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Posted by: Mike Mashon
I wrote in an earlier post about how few copies of Johnny Carson’s first ten years of hosting the Tonight Show survive because of NBC’s re-use of the 2″ Quadruplex videotapes on which the show was recorded, a practice that stopped once Carson purchased the show from NBC in 1972. One of our video preservation …
Posted in: Television
Posted by: Mike Mashon
The following is a guest post by Jenny Paxson, Administrative Assistant at the Packard Campus. Thursday, November 20 (7:30 p.m.) A Night of Electric Blues: Great Blues Performances on TV (1955-1989) Selected from the Library’s video collections and digitally restored by Video Preservation Specialists at the Packard Campus, this memorable evening features legendary blues artists …
Posted in: Motion Pictures, Packard Campus Theater, Television
Posted by: Mike Mashon
She remembers the “hot packs”–towels soaked in boiling water, wrung out, then wrapped around her legs. She remembers the blisters. She remembers the endless hours of physical therapy, the manipulation of her limbs, especially her right leg, the one affected by polio. She also remembers the kindness of her doctors and nurses, the friendships she …
Posted in: Film/Video, Motion Pictures, Television
Posted by: Mike Mashon
The following is a guest post by Cary O’Dell, Assistant to the National Recording Preservation Board. Sometimes TV comes full circle. Certainly this is true among certain small screen genres. For example, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, which debuted over the tube on December 6, 1948 and picked its weekly winning singer/comic/dancer via an in-studio applause-o-meter, …
Posted in: Packard Campus Theater, Television
Posted by: Mike Mashon
Thursday, October 9 (7:30 p.m.) James Garner on Television Maverick (ABC, 1957-1962) Although he had already appeared in several movies, Maverick is generally credited with launching James Garner’s career. He starred as Bret Maverick, a cardsharp from Texas who traveled across the Old West and on Mississippi riverboats, regularly getting in and out of trouble. …
Posted in: Packard Campus Theater, Television
Posted by: Mike Mashon
The following is a guest post by Cary O’Dell, Assistant to the National Recording Preservation Board. You might never have heard of her, but Martha Rountree is one of the most important women in the history of American broadcasting. The longevity of her “product” rivals Lucille Ball’s. Her importance and influence is as esteemed as …
Posted in: Television
Posted by: Mike Mashon
There’s lots of reminiscing in the Moving Image Section today about Robin Williams. My younger colleagues first remember him from Aladdin (1992) and Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), for others it was his Eighties films Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) and Dead Poets Society (1989), and for folks of my generation, he’ll always be a little bit Mork. …
Posted in: Copyright, Motion Pictures, Television
Posted by: Mike Mashon
Last week my colleague Daniel Blazek told the interesting story of how the Library came to acquire audio transcription discs of 1960s-era Tonight Show broadcasts via the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. Of course, the very existence of these discs is, to say the least, unexpected—record discs of TV show audio?—and given the preservation …
Posted in: Copyright, Film/Video, Television
Posted by: Karen Fishman
The following is a guest post by Daniel Blazek, Recorded Sound Technician, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center The Tonight Show has become such a cultural institution in America that it is hard to imagine that early episodes were lost, as so many early television programs on tape were erased when subsequent broadcasts were taped over …
Posted in: National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Recorded Sound, Television