder practice of black & white broadcast of color film in the color TV era by color-indifferent CBS. My Friend Flicka was filmed in color, yet broadcast in black & white in 1956-57. It wasn't until the following that season NBC broadcast the reruns in color.

As far as what happened in 1961-62, maybe the 'executive decision' to halt any more one-off color broadcasts of black & white shows was so sweeping that it ended up including reruns of episodes already filmed.

I should have posted more info, but I couldn't get the quote box to work on the little old Asus eee 700 that I was using at the time. Craig Adams went on to list specific programs that were "tinted"
He indicated that the '61-'62 Wed night NBC "color" schedule was as follows:
This seems to me to be pretty specific information from a reliable historian, indicating that the Wed night NBC "full color" lineup was not quite as advertised. :scratch2:

jr

One Hazel tv episode was shot in color in the 1962 season, it was about Hazel getting a new color tv to replace her old 10" Emerson table set. She paid what she was saving, and Mr. Baxter paid the difference for the color model.

And George bought a set similar to my CTC-10 only with a remote before the show ended.

I have this show on 16mm. Its faded pretty pink.

It's show #6, and is titled "What Shall We Watch Tonight?" 1-5 shot B/W, and 7-35 are B/W, also.

They didn't have the technology to colorize programs and movies like they do today. The word tint was used to refer to programs in color. I seen the majority of these shows and they are all in full color.

One way they could have done "tinted" B&W would be to play the B&W footage in a color telecine, and misadjust the color balance. Cut back on the blue, and increase the red a little, and you would get a tinted video stream. You could change the tint for various scenes, say yellowish for outdoor sunlit scenes, blueish for rainy days, pink for lovers kissing (this is terrestrial broadcast of course ;) ) and so on.

When I worked for an independent TV station... Remember those? No affiliation with a network of anykind?

Our home-made video switcher that we used for broadcast would hang up sometimes, and leave the chroma turned on while we were broadcasting a black and white film. We'd get some really interesting color artifacts, depending on the age of the camera tubes in our film chain.

There was a key on the switcher to kill chroma. It worked when it wanted to... Those were the days.

We eventually bought a brand new Grass Valley brand switcher, and we thought it would be installed overnight. Didnt happen that way, either.

I remember NBC going color, but I dont remember ever hearing of B/W shows being tinted for broadcast.

Interesting! do you recall the specific episodes mentioned in post 6 as being in full color ? or a more general recollection of the series?

jr

In this context, the word "tint" means programs shot and broadcast in color, as opposed to black and white, which is what these series mentioned above were usually done in. It was a chance for NBC to showcase color in some of their regular black and white series. It seems to me that the use of the word "tint" by the oiginal author of the newspaper article in 1961 was a poor choice of words.

I was going to mention George's new tv as well, but I didn't want to get too wordy. I didn't need many clues as to the actual make of the sets in the showroom, and the ones that Hazel and George ended up with. Most of the time I think George had a nice Zenith B&W console. Their stereo was a Zenith for the first couple of seasons. A shame about your 16mm film too, I found a Magnavox, Motorola, and Maytag YouTube entry, the Magnavox ads are washed out pink now as well. Motorola looked a tad better, and Maytag was tolerable. But then of course, they had no idea people would want to see these things 40 some years into the future!

When I got the film, it was brand new and beautiful.

Dats OK. I get wordy all the time.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050073/ Here is the scoop in wagon train.

As mentioned, the word "tinted" was a catchy way for color TV related articles to discribe color TV shows in the 50's & early 60's. Many instances of NBC having special "color nights" or several one off color episodes of certain programs for a "color week." This as a promotional tie-in with RCA, which owned the NBC Network and provided RCA major advertising for their color sets in newpaper & magazine ads both for the network and RCA dealers.
The Antenna TV channel aired the 1962 Hazel one off color episode not long ago and I did record it to DVD. It was a pristine color print.

-Steve D.

I have this episode on the first season Hazel DVD and it looks fantastic. I always wondered how this episode got made in color and was not either the pilot or season finale of this series. Hazel was filmed entirely in color from the second season on. I believe that "tinted" was a common slang expression of the day to refer to anything broadcast in color.

The Lucy Show began color filming with it's second season (1963-64), but continued to be shown by CBS in black-and-white until the fall of 1965. This due to CBS's resistance to color, which would benefit rival network NBC. The DVDs of The Lucy Show's early color episodes have been fully restored and look spectacular in color.

Leslie,

As I mentioned in my post and David Roper went on to explain, this was done to promote the sale of color tv's to the public. NBC generally taking the lead in this. In the peticular "Hazel" season one color episode you cite. Maid Hazel's employer offers to replace Hazel's old B&W TV w/another new low cost B&W. At the TV store Hazel spots a color set and offers to split the cost with her employer George Baxter. The deal is done and Hazel has a color set in her room. A constant stream of neighbors & friends invade the Baxter household to watch color TV. In this instance, the NBC show "Perry Como" which was broadcast in color each week. And so the plot goes on. In the end George Baxter also buys a new color console for the living room. A perfect script for promoting color TV in a one off color episode of the 1962 season. I also have the box set of the entire "Hazel" series that includes this color episode. The show is from
a beautiful color print transfer and looks stunning
compared to the B&W episodes aired that season.

-Steve D.

So the B/W shows from season 1 dont look so good? I remember being told by Columbia Pictures TV that their 16mm B/W's were printed from a well-worn printing negative even back in the 1970's.

I hope they went back to the original show titles for the DVD release. The syndication titles were Hazel getting out of the car with groceries, Don DeFore laughing at something, with his wife coming out and laughing, only to find little Harold up in the tree throwing confetti, and then Hazel goes in the house.... The Ford titles were better, and I had the Galaxie kiddy car that Harold had, too!!

And what about Ted Turner's attempts at "colorizing" b&w television shows? That stunt goes back to the '80s, IIRC. I don't know how many programs were actually colorized before Turner stopped (or was ordered by the production companies and/or networks to stop) the experiment. However, I do know some purists were all but furious over Turner's colorizing of classic b&w TV programs. Thankfully, the experiment ended, again IIRC, by the end of the decade.

Ted could color anything he wanted to. He OWNED the shows and movies. He still controls these shows, and movies.

I still prefer B/W originals over colorized stuff. I still see Gilligans Island colorized episodes... A TV station I worked for back in the day refused to run the B/W Gilligans, along with the B/W Jeannie shows, and Bewitched. Stupid idea, if you ask me.

My parents did not own a color TV. My first color set was purchased out of high school in fall of 1965, coinciding with the 65/66 season when the three networks went 100% color in prime time. I do remember seeing some very early episodes of "Superman" in the faux color.

Hazel
 

I just watched the Hazel episode that she bought the new Color Tv. Also a later one where the Tv was acting up for George and it was his Heating pad. Nice shots of the set and also I never seen a tech quite like the one that was performing service on the set.

Someone post a link to the HAZEL color episode.

Or, use mine!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKyfA...eature=related

I didnt watch the whole show, but I did watch thru the opening titles. My 16mm print uses the awful generic syndication title.

The color is lovely, like my print was when I got it many moons ago...

Screen Gems (aka Columbia Pictures Television) did some beautiful photography in its day. They won emmy awards for their production work.

But that script, geez. A few lines were flubbed as well. Interesting. The last time I saw a HAZEL episode with Whitney Blake I was 8.

I havent seen Hazel on TV since 1981... Thats when the station I worked for stopped running it. We had a library of brand new prints. Beautiful and in great condition, except for the B/W episodes, some of which looked like they were dupes.

I had forgotten how cute Whitney Blake was. She looked so old to me when I was a kid. Now she looks so young on HAZEL. Her daughter of course is Meredith Baxter.

I have a 35mm TV show episode that she guested on in 1960. They played her up as a knockout beauty there, too.

If you are referring to the 1950's "The Adventures of Superman" they were shot in actual color from 55-58, the earlier seasons were B&W.

I have the DVD sets and the Color episodes do have a colorized look to them, I suspect because the negatives have faded over time.

...Yeah, as if somebody as dorky as Don Defore could have EVER scored an Uberbabe like Whitney Blake in real life...He'd had trouble even landin' a "Hazel"...(grin)

Could that 1960 35mm episode possibly be "Pete's Personality Change" from the old CBS series "Pete and Gladys"? I have that episode on a custom-made 18 episode DVD set from that series that I purchased on ioffer 4 years ago. Whitney Blake was as gorgeous on that show as she was on Hazel. The gag was that Pete (Harry Morgan) had to see a psychiatrist to find out why his sales were down. (He sold insurance). The psychiatrist's name was Agatha Henderson, and Pete didn't want to be analyzed by an old battle-axe in bloomers and then in walks Whitney! LOL.

You win the prize, Leslie! I was a major fan of the old December Bride TV series with neighbors Pete Porter, and his unseen wife, Gladys. When the spin-off series debuted, we got to see Cara Williams as Gladys, a perfectly likeable person, unlike her unseen hilarious charactor on Dec. Bride.

My P&G shows are beautiful. Unfortunately, none have commercials.

I remember watching "Pete and Gladys" at my Grandma's house on Monday nights. I always liked the show, but after the morning reruns on CBS ended in 1964, the show was not seen in Chicago again, except for a very brief run on CBS in April, 1967 during an AFTRA strike. Some of the shows in my DVD have original commercials and sponsor bumpers. Perhaps the best ones are the "integrated" spots for Carnation Milk. Carnation was the main sponsor every other week, and the main commercial came at the end of the show, with Cara Williams and Harry Morgan, and the spot was written as to tie in with the story just presented, like a "tag" scene from the evening's story. I loved December Bride too, it's a shame that these shows are just locked away in Paramount's vault(with the exception of your 35mm copies!). I think people would enjoy seeing a funny show that hasn't been run to death.

I was told years ago that December Bride is tangled up in copyright issues. Parke Levy created it, Desi Arnaz produced and filmed it for Desilu, and CBS owned the shows.

My 35mm's were from the daytime runs, with cut footage wound onto the end of the reel. Of course, I put the footage back where it was supposed to go!! The daytime version was cut by one minute for more commercial time.

I was home from school sick (strep throat) and watching "Pete and Gladys" on my parents portable Zenith in their bedroom on the Friday morning of Nov. 22, 1963 when the "Bulletin" from CBS News came on about the assassination of JFK. I'll never forget that.. The East Coast got The Edge Of Night or whatever it was but us West Coast folk got "Pete and Gladys" forever impacted in our memories along with the death of the President. A very weird combination..

Those 35mm prints must look awesome! The prints used for my DVD are taken from 16mm and show some occasional signs of age (jumping due to broken sprocket holes and such), but this does not impair my enjoyment of the show. The DVD also came with 2 "bonus" episodes of December Bride. The gentlemen who sold me the set used to post many old and obscure series, but has been inactive on ioffer for several years now. I posted on SitcomsOnLine that I had done a copyright search on P&G, and I was informed that due to new copyright laws, P&G wouldn't be completely out of copyright until 2057! At which time I would be 105!

I was in school on that fateful day and we were dismissed for the day after the news broke. I was supposed to go to confirmation class for the Episcopal Church that afternoon, But Father Gracia cancelled that as well. It's funny that all people's memories of that day are imperishable. I remember it so clearly. When I got home I remember my Mother and our neighbor Carol O'Dea sitting in silence watching the events unfold on our set.