Found at Last: A Tape of the First Super Bowl
La N
Found at Last: A Tape of the First Super Bowl
No Recording of the 1967 Packers-Chiefs Game Had Ever Been Found-Until This
One Emerged From a Pennsylvania Attic
By DAVID ROTH and JARED DIAMOND
Football fans know what happened in Super Bowl I. The game, which was played
on January 15, 1967, was the first showdown between the NFL and AFL
champions. It ended with the Green Bay Packers stomping the Kansas City
Chiefs, 35-10.
Unless they were one of the 61,946 people at the Los Angeles Memorial
Coliseum that day, or one of the fans who watched it live on NBC or CBS,
there's one thing that all football fans have in common: They've never
actually seen the game.
WSJ's J.R. Whalen reveals some little-known facts about Super Bowl I, played
in 1967. Like, for instance, it wasn't even called the Super Bowl.
In a bizarre confluence of events, neither network preserved a tape. All
that survived of this broadcast is sideline footage shot by NFL Films and
roughly 30 seconds of footage CBS included in a pre-game show for Super Bowl
XXV. Somehow, an historic football game that was seen by 26.8 million people
had, for all intents and purposes, vanished.
HBO executive Rick Bernstein, who produced a two-part history of sports
television in 1991, is one of many who have searched for a tape. He says his
team chased numerous leads, from a reported copy in Cuba to rumors that Hugh
Hefner might have recorded the game on a videotape machine in the Playboy
Mansion. Nothing turned up. "It's the holy grail," Mr. Bernstein says.
The long search may finally be over. The Paley Center for Media in New York,
which had searched for the game footage for some time, has restored what it
believes to be a genuine copy of the CBS broadcast. The 94-minute tape,
which has never been shown to the public, was donated to the center by its
owner in return for having it restored. It was originally recorded on bulky
two-inch video and had been stored in an attic in Pennsylvania for nearly 38
years, the Paley Center says.
Ron Simon, a curator at the Paley Center, said the center's archivists had
issued "most-wanted" lists in the past for lost tapes it coveted, and the
Super Bowl I broadcast was always on them. Mr. Simon says the sequence of
plays shown, the announcers and graphics that appear and the general look of
the production leave no doubt that the tape is real. "I've seen faked games
before, and this is not one," he says.
Mr. Simon likens the tape's emergence to the center's discovery of lost
episodes of "The Honeymooners." "This is one of the great finds," he says.
It seems preposterous now, in the DVR age, that a telecast shown by two
major networks could go missing. But in 1967, "people just didn't have video
recorders at home," Mr. Simon explains. He says the networks didn't develop
consistent policies for preserving programs until the 1970s and that while
they did a good job of preserving prime-time programs, other shows-daytime
shows, morning shows, and sports-weren't usually preserved at all.
Representatives from both CBS and NBC confirmed the networks do not have
copies of their broadcasts.
The tape's owner said through his attorney, Steve Harwood of Norfolk, Va.,
that the recording had been shot by his client's father, who recorded the
broadcast by WDAU-TV in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on a videotape machine
at his workplace in hopes the tapes might someday be valuable.
In the summer of 2005, Mr. Harwood says that the tape's owner found out that
Sports Illustrated had named the missing Super Bowl broadcast one of the
"lost treasures" of sports and estimated the tapes were worth more than $1
million. Mr. Harwood says his client decided to approach the Paley Center
about restoring the tape.
Doug Warner, the Paley Center's director of engineering, remembers the day
when the unthinkable happened. "This guy showed up with a shopping bag that
had Super Bowl I in it."
The two reels of two-inch quadruplex tape were warped and slightly beat up.
To restore the recording, the Paley Center worked with a consultant with
expertise in crude tape machines used to record them and hired New
Jersey-based film preservation house Specs Bros. to do the work. The center
says it was allowed to keep a copy but cannot show it without the owner's
permission. (The still photographs accompanying this story and the short
clips available on WSJ.com were provided by Mr. Harwood).
The tape, which is in color, is an absorbing time capsule. It contains
vintage commercials for McDonald's (then boasting of "Over Two Billion
Served") and Muriel cigars ("So much more cigar for just 10 cents"). The
first touchdown in Super Bowl history-a 37-yard pass from Green Bay's Bart
Starr to backup wide receiver Max McGee-is shown in a replay where the words
"video tape" appear on the screen. There's some understated commentary from
CBS broadcasters Jack Whitaker, Ray Scott and Frank Gifford ("Dawson...
Sideline... Burford... Incomplete.") and a rare postgame grin from Packers
head coach Vince Lombardi.
The recording also includes a shocking sight for a Super Bowl: empty seats.
The game didn't sell out, even with ticket prices that topped out at $12.
The tape isn't perfect. The halftime show and a large chunk of the third
quarter are missing. The person who recorded it skipped over some breaks in
the action. The image pixelates on occasion, the sound quality varies and
there are occasional eruptions of white static at the side of the screen.
Mr. Harwood, the attorney, says he contacted the NFL in 2005 about the tape.
He says the league sent him a letter on Dec. 16, 2005 claiming the NFL was
the exclusive owner of the copyright. Mr. Harwood says the NFL offered his
client $30,000 for the tape and his client declined. Mr. Harwood said his
client would like to sell the tapes and make them available to the public if
the legal issues can be resolved.
Whatever its fate, the tape's discovery is the first strong evidence that
one of the lost treasures of sports may not be lost after all. "This is an
amazing document," Mr. Simon says.
Michael O'Connor
exist, and Super Bowl 5 is only a partial game with part of the second
and fourth quarters. I have seen a homemade Super Bowl 1 film where
somebody took the game film that was shot by either the Packers or
Chiefs coaching staff (which they routinely did and still do to this
day, for scouting purposes) and put the game film together with the
Ray Scott radio broadcast of the game. As a Pro Football historian I
am interested in seeing this; I'm sure it will wind up on the NFL
network before long.
KingDaevid
...any chance of a DVD release, a la the Ed Sullivan broadcasts that
The Beatles appeared on (with most, if not all, of the
commercials)?...
kdm
Michael O'Connor
> ...any chance of a DVD release, a la the Ed Sullivan broadcasts that
> The Beatles appeared on (with most, if not all, of the
> commercials)?...
I'm pretty confident the game will be released on DVD. A think the
obvious parallel is the recent discovery of Game 7 of the 1960 World
Series, which was found in Bing Crosby's wine cellar; the game was
aired on MLB Network in December and soonafter released on DVD.
Most of the Super Bowl broadcasts are already available on commercial
DVD releases. The NFL produced a Greatest Games DVD series which
include all the Super Bowl broadcasts (game only, no halftime or
commercials) for many teams, including the Steelers, Cowboys, Raiders,
and other teams in sets where you can get all the Cowboy Super Bowl
wins, all the Steeler Super Bowl wins, etc. An ebay search showed
that bootlegs of the complete broadcasts of all the existing Super
Bowls are also available there. There are also online trading groups
where the bootlegs can be found.
Michael O'Connor
> > WSJ's J.R. Whalen reveals some little-known facts about Super Bowl I, played
> > in 1967. Like, for instance, it wasn't even called the Super Bowl.
>
> "Super Bowl l."
>
> In the 1-15-1967 TV Guide listings, CBS has a full-page ad with a
> vertical "SUPER BOWL" taking up most of the page.
>
> TV Guide's listing opens with "Who's No. 1? The Green Bay Packers and
> the Kansas City Chiefs settle the issue in the first Super Bowl
> championship in Los Angeles."
>
> Prior to the game, NBC aired a one-hour preview entitled "Super Bowl
> l."
>
> This was, of course, many years before Rupert Murdoch took over the
> magazine.
>
> Silas Calhoun
Most people do not know that CBS and NBC both simultaneously aired
Super Bowl I using their own broadcast teams. At the time, CBS
carried the NFL games and NBC the AFL games, and it was agreed that
both networks would air the game. Starting with Super Bowl II, the
game was alternated between the networks. The only other NFL game
which aired simultaneously on more than one of the big three networks
was the 2007 Patriots Giants regular season finale, which was
scheduled to air on the NFL Network but because of the historical
nature of the game (the Patriots went into the game undefeated), it
was also offered to NBC and CBS, who both simulcast the NFL Network
telecast.
Rick B.
news:bb1b26be-70cd-4248...@i40g2000yqh.googlegroups.com:
>
>> WSJ's J.R. Whalen reveals some little-known facts about Super Bowl I,
>> played in 1967. Like, for instance, it wasn't even called the Super
>> Bowl.
>
> Huh? Not only was it called the Super Bowl, it was already called
> "Super Bowl l."
>
> In the 1-15-1967 TV Guide listings, CBS has a full-page ad with a
> vertical "SUPER BOWL" taking up most of the page.
>
> TV Guide's listing opens with "Who's No. 1? The Green Bay Packers and
> the Kansas City Chiefs settle the issue in the first Super Bowl
> championship in Los Angeles."
>
> Prior to the game, NBC aired a one-hour preview entitled "Super Bowl
> l."
Note, though, that Super Bowl doesn't appear on the tickets for the first
three games:
http://www.superbowlstubs.com/I_X.htm
I was a kid at the time, and I don't recall ever hearing it called anything
but the Super Bowl.
danny burstein
>Note, though, that Super Bowl doesn't appear on the tickets for the first
>three games:
>http://www.superbowlstubs.com/I_X.htm
>I was a kid at the time, and I don't recall ever hearing it called anything
>but the Super Bowl.
And it most assuredly was called the Super Bowl in 1977, even
if Robert Shaw didn't recognize it.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dan...@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Bryan Styble
THANK YOU for digging up that TV Guide listing, for it confirms
something I've long believed but was afraid to voice.
That is, it's been purported common knowledge to anyone who follows
the NFL that the "Super Bowl" moniker didn't come into usage until the
historic third edition of the contest.
Yet I've always seemed to remember it was from the OUTSET. Being an
NFL fan in the mid-60s (as well as preferring CBS coverage in those
days to the generally cheesier coverage NBC was providing for the
still-upstart AFL), I of course elected to watch the co-coverage SB I
on CBS, rather than on NBC. (Though for decades I've been
disappointed that my 12-year old mind wasn't curious enough to at
least SAMPLE the NBC co-coverage just one channel away in St. Louis
that Sunday.) Indeed, I even seemed to recall Jack Whittaker using
the SB term during the coverage.
But I've always assumed this was all simply my mind misremembering,
because again, darned near every SB story I've read in the ensuing
decades has repeated the name-originated-with-III story. But this TV
Guide listing and its accompanying ad confirms an alternate account
which squares with my memory: isn't it possible that the SB name was
coined by the media (or someone else outside the NFL hierarchy) and
thus used by the networks in their promos, and only two seasons later
was adopted by the NFL, and that for unclear reasons Lamar Hunt (or
someone sympathetic to him) then appropriated it, adding perhaps for
sentimental value, the daughter-with-the-Superball story?
What I've always DISTINCTLY remembered is that the first time I heard
the term was how it was an obvious adaptation of the name of the
Superball--perhaps configured Super Ball?--but also have always been
cowed into believing this all was in late 1968, instead of in 1966 as
I seemed to remember it.
I shoulda trusted my usually-strong memory for details. Again, thanks
much, Silas!
Existentially,
BRYAN STYBLE/Orlando
Michael O'Connor
> I was a kid at the time, and I don't recall ever hearing it called anything
> but the Super Bowl.
The NFL and AFL did not officially refer to the game as Super Bowl I
at the time; it was referred to as the NFL-AFL Championship Game, even
though everybody else referred to it as the Super Bowl. By Super Bowl
II, the leagues realized that Super Bowl had become the accepted term
for the game and started using it.
R H Draney
Just been tooling around Wikipedia to see what else would have been on TV that
night...apparently that's the week CBS gave "It's About Time" a week off to
retool their concept; before SBI it was about two astronauts stuck in the Stone
Age, and after it was about a Stone Age family transported to the present
day...the Ed Sullivan show followed....
On NBC, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color ran the second of three parts of
something called "Willie and the Yank", then there was an episode of "Hey
Landlord" later that evening on NBC, called "A Legend Dies", which tv.com
synopsizes as "Chuck [series regular Sandy Baron], a former street-gang hero, is
called upon to stop a rumble"....
Following that, on Bonanza: "A Bride for Buford"...Dolly Bantree [Lola
Albright] has a crooked manager, "Blackie" [Richard Devon], who blackmails her
into fleecing newly-rich miner Buford [Jack Elam!] out of his fortune. To prove
that Dolly only loves Buford for his money, Hoss gets all duded up as a rich
"mark" to test Dolly.
....r
--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.
Brad Ferguson
<dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> On NBC, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color ran the second of
> three parts of something called "Willie and the Yank"
It was about Mosby's Rangers and starred Disney stalwart Kurt Russell
as Willie, a Confederate private. Maybe they were trying for another
Swamp Fox-style franchise.
The Yank was Union Cpl. James MacArthur, who falls in love with Kurt's
cousin, Peggy Lipton. (This was more than a year and a half before the
debut of The Mod Squad. "One black. One white. One blonde.")
Bryan Styble
>
> Just been tooling around Wikipedia to see what else would have been on TV that
> night...apparently that's the week CBS gave "It's About Time" a week off to
> retool their concept; before SBI it was about two astronauts stuck in the Stone
> Age, and after it was about a Stone Age family transported to the present
> day...the Ed Sullivan show followed....
>
----------------------------------------------
Yo, R.H.: appreciate the lineups detail there, but you invite the
question:
Do you prefer the first, circa-1 million B.C. premise, or the back-
in-1967 reworking of "It's About Time"?
I thought it was mildly amusing in its first incarnation, but its
second sequence's only highlight was the series-long catchy theme
song. Ya gotta love Imogene Coca and Frank Alletter [sp?], though.
Existentially,
BRYAN STYBLE/Orlando
Brad Ferguson
<ace5ee06-bcc7-403e...@o21g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,
Bryan Styble <radioacti...@gmail.com> wrote:
I skimmed through two of the Stone Age episodes and one of the modern
ones fairly recently. They're really, really awful. The animated
opening sequences were far and away the best thing about them.
Tell you the truth, I don't remember liking the show much even back in
the day.
R H Draney
That seems to be the consensus: the theme song was the best thing about it...I
remember in school we took to singing "it's about time, it's about time, it's
about time to slap your face" and then hauling off and whacking the nearest
person in the kisser...that was as funny to us in those days as rewriting the
theme song for Chuck Connors' show as "stranded, stuck on the toilet bowl"....r
Scott Brady
> The NFL and AFL did not officially refer to the game as Super Bowl I
> at the time; it was referred to as the NFL-AFL Championship Game, even
> though everybody else referred to it as the Super Bowl. By Super Bowl
> II, the leagues realized that Super Bowl had become the accepted term
> for the game and started using it.
The earliest printed occurence of "Super Bowl" I could find is from
July 18, 1966, with Lamar Hunt taking credit for the coinage:
The number of articles available shows the term went into common usage
almost immediately, although Pete Rozelle apparently hated it and kept
looking for a more suitable name. I knew "Super Bowl" wasn't
officially adopted for a few years, but had no idea it was in popular
use (or even existed) from the start.
By the way, the site of the game wasn't even determined until mid-
December of 1966, which probably contributed to its not being a
sellout.
R H Draney
>
>On 5 Feb 2011 13:58:17 -0800, R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>>On NBC, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color ran the second of three parts of
>>something called "Willie and the Yank"
>
Most suggestive lyric in a Disney song:
"Darling, it's better down where it's wetter, take it from me!"
-- Sebastian the crab, "Under the Sea" from "The Little Mermaid"
Joe Pucillo
> Terry del Fuego filted:
> >R H Draney wrote:
> >>On NBC, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color ran the second of three parts of
> >>something called "Willie and the Yank"
> >And people think dirty TV shows are something new...
> Most suggestive lyric in a Disney song:
>
> "Darling, it's better down where it's wetter, take it from me!"
> -- Sebastian the crab, "Under the Sea" from "The Little Mermaid"
"But Patty's into rock and roll,
A hot dog makes her lose control..."
JP
Joe Pucillo
> There's some understated commentary from
> CBS broadcasters Jack Whitaker, Ray Scott and Frank Gifford ("Dawson...
> Sideline... Burford... Incomplete.")
God, I miss understated commentary.
JP