Lost Betty White Commercial

Found this great commercial recently in a group of videos I downloaded from YouTube.

Lost William Shatner Performance

I found this in a collection of episode of The Mike Douglas Show tapes. This is William Shatner doing a piece from H.G. Well's War of the Worlds.

The Jitter Bug - The Judy Garland Show

The year is 1939 and The Wizard of Oz is in previews throughout Southern and Central California. One song seems hopelessly out of place. That song, The Jitter Bug.

It has a jazzy feeling that clashes with the rest of the movie. And at a point in the movie where the audience is supposed to be afraid of what the Wicked Witch is going to do to the heroes, they break into song.

So MGM cuts the song. And over the years the film is destroyed, probably by accident. But the soundtrack of the movie contains the song. And one of the composers shot home movies of the dancing. So The Jitterbug lived in the hearts of fans.

In 1963, Judy Garland has her own television series on CBS. Her guests are Jane Powell and Ray Bolger. Finally, after almost a quarter century, two surviving members of the cast of The Wizard of Oz get the chance to perform The Jitterbug:

Now This Is Funny

Ellen trying try Hawaiian Chair

Unusual Foreign TV

Television is countries outside of the United States can seem unusual to us. Here are two examples.

The first is an audition for Sweden's Got Talent. This is one of the best auditions I have seen from any show. It is daring, fun, and right in line with modern moral ethics:



The second video is from an unknown country. It is clearly from a children's series. The subtitles are quite funny. But who in the world thought it would okay to have all these kids running around in Speedo's?

Finding vintage and rare TV on YouTube

As you know, I love television. I check YouTube multiple times a day. And since I use Firefox I added Fast Video Download. This allowed be to download most videos without hassle.

Because most shows are split into multiple parts because of the 10 minute time limit I download all of the parts. I then use FinalCut Express to edit them together and create a single file. I then can share this with other people and I include a copy in the archive I am building for my school

If you are looking for classic TV on YouTube check out the following channels:

80sCommercialVault

austvarchive

thesixtiesguy
WookieCookie

VampireHunterDVD

And my favorite is TVDays. Ira Gallen is a TV and film preservationist and has a collection of tens of thousands of film reels. For example he has more then 20,000 commercials. He also has a website - tvdays.com - where you can purchase DVDs of some of his collections that are in the public domain.

And if you like websites try TVparty.com. A lot of great articles on classic TV. There is a free site and a more indepth paid site.

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I'm back and Ugly Betty Canceled

Welcome everyone,

After a year of no posting I have decided to take this blog in a different direction. Instead of having my writing be academic in nature I am now going to be sharing my views on TV while at the same time keeping the history of TV alive.

Here I am sitting at home watching Ugly Betty. Boy do I love my DVR.

I am so sad that the show has been canceled. Now there are only 7 episodes left. ABC has promised that loss ends will be cleared up. And let's hope they do a dramatic final episode. Since first episode the question of Justin's sexual orientation has been hinted at and played around with. It is time to deal with what is an important topic and let Justin be who he really is.

I am going to try to update my blog on a weekly basis so please bear with me and I get in the grove.

Thanx,
William

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