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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.
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