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Article About the CBS Thursday Night/Friday Night Movie(Psycho, NXNW)

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_Thursday_Night_Movie

OK, I have tried to put a link up here...

I was browsing on Psycho and found this Wikipedia article which provides both wonderful nostalgia and a well-detailed look at how:

The CBS Thursday Night Movie and
The CBS Friday Night Movie ....came to be.

Lots of tidbits along the way, such as :

For the first season (65-66) there was only a THURSDAY night movie.

The Manchurian Candidate opened the entire franchise on the very first CBS Thursday Night movie in 1965(thus refuting claims that Sinatra had the film pulled after the 1963 JFK assassination.)

For the second season(66-67) , the Friday night movie was added, Psycho was promoted(having cost CBS $500,000 to buy the rights! Two showings as I recall), and the famous Charles Percy's Daughter Thing. But nifty: the TV Guide Ad for Psycho on CBS. Its not nearly as haunting as the 1967 Los Angeles TV ad that I've carried in my head for years, but I did get a nostalgia jolt seeing Vera Miles in this CBS ad for "the movie that was never broadcast."(Later in the article, it is pointed out that when CBS showed In Cold Blood, 100 affiliates didn't show it.)

Interesting how CBS exec James Aubrey saw theatrical films as required because "a $250,000 TV production can't compete with a $4,000,000 movie." That's how I saw it, even as a kid. Movies were BIGGER, more special, with movie stars, and, often had a "classic or hit" cachet(North by Northwest, The Dirty Dozen, Bullitt.)

When you reach the 73-74 season, you see the arrival of Bullitt, The Graduate, and The Wild Bunch on TV . Wow. Of course, The Wild Bunch was edited to ribbons.

You also get some critics of the time discussing how network TV had to consider the broadcast of films from the risqué "The Apartment" to the bad language of newer films (John Wayne reduced to saying "Fill your hands, you" in True Grit.)

CBS didn't get many Hitchcock films to show. I count North by Northwest(from MGM.) I think they showed Under Capricorn. NBC had Paramount and Universal packages so showed most every Hitchcock movie from Rear Window forward EXCEPT NXNW and The Wrong Man. I take that back. For some reason, ABC got The Trouble With Harry, and CBS bought Psycho when it was owned by Paramount.

And as I've noted before, Vertigo and The Man Who Knew Too Much '56 are the only Hitchcock movies(the only MOVIES?) ever to air on NBC(first), then ABC, then CBS right before they were taken out of circulation. (Rear Window did NBC and ABC, but was in litigation before CBS could get it.) I need to go back to this article to see if the CBS screenings are listed(in the 70's.)

Nostalgia: the Thanksgiving shows of Mysterious Island (65) and Jason and the Argonauts(66.) Our family gathered round after the turkey and watched those.

Nostalgia: The Guns of Navarone as a two-parter in '69. I waited all summer for that to come in the fall, pulled in by the clip of Peck snarling "You're in it now -- up to your NECK!"

Nostalgia...for the whole damn thing.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I need to go back to this article to see if the CBS screenings are listed(in the 70's.)

---

Found them! Vertigo on Thursday, January 18, 1973, then The Man Who Knew Too Much on Friday January 19, 1973.

I also note showings of my favorite movie of 1966(The Professionals) and of 1967(Wait Until Dark) in those early 70's seasons.

And I have fond memories of watching Hello Dolly in February of 1974 with a grandmother who ONLY loved that movie. I had seen it in the theater with her in 1970(a '69 release), and made tracks to watch it with her at her home in 1974. She was very happy, transported for a couple of hours -- and then she came down to earth, rather quiet. It was possibly the most "moving" CBS movie broadcast I ever watched.