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.