TV in prewar movies

[Steve D.]

From the 1941 Columbia film "Sweetheart of the Campus" seen on TCM starring Ozzie & Harriet Nelson. Silly plot line but Ozzie's band gets to perform on a college's experimental TV station. Television was featured in several prewar films as it was seen as a curiosity and not a threat to the film industry at the time.

-Steve D.

[mstaton]

I love the fake exact rectangle screen

[rld-tv01]

The movies Trapped by Television (Fictional story of TV inventor similar to Farnsworth), Murder by Television, Metropolis (two way Television office to factory floor), and the Flash Gordon serials (large space ship viewer screen) used fictional televisions in their story plots.

[mpatoray]

Radioland Murders also used television as the plot, although this movie is not prewar being it is from 1992. It does have some great Art Deco styling, and a great hodgepodge of somewhat technical terms used in radio but where they are used wrong often times.

[rld-tv01]

I did a google search for the Metropolis movie and found that the June 1927 issue of Science and Invention had an article on the making of the movie. The movie simulated two way television with a movie projector behind the screen. Real TV in 1927 was a mechanical TV with a one-inch view-port.

[rld-tv01]

The 1936 movie version of the HG Wells book "Things to Come" had both large and small flat panel Televisions. The large flat panel is transparent shown in image #2.

Images found on http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1286

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by rld-tv01

June 1927 issue of Science and Invention had an article on the making of the movie. The movie simulated two way television with a movie projector behind the screen.

It must have been fun to avoid strobe beat effects caused by that projector's frame rate and the movie camera's frame rate. Getting both to match up so the brightness of the display doesn't flicker or image fragment too much.

[mstaton]

I think there was a Twilight Zone episode with flat panel TV's

[Sandy G]

Originally Posted by mstaton

I think there was a Twilight Zone episode with flat panel TV's

Yeah. "Eye of the Beholder" from 1960. Starred a YOUNG Donna Douglas as a BEAUTIFUL girl in a world populated by hideously ugly people.

[vts1134]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

Yeah. "Eye of the Beholder" from 1960. Starred a YOUNG Donna Douglas as a BEAUTIFUL girl in a world populated by hideously ugly people.

I think you have that the wrong way around.

[Sandy G]

Originally Posted by vts1134

I think you have that the wrong way around.

Well, yeah, in HER world, SHE was unspeakably ugly-She was in the hospital having the last treatment allowed by the State to try to bring her into the "Glorious Conformity", as preached by the Leader on one of the image screens. We NEVER see the faces of the doctors or nurses, til after we see "Ellie May"-She's GORGEOUS, & then the camera pans around to show the doctors & nurses-Swollen, misshapen mouths, ridges over their eyes, like something out of a nightmare. THEY were the norm in that world-And Donna was the hideous freak. Always thought it was one of the finer episodes, of one of the best series ever on TV..

[vts1134]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

...Always thought it was one of the finer episodes, of one of the best series ever on TV..

Agreed

[Eric H]

Wow, they really nailed it, even the aspect ratio looks about right, and there are transparent LCD screens in existence now.

[Sandy G]

Don't think it was "Prewar" but I bet ALL of us REMEMBER the 3 Stooges short where they pretend to be plumbers & completely WRECK their employers' house-Even to the point of having water fly out of a TV that's showing Niagra Falls..

[Steve D.]

Typical British music hall humor. Says released in 1940. Perhaps produced before the BBC shutdown of TV broadcasting at the start of WWII. The TV sequences are fun and they must have had an ok from the BBC to use and abuse their name throughout the film. good promotion for the British radio stars.

Peter, Thanks for posting the link.

-Steve D.