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Post by Richard Kimble on Apr 11, 2017 8:06:46 GMT
I know it's not what you are asking for, but a lot of old plays were adapted for TV before being adapted for film. "Rope", for example, was broadcast live on BBC TV in both 1939 and 1947 before Mister Hitchcock made it a film. Today I watched a 1939 film called "Inquest", a low-budget but good British film based on a play. Several months before the film came out, the BBC broadcast a live version of the play. Sadly, it is lost, as kinescope recording was not invented until 1947 (and the BBC didn't use it to record any drama until 1953). The oldest surviving US TV footage is of a 1939 production called "The Streets of New York". In the cast was a young Mercury Theatre vet named Norman Lloyd and a young lady named Phyllis Isley, eventually to be renamed Jennifer Jones; active behind the scenes was one Emil Bundmann, later known as Anthony Mann. . The Dead Sea Scroll of TV History
About 11 minutes of silent footage exists. 1 minute could be watched online at one time, but is no longer availiable. In fact I couldn't even find a still photo from the footage. |
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Post by Matthew the Swordsman on Apr 11, 2017 8:13:54 GMT
I know it's not what you are asking for, but a lot of old plays were adapted for TV before being adapted for film. "Rope", for example, was broadcast live on BBC TV in both 1939 and 1947 before Mister Hitchcock made it a film. Today I watched a 1939 film called "Inquest", a low-budget but good British film based on a play. Several months before the film came out, the BBC broadcast a live version of the play. Sadly, it is lost, as kinescope recording was not invented until 1947 (and the BBC didn't use it to record any drama until 1953). The oldest surviving US TV footage is of a 1939 production called "The Streets of New York". In the cast was a young Mercury Theatre vet named Norman Lloyd and a young lady named Phyllis Isley, eventually to be renamed Jennifer Jones; active behind the scenes was one Emil Bundmann, later known as Anthony Mann. . The Dead Sea Scroll of TV History
About 11 minutes of silent footage exists. 1 minute could be watched online at one time, but is no longer availiable. In fact I couldn't even find a still photo from the footage. Excluding bits where a TV screen is seen in a newsreel and stuff like that, the oldest surviving recording of a live BBC TV program is a delightful 6-minute fragment from "Variety in Sepia", a 1947 TV special with an all-Black cast. Adelaide Hall sings two songs in the fragment. It used to be on YouTube, but sadly is now gone. A lot of German TV programs of the 1930s survive because they were shot on film, but apart from tiny out-of-context clips in documentaries, these programs aren't available. Meanwhile 21st century garbage like "Emily's Reasons Why Not" is on DVD....ugh. |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Apr 11, 2017 8:37:31 GMT
Thanks for all that, RK. Good for Roy Huggins. His projects tended to be classy. I find it sort of odd that Huggins, who created The Fugitive, also created the similarly themed,--a man on the run due to a deadly disease rather than a crime he didn't commit-- Run For Your Life, two of the first three years of which it ran concurrently with The Fugitive but on a different network. RFYL is semi-forgotten now. I've never seen it in reruns. It deserves better. Its stories were more cerebral and overall more pensive than the more mainstream feeling The Fugitive. What probably hurts it somewhat as a popular favorite is that Ben Gazzara, very good actor that he was, had zero charisma and not much sex appeal. Women loved David Janssen, and he owned the screen. Nothing really odd about Huggins doing a Fugitive knock-off. 1964-5 was The Fugitive's big ratings year, making the top 10 (on weak sister ABC, an impressive achievement until the '70s). So for 65-6 there were plenty of "Drifter" shows, especially in the western, which had helped inspire The Fugitive in the first place: The Loner, A Man Called Shenandoah, Branded, and of course RFYL -- why shouldn't Roy make a few bucks off his own creation?. While RFYL is certainly an above average TV series, for me it never reaches the heights of The Fugitive. The latter had the perfect TV premise: a man on the run, with not one but two chases going on -- the police after Kimble, and Kimble after the one armed man. It not only has momentum, "push", but a double amount. In the handful of RFYLs I've seen Gazzara's character, despite the terminal prognosis, comes across as something of a dilettante, if an existentialist one. It's interesting but perhaps of limited appeal to the mass TV audience, who want to see determined, goal-oriented heroes, at least in contemporary settings. Huggins had created The Fugitive in the first place b/c he wanted to do a modern day drifter series, and felt he needed a format to explain the character's constantly being on the move. Neither the previous existentialist wandering-around-for-no-reason show, Route 66, nor the Fugitive knockoffs of '65-6 or the later Then Came Bronson, were big ratings hits. I can't mention Huggins and RFYL w/o mentioning his penchant for reworking material. One early RFYL is set in a Swiss ski resort that is snowed in, isolating the guests. Gazzara gets into an epic card game w/a Latin American dictator (Robert Loggia). The game isn't poker but rather "Montana Red Dog", which would later inspire one of my favorite episodes of Alias Smith & Jones (another Huggins series) where the boys get into a MRD game in a snowed-in miner's cabin. |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Apr 11, 2017 8:41:57 GMT
A lot of German TV programs of the 1930s survive because they were shot on film, but apart from tiny out-of-context clips in documentaries, these programs aren't available. I was going to mention this in a later post. There is a fascinating documentary on German TV of the '30s, which anyone interested in pre-'40s TV should check out. |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Apr 11, 2017 14:23:59 GMT
The oldest surviving US TV footage is of a 1939 production called "The Streets of New York". In the cast was a young Mercury Theatre vet named Norman Lloyd and a young lady named Phyllis Isley, eventually to be renamed Jennifer Jones; active behind the scenes was one Emil Bundmann, later known as Anthony Mann. . The Dead Sea Scroll of TV History
About 11 minutes of silent footage exists. 1 minute could be watched online at one time, but is no longer availiable. In fact I couldn't even find a still photo from the footage. Wow, RK! Thanks for this fascinating info. It would be wonderful to be able to see that footage. One wonders if it isn't archived somewhere, though Apparently the 11 minutes of footage can be seen at the Paley Museum of Broadcasting in NYC The Paley also has a print of "Enough Rope", the 1960 Chevy Mystery Theatre production which introduced the character of Lt. Columbo (played by Bert Freed). As far as I know, going to the museum is the only way to see it. |
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Post by Matthew the Swordsman on Apr 11, 2017 14:28:50 GMT
Wow, RK! Thanks for this fascinating info. It would be wonderful to be able to see that footage. One wonders if it isn't archived somewhere, though Apparently the 11 minutes of footage can be seen at the Paley Museum of Broadcasting in NYC The Paley also has a print of "Enough Rope", the 1960 Chevy Mystery Theatre production which introduced the character of Lt. Columbo (played by Bert Freed). As far as I know, going to the museum is the only way to see it. Paley also holds a kinescope consisting of the opening 10 minutes (or so) of KTLA's "official" debut broadcast back in 1947, which featured Bob Hope! |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Apr 11, 2017 14:55:40 GMT
The Paley also has a print of "Enough Rope", the 1960 Chevy Mystery Theatre production which introduced the character of Lt. Columbo (played by Bert Freed). As far as I know, going to the museum is the only way to see it. Levinson and Link later adapted this script into a play called Prescription: Murder, starring Thomas Mitchell as Columbo. In 1968 this play was filmed as a TV movie, with guess who as the Lt. But there was a something of a detour along the way. The 1964 Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode "Dear Uncle George", from a Levinson and Link stars Gene Barry as a man who murders his wife (just as he would do later in the film version of Prescription: Murder). But investigating the case is a rumpled detective named Lt Wolfson (Lou Jacobi). Lt. Wolfson isn't quite the Columbo we've come to know -- he's a bit too obviously sharp. But perhaps he is closer to the original conception of the character -- which Levinson and Link would later fine-tune, with a little help from Peter Falk. Lt. Wolfson (Lou Jacobi) meets wife-murderer Gene Barry in "Dear Uncle George":  Those interested in discussing Columbo should check out this thread. |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Apr 14, 2017 15:12:12 GMT
Apparently the 11 minutes of footage can be seen at the Paley Museum of Broadcasting in NYC The Paley also has a print of "Enough Rope", the 1960 Chevy Mystery Theatre production which introduced the character of Lt. Columbo (played by Bert Freed). As far as I know, going to the museum is the only way to see it. I knew you would know. But since I'm on the west coast, I doubt I'll be going to the Paley in N.Y. anytime soon. I was hoping maybe it was at the Paley in L.A. or the Museum of Broadcasting in L.A. |
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Post by _ on Apr 14, 2017 16:51:49 GMT
The two hour pilot for the television series Star Trek: Phase II ( "In Thy Image" ) eventually became Star Trek: The Motion Picture instead!
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Post by _ on Apr 14, 2017 17:02:52 GMT
The pilot for the television series Battlestar Galactica ( "Saga of a Star World" ) was released theatrically as Battlestar Galactica.
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Post by teleadm on Apr 14, 2017 17:32:08 GMT
Most of them came from the early days of live television in the 1950s when great writers, actors and directors were working to create some truly remarkable things. Among my favorites: Marty (1955) - Directed by Delbert Mann; starring Ernest Borgnine. Written by Paddy Chayefsky for a The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse production in 1953, directed by Mann and starring Rod Steiger. The Days of Wine and Roses (1962) - Directed by Blake Edwards; starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. Written by J.P. Miller for a Playhouse 90 production in 1958, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie (a masterpiece!!) Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) - Directed by Stanley Kramer; starring a mob of actors. Written by Abby Mann for a Playhouse 90 production in 1959, directed by George Roy Hill and starring Claude Rains, Paul Lukas, and Maximilian Schell, among others. 12 Angry Men (1957) - Directed by Sidney Lumet; starring Henry Fonda, et al. Written by Reginald Rose for a Studio One in Hollywood production in 1954, directed by Franklin Schaffner and starring Robert Cummings, Franchot Tone, and Edward Arnold, among others. Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) - Directed by Ralph Nelson; starring Anthony Quinn, Jackie Gleason, Julie Harris. Written by Rod Serling for a Playhouse 90 production in 1956, directed by Ralph Nelson and starring Jack Palance, Keenan Wynn and Kim Hunter. The Catered Affair (1956) - Directed by Richard Brooks; starring Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine, Debbie Reynolds. Written by Paddy Chayefsky for a Goodyear Playhouse production in 1955, directed by Robert Mulligan and starring Billy M. Greene, Katherine Hynes, and Kathleen Maguire. Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) - Directed by John Hancock; starring Robert De Niro and Michael Moriarty. Adapted from Mark Harris' novel by Arnold Schulman for a The United States Steel Hour production in 1956, directed by Daniel Petrie and starring Paul Newman, Albert Salmi, and Georgeann Johnson. It was after all called "the Golden Age of Television", because there was a new air of new fresh wirters and directors and this is sometimes forgotten, The Hay's office didnt involve Television, so there was a chance to create new, more direct fresh, sometimes punch in the face dramas. |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Apr 14, 2017 21:19:49 GMT
Another I just discovered: The Traveling Lady (1957) was a one hour drama on Studio One Hollywood, starring Kim Stanley, Robert Loggia, and Mildred Dunnock. It was directed by Robert Mulligan from a script by Horton Foote and later became the film, Baby The Rain Must Fall (1965), also directed by Mulligan and written by Foote. began as a TV play in 1953, with Lillian Gish and Eva Marie Saint. Apparently this version does survive, although it is not easily accessible. |
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Post by hi224 on Apr 14, 2017 21:45:37 GMT
Heat (1995) I think was originally a television movie. I can't find any way to verify this in the imdb database, politicidal. Do you have a reference for me? Actually it was originally L.A. Takedown with differing actors. |
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Post by bravomailer on Apr 24, 2019 19:55:51 GMT
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Post by Prime etc. on Apr 24, 2019 20:47:08 GMT
Nigel Kneale's The Abominable Snowman and Quatermass and the Pit started as tv productions.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Apr 24, 2019 20:54:40 GMT
It's interesting as a curiosity, and Peter Lorre makes a properly sinister Le Chiffre. Nelson is a rather uncharacteristically fraught Bond, and his all-American-ness reminds one that, of his six big-screen successors, only two (Moore and Craig) have been English.
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Post by mikef6 on Apr 24, 2019 21:55:15 GMT
Who remembers coonskin caps? Who remembers the cultural phenomenon known as Davy Crockett? In 1954, Walt Disney launched a weekly TV show called “Disneyland,” which was designed to promote his new theme park of the same name (it also gave the also-ran network ABC its first #1 hit ever). The most popular shows of the first season were the three Davy Crockett segments, each a one hour (with commercials) adventure: Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter, Davy Crockett Goes To Congress, and Davy Crockett At the Alamo. The merchandising alone probably made a million billion bucks for Disney. Then in a master stroke Uncle Walt sold the same thing to America twice. Instead of a stitching together of the episodes, they were edited down and released as a 90-minute theatrical film called “Davy Crockett, King Of The Wild Frontier” (1955), which made another gazillion dollars for the studio.
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