Bing Crosby, Television Sports Preservationist

Hugh Pickens submits news first gleaned from a now-paywalled article at the New York Times (and, happily, widely reported) that "The hunt for a copy of the seventh and deciding game of the 1960 World Series, considered one of the greatest games ever played and long believed to be lost forever, has come to an end in the home of Bing Crosby, a canny preservationist of his own legacy, who kept a half-century's worth of records, tapes and films in the wine cellar turned vault in his Hillsborough, California home. Crosby loved baseball, but as a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates he was too nervous to watch the Series against the Yankees, so he and his wife went to Paris, where they listened by radio. Crosby knew he would want to watch the game later — if his Pirates won — so he hired a company to record Game 7 by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR, filming off a television monitor. The five-reel set, found in December in Crosby's home, is the only known complete copy of the game, in which Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending home run to beat the Yankees, 10-9."

Comments

The Fall Classic and 2" quad

[schmidt349]

1960 was a classic Series. It's right up there with 1955-6, 1986, 1996, and 2001 on my list for the all-time best.

It's amazing to realize how different program preservation policy was in the prime of 2" Ampex quad videotape. So much of historic significance has been lost -- and not just Doctor Who and the moon landings, either. British TV before 1978 is a Swiss cheese. American programming suffered as well -- there are huge chunks of The Tonight Show that just plain don't exist anymore. For a long time, possibly the greatest baseball game of all time (1956 WS game 5) was thought to be gone forever.

What with Google pushing something like 20 PB of data every day it kind of makes you wonder what's being done to ensure the long-term survival of the digital patrimony. I mean, I don't particularly give a damn whether the wingnuts' blogs and every video of a dog pooping on a baby makes it to the 22nd century, but isn't there some stuff worth saving? Who's taking that responsibility?

Re:The Fall Classic and 2" quad

[grapeape]

I grew up a few houses away from Smokey Burgess, he used to tell all kinds of baseball stories but the 60 series was definitely something that meant more to him than anything else in his career. I've been thinking about him all day now, when I was a kid I didn't really appreciate and I guess took for granted his taking time to talk to we neighborhood kids. I just wish I could have known him when I was an adult rather than a snot nosed kid who half paid attention, still I heard so much about it I feel like I was a witness to the series...but it would be great to really see it.

Re:The Fall Classic and 2" quad

[schmidt349]

Well, bear me out, I have a pretty interesting perspective on this. I'm a classical philologist, which means my job is to read and ponder texts written in Greek and Latin between the 8th century BCE and the fourth century CE. The difference between what was actually written and what's come down to us is colossal. A lot of people have heard of the Iliad and the Odyssey -- but most don't know names like the Cypria and the Margites, epics also thought in antiquity to have been created by Homer (whoever or whatever he was). Sophocles may have written more than a hundred plays in his career; we're incredibly lucky to have seven. Sure, some of these selections were made on the basis of quality, but I sure wish that I had been the arbiter of "quality" rather than some asshole monk sitting in a cloister in 10th century Greece looking to crib lines for a passion play.

It may be impossible, but we should try to convey as much of our data to our posterity as we can. Folks in my line of work have a long list of texts that they would quite literally give an arm and a leg to get back. Let's not leave our descendants with the same sense of loss.

The upside to letting people copy media

[dmadzak]

Just think about all the culture that would still be available to us today, if the technology to copy was wider spread and available when TV first appeared. We would have a complete collection of all the old Dr. Who episodes.

Re:The upside to letting people copy media

[westlake]

Just think about all the culture that would still be available to us today, if the technology to copy was wider spread and available when TV first appeared. We would have a complete collection of all the old Dr. Who episodes.

Some 280 rolls of film survive of Berlin television broadcasts ca. 1934-1944.

The kinescope was in broad commercial use in the states in 1947.

NBC, CBS, and DuMont set up their main kinescope recording facilities in New York City, while ABC chose Chicago. By 1951, NBC and CBS were each shipping out some 1,000 16mm kinescope prints each week to their affiliates across the United States, and by 1955 that number had increased to 2,500 per week for CBS. By 1954 the television industry's film consumption surpassed that of all of the Hollywood studios combined. Kinescope

Network kinescopes were often 35mm and can be of strikingly good quality.

It has even become possible to recover the chroma - color - signal - that was occasionally recorded on the B/W kinescope of a color production.

The problem was never the technology. The technology was always there. What was lacking was the desire, the will, the commitment and the money to maintain an archive.

 

He could sing

[PopeRatzo]

Man, I love those old Crosby recordings, like "I Remember Dear" and "Moonlight Becomes You". And the "Road to..." pictures he did with Hope were some of the funniest, hippest movies of the era (especially "Road to Bali"). But as as person, he was a piece of shit. Worse as he got older.

That he saved some old recordings doesn't make him a pioneer of media preservationism as much as someone who wanted to have what other people couldn't have.

A "preservationist" is someone like Martin Scorsese who has worked tirelessly to make sure old celluloid films aren't lost. He's doing it to make sure others can get the kind of exposure to the history of our culture as shown in cinema.

When I was growing up, the local TV station, WGN-TV, had an amazing library of films and played at least two of them every day. There would be one a 9am and another after the evening news. Sometimes another after midnight. Everything from film noir to Busby Berkeley to Fellini (both dubbed and subbed). Howard Hawks, King Vidor, Walter Huston, Welles, Michael Powell, Billy Wilder, the Marx Bros, Kurosawa, Vittorio Di Sica. Even modern masterpieces like "Joe" or "Little Murders". Everything. Sometime in the early '80s, there must have been some change in the way they were licensed or something because those movies were replaced by back-to-back episodes of some lame TV show like Dallas or even worse. I got a remarkable education in cinema just from my local TV station. Now that's all gone. The cable stations that are dedicated to "classic" films aren't nearly so eclectic or comprehensive. When they went to commercial, the bumper music they used was "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck. Whenever I hear that song today all those images flood into my mind's eye. I'll always associate that 5/4 melody with the excitement of being exposed to another nugget of cinema greatness, curled up in a comfy chair in my parents' basement, watching an old Sylvania console TV.

When I was in college, I had campus job in the film school's archive. It was always slow, so I could project 16mm versions of foreign and avant-garde films, such as the work of Kenneth Anger, Michael Snow, Maya Deren, Bunuel, and my favorite Joseph Cornell (if you ever get a chance, see the film "Rose Hobard" actually projected on a screen. It's a mind-bender.

Sometimes I wonder about some young kid out there using the Internet to search out these films and to be exposed to cinema in the way I did, without effort, almost accidentally. With luck, Scorsese's foundation got to these works before the masters disintegrated beyond saving.

Re:He could sing

[unitron]

That he saved some old recordings doesn't make him a pioneer of media preservationism...

Actually it was more his desire to be able to record his shows, first radio on audio tape, and later his television shows on videotape, instead of having to do them live that got him the pioneer status. That, and putting the cost of several average homes into Ampex in the early days.

WGN was on cable down here by the early '80s, so I remember those morning movies. The change of format may have been due to Ted Turner buying up the MGM library.

As for his singing, it was the epitome of being mellow but never bland, and perhaps only Dean Martin had him beat at being relaxed in a supremely self-confident way.

Bing Crosby jump-started Ampex

[Animats]

A "preservationist" is someone like Martin Scorsese who has worked tirelessly to make sure old celluloid films aren't lost.

Crosby was a major figure in the early days of magnetic tape recording. He wanted better audio for his Bing Crosby show, and used some early tape recorders based on the German Magnetophon. The engineers involved with the early recorders started Ampex, Crosby put in $50,000, and pro audio rapidly moved to tape. The Bing Crosby Show was the first show to be edited before broadcast, which tightened up the pacing and made it a hit show.

Ampex later went on to build the first videotape recorder in 1950, which was simply called "Crosby Video".

So Crosby definitely had a major role in the preservation of audio and video.

Re:Now,

[rxmd]

Bing Crosby deserves recognition for his place in history as the investor that stepped in with a $50,000 investment in Ampex Corporation for development of the reel to reel tape recorder. Ampex was a small company with six employees prior to that. During WWII Germany developed wire recorders with improved quality as a result of a high frequency (above audio range) signal added to the record current. That overcame non-linear magnetic behavior greatly reducing distortion.
Ampex used the same A.C. bias current technique with magnetic tape, and Bing Crosby was a major influence in the quick adoption by broadcasters.

Actually the Germans had been using magnetic tape recorders since about 1935. The AC bias technique you mentioned was developed for the AEG Magnetophon, which was a series of tape recorders, not wire recorders.

Towards 1943 or so it was pretty much a high-end system, with stereo and everything. There are a few surviving recordings that were later reissued in LP and CD form.

Re:Crosby's estate is screwed

[yotto]

You joke (and it's funny) but when it comes down to it, piracy preserved this game.

The irony is, now that they've got it back they'll probably sell it on DRM'd blu-rays.

Well, since it started in 1903

[Shivetya]

I am pretty sure the name was not much of a concern, only now when "sensitivities" are the issue of the day. Now, since the talent in the game comes from all over the globe it has a good reason to use the name. Let alone the simple fact, they created it in 1903 who is to object? How does it offend people of other countries where baseball is not played at a similar level? If it does offend, then get over it, its a sporting event. Nothing to take offense at.

So, there you have it, they were first so they claimed whatever named appealed to them, out of tradition the name stays. Sometimes tradition is better than being correct.

Re:Now,

[Stargoat]

Bing Crosby deserves recognition for being one heck of a good guy. My grandfather decided to hitchhike home after WWII - he'd had enough with slow travel on a jeep carrier following Operation Magic Carpet and didn't feel like taking the slow train home. He was in California, and he needed to get to northern Illinois. In southern California, a bald fella stops to pick him up. They travel for a couple hours together until the bald fella says that he's singing in Las Vegas in a couple of hours and needs to warm up his voice. Asks if it's alright if he starts singing. My grandpa says your car, feel free. The bald fella is Bing Crosby. Just stopped to pick up some random Marine to give him a lift.

He beat the troop train home by a good 4 hours. :)