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Post by snsurone on Dec 23, 2018 18:27:13 GMT
I'm referring to some male off-screen voice announcing the show's title and stars, even though they're prominently shown on the screen.
What was the idea of this--that viewers were either blind or illiterate? Or that out-of-work actors found jobs as voice overs?
Whatever the reason, it was an insult to the intelligent TV viewer. Thank God it doesn't exist any more.
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Post by telegonus on Dec 23, 2018 19:28:57 GMT
I kind of like it. A holdover from radio? Dragnet used those intros; and it ended the same way, with the announcer winding up the story. The sitcoms used them as well. Later, on the Norman Lear shows, and others like them, they'd substitute a title song. Mary Tyler Moore had that, too, but not Bob Newhart. WKRP was another like that, though I hated the music they used. Later, they used easy to remember opening and closing music, as on Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere, which turned up on radio a lot.
In the much earlier shows the intros date them, but for me not in a bad way. Didn't Leave It To Beaver have an intro? The somewhat earlier The Honeymooners has a classic opening, with Gleason's music and the announcing of the star players. I don't consider those openings (and closings) an insult to the viewer's intelligence. My sense is that it was more like what the networks considered good manners, as they announced their entry into the viewer's living room. Also, television was a "family medium" back then, and all those elaborate openings, with the announcer's voice, whether joyous or somber, setting the tone.
The setting of a certain tone was essential to the workings, as it were, of a show like The Untouchables, with the hard-driving, melodramatic music, Walter Winchell's "sensational" introductions, as if what you were about to see was hot off the wires. I don't think the show would have worked nearly so well without those "framing devices". Around the same time, the Warners detective series used similar, very contemporary feeling openings, complete with finger snapping, for the Sunset Strip, the island drumbeats for Hawaiian Eye.
Also, while we now take television for granted, back in its early years there may well have been concerns, and legitimate ones for the time, that some viewers might not "get it". I mean, kids watching The Lone Ranger might think they were watching something that was actually happening, thus there was, even more than on old-time radio shows, a need for someone to tell the kids what was "up", thus "return with us now to the thrilling days of yesteryear" or whatever the announcer said, so that it was clear what kids were about to see was fantasy, not a news story! Then there were the mentally impaired, "slow" people; plus older folks who weren't sure what was up. There were still plenty of Americans who grew up in rural areas and in small towns, who remembered the horse and buggy days. I've known my share of people who grew up in the Old America of the early 20th century.
Back when television was a new medium I think a lot of people still didn't quite get what was happening with the newfangled "moving pictures in our house". The polite sounding announcers and narrators helped things along, for children and old folks alike. Just my take. To put all this on context, I mean. I don't think that the intelligence of the viewer, whether high or low, was a factor in any of this so far as the TV networks were concerned. They just wanted to make viewers feel at ease with the new medium, which for some, they were maybe concerned, might otherwise, unvarnished, and with no "explanation" might have felt like a "shock to the system".
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Post by deembastille on Dec 23, 2018 20:23:12 GMT
If you mean like what is on the DVDs of the original Dark Shadows soap opera... Yeah.
Oh God and the way the announcer would say Six. I want to kill myself. And of course it was made in 1966...
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Post by deembastille on Dec 23, 2018 20:24:12 GMT
Ewizzabef. Montgomery In Beeeewitched.
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Post by snsurone on Dec 24, 2018 0:51:49 GMT
Tele, I do agree that the very early voice-over announcings may have been a holdover from radio. Trouble is, they continued well past that time, some even into the '60's. And most of those announcers totally lacked the communications skill of a Walter Winchell!
And there were some shows even then that didn't employ voice-over intros, such as PERRY MASON and I LOVE LUCY. Why was this?
Make no mistake, I have no objection to theme music, whether chords or vocals, announcing a program. In fact, there is some theme music that I love, such as BONANZA and CIRCUS BOY.
As to the mentally impaired, did they actually benefit from voice-over intros? If so, I'd like to know details.
I confess that this didn't bother me in my young years. But today, watching classic shows on MeTV, I find it quite bothersome. Maybe I'm just getting crotchety in my old age, LOL.
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Post by telegonus on Dec 30, 2018 6:47:10 GMT
Maybe so, Snsurone. We all change as we grow older. I just like those old-fashioned introductions, complete with music. It was part of the show itself. Things fit together a certain way on television way back when, and I find those musical and vocal intros/outros to the old shows make them all "add up" a certain way. They go together, like hot dogs at the ball park, popcorn at the movies. There's a completeness to them I find lacking in the less polite television of today.
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Post by ant-mac on Dec 30, 2018 19:18:58 GMT
Maybe so, Snsurone. We all change as we grow older. I just like those old-fashioned introductions, complete with music. It was part of the show itself. Things fit together a certain way on television way back when, and I find those musical and vocal intros/outros to the old shows make them all "add up" a certain way. They go together, like hot dogs at the ball park, popcorn at the movies. There's a completeness to them I find lacking in the less polite television of today. Likewise.
I enjoy the entire experience of watching many old TV series from the 1950s and 1960s. Not only for the sake of the TV series themselves, but for the era from which they came. It's all part of the entertainment, plus you get to do a little time travelling on the cheap.
And the makers of TV shows are still perfectly capable of insulting their audiences even today. Just look at some of the rubbish they try to pass off as entertainment.
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Post by taylorfirst1 on Jan 7, 2019 17:23:33 GMT
I fail to see any reason to be annoyed by that.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jan 7, 2019 17:30:06 GMT
... some male off-screen voice announcing the show's title and stars, even though they're prominently shown on the screen. What was the idea of this? say you are in another room making coffee or pouring another glass of merlot and not watching the clock OR the television and this male off screen voice announces the title and stars so you don't miss the beginning of the show … Sounds like a win win situation to me.
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Post by telegonus on Jan 8, 2019 7:19:26 GMT
... some male off-screen voice announcing the show's title and stars, even though they're prominently shown on the screen. What was the idea of this? say you are in another room making coffee or pouring another glass of merlot and not watching the clock OR the television and this male off screen voice announces the title and stars so you don't miss the beginning of the show … Sounds like a win win situation to me. Yes, it does to me, too. The thing is, TV shows of the era we're discussing here, mostly mid-Fifties to mid-Sixties, were still trying to a.) lure veteran players, from stars to character actors, singers to comedians, who were known commodities, and b.) to create new stars, including "star" character payers, some of whom went on to big screen stardom or to having TV shows of their own (Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas, Jack Klugman). Thus network television in those days was still trying to get a feel of demographic trends; alas, what often happened was that a player would "click" with younger viewers, then fail to go on to a disappointing career, or a disappointing career for someone who'd been on the cover of TV Guide, even had hits songs or, in the case of the Sunset Strip's Edd Byrnes, have songs written about them.
That's a whole lot of name and face and even voice recognition for someone new to the business. One only has to think back on the young dudes being groomed to become the "next", well, fill in the blanks, usually Marlon Brando or James Dean. Robert Conrad was compared, early on, to Alan Ladd (being a short blonde tough guy). Even later on, in the Seventies, there was talk of Tom Selleck being the New Age Clark Gable. Selleck's done well for himself, but he's not a legend at the Gable, Tracy, Bogart or Cooper level; and feature film stardom eluded him, in spite of a good beginning (one only has to compare Selleck's perfectly respectable but scarcely dazzling early Magnum success to Clint Eastwood's more journeyman turn on Rawhide and how big he got in the movies.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jan 8, 2019 15:30:07 GMT
telegonus Excellent points ^^^ ! Further evidence that interesting observations can be spun from basically idiotic original posts
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Post by snsurone on Jan 14, 2019 17:57:52 GMT
There was an early Western called TRACKDOWN, which not only contained a booming voice announcing the title and star (Robert Culp), but chunks of the story line was off-screen narration! The show didn't last long and is forgotten today, except to those who watch it on MeTV Saturday mornings at 8:00 AM, ET.
I like to think that viewers eventually preferred to SEE the action rather than just HEAR about it.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jan 14, 2019 23:22:44 GMT
The show... didn't last long and is forgotten today... IF it is a "forgotten" show why is MeTV bothering to show it ? Do they have a secret formula for making money running programs that no-one wants to see ? It ran for 72 episodes in the 1957-59 and was "must see" viewing for many back then and many remember it fondly today. Thanks to the OP's complaining about it I will watch it as I was not aware until now that it was on MeTV 's schedule.
Wanted Dead or Alive spun off from Trackdown and launched McQueen's career. IMDb page with episode guide
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Post by taylorfirst1 on Jan 15, 2019 15:13:45 GMT
Trackdown's a great show.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jan 15, 2019 15:18:36 GMT
chunks of the story line was off-screen narration! It was a 30 minute show less commercials. Writers knew that MOST viewers could follow a story that they didn't see every second of. Narration is a long standing method of story telling that pre-dates moving pictures.
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Post by taylorfirst1 on Jan 15, 2019 15:29:09 GMT
chunks of the story line was off-screen narration! It was a 30 minute show less commercials. Writers knew that MOST viewers could follow a story that they didn't see every second of. Narration is a long standing method of story telling that pre-dates moving pictures. Also, it's not like there were gun fights happening off screen. Usually, it was stuff like "he traveled here and spoke to so and so and got a small piece of information" in other words boring stuff that would be a waste of time to show.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jan 15, 2019 15:35:19 GMT
taylorfirst1 ^^^^^ YEP ! We also miss the gathering of wood for a fire and the details of coffee and supper making. What are those writers thinking ? Never see bathing or clothes washing either. Perhaps that will be the next complaint topic WHY DON'T THEY EVER BATHE OR DO LAUNDRY IN OLD TV SHOWS ?
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jan 16, 2019 1:03:28 GMT
next annoyance OLD TELEVISION SHOWS ARE ANNOYING BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL IN BLACK AND WHITE IF THEY COULD MAKE MOVIES IN COLOR IN THE 50s WHY NOT TELEVISION SHOWS ?
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Post by amyghost on Jan 17, 2019 14:42:53 GMT
next annoyance OLD TELEVISION SHOWS ARE ANNOYING BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL IN BLACK AND WHITE IF THEY COULD MAKE MOVIES IN COLOR IN THE 50s WHY NOT TELEVISION SHOWS ? Doggone it, if black and white television was good enough for President Lincoln, it's good enough for me.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jan 17, 2019 19:41:54 GMT
Early TV spent so much time showing those old movies from the 30's and 40's .. every day on some show called MILLION DOLLAR MOVIE . Who did they think would want to see OLD stuff like that ? No one remembered John Garfield,the Lane sisters etc in the 50's.
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