Anyone know when they switched to color? My guess would be 63-64, but I may be wrong. They apparently also did away with the laugh track at the same time, which made the show seem like a cold, just different show...

Also, does TV Land have any other episodes besides the same old 10 or so from the first season??? I love this show and would love to see more than just the same ones, especially since it only airs once a week...also, do they ever show any other color eps besides the "Hazel gets a color tv set" one?? :confused:

Hazel switched to color with the second season in 1962. This early change most likely only happened because the show was on NBC, which was trying to sell color sets for RCA, its corporate parent. This weekend, TV Land aired "86 Shopping Minutes to Christmas", which was the 1964 Christmas episode, originally airing Christmas Eve that year. It was filmed in color, and the blue seen in the closing credits background and on a Christmas package was pretty sharp-looking in particular. I was smart enough to tape it this year, since I missed it, or most of it, last year. I have yet to see the color ep from the first season myself.

So they started filming in color towards the end of the first season? That's pretty interesting...most shows (except higher budget) used black and white until 65 or 66...

Originally posted by bb25
So they started filming in color towards the end of the first season? That's pretty interesting...most shows (except higher budget) used black and white until 65 or 66...

Well, that's NBC for you. It filmed as many shows in color as it could afford in order to promote RCA color sets. NBC also had The Joey Bishop Show in color from 1962-64, but when NBC cancelled it and CBS took it over, it went back to B&W for its last 1964-65 season. I read somewhere that Desilu filmed The Lucy Show in color starting in 1963, and this is apparent in the reruns, but CBS wouldn't broadcast the show in color until 1965. I'm sure NBC would've shown the Lucy Show in color back in 1963, if it hadn't pushed for color even earlier. By the time that CBS picked up Hazel in 1965, it had accepted color as being "here to stay", so most of its sitcoms and other shows were in color starting that year.

Thanks for the interesting info! Yes, The Lucy Show was filmed in color starting in 63. I read that they "splurged" on color film since they thought it would bring up the value in syndication. However, I still like to drain out the color on my set when I watch any 63-65 episodes of that show. It just suits it better...

Another question...any color episodes of Hazel I've seen don't seem to have a laugh track. It's almost as if after the switch to color it turned into a dramadey of sorts...is this true or did the episodes I've seen just not have any funny moments?

Some interesting info...

There was actually 1 color episode in the first season. It was actually the shows 4th episode, aired in the fall of 61, and ironically, it was about Hazel getting a new color TV set! Guess I understand the whole NBC/RCA color TV thing now...:lol:

I have this ep on tape, and have seen it on TV Land 1 or 2 other times as well...

....to be telecast in color in the fall of 1962. Her sponsor, the Ford Motor Company, wanted their ads (and cars) to have the best advantage to be seen by potential car owners in "living color"....just as they had been during the final seasons of Ford's previous Thursday night NBC series, "THE FORD SHOW STARRING TENNESSEE ERNIE FORD". And they had the money to do it.
They had already requested two "experimental" color episodes during the first season (one of them involving Hazel's color TV set!), and wanted to "go" color, full-time, that fall. Screen Gems-Columbia, "HAZEL"'s producer, wouldn't have done it on their own without the sponsor's "big pockets". And when Ford relinquished the show after its fourth season, Screen Gems continued to film color episodes when the series moved to CBS in September 1965 (for Procter & Gamble and Philip Morris, the new alternate sponsors).

....to be telecast in color in the fall of 1962. Her sponsor, the Ford Motor Company, wanted their ads (and cars) to have the best advantage to be seen by potential car owners in "living color"....just as they had been during the final seasons of Ford's previous Thursday night NBC series, "THE FORD SHOW STARRING TENNESSEE ERNIE FORD". And they had the money to do it.

I was able to tape the final episode of The Ford Show from June 1961 off of PBS a few years back. It was rerun in its original color videotape format (apparently someone, maybe Ernie, kept at least this ep away from NBC's videotape erasers), and it looked great. The opening of the show was w/ most of the Peanuts characters, like Charlie Brown & Lucy, on color film, so since this show preceded A Charlie Brown Christmas by 4 1/2 years, it may have been one of the first shows to animate the Peanuts characters.

....The Ford Motor Company somehow convinced Charles Schulz to let them use the "Peanuts" characters for several of their advertising campaigns, beginning in 1959. This would be the first time Charlie Brown and the "gang"
would appear on television in animated form...and won a few Clio advertising
awards along the way.

There were animated color commercials on "THE FORD SHOW" (and "FORD STARTIME", I believe, in 1959-'60), full-color magazine ads in LIFE, LOOK, THE SATURDAY EVENING POST, and other "big" weekly magazines, and some newspaper tie-ins as well {Charlie Brown makes a brief reference to "Tennessee Ernie" in a 1959 daily strip}. So, it wasn't too surprising to see Charlie Brown (and Linus, or Lucy) appear in a special film insert before the opening titles of "THE FORD SHOW" were flashed. Those special "Peanuts" ads came to an end in 1963, when Ford decided to go with a different kind of ad campaign for '64...but I believe the ads did appear in some "HAZEL" episodes during the first two seasons. However, as we all know, Schulz was not approached to create a "Peanuts" special until Coca-Cola [and their ad agency] contacted him and producer Lee Mendelson in the early summer of 1965 about creating a half-hour "Christmas special"--and the rest is history.

As for the original color videotapes of "THE FORD SHOW", you can thank Ernie
Ford himself (and possibly his producer) for saving those shows taped between 1959 and '61- NBC certainly didn't. {They also saved a lot of the black & white kinescope film copies of those shows that weren't taped in color before 1959.}

:D

..."HAZEL" had a laugh track during its entire run. What you might have seen were remastered color prints from the Sony/Columbia vaults that did NOT have a laugh track. There were "breakdown" masters that did not have laugh tracks or complete musical tracks included- these might have been used for foreign dubbing {Spanish, French, Italian, etc.} for release in the "international" TV markets. There are several episodes of "I DREAM OF JEANNIE" that were shown on TV LAND that did NOT have full musical backgrounds or laugh tracks ["Russian Roulette", "My Poor Master, The Civilian"] because Sony used some "breakdown" masters. New music cues and laugh tracks had to be added to these "freshened" episodes. The same thing happened when Nick At Nite showed the "JEANNIE" episode "Never Put A Genie On A Budget" in the '80s...NO LAUGH TRACK. When the "remastered" version was shown on TV LAND, the laugh track was in place!


:crazy:

N@N didn't show "I DREAM OF JEANNIE" in the 80s. They showed it in the 90s!

...you're right about that. 1994-2000, I believe!