The NBC Radio City building in Los Angeles was born out of a moment when radio was not just entertainment, but the beating heart of American culture. Constructed between 1936 and 1938 at the famous intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street, it became the West Coast headquarters of the National Broadcasting Company at a time when Hollywood itself was rapidly transforming into the global capital of media. The move from San Francisco to Los Angeles reflected a deeper shift: radio was merging with film, celebrity culture, and eventually television, all converging in Southern California. 

 There is something truly magical about holding a piece of television history in your hands. I’ve just added a stunning vintage press photo to my collection, and it’s a real gem from the set of I Dream of Jeannie. This isn't just a publicity shot; it’s a window into the golden age of sitcoms, captured on a Saturday back in June 1966.

The back of the photo carries that classic NBC typewriter text, detailing a hilarious mix-up from the episode "My Master, the Doctor." In the scene, Tony (the incomparable Larry Hagman) idly wishes he were a great violinist and then a surgeon. Jeannie (the radiant Barbara Eden), ever the devoted—if literal—genie, obliges him by blinking him right into an operating room! Seeing the two of them in their surgical scrubs, with Jeannie as the world’s most glamorous assisting nurse, perfectly captures the whimsical chaos that made the show a household staple.

What always strikes me about this series is the fascinating tie to the U.S. Space Program. Set in Cocoa Beach, Florida, just a stone's throw from Cape Kennedy, the show aired during the height of the Space Race. Tony Nelson wasn’t just a "master"—he was a high-level NASA astronaut. This created a brilliant tension: Tony was a man of science and military discipline, constantly trying to hide a 2,000-year-old magical entity from his straight-laced colleagues. NASA was actually quite supportive of the show, and the production often used stock footage of actual rocket launches to add a layer of 1960s realism to the fantasy.

Looking at this photo, you can practically feel the chemistry between the leads. Larry Hagman was a comedic force of nature long before his "J.R. Ewing" days. His physical comedy—the frantic double-takes and the "oh-no-not-again" expressions—was the perfect foil to the magic. And then there is Barbara Eden. To say she was gorgeous is an understatement; she was luminous. But more than her beauty, she brought a sense of innocent mischief to Jeannie that made the character iconic. Whether she was popping Tony into a tuxedo or an operating gown, she did it with a "blink" and a smile that captured the heart of the world.

I recently came across and purchased a fascinating piece of television history: an original 1962 press photo from the classic game show Password. While the image itself is a charming look at the "Golden Age" of game shows, the markings on the front and a curious typo on the back tell a much larger story about how news was made before the digital age.

The Scene: August 5, 1962

The photo captures a tense moment during a CBS Sunday night broadcast. In the shot, we see:

• Allen Ludden: The legendary "Password Master" himself.

• Kitty Carlisle & Tom Poston: Two giants of the 1960s panel-show circuit.

• The Guest: A civilian player chosen from the audience, clearly feeling the pressure of the national spotlight.

The "Smoking Gun" Typo

The most human part of this artifact is found on the back. The typed caption (known in the industry as a "snipe") describes Kitty Carlisle trying to "deciper" a clue.

In 1962, there was no spellcheck. A publicist at CBS or for syndicated columnist Ed Misurell likely banged this out on a manual typewriter. Once that master copy was made, the "deciper" error was duplicated via mimeograph and sent to newspapers across the country. It’s a permanent record of a split-second finger slip from over 60 years ago.

Behind the Scenes: The "Editorial Marks"

What makes this specific physical copy special is that it was a "working draft" for a newspaper editor. You can see the history written directly on the image:

• The White Paint: Those thick borders aren't damage—they are "crop marks." An editor painted over the edges to tell the printer exactly where to cut the image to fit a specific layout.

• "3 COL": This handwritten note was a directive to the layout team: “This photo needs to span three columns of the newspaper.”

• The "PREDATE" Stamp: This is the ultimate newspaper insider term. It proves the photo was prepared for an early edition of the Sunday paper, likely the "TV Highlights" section that had to be printed days before the show actually aired.

The "Kill" That Saved the Photo

Interestingly, this photo is in remarkably good condition. Usually, if a photo was actually used to create a metal printing plate, it ended up stained or scratched. Because this one is so clean, it was likely "killed"—slated for the paper but cut at the last minute to make room for more text or an advertisement.

It was filed away in a newspaper "morgue" (archive) under file #665, where it sat for decades until it found its way into the light again.

Why It Matters Today

In an era of high-definition digital archives, holding a physical "working" photo like this reminds us that history was once hand-painted, manually typed, and physically filed. It’s not just a photo of Allen Ludden; it’s a physical piece of the 1962 news cycle.

From now on, "a night at the opera," concert or theater is more apt to mean a seat in your own living room than in the Grand Tier. Television has worked this change. Since you are now responsible for the setting of your theater at home, it behooves you to see that it has something of the glam- you will want our you associate with theater-going. To achieve a gala mood harmonious colors, comfortable chairs (possibly the excellent ones which swivel), a cushioned carpet, a galaxy of small tables for ash trays and drinks. conveniently placed. For its part, television is creating increasingly good programs to inspire your decorative efforts. To us, it seems that opera is the field of music which opens the most exciting new vistas for this medium. 

During the past year both CBS and NBC have experimented with opera, tailoring it to meet the requirements of the home screen. For example CBS presented Carmen and La Traviata; NBC has sponsored Madame Butterfly and The Tales of Hoffman. Response to these productions was so enthusiastic that they can be definitely counted as harbingers of a larger operatic future for television. It is interesting to note that though audiences in auditoriums are still debating the question of opera-in-English, the television audience is. solidly in favor of opera-in-English. This would seem to prove that in the friendly, familiar confines of our own living rooms, we like to know what is going on. Having established itself as a favorite guest and an accomplished one, we expect this delightful newcomer, television, to speak our language.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
source: House and Garden Magazine | July 1950

It's not at all surprising that spring-or the Vernal Equinox, as it is known in less romantic, more erudite circles-arrived right on schedule (March 21) this year. Nor is it so surprising that three of TV's loveliest singers were on hand to hail the season with the lilting lyrics of "Spring Is Here"- a standby since 1938, when Rodgers and Hart wrote it for the musical comedy, "I Married An Angel."

The words, music and occasion facing the three singers might have been the same, but look at the results!

Dinah Shore and Bob Banner, producer-director of her show, chose a greenhouse and the planting of flow-to interpret her mood. "Once you start planting," says says Dinah, "spring is really here." For good measure, they included gentle rain. For Jo Stafford, who felt that the song was plaintive, producers Berni Gould and Paul Harrison chose a setting that "evoked the mood of the song, in a way that was faithful to the simple sincerity of Jo's own singing." Result: an abstract garden, pure of line, suggesting spring. Jane Froman, who said all she ever wanted to do on the first day of spring was "to look," sat before a little stone wall effect and sang as though she were soaking up the wonders of na- ture.

"Even if you're 100 years old," said producer-director Byron Paul, "you must be awed by the first beautiful spring day. That word 'beautiful' is visual-you just want to look. That's why we staged the number as we did."

 Stunt-tester Kit Merri- man tries to ring doughnut-shaped pie on rod balanced over James Mack's face. At right, Bud Collyer watches Roxanne snap results.

The producers of Beat the Clock might just as well have used the tag of another show, Chance of a Life- time, because that's what they give the ladies when it comes to throwing things. Alas for the men who play target; the better the woman's aim (with whipped-cream pies), the bet- ter the prizes.

Glamor girl Roxanne, decorative aid to emcee Bud Collyer, is sure of this: there's nothing a woman likes better than throwing things at her husband-unless it's watching another woman throwing things at another husband. Roxanne remembers one woman who shouted gleefully, just as she hurled a custard pie at her spouse: "I've been waiting 10 years to do this!"

The show's stunts are suggested by two professional pranksters, who furnish 20 ideas a week. Seven of these must prove workable. Before a stunt is used, it is tested four times by four sets of stand-in contestants. During the tryouts, two cases of canned whipped cream are used regularly.

As the funniest stunt, Jean Hollander, co-producer of the show, nominates this gem: "Mother and children bandaged Daddy right up to his eyes, leaving him just room to breathe. Then everyone squirted Daddy with cream.'

Five years and 1900-plus gags ago, the show used "intellectual-type stunts," which required "some thinking." But no more.

Toughest stunt, which defied solution for 32 weeks while the jack- pot increased $100 per week: trying to put two toupees, suspended by strings just a little too far apart, into an open-crowned stovepipe hat worn contestant, without using by the hands.

How was it done? Just as Roxanne and Bud demonstrated. You merely had to set one toupee in motion by blowing at it, after getting the first toupee in the hat.

Show business should be the easiest place in the world to find the kind of guys and dolls to play the kind of guys and dolls called for by The Damon Runyon Theater. For reasons utterly perplexing to the show's producers, however, such people are not growing plentifully on show-business trees.

The big problem has been finding the dolls, such as the four shown on these pages. Generally speaking, the Runyon Doll is a luscious dame with a heart of gold, who is forever trying to get her larceny-minded guy to go straight. Additionally, she must have the flavor of a Brooklyn-Bronx accent, and that's the stickler.

There's not a voice coach in Hollywood that the Runyon Theater casting director isn't ready to shoot right through the heart-for they're the ones, apparently, who teach the star- lets their broad A's. And who wants a cultured doll?

below: Vivan Blaine, Marlin Erskine, Adele Jergens and Jean Lewis

Star Tonight is the magic carpet that whisks aspiring young actors to stardom-but only for one night. The program, a series of half-hour live dramas on ABC, gives these hopefuls their first star billing, in plays writ- ten especially for them or chosen to fit their talents.

Anne Edwards, for example, got her chance one Thursday night in Rod Serling's "Strength of Steel," in which she played a young Army widow.

Anne had been spotted originally by Helen Hayes while a University of North Carolina drama student. From campus, Miss Edwards became an understudy in the Chicago company of "The Moon Is Blue"-and never got on the stage.

She then became a stand-in for Miss Hayes-and never appeared before an audience.

Finally, for a year she tested stunts for Beat The Clock-and didn't get on the air.

Then came Star Tonight.

THE blondes, brunettes and red- heads whose eyes and hearts used to be set only on motion pictures are now storming the television studios of Hollywood and New York.

Out of the hundreds who besiege the production offices and haunt the model agencies, only a few will succeed. But hope always runs high. The next telephone call may be the one that will launch a brilliant career.

That was the way Judy Tyler achieved her role as Princess Summerfall Winterspring on the Howdy Doody show. It's the hope of pretty young aspirants like Siri, Marion Moore, Shirley Cotler, Georgia Landeau, Linda Lombard, Dorothy Hart, and many others.

Two years ago, Judy was picked out of the Copacabana chorus line by Jimmy Durante for a bit part on a show. She got other jobs, but it was still on a now and then basis. Then she heard they were looking for a girl who could sing on the Howdy Doody show. She auditioned with more than 200 others.

"I was lucky," she says. "I could sing, dance and work puppets and I look like an Indian, actually like the Indian Princess puppet they used before they decided to have a live girl." Now she's making between $25,000 and $30,000 a year.

In a recent show, when these TV Guide pictures were made, Hope had to change into evening clothes, a sailor's suit, soldier uniform and military police garb. The various costumes made the neat pile shown in the small picture at left.

The script allowed only moments for each change. Hope not only made them all on schedule, but kept the sketches moving at top speed.

The backstage pictures tell part of the story. A trained staff of assistants waited in the wings. As Hope rushed offstage, wriggling out of one costume, they got the next ready for him. With the last button in place, Hope would hurry back to the stage for his next round of jokes.

In some cases, the dialogue already had started while Hope was in the middle of a change, yet he was back right on cue.

The quick change routine increased Hope's respect for the Navy. "All those buttons," he said. "Wow!"

The first collaboration of the Gold Dust Twins -another name for the successful team- was a radio quizzer named Winner Take All. Mark, a West Coast announcer, had come East with the idea in 1941. He met Bill, a fairly successful writer and director, and showed him the idea. Bill tried to sell it to CBS but an executive vetoed it. It gathered dust until 1946 when it was finally launched.

The Keystone of Empire

Winner Take All has also been on TV, but is more famous as the keystone of the expanding Goodson-Todman empire.

That empire now includes these "packages," at these "package" prices: Two For the Money. $20,000; The Web, $12,500; It's News To Me, $11,000; The Name's the Same, $10,000; I've Got a Secret, $10,000; What's My Line?, $10,000; Beat the Clock, $8,000.

Of these totals, Bill and Mark's slices come off the top and make them very high salaried personages indeed.

Bill and Mark's careers as producers have not been entirely free of grief. A particular sore spot is the case of Hal Block.

Todman says: "Hal never was able to live with the idea of being a celebrity. When he started on the show he had no trouble at all. But after a little publicity..."

Dorothy Kilgallen has quite a few critics too, although Bill denies they receive more complaints about her than the others. "Dorothy is a great game player. Best I've ever seen. She's a good deductive reasoner and is loaded with feminine intuition. No, we haven't had many complaints about her."

They're Proud of Daly

The pride of the Goodson-Todman enterprises, of course, is John Daly, who seems to have the unabashed admiration of everyone. He's a moderator on both What's My Line? and It's News To Me and has an apparently endless and effortless charm. Goodson says of John: "He rules a panel with a velvet whip," which sums it up pretty well.

Both Mark and Bill are inveterate games players themselves and this helps them dream up new games. Bill claims he went over to the Swopes (famed editor Herbert Bayard Swope) for the evening and found that the family plays What's My Line? every night, only with a tougher set of rules.

The lesson seems to be clear. If you want to be a successful TV producer, round up a few of your celebrity friends, see if you can't land John Daly as moderator, roll up your sleeves and make up a game. It's that easy.

EVE Arden, blonde star of the high-rating CBS show, Our Miss Brooks, is currently the darling of the Nation's schoolteachers for one good reason. She portrays a schoolmarm with plenty of glamor, instead of the usual spinsterish caricature.

This wasn't enough to send Eve soaring to television success, but it helped. Also helpful is the fact that she is a gifted comedienne, surrounded by a cast of experienced laugh-getters.

As for Eve herself, the laughs are coming easier these days. She has a busy life-television, radio, a husband and family. She's enjoying every minute of it, but things weren't always so happy.

"But life has battered me only slight- ly, less than most others," she said during an interview, "and I'm grateful."

Born Eunice Quedens in Mill Valley, Calif., something over 40 years ago, as Hollywood counts it, she inherited her hopes for the stage from her mother. She appeared in school plays. At 16, she applied for a job with Henry Duffy's stock company, then appearing in San Francisco.

She started with a two-line, walk-on role, then graduated to longer parts and then to a season with the Band Box Repertory Company in Los Angeles.

Eve moved into a Hollywood revue, then got her first real break when Lee Shubert cast her for a spot in the Ziegfeld Follies, which starred Fannie Brice. She was in the following edition of the Follies, when Bob Hope headed the cast, then returned to the West Coast in 1935 because of the death of her mother.

She made the first of her more than 40 pictures at that time. Eve branched out into radio in 1947 and was offered the principal role in the radio show Our Miss Brooks the following year. The program caught on, so much so that a pilot television film was made late in 1951. In February, 1952, the program made its television debut.

With success on the stage, in film, on radio and television, Eve's life would seem to have been unbrokenly happy. But she is the first to admit that this isn't true.

"I had all the things I wanted, but I couldn't enjoy them because of inner conflict," she says. "I felt a sense of re- sponsibility for everybody whose life touched mine. It was a little like trying to play God.

"Because I couldn't help everybody, I constantly found fault with myself."

Ed Sullivan, the Toast of the Town man, swaps town for country every chance he gets these days-to hie himself out to his new home (once occupied by Arlene Francis) and his nearly 200 acres of Connecticut farmland, 22 miles north- east of Bridgeport. A self-designated (and New York-born) "city slicker," Ed now happily is learning how much fodder will take a Guernsey or a Holstein through the winter, how many pounds of milk each gives a day, and what constitutes a cord of wood. However, the necessary work around the place, he stresses, is being done by real farmers.