A Week in Radio and Television History - Mid-August, 1962: WNBC's Anniversary, News From Here, Abroad, and Space, Bert Parks. and the Star of Our Show, Shelley Berman!

Before we get to today's offering, I want to share my deepest thanks and appreciation to those who read and listened to my birthday post, and particularly those who offered up some truly wonderful comments. Thank you, everyone.

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I have a bunch of clips today, and all but the last offering come from the same reel, and I hope that I find that I own more tapes from this same collector (my unlistened-to tapes are a hodge-podge, and tapes bought together have gotten separated over the years).

The reason I hope that is because this person seems to have recorded like a fiend - I'm going to share with you almost the entire contents of this tape, well over two hours worth, and those contents appear to capture recordings made over the course of less than a week, in mid August, 1962. Imagine how many tapes this person may have had, and the contents thereof, if he or she filled a two hour tape in just four or five days!

Anyway, this tape is quite the variety reel, capturing part of one TV show, the entirety of another, parts of three different newscasts, and seven installments of a feature being aired that week by NBC flagship station WNBC, in honor of the 40th anniversary of their having gone on the air. The two dates I can actually nail down are August 14th and August 16th, but certain items here likely are from both before and after those dates.

I have grouped these items together by theme - what follows is not actually quite the order in which they appear on the tape. It is just much easier for me to do it this way, as I digitized these some time ago and am not sure where the tape is, so I don't recall the original order - hope that makes sense.

Let's start with the newscasts. The dominant news stories that week including the lengthy flight of two Russian cosmonauts, Eisenhower's visit to England, an assassination attempt on the President of Ghana, and a disagreement about whether the return to the US by an terminally ill American doctor who had been spying for Russia.

The first segment is from "London Calling", a news report from England but broadcast in the US. The second segment contains a brief excerpt from "Douglas Edwards News" then segues into another show, "The World Today", and the third segment is from Mutual News. It seems to me at least possible that this second clip flips again into another broadcast, as the end of that clip seems quite similar to the start of the Mutual clip. At least one of these items is from August 14th, based on the reference to it being one year and one day after the start of the Berlin Wall.

(Note: All three of these segments sound to me as if they are running slowly - the voices sound artificially low and slow. However, this makes no sense, as the rest of the tape (that these segments are interspersed within) does not sound slow. Why would only the newscasts be recorded on a machine not running correctly?)

Download: London Calling - News from England - Peter King Reporting - Mid-August, 1962
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Download: Douglas Edwards News and The World Today
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Download: Mutual News, August, 1962
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Now, the first of the two Television recordings. While I suspect that this tape's entire contents may be made up of sounds which no longer (or barely) exist anywhere but on this tape, this strikes me as something special even within that world of rarity. Maybe it's just because I love game shows.

But anyway, what we have here is a few portions of a game show called "Yours For a Song", hosted by Bert Parks. The show aired on ABC during the daytime for about 15 months and in a nighttime edition for just under a year. And I'd certainly never heard of it. It's a goofy program, but sounds like something I'd have enjoyed. Rather than explain it here, I'll just let you listen, as all the explanation you need is in the recording. There is a break near the end, and I don't actually know if the part following the break is from the same episode or not, but I suspect it was, and that a portion of the show was later erased by one of the other items being shared here.

Download: Yours for a Song, Starring Bert Parks, August, 1962
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Recorded rather haphazardly throughout the tape is a feature that was airing that week on WNBC, the flagship station of the NBC network, in New York (where, presumably, all of these recordings were made). The station was acknowledging their 40th anniversary. Please note that while Wikipedia (linked above) states that the station first went on the air on March 2, 1922, these segments, developed and provided by the station itself, are using August 16th, 1922 as the first date of operation. I don't know which is correct, but one of these clips definitely identifies that date. The clips all feature earlier recordings from the station, mostly from the 1940's or earlier. The first one is the only one for which I have a hard-and-fast date for - it's clear from the introduction what today's date was. And the two clips of announcer contests may well be two broadcasts of different parts of the same archival segment. ere are all of those clips, in succession as they appear on the tape:

Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - 8-16-62 - The Silver Masked Tenor, Joe White
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Quick Reading Announcers' Contest
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Jack Norworth Sings
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Another Announcers' Contest (Segment)
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Snoring Demonstration
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Billy Hill Sings "The Last Round-Up"
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - The Ed Wynn Show
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And finally, the pièce de résistance! If you read my birthday post, you'd have seen a brief reference to my adoration for the comedy of Shelley Berman. Well, the saga of Mr. Berman usually includes a reference to an ill-fated show that was done about him in early 1963, following him for a day at a club, including parts of his performance, followed by a few things that happened afterwards. I will not recount the details here, but the legend is that this show ruined his career - although some recent research captured in a book called "The Comedians" indicates strongly that this was not the case.

What I didn't know until I listened to this tape - and this is not even documented on Shelley Berman's IMDB page - is that he did a show for ABC in 1962 - on August 14th - tied to his then-most-recent album, "Shelley Berman: A Personal Appearance", a show which carried the same title as the album, and which was almost entirely made up simply of his act, including much of that album, with slight differences, of course, since it is a different recording of the material. There is also other material here that I've never heard before.

Well.... Wow. My considered opinion is that "Shelley Berman: A Personal Appearance" is the greatest comedy album ever recorded. So I was knocked out to have found this tape, and to learn that it is virtually unknown. (There is a seller online who will sell you audio copies of any of hundreds or perhaps thousands of recordings he holds. He's got a copy.)

So here, unheard by virtually everyone in the world sing 8/14/62, is the ABC special, "Shelley Berman: A Personal Appearance".

Download: Shelley Berman - A Personal Appearance - ABC TV Special - 8-14-62
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Today's very short reel is an ad which apparently ran on Chicago's WNIB, which was, for decades, the second place classical music station in town. It's an ad for the Sunday Chicago Tribune, probably from 1972 or 73 or so, and it's an interesting curio, containing as it does some references to what one expert thought would become collectible in the future (the expert doesn't seem to have been too accurate, based on the view from nearly 50 years later), and a reference to a story on Jane Byrne, who would have been virtually unknown at that time, but who, by the end of the decade, would be Mayor of Chicago.

Download: Sunday Chicago Tribune Ad, Circa Early 1970's
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