This month’s spotlight focuses on an unsold pilot from 1955 for a sitcom to be called Behind the Scenes. Sally Fraser and Jil Jarmyn starred as two aspiring actresses living in Hollywood. Studio City Television Productions produced the pilot. Distribution was handled by Hollywood Television Service. Both companies were subsidiaries of Republic Studios.
I believe it was actually the second pilot completed for the proposed series. An earlier pilot was produced in 1954 and starred Margie Millar. Or at least that’s what a search of the Variety archives suggests. Unfortunately, I don’t have a subscription so I’m limited to the free search results, which are as fragmentary as they are frustrating.
The Behind the Scenes pilot was released on DVD in December 2013 by Alpha Video alongside episodes of The Beulah Show, The Ruggles, and Peck’s Bad Girl. The summary on the back of the DVD makes no mention of it being an unsold pilot. It also incorrectly states it’s from 1959.
You can read the entire spotlight here.
Republic’s “Stories of the Century” was still being shown in Great Britain (The Midlands) in 1970, whilst “Stryker of Scotland Yard” was still shown as late as 1972.