W2XBS Schedule, Week of October 29th, 1939

Here’s the schedule for NBC’s experimental station W2XBS in New York City for the week starting Sunday, October 29th, 1939, straight from the weekly television listings printed in The New York Times. This was the second week to feature the station’s latest schedule overall in which no broadcasts were made on Monday or Tuesday. Football opened the week on Sunday, boxing was featured on Wednesday and football wrapped things up on Saturday. Saturday also featured a dramatization of Treasure Island. There seem to be an unusual number of films due to the loss of the Tuesday variety hour; this was offset by Sunday’s hour of exposition on exploration. Other programming included marionettes, a stylist named Elizabeth Watts, another installment of The Lost Jungle, and a fashion show.

Sunday, October 29th, 1939
2:30-5PM – Football: New York Giants versus Brooklyn Dodgers, at Ebbets Field.
8:30-9:30PM – Captain Bob Bartlett, motion pictures of his Arctic explorations; talks by explorers.

Wednesday, November 1st, 1939
2:30-3:30PM – Elizabeth Watts, stylist, on “The Right and Wrong of It”; film serial, “The Lost Jungle,” Episode XI, with Clyde Beatty; film, “Oberon Overture”; Alison Skipworth, actress, interviewed.
9:30-11PM – Boxing: Tony Canzoneri versus Al Davis and preliminaries at Madison Square Garden.

Thursday, November 2nd, 1939
2:30-3:45PM – Film, “Two Minutes to Play.”
8:30-9:30PM – Variety show: Gaige’s Cooking Scandals; Buffano’s marionettes; fashion show.

Friday, November 3rd, 1939
2:30-4PM – Film, “Forty Girls and a Baby.”
8:30-9:40PM – Film, “Young and Beautiful,” with William Haines.

Saturday, November 4th, 1939
2:30-5PM – Football: N.Y.U. versus Lafayette College.
8:30-9:45PM – “Treasure Island,” dramatized.

Sources:

“Telecasts.” New York Times. 29 Oct. 1939: X10.


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One Reply to “W2XBS Schedule, Week of October 29th, 1939”

  1. Hmmm, more good “B-movies” scheduled this week: “Two Minutes To Play” (1936), another little gem from ‘Victory Pictures’, starring “Herman Brix” (later known as Bruce Bennett), Edward J. Nugent, Jeanne Martel, Betty Compson, Grady Sutton [who recently appeared in W.C. Fields’ “The Bank Dick” for Universal, his best-known movie role], and Duncan “Cisco Kid” Renaldo {what a cast!} in a stirring drama of the football field (you’ve probably seen it all before [some people did when it was originally filmed as a 1926 silent, “One Minute To Play”] but viewers of W2XBS probably didn’t, so this must have been entertaining for them)….”Young and Beautiful” (1934), starring William Haines, Judith Allen, Warren Hymer, Franklin Pangborn, and Ted Fio Rito and his Orchestra; interesting Mascot Pictures comedy about a Hollywood publicity man trying make his fiancee the “biggest name in Hollywood”.

    However, “Forty Girls and a Baby” is SO obscure, even I don’t know what it was about!

    Alison Skipworth was a veteran movie and Broadway actress (at the time of her 15 minute interview on November 1st, she was about to co-star in a Broadway comedy, “When We Are Married”, which lasted from December 1939 through May 1940), and co-starred with W.C. Fields in four Paramount features earlier in the decade, although he told the studio, after 1934’s “Six Of A Kind”, that he preferred “working alone”. This was one of her rare TV appearances- she died in 1952, at the age of 88.

    Now, how DO you dramatize an “expansive” book like “Treasure Island”, filmed at least four times by then, into a 1939 TV production in a cramped converted radio studio???

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