The CBS Thursday Night Movie is the network's venture into the weekly televising of then-recent theatrical films, debuting at the start of the 1965–1966 season, from 9:00 to 11 p.m. (Eastern Time). Unlike its two competitors (NBC and ABC), CBS had delayed running feature films at the behest of the network's hierarchy.Edgerton, Gary T. The Columbia History of American Television. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007. p. 250. Indeed, as far back as 1960, when Paramount Pictures offered a huge backlog of titles for sale to television for $50 million,Segrave, Kerry. Movies at Home: How Hollywood Came to Television. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999. p. 75. James T. Aubrey, program director at CBS, negotiated with the studio to buy the package for the network. Aubrey summed up his thinking this way: "I decided that the feature film was the thing for TV. A $250,000 specially-tailored television show just could not compete with a film that cost three or four million dollars."Cited in Oulihan, Richard and William Lambert. "The Tyrant's Fall That Rocked the TV World". Life (magazine). Vol. 59, No. 11. (Sept. 10, 1965): p. 94. However, the network's chairman, William Paley, who considered the scheduling of old movies "uncreative", vetoed the Paramount transaction.
It was not until after Aubrey's departure from CBS in early 1965 that Paley finally conceded on the issue and cleared the way for the network to embark on its own prime-time weekly movie broadcast.Cited in Oulihan, Richard and William Lambert. "The Tyrant's Fall That Rocked the TV World," etc. After completing negotiations with various studios that year, the network acquired exclusive rights to televise a total of 90 titles from Columbia Pictures, United Artists, Paramount, and Warner Brothers—news of which resulted in rumors that the network would actually slate films for two prime-time nights rather than just one.Adams, Val. "CBS May Offer 2 'Movie Nights': $8 Million Deal Suggests Plan for 2d Series in '66." New York Times. (August 27, 1965): p. 59. This scheduling addition, however, would not be made until a season later; but reports of further meetings between CBS and Columbia over the acquisition of 20 more titles signaled that the network was now a serious movie-night contender."A.B.C. and M-G-M Close 21-Film Deal." The New York Times. (August 23, 1965): p. 51. The Thursday Night Movie thus began on September 16, 1965, with the television debut of the original The Manchurian Candidate (1962), starring Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey.
Controversy CBS's new anthology was not to escape notoriety, as the network learned the evening of September 30. During its running of the Jack Lemmon-Kim Novak comedy, The Notorious Landlady, someone at the controls of the film's broadcast inadvertently got the reels mixed up, and it was with some chagrin that a network announcer issued an apology during a commercial break before a substantial portion of the movie was then replayed just to get the continuity back on track. What started out, therefore, as a 2-hour-and-15-minute airing wound up lasting approximately three hours.Erickson, Hal. "Movies on Network TV: 1961 Onward (Part 3)." Radio Discussions.. See also Trivia for The Notorious Landlady at the Internet Movie Database. Then a month later, when the Burt Lancaster film Elmer Gantry (1960) was televised with approximately 30 minutes total in various deletions from its original 146-minute length, viewers complained that because of all the omissions, the movie made little sense.Erickson, Hal. "Movies on Network TV," etc. In fact, quite a few entries in the Thursday night anthology during the first season were over 2 hours long—and this was without commercial interruptions. These included The Counterfeit Traitor (1961; 140 minutes), Parrish (1961; 138 minutes), Ocean's 11 (1960; 127 minutes), Mary, Mary (1963; 126 minutes), and Sunrise at Campobello (1960; 144 minutes). Before their broadcast, each of these films was cut to accommodate what CBS executives deemed a feasible running-time. Sunrise at Campobello, in particular, suffered a loss of nearly an hour from its footage after the network pared it down to a 2-hour broadcast including advertisements. Even so, CBS's affiliated stations were still forced on more than a few occasions to delay the start of their local 11:00 (ET) Thursday night newscasts.
In one case, however—that of the Anthony Quinn film Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)—the network considered the entry too short. Requiem had a running time of 85 minutes, but this was judged untenable by CBS executives. Columbia Pictures, the film's theatrical distributor, was contacted and arrangements were made to "pad" the film with extra footage. According to the movie's producer, David Susskind, there were 40 minutes of outtakes from the film in the studio's vault that had to be located. It was from these that an extra 10 minutes was assembled and added to the CBS print. In fact, this is believed to be "the first time television has added footage to a movie."Adams, Val. "10 Minutes Will Be Added to Feature Film for TV." New York Times. (December 28, 1965): p. 55.
First season (1965–66)
All lists of titles and show-dates in this article were culled from the archives of The New York Times, Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via microfilm. 1965-09-16: The Manchurian Candidate (1962) 1965-09-23: The Counterfeit Traitor (1962) 1965-09-30: The Notorious Landlady (1962) 1965-10-07: Parrish (1961) 1965-10-14: Houseboat (1958) 1965-10-21: Ocean's 11 (1960) 1965-10-28: Mary, Mary (1963) 1965-11-04: Elmer Gantry (1960) 1965-11-11: The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1960) 1965-11-18: Experiment in Terror (1962) 1965-11-25: Mysterious Island (1961) 1965-12-02: The Bramble Bush (1960) 1965-12-09: Merrill's Marauders (1962) 1965-12-16: Two Rode Together (1961) 1965-12-23: Sunrise at Campobello (1960) 1965-12-30: Rome Adventure (1962) 1966-01-06: Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) 1966-01-13: Cry for Happy (1961) 1966-01-20: The War Lover (1962) 1966-01-27: The Running Man (1963) 1966-02-03: Guns of Darkness (1962) 1966-02-10: A Fever in the Blood (1961) 1966-02-17: Susan Slade (1961) 1966-02-24: Harvey (1950) 1966-03-03: The Devil at 4 O'Clock (1961) 1966-03-10: The Interns (1962) 1966-03-17: The Notorious Landlady (1962) (Rerun) 1966-03-24: The Ladies Man (1961) 1966-03-31: Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) 1966-04-07: The Best of Enemies (1961) 1966-04-14: Elmer Gantry (1960) (Rerun) 1966-04-21: A Majority of One (1961) 1966-04-28: Houseboat (1958) (Rerun) 1966-05-05: John Paul Jones (1959)
From here through the summer, the remaining broadcasts consisted of reruns of many of the above films. The series' initial season thus comprised a total of 31 movies–12 from Warner Brothers, 13 from Columbia, 3 from Paramount, 2 from United Artists, plus one classic (Harvey) from Universal Studios in a transaction involving an aborted TV-movie deal. (See the article section below on the "Rise of the Made-for-TV Movie.") The next season, CBS would add a second anthology on Friday nights. The network's movie schedule for the 1966-67 season would begin in September with the Thursday Night Movie's television debut of the first half of The Music Man (1962), starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones. The concluding half of the film would be televised the following evening as the premiere offering of the new CBS Friday Night Movie.
The 1966–67 and '67–68 seasons: Thursdays and Fridays Among the films CBS had acquired from Paramount Pictures in 1965, there included the Alfred Hitchcock shocker Psycho (1960), which was scheduled for premiere the night of Friday, September 23, 1966. However, just days before the film was to air, U.S. Senatorial candidate Charles H. Percy's (R-Illinois) college-aged daughter, Valerie, was reported slain by an unknown assailant, and details of the crime went viral in the national print and TV-radio media, including one news article that described the "blonde and pretty" Miss Percy as having been "beaten and stabbed to death in her bed.""Clues Studied in Girl's Slaying." Corpus Christi Times. (September 19, 1966): p. 2. To this day, the identity of Valerie Percy's murderer remains unsolved. The inevitable analogy between Valerie Percy and a "blonde and pretty" Janet Leigh, plus the fact that both the senator's daughter and the Leigh character in the film were both murdered while in a vulnerable state (Miss Leigh in the shower, Miss Percy while asleep) became too much of a coincidence for some of the network's affiliates in the Midwest who announced they would not carry the film."'Psycho' Date Up in Air." Corpus Christi Caller Times. (October 9, 1966): p. 15F. Thus, shortly before Psycho's broadcast, CBS, without notice, yanked it in favor of a Frank Sinatra war film Kings Go Forth (1958). Later that year, CBS decided not to air Psycho at any future date.Adams, Val. "CBS Drops 'Psycho' from Film List." (New York Times News Service) Corpus Christi Caller-Times. (December 18, 1966): p. 22G.According to the 1996 book Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller by Christopher Nickens and Janet Leigh (Harmony. ISBN 0-517-70112-X, p.187), the film was rescheduled for January 27, 1967, but was bumped due to coverage of the Apollo 1 fire. Another film, Die! Die! My Darling!, was seen on that night instead. The film would not be seen in many areas of the country until 1970. The film was thus canceled altogether despite the hefty $500,000 price that CBS had paid Paramount for exclusive rights to televise the movie.
The preemption of Psycho aside, however, the 1966-67 season saw an increase over the previous season in the number of Paramount films televised on CBS. These included Grace Kelly's Academy Award-winning performance in The Country Girl (1954), Marlon Brando's only directorial effort, One-Eyed Jacks (1961), and the Jerry Lewis comedy, The Delicate Delinquent (1957). Columbia Pictures also made a strong showing during the Thursday Night Movie's second season with such entries as Sam Peckinpah's Civil War epic Major Dundee (1964) and the Jack Lemmon comedy, Good Neighbor Sam (1964). But Warner Brothers output, so prominent throughout the anthology's first season, consisted of only five features—and one of those was the animated Gay Purr-ee (1963), a film targeting the pre-teen audience and broadcast just two days before Christmas. Additionally, United Artists pictures during the season also totaled only five; however, the televising of one of those entries, Lilies of the Field (1963), became of particular interest when it was reported that its director, Ralph Nelson, was "given the privilege [by CBS] of editing his own movie for television presentation."Kleiner, Dick. "New Specter Rising in TV-Movie Marriage." Corpus Christi Caller-Times. (March 26, 1967): p. 11F. Further, Nelson was allowed to insert commercial breaks anywhere he wanted. He was even successful in negotiating a bit of risqué dialogue delivered by Sidney Poitier, the film's star. Given that this occurred just a year after producer-director George Stevens had sued NBC over its telecast of his movie A Place in the Sun (1951), arguing that "the network would damage the film by interrupting the narrative with a series of commercials",Rich, John. Warm Up the Snake: A Hollywood Memoir. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006. p. 98. this move by CBS to collaborate with a filmmaker on the broadcast of his own work suggested that commerce could, on occasion, co-exist with art. Also of note, the religiously-themed film aired on Good Friday.
Thursdays (1966–67): 1966-09-15: The Music Man (1962), Part 1