“An Evening with Fred Astaire” shines to this day as an example of excellence in early television. The program was produced in the midst of the turbulence over television’s transition from kinescopes to videotape, monochrome to color, and live to recorded. But NBC, the network that aired it, was working through dilemmas largely of its own making.
“An Evening with Fred Astaire” shines to this day as an example of excellence in early television. The program was produced in the midst of the turbulence over television’s transition from kinescopes to videotape, monochrome to color, and live to recorded. But NBC, the network that aired it, was working through dilemmas largely of its own making.
The race to get color on the air was a big deal for RCA in the 1950’s and intertwined with several new technologies. RCA was trying to get color to stations not carrying programs live, such as the entire the west coast. Videotape was a hit for time zone delays but, like kinescopes, it was still only black & white. Pre-recording of shows in part or in full was being tried out. Editors started experimenting with physically cutting videotape to edit it.
Out of this turmoil came a program that was such a hit, it received Emmy Awards in a record amount and is still honored to this day.
In one section, I wrote about the production of an NBC Special “An Evening with Fred Astaire” and its place in early television history. After reading my article, one reader, Mr. John Butler, wrote to me questioning some conflicting information regarding that broadcast on October 17th, 1958. Because the show was said to be one of the first to have edits in it, Mr. Butler questioned whether the show had been done live or on tape or a combination.
This piqued my curiosity particularly as I had referenced Art Schneider’s discussion of the pioneer use of NBC’s Edit Sync Guide (ESG) on the program from his memoir “Jump Cut” both in part two of the NBC article as well as my article on the history of SMPTE Time Code. Schneider was an NBC film (and later, tape) editor who distinguished himself on many shows over the years including the sixties hit “Rowan Martin’s Laugh In.”
Independently, Mr. Butler and myself did more research and we came away with some interesting facts about the Astaire show. The new information then led me to the story of the show’s restoration and conversion to digital thirty years later (resulting in an unprecedented 10th Emmy Award for the show) and to a television history guru, Ed Reitan, who’s untimely passing silences much knowledge of television’s early days.
Reitan knew more than the history of television. He could re-build it, too. It was Reitan who did the in depth technical work required to resurrect the hand made color videotape format that recorded the Astaire program. I’ll devote another article to Reitan and explore some of his work, including the restoration of “An Evening with Fred Astaire.” My thanks go out to his associate, Don Kent, for his assistance. Kent was a good friend of Reitan’s and shared the Emmy Award with Reitan as well as Dan Einstein, curator of the UCLA Film and Television Archives.
Left to right: Dan Einstein, Ed Reitan, Bob Rosen (Director of the UCLA Film & TV Archive) and Don Kent the night they received the Technical Emmy Award for the restoration of “An Evening with Fred Astaire.” Courtesy of Don Kent
To recap, the Astaire show was produced in the new Color City studios at NBC Burbank. In his book, Schneider wrote that the show was the first to make use of ESG. It allowed the frame accurate editing of the television recording format two inch quadruplex video tape. It was a cumbersome system but it worked. Years later, the concept of applying unique addresses to individual frames of video on tape would be applied to SMPTE time code, the all electronic based system that would eventually operate under computer control and make the edits without the need to physically cut the tape as two inch quadruplex editing had to be done in that short era.
In his book, Schneider states, “In 1958, NBC Burbank began using this new process to edit the first Fred Astaire special.” Up until that time, the editors had only been testing “…using segments from NBC productions,” and goes on to say, “All this was kept confidential,” so they (the editors) wouldn’t be pressured …”to start using this process before we were convinced that it would really work.” The use of this system and the way Schneider explained it in his book have lead many to believe the Astaire program was one of the first to be recorded on tape, edited using ESG and then broadcast.
More evidence was found in an edition of RCA Broadcast News, a magazine to promote RCA Broadcast products published from the early 1930’s to the end of 1984 when RCA ceased building broadcast equipment. In the April, 1961, issue an article titled “Improving Television Tapes of Color Shows” the author, Russell A. Nies, an NBC Burbank recording engineer, asserts “A large portion of the network business at the west coast plant in Burbank is concerned with the pre-recording of programs for later release,” and goes on to give examples including “The Fred Astaire Shows” without qualifying which shows. Ultimately, there were four Astaire shows but only one in 1958 (according to the Internet Movie DataBase, the shows are “An Evening with Fred Astaire” (1958), “Another Evening with Fred Astaire” (1959), “Astaire Time” (1960), and “The Fred Astaire Show” (1968).
But some conjecture on the Internet that the whole show had been recorded on tape prior to its airtime was not the case. The show was produced live for the Eastern and Central time zones of the United States from Burbank. Mr. Butler found an Emmy Legends interview with Bud Yorkin, the director of the show where he claims he used all the stages NBC Burbank had to offer on that particular evening.
At that time, the Burbank facility had four stages and given the complexity and breadth of the Astaire show, a fully live production would have needed that much space.
My own research yielded similar results. Newspaper archives revealed several clippings confirming the fact at least portions of the show had been done live. However, the possibility still existed that segments could have been recorded, edited and rolled into the show even though Yorkin’s interview seems to dispute that.
To know how I arrived at some of my conclusions, a brief examination of the state of television in the mid-fifties is in order.
At the time the Astaire program was produced, videotape was still quite new and television was primarily still monochrome (black and white). Ampex Corporation had demonstrated the first videotape machine in April of 1956 and the first network use of the new technology took place the following November with the CBS broadcast of “Douglas Edwards Evening News.” Up until that time, the American networks were relying on poor quality kinescopes (films made by photographing a television screen) to deliver programs beyond the live feeds to the Eastern and Central U.S.A. This included affiliated stations beyond the U.S. Central Time Zone, affiliates not yet connected to the coaxial cable and stations electing to run shows in other times slots due to multiple network affiliations. In addition, kinescopes were costly as the process exposed thousands of feet of film stock that also had to be processed.
The first use of Videotape on the air, November 30, 1956, from CBS Television City. Engineer John Radis monitors playback of the West Coast time zone delay of “Douglas Edwards with the News” on the Ampex VTX-1000. Courtesy of Ampex Corporation.
Anxious to replace the poor quality of kinescope film recording and save money, networks and stations (foreign and domestic) didn’t hesitate to immediately place orders for seventy five of the machines totaling over two million dollars during the short four day period of the National Association of Broadcasters convention where Ampex had done its unveiling. Ampex had beaten RCA (the predominant supplier of broadcast equipment and owner of the NBC Network) in getting video recording to the marketplace. But Ampex’s machine was only capable of recording and playing back monochrome images.
RCA had spent millions making color television a reality. Also, RCA convinced the FCC to reverse its decision to approve the CBS field sequential color system. RCA argued their system didn’t make obsolete all the black and white televisions in American homes as CBS’s system did. RCA’s system was “compatible color television” meaning the millions of black and white sets already in use would be able to see the program on their current set in monochrome. For the consumer, however, the cost of a color television was steep and the results were not always predictable as owners fiddled with finicky controls.
Then there was the lack of color programming. Without color shows, color TV was caught in the classic “which came first – the chicken or the egg” situation, and color receiver sales languished. After the FCC’s approval of RCA’s system in December, 1953, NBC rushed to get color programs on the air but other networks held back citing the high cost of converting to color equipment and higher program production costs.
Exacerbating the color problem for NBC and RCA was the inability to provide color versions of their live shows to western time zone affiliates. When NBC began producing color shows in 1954, they were being sent out to the Eastern and Central time zones live. They were not able to provide the same service to their western audiences who were still stuck with watching muddy black and white kinescopes due to the difference in times between east and west. Even the programs produced in color at NBC in California would appear later in Los Angeles in black and white.
With the exception of live sports or specials, about half the United States was only able to see everyday shows in monochrome. NBC did try kinescopes using color film. The earliest known example is of a “Dinah Shore Show.” Shows from as early as 1954 survive made from shooting color film off finely tuned color monitors. However, due the extra time required for processing color film, they did not solve the problem of getting shows to west coast audiences the same day on a three-hour time zone delay.
RCA was working on videotape. Under much pressure from corporate management, they had a mission to build a television recording mechanism – but it had to be capable of color recording and playback from the start. Unfortunately, they were mired in a clumsy system that required tapes moving at high speed and needed multiple machines to deliver just one full length program.
To fill the gap, RCA entered into a joint effort with Eastman Kodak to resurrect Kodak’s obsolete Kodacolor 16mm film process and revive it as the lenticular color kinescope process. Using a special black and white film George Eastman developed in 1928, the stock is coated with tiny lenticular lenses that when projected through the correct filters yielded color images. Using a black and white film stock would save the extra processing time color film stock required and put the lenticular color kinescopes on a time schedule already in common use for kines by the networks. RCA Engineers worked with Kodak to adapt it for their purposes and in September, 1956, a few months after the April introduction of videotape by Ampex, they demonstrated it to the press.
But it was not well received. According to the New York Times, the blues were purplish and images tended to be fuzzy. Overlapping and bleeding of colors were evident. In spite of all the problems, the system was put into daily use. For the first time, the West Coast could see the same programs in color the Eastern United States had enjoyed a few hours before. Except what they saw had the same problems kinescopes had from the beginning. Only now, color shifts and desaturation added to the annoyance. NBC couldn’t wait for RCA Labs to come up with a video tape recorder built from the ground up for color. Sales of color TV’s were at a standstill. In Billboard’s ‘News in Brief’ section from its December 4, 1954 edition, it was predicted sales of color sets would reach 300,000 the following year. But by 1957, only 150,000 color sets had been sold nationwide. Something had to be done about color videotape and it had to be done fast.
When Ampex first unveiled their first videotape machines, NBC/RCA ordered several of them. The first one went to RCA Laboratories in New Jersey to be reverse engineered. In addition to re-engineering the Ampex equipment for their own line of television tape machines, RCA and NBC engineers also went to work to figure out a way to adapt the Ampex machines to have color capability. While this was going on, NBC continued to limp along with the lenticular color kinescopes of their live color shows.
Finally, by early 1958, engineers were able to adapt NBC’s original Ampex machines to record and playback color.
Ed Reitan told Ted Langdell of the website QuadVideotapeGroup.com, “I use the terminology “RCA Labs Color” for the format of the original…color tapes used on the modified Ampex machines at Burbank from early 1958 through at least April of 1959.” This was never an official title. Just a means to tell the short lived hand built system from the manufactured ones that followed (Don Kent refers to these names as “Ed-ism’s”).
It was a format only active for a short time and quickly became obsolete. The adaptation was so sensitive, tapes had to be played on the machine they were recorded on. Compounding the problem, making a copy of a tape introduced severe generational loss and a degraded picture resulted.
About the same time the color adapted Ampex machines went online, NBC Burbank opened their Video Tape Central that eventually included six prototype RCA Television Tape machines running alongside the Ampex machines. Don Kent said that Reitan once told him that even though both the “RCA and Ampex machines could record color, but only the Ampex could be modified to play it back. The RCA wasn’t stable enough.”
Finally, NBC was able to provide its western viewers almost the same quality eastern viewers were experiencing – using a format that only worked on a few machines at NBC in Burbank with limited ability to make copies.
On the left is the picture of Video Tape Central at NBC in Burbank. RCA used this and others like it in their PR and Ads promoting their new video tape machines. However, a wider view (right) reveals the bank of eight Ampex VTX-1000’s that did most of the color work. Left: From RCA Broadcast News. Right: from RCA Review Technical Journal. Both from americanradiohistory.com
This was the landscape of early television that surrounded “An Evening with Fred Astaire” as it went into production.
When I first reached out to Don Kent, who assisted in the restoration of the show, he informed me there were “Roll In’s” to the program – pre-recorded segments rolled into the live show. It turns out the dance numbers had been pre-recorded at the insistence of the perfectionist Astaire. Also, the commercials were rolled in as well. However, there were no physical splices in the roll-in reels that would indicate editing had been performed on those segments save for one physical splice Kent remembers.
Don Kent holds the pre-recorded roll-in reel from “An Evening with Fred Astaire” thus proving the show was not all live. According to Kent, these included all the dance numbers and the commercials. He could not find physical splices on this reel save for one that was not supposed to be there. Courtesy of Don Kent.
There was a splice in the “St. James Infirmary” number. It wasn’t there for an edit as there is no cut at that point. Back in the day, tape was expensive and often re-used. Kent theorizes the tape used to record the dance routine had been spliced for an edit on a previous recording and just slipped through when the tape was used to record the dance numbers. According to Kent, “Instead of a butt splice they overlapped a little… You’ll notice it hiccups a little bit.” It happens near the beginning of the performance and if you aren’t looking for it you will probably miss it.
The restored “Evening with Fred Astaire” in its entirety. Watch for the tape splice at 41:11
So what’s the verdict? There is no doubt the show was produced live (or in the case of the “Roll In’s,” live to tape) drawing into question Art Schneider’s description of the use of the Edit Sync Guide on this show. How the prototype ESG system fit into the production of “An Evening with Fred Astaire” (if it did), may always be a mystery.
Soon after RCA began manufacturing tape machines, it became evident a standard was needed as other manufacturers in the U.S.A. and elsewhere began building videotape equipment. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers set a standard called “Low Band Color” for tape machines. Both RCA and Ampex modified their designs to adhere to the standard. Finally, tapes could be recorded on either an RCA machine or an Ampex machine. Many tapes were dubbed (copied) to the machines operating in the new standard. In 1964, the SMPTE high band standard superceded all previous formats and remains in effect for this now obsolete format.
As for the lenticular color kinescope system, after color videotape was developed it continued for a few more years then completely died out. Even if lenticular kinescopes could be found and identified (to the untrained eye, lenticular kinescopes appear to be standard black and white film prints), the equipment no longer exists to decode the color. New equipment would have to be designed and built to extract the color information.
The original color format built by RCA and NBC engineers and referred to by Ed Reitan as “RCA Labs Color” ceased to exist. That is, until thirty years later when Reitan showed it could be resuscitated to preserve some television history.
And finally, how was it that a show made primarily for time zone delay survived the erase head? As Don Kent mentioned, tape was expensive and got reused. But ownership of the Astaire show was different. Fred Astaire’s production company, Ava Productions owned the copyright and therefore his production company owned the tapes. The original tapes were not stored at NBC but in a vault at Universal Studios.
According to Don Kent, this cart holds all the earliest color videotape known to exist. This was taken during the restoration of these shows by Reitan and Kent, including “An Evening with Fred Astaire.” Courtesy of Don Kent.
“An Evening with Fred Astaire” still continues today as the only single program to receive nine major Emmy awards. We’ll save the story of its tenth award for next time.
Oh, did I mention the show was also one of the first to use chroma-key?