MovieChat Forums > The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1957) Discussion > Was 'Pied Piper' Originally Meant for Th...

Was 'Pied Piper' Originally Meant for Theatres?

posted 15 years ago by Chesterfield_Invincible
6 replies | jump to latest

The film sports an MPAA seal and is in Technicolor (as opposed to Eastman Color, which at the time was the color of choice for TV). It looks like the kind of indie that would have been released by UA. It may have been that NBC, which had more color programs at the time than the other two networks combined (and in ABC's case, that number was 0) offered to buy the unreleased movie, thereby having a full-color spectacular for less money than it would have cost NBC to stage themselves live. Just a theory, mind you.

[–] johnjohnson68510 15 years ago

Makes sense, though, because why else the Technicolor? And, by the way, how do you know so much about early television? I'm surprised to hear NBC had _any_ color programming in 1957 - what was the percentage of color TVs? I don't remember color TV's until early to mid 60's. I think the second season of Gilliagn's Island was in color, and I think that's about the time we got ours.

[–] Chesterfield_Invincible 15 years ago

Thanks to the miracle called the World Wide Web, anyone can now become an expert in anything they so desire. What used to take days and even weeks of research in the library, now takes just a matter of minutes here on the web. Here is the URL for a comphrehensive site on the history of color TV:

http://novia.net/~ereitan

[–] johnjohnson68510 15 years ago

Thanks!

[–] critic-2 13 years ago

NBC has been showing color programs since 1954. The Mary Martin "Peter Pan" was first presented live on "Producers' Showcase" in 1955. It was so popular that it was restaged live and in color in 1956, and in 1960, it was videotaped in color. That third version is the one that has been rerun and is preserved in color. The earlier two versions now exist only in black-and-white.

"The Wizard of Oz" was first telecast in 1956, in color.

I remember seeing "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" when I was four the first time it was telecast, on a black-and-white TV set. For years I thought it was a theatrical film, but when I bought Leonard Maltin's movie guide i discovered it was made-for-TV. It was one of the few Technicolor made-for-TV films; others were the animated "Our Mr. Sun" (which I saw in grade school) and "Hemo the Magnificent".

[–] Wfs1933 13 years ago

The last "film" made in REAL Technicolor was Foxfire filmed in 1954, the term Technicolor here is it was processed by Techicolor labs and most likely on eastman film stock.

[–] phillindholm 13 years ago

It was made for tv, and bought some years later by Kiddie Matinee King K.GORDON MURRAY, who released it to theaters around 1961. According to him : ''We took a bath on that one''. Still, the production values are good enough for a feature film, and it must have looked fine on the big screen.