CBS Playhouse Saturday Adoption 1968

[stravinsky 203]

I've just read the liner notes for the Quartet Records release of the TV Movie "Heidi" from 1968. John Takis mentions a TV project Williams was involved in that same year which I've never heard of. 

      Does anyone know about this (apparently the 2nd) episode of Season 2 of "CBS Playhouse"? Since the teleplay was apparently 90 minutes long I'm kind of hoping Williams might have written a mini film score for it and that this obscurity might see the light of day sometime. I'm guessing if something as obscure as the music for the unaired pilot "The Ghostbreaker" gets a release then there's hope for a possible substantial unknown late 60s TV Movie type score from the master.  Any thoughts? 

[Thor 7,478]

I've been aware of this episode for a few years now, but have not been able to verify Williams' involvement.

[stravinsky 203]

Ok. Just that it says so in the liner notes I mentioned plus Williams is mentioned in the IMDB page. 

 

This screenshot is from Billboard Magazine

December 7th 1968

[Thor 7,478]

13 minutes ago, stravinsky said:

Ok. Just that it says so in the liner notes I mentioned plus Williams is mentioned in the IMDB page. 

 

Yes, I know, but I like to see it with my own eyes, or a proper source listed. The Billboard clip you've posted serves just that purpose. So thanks! It just beats out LAND OF THE GIANTS with a couple of months as the last Williams work for episodic TV as a 'side profession'.

[stravinsky 203]

Listen I'd never heard of this thing until today so I'm surprised as you mate. I just googled and found the reference to it in Billboard.

 

I love Goldsmith's TV Movie/Pilot music and happily we are spolied because there's quite a bit of it on CD. But as far as I know there's a lot less of Williams TV output.

 

This combined with the fact that this score could be a lost feature length TV effort makes it all the more interesting. 

 

I know I shouldn't do this but here is a list of unreleased Goldsmith TV music. If this stuff is ever unearthed and released there will be literally nothing left of 70s Goldsmith to premiere. 

 

 

 

Indict and Convict (TVM) 1974
Crawlspace (TVM) 1972
Pursuit (TVM) 1972
Do not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate (TVM) 1971
Lights Out (Unsold Pilot) 1972
A Tree grows in Brooklyn (TVM) 1972
Anna and the King (Pilot) 1972
The People Next Door (CBS Playhouse) 1968
Prudence and the Chief (Unsold Pilot) 1970
Best of Times (Unaired Pilot) 1974

[stravinsky 203]

This could be a major find. However I can't find the drama anywhere online to watch. Pity. The music could be a lost gem. Who knows? 

[Thor 7,478]

I've never been able to find it either.

[John Takis 206]

Saturday Adoption (the show, that is) is not lost media. At any rate, the website TV Obscurities lists extant recordings at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Peabody Awards Collection and the Paley Center for Media. But I've never seen it online or offered for sale either. Perhaps someone visiting one of the aforementioned archives will be able to check it out someday and report back.

[stravinsky 203]

I just brought the issue up since the episode is not mentioned in the Filmography section on JWFan (perhaps because there is so little evidence of its composition plus the fact the actual film isn't easy to track down) so unless I had read your liner notes for Heidi I would never have heard of it. Thankyou! Also since it is late 60s Williams and he was nearing the stage of sounding more and more like the mature Williams we love today then perhaps his music for a mostly unknown feature length TV movie might be worth unearthing. As I say if something as obscure as Goldsmith's gorgeous Americana score for "A Girl Named Sooner" can be sourced and released then who knows what gathers dust in the vaults. It continues to fascinate and hearten me that cutthroat Hollywood still has a human side when it comes to being unwilling to trash something as precious as music. Surely there would have been no reason to store thousands of film and TV scores back in the day but they did. And thank god they did. 

[Bespin 8,480]

Well, at least, it's on the discography website.

 

[Yavar Moradi 2,593]

For what it's worth after *years* of searching and trading I finally managed to get a copy of the 1968 CBS Playhouse Jerry Goldsmith scored ("The People Next Door"). One of the hardest hunts I've ever had, in terms of things I've actually been able to find. Fascinating, because it has a proto-version of the Chinatown theme. Hopefully the Williams-scored one shows up someday. Maybe there could be a CBS Playhouse album release with both of their scores as well as ones by others? CBS has cooperated with the labels in the past...if only the music recordings can turn up.

 

Yavar

[stravinsky 203]

Yes a great idea. There could be as much as 45 minutes of music for each score. Is "The People Next Door" available to view anywhere? How on earth do you track down these obscurities? 

[Yavar Moradi 2,593]

5 hours ago, stravinsky said:

Yes a great idea. There could be as much as 45 minutes of music for each score. Is "The People Next Door" available to view anywhere? How on earth do you track down these obscurities? 

 

Searching online, at first. Some rarities are put up on YouTube, for example the absolute worst thing ever scored by Jerry Goldsmith:

 

(We bought Part 1 of this two part episode years ago and have been searching for Part 2 ever since...and it turned up on YouTube just a few months ago.)

 

Other things, we buy from sites like robertsvideos.com. But "The People Next Door" we managed to get in a trade with a collector of rare TV stuff, back in 2020.

 

Yavar

 

 

[stravinsky 203]

Fascinating! Well keep up your intrepid detective work for "Saturday Adoption"! Could the Soundtracks exist somewhere for these forgotten shows? Let's hope so. It just always strikes me that treasured tapes are gathering dust somewhere. It would make a great documentary to chart how (from start to finish) the unearthing process goes for something like "Shamus" was achieved.  Its like when the Stereo tapes were found for Dracula or the ET Botanicus music was found at the bottom of a box. Another fascination was the discovery of the original scoring logs and orchestral parts being intact for Gottfried Huppertz' Metropolis which enabled restorers to not only spot the restoration in 2011 but to work out from the music cues which previously lost scenes went where. It's like Indiana Jones. 

     A few years ago by chance I found mention of the original uncut version of my favourite work by Steve Reich, namely the Music for a Large Ensemble. I had no knowledge Reich originally cut the central section of the piece (which is hypnotic and ravishing). I emailed the guy on the forum asking where I might find the recording (lodged in the archives of the Dutch Radio in Hilversum) and he replied saying he had a vinyl copy sent to him for college radio back in the day. He dug the LP out and an email later he sent me the MP3 of a version of my #1 Reich work that I never knew existed. Happy days! 

[Yavar Moradi 2,593]

9 hours ago, stravinsky said:

Fascinating! Well keep up your intrepid detective work for "Saturday Adoption"! Could the Soundtracks exist somewhere for these forgotten shows? Let's hope so.

 

It probably depends on the studio. For a while there it looked like the CBS floodgates had opened: we got multiple things from the various labels like the Goldsmith TV movie twofer from Intrada (Brotherhood of the Bell/A Step Out of Line), we got the pairing of Goldsmith's The Homecoming with Horner's Rascals and Robbers from FSM, and even more recently LLL was putting out CBS TV stuff like Wild Wild West.

 

But that seems to have slowed to a trickle now, at best, and I can only assume somebody at CBS retired or something. It doesn't seem as accessible as it used to be, for the labels. But if tapes survive maybe someday we could get a 2CD or 3CD set of music from CBS Playhouse. I suspect IMDb's composer listing is incomplete, but check it out anyway:

Quote

Series Music by 

David Shire	...	(4 episodes, 1969-1970)
Bernard Green	...	(2 episodes, 1967-1968)
Sol Kaplan	...	(1 episode, 1967)
Jerry Goldsmith	...	(1 episode, 1968)
George Kleinsinger	...	(1 episode, 1968)
John Williams	...	(1 episode, 1968)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831400/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cl_sm

 

A Jerry Goldsmith score and a John Williams score should be enough to guarantee sales, but I'm equally excited to hear the score by Sol Kaplan (according to IMDb this is the next thing he scored right after he did his episodic TV masterpiece "The Doomsday Machine" for Star Trek!) A rare score by George Kleinsinger is also super enticing for me... I grew up with his score for George Pal's Tubby the Tuba short, and it's just wonderful, with a pair of very memorable themes:

 

 

And FOUR scores by the great David Shire?? That's super promising as well....  according to IMDb, CBS Playhouse was the VERY FIRST WORK he did as a composer in Hollywood!   Only Bernard Green is entirely unfamiliar to me, but I'd be curious to hear what he did too.

 

Yavar