1957' broadcast of Cinderella on CBS? IN COLOR!!
 

I was searching for some Christmas video's and ran accross an ad for the dvd of Julie Andrews in Cinderella broadcast in COLOR, on CBS. Anyone have any further info on this, this video is listed on Amazon, but say only the b & w kinescope is the only version that survived.

I would think the BW kinescope is the survivor. Then again, there may be a color videotape either in NY or at Television City.

From the IMDB:

Runtime: 76 min (dvd release) / USA:90 min (including commercials)
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Black and White (surviving Kinescope prints) / Color (original broadcast)
Sound Mix: Mono

A B&W Kine is all that survives, with all the quality that implies :cry:

That is so frustrating to know that there may be a color copy but maybe not available yet or ever!
I'll be so glad when whoever has all those early color copies releases them for sale!
Hopefully they don't give us computerized fake color with someone's guesses as to what the colors actually might have been.
Are there colorized B/W things that are very hard to tell that it's fake? Any examples?

1957 is a bit early for color video tape. CBS was using Ampex qaud but it's possible an RCA quad at NBC was used to record it in color.
I think RCA was testing recording color around that time. The big problem today is if a tape is found it very hard if near impossible to get it to play back without banding ect.. but it has been done.
There are good working quad VTR's out there for stuff just like this.

Seems to me that a color tape of this would be unlikely since not even a black and white tape seems to have been made, otherwise why would they have bothered kinescoping it? Would it have been normal for a tape to be captured AND a kniscope filmed for rebroadcast?

RCA had the first color VTR on the market, but not until 1958. An agreement with Ampex allowed RCA to use quad tape technology in RCA machines, in exchange for RCA designing color circuitry for use in Ampex VTRs. The first complete entertainment program aired on a network from color video tape was "An Evening With Fred Astaire" on NBC in October 1958.

There never was a color tape of the broadcast, but a B&W tape **was** made by CBS for the West Coast replay. Unfortunately, that tape is currently MIA, and its fate is uncertain... it may have grown legs and walked out some years later, or it may have just been erased and reused after the replay.

-Kevin

Kev,

I believe the tape was bulked the week after broadcast.

So the B&W tape was just used for the west coast replay and the Kine was used for archival reasons?

How would a 1958 B&W videotape have compared in quality to a kinescope, (assuming a 47 year old videotape, not when it was new)

As bad as Kines can be I suppose were lucky they used them at all or we might not have ANY vintage live TV shows.

A B&W videotape from that era would have looked truly wonderful.

But the image was good because the tape was larger than the today's tape?

When I lived in L.A. the local PBS station played this show (in black and white) and I taped it. I think I still have this tape. If it still plays I'll copy it onto DVD. I'll post later this week if I have it.

The image was good because any size tape produces a better image than cheap 16 mm film shot from the faceplate of a small CRT.

Seems to me that folks on the West coast who spent hundreds of 1957 dollars on a color set had cause for complaint. I guess the sponsors wanted the largest audience possible and a delayed prime time B&W telecast to the Pacific time zone was worth disappointing the few viewers with color sets. I've seen the B&W Cinderella kine. It looks terrible now and I'm sure just as bad in 1957. The live color telecast must have been spectacular.

-Steve D.

Get your credit cards ready
 

If you want to spend a few bucks, the DVD of the B&W 1957 kine is available at Amazon;

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...=UTF8&v=glance

And if you want a color copy of the 1965 color remake (unknown if it is a kine or a tape copy) of the same with Lesley Ann Warren as Cinderella, Amazon has it also;

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...v=glance&n=130

Check the second listing and find the sale price for both.

Good night and good luck,

Dave A

I say to heck with the crappy Kine version, get this one instead:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...s=dvd&v=glance

It truly does look spectacular!

While we've got our thinking caps on, I STILL think I remember seeing back in the '70s, a special on Early TV that had Marlene Dietrich singing "Lili Marlene", & it was supposed to be one of the first color telecasts in 1949...It looked like a kine, and the color kinda went back & forth between being washed out & saturated. There really wasn't much color, just Marlene's flesh-tones. Maybe it was some experimental thing..Seems like the show was on CBS, maybe it was a demonstration of their field-sequential system or something.-Sandy G.

You know, it's funny but there was a site a few years ago that had a very short online clip of what was supposed to be a 1940's CBS color kine, except that they were unable to identify the subject... which I seem to recall was a close-up of a blonde woman. Wonder if that's the same clip?

Along these same lines, I was just recently told about a reel of film that was found on Ebay, which contained two 1954 COLOR kinescope clips from NBC (though they were badly faded)-- a few minutes of an episode of the Dinah Shore Show, complete with a chopped-up but heretofore unknown NBC color ident, voiced by Hugh Downs; and the opening minutes of an episode of Eddie Fisher's "Coke Time", from March of 1954.

Impossible things **are** happening every day!! :D

-Kevin

modern marvels on the history channel
 

If you get a chance to see television on modern marvels on the history channel they show a short film clip of very early CBS color on that program.

Is this the one? (link below) It's Patty Painter on CBS sequential color.
In an email from Patty's daughter, Alexis Ward, in November 2003, she said "That is the first color TV demonstration for the FCC in 1946. She was 19 at the time."

http://home.att.net/~pldexnis/video/...dSequential.rm

[QUOTE=Joel Cairo]You know, it's funny but there was a site a few years ago that had a very short online clip of what was supposed to be a 1940's CBS color kine, except that they were unable to identify the subject... which I seem to recall was a close-up of a blonde woman. Wonder if that's the same clip?

I believe the clip you are referring to is the one at this site:

http://home.att.net/~pldexnis/potpourri1/lastpage4.html

The subject was Patty Painter, who was known in the forties as CBS' "Miss Color Television". The site has a message from her daughter explaining Patty's activities at CBS. Buff Cobb and Mike Wallace also were frequent color TV models at CBS in the forties.

that's the clip that I saw on the modern marvel episode on the History Channel.

Yep-- that's the clip I saw as well. Thanks for the additional info!!

-Kevin

I remember in the early sixties CBS also snuck in some color episodes of LASSIE on Sunday night. There were only a couple that I remember.

Do you remember if Lassie was with Timmy's family or the rangers? I wouldn't be surprised if exact airdates of those special color eps are somewhere on the internet.

Timmy.

Hmmm...so far no reference found to any color broadcast of Lassie prior to 9/12/65 premiere of season 12 when it was all-color from then on.

I do recall watching at least one color Lassie during 1963 and 1964. Back in the days before CBS went all-color, early in the season a show would be hyped as being In Color. I remember thinking at the time that a B&W TV owner would think the entire season was in color.

It was in that time period that CBS used the color bloodshot eye logo; my reaction when I saw it back then was that it was both clever and weird!

They did a Perry Mason in color too. I ran across it one day, wondering why the heck Perry was flesh colored! I wish they had done at least one show in color on some other shows too like I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners. And glad some they DIDN'T, like The Twilight Zone! : )

Pete, I think CBS was getting ready for the inevitable shift to full schedule color broadcasts. Early on they also may have been testing the water to see what kind of jump they got in ratings for color shows.
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Lassie in color
 

A four episode Lassie called "The Journey" was telecast in color by CBS starting Feb. 17, 1963. I recall the first episode on the 17th was followed that same evening by the CBS color telecast "A Tour of London with Elizabeth Taylor". This was CBS's cautious re-entry into color broadcasting after several dormant years. The Lassie color episodes aired opposite NBC's "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color".

Several versions of the CBS "bloodshot eye" can be seen on my site.

Steve D.

Now this may be barking right up the wrong tree ..but wasn't "The Cisco Kid" from the early 50s filmed in color and if I remember my history it was a CBS series??? I remember the shock of seeing it in colour in the 1970s! maybe it was so early it was CBS FS color?

I believe that CK was a color series, but I'm sure that it's lot like the "Lone Ranger" and "Superman", in that it was produced in color, but probably originally aired in B&W.

-Kevin

Ziv was very forward thinking in producing six years worth of The Cisco Kid in color starting in 1950 when no station could possibly have broadcast it in color (it was syndicated only). Toward the end of its run, especially in '55-'56 I'm sure there were first-run episodes broadcast in color in at least a couple markets, but documentation to prove it would be hard to come by. ISTR a contemporary ad c. 1956 about it being on some station in color, and if one can find listings of the time they're probably the only existing record of what was in color when. And even then they're not 100% reliable, as an October 1954 ad for a color episode of I Love Lucy gave false hope that such an episode had actually been produced. Diligent research uncovered documentation that proved plans for that episode's color filming were scrapped (as were some others) apparently too late to change the ad copy.

Starting in 1954, there were perhaps a dozen local stations around the country who had the capability to air film programs in color. I Lived in one of those markets and remember seeing "The Cisco Kid" in color in the late fifties. It was syndicated. Another series aired in color locally at that time was "The Adventures of Long John Silver". You can see clips from that series at:

http://www.liketelevision.com/web1/classictv/longjohn/

"I Love Lucy" in color?
 

Here's the site that discusses the search for the Lucy color episode. Pretty good read.

Color Her Missing
http://www.lucyfan.com/lucyincolor.html

And the follow up page, updated info on the search:

Lucy In Color - Part 2
Address:http://www.lucyfan.com/lucyincolor2.html

-Steve D.

THOSE B&W SHOWS FILMED IN COLOR
 

In the early or mid 70's at WTVT in Tampa we had Andy Devine on our noon program as a guest talking about an old-time western films convention. He mentioned the fact that the series he was co-star of, "Wild Bill Hickock", filmed in color in the 1950's on pure foresight on the producer's thought that eventually the episodes would air in color, as they did beginning in a syndicated package in the 1960's along with The Cisco Kid, The Lone Ranger, Superman (a couple of seasons), Mr. District Attorney (possibly the earliest TV show to film in color in 1951), Science Fiction Theatre and a few others including The Gene Autry Show (1954-55 only). SOme I remember seeing in the mid 60's, especially Mr. District Attorney and Science Fiction Theatre, would have the open in b&w and the show content in color. Andy Devine seemed proud of the fact they were so prophetic in the early and mid 50's.

Well I rented this disc from Netflix to see what it looks like.
Not too bad for a Kinescope though there is a weird moire pattern in the picture along with the usual artifacts.
I haven't actually watched it yet so I can't comment on the program yet.

Here's a capture, shrinking it kind of cleaned it up a little.

Here's another, you can actually see the scan lines if you look closely.