Mark Goodson Holdings, Library Of Congress

[RMF]

A brief piece from one of the blogs of the Library of Congress, discussing how the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center has recently been processing a substantial number of kinescopes donated by Mark Goodson Productions:

https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2020/10/this-is-a-mark-goodson-bill-todman-production/

[Matt Ottinger]

Outside of "The Web", which is a dramatic anthology series, these are just the kinescopes we've been enjoying on GSN and Buzzr for all these years.  G-T had everything transferred first, then donated the no-longer-necessary films.

There are certainly a handful of shows that neither service has aired, for any number of reasons (tobacco sponsors, clearance issues, quality concerns, etc), but this isn't some treasure trove of undiscovered material.

[snowpeck]

Outside of "The Web", which is a dramatic anthology series, these are just the kinescopes we've been enjoying on GSN and Buzzr for all these years.  G-T had everything transferred first, then donated the no-longer-necessary films.

There are certainly a handful of shows that neither service has aired, for any number of reasons (tobacco sponsors, clearance issues, quality concerns, etc), but this isn't some treasure trove of undiscovered material.

Nevertheless, if one were planning to be in DC anyway, it would make a trip to the LOC worthwhile.

[Matt Ottinger]

Nevertheless, if one were planning to be in DC anyway, it would make a trip to the LOC worthwhile.

If there was a detailed catalog of their holdings, like the article seems to indicate they're working on, then yeah, I would dig in big time to see what there is that we haven't been shown yet.  Just in the last couple of weeks, two different IGAS episodes have turned up that GSN never got around to airing.  I just have to wonder how much of a broader interest there really is in that level of specificity, when literally hundreds of examples of those shows are available on YouTube.

[calliaume]

Nevertheless, if one were planning to be in DC anyway, it would make a trip to the LOC worthwhile.

If there was a detailed catalog of their holdings, like the article seems to indicate they're working on, then yeah, I would dig in big time to see what there is that we haven't been shown yet.  Just in the last couple of weeks, two different IGAS episodes have turned up that GSN never got around to airing.  I just have to wonder how much of a broader interest there really is in that level of specificity, when literally hundreds of examples of those shows are available on YouTube.

What Matt said. Other than He Said She Said and Two for the Money, which didn't have a whole lot of airings on GSN and BUZZR, there's not a lot here that I'd spend hours in the LoC researching. (My family and I usually go to DC once or twice a year as we have lots of family and friends there, but my wife and son wouldn't have the patience to sit in the LoC all day to watching half-century episodes of old shows.)

[snowpeck]

I emailed the LOC to ask if they had catalogued the collection yet and they replied with a bunch of Excel documents. I've uploaded and shared them here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NTKCXrgzziG_zJacbWPc8UkJAbGGYB_y?usp=sharing

[Blanquepage]

With the exception of a few Daytime Price episodes, probably the most interesting for me is the 1969 Beat the Clock. Probably the pilot?

[snowpeck]

With the exception of a few Daytime Price episodes, probably the most interesting for me is the 1969 Beat the Clock. Probably the pilot?

I noticed a few daytime Password episodes as well, including a couple from very early in the run.

[Bryce L.]

With the exception of a few Daytime Price episodes, probably the most interesting for me is the 1969 Beat the Clock. Probably the pilot?

I noticed a few daytime Password episodes as well, including a couple from very early in the run.

Those caught my eye as well... correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the earliest circulating episode the 1962 primetime premiere?

[Eric Paddon]

The Password listings raise some interesting questions since any listing of a primetime episode refers to the backup kinescope and not the videotape master that still exists and has aired on GSN.    Most of the episodes listed are clearly primetime even when they're not specifically identified as "primetime" and I noticed how the first five primetime shows from January-February 1962 do not have a listing at all even though they exist in their videotape versions and have aired (and looking further there are other extant night shows on tape that don't seem to have a kinescope backup)

The dates that have to be daytime are:

11/20/61 (Burnett-Moore)
11/21/61 (Burnett-Moore)
6/20/66  (Florence Henderson-Paul Anka)
8/3/66    (Betty White-Barry Nelson)
12/25/66 (The first of the night show revival episodes; this does not exist in a syndicated repeat version.   All-star with Lee Remick, Peter Lawford, Otto Preminger, Stephen Sondheim, Audrey Meadows)

[Eric Paddon]

"He Said, She Said" only has three entries and two of them have to be the different pilot episodes that aired on GSN (one which had Gene Rayburn and the rest civilian contestants).     So there's only one item there that GSN never aired.

"I've Got A Secret" I noticed does not list the initial episodes from the summer of 1952 that survive nor does it list the last two shows (one of which is the one that turned up recently).   They also list dates that were summer repeat broadcasts once you get into the 60s.

[snowpeck]

It looks like they have about 170 episodes of Two for the Money, which I'm sure is nowhere near the number that aired on GSN during that brief time when they were less strict about tobacco sponsors.

[RMF]

A note of importance, looking at this discussion:

Mark Goodson Productions appears to have split its kinescope library when it made its 1990s donations between at least two archives: the Library of Congress (about which we are getting details now), and the UCLA Film and Television Archive (which has a searchable database).

An example of these splits can be found looking at Judge For Yourself: the Library of Congress has thirteen episodes, which aired near-continuously from late November of 1953 to February of 1954, while UCLA has fourteen episodes, of which five date to before the LoC set and nine to the last months of the run.

This explains a couple of the gaps already noted- for instance, the earliest surviving IGAS episodes are held at UCLA. However, it also gives this list value in a different regard- these lists by themselves attest well to surviving G-T materials for some series that didn't go to UCLA in large numbers and for which the reruns are not fully confirmatory (in addition to Two For The Money, it confirms how much survives of Beat The Clock, which I'm not sure GSN has rerun the entire 1950s primetime run of, and The Price Is Right, where sponsorship and Barker issues apparently combined to make a pile of episodes unrerunable).

[Eric Paddon]

There are a large number of random BTC episodes from 53-55 that may have been skipped during various runs on GSN.   9/15/58 is an unaired one and that's a wrong date because 9/12/58 was the last CBS daytime show (the nighttime run ended in February 1958 and the last five months are totally absent) so it could be the last CBS daytime show.    The ABC daytime version didn't debut until October 1958.

[Matt Ottinger]

I'm working up a definitive list of I've Got A Secret now, but just as an example, GSN has only ever aired seven episodes from 1954, and the LOC has 31 of them.  These would have all been Winston shows.