Wide Wide World – Garroway at Large

Bob and Ray’s “Big Big Earth,” 1958

Some time ago we looked at MAD Magazine’s spoof of Today. Well, there was more – and it was the work of no less a pair of luminaries than Bob and Ray, who contributed to MAD in its early days. From 1958, here’s their take on Wide Wide World.

As a bonus, here’s a visit Dave made to Bob and Ray’s TV show shortly before Today made its debut.

:: We’re still here and we’re doing okay, incidentally. There just hasn’t been anything to report. The manuscript is still in the editing/review process, which from experience I know takes time. I also haven’t made many new discoveries, and even if I had, the day job keeps getting in the way. Good things are to come, and soon, I hope. Stay tuned.

Wide Wide World: “The Western,” June 6, 1958

I am remiss. There, I’ve said it. I won’t bore you with the personally-related reasons for my silence¹, though given my line of work you can imagine it’s been an interesting time. But the semester is over and I can think about other things for a little bit (well, I think I can, anyway).²

By way of making up for it a little, here’s a king-size treat for you: an episode of Wide Wide World from 1958, in which we take a look at westerns. By this point, Wide Wide World was no longer doing what it once did, which was hopscotching around to show amazing sights that live cameras picked up as they happened.³ Plus, the program’s founder, Pat Weaver, was long gone from NBC by this point and his “going places and doing things” philosophy had given way to what would become more traditional forms of program content.⁴

There are other changes you’ll notice if you’re a Wide Wide World enthusiast. David Broekman’s lush, elegant theme is preceded by an otherworldly series of notes as a crude animated globe forms.⁵

And, as it turned out, “The Western” was the final installment of Wide Wide World. General Motors, which had sponsored the series since its debut, proposed altering the format to 15 one-hour installments. But those plans never took, and no other sponsor took the show over. Wide Wide World was gone, and with it went some ambitious plans for the fourth season, including a visit to Europe and possibly a trip into the Soviet Union to interview Russian leaders within the Kremlin.

That said, when you’re able to get the likes of Gary Cooper, James Arness, Gene Autry and James Garner⁶ on your program, it’s not a small way to say farewell. So, even though it’s a blurry copy of the program, enjoy the final Wide Wide World, from June 6, 1958.

“Wide Wide World,” June 9, 1957

One of the tragedies of the early years of television is that comparatively little of it remains. There were technical reasons – in the days before videotape, the only real way to preserve a show was through kinescopes, which looked crude by comparison and took a lot of effort to make¹, often done mainly at the behest of program sponsors – and, honestly, there was a belief that once something aired, there wasn’t much value in holding on to it. The idea of television programs as something worth saving wasn’t a thing in a lot of circles then. Once it was done, it was gone. It’s understandable (think, for instance, of the logistical nightmare it would have been to preserve every single Today program that ever aired), but it means a lot of things are lost forever.²

That means when there is a new discovery, it’s a treat. And courtesy of my trusty associate Brandon, who found this recently and shared the good news with me, I’m happy to bring you another rare-as-hen’s-teeth segment of Wide Wide World, from June 9, 1957. There’s so much to enjoy here, including correspondent Charles Van Doren interviewing the great John Houseman, and a look at the efforts to put a satellite into orbit.

More rare footage will come next week! In the meantime, please watch, and enjoy.

“No wider than the heart is wide…”

I was working on another post for today until I remembered that October 16 is a special day. For it was on this date in 1955 that Dave Garroway welcomed us to Wide Wide World. The ambitious program, which had aired as a special presentation earlier in 1955, made its regularly-scheduled debut on October 16.

Not much Wide Wide World footage is available, and not even the entirety of the debut is out there to see. But about 60 out of those first 90 minutes is available, starting below. Take the time to watch it, and think about how the remotes we take for granted today seemed like a miracle in 1955.

Detective work

Back in June I spent a day at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin. It’s a long story, but Wisconsin has a huge collection of papers related to broadcast history. And, as things turned out, it’s where the NBC papers ended up. For anyone needing to conduct research into broadcast history, Wisconsin is a mandatory stop. (And don’t think one day will suffice, either. I am certain that had my schedule allowed, I could have spent a week and not scratched the surface. The NBC collection is huge.)

It had been about a decade and a half since I’d last done honest-to-goodness research in archival materials. Teaching at a small college means you don’t get much time to do research, because you have a dozen other duties demanding your attention and the day only has so many hours. Research has been one of those “I’ll get around to it” things. The Wisconsin trip let me break that cycle, and getting back into the documents was as delightful as I remembered. I had missed it, and each box the archivists brought out for me contained a new treasure.

This was my view most of the day: a big box of folders full of documents from yesteryear, each of them its own little time machine. I had little time for reverie; as soon as I opened a folder with a worthwhile document, I had the phone on my camera going like crazy capturing pages. It got really interesting in correspondence files, for so many of those documents were file copies produced with carbon paper (anybody remember that stuff?) on onion-skin paper. I’d hoped to get a copy of one especially intriguing document, only to find about ten pages in that it was just about half a ream of onion-skin paper, and I’d expend precious time and battery life to get a document not really related to Dave Garroway. (Argh! The choices we must make!)

Sometimes, though, I’d come across a box that left me speechless. For instance, a box containing the scripts, coordination charts, and other miscellany for each installment of Wide Wide World. I’ve watched this countless times, and yet before me was this:

It was the genuine, game-used (in the coordinating studio) script from that very telecast. In my hands. It was truly a moment. (And reading the script as written really drove home to me just what Dave Garroway could do with a piece of material – that little intangible something that took plain words and made them magic.)

There were dozens upon dozens of finds during that trip, and all of them will come to play somehow in this book we’re working on. But of all of them, this is definitely one of my favorites. It reminded me why I love the historian’s craft, how much I’ve truly missed it, and why I’m so glad I get to engage in it from time to time.