The Archive of American Television has made a number of interviews with notable figures from TV history freely available via Google Video. This is fascinating stuff for anyone interested in the evolution of popular culture, and Google Video provides a great viewing experience (via broadband, anyway.) Check out the entire list of interviews or just browse the archives.
Each interview is about three hours, typically broken up into six segments. The ones that look the most interesting to me are Alan Alda, Steven Bochco, Ed Bradley, Sid Caesar, Julia Child, Ossie Davis, Phyllis Diller, Phil Donahue, John Frankenheimer, Curt Gowdy, Quincy Jones, Angela Lansbury, Norman Lear, Jim McKay, Ed McMahon, Rita Moreno, Bob Newhart (pictured at left), Carl Reiner, William Shatner, George Takei, Ted Turner, Mike Wallace, and Jonathan Winters. (The entire list is after the jump below.)
My only complaint is that the Archive is making just a small percentage of their interviews available on Google. (Among the hundreds sitting on the shelf are Steve Allen, Tammy Faye Bakker, Milton Berle, David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Chuck Jones, Eartha Kitt, Sidney Lumet, Mary Tyler Moore, Pat Morita, Bill Moyers, Leonard Nimoy, Tony Randall, Morley Safer, Vin Scully, Fred Silverman, Dick and Tom Smothers, Jean Stapleton, and Studs Terkel!)
tags: tv television archive of american television google video
Here are all the interviews that the Archive is currently making available on
Google:
- Alan Alda, actor/producer/director
- James Arness, actor
- Joseph Barbera, animation creator
- Bob Barker, game show host, executive producer
- Barbara Billingsley, actress
- Steven Bochco, producer
- Mili Lerner Bonsignori, news editor
- Ed Bradley, anchor correspondent
- James Burrows, director
- Sid Caesar, performer
- Vince Calandra, talent coordinator
- Stephen Cannell, show creator/producer/writer
- Bob Carroll, Jr., producer/writer
- Diahann Carroll, actress
- Julia Child, host
- Dick Clark, producer/entertainer
- Joan Ganz Cooney, co-creator of "Sesame Street"
- Richard Crenna, actor
- Madelyn Pugh Davis, producer/writer
- Ossie Davis, writer/actor
- Phyllis Diller, comedian/actress
- Phil Donahue, show host
- Barbara Eden, actress
- Elma Farnsworth, widow of Philo Farnsworth, TV inventor
- Michael J. Fox, actor
- John Frankenheimer, director
- James Garner, actor
- Curt Gowdy, sportscaster
- Andy Griffith, actor
- Robert Guillaume, actor
- Larry Hagman, actor
- Florence Henderson, actress
- Don Hewitt, show creator/news producer
- Kim Hunter, actress
- Quincy Jones, composer/producer
- Don Knotts, actor
- Angela Lansbury, actress
- Norman Lear, show creator/writer/director
- Jim Lehrer, news anchor/correspondent
- Bob Mackie, costume designer
- Robert MacNeil, anchor/host
- Delbert Mann, director
- Jim McKay, sports broadcaster
- Ed McMahon, host/announcer
- Ricardo Montalban, actor
- Rita Moreno, actress
- Bob Newhart, actor
- Agnes Nixon, soap opera creator/writer
- Fess Parker, actor
- Abraham Polonsky, writer
- Joyce Randolph, actress
- Carl Reiner, show creator/writer/actor/director
- Gene Reynolds, director/producer
- Fred Rogers, children's show creator/host
- Phil Roman, animation director
- Jay Sandrich, director
- Sherwood Schwartz, show creator/producer writer
- William Shatner, actor
- Doris Singleton, actress
- Bob Smith, children's show creator
- Carroll Spinney, puppeteer
- Leonard Stern, writer/producer
- George Takei, actor
- Grant Tinker, executive/producer
- Ted Turner, network creator executive
- Dick Van Dyke, actor
- Mike Wallace, anchor/correspondent
- Ruth Warrick, actress
- Dennis Weaver, actor
- Joseph Wershba, news reporter/producer
- Betty White, actress
- Jonathan Winters, comedian
- Dick Wolf, producer
- David Wolper, producer/documentarian
- Jane Wyatt, actress
5 Responses
ed –
hey, glad you liked these. I’m actually moving over to work on Google Video so will be fun to talk about this stuff with you next time we get together.
Hi Ed, I wondered if you’ve heard about the BBC Archive programme, that’s releasing archived news content under creative commons licensing?
https://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/
Thanks, Stewart. It’s an outstanding project in theory, but I’m wondering what’s holding up the release of more clips.
You can see what’s available at Superstar VJs, and in the historical index, for example, there are just 2 clips from the ’50s, 1 from the ’60s, 2 from the ’70s, 3 from the ’80s and 1 from the ’90s.
Ed, There’s 80 news stories here. The BBC have said that this is a pilot for the archive and that once the technology and the initial take up has been looked at, and if it’s deemed a success then there will be further content released into the public domain.
You wrote: “My only complaint is that the Archive is making just a small percentage of their interviews available on Google.”
Keep checking back for more interviews. The Archive of American Television will be posting a lot more of these exclusive interviews on Google Video in the coming months. Thanks for the nice post.