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Shows That Aired In Both Black & White And Color

C

Corky Marlowe

This topic has been bouncing around my head for a while, and if it's somewhere in the dark recesses of this section already, I apologize...

How many PRIME-TIME network shows aired in both black & white and color?

Here's what I can think of, by network: (Note: I'm not counting shows like "Dragnet" and "The Garry Moore Show" that left the air for a time and came back in color, nor am I counting news shows)

CBS--
The Andy Griffith Show (the show with the strongest opinions concerning the merits of B/W vs.color)
Gomer Pyle, USMC
The Beverly Hillbillies
Petticoat Junction
The Lucy Show
Gilligan's Island
My Favorite Martian
My Three Sons (from ABC)
Hazel (from NBC)
The Joey Bishop Show(from NBC, and the only one AFAIK that went from color to B/W)
Gunsmoke
Lassie
The Wild, Wild West
Lost In Space
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Red Skelton Hour
The Jackie Gleason Show
The Danny Kaye Show (I think)
What's My Line?
I've Got A Secret
Password (maybe?)
Candid Camera

ABC--
Bewitched
F Troop
The Flintstones
The Farmer's Daughter (?)
The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet
The Fugitive
Combat!
Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea
Peyton Place
Wagon Train (from NBC)
The Lawrence Welk Show
The Hollywood Palace

NBC--
(Here's where it gets fuzzy...They probably had a lot of shows make the switch before I can remember,or before I was even around...Anyhoo:)

Daniel Boone
The Man From UNCLE
I Dream Of Jeannie
And, I'm guessing, Perry Como, Dinah Shore, and some other variety shows that started airing in color as early as the late 50s.

Anyone got any more?
 
One more ABC--
12 O'Clock High (...a QM Production)

Do pilot/first episodes count?--
Hogan's Heroes (CBS) and
(IIRC) Get Smart (NBC/CBS)
 
The Farmer's Daughter did air in color in its last season (1965-1966)

Both the pilots of Get Smart and Hogan's Heroes were in black and white.

Please Don't Eat The Daisies aired its first season in 1965-1966 in black and white and then the second season in color.
 
Another ABC....

American Bandstand

In one of those American Bandstand books, Dick Clark made the claim that AB was the last ABC show to go color in 1967.
 
Corky Marlowe said:
The Joey Bishop Show(from NBC, and the only one AFAIK that went from color to B/W)
Click to expand...

The original "Price Is Right" with Bill Cullen was "in living color on NBC", but when it moved to ABC, it had to settle for black and white.
 
The original "Price Is Right" with Bill Cullen was "in living color on NBC", but when it moved to ABC, it had to settle for black and white.
Forgot about that one...Also, I do kind of remember Bandstand being B/W till the fall of '67.
 
Wasn't the final episode of Perry Mason in color vs. B&W for the rest of the series?

There was also an episode of The Twilight Zone where Robert Duvall was obsessed with a dollhouse in a museum where the scenes inside the dollhouse were in color.

Would shows that were in color but had special episodes in B&W count? The main ones I can think of were the interview episodes of MASH.
 
Wasn't the final episode of Perry Mason in color vs. B&W for the rest of the series?
I don't think it was the final ep, and for some reason (this has come up elsewhere on the classic TV boards) it seems as though it was just the second half of the episode.
 
Corky Marlowe said:
Wasn't the final episode of Perry Mason in color vs. B&W
for the rest of the series?I don't think it was the final ep, and for some reason (this has come up
elsewhere on the classic TV boards) it seems as though it was just the
second half of the episode.
Click to expand...

Oh, you mean "The Case of the Ozzard of Wiz"? ;D

Actually, according to this website...

http://www.perrymasontvseries.com/pm_color.htm

...it was "The Case of the Twice-Told Twist" which aired late in the
last (65-66) season, but not the final first-run. Those honors, IIRC,
went to "The Case of the Final Fade-Out" in normal B&W in which
Dick Clark played the guilty perp and creator Erle Stanley Gardner
had a cameo as a judge.
 
...during the first season of Branded, the first seven episodes were in black&white before the series shifted to color on 14 March 1965 for the three-part story "The Mission." Then, on 4 April 1965 with the episode "The First Kill," it returned to black&white for the remainder of the season...

...The Avengers was run on ABC in black&white from its 28 March 1966 premiere to 27 January 1967, when the first episode produced in color, "The Fear Merchants," led off the series' second U.S. season. A three-minute "color test" film using the Steed and Peel characters, "The Strange Case of the Missing Corpse," appears to have been shown by ABC sometime in late 1966, perhaps as an hour-filler at the end of a movie, to promote the upcoming color season...
 
In this topic, it should be mentioned that at least two syndicated shows were made in both color and B&W. Perhaps the most well-known is Superman whose later episodes were filmed in color and also The Cisco Kid. In both instances, the makers of those shows must have seen that color would one day be the rule rather than the exception and funded color filming even when most viewers still had B&W sets.
 
There was also an episode of The Twilight Zone where Robert Duvall was obsessed with a dollhouse in a museum where the scenes inside the dollhouse were in color.

Actually, that part of episode was "colorized" in the 1980's. I saw it recently on Sci-Fi and they showed the original -not colorized version.
Too bad. It really added to the added to the story.
 
mleach said:
Another ABC....

American Bandstand

In one of those American Bandstand books, Dick Clark made the claim that AB was the last ABC show to go color in 1967.
Click to expand...

In fact, while Bandstand was still produced in Philadelphia at WFIL-TV (now WPVI), the show actually was aired in color in '57 (locally only in Philly) from time to time. Of course, it was still in black and white on the ABC television network. It wasn't until the fall of 1967 that Bandstand went to all color on ABC.
 
landtuna said:
McHale's Navy
Click to expand...

McHale's Navy (the ABC series) aired from 1962-1966. All episodes were in black and white. However, some episodes were colorized in the early 1990's. Unfortunately, the technology at the time left a lot to be desired and the color was pretty crappy. There were two full color theatrical movies, the original "McHale's Navy" (1964) and "McHale's Navy Joins The Air Force" (1965). Ernest Borgnine was not on the second movie. Colorization techniques have improved since the 90's. Check out the color episodes of The Three Stooges, available on DVD. These 70 year old shorts were specially computer enhanced to where you'd think they were made just yesterday. The colors are that good! Now if Universal were to use the same techniques like the ones used by Columbia used to clean up and colorize the Stooges shorts, it would be sensational for many of their black and white catalogue of classic TV hits. Personally, I love the orignal "McHale's Navy". I loved it as a kid, watching it in first run on ABC.
 
"The Flintstones" aired in black and white in first run on ABC, but, to my knowledge, all syndicated airings were in color(I wasn't even aware the show had ever been in black and white til 'Entertainment Tonight' aired a brief bw clip accompanying some story in the early '80s).
 
I don't know if it has been brought up yet, but several episodes of The Lone Ranger are in Color. Probably the last season.
 
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