Ruth Lyons, Bob Braun, Larry Smith’s puppets, a Rod Serling drama from The Storm, the Midwestern Hayride country music show and old Kenner Star Wars toy commercials return to the screen Saturday, Oct. 25, as the Cincinnati Museum Center celebrates “Archives Day.”
Rare TV shows and historic films — including from Coney Island in the 1920s, the 1918 and 1937 floods, and 1967 Avondale unrest — are among the two dozen digitized videos selected by Arabeth Balasko, the museum center’s curator of photography, prints and media.
Balasko will introduce the videos from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Scripps-Howard Newsreel Theater.
“I love the material in our collection, and I want people to see it. It is amazing that we had forward-thinking people who donated videos to us,” says Balasko, who was hired in March 2022.
Many local TV veterans and the Cincinnati-owned television stations donated videotapes to the Cincinnati Historical Society when Union Terminal was remodeled to house the Museum Center in the late 1980s. It opened in 1990.
It’s the Museum Center’s first “Archives Day” celebration during October, which is National Archives Month, she says.
The all-day program will start with WLW Beginnings, a color promotional and sales film about how WLW grew from radio in 1922 into the city’s first — and most popular — television station in the 1950s with Lyons’ 50-50 Club, Paul Dixon, Bob Braun and Midwestern Hayride.
The presentation will be in one-hour blocks devoted to variety shows; “political/activism/community, sports and silent clips;” then entire TV shows such as The Storm; and “assorted commercials and found-in-the-collection items,” such as a Jim Henson puppet film and commercials for Dixon, Kenner Star War toys and Crosley’s Shelvador refrigerator, she says.
All of the clips — even the musical performances — will be captioned. Balasko did them herself. “We want to make this as accessible to everyone as possible,” she says. No clips will be repeated Saturday.
The videos, which were recently digitized by Scene Savers in Covington, Ky., may eventually be uploaded to the Museum Center’s YouTube channel or website, she says.
Among the highlights are:
RUTH LYONS: A 14-minute clip from 1951 features WLWT-TV's Ruth Lyons' 50-50 Club with sidekick Willie Thall. Lyons hosted the city’s highest-rated TV show live at noon weekdays 1949 to her retirement in 1967.
ROD SERLING: An entire half-hour episode of The Storm, WKRC-TV’s live drama series from 1952. Rod Serling wrote this episode, “No Gods To Serve,” a Korean War drama, which was filmed by the station in hopes to sell CBS a weekly live drama series produced in Cincinnati. (CBS didn’t buy it, and The Storm was canceled three months later.)
Serling, who would create The Twilight Zone in 1959 for CBS, was actually working as a WLW radio and TV staff writer in 1952. He freelanced drama scripts for the competing station because WLW wanted him to write for Melody Showcase and variety shows, situation comedies and travel shows and not serious dramas.
MELODY SHOWCASE: The video I’m most interested in watching is a 1951 clip from Melody Showcase, the Sunday night musical-variety series which was a staple in WLW-TV’s early years. I’ve never seen a sample of this show. The 14-minute clip includes a sketch set in a Wild West bar. There are no credits on the clip identifying the performers or writer, Balasko says.
SOUL STREET: Another show I’ve never seen is Soul Street, WKRC-TV’s 1972 teen dance program for Black youth hosted by Kenny Smith, which Taft Broadcasting wanted to syndicate nationally. A 12-minute clip will be screened as one of the local variety shows.
BOB BRAUN: Unlike the color Bob Braun Show clips broadcast in WLWT-TV’s retrospectives on Braun — Lyons’ successor who hosted Channel 5’s live noon variety show until it was canceled in 1984 — the Museum Center will screen a four-minute 1963 black-and-white clip from Bob Braun’s Bandstand, the weekend teen music and dance show sponsored by Coca-Cola.
The entire 1973 color pilot for Braun’s On The Money game show also will be screened. Braun hosted the nationally syndicated game show for one season in 1973-74.
MIDWESTERN HAYRIDE: Cincinnati TV’s first big hit, Midwestern Hayride, will be featured in several ways. Hayride premiered April 19, 1948, two months after WLWT-TV started broadcasting. It went national on NBC in June 16, 1951, as the summer replacement series for Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, and aired every summer (except 1953) on NBC or ABC.
The Museum Center’s lineup includes two black-and-white clips from the 1950s: Thall hosting in 1951 (12 minutes), and Dixon hosting in 1955 (10 minutes). Also to be screened is a clip from Country Hayride, WLWT-TV’s revamped version for national syndication in 1968-69 with host Henson Cargill and musician Kenny Price.
Also on Saturday, Balasko will screen a spoof of the show — a sketch called Mideastern Alfalfa Ride — from WLWT-TV’s Mr. Hop children’s show starring Dave Manning (Stull) in the 1960s.
CHILDREN’S SHOWS: In addition to Mr. Hop, the videos include a couple Halloween treats: Clips from Larry Smith’s puppets performing Once Upon A Broomstick starring Hattie the Witch from the early 1970s on WXIX-TV, and the Max B. Nimble Halloween Special from WKRC-TV.
Smith, who did puppets on WCPO-TV’s Uncle Al Show in the late 1950s, was WXIX-TV’s biggest star after the independent station signed on in 1968. Actor Max Howard starred as Nimble on the the Emmy-winning children’s show produced by Taft Broadcasting’s WKRC-TV from September 1975 to December 1976.
HISTORIC FILMS: Silent black-and-white films include the 1918 ice flood, Coney Island in the 1920s, and the 1937 flood. The lineup includes 13 minutes of rare color film from the 1937 North Fairmont Halloween Parade, plus 27-minutes of color sound film from the 1967 Avondale unrest. Other films include Pete Rose at Crosley Field in 1969, and a Barb Musselman interview about women’s rights.
