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MORE EARLY SCREEN GEMS SYNDICATION OF COLUMBIA MOVIES

H

Hal Erickson

Guest
Previously I posted the list of 104 Columbia feature films released to television in Screen Gems' first TV-syndication package in 1956.
This was quickly followed by Screen Gems' "Hollywood Mystery Package", consisting of 52 B-pictures. Most of these were from Columbia's "Boston Blackie", "Crime Doctor", "Ellery Queen", "Lone Wolf" and "Whistler" series, plus at least one of the two "Bulldog Drummond" films made for Columbia in 1947. Also in this package were a quartet of non-series melodramas: "Soul of a Monster", "Return of the Vampire", "Cry of the Werewolf" and "Strange Affair." I'm not sure which other titles were in this package: evidently a handful of "series" films were withheld at the time.
A few months before Screen Gems came up with its legendary 52-title "Shock Theater" package in the fall of 1957, the company issued 39 more Columbia features--mostly "A" pictures, with a few Bs and programmers included--under the blanket title "Hollywood Premiere Parade." Most of the stations which had purchased the original 104-title "Hollywood Movie Parade"in 1956 snatched this package up as well, though in several markets the new group of 39 was purchased by rival stations (In New York for example, WCBS got "Movie Parade", while WABC claimed "Premiere Parade"; while in Milwaukee, the two packages were divvied up between NBC affiliate WTMJ and CBS-owned WXIX).
Here are the titles included in "Hollywood Premiere Parade" (1957):
ADVENTURE IN MANHATTAN
ATLANTIC CONVOY
THE AWFUL TRUTH
THE BLACK ARROW
THE CORPSE CAME COD
CRAIG’S WIFE
THE DARING YOUNG MAN
DEAD RECKONING
DESTROYER
FLIGHT LIEUTENANT
GO WEST YOUNG LADY
GOLDEN BOY
GOOD LUCK MR. YATES
HE STAYED FOR BREAKFAST
HER HUSBAND’S AFFAIRS
THE HOWARDS OF VIRGINIA
THE IMPATIENT YEARS
JAM SESSION
JOHNNY O’CLOCK
KEEPER OF THE BEES
THE MISSING JUROR
ONE WAY TO LOVE
ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS
OVER 21
PORT SAID
ROMANCE OF THE REDWOODS
ROUGH TOUGH AND READY
SOMETHING TO SHOUT ABOUT
TALK OF THE TOWN
TARS AND SPARS
THEY ALL KISSED THE BRIDE
TRAMP TRAMP TRAMP (Not Langdon, but Jackie Gleason & Jack Durant, 1942--a BUCK PRIVATES ripoff)
TWENTIETH CENTURY
WALK A CROOKED MILE
THE WHOLE TOWN’S TALKING
WOMAN IN DISTRESS
YOU BELONG TO ME
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU
YOU WERE NEVER LOVELIER
 
In New York, You Can't Take It With You was initially acquired by WRCA-TV (now WNBC) in early 1957 as part of a one-picture deal with Screen Gems; the debut screening of that, in fact, inaugurated a Sunday night edition of what in a few weeks from then would become Movie 4. (Channel 4 also acquired one pre-'48 Warner Bros. picture from A.A.P., The Roaring Twenties.) However, YCTIWY did go to WABC by the end of '57.

By the early '60's, many of the titles in this group were seen on WNEW-TV, and in a period spanning 1965 to 1970 several were shown on WNBC-TV's Movie 4. The pictures seen on Movie 4 in that stretch from this initial "Hollywood Premiere Parade" group (mostly weekdays at 4:30 PM, though some of the "B" pics may've been on the short-lived Sunday night/Monday morning 12:30 AM edition that came after The Saint between October 1965 and September 1966) were:
ADVENTURE IN MANHATTAN
THE AWFUL TRUTH
THE DARING YOUNG MAN
DEAD RECKONING
DESTROYER
FLIGHT LIEUTENANT
GO WEST YOUNG LADY
GOLDEN BOY
HER HUSBAND’S AFFAIRS
THE HOWARDS OF VIRGINIA
THE IMPATIENT YEARS
JOHNNY O’CLOCK
ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS
OVER 21
TALK OF THE TOWN
WALK A CROOKED MILE
YOU BELONG TO ME
YOU WERE NEVER LOVELIER

In short, 18 out of 39. But if you count You Can't Take It With You (which aired three times between January and May of 1957), Channel 4 actually aired 19 out of that group of 39. There may've been a few titles - The Corpse Came C.O.D., perhaps? - that aired on their late-night umbrella, The Great Great Show, but I can't say for sure.

And as for WXIX, everyone knows that that station is now WVTV, while the WXIX calls now reside in Newport, KY/Cincinnati, OH. ;)

EDIT: By the 1970's, several of these films took up residence on WOR-TV.
 
Several films from the "Hollywood Premiere Package" were later bundled into another Screen Gems collection in late 1959, which included both Columbia and Universal films. Thus, such "film debuts" as GILDA, COVER GIRL, THE JOLSON STORY, A SONG TO REMEMBER, ALI BABA AND THE 40 THIEVES, THE BANK DICK, THE KILLERS and THE NAKED CITY were mixed in with such second-runs as GOLDEN BOY, JOHNNY O'CLOCK, ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS and WALK A CROOKED MILE.
Later on I'll post the 52 films included in yet another, less expensive Screen Gems package from 1957, "The Hollywood Value Parade." This came out around the same time as the first "Shock Theater" package, the titles of which can be found on this site:

http://myweb.wvnet.edu/e-gor/tvhorrorhosts/shoklist.html

In the meantime, I'm trying to determine the titles of the 104 Columbia and Universal features (52 from each studio) that were included in Screen Gems' early-1958 "Triple Crown" Package, which also contained eight feature-lengths dramas filmed by SG for CBS' Playhouse 90 anthology (for the record, those eight titles were AIN'T NO TIME FOR GLORY, CONFESSION, CLIPPER SHIP, HOMEWARD BORNE, THE BLACKWELL STORY, THE COUNTRY HUSBAND, MASSACRE AT SAND CREEK and SO SOON TO DIE). I do know that this package included Columbia's IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, LOST HORIZON MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, HOLIDAY and HERE COMES MR. JORDAN, as well as Universal's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, BRUTE FORCE, ALL MY SONS, AN ACT OF MURDER, ROGUE'S REGIMENT and SINGAPORE (the W.C. Fields and Abbott&Costello Universals were NOT part of this manifest however).

BTW, I'm well aware of the history of WXIX-TV,since I live in Milwaukee!
 
Hal Erickson said:
Several films from the "Hollywood Premiere Package" were later bundled into another Screen Gems collection in late 1959, which included both Columbia and Universal films. Thus, such "film debuts" as GILDA, COVER GIRL, THE JOLSON STORY, A SONG TO REMEMBER, ALI BABA AND THE 40 THIEVES, THE BANK DICK, THE KILLERS and THE NAKED CITY were mixed in with such second-runs as GOLDEN BOY, JOHNNY O'CLOCK, ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS and WALK A CROOKED MILE.
Click to expand...

I.I.N.M., as of the early 1960's The Killers and A Song to Remember aired on WOR-TV in New York, which is probably a hint of where that 1959 package (or at least the bulk of it) had gone. Ali Baba, The Killers, A Song to Remember and The Naked City ultimately joined the last four titles you mentioned here among the Columbia (and some pre-'48 Universal) flicks at WNBC in the 1965-70 stretch. I presume four Abbott & Costello films - Hold That Ghost, Hit the Ice, High Society and Buck Privates Come Home - were part of that same late 1959 Screen Gems package, since they too had been at WOR pre-1965 and WNBC from then to 1970. However, The Jolson Story stayed with WOR well into the 1970's. As for The Bank Dick, it appeared to run in the early '60's on WNEW-TV, which also had Only Angels Have Wings in that same time period; however, the Fields film was a WOR staple in the '70's, after playing in the latter half of the '60's on WABC-TV.

Hal Erickson said:
In the meantime, I'm trying to determine the titles of the 104 Columbia and Universal features (52 from each studio) that were included in Screen Gems' early-1958 "Triple Crown" Package, which also contained eight feature-lengths dramas filmed by SG for CBS' Playhouse 90 anthology (for the record, those eight titles were AIN'T NO TIME FOR GLORY, CONFESSION, CLIPPER SHIP, HOMEWARD BORNE, THE BLACKWELL STORY, THE COUNTRY HUSBAND, MASSACRE AT SAND CREEK and SO SOON TO DIE). I do know that this package included Columbia's IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, LOST HORIZON MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, HOLIDAY and HERE COMES MR. JORDAN, as well as Universal's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, BRUTE FORCE, ALL MY SONS, AN ACT OF MURDER, ROGUE'S REGIMENT and SINGAPORE (the W.C. Fields and Abbott&Costello Universals were NOT part of this manifest however).
Click to expand...

This sounds like the package that WCBS-TV had acquired when it was first offered. In fact, two of the titles - It Happened One Night and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - were the first two screenings of the station's special Schaefer Award Theatre presentations when that program (famous for its four commercial interruptions, and run in place of the usual The Late Show) debuted in 1959. Mr. Smith . . . and All My Sons, from what I could tell, later wound up in another Screen Gems package that, until 1968, was held by WABC-TV (both aired that year on what ultimately became The 4:30 Movie), and then yet another which was picked up after 1969 by WOR-TV; Here Comes Mr. Jordan, in the mid-1960's, went to WNBC (however, as of February 1965 it was on WOR-TV).

As for Shock . . . was there a reason why only 17 of the 52 films from that package (and 13 out of the 20 that constituted the supplementary Son of Shock from '58) would have been run from 1965 to 1968 on WNBC-TV while other pictures from the two horror groups in question were scattered among WOR, WNEW and WABC in that same stretch? Another slicing and dicing, perhaps?
 
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