Television Obscurities

Bookshelf: The Very First TV Tie-In

RGJ — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:18:09 +0000

Writing about TV tie-in novelizations last week got me to thinking about the very first television tie-in novel. What was it? I haven’t been able to find the answer and part of the problem is defining a tie-in novel. The earliest tie-ins were likely hardcover illustrated stories published by Whitman Publishing (a subsidiary of Western Publishing). The company began publishing books featuring licensed characters from film, radio and eventually television. One of the earliest Whitmans that might be considered a TV tie-in is Gene Autry and the Badmen of Broken Bow, first published in 1951. According to Kurt Peer in TV Tie-Ins: A Bibliography of American TV Tie-In Paperbacks, “Whitman, which had been publishing Gene Autry books since the 1940′s, continued to publish them, with show-mention, once the show aired” [1].

Additional Whitman titles published in the early 1950s included Roy Rogers and the Rimrod Renegades, Gene Autry and the Big Valley Crab and Rin Tin Tin’s Rinty. Again, these likely had less to do with any television programs and more to do with the characters themselves. Two books published in 1955 may be among the first actual tie-ins: The $64,000 Question Official Quiz Book (Dell) and The Life of Davy Crockett (Signet). The latter was said to be written by Crockett himself and coincided with the 1954-1955 ABC Disneyland episodes starring Fess Parker.

Peer called Frontier: 150 Years of the West, published by Bantam in 1955, an “inferred TV tie-in” because it was “similar to the Western anthology TV show Frontier” despite the fact that the book made no mention of the show. It was published four months after Frontier premiered, however, so it very well may have been a tie-in [2]. Dragnet: Case No. 561 was published in 1956 by Pocket. Written by Richard S. Prather under the pen name David Knight, it may be the very first original story related to a television show. In 1957 Ballantine published Gunsmoke, a novelization of ten radio and television episodes, and Sergeant Bilko, which reprinted ten shooting scripts.

The next original novels may have been Wagon Train: Wagonmaster and Wagon Train: The Scout, both written by Robert Turner and both published in 1958 by Pocket. Also published in 1958 were Dragnet: The Case of the Courteous Killer (Pocket) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 12 Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do On TV, a collection of short stories (Dell). The following year brought Dragnet: The Case of the Crime King (Pocket) and Dragnet: The Badge (Crest).

The first year of the decade saw a slew of tie-ins: Have Gun, Will Travel (Dell), Johnny Staccato (Gold Medal), Leave it to Beaver (Berkley Medallion), Peter Gunn (Dell), The Deputy (Dell) and Men Into Space (Berkley) were all published in 1960. With the exception of Leave it to Beaver, which consisted of novelizations, I believe all of these were original stories. The earliest tie-in novel in my personal collection is The Americans, published in 1961 by Popular Library.

To sum up, the very first tie-in novel with an original story may be Dragnet: Case No. 561, published in 1956. The first tie-ins of any sort were likely Whitman stories based on licensed characters like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. If anyone has information about an earlier original story or can shed some light on whether the Whitman stories published in the early 1950s were actually intended as TV tie-ins, please let me know.

Works Cited:

1 Peer, Kurt. TV Tie-Ins: A Bibliography of American TV Tie-In Paperbacks. 2nd ed. New York: TV Books, L.L.C., 1997. Page 81.
2 Ibid, Page 79.

DVD Tuesday: Thriller, The Judy Garland Show

RGJ — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:10:02 +0000

Every Tuesday I take a look at obscure and/or classic television programs, specials, miniseries or made-for-TV movies being released on DVD. For the record I consider anything broadcast prior to 1980 to be classic or else there wouldn’t be much to discuss. The releases referred to in these posts are encoded for Region 1 use in the United States and Canada.

The big news today is Thriller: The Complete Series from Image Entertainment. The set contains all 67 episodes of the series, originally broadcast between September of 1960 and April of 1962, on 14 discs. Also included are more than two dozen audio commentaries and some 30 hours of “isolated music & effects tracks” featuring music from Jerry Goldsmith and Morton Stevens, plus a promotional film intended for sponsors, promotional spots for specific episodes and two galleries of promotional/production photographs. Reviews can be found at TVShowsOnDVD.com, DVD Savant, Home Theater Forum and DVD Verdict. A preview of the set is available at Cinefantastique.

Also out today, from Infinity Entertainment Group, is The Judy Garland Show: Volume 5, with two more episodes of the 1963-1964 CBS variety show. I haven’t been able to determine which two episodes are in this volume but guest stars include Jayne Meadows, Steve Allen and Mel Torme. Finally, you can buy made-for-TV movie Deliver Us from Evil, starring George Kennedy and Jan-Michael Vincent, from Warner Archive. It was originally aired on ABC on September 11th, 1973, and follows a group of men who find a wounded skyjacker loaded with $600,000 and, after killing him, begin fighting over the money.

40th/41st Emmy Awards Promo Spots

RGJ — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:10:07 +0000

Here are two promotional spots for the 40th Primetime Emmy Awards, broadcast by FOX on Sunday, August 28th, 1988. It was the first year for which cable programming was eligible. FOX first aired the awards ceremony in 1987 and would ultimately air it for six years in a row.

View a Promotional Spot for the 40th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards

40th/41st Emmy Awards Promo Spots

View a Promotional Spot for the 40th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards

40th/41st Emmy Awards Promo Spots

And here’s a spot for the 41st Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, broadcast on Sunday, September 17th, 1989. FOX won its first awards this year.

View a Promotional Spot for the 41st Annual Primetime Emmy Awards

40th/41st Emmy Awards Promo Spots

Nielsen Top Ten, March 26th – April 1st, 1973

RGJ — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:25:25 +0000

Here are the first ten programs from the twenty-ninth week of the 1972-1973 television season, which ran from Monday, March 26th, 1973 through Sunday, April 1st, 1973. Bill was once again kind enough to send me the Top Ten programs and their Nielsen ratings for the week. Not surprisingly, the 45th Annual Academy Awards (broadcast on Tuesday, March 27th) took the top spot for NBC, with a 37.8 rating. (Marlon Brando boycotted the ceremony and sent Sacheen Littlefeather as his proxy; she refused his Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role (for The Godfather) in protest of the treatment of Native Americans by the entertainment industry.)

All in the Family was second for second for CBS. Both networks placed five programs in the Top Ten, leaving ABC shut out completely. If I had to guess, I would say NBC may have been able to win the week thanks to the strength of the Academy Awards. For the record, the Academy Awards broadcast began at 10PM but I don’t know how long it lasted. It was preceded by “Bob Hope’s Cavalcade of Champions,” an hour-long special honoring the best in sports, which ranked fourth for the week. A repeat of the canceled Bridget Loves Bernie ranked seventh for the week.

Here’s the Top Ten, complete with Nielsen ratings:

##	Program	Net	Rating
1.	“45th Annual Academy Awards”	NBC	37.8
2.	All in the Family	CBS	33.3
3.	Sanford and Son	NBC	26.9
4.	“Bob Hope’s Cavalcade of Champions”	NBC	26.9
5.	NBC Sunday Mystery Movie (McMillan and Wife)	NBC	25.1
6.	Here’s Lucy	CBS	23.9
7.	Bridget Loves Bernie	CBS	23.6
8.	Maude	CBS	23.5
9.	The Mary Tyler Moore Show	CBS	23.2
10	Adam-12	NBC	23.2

Jackson Gillis (1916-2010)

RGJ — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 14:40:57 +0000

Prolific scriptwriter Jackson Gillis, who wrote dramatic scripts for dozens of television shows over the course of four decades, passed away on August 19th at the age of 93. Prior to his television career, Gillis wrote for radio. According to his Internet Movie Database entry, his first television work was a November 1952 episode of Racket Squad, broadcast on CBS. He then wrote more than a dozen episodes of syndicated half-hour drama I’m the Law in 1953, followed by three serials broadcast as part of The Mickey Mouse Club: “The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure”, “The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Ghost Farm” and “The Adventures of Spin and Marty” as well as 15 episodes of The Adventures of Superman, 11 episodes of Lassie and a handful of scripts for other shows. And all this during the 1950s.

During the 1960s, Gillis wrote regularly for Perry Mason, Lost in Space, Tarzan, along with one or two scripts each for shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Mod Squad, The Wild Wild West, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. and Bonanza. He wrote a number of episodes of Columbo and three episodes each for Mission: Impossible and Medical Center during the 1970s, plus episodes of Hawaii Five-O, Longstreet, Cade’s Country, The Snoop Sisters and Starsky and Hutch.

Although his career slowed down in the 1980s, Gillis still contributed to shows like Code Red, Knight Rider and Murder, She Wrote. He all but retired by the mid-1980s, with the exception of 1992 episode of Columbo. A script he wrote for The Adventures of Superman was remade in 1994 as an episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Gillis was nominated for an Outstanding Writing Achievement in Drama Emmy Award in 1972 for an episode of Columbo but lost. An obituary can be found at The New York Times; here‘s his entry at the George Reeves Hall of Fame.

New Article – “My World and Welcome To It”

RGJ — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:44:55 +0000

I’m not sure if My World and Welcome To It, which aired on NBC during the 1969-1970, can be considered a “popular obscurity.” Quite a number of people remembering watching it, and have fond recollections of the show. Following its cancellation it won two Emmy awards, which may have led to some embarrassment at NBC. CBS aired select episodes during the summer of 1972. What interested me most while writing this article was learning about previous attempts to turn the works and life of James Thurber into a weekly television series. Two pilots were produced and broadcast in the late 1950s/early 1960s but neither was picked up. I’d love to see those. They’d make wonderful bonus material for a DVD release.

Here’s the summary for the article:

It took several tries before the life and works of James Thurber were successfully turned into a weekly television series. Two failed pilots, broadcast in 1959 and 1961, eventually led to NBC scheduling My World and Welcome To It on Mondays for the 1969-1970 season. The sitcom starred William Windom and featured a combination of live-action and animation. Despite many positive reviews, moderate Nielsen ratings led NBC to cancel the series after one season. It then went on to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series.

You can read the full article here and please leave any comments you have at the article itself.

Bookshelf: TV Tie-In Novelizations

RGJ — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:28:26 +0000

A large portion of my collection of TV tie-in novels consists of novelizations rather than original stories. I’ve reviewed a handful of them over the past year or so, including Planet of the Apes #1 – “Man the Fugitive”, which novelized two episodes of the short-lived 1974 live-action Planet of the Apes series, Man from Atlantis #1, “Man from Atlantis”, which novelized the first Man from Atlantis telefilm, and Sons and Daughters, a novelization of Senior Year, the pilot telefilm to Sons and Daughters. The problem with reviewing novelizations is that I always feel like I should compare them to the episode or episodes being novelized. That’s because novelizations are rarely, if ever, strict adaptations of a television script. They may be based on an early draft or a shooting script that deviated from the final television broadcast.

Every novelization I have read has, to some extent, expanded upon the original story as presented on television. The amount of freedom given to writers of novelizations varied. According to Kurt Peer’s TV Tie-Ins: A Bibliography of American TV Tie-In Paperbacks (which I reviewed in December of 2009), “in some cases the writers were required to adhere strictly to the scripts and even use every word from them, while in other cases the writers were given broader latitude” [1]. Peer notes that prior to 1966, scriptwriters retained all rights to their scripts, making it difficult for publishers to purchase the novelization rights.

Based on a list of novelized episodes published in TV Tie-Ins, which runs 15 pages and probably contains several hundred episodes, among the earliest novelizations were ten radio and television episodes of Gunsmoke (novelized by Don Ward for Ballantine Books, first published in 1957), eight episodes of Tales of Wells Fargo (novelized by Sam Allison for Bantam Books, first published in 1958) and eight episodes of The Naked City (novelized by Charles Einstein for Dell, first published in 1959). One of the television episodes of Gunsmoke novelized by Don Ward, “Hot Spell,” was originally broadcast on September 17th, 1955 and may be the earliest television episode to be novelized. According to Peer, it wasn’t until the mid-1960s that novelizations became popular.

Perhaps the most popular novelizations were those written by James Blish (and, after his death, by his wife Judith A. Lawrence) based on episodes of Star Trek. The first batch of novelizations were published in a January of 1967 book titled Star Trek (later retitled Star Trek #1) while the show was still on the air. The book went through at least 25 printings (the 25th came out in January of 1977) and perhaps even more.

According to Peer, by the mid-to-late 1970s “most TV tie-ins were novelizations, as that’s where the trend had taken them. And they were beginning to glut the market, causing at times heavy losses for the publishers. It was becoming evident that the public was no longer interested in a quick rehashing of an episode, but wanted a fresher and more in depth look at a show” [3]. This glut eventually led to the collapse of the TV tie-in novel during the 1980s, although both original stories and novelizations continued.

I’ve read a good number of novelizations over the years and enjoyed them, especially novelizations of episodes I haven’t seen. What are your thoughts on novelizations? Just as good as an original story or something of a waste of time if you’ve already seen the episode(s) being novelized? Are novelizations that vary greatly from the finished work more interesting than those that are nearly identical? And on a related note, excluding the various Star Trek shows, what’s the most recent TV tie-in novelization?

Works Cited:

1 Peer, Kurt. TV Tie-Ins: A Bibliography of American TV Tie-In Paperbacks. 2nd ed. New York: TV Books, L.L.C., 1997. Page 12.
2 Ibid, 13.

Edward Kean (1924-2010)

RGJ — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:20:25 +0000

Edward Kean, who served as chief writer for NBC’s The Howdy Doody Show and also helped write the show’s theme song, passed away on August 13th at the age of 85. Kean is said to have written some 2,000 episodes of the long-running children’s show, which premiered on December 27th, 1947. He left in 1955 but the show continued for another five years; the final episode aired on September 24th, 1960. In addition to his scriptwriting duties, Kean was heavily involved in other levels of production. He co-wrote the show’s theme song with “Buffalo” Bob Smith and helped develop many of the characters (but not the actual puppets). He also invented the word “cowabunga” (he spelled it with a “k”) as a greeting for the character of Chief Thunderthud.

Here’s the first portion of Kean’s 2005 interview with the Archive of American Television:

Obituaries can be found at The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times.

DVD Tuesday: The Patty Duke Show

RGJ — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:21:13 +0000

Out today from Shout! Factory is The Patty Duke Show: Season Three, the third and final season of the ABC sitcom. Included are all 32 episodes from the 1965-1966 season as well as The Patty Duke Show: Still Rockin’ In Brooklyn Heights, a reunion telefilm broadcast by CBS on April 27th, 1999.

Q & A: “The Movie Classics of David O. Selznick”

RGJ — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 20:07:42 +0000

I get a lot of e-mails from people asking me about television shows, made-for-TV movies or miniseries they remember from years or decades past. I try to answer each question as best I can. Every now and then I like to dig through my inbox and pull out a few choice e-mails to answer here at Television Obscurities for everyone to read. Keep reading for today’s questions and answers.

I am trying to pin down a recollection. In the early Seventies, one of the networks — I believe it was ABC — ran a summer series of classic black-and-white movies over several weeks. Two of them were definitely Portrait of Jennie and The Spiral Staircase. Can you or any of your readers help me identify which other films were screened in this series? It was my introduction to classic Hollywood as a young adolescent, and I have always been grateful for it.

-Patrick

I was impressed with Patrick’s memories of this short-lived summer movie series that did indeed air on ABC. The Movie Classics of David O. Selznick was broadcast over the course of four weeks during the summer of 1971, presenting a new film produced by Selznick each week. It was the first time any had been seen on television. The films ran from 8:30-10PM on Tuesdays, taking over the time slot usually held by The Movie of the Week.

Here’s the schedule for the series:

“Intermezzo”
Tuesday, June 22nd, 1971

“The Spiral Staircase”
Tuesday, June 29th, 1971

“Portrait of Jennie”
Tuesday, July 6th, 1971

“Made for Each Other”
Tuesday, July 13th, 1971

Martin Starger, ABC’s vice president in charge of programming, explained that “the great films of the past have usually been relegated to something other than primetime exposure on television. We are proud to present four of David O. Selznick’s great films on ABC this summer in primetime” [1]. Ruby Gentry was originally intended to be shown as part of the series but was ultimately replaced by The Spiral Staircase [2].

I assume the films were preceded by an introduction or at the very least a credit sequence.

Works Cited:

1 “Selznick Classics Slated.” Sumter Daily Item. TV Item Supplement. [Sumter, SC]. 28 May 1971: 7.
2 Ibid.