#television archives

[dearmash1975project]

One of hundreds of letters sent to CBS after “Abyssinia Henry” aired 50 years ago today on March 18th, 1975. Many of them were from young children.

Last summer I started working on a project with these letters where I tracked down and spoke to many of the children who wrote them (now in their 60s). The project is on hold until I finish this school year, but I leaving cryptic messages on the answering machines of America's boomers resulted in some of the best conversations I've ever had. I'll keep you updated. I chose to share this image as the letter writer is anonymous.

Photo by me, taken 3 July 2024. “Letters from viewers regarding the death of Henry Blake.” Box 22, Folder 4. M*A*S*H Television Show Collection, 1950-1984, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. https://sova.si.edu/record/nmah.ac.0117/ref359?s=0&n=10&t=C&q=NMAH.AC.0117&i=0

[arconinternet]

The Price is Right (Videos, 1956 onward)

You can watch various episodes from through the history of the long-running game show here. (Keep scrolling to find unsorted videos after the 2025 ones.)

The second-last image is from the 2015 April Fool's Day episode - here's a YouTube playlist with some of the others.

[psykopaths]

2046 (2004)

Dir - Wong-Kar Wai

[high-quality-tiktoks]

I know the show was good when I’m already searching on Ao3

[therandomhalfrussian]

You will have to excuse the horrible camera quality and the fact that it’s filmed over a TV but I feel like tumblr should see this clip of Ronnie imitating a turkey:

Featuring Barbro Peterson (❤️) on the left and two french, possibly monegasque, individuals that who are discussing the english word for “turkey” while eating breakfast during the 1975 Monaco grand prix.

[mj-slenderman]

Unpopular magnus protocol take but this is what Gwen looks like. To me.

[eastgaysian]

MY BAZOOKA! 🚀 (originally posted apr 26 2022)

[theaftersundown]

The annual urge to binge all of my favorite shows again.

[brokenlovesong]

AND NOW I'M FALLING FOR YOU

darry x Paul rating: general word count: 2.5k

Paul Holden ate shit. The mud on the field was slick from the rain and he managed to step in just the right way that his heel slid out from underneath. And, like a cartoon character on banana peel, one minute he was in the air and the next he was sprawled out on the ground, starfish style.

[short excerpt]

“Glory, Paul. I’d tell you to watch your step. But it seems a little late for that,” Darrel joked and extended out a mockingly helpful hand towards the boy on the ground who wished the dirt would just swallow him whole and put him out of his misery.

Paul wanted Darrel dead.

Okay, not dead. That was a little dramatic. But he was tired and his head hurt like hell and the mud was gross and squishy beneath him. Everything sucked.

The only reason he accepted Darrel’s assistance in standing was because he did not want to put his hands back down in the mud. And, plus, if he fell, at least he could take Darrel down with him. Was that petty? Maybe.

Darrel’s hands were strong and he had a firm grip as he pulled Paul to his feet. Even through the gloves, Paul could feel how tough his skin was.

[full fic on ao3]

[samuraijacksoff]

hiii im having a lot of fun watching fistful of dollars from a VHS rip available on internet archive !!!!!

[dearmash1975project]

It was fitting that Brian was the first person I spoke to for this. It was his letter, after all, and the age written on it (age 11), that touched me so deeply that it sparked this whole project. I’ll keep my methods on how I tracked him down close to the vest, so as not to illustrate how easy it is to find anyone in this digital age; needless to say– getting an email back that read “Dear Lily, Yes I did!” was thrilling. We scheduled to speak on the phone and did on July 15th, 2024.

{Interview continued under the cut}

Brian Nores was no longer 11 when we spoke on the phone. Between the passage of time and the life that fills the mind since age 11, he didn’t remember writing the letter until my email.

An email, he told me, that his partner advised him not to answer as it was “probably a scam.” Thankfully for me, Brian is “always getting himself into trouble” and answered my inquiry about a letter he may or may not have sent while living at X address in 1975. In hindsight, his partner was definitely right for being wary.

Brian credited his late father for the letter’s existence and described memories flooding back after reading the words he wrote nearly 50 years earlier. Not long before he wrote the M*A*S*H letter, Brian was a boy scout who wanted to quit. His father instructed him that he could quit, but he had to write a letter to the scout master explaining why he wanted to leave the troop. His dad ‘never let him off the hook for that,’ and it was likely this instillation of values that gave Brian the confidence to speak his mind after the fateful episode aired. [In a fascinating ending to the boy scout anecdote– Brian, who still lives in the area, was at the local frame shop years later where the owner recognized his name and produced the letter, which the scout master was having framed.]

When I asked if he remembered the episode he responded how anyone who has seen it would; he remembered it very well. He recalled being “disturbed” and “shocked” by it. In a world before spoiler alerts, he explained, “the whole world saw that episode and reacted in real time.” As an 11-year-old, but also as an American youth raised on American narratives of war, he remembered expecting Henry to “go off into the sunset” and be okay.

“For me, M*A*S*H ended after that episode.”

Brian watched occasionally after season 3 but had no idea the series continued for as long as it did (M*A*S*H aired from 1972-1983). “It was never the same, certainly.”

Brian was in 5th grade in 1975, and at his young age he had never seen something on TV that disturbing. He told me he reached out to an old friend to discuss the letter, and they reminisced about their lives at that time. “Age of innocence” was the term he used with me. At that point in his life, he had never lost any relatives or experienced any hardships. “The most shocking thing that I had experienced prior to that was a large earthquake in ’71.” For Brian, this episode marked one of the first experiences he had had with death.

It's an extraordinary level of influence to have, that the simple ‘writing off’ of a character can have such an impact on a young life. We often characterize television as a sort of hobby, one that has less of a cachet than movies; but the mechanism by which media compels our emotions is the same.

Brian reflected more on this impact when telling me that The Mary Tyler Moore Show was his favorite series, and he recalled crying at the finale in 1977. He remembered thinking “How could they end this?”

To Brian, television was “taken a little more seriously then.” With one TV, there were fights over who got to hold the clicker when you sat around the set as a family. “You got one chance to watch it.” He explained. “What a different world we live in now.”

Brian still lives in the area where he grew up and drives past his old house and “down memory lane” often. He is still close to two of his childhood best friends. He shared with me some of his thoughts on aging, a topic that still feels “surreal” to him. “Only recently have I started to experience change. Restaurants etc. going away. Everything that we grew up with has changed. TV, movies, roads, politics. I don’t like this!” He laughed. “You look in the mirror and think.”

Brian had no idea that his letter ended up in the archives of our country’s National History Museum. “Really surprised” is how he described his reaction to the news; one of the aforementioned childhood friends was “blown away.”

“What it said to me (...) was that it reaffirmed/reinforced some of the things that my dad told me. Doing the right thing and following through.” Brian shared.

“What a difference it can make. That this moment is occurring because I spent a few minutes writing.”

~~~~

Thank you so much to Brian for granting me this interview.

Subject photos courtesy of Brian: Letter-era Brian/current-era Brian, Huntington Library Garden, California.

Accession information: Photo taken by me, 3 July 2024. “Letters from viewers regarding the death of Henry Blake.” Box 22, Folder 4. M*A*S*H Television Show Collection, 1950-1984, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. https://sova.si.edu/record/nmah.ac.0117/ref359?s=0&n=10&t=C&q=NMAH.AC.0117&i=0

[arconinternet]

Space Patrol - British series (Videos, Roberta Leigh, produced 1962, aired 1963)

You can watch them here. From the Wikipedia article:

"The humanoids in his crew consist of the elfin Slim from Venus, and the stocky, ravenously sausage-mad Husky from the Red Planet, Mars. The imperfect Slavic accent variants and six-pointed star chest emblems of these two may have been a sly nod to the Jewish-Russian heritage of the English series creator/writer."

"The show reflected sex roles characteristic of the culture and era which produced it, but blonde and brainy Marla would often explicitly point out that "There are no dumb blondes on Venus." Indeed, the series was created and written by the prolific polymath artist Roberta Leigh, the first woman producer in Britain to have her own film company."

[byler-alarmist]

It feels actually insane to be alive and also involved in fandom right now. The world we live in is getting infinitely shittier with the looming threat of even more terrible things on the horizon, but you'd never know it in the fandom world because there is SO MUCH to look forward to.

Your favorite shows have begun filming the new season! Your favorite character has a very good chance of being revealed as queer! Your favorite fanon couple actually has a good shot at being canon endgame! Long-standing mysteries may finally get answered! Bonus material has been filmed and may be released!

My one fear is that the real world getting shittier could bleed into the fandom space and prevent our joys, leading to cancellations and rewrites and removal from streaming, effectively undoing all the progress we've seen.

Still, I remain hopeful that we can keep this momentum. There is a window of opportunity right now for stories that couldn't be told in the past, and we must continue to uplift them!

Also, we all need to commit to physical media and bootlegging copjes where they don't exist. We need to preserve our shows when they air, lest they become lost media under future oppressive regimes.

[wdr2-rlbmut]

Back in 1980, legendary actor Vincent Price recorded several 30-second television announcements in a bid by the Albuquerque Museum to gain more visitors and members. In an interview with the Albuquerque Journal at the time, Price said, “I am crazy about New Mexico. If I had lots of money, I would like to have a house like Georgia O'Keeffe's here.” Price served on the Arts and Crafts Board of the Interior Department and had a doctorate from the California College of Arts and Crafts.

Digging through our archives, we uncovered this fabulous promo video promoting the Albuquerque Museum Foundation—a non-profit that raises funds for the Albuquerque Museum. You can learn more about us, and as the King of Horror suggests, support us!