According to Simon, the silent footage was uncovered by the American Film Institute at an estate sale some years back. It made its way to the Paley Center and Simon was able to identify it (which is an incredible achievement when you think about it) and now roughly one minute has been posted at the Center’s website. A total of eleven minutes exist. Here’s the entry from the Center’s database:

This home-made kinescope (without sound) shows fragments of one of the Thursday Night Programs broadcast by the predecessor of WNBC-TV, the experimental NBC station W2XBS. The melodrama, about a family’s descent into poverty, is presented as a play within the program. Also shown are shots of patrons entering the Lester Wallace Theatre to watch the show, cards that direct theater patrons in proper behavior, and a “dramatis personae.” Fragmentary scenes include Badger (played by Norman Lloyd) and Bloodgood (played by George Coulouris) plotting together and Bloodgood setting a house on fire.

Yes, that’s producer/actor/director Norman Lloyd (here’s his IMDb page) who appeared in a variety of early W2XBS broadcasts. I cannot see identify him in the footage available at the Paley Center’s website but he may not be in that scene. I was aware that the Center had this footage for quite some time — it is available for viewing in its entirety by visitors at the New York City and Los Angeles locations — but never thought it would be made available online. I implore everyone to take a minute to watch the footage here.

Incredible.

Related posts:

1. WX2BS Schedule, Week of August 27th, 1939
2. Apollo 11 Footage Missing
3. Listing the Status of Existing Episodes

The way I understand the story, Gene Roddenberry had the only color print of “The Cage” and it was physically cut apart to create “The Menagerie.” Roddenberry was left with black and white 16mm work print that he would screen for fans at conventions. On August 7th, 1986 the Museum of Broadcasting (later the Museum of Television and Radio, now the Paley Center for Media) held the first public screening of the pilot; it was a combined version featuring the color scenes from “The Menagerie” and black and white footage from Roddenberry’s work print. Here’s how an article from Boston Globe explained how “The Cage” came to be:

It was the tight budget that caused the original “Star Trek” pilot to be lost for more than 20 years. “It was made under Desilu, which was a low budget studio,” explains Rodenberry, “I was running out of money making Star Trek episodes, and they Desilu asked me if it was possible to work in the first pilot with Kirk and the new crew. If it could be done, we could have two episodes for the price of one. And maybe make it through the year.”

Rodenberry said it was probably the most difficult job of writing he’d ever done. The result was the two-part episode “The Menagerie,” which won the international Hugo Award, given to works of fantasy literature and art. Unfortunately, the only color copy of the first pilot was used as the work print, because Desilu apparently wouldn’t pay $200 to make a copy.

Rodenberry has since found many of the original color frames and spliced them with black and white footage to create “The Cage” being shown at the museum. [1]

An article in The New York Times stated that the pilot ran 65 minutes [2]. A 73-minute version was released on video in November of 1986 (it cost $29.98) but it contained an introduction and conclusion from Roddenberry [3]. In October of 1988, a full-color version was broadcast as part of “The Star Trek Saga: From One Generation to the Next,” a special hosted by Patrick Stewart. According to The Los Angeles Times, it “was recently found in the Paramount vaults” [4]. Memory Alpha, however, explains that “in 1987, film archivist Bob Furmanek discovered the missing trims from the color 35 mm negative of “The Cage” at a Hollywood film laboratory, and saw that they were returned to Paramount.”

The question I’m left with is whether any footage from the original, complete version of “The Cage” is still missing. The TrekWeb article mentioned earlier concludes that at least some frames were lost during the creation of “The Menagerie” but suggests that only roughly 20 seconds are unaccounted for. And some of these missing frames were included in the 1988 broadcast only to be removed when the pilot was released for the first time on DVD in 2001. Thus, Roddenberry’s original vision of Star Trek does exist. For a wonderful look at scenes cut from “The Cage” before Roddenberry finalized the pilot as well as behind-the-scenes information, head over to Star Trek History.

Works Cited:

Related posts:

1. Update on Alternative Version of Star Trek Pilot on Blu-ray
2. Star Trek Season 3 Blu-ray to Include Alternate Pilot
3. New Exhibit: Star Trek Promotional Spots, 1987-2001

Only three complete episodes exist at the four big television archives, two at the Library of Congress and one at UCLA’s Film & Television Archive. Excerpts from another episode, broadcast as part of the sixth anniversary show, are held by both institutions.

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1. Kraft Television Theatre: How Many Episodes Survive?
2. Status Guide – “Kraft Television Theatre” Season One
3. Status Guide – “Coronet Blue”

Sketches from the 1952-1959 version of The Jackie Gleason Show (Art Carney left in 1957 and the Honeymooners sketches were dropped) were uncovered in 1984 by Ron Simon, curator for the Museum of Broadcasting (then the Museum of Television & Radio and now the Paley Center for Media) and immediately — and understandably — dubbed “lost episodes” by the media. (Based on the terminology I’ve been using these would be missing, not lost).

Richard F. Shepard reported in The New York Times on August 4th, 1984 that The Museum of Broadcasting in New York City bad begun screening four “rediscovered” episodes from Gleason’s 1954 variety series in its auditorium under the museum’s “Discovery” banner [1]. On September 5th, an Associated Press article by Tom Jory explained that the episodes, each of which contained a roughly 40-minute Honeymooners sketch, were found in a CBS archive in New Jersey [2]. A fifth episode of The Jackie Gleason Show with Robert Q. Lewis guest hosting, was also found.

Said Simon, “The characters seem a little rougher around the edges and the plots are more complicated than they would become in the half-hour show. They were done live, and they didn’t really have a specific amount of time to work with. So they could play around with the audience a bit” [3]. The screenings were held through September 29th and reportedly drew huge crowds three times a day.

Following the recovery of these missing episodes, Jackie Gleason famously announced in early 1985 that he had dozens of other episodes of The Jackie Gleason Show (1952) as well as Cavalcade of Stars complete with Honeymooners sketches. These were cut into half-hour episodes titled “The Honeymooners: The Lost Episodes” and aired on Showtime, in syndication and released on VHS and DVD.

I haven’t been able to figure out which four episodes/sketches were presented by the Museum of Broadcasting in 1984 but presumably they’ve since been released on one of the various “lost episodes” collections. I also am not exactly sure which episodes of which shows were released by Gleason in 1985. This list of Honeymooners sketches compiled by Jim Davidson states that eight sketches originally broadcast between 1952 and 1954 are still missing. Additionally, four other sketches from 1954 to 1957 that were remakes of earlier sketches are also missing.

According to an article in the Fall 2005 edition of Television Quarterly written by none other than Ron Simon, the very first Honeymooners sketch, broadcast as part of Cavalcade of Stars on October 5th, 1951, was recovered from the estate of Snag Werris, actor and scriptwriter for Jackie Gleason who “supposedly had traded Gleason a bottle of booze” for the film [4]. It’s actually quite surprising that the seven sketches from Cavalcade of Stars still exist.

If anyone has additional information about the status of Honeymooners sketches please post in the comments section or contact me directly.

Works Cited:

Related posts:

1. Television Programs – Lost, Missing or Unavailable
2. Episodes of The Jackie Gleason Show (1961) Not Lost
3. NBC “Talking Head” Promo Spots 1984-1985

Related posts:

1. Status Guide – “Kraft Television Theatre” Season Two
2. Status Guide – “Kraft Television Theatre” Season One
3. Status Guide – “The Americans”

The article noted that the November 13th broadcast would visit NBC’s Studio 3-H at the RCA Building and the November 20th broadcast would come from a mobile pick-up. Another broadcast, date unknown, was from the RCA Exhibition Hall. Ben Grauer was announcer and host for the series, which was directed by Garry Simpson. Dr. Vladimir K. Zworykin was the guest on the February 25th, 1948 episode, which UCLA has in its collection. No other episodes are known to exist.

Scenes from the February 26th, 1948 broadcast with Dr. Zworykin were included in the third installment of “Television,” a 1988 documentary series shown on PBS. The installment, titled “The Race for Television,” can be viewed at the Museum of Broadcast Communications (registration required). Simply search for “race for television” in the Episode Title box. The Eye Witness segment runs from roughly 43:08 to 47:03. The episode can also be viewed at the The Paley Center for Media in New York City or Los Angeles.

Sources:
“The News of Radio: Bob Hope Retains Lead in Night-time Hooper Rating–Fred Allen Jumps to Second Spot.” New York Times. 3 Nov. 1947: 44.

Related posts:

1. Status Guide – “Kraft Television Theatre” Season Two
2. Status Guide – “Teen-Age Book Club”
3. Status Guide – “Kraft Television Theatre” Season One

Next to nothing is known about Teen-Age Book Club, not the names of the books covered or the names of the teenagers participating. Was there a regular panel that appeared each week? The guests listed in the following status guide come from The New York Times and may reflect writers and editors appearing each week and not the teenage reviewers. None of the episodes are known to exist, unfortunately, so there’s no way of knowing how each episode played out.

Related posts:

1. Status Guide – “Kraft Television Theatre” Season Two
2. Status Guide – “Eye Witness”
3. Status Guide – “Kraft Television Theatre” Season One

A distinction should be made between television programs that are lost, missing and unavailable. I’ll attempt to lay out just what that means in the following paragraphs.

Although the vast majority of the shows I write about aren’t commercially available, meaning you can’t go to a store or look online and find them on DVD, many do circulate among private collectors. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to include video clips and images taken from episodes.

Plenty of shows that have never been released on VHS or DVD (or Laserdisc or Betamax, for that matter) were recorded during their original broadcasts (beginning in the late 1970s) or later local and/or cable syndication by fans with the right equipment and access to the proper cable channels. The New People, for example, has never been released commercially in any format. It isn’t lost; all 17 episodes are part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive, as 16mm safety prints, and may exist elsewhere as well (perhaps even the original film elements, although not being an expert on television production I can’t say whether those would be 35mm negatives or something else).

But only the pilot episode exists in the hands of private collectors. So it is an example of a show that is commercially unavailable and, for the most part, simply unavailable. To say a given television show is lost, in my mind, means it was broadcast live and never recorded in any format. It is quite literally lost. Prior to 1947/1948 when the kinescope was introduced in the United States, there was no real way to record live television.

NBC’s Hour Glass, broadcast in 1946, is an example of a lost show. So is Thrills and Chills Everywhere, broadcast on DuMont and NBC from 1941 to 1944, or any of the shows included in my article Television Programs in 1941. I don’t know the exact date when kinescopes became common but 1948 works well enough as a cutoff.

Programs that are missing, then, are those that were either filmed to begin with or recorded in some fashion, be it a kinescope or video tape, and have seemingly disappeared. This is where things get confusing. Here in the United States there has never been a concentrated effort to document the whereabouts of decades worth of television episodes. At least, not that I’m aware of. The Paley Center for Media does have a section called “Lost” Programs at its website but it is far from comprehensive.

Scattered between a variety of museums, archives, production company warehouses and random basements or attacks, are tens of thousands of television episodes. The Library of Congress has 80,000, the Paley Center for Media some 140,000 and UCLA’s Film & Television Archive a combined 220,000 films and television episodes. I’m sure there’s a lot of overlap. But does the Library of Congress, for example, know what the Paley Center for Media has in its collection?

The Missing Pieces of Media History article at the Paley Center for Media states that “A 1969 pilot about a Queens, New York, family headed by a grouch named Archie Justice—later known as Archie Bunker—has disappeared as well.” Both pilots for All in the Family have been at UCLA’s Film & Television Archive since the mid-1990s and are now available on DVD as well. So they are neither missing nor lost.

Perhaps one of the reasons there isn’t a central database of which television programs exist where and in what condition has to do with the staggering amount of television produced here in the States. Four television networks from 1948 to 1955, not to mention independent syndication, pumping out thousands of episodes per year. That’s a lot of television to keep track of. Things appear to be a little better in the United Kingdom, where for many years there were only one or two networks available. The BBC, for example, has its own Treasure Hunt for missing programs and websites like Missing-Episodes.com provide extensive information about what’s missing, what’s found, and where to look next.

To sum up, there’s far too much television in existence and far too little effort has been put into cataloging it. Lost programs are those that aired live and were never recorded. Missing programs were recorded and then went missing. Unavailable programs are known to exist but have either never been released on VHS/DVD or don’t circulate among private collectors.

Questions or suggestions? Hit the comments. And be sure to let me know if I haven’t made sense.

Related posts:

1. “Lost” Honeymooners Sketches Uncovered in 1984
2. “Unprecedented” Use of Television in 1950 Missing Persons Case
3. Important Television Archives

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” (Read the full speech here)

Apollo 11, with Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins, lifted off on July 16th, 1969. The lunar module (named Eagle) with Armstrong and Aldrin aboard landed on the lunar surface at 4:18PM Eastern Daylight Time. Armstrong set foot on the Moon at 10:56PM EDT and famously proclaimed “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” Watch the late Walter Cronkite covering Armstrong’s first steps (those outside the United States may not be able to view it):

Apollo 11 returned safely to Earth on July 24th, 1969. According to a September 1st, 1969 article in Broadcasting, 93.9% of television households (53.5 million in total) watched an average of 15 hours and 35 minutes of network coverage of the Apollo 11 mission between July 14th and July 27th, making it the most-watched television event at that time [1]. Some 125 million viewers watched the Moon walk [2].

The grainy black-and-white footage of Armstrong setting foot on the Moon has become well-known in the past four decades. Due to technical issues relating to the way the video was shot on the Moon and then transmitted back to Earth, the original high-quality footage could not be shown on television at the time. Instead, it was converted to a format that could be broadcast, in the progress sacrificing quality. Unbelievably, recordings of this high-quality footage, beamed to three tracking stations by satellite, have been missing since roughly 1970.

A full-fledged search for the missing 14-inch spools tapes, which also include telemetry data, seems to have begun in 2006. Here’s a wonderful NPR article from July of 2006 about the missing tapes and the search to find them. According to this NASA press release from August of 2006 the tapes were missing, not lost.

Here’s a brief CNN.com video reporting on the missing tapes (those outside the United States may not be able to view it):

New, high-quality video from Apollo 11 was released by NASA on July 16th, 2009 but it was digitally restored from a variety of secondary sources (including the CBS News Archive and sites in Australia). This press releases notes that “a three-year search for these original telemetry tapes was unsuccessful. A final report on the investigation is expected to be completed in the near future and will be publicly released at that time.” Unfortunately, that seems to suggest that NASA now considers the tapes lost for good.

It’s unfortunate that the high-quality footage is missing but even the grainy video from 1969 is quite impressive to watch. The newly restored

Works Cited:

Related posts:

1. View Scenes from Earliest Existing Television Footage
2. Television Programs – Lost, Missing or Unavailable
3. “Unprecedented” Use of Television in 1950 Missing Persons Case

This was a difficult status guide to put together. Using television listings from The New York Times I came up with a total of 170 episodes broadcast between June 6th, 1949 and September 25th, 1952. TV.com lists 171 episodes and there are some discrepancies, notably in July of 1952 when The New York Times twice listed Cavalcade of Stars as pre-empted by coverage of political conventions while TV.com shows episodes airing on these dates.

The Library of Congress does not appear to have any episodes of Cavalcade of Stars. The Museum of Broadcast Communications has one. UCLA’s Film & Television Archive has 12 complete episodes, the first half of another episode, excerpts from another and unknown excerpts from several episodes (part of a collection of DuMont network clips and promos). The Paley Center for Media has 16 episodes that I was able to match with known broadcasts, plus at least a half dozen others that had no air date listed. The Paley Center also has many excerpts, sketches and segments from unknown episodes.

One of UCLA’s episodes is listed as airing on Thursday, May 25th, 1950; at the time Cavalcade of Stars was broadcast on Saturdays. I have included this episode as the May 27th broadcast but that may be incorrect. Additionally, UCLA has an episode from September of 1949 that it suggests may have aired on Friday, September 16th. Judging from the guest stars I believe this episode aired on September 19th, 1949.

The Paley Center has one episode (catalog ID T85:0512) that, based on the guest stars (Jo Sullivan, The Ames Brothers) likely aired on June 15th, 1951. It was the only unknown episode from the Paley Center I could match solely on the basis of guest stars listed in The New York Times. As always, this status guide only lists episodes at the four big television archives/museums; there could certainly be many more out there.

Related posts:

1. Status Guide – Programs Cancelled Before They Premiered
2. Status Guide – “Betty Crocker Star Matinee”
3. Status Guide – “Stars Over Hollywood”