NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies

In regard to showing theatrical films, the television landscape has changed mightily over the last 50 years. Back in 1960, there was no streaming video, no DVRs, and no DVDs. Either you saw a theatrical film when it was released, caught it at a revival house, or waited for years for it to pop up on your local TV station. Indeed, most stations were still showing vintage films from the 1930s and 1940s. That changed when NBC ushered in Saturday Night at the Movies on September 23, 1961.

NBC's concept was to broadcast a "world television premiere" of a major motion picture each week. It focused on "recent" post-1950 films, many of which were in color (which was still a big deal since most programming was in black and white). NBC wasn't the first network to launch a movie series, but it was the one that worked. Its debut offering, 1953's How to Marry a Millionaire, garnered strong ratings and Saturday Night at the Movies became a staple on NBC's schedule for the next 16 years. That first year featured The Day the Earth Stood Still, Garden of Evil, People Will Talk, The Black Rose, It Happens Every Spring, and 25 other motion pictures.

The films ran in a two-hour time slot from 9:00 to 11:00, though occasionally longer films (e.g., There's No Business Like Show Business) shifted the local news by fifteen to thirty minutes. If a movie ended early, then NBC would often show a "making of" featurette about an upcoming movie to fill out the time slot.

There was no letter-boxing back then, so wide-screen films were adapted for the smaller television screen ratio using a technique called "pan and scan." Thus, if there were two people talking on opposite sides of the screen, only one of them would be shown when the movie appeared on television. Sometimes, creative framing caused insurmountable problems. I once watched a pan-and-scan version of American Graffiti in which it looked like two noses were having a conversation.

The network also edited movies for time and objectionable content.The latter was not a major concern with the films of the 1950s, but became more prevalent as movies expanded the boundaries of censorship. Sometimes, it was just easier not to show a "racy movie" like Otto Preminger's The Moon Is Blue--which didn't premiere on network TV until 1973--twenty years after its theatrical release.

Kiss of the Vampire before re-editing.

However, some films were so heavily edited that new footage had to be shot to fill out the running time. One example was the excellent 1963 Hammer film Kiss of the Vampire. The film's plot was altered extensively through editing and additional scenes were filmed with other actors. Fortunately, the altered film was retitled Kiss of Evil--which has helped horror film enthusiasts distinguish it from the original Kiss of the Vampire.

The success of Saturday Night at the Movies prompted CBS and ABC to add movie nights. That scheduling tactic became so popular that, during the 1968-69 season, a network movie aired in prime time on each day of the week: NBC showed movies on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday; ABC did on Sunday and Wednesday; and CBS did on Thursday and Friday.

Clu Gulager and Lee Marvin as The Killers.

The increase in movie nights, the desire to show current films, and rising costs led to the development of made-for-TV movies. These inexpensive films didn't feature big screen stars and frequently doubled as pilots for new TV series (which saved additional money!). The 1964 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's The Killers, starring Lee Marvin and Ronald Reagan, was made for Saturday Night at the Movies. However, NBC determined that it was too violent and so The Killers was released theatrically. Therefore, most TV historians consider See How They Run to be the first made-for-TV movie. It starred John Forsyte and Senta Berger in a tale about killers pursuing three orphans who unknowingly possess valuable evidence against a cartel.

By the mid-1970s, spurred by the popularity of ABC's Movie of the Week, telefilms began to outnumber theatrical films shown on network TV. A decade later, cable channels and videotape distributors overtook the television networks as the first option for a post-theatrical movie release. The network's familiar "world premiere" claim was modified to "broadcast television premiere." It was the beginning of the end, although the networks still had sporadic successes. When NBC showed Gone With the Wind in 1976, it became the most-watched broadcast in U.S. television history at that time.