Saturday night at the movies

[oldtvman]

I almost forgot about this program, until I found a preview guide from NBC back in the early sixties, All I remember was the beautiful color on those movies, many seen on tv for the first time

[bozey45]

I remember those also; NBC purchased a large package of 20th Century Fox films and must have at that time used 35mm to run those--I don't know if they transfered to tape yet at tnat time or not like now. They may have run directly off of film. i was still in high school when that started in 1961 I think.

[colortrakker]

I'd bet what little I have that they ran those movies from film chains - a modded color TV camera picking up the image from 35mm film through all kinds of optics and mirrors. Kris Trexler has a pretty good explanation and some pics on this page.

[Steve Hoffman]

The problem with all of those Fox color films that NBC broadcast is that they were all filmed in CineamaScope and NBC used "flat" prints that cut off at least 1/3 of the scope ratio. I remember the "sqeeze" during the credits so they could fit them in.

I do remember watching the NBC broadcast of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" and there was Michael Rennie after the film was over in a taped "greeting". Anyone else remember that?

[Steve D.]

I remember, very well, the 1961 opening for NBC Saturday Night at the Movies. It was verticle multicolored-film strips rotating around each other. I think it was also the first use of pan and scan to accomodate the Cinemascope movies.

Here's some futher info from a UK site of all places.

"NBC Saturday Night At The Movies" (1961-1978): For many years, movies were seen as programming limited only to local television stations-mostly black and white features made before 1948. But on September 22 1961, the comedy "How To Marry A Millionaire" with Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable made its debut on NBC's new showcase for feature films. "Saturday Night At The Movies" quickly gained a following for two major reasons. First, the films were recent box office hits. Second, most of them were in color-a potent weapon at a time when NBC was pushing color programming.

-Steve D.

[wa2ise]

Another way of feeding film programs into video was the use of "flying spot scanners". A frame of film is in darkness except for an image of a bright spot of white light projected onto the film. The spot is raster scanned over the film. Behind the film are 3 photomultiplier tubes, one with a green filter, another red filter and the third a blue filter. The amplified outputs of these tubes look like RGB video, which is then converted to composite NTSC video.