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Serious question about THE DINAH SHORE CHEVY SHOW--answers appreciated!

posted 9 years ago by MyMovieTVRomance
2 replies | jump to latest

The following is being re-posted from the 1950s TV board, in the hopes that someone here might know the answer too:

I know this wasn't Dinah Shore's first show, and that before this one, she had a 15 minute program broadcast in black and white. But I want to know about this particular program – THE DINAH SHORE CHEVY SHOW, that started in 1956 and ended in 1962 and 1963.

What I really want to know about it is – was it always broadcast in color from day one? I ask because I just started seeing it on the JEWISH LIFE NETWORK, and I was struck by how "live" it felt, being in color, it almost felt like it was happening today – just with lot of classier people who knew how to talk, act, and dress better. I loved seeing it in color – and the episodes I watched were from early 1960.

I've done some YouTube searches, and found a mix of episodes that are in color and black and white. So you might be thinking that answers my question, but it actually doesn't, because come to find out, a lot of shows that are seen in black and white were actually broadcast in color originally.

For example, THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM special that he did in the 1960s with The Beach Boys was in color, but when I watched it on THE JEWISH LIFE NETWORK, it was in black and white – despite the fact that Jack Benny himself mentioned within the program that they were broadcasting "in living color".

I will be sad if I find out that a lot of the color episodes of this wonderful, beautiful program are now lost, and that all which survives are black-and-white kinescopes. And anyway, wasn't kinescope out of fashion by the mid-1950s? Didn't all the shows convert to film by then, following the example of I LOVE LUCY?

If anybody has any information on this, I would really like to know. Because silly as it may sound, as much as I love THE DINAH SHORE CHEVY SHOW now, this is really praying on my mind!

Please excuse typos/funny wording; I use speech-recognition that doesn't always recognize!

[–] davidwile 8 years ago

Hey Romance,

While I certainly remember Dinah Shore (most fondly), I do not remember seeing her show in color, perhaps because our first color television was not purchased until about 1971. If you Google The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, there is a fair amount of information about Shore's shows and that some were in color as you noted.

Best wishes,
Dave Wile

[–] Thor-Delta 8 years ago

1. Variety shows were virtually never shot on film. They were live, or later on were live-on-tape. The only variety shows that come to mind that were shot on film were "The Frankie Laine Show" (1954-1955), "Florian Zabach" and "Liberace". Those series had a "canned" feeling to them, and would have been better if they had been live.

2. Kinescopes continued being made well into the 1960s and even into the 1970s.

3. The Dinah Shore Chevy Show was always broadcast in colour. But colour video-tape was expensive and tended to be re-used. Also, the show began in 1956, and colour video-tape was not invented until 1958.

4. Kinescopes are much easier to digitise than video tape and also much less likely to deteriorate. Video-tapes look better when new, but 60 years later often can look a lot worse and are often completely unplayable.

New Du Mont high-resolution picture tube and high picture power give a fuller tone range