I had a history teacher who showed us some of these episodes in class. They were pretty fun, and by the end of the second one, we were chanting along with the narrator’s exit lines, "And Remember: You. Are there! I think the teacher was thrilled that she’d finally found something historical that held our attention.
On edit: If you’re a history buff, I’d definitely recommend the DVD’s.
These are usually my first thoughts, as well. The early live stuff, like the teleplays, and especially the experimental feeds. If Bricker would be kind enough to create a DVR capable of recording non-standard broadcasts, I’d love to see the early mechanical systems, the 1920s experiments in color, the incompatible CBS color broadcasts.
I’d also like to step back to the 80s and grab the LA-area Z Channel exclusives-- they had letterboxed, uncut versions of many films which still have not received home video releases. (Or, alternately, one could take a camcorder, too, and hit the theater like Morbo suggests-- I’d definitely be crashing the premiere of Metropolis.)
Peter Morris writes:
Parts of the original broadcast exist. They were available for years on videotape, and I think they’re now on the Quatermass Xperiment DVD.
(BTW – Penguin published the teleplay in book form. I’ve got a copy)
I don’t know if they exist anywhere on tape, but I’d love to see some British TV series from the 1960s that I’ve heard and read of. The science fiction series Out of the Unknown and Out of this World featured adaptations of works by noted science fiction writers (including Frederick Pohl, Robert Sheckley, C.M. Kornbluth, Philip K. Dick, Tom Godwin, John Wyndham, and Isaac asimov’s “The Naked Sun”).
I’d also like to see the British TV series of Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee, even though it only ran for six episodes.
Can I use your time machine with radio recording equipment? There are very few broadcasts known to exist pre-1932 (and not that many from the 1932-1935 period), and I’d like to tape record pretty much everything.
Sticking to television (and, to start this, American television), I’m tempted to say “record everything”, but, if that’s not possible, some early selections include:
The 1940s and earlier. Virtually nothing survives pre-1948, and there isn’t much surviving from 1948 and 1949. High on the list here: The first day of the NBC network in 1941, the World Fair broadcasts of 1939, experimental programming of the 1930s, and the 1948 election coverage (conventions, election day, and everything else) beyond what currently exists.
Newscasts. Most newscasts pre-1968 are gone (and a lot of those that survive between 1968 and the late 1970s survive only due to the folks at Vanderbilt University). I’d like to record some of them, especially from ABC, which seems to have a survival rate even worst than the other two networks.
Local programing. This tends to have a bad survival rate, especially outside the major TV production centers.
Color videotaped programming. Very few color videotapes exist before the mid-1960s, and I’d like to have some more of those.
Sports. Sports coverage (and especially coverage of baseball, basketball, hockey, and football) into the mid-1970s has a survival rate worst than that of virtually all other kinds of programming. In particular, videotaping some color World Series broadcasts in the late 1950s (the earliest to survive on color videotape is Game 3 of the 1969 WS).
The first few episodes of Upstairs Downstairs were originally taped and broadcast in black&white. They were then retaped in color and these color episodes are the ones that have been shown ever since. The actual b&w episode that was the premiere broadcast of the series is now lost (the other b&w episodes survive).
I’d sneak a camera into a drive-in showing Star Wars in 1977 and settle the Biggs Scenes debate.
I’d like to recover all of the 1970s and 1980s TV shows, mostly on PBS, written by or featuring Jean Shepherd, apparently none of which have been preserved:
America, Inc.
Jean Shepherd’s America
No Whistles, Bells, or Bedlam
Shepherd’s Pie
Phantom of the Open Hearth
The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters
The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski
Jean Shepherd on Route 1… and Other Major Thoroughfares
The Great American Road Racing Festival
Ollie Hopnoodle’s Haven of Bliss
And since I’m sure your DVR doesn’t work as hard when it records audio only, I’d also like to get as many of Shepherd’s thousands of hours of nightly radio broadcasts as possible. Several hundred shows have been preserved, but I’d like the rest, please.
While we’re going for audio, I’d like the missing episodes of the BBC’s The Goon Show (all of seasons 1,2,3, and some of 4).
There’s tons of old time radio that would be nice to have, but I’ll limit myself to one series: Vic and Sade, a 15-minute daily(!) comedy that was on for about 12 years from 1932 to 1944. A few hundred episodes are extant, but the audio quality of many is pretty poor. And they’re only a small percentage of the 3,000 or so that were broadcast.
Let me know when you’ve recorded these, Bricker, and if you need a couple bucks for blank DVDs or CDs. Thanks.
Oh man, you read my mind. It would be great to have some of the low-res broadcasts from CBS, Jenkins Television, and the University of Iowa. Not to mention the earliest CRT programming from NBC, DuMont and General Electric.
Cool, thanks- for some reason I thought they were lost and didn’t realize they were on DVD.
I’ve read that in the early 1950s Gloria Swanson commissioned a musical version of Sunset Blvd and performed parts of it on various TV shows. I’ve seen clips from one of the numbers (a song inspired by the “my people in the dark” line) but would love to see more. Admittedly the ALW musical is probably an incomparably better effort, but I’d like to see the older one just because Gloria created Norma. (Supposedly she lost the rights to produce the play before it could be mounted.)
I’ve also read that scenes from the original [lackluster sales] Broadway production of The Lion in Winter starring Robert Preston and Rosemary Harris (who later appeared together as a pioneer couple in The Chisholms) were aired on NYC television. I’d love to have a recording of those.
My parents were huge fans of Wally Cox/Tony Randall/Marion Lorne in Mr. Peepers, only some episodes of which survive. I’d like to see the early ones where the characters are established.
Just wanted to make sure that you were aware of this link.
I’ll vouch for you. It really did exist. One of the clubs I was in during high school had a trip to an episode taping in the late 80’s. They actually paid us to be part of the audience! I think I still have some pictures from that day on the set.
I’ve heard of it- one of the many incarnations of “Savage” Steve Holland’s well-meaning but accident-prone Eek! the Cat.
As for me, if this magic TiVoish thingy can record off of celluloid, I’d like to go back and record some of the old theatrical animated Warners and MGM shorts. Warners is doing a wonderful job restoring the old Looney Tunes and putting them out on DVD, but many of the cartoons no longer have their original titles and probably only exist in reissue prints. As for the MGM cartoons, reissues are all that exist, since the originals were lost in a fire.
Man From Atlantis. I expect it would be terrible viewed by my eyes of today, but I did love that series, way back.
That’s pretty recent. I don’t think you need a Magic Wayback Machine to see those. I’ll bet you can find them, somewhere.
The first BBC live broadcast of Orwell’s 1984 starring Peter Cushing. I think all existing copies are from the second broadcast.
Beat me to it too.
I’d go for Evil of the Daleks in particular.
Probably the Playhouse 90 live theatre that was on early TV.
And a cheesey sketch comedy show from the early days of the Fox network called The Edge with Julie Brown, Jennifer Anniston and Alan Ruck and Wayne Knight.
All the episodes of WKRP with the original music intact. I’ve seen the episodes with the new and generic music, and while they’re good, they’re not the original. Let’s see (and hear) the original WKRPs again.
If this is allowed I want to record my grandfather, who was a radio announcer in the 40’s through the 60’s. I tried searching for existing recordings as a gift for my mother, but none exist. In particular there’s his narration of Navy ships (the Pacific Fleet?) returning to San Francisco after WWII, and some other family-favorite radio stories I won’t bore you all with.
I’m here to help: you can actually see a couple of episodes on YouTube. It really did exist.
Oh, man, The Great American Fourth of July…I still remember that one. My dad turned it on, because at the time he watched nothing but PBS; we had no idea what it was, but soon, oh so funny!
Me, I’d go back and record the first and only episode of Turn-On, so I could see how bad it really was. They say it was so legendarily bad that at least one ABC affiliate stopped the broadcast halfway through the premiere, which I think would make it the shortest-lived TV series in history.