What I watched: The only surviving episode of Rehearsal Time, a musical revue show that aired on KTLA. Best guesses date this episode to Thursday, September 22, 1949. The series (or at least this episode) starred Bonnie Jo Calder, Dick Vine, Priscilla Gates, Vivi Allen, Charlie Lampkin, and Murray Wagner. (I’m writing this from narration over the closing credits, so my apologies if there are any misspellings.) It’s available to watch via Internet Archive.
What happened: We open on an ad for Sealy mattresses that would do any contemporary podcasters proud. Our hosts Calder and Vine, a pretty if generic-looking white couple, note the passage of summer into autumn and sing a verse of “Harvest Moon.” Just as they kiss, Gates comes up to interrupt them, saying that “it’s time for rehearsal.” But one of their number (Wagner) is still asleep — which cues up another more involved mattress ad.
Finally, the commercial duties are done, and the cast has been given cue sheets by “the writers”, who apparently are “in an autumnal mood too.” Vine tells the black pianist Charlie to play inside while he does a hammy number in the backyard. The piano goes on as Allen awkwardly as if she has someone in her arms. Like The Gay 90s Revue, there’s a very Twin Peaks feeling to it.
After that, there’s a duet apparently called “September in the Rain” (which I don’t usually think of as a pleasant experienced.) This leads into yet another mattress promo to close out the show. This finishes with an announcement that the show will be moving to Wednesday night
What I thought: Up until this point, I’ve been describing television scheduling in a slightly anachronistic way. For the sake of convenience, I write that Crusade in Europe aired on Thursdays on ABC at 9:30 in the same way I might say that The Big Bang Theory now airs on Mondays on CBS at 8:00 — that is, as if anyone across the country could tune in to their local ABC station at the same time and watch the same episode of Crusade. But TV in this period was deeply regional in the same way that radio is today. You’d be able to hear or see the big hits everywhere, but not usually in the same time or place.
In part these regional gaps were due to limitations in technology. Several major cities didn’t even have television and, due to a Korean War-era restriction, wouldn’t get it for several years. I’ve used dates and times taken from the New York papers, which are usually the earliest dates for each program. But schedules just a few cities away could be drastically different — they might get recorded episodes of Howdy Doody or other popular shows from weeks ago, or air their own local programming. There was some simultaneous broadcasting on the Eastern seaboard, mostly for major sporting events, but it was too much of a hassle to do it for every show. Besides, in this age of largely episodic and little-watched scripted programming, what would be the point?
Rehearsal Time is exactly one of those local shows, airing on LA independent network KTLA. In 1949, coast-to-coast broadcasting was still a pipe dream. West Coast viewers thus had an almost completely different set of TV shows than those in the East. This would change as television shifted from live to filmed programming (and from New York to LA), but for the time being those few hundred sets in California would be tuned to local shows. These shows are mostly lost to history, including early incarnations of the Emmys and Oscars.
We may not have those historic occasions, but hey, we have Rehearsal Time! The show itself is a pleasant but mostly dull collection of music and dance. What seems most notable is the amount of advertising, including two filmed bumpers and two in-character ads, which total at least a third of the episode’s 14-minute length. (Wait a minute, that’s the same ratio as a modern network show…)
Rehearsal Time is actually most reminiscent of one of those low-budget, oddly-formatted DuMont variety shows. As in The Morey Amsterdam Show or The School House, there’s a strange additional layer of fictionality pressed on to. The actors play themselves as performers, but also play plucky characters who are given songs to sing by external “writers.” These characters make unconvincing suggestions that they’re improvising and deciding to play one piece over another. Overall, it comes across as an attempt to artificially generate the theatrical spontaneity that early television was known for. But, as when the rock band comes on stage for the first encore, nobody is fooled.
Oh yeah, there’s a black guy! Charlie is seemingly just one of our band of merry performers, but is weirdly banished to the insides to play piano. The white characters certainly feel comfortable enough ordering him around to suit their spontaneous whims, which he certainly doesn’t have. (If it’s any consolation, he’s the most talented performer here by a mile.) To be fair, it’s hard to really convey a progressive racial statement in a quarter-hour of musical revue, but there are clear similarities with the paternalistic mode of presenting black performers from Texaco Star Theater. Even in the “integrated” parts of the United States, on shows that thought of themselves as being progressive, black artists had to be presented in the most friendly, non-challenging light possible.
Coming up next: Molly gets suspicious on The Goldbergs.
The Eternal Couch Potato 