Made-for-TV-Movies - On September 23, 1961, the NBC network premiered SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES, the first program series to "successfully" broadcast major studio films (made after 1948). The initial telecast featured How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) starring Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable. Before this series, television aired old re-edited westerns, British films and movies (many "B" grade) that had been made no later than 1948. As the motion picture industry saw television as less of a threat and competitor and more of a customer for their films, the market was soon on its way to being flooded with all sorts of contemporary movie productions. According to Anthony Slide the author of The American Film Industry: A Historical Dictionary the first feature-length film made specifically for television was The Three Musketeers (1950) produced by Hal Roach and aired on the CBS network under the sponsorship of Magnavox. In 1964, Universal Studios began producing on a regular basis what the American public is now accustomed to see as the movie of the week format. The first of these movies was based on an Ernest Hemingway story, The Killers starring Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes, Angie Dickenson and Ronald Reagan. However, this film was judged too violent for television and was subsequently released to the movie theaters. Actually, the first of these made-for-television movie was See How They Run starring John Forsythe premiering on October 7, 1964. The 1970s ushered in the cooperative effort known as "Operation Prime Time" (created by MCA Television Ltd. in 1976) which was a group of independent television stations who pooled their financial resources to produce quality first run programs. Their first project was an adaptation of Taylor Caldwell's novel Testimony for Two Men (1977) starring David Birney, David Huffman and Linda Purl. The first made-for-television movie using a single camera videotape system was Sandcastles (10/17/72), a romance about a lonely girl who communed with a man she thought dead. Prisoners of the Lost Planet (1983) made by Universal Studios was the first tele-movie made for Showtime Cable television. This sci-fi rip-off of the Raider of the Lost Ark (1981) starred Kay Lenz and Richard Hatch. TRIVIA NOTE: According to Movie Facts and Feats: A Guinness Record Book (Sterling, 1980), The Bride (1929) was the first film to be experimentally transmitted on television on August 19, 1929 from the Baird Television Studios in London. Later beginning on April 6, 1931, the feature-length film Police Patrol (1925) was transmitted (over a six-day period) by W2XCD out of Passaic, New Jersey.