Inspired by http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=813556 which discusses where WKRP has the earliest clip show, I’m wondering what was the first TV show to have a clip show?
Wasn’t there an I Love Lucy Christmas Special that was basically a clip show?
Betty Boop’s Rise to Fame (1934) is a good candidate.
*A reporter interviews Max Fleischer about his creation, and Betty illustrates with excerpts from three prior cartoons. *
***Lucy ***would make sense for TV, since they were the first to do pretty much everything.
The earliest one I can think of is the final episode of Leave It to Beaver in June 1963.
That’s the earliest one I know of for sure, but I’m willing to bet that there was some hour-long drama at some point before then that did a clip show. Another good bet might be The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which ran forever, had the same core characters all the way through, and wasn’t known for particularly original plots in the first place.
The Lucy Show did for sure have a clip show, but that was some years after Beaver.
The Adventures of Superman episode, Crime Wave (Feb 27, 1953) was essentially a clip show, incorporating a bunch of scenes of Superman in action from earlier episodes because the budget was running out at the end of the season.
<digression>One of the scenes it included from the earlier episode The Mind Machine was the only scene in the entire series in which Superman ducked a thrown gun – yet somehow it’s become “common knowledge” that it happened many times. It’s like Clark Kent changing to Superman in a telephone booth; he did that maybe four or five times in over seven decades (once in a Max Fleischer cartoon, and a few times in the comic books), but somehow it turned into a cliche.</digression>
The Adventures of Superman reused the same clips over and over again, actually – Clark going into the stockroom, Superman taking off, many of the flying sequences.
Actually, they also did a clip show at the end of the first season – they took the feature film Superman vs. the Mole Men and turned it into a two-parter “The Unknown People.”
The Twilight Zone did something similar: for budgetary reasons, one episode was a running of the short film “Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge.”
I don’t think using the same footage over and over again is the same as a clip show (sometimes called a “bottle” show, because the action is “bottled up”). The clips are used as flashbacks within a particular story, like the Cleavers reminiscing about Beaver and Wally growing up after June finds an old photo album while cleaning the closet. Or the scenes from “The Cage” being used to advance the plot of “The Menagerie,” the “envelope” in which the clips were wrapped.
You can use the same shots of Clark Kent ducking into the storeroom as many times as you want, but they don’t take us out of the story being told now.
Not quite. A bottle episodeis one that takes place entirely within the show’s standard sets, using only the regular cast. It’s a quick and cheap episode that doesn’t require construction of new sets/ props/ costumes, etc.
I Love Lucy had a Christmas special that was a clip show; it first aired on Christmas Eve in 1956. In fact, CBS now airs a colorized version of it pretty much every year, usually paired with a newly-colorized episode (in 2016, it was the Hollywood episode where Lucy is given a part in a film).
Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.
We may have a winner. According to the I Love Lucy wiki, the Season 6, Episode 27 show of December 24, 1956 is a clip show and that entry makes the claim:
“This is the first-ever clip show/“flashback” show on television.”
(And we’re talking about clips from earlier television broadcasts here.)
This episode isn’t included with the standard syndication bundle, apparently.
(Oops, too slow.)
The final episode of Leave it To Beaver was a clip show? I find that funny some how. Was that intentional? Or a lack of budget? Were they expecting another season?
I’m pretty sure they knew it was the last. The show ended because Mathers and Dow were ready to move on with their lives. It (the last episode) felt to me like a way of saying goodbye without actually saying goodbye.
The key word above is “sometimes.” “Shades of Gray,” the final episode of TNG’s Season 2 (with Dr Pulaski) was both.
This is amazing when you consider how many shows of that era weren’t filmed or recorded and are lost forever. Like Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows, Lucy and Desi showed remarkable foresight in this.
Yes, impressive. They created a standard format for sitcoms still in use. Not entirely different than other shows at the time, but in many industries someone talented needs to make the effort to perfect a process, system, or pattern that does this. It takes a concentrated effort to carefully hone the details and they started that before the show even aired and continued that process with ILL and their other productions also. It’s too bad personal issues took apart that duo, their company end up springboarding Star Trek and supported other great shows that helped expand the range of television programming. No doubt the clip show would have happened before long without them but it was just one of the many ways they were ahead of the pack. Their success also affected the industry as a whole, increasing the production standards and highlighting the impact of such efforts on the overall commercial success of the medium. Then on top of that they weren’t simply great producers but outstanding as the actual performers themselves, still a rarity in the business.
I once read that Audrey “Alice Kramden” Meadows refused to sign her contract until the powers-that-were included a clause guaranteeing her residual fees. They all thought she was crazy (“Nobody’s gonna watch a show they’ve already seen once!”), but the execs met her demands thinking they would never amount to anything. How wrong they were!
Another note: When I started watching The Untouchables after it was re-released back in the '80s, I was surprised to see it was a Desilu series (I had always assumed it was from Quinn Martin). That was another absolutely groundbreaking show, years ahead of Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and Mannix.
This is basically true except that it was her agent who had the foresight. Kind of like how when George Lucas agreed to take little money for directing Star Wars in exchange for for the merchandising.
Way to go, Fox! 