Here’s the schedule for NBC’s experimental station W2XBS in New York City for the week starting Sunday, September 17th, 1939, straight from the weekly television listings printed in The New York Times. Only one outside pick-up was aired during the week, on Saturday afternoon. The fifth episode of the 1934 serial, The Lost Jungle, was shown on Wednesday. Several films, a play, a fashion show or two and an “animal show” with the curator of the Bronx Zoo rounded out the week.
Tuesday, September 19th, 1939
12PM – Lou Nova, boxer, interviewed; Fashion show films, “Don’t Try it; Automobile news; “Irish Isle”; Colin O’More, news; newscast.
8:30-9:30PM – Revue: “As Others See Us.”Wednesday, September 20th, 1939
12PM – Discussion: “How to Make a Book”; film serial, “The Lost Jungle,” Episode V, with Clyde Beatty; film, “Heart of a Nation”; George Ross, Broadway columnist, news.
3-4PM – Animal show, with Dr. Raymond L. Ditmars, curator of the Bronx Zoo.
8:30-9:30PM – Film, “Swing It, Professor.”Thursday, September 21st, 1939
12PM – Fashion show; films, “Life in Lapland”; “Milk Parade”; “Zion National Park”; talk on manicure style.
8:30-9:30PM – Play: “Death Takes a Holiday.” The cast includes: Kent Smith, portraying the part of “Death”; Ethel Wilson, Dennis Hoey, Frances Reed, John Clark, Stephen Kerappleby and Kay Strozzi, most of whom have played in Broadway productions.Friday, September 22nd, 1939
12PM – Madge Tucker’s radio children; films, “French Country Life”; “Far Speaking”; “Forward Pass”; Red Barber, sports.
3-4PM – Rehearsal of police show at Randalls Island.
8:30-9:30PM – Variety hour: fashion show; spelling bee; Tamara, songs.Saturday, September 23rd, 1939
3-4PM – An outside pick-up, to be announced.
Works Cited:
Another “B” movie seen on Wednesday night- “Swing It, Professor” (1937), from the defunct Conn Pictures Corporation [W2XBS had access to several of Conn’s “programmers”, most of them westerns]- this one starring Pinky Tomlin, a singer/songwriter who enjoyed a brief “spurt” of fame in the ’30s with two songs he introduced: “The Object of My Affection” and “The Love Bug Will Bite You If You Don’t Watch Out”. He also appeared in several “minor” musicals (including this one, about a music professor trying to “get hep” to swing music in order to save his job, getting mixed up with gangsters as a result). Later, he was Preston Foster’s co-star in the syndicated series “WATERFRONT”, in the mid-’50s. As I’ve said before, movies like this became “established fare” on local stations after commercial television became a viable commodity in the late ’40s and early ’50s…more travelogues and “commercial” shorts were also shown during the day as well [wonder what “Milk Parade” was like?].