Today's Video Link

Here's one more post about that musical number from the 1958 episode of The Steve Allen Show. If you haven't seen it yet, go watch it here before you watch the video below.

In 2013, a broadcast engineer named "Bob Z" who used to work at NBC Burbank took a video camera and attempted to replicate the path the performers followed from Stage 1 to Stage 4. Naturally, a lot of the geography there had changed since '58 with new walls erected but it's still a clear path. You'll see that in the video below which replays the old video with the new video as an inset. Take a look…

The amazing thing about this is that the '58 version was probably shot with an RCA TK-41 camera. Those old color cameras were heavy and bulky and they required a lot of light, especially for color — and this number was originally telecast in color. Still, the cameraman — probably with the help of a lot of crew members — moved it flawlessly backwards at a steady pace and it was properly lit almost every step of the way with only the tinest flash of cables. I still don't know where they had some speaker to play the pre-recorded audio back for the performers but they somehow pulled it off…on live TV.

One thing that puzzles some folks is which shows were in which studios. It was not always consistent. Stage 1 was where Johnny Carson taped and I don't think he was ever anywhere else in that building. Remember the famous time when Johnny took a camera across the hall and barged in on Don Rickles taping CPO Sharkey? CPO Sharkey was on Stage 3. In the video, you see Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme emerging from the corridor between Stage 1 and Stage 3. The make-up room and wardrobe department that served both stages was in that corridor along with some dressing rooms.

When I was prowling and trespassing at NBC in 1971-1973, Bob Hope was usually taping a special — the portions with an audience on Stage 1 and the portions without on Stage 3. Laugh-In used Stage 4 as its main stage but sometimes set up on 3. The Flip Wilson Show and The Dean Martin Show were usually on Stage 4, occasionally on Stage 2. The game shows taped on whatever stage was available. The original Hollywood Squares at one time or another was probably in every studio there except the one used for the local news. So was Tom Snyder when he did the Tomorrow show from there.

NBC Burbank was kind of a magical place in those days. The facility opened in March of 1955 and the network sold the place to a real estate firm in 2008 whereupon it was renamed Burbank Studios, which is what it's called today. The plan was to move all the shows then produced there over to the new NBC facility on the Universal Studios lot. Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show was done on Stage 1 at Universal but Ellen DeGeneres instead moved her afternoon talk show to the nearby Warner lot and Days of Our Lives remained at Burbank in Stage 4 which NBC leased back from the new owners.

Jay Leno started his Tonight Show in Stage 1 at Burbank where he'd guest-hosted for Johnny. Later, they decided he needed a new layout where he could be closer to the audience for his monologues. Since the seats in Stage 1 were fixed, they moved him across the hall to Stage 3 for the remainder of his first Tonight Show stint. He then did his short-lived 10 PM show on Stage 11, which had just been erected on the other side of the Burbank lot. Again, NBC leased space on its old lot from the new proprietors. When Jay returned to The Tonight Show, NBC wanted to move him into the stage Conan had used at Universal but (a) he was already set up with offices on Stage 11 in Burbank and (b) there was all that anger at Leno displacing O'Brien in that time slot and it might have made it worse had Jay displaced him in the studio that was sort of built for him. So Jay stayed on Stage 11 at Burbank.

The last time I was at the Burbank facility was one day when I had lunch with my buddy Wally Wingert, who was announcing The Tonight Show on Stage 11. I'll tell you when this was: One of Jay's guests that night was presidential candidate Ron Paul. Wally and I toured 11, then went to lunch at the commissary — formerly the infamous NBC Commissary and still not a good place to dine. Then I walked Wally through Stages 1, 3 and 4 and showed him where Johnny's desk had been, where Bob Hope did his monologues, where the Laugh-In joke wall was, etc. 3 and 4 were vacant that day but 1 was being used for an infomercial of some sort. It was a bit sad to feel the "ghost town" atmosphere of the place and to realize that nothing was going on there that was in the same league as what Carson, Hope, Dino, Steve Allen and so many others had done there. I doubt there'll ever be a studio like that again.