In the days when this show was in production (1949-1957), episodes were preserved for rebroadcast by a process known as "kinoscope", where a TV monitor image would be transferred to motion picture film. These were originally kept for short term rebroadcast purposes, not for permanent archiving. Accordingly, a lot of kinoscopes in this time period got disposed of due to storage space issues.
On the bright side, Mama was a CBS series and was rather popular at the time it seems. Another popular CBS series from a little later, The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), had all its episodes preserved, so maybe Mama got the same treatment. On the not so good side, a post on IMDb claims that all of the live episodes early in the series were lost; no indication of how many those were.
(Nov 11, 2023, 21:05 pm)CaptButler Wrote: [ -> ]In the days when this show was in production (1949-1957), episodes were preserved for rebroadcast by a process known as "kinoscope", where a TV monitor image would be transferred to motion picture film. These were originally kept for short term rebroadcast purposes, not for permanent archiving. Accordingly, a lot of kinoscopes in this time period got disposed of due to storage space issues.
On the bright side, Mama was a CBS series and was rather popular at the time it seems. Another popular CBS series from a little later, The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), had all its episodes preserved, so maybe Mama got the same treatment. On the not so good side, a post on IMDb claims that all of the live episodes early in the series were lost; no indication of how many those were.
Thank you for the information CaptButler.
(Nov 11, 2023, 16:37 pm)rickndeb Wrote: [ -> ]Best I could do was find 4 episodes here. You might be able to find more in collection search:
https://archive.org/details/classic_tv_1...=mama+1949
Yes, I got a few episodes from archive.org . Thank you for the information rickndeb.