The discovery of a rare color videotape of the Kraft Music Hall Starring Milton Berle has displaced NBC’s An Evening with Fred Astaire as the oldest color entertainment found on videotape. The latter aired live on October 17, 1958, while the new record breaker aired nine days before.
An Evening with Fred Astaire will replay and be open to all at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, California on the evening of February 24, 2024. Mr. Quigley, who is the John H. Mitchell Television Curator at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, said the tape was a “unicorn” to have survived for all this time.
The ‘Kraft Music Hall Starring Milton Berle’ videotape is a rare save
According to Quigley, “Many important programs were simply taped over” back then “as no anticipated future use was envisioned.”
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“With the introduction of videotape technology in the broadcast industry starting in 1956, one of the main virtues of videotape for producers, networks, and local stations was that tapes could be reused repeatedly to save costs,” he said.
He added that erasing programs was standard practice; “every 2-inch tape that survives is something of a happy miracle and a time capsule.” Thanks to Paul Brownstein, television distributor and executive producer of The Greatest Night in Pop; and independent archivist and documentarian Dan Wingate of Kaye Ballard: The Show Goes On, people today can now see what the first color film was like back then.
Milton Berle’s wife saved the tape
Lorna Berle, widow and show host and comedian Milton Berle, saved the historic color film debut and other Kraft Film Music Hall tapes until they were discovered and preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive in collaboration with the music footage licensing agency and vintage television footage archive, Retro Video, in California.
The tape contains footage of Berle’s half-hour program with cameos from Bob Hope, Gene Barry, and musical director Billy May, with Selwyn Touber and Hal Kanter directing. The show thrived so well that Berle landed a thirty-year contract with NBC for exclusive rights to his talents.
Preserving Historic Color Videotape: Mr. Television (a.k.a. Milton Berle) and Friends showing in a few weeks will showcase additional Kraft Music Hall episodes featuring the likes of Sammy Davis, Jr., Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Jerry Lewis, Harpo Marx, and Peter Lorre.