Spokane’s connection to the mid-50’s TV “live line” brought us drama and variety shows from the so-called Golden Age of Television. It was like attending a live variety show or a Broadway play on the cheap. The 1950’s network dramas and variety shows were filled with drama and comedy. And they were live, but slow-paced and imperfect. It was fun because there was the chance of goofs or glitches. We didn’t know the word “glitch” yet, but live TV had them.
The Jackie Gleason Show combined comedy sketches with dance numbers, singing, and monologs. A feature of every show was the female dance troop, The June Taylor Dancers. Everyone remembers The Honeymooners, that originated as a repeating series of sketches on the show. The Jackie Gleason Show began as live show, but survived well into the days of videotaped color shows.
We recall watching an extravagant dance number that incorporated the June Taylor Dancers along with almost every actor on the show. Jackie Gleason was in his Reginald Van Gleason persona, wearing a stovepipe hat and tuxedo. Art Carney was doing a choreographed version of his sewer worker character. There was dry ice fog on the stage. Actors were moving in intricate patterns amongst the real dancers. Suddenly Jackie Gleason slipped on the moisture caused by condensation from the cold dry ice. Art Carney literally dragged him offstage. The next morning, the Spokeman Reivew had an article about Jackie Gleason breaking his leg onscreen during his show.. Gleason was to be off the show for a few weeks. We coast-to-coast live viewers saw it all
Many commercials were even live. Once, Bess Myerson, the 1945 Miss America, advertised an Admiral refrigerator. She demonstrated a handy aluminum foil dispenser inside the door. “You simply tear off a piece of foil at the desired length,” she said smugly, as she took a tug at it. Nothing parted. She tugged harder. The foil looked a bit worse for wear, but didn’t part. She assumed one of those wide-eyed forced smiles. She pulled harder, rapidly, violently, again and again. The foil became a wadded mess, but held fast to the roll. Her horrified smile was frozen as the picture cut to an announcement about upcoming shows. Fun over.
Jack Benny played a sketch on the Colgate Comedy Hour. At one point another actor pointed a gun at him. The two faced one-another in profile to the camera. It was to be the famous “your money or your life” Benny gag (where Benny pauses and replies, “I’m thinking! I’m thinking!), except that the gun dropped a bit low while the gunslinger talked to the camera. The gun pointed below Benny’s belt! Benny did one of his perfectly timed pauses as he dead-panned sideways at us through the camera. Then he slowly grasped the gun barrel with his thumb and forefinger and slowly elevated it to point it toward his chest. We almost choked laughing. This would have never been seen in the 50’s, had it not been for live TV.
We belie our age when we define this as high entertainment. It was superior to the modern unscripted reality show that depicts the worst qualities of people. The manipulative people in these shows are, themselves, manipulated. So is the audience. The shows are highly edited scripted situations. They are in no fashion, reality, nor are they live.
By 1957, the live show was already disappearing due to the emergence of videotape technology. Now, productions consisted of edited recordings of entire shows. This process mitigated the huge expense and pressure of producing a real-time weekly 90-minute show of PlayHouse 90 across four time zones every single week. From 1957 onward, a drama or variety show could be recorded in pieces, edited, and any needed retakes carried out. The result could be played onto the live line twice or three times to accommodate the four time zones. The goofs were removed. The whole thing was sanitized. The pace was quicker. Commercials were canned. Background music could be overdubbed at will. The result was a polished piece of work at a fraction of the cost, and, we’re sure, with less pressure on the actors and crew. We viewers noticed that some of the ambience was missing.
In 2001 we experienced a rare reprise of 1950s-style live television drama. CBS aired a live presentation of On Golden Pond, starring a reunion of Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, famous for their decades-old roles in The Sound of Music. Aside from the age of the actors and the picture being in color, we could immediately discern that this drama was live. Things happened slowly. There was no background music. There were pauses in the flow, and gaps with no dialog. Scenes changed hesitatingly. We felt transported back to the days of Kraft TelevisonTheater, and PlayHouse 90. We rather liked it.
- Ed Mauget