Here's an awesome bit of video — a musical number from The Steve Allen Show for February 9, 1958. Give it a look and then we'll discuss what you just saw…
Okay, first off: That was a four-minute song that was done, I'm fairly sure, live from the NBC Studios in Burbank. The singers are all lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track but they really do wander out of Studio 1, down through the scenery docks, then back around to Studio 1. Studio 1, by the way, is where Johnny Carson did his show for many, many years.
The number involves Steve Allen (who wrote the song they're singing), Ann Sothern, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, Dinah Shore and a man some probably thought was Frank Sinatra. It's actually a Sinatra impersonator…almost certainly Duke Hazlitt, who was then doing a Sinatra "tribute" act in Las Vegas.
But the real stars of the number were the director and the camera operators and crew. There were no lightweight TV cameras in those days and certainly no Steadicams. It also had to be a bitch to light this thing…and remember they had to get it in one take.
I'm guessing they had a real, real long cable on a camera and a whole bunch of guys who were pulling it taut so it never got into the shot while other crew members guided the cameraman backwards. From the shadows at the beginning and end, you can also see there was a cue card guy who was presumably walking backwards through the entire number…and probably a stage manager or choreographer who was pacing the entire thing. I have no idea what kind of speakers they had and how they were placed so the performers could hear the track.
But it's one camera, one take, no edits…not easy to do now, even more difficult to do back then. Hope you're as impressed as I am. (And by the way, I don't think this was a "first." I'm pretty sure Spike Jones had already done something like this a few times…and from the same studio.)