Mystery Solved!

Okay, my pal Bob Elisberg watched the clip I linked to a little while ago and wrote me to note that the male singer is Sergio Franchi. Bob also thinks the second of the two women who sings is Rini Willson, spouse of Meredith. I went and Googled "Meredith Willson" and "Sergio Franchi" and found this listing in Time for what to watch on TV the first week of June, 1964…

Thursday, June 4

MEREDITH WILLSON VARIETY SHOW (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). The first of three specials produced by the Music Man himself, this one features Caterina Valente, Sergio Franchi, Willson and his wife.

That's gotta be it, which means the first woman who sings is Caterina Valente. I didn't recognize her but I sure recognize the geography. The opening shot is looking northwest at the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Beverly Boulevard. If you look real, real hard, you can see the probably-about-to-be-demolished Fairfax Theater in the background. Later, when the marchers are hiking around the south side of CBS Television City, you can see the parking lot of the world-famous Farmers Market and several people standing there, watching the performance.

And since I started writing this, I received this from Franklin Ruetz…

As a student at Harvard (now Harvard Westlake) we occasionally had industry folks show us odd gems, and this one was of them. About 1972 a man, name long forgotten, brought the Film/Video Workshop & Appreciation course a 16mm sound film. He explained CBS needed to make a case for their video production capabilities, and he got that assignment. He conceptualized the production and reported that CBS was delighted with the finished product.

When asked why marching bands, he said they gave him opportunities for shots with very long sight lines to better show their video cameras zoom lens capability. He also pointed out the high quality audio & balancing through the video chain. Getting several sections of instruments and featured vocals audio mixed well for TV was hard he assured us. Shure shotgun mics captured featured singers.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same film here. For one thing, I'm pretty sure the band is not playing and the marchers are just miming to a pre-recorded track. Still, it does raise the question for me of just what it is we're looking at. Castle Films would have needed film to release this, not tape. In '64, if I'm not mistaken, the only way to convert tape to film was via kinescope and this doesn' look like a kinnie to me. But would someone have hauled in 35mm cameras to film at (then) the nation's most modern videotape facility? Any video engineers want to hazard a guess?