Dinah Shore show Nov 9, 1958
 

I happen to run accross the video from the Dinah Shore show on NBC date Nov 9 1958. The color is amazing on this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUTKl_z9474

They HAD to ruin it w/their stupid logo plastered all thru it...Jackazzes...I know, I know, they did because of copyright and/or fear of it being stolen by somebody else...But HONESTLY...Grrrrr....

At least they didn't show something really spectacular like the New Jet Smooth Chevrolet for 1959, and leave us wanting. The other lady looked like Dorothy Provine, and one of the men was Peter Lawford. It looked like it was a wonderful show though.

Nice color of the pastel costume hues. Sharp luminance, too. Both Ladies look wonderful, captured on tape for all who care to enjoy. Damn shame so much tape was written over or destroyed.
Thanks for the post!! :yes:
Kevin

The other guy may be Alan Young wearing a makeup test for his role later in "The Time Machine".

Boy are they sweating...can you imagine how hot is was in that studio? But such a beautiful job...

Amazing how good things could look 54 years ago. And we're seeing what is left over after Youtube compresses the crud out of it; Just think how good it really looks!

The cast of characters for Dinah's show this particular week were Gene Barry, Peter Lawford, and Janis Paige. Interestingly though....the information I found on the web regarding this particular show indicates that it aired May 3, 1959. But in any event....it looks fantastic!

Thank you,quite nice :)

Very nice, but what is the point of recovering and restoring all of this great footage (and Fred Astaire?) just to let it sit in the vault, or trickle out in low res YouTube clips?

How bout putting it on DVD for everyone to see in it's full glory?

I could not agree more, Eric!

This clip is simply an ad for the company's services. They make money by licensing archival content to studios and production companies:

http://www.researchvideo.com/about-research-video.html

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

I understand that Phil, but they did the restoration for someone, why doesn't that someone make it available for sale?

Because they would lose money on the 64 copies they would sell.

Artwork would have to be created, royalties paid, manufacturing, mastering, etc.

It's a glum time for us lovers of this stuff..

It could be streamed through Netflix or Amazon with little manufacturing cost.

I suspect that Steve's right. Their customer list is big kahunas like PBS, The Tonight Show, and the like. Small fry like you and me probably aren't worth their time, streaming or not.

Also, these guys are more like middlemen. They market and restore content, but they don't own it. Here's a piece of fine print from one of their pages:

"Research Video Inc. is an authorized agency with exclusive represenation rights for over 100 television programs, TV series, private film collections and video footage archives on behalf of the official copyright holders and original producers."

So, if you want DVDs of all the old Flip Wilson shows, you can hire them as an agent to negotiate with the rights owners, but they can't just toss all that content up on Amazon or Youtube.

Phil Nelson

I know what you're saying Phil and it may be true that the market is small for this, however someone paid to have the tape restored so either they did it solely to save some history or else they thought there was a market for it.

There are (were?) lots of small DVD companies putting out all sorts of obscure shows from the 40's and the 50's, I think a DVD set of the oldest surviving Videotapes would sell well enough to justify the cost. If nothing else one of the Cable channels could run them, Turner Classics for example.
Perhaps they are tangled up in copyright issues, that happens a lot, The Batman TV show from the 60's is a good example, it may never come out due to all the royalty issues.

My son has had some dealings with tiny companies that put out obscure DVDs, and learned that copyrights get extra messy when a movie or show includes a musical number.

To you and me, it's Dinah singing a song. But her production company probably paid the composer a royalty for that performance in a single broadcast. Fine, but did their permission from the songwriter also include the right to sell reproductions of the performance in any medium for perpetuity? If not, does a valid copyright still exist for that song, and in that case, who the heck owns the song rights and what is their price for us to re-use it?

Now, imagine a full episode of a variety show with a couple of celebrity guests and, say, three or four musical numbers by different composers. Yech, I'm getting a headache already -- enough with this crummy DVD business :)

Phil Nelson

Regardless of what their goals are the fact remains that this is an amazing example of how good some of the early color stuff really was. Combine this with the fact that the early color sets I have and the ones I saw back in the day supports my theory that the complaints about early color may have been overly stated. Keep in mind when I did service I would walk into people homes and see color pictures you might find in horror shows. I think someone with a properly adjusted set in good working condition would produce an amazing color image.

It's even more complicated than that. The musicians in the orchestra would all have to be paid again. Renegotiated with the union. Each of the guest stars' estates would have to be paid again, royalty fees would have to be worked out with legal, etc.

I'm tellin' ya, a nightmare. I had a long meeting with the late Andy Williams about putting 40 of his best shows out on DVD in 2000, complete, commercials, NBC peacock, everything. Andy signed off on the deal. The nightmare of clearances worked out to the sad realization that we would have lost money on each and every DVD sold. Just can't be done..

That's pretty sad. I thoughtmost of this stuff went to public domain after X number of years...There's a good probability that a lot of this stuff will NEVER get seen again, I'd imagine.

For all practical purposes nothing goes to the public domain anymore. Whenever X is approached, legislation is passed to increase it. Google for "Copyright Term Extension Act" and "Eldred v. Ashcroft".

Edit: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/12/how_...nnovation.html also discusses this - see the "Intellectual Property" section.

While I fully understand & support the artists/parties all being properly compensated on things like this, it looks like SOMETHING could be worked out in cases like this...

Far out that picture quality is pretty amazing! Would love to see it uncompressed in its real form. :yes: Would be something.

OK then, mute the audio so that the license-able content is removed, put black boxes and blurs around the orchestra's faces, and lets enjoy the living color!

Out of curiosity, I emailed that company and later had a chat with a guy who works there. The copyright issues are truly daunting. The audience for such material is very limited and the cost of production dwarfs the return. They provided the restored video for a special on Dinah Shore, which aired on PBS (and "tanked," to use his term).

VHS copies of that show, with some bonus material, are still available on the used market:

http://www.amazon.com/MWAH-Best-Dina...dp/B0015A07MK/

This is later material than the clip mentioned at the beginning of this thread, of course.

Phil Nelson

There are unfortunately, just not enuff of us "Mad Monks" to warrant getting all the clearances... And if one bunch thought they were losing 15 cents worth of residuals...Oh, Hell !....Think of ALL those starving musicians we'd be puttin' in the Poor House..Like I said, I DON'T wanna deprive anyone of their just compensation, but, some shark-ass lawyer, OTOH....

That's show biz. I used to scream and cry about it (especially after spending hours trying to get one thing cleared) but now I don't even grunt. Just stupid greed. Such is life.

The only answer unfortunately (or fortunately) is web piracy. They either get less than what they want
or nothing, their choice.

i am the guy who pushed the record button on that videotape machine, that recorded that show . It was an rca trt-1 2" machine at nbc burbank. Don't know where you found the tape. But, thanks it brings back memories of my youth. I was 29.

Barnaby 1

Welcome my friend!!

It was an excellent recording you made :)

Hi Barnaby1,

Very exciting to hear from someone in the business then. Do you recall: was the recording basically a recording of a 'live' show, or was there editing involved, as was the case with " An Evening with Fred Astaire" also in 1958?

Thanks for any input you may have.

Pete

Welcome Barnaby!

It's interesting that the quality of the video was better back then than it was in the 70's and 80's when they started using the early Solid State Cameras, most of those shows look rather artificial today while the Dinah Shore video looks rich and colorful.

Just imagine- Being PAID to get to "Play" with state of the art video stuff like that...Did you REALISE what a KEWL job you had ?!?

Cool, it's neat to have someone who was part of that history posting here now. BTW, I admire the quality of those early shows, both in content and in a technical way.

Pete:

What editing was involved in the "Evening with Fred Astaire Show" that you've seen...? The original program was a live broadcast from L.A. to N.Y., which was taped and then replayed for the West Coast.

- Kevin

I agree totally, I remember the early color shows and the results were amazing, whereas the later color shows seemed to look washed out and lacked the delicate color balance achieved in early days.

Didn't the Astair show use some cutting and splicing?

Pete

Not the first one. It actually was a live broadcast to the East Coast, with a taped West Coast replay three hours later.

The subsequent Astaire specials were edited, however, as they were taped and assembled in advance.

- Kevin

I thought the same. However my bias may be due to the poor shape we see a lot of the older programs these days. In many instances we are seeing multigenerational copies. The losses incurred with the multiple dubs make the 70's and 80's programs look pale in comparison with the first generation recording of Dinah Shore.

Like old film, many producers never saw the need to properly monitor the dubs or show any concern in archiving. Most of the early video tapes, especially by ABC and NBC were erased after use. It could not be fathomed that someone would be interested in Dinah Shore's program 55 years later!