Golden Age / 1950s Television on DVD

[whaleallright]

I've been exploring television of the Eisenhower era lately, from variety shows to early situation comedies and dramas, to the anthology series like "Studio One" and "Zane Grey Theatre."

Unfortunately it's mostly a morass of horrible-quality public domain titles and/or "highlights" DVDs that pull individual segments out of their original context and string them together in a way more acceptable to contemporary attention spans.

I figured it might be useful to more than just me to have a thread where people can recommend interesting shows and "telefilms" on DVD -- and perhaps provide tips for the better-quality items out there.

I can start by noting that Disney's "Treasures" collections of vintage TV, e.g. the Davy Crockett set, are mostly impeccable, if you can stomach multiple Leonard Maltin introductions. Similarly, Koch's Studio One Anthology features good transfers of important telefilms, with various bonuses.

[zedz]

The only thing I've got from this era, but it's excellent, is a BBC set of the three original Quatermass series, or what remains of them. Good contextualising extras, including scripts of the lost episodes, as I recall, and a thick book.

[knives]

How come so many BBC series seem to have lost episodes, even moreso then American television from the same eras?

[tojoed]

How come so many BBC series seem to have lost episodes, even moreso then American television from the same eras?

The BBC used to tape over some of their classic TV shows with things like "The Horse of the Year Show". That's how a lot of great comedies have lost episodes and even whole series.
The BBC, in general, is a bunch of cultural criminals.

[Sloper]

Yes, they even chucked away enormously popular things like Dr. Who, apparently lacking the imagination to anticipate a time when they could revive this stuff and make a profit out of it. Some of the soundtracks survive, though, and apparently someone's done a sort of black-and-white animated version of one of the Patrick Troughton episodes. I've heard it's very good.

Edit: if anyone's interested, it's The Invasion. Seems they threw away this stuff in the '70s!

[colinr0380]

Don't forget The Andromeda Anthology piecing together what remains of A From Andromeda (one of Julie Christie's earliest roles) with the more complete follow up series The Andromeda Breakthrough.

Yes, I had some schoolfriends who were Doctor Who fans (from the pre-Russell T. Davies 'dark ages' when the BBC was still smarting from the Americanised Paul McGann TV movie and wanting to forget about the series altogether) and they introduced me to the idea of the BBC having wiped huge swathes of their programmes, especially the black and white ones once colour television became common and therefore made monochrome seem less commercially exploitable.

The BBC seems to be trying to rectify the situation now with their periodic "Missing Believed Wiped" campaigns, though at the moment they are mainly focusing on recovering beloved Dad's Army episodes rather than anything less commercial.

[Dr Amicus]

To be fair to the BBC (and as a self confessed Doctor Who Geek believe me this is VERY painful to write...) there are a couple of mitigating factors. Firstly, video was expensive and bulky - it was reused wherever possible. Secondly, as has been pointed out, they simply did not anticipate that anyone would be interested in the material - and being black & white there didn't seem to be any possibility of further commercial sales.

On the other hand, apparently every Trooping the Colour is still stored, so hurrah for that (and another reason to be a republican).

I have the DVD edition of The Invasion that Sloper mentions - Cosgrove Hall (who were responsible for Danger Mouse) did new versions of episodes 1 and 4 based on the shooting script and off-air stills, and it is very impressive. I understand no further missing episodes are on the cards for animation, which is a shame to put it mildly.

[Jonathan S]

One of the most notorious BBC erasures was the 1966 Alan Bennett sketch series On the Margin despite the fact it was popular enough for a LP record of audio excerpts to be issued (a friend of mine bought it). I wonder if the BBC is brave enough to release these as an extra in their forthcoming Bennett set?

To be fair, the erasure policy isn't confined to the BBC, nor to such relatively early material. I still have an ex-VHS recording I made on Christmas Eve 1980 of an ITV documentary which is officially listed as "lost".

[Sloper]

I do understand there were reasons for getting rid of this stuff, but after all Doctor Who was at the height of its popularity (and quality) in the '70s, so it does seem kind of short-sighted. I spend a good deal of time lamenting the similarly ruthless annihilation of films from the silent era, but it's hard to get my head around the BBC doing the same thing so many decades later.

[Dr Amicus]

I agree - it was cultural vandalism on an astonishing scale. And let's not forget the class issue, as I noted EVERY SINGLE TROOPING THE COLOUR HAS BEEN KEPT.

Anyway, back on topic - a release of the (in)famous 50s version of 1984 has been mooted for years, in fact IIRC it went through the BBFC classification process a couple of years back, but has yet to turn up. I taped it when it was last shown about 5 years ago and watched the first few minutes and even now it's an extraordinary piece of work and genuinely chilling. Peter Cushing is as reliable as ever, and this was amongst the productions that made him star. His horror work has overshadowed his TV work, but he was one of the biggest TV stars of the decade.

I understand that only the repeat was filmed - it was broadcast live, and the first showing (a Tuesday?) wasn't recorded only the (Sunday?) repeat. Cushing argued that the repeat was not in the same league as the first broadcast, but from what I've seen it's still hugely impressive.