NBC Saturday Night at the Movies

NBC Saturday Night at the Movies was the first TV show to broadcast in color relatively recent feature films from major studios. The series premiered on September 23, 1961, and ran until October 1978, spawning many imitators. Previously, television stations had been only been able to show older, low-budget, black-and-white films that wouldn't be shown at movie theaters. In the late 1970s, competition from cable television and home video led to a decline in viewership.

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History

Background and early history

Further information: List of NBC Saturday Night at the Movies titles

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For its 1961–62 television season, NBC obtained the rights to broadcast 31 post-1950 movie titles from 20th Century Fox, although only 30 were actually telecast that season (one film, The Seven Year Itch, not being televised until the start of the 1963 season). On September 23, 1961, Saturday Night at the Movies premiered with the 1953 Marilyn Monroe–Lauren Bacall–Betty Grable film How to Marry a Millionaire, presented "In Living Color". Some of the other movies shown were The Day the Earth Stood Still (March 3, 1962) and No Highway in the Sky (March 24, 1962). (Having been filmed in Cinemascope, a Fox specialty from 1953 to 1967, many of these films had to be severely panned-and-scanned to fit the invariable full screen television aspect ratio of the time.)

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