The Box: An Oral History of Television 1920-1961

by Jeff Kisseloff

Guaranteed to keep you up long after prime time, The Box re-creates the old-time TV years through more than three hundred interviews with those who invented, manufactured, advertised, produced, directed, wrote, and acted in them. Their reminiscences are intertwined with a chronological narrative that tells the technological, business, and entertainment stories—from pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth, through the Golden Age of comedy and drama, to FCC chairman Newt Minow's historic speech declaring television a “vast wasteland.”

Here are household names and fascinating unknowns, from the brilliant RCA scientists who flew paper airplanes off the Empire State Building, to Uncle Miltie, Edward R. Murrow, and Beaver's mom. You'll hear about the great pioneering stations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York, and the inside story from the people who fixed the quiz shows. This enormous treasury of sparkling memories and candid opinions truly breaks new ground in the history of television.

This new edition includes over 100 photos of people, events, and memorabilia!

“Wondrous... An oral scrapbook of the pioneering days of our video nation”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Perhaps the highest compliment one can pay this popcorn page-turner is that it would make a terrific TV documentary.”
—People

“The best book ever about the early days of America's most pervasive communication medium.”
—Los Angeles Daily News

“A gossipy and profanely entertaining reality check by way of everyone from June Cleaver to Studs Terkel.”
—The Boston Globe

“A tour de force... Readers will get a good perspective on the business.”
—Hugh Downs

“Riveting”
—L.A. Weekly

“The Box is hilarious, tacky, screwball, and sublime—everything that TV itself has always been.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Pop Culture, Tv

527 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 1995

Reviews

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review title: Bringing TV home

Oral history in the Age of podcasting may seem a low-bandwidth lost cause, but insightful interviews well organized can tell a story with more thought and depth than the best documentary. The density of information in text that can be consumed at the reader's pace imparts more perspective on the material than the controlled linear flow of video and audio. Despite the association that the genre passed into history with the late Studs Terkel, its most recognized and decorated author, Jeff Kisseloff produced this great oral history of the birth and nurturing of television from 1920 to its first golden age in the 1950s and the nursery room doorstep of the technological and cultural revolution it would work on the world in the decades since.

The key to good oral history is the organization of the material; turning on the tape recorder and transcribing the interview to paper is just the first step in mining raw material that needs to be sculpted into story. Kisseloff has done this job masterfully, organizing the history into meaningful chapter organization and the interviews within chapters into virtual conversations that left me mentally envisioning the author surrounded by his subjects in a room in free-flowing discussion with each other as well as the interviewer. In Book One encompassing the first third of the pages the chapters are arranged chronologically as Kisseloff gathers material on the invention of the technology, its improvement to the point of viability, the early confusion about what television could and should show, and the transition of content from radio to TV, live performances to taped shows (driven by the lure of resellable reruns), and advertiser-produced content to advertiser-supported network programming (driven by the rising cost of airtime and the networks desire to control the programming schedule). In Book Two, as the technology and delivery of content settle down into patterns that would continue mostly intact with tweaking over the following decades, and television transitions to the 1950s golden years, Kisseloff switches to chapters based on content: melodrama and westerns, variety and situation comedies, news, soap operas, kids programming and game shows.

Each chapter begins with a short author-written introduction to the history and key players of the period or content, and at the back of the book Kisseloff includes a bibliography and a section called "The Witnesses" that provides thumbnail biographies of the interview subjects who supplied the material. I found these bios particularly interesting and kept a bookmark in that section so I could understand the role, expertise and perspective of the voices I was hearing, most of them for the first time. While a few of the names are familiar for their on screen appearances, most of the interviewees are the behind-the-camera men and women who invented, assembled, or operated the technology and produced, directed, sold or wrote the content. Remembering the scope of the book from 1920 to 1960, it is not surprising that few of the names are household names; conversely, the publication date of 1995 means that many of those present at the very creation of television were still alive and their words and thoughts included here in an immediacy that could not have been captured in the 21st century. It is astonishing how many of the birth dates in the biographies are in the 1910s, so we owe Kisseloff a debt of gratitude for preserving this first generation's voice before it passed away.

While no photographs of the subjects are included here, the benefit of reading this in the 21st century is the ability of search engines to find those pictures and additional biographical details, which I found myself doing often as an interviewee's words and stories sparked a desire to learn more. The stories often revealed hidden facets of the familiar icons of those early days. Lucille Ball, Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Edward R. Murrow, Milton Berle, Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) and others are seen here in three dimensions through the eyes of coworkers, friends, and competitors. Some of the added dimensions are flattering, a few are not, but all paint a better picture of those long-gone days.

One common thread is that of the great effort it took to get on the air and produce content to fill it. The creators were too busy inventing television to spend a lot of time considering its impact until they were reminded by viewers calling the studio after a live show (whether positive or negative, one interview said that the crew could tell the impact of a broadcast by how many seconds it took for the first call to arrive), recognizing a soap star on the street as a personal friend, or mailing in post cards in response to a Howdy Doody show which within a week overwhelmed the mail delivery and storage in the studio so that an outside firm had to be hired to handle and count the responses. It was responses like these that helped creators figure out the power of television as an intensely intimate window into the home and the lives of viewers; the mode of interaction may have changed to blogging, tweeting, and binge-watching, but interaction between creators and viewers of the technology and the content continues today.

Kisseloff quotes this reminder of the purpose of television from a guide to children's television:

The television business works on three simple principles: keep the audience up, the costs down, and the regulators out. . . . . Television's first mission is not to inform, educate or enlighten. It isn't even to entertain. Its first mission is to entice viewers to watch the commercials. (p. 444>

It is a powerful reminder that then and now the purpose of television remains the same, no matter the size of the screen, the quality of the picture and sound, the delivery channel, and the many sources of programming in the streaming age. Kisseloff's subjects don't shy away from or sugar-coat the McCarthy-era blacklist, the game-show fixing scandal, the implicit and explicit racism and gender inequities, and the sometimes cynical intersection of business and creativity to entice viewers to watch the commercials. But they also reveal the expertise, devotion, teamwork, and life that was poured into the every-day effort to keep the show on the air. If you have any interest in what brought TV into history and into your home, you'll want to open The Box.

[Muffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is FULL of unbelievably dishy anecdotes from TV history. I chronicled a VERY small number of them here:

https://twitter.com/MuffMacGuff/statu...

But truthfully there are so many more. This is an endlessly entertaining book and a must-read for anyone interested in TV's fucked up inspiring history.

[Scott Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first 150 pages or so are about the development of the television industry and are interesting but not riveting. After that point though, the book is a total gas and is hard to put down. There are hundreds of great anecdotes, although the best is the one about Mike Wallace and the elephants. That story alone is worth 5 stars.

[Joe Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and such a different world that it is tough to believe even though true. The oddest thing now is the people in the book passionately pleading for and believing in the viability of live Television with no recordings. Can you imagine a world were every sitcom and drama is live and never repeated?
Anyway very good history of the technical part of radio creation early and then the broadcasting part later in the book. It covers the scandals well particularly the quiz show stuff and Congress getting interested in all the violence. Also lots of information on the news side of things.
Fans of recorded sitcoms an dramas won't find as much here as it really isn't the books emphasis. Anyone who is interested in the birth of TV, the transition from radio and the live performances of the 40s and 50s will find this book incredibly fine. There is as in most oral histories pages with a greater density of swear words than George RR Martin every dreamed possible. You have been warned.

[Steve Pellini · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was totally captivated by the book. Being a TV history nerd and a Chicagoan, I died laughing when I read the chapter about 'Super Circus' and the elephant trainer's debacle that included Mary Hartline that was broadcast live. I have opened the book several times just to read that story.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely monumental work of history. Anyone with any sort of interest in the early days of television needs to read this book.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be obligatory reading for all Americans not off the grid. It is the story of how our entertainment lives came to be shaped as they were, haphazardly and for profit. There's no need to question that. Many individuals did their damnedest, and some of their were kind, talented artists. Some weren't. Kisseloff interviews them all. I hope he got a medal for this book. What kind of tenacious TV historian tracks down production assistants from the Lone Ranger's early days and spends hours listening to them talk to eke out one quote that reinforces something that someone else said? Jeff Kisseloff, that's who. I take my hat off to him.

Before the story of the decline of America, there is a funner, better, happier story. Kisseloff didn't start interviewing until after Philo Farnsworth's passing, but he talks to his wife and sister, who were there when Farnsworth was inspired by a field he was plowing to solve one of the great problems dogging his pursuit of television. Philo and others made the television possible, and tweaked it until it was commercially viable. They were young, passionate inventor-types, young writers, young actors. People who would do anything to make four hours of broadcastable TV an evening exclusively for New York, because without the invention of coaxial cable, the broadcasts couldn't leave the region. Early television is where the great stories are. People melting under the studio lights, driving over cables that the president is being broadcast through, filming the fire across the street from the studio (first TV news event), accidentally broadcasting naked ladies, falling over on set. People you've heard of now are perpetually showing up, plucky and scrappy, and being put on television because they would broadcast anything: Coin collections, juggling, etc. The men selling the television sets are a bit slimy, but they get half a chapter. And this is all told in Kisseloff's glib way, excerpting of millions of hours of interviews. Just, wow.

After the war, things get more boring. Television gets corporate. The plucky young people with the ideas are up against, say, Camel, who gets a say in the content of the Camel News Caravan. Alcoa is praised; they came off an environmental and public relations disaster to fund a documentary program and gave the editors free reign as long as they could have their name on something positive for once. The theatre came to television in a big way. Miracle Worker was on TV before it was in the theater? Really? Other plays I can't remember right now and can't find in this 600-page-book, but they were on TV first. But, as TV became more important, without the cultural mandates of, say, the BBC, it became entirely money-driven. Entirely. As soon as something worked, all stations would rush to replicate it. If something didn't work, it was thrown in the garbage, no matter how good or important it was.

Then there were scandals, and the Vast Wasteland speech. And then we went through another forty years of garbage until some people got together to make an aggregate of watchable shows that aren't too racist, sexist, or plain embarrassing. Which is the other point. Television was entirely controlled by white men. There were women announcing, writing, and doing the same things the men were doing for half the pay, and Kisseloff interviews them, but it's very clear reading this where the money and power were and who was making decisions. And things get bleaker and more formulaic the longer television was around. So we go from comic stories of early television to "Oh my God, these people are terrible." The book gets harder to read. And it is damn long. The only other trouble is that Kisseloff's introductory essays to each chapter are so well done that one wishes he'd just written a standard history instead of going the interview route. And, again, this book is looong. If you don't get past page three hundred, no one will judge you. But, try.

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very entertaining stories of all aspects of the early days of television. If you have any interest in this topic you should definitely read this book.