Tweet Movies on TV in 1939

Looking through the weekly TV listings that the New York Times published in late 1939, one finds several theatrical films scheduled for airing in the afternoon or evening, and I thought I'd list some of them here. Of course, being listed in the NYT only means that these titles were scheduled, not that they were actually aired; there was always the possibility of last minute changes, especially at this early point. These were all aired on W2XBS, NBC's immediate predecessor to WNBT/WNBC. I imagine they were seen only in NYC and surrounding areas, and all in PM hours.

Now, what many of you are probably asking: were any silents aired? So, far, I haven't found any. There are ambiguous titles like "Power" and "Barcelona" that *might* be silent, but they could just as easily be industrial movies. This is only a sampling, and I haven't gone through all the TV listings for 1939-40, but it should provide a cross section of what movies were aired at the time.

18 Oct.
2.30-3.30: The Texas Ranger (1931, Sol Lesser/Columbia) Buck Jones

26 Oct.
8.30-9.30: Mutiny of the Elsinore (1937) British film with Paul Lukas

27 Oct.
2.30-3.30: Pilot X (1936, Puritan) Lona Andre, John Carroll

2 Nov.
2.30-3.45: Two Minutes to Play (1937, Victory) Herman Brix, Betty Compson

3 Nov.
8.30-9.40: Young and Beautiful (1934, Mascot) William Haines, Judith Allen

16 Nov.
2.30-3.30: Rose of Tralee (1937) Irish film with Dorothy Dare

18 Nov.
2.30-4: Alla en el Rancho Grande (1936) Mexican film with Tito Guizar

26 Nov.
8.30-9.45: The World Gone Mad (1933, Majestic) Pat O'Brien, Evelyn Brent

30 Nov.
8.30-10: Mayerling (1936) Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux

1 Dec.
2.30-3.30: Harlem Rides the Range (1939) Herb Jeffries

Obviously, mostly poverty row or overseas titles, even if some of them were surprisingly recent.

-Harold

[Mike Gebert]

Obviously, mostly poverty row or overseas titles, even if some of them were surprisingly recent.

I have always heard that the studios were very strict against giving aid and comfort to the enemy television by selling relatively recent films to them. Interesting to see that that applied even as early as the basically experimental prewar broadcasts.

My dad said that what made the Ealing comedies-- and Alec Guinness, who was in so many of them-- so famous in the 1950s was that they played on ABC back when it was the poorest of the networks and most in need of programming, and they enjoyed a lot of popularity for being high quality, pretty recent movies on TV when that was a real rarity.

My dad said that what made the Ealing comedies-- and Alec Guinness, who was in so many of them-- so famous in the 1950s was that they played on ABC back when it was the poorest of the networks and most in need of programming, and they enjoyed a lot of popularity for being high quality, pretty recent movies on TV when that was a real rarity.

Your Dad was right. I was just a little kid back in the early 1950's, but I remember a lot of British films running on our local station. They were actually pretty popular in our house because my dad had spent most of WWII with the 8th Air Force in England so he was familiar with most of the stars and had seen a lot of the films at the local cinema.

Even at that age, I enjoyed watching those films because he had seen them over there. No doubt I was the only kid in my second grade class (not to mention the whole school) who could recognize Alistair Sim or Will Hay.

I've always thought that this early exposure is what caused me to develop a lifelong love of British films.

18 Oct.
2.30-3.30: The Texas Ranger (1931, Sol Lesser/Columbia) Buck Jones

26 Oct.
8.30-9.30: Mutiny of the Elsinore (1937) British film with Paul Lukas

27 Oct.
2.30-3.30: Pilot X (1936, Puritan) Lona Andre, John Carroll

2 Nov.
2.30-3.45: Two Minutes to Play (1937, Victory) Herman Brix, Betty Compson

3 Nov.
8.30-9.40: Young and Beautiful (1934, Mascot) William Haines, Judith Allen

16 Nov.
2.30-3.30: Rose of Tralee (1937) Irish film with Dorothy Dare

18 Nov.
2.30-4: Alla en el Rancho Grande (1936) Mexican film with Tito Guizar

26 Nov.
8.30-9.45: The World Gone Mad (1933, Majestic) Pat O'Brien, Evelyn Brent

30 Nov.
8.30-10: Mayerling (1936) Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux

1 Dec.
2.30-3.30: Harlem Rides the Range (1939) Herb Jeffries

This reads like a typical RTE (Irish TV) sdhedule from my own youth in the early 70's. It's where I acquired my love of classic film.

Looking through the weekly TV listings that the New York Times published in late 1939, one finds several theatrical films scheduled for airing in the afternoon or evening, and I thought I'd list some of them here....
18 Oct.
2.30-3.30: The Texas Ranger (1931, Sol Lesser/Columbia) Buck Jones
26 Oct.
8.30-9.30: Mutiny of the Elsinore (1937) British film with Paul Lukas
27 Oct.
2.30-3.30: Pilot X (1936, Puritan) Lona Andre, John Carroll
2 Nov.
2.30-3.45: Two Minutes to Play (1937, Victory) Herman Brix, Betty Compson
3 Nov.
8.30-9.40: Young and Beautiful (1934, Mascot) William Haines, Judith Allen And SHAW & LEE!!
16 Nov.
2.30-3.30: Rose of Tralee (1937) Irish film with Dorothy Dare
18 Nov.
2.30-4: Alla en el Rancho Grande (1936) Mexican film with Tito Guizar
26 Nov.
8.30-9.45: The World Gone Mad (1933, Majestic) Pat O'Brien, Evelyn Brent
30 Nov.
8.30-10: Mayerling (1936) Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux
1 Dec.
2.30-3.30: Harlem Rides the Range (1939) Herb Jeffries

Obviously, mostly poverty row or overseas titles, even if some of them were surprisingly recent.

-Harold

I wish we still had local channels running this kind of stuff!

It looks like even back in 1939 MAYERLING was resigned to the PD shelf.

For these foreign films, how do you think they presented them? Straight with no subtitles? Dubbed?

For these foreign films, how do you think they presented them? Straight with no subtitles? Dubbed?

I've thought about that too, and I'd *guess* that W2XBS ran whatever prints the American distributors made available to them. Foreign films were often picked up for domestic release by poverty row studios and states' rights distributors (the sources for most of the domestic films), so that might explain why some of these were chosen for airing. Whatever format the American prints were in is probably how they were broadcast.

Presumably they ran without commercials, as no commercial TV licences were granted in the U.S. until July 1941 (and W2XBS became WNBT).

-Harold

For these foreign films, how do you think they presented them? Straight with no subtitles? Dubbed?

Interesting question. Some time ago I wondered when the process of subtitling itself came in, and what format it took. Information turned out to be quite scarce but very intriguing. The Italian market was receiving subtitled films as early as 1928, although the titles sound more like silent-era titles superimposed over the picture than actual translation of the dialogue.

By means of deduction, plus a large guess, I think the foreign language films were most likely shown straight. If only second-tier material was being offered for television broadcast, I doubt they would have gone to the extra expense of dubbing (according to IMDb, `Allá en el Rancho Grande' was released in the US as Spanish language only).

Also, it's hard enough to encourage English-speaking audiences to come and see subtitled films today, let alone in 1939 when the whole thing would have seemed quite odd for the average viewer. And thirdly, demand for foreign films was so low at the time that I can only imagine that they would appeal almost exclusively to their native-speaking audiences.

If someone else is more knowledgeable in this area, please step in!

Actually, I don't think that any of the three scenarios are impossible. Subtitling was quite easy to do, even in the early '30s with acid etching (each subtitle would have a "plate" that would melt into a coat of wax on the emulsion side, and then the exposed emulsion etched away). Optical printing and dupe negs with "B" rolled subtitles also made this possible.

As an aside, Technicolor had a very interesting technique for subtitling—titles would be printed up with the frame line and soundtrack as part of an unobtrusive black bar on the bottom of the frame. The dye matrices would be made so that at that footage count, the area where the subtitle was was blank. So you had the film effectively being print around the subtitles.

Dubbing was particularly inexpensive and was usually done in New York, anyway. And I don't know about the Guizar film, but I wouldn't trust IMDb's technical specs, which are usually woefully inadequate.

But, given the experimental nature of these broadcasts, anything is possible. It was a captive audience, so whatever you put on, they watched. It's also possible that these shows were hosted, and that during breaks, the scenario was explained.

We may never know!

It certainly might have been technically possible to dub or subtitle the film, but my question is: why would they have bothered? Were they that hard-up for material that they would go to the trouble, or would the demand warrant it?

Another factor that just occurred to me - the size of the television screens of that era would not make subtitles very practical.

There are some later (1940s) schedules online at http://www.tvhistory.tv/tv_forecast.htm - boy, people must have liked amateur boxing in those days ...

There are some later (1940s) schedules online at http://www.tvhistory.tv/tv_forecast.htm - boy, people must have liked amateur boxing in those days ...

Very early on, TV stations realized that broadcasting a sports event was cheaper than paying people to come dance and sing for two hours, and it was a lot easier to stage from a technical standpoint.

But big-league sports teams were wary about the fans staying home rather than coming out to the ballpark, so the costs to broadcast pro baseball or football were high. Plus, it was a problem in those days for the cameraman to constantly pan around, trying to keep track of a ball every couple of seconds.

The advantage of boxing and wrestling was that the promoters were glad to have the coverage, so broadcast rights were very cheap. And just one or two stationary camera set-ups could cover all the action. And that's why there was so much boxing and wrestling on early television!

Dubbing was particularly inexpensive and was usually done in New York, anyway. And I don't know about the Guizar film, but I wouldn't trust IMDb's technical specs, which are usually woefully inadequate.

But, given the experimental nature of these broadcasts, anything is possible. It was a captive audience, so whatever you put on, they watched. It's also possible that these shows were hosted, and that during breaks, the scenario was explained.

We may never know!

I do not recall any foreign film I watched on television as a wee vamplet being subtitled. My childhood was a particularly deprived one as films on television go, but we still got Godzilla and Steve Reeves films, and they were never subtitled, always dubbed. I might add that to this day I consider subtitling either the Big Lizard or Reeves as blasphemy.

[Mike Gebert]

Mayerling was a big international hit and while I doubt it played the sticks in America, I don't think it got showed on TV because it was the cheapest thing they could have gotten their hands on. More likely, there was some connection to the distributor (Pax Film Inc., whoever that was) and it was a bit of a coup to get such a well-known film compared to the others on the list.

My guess is that it was subtitled because, presumably, subtitled prints existed (the NY Times review certainly gives no hint of dubbing in its praise for the performances). Later on, I agree, subtitles on TV would have been extremely rare, but 1939's experimental broadcasts are no particular indicator of later commercial practice.

[Christopher Jacobs]

I would expect that the people who owned TV sets in 1939-40 and could actually watch these broadcasts were reasonably well-off and/or hobbyists who built their own sets, and perhaps more open to watching foreign or off-beat films, for the exclusivity as much as for the novelty, and not necessarily for simple entertainment or time-killing as TV became in the 1950s and remains today. I wonder if there are any records of estimated viewing numbers in those pre-Nielson days. I imagine they were maybe in the hundreds or possibly thousands, rather than the millions we're used to today. Not many more than could pack a New York theatre for a single show or two.

Just a thought. Perhaps the foreign studios had already made dubbed versions for English-speaking theatrical markets and used those to make TV prints for this country.

I wonder if there are any records of estimated viewing numbers in those pre-Nielson days. I imagine they were maybe in the hundreds or possibly thousands, rather than the millions we're used to today. Not many more than could pack a New York theatre for a single show or two.

At the link I posted earlier they estimate 1941 television ownership at around 7,000, which seems amazing. I don't know how they arrived at that figure. Some stations mailed their schedules directly to their viewers, so perhaps figures exist on that.

I've had a poke around, and I have not yet found any evidence that `Alla en el Rancho Grande' received any kind of English-language release, but I have found a reference to what are described as `captions' in one Australian review of `Mayerling'. I tend to agree with the idea that audiences of the time would have been self-selecting, and more likely to be interested in viewing a foreign film.

Interesting stuff - I wish I knew more about it (I can leave the amateur boxing, though).

Here's an odd little piece I came across from a 1939 newspaper (original is at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/17592131):

JUST as Warners were first on the market with a talkie, R K O hopes to beat the gun with films for television. ' Gunga Din', the studio's most lavish production has been re-edited for television purposes. The 12 000-foot film has been cut to 1,000 feet with a running time of 10 minutes and mostly close-up shots left in. The television film will be given a trial run in New York.

I've seen plenty of those old RKOs squeezed into an hour time slot (in fact, those vintage TV schedules suggest that practice is as old as television itself), but ten minutes?

Some early prints I have seen of foreign films for English audiences had silent style intertitles. A little disconcerting as the whole picture would 'go off' whilst you read the translation.