"The Honeymooners Lost Episodes: Complete Restored Series" Coming To DVD

Wondering how closely these "Trip to Europe" eps are to those done in the 60's...are they word-for-word identical?

 

with the volumes of my DVD backlog...my watch list is long!
it will be indeed interesting to see what the future will bring.

 

so what is your overall opinion on this set and how is the picture quality?

 

I would say the best thing about the set is that MPI did a great job including all of the surviving Honeymooners sketches and other Honeymooners-related material from the Gleason show, such as the Norton interviews, commercials, etc.

Regarding the picture quality, some shows look pretty good, and others are pretty rough. It's hard to compare to previous releases without a side-by-side comparison, but I can't really see what "restoration" has been done here. I'm no expert, but it seems that a lot more could be done in terms of removing all the specks and blemishes and by applying something like the VidFire or LiveFeed process. Of course, I don't know how big a budget would be required for a project like this, and would it ever really happen?

That said, if you love the Honeymooners, I would not let any of these issues stop you from buying this set. We now have the complete existing Honeymooners sketches in one set presented in chronological order with bonus footage - and that's more than I thought we'd ever get from MPI.

 

Thanks...

I preordered it immediately when it became available...

MPI isn't the best by far...they rarely go the distance...I have much of their stuff and nothing they've done is a stand out in the video quality dept...but, it is wonderful we have them all in one place...well almost all of them!

 

Please keep us posted Michael. Can't wait to hear your review. Hope it's as good as it sounds!

 

will do.

 

My set came today. I had it ordered originally from Barnes and Noble and paid the high shipping (I used gift cards for the DVD) and it was to be here Tuesday. It never shipped and I had a notice that it would ship Friday. I cancelled, ordered from Amazon, Tuesday night, it shipped last night, was here this afternoon. Once I use up the gift cards, no more bn.com for me.

As for the set, I have not had a lot of time to jump into the actual sketches. From what I did watch, the first show from DuMont on 10/5/1951 appears to be from a video master and not film as there are several glitches that looks like what video does. That is the best way to describe it, I'm sure there is a technical term for it.

"The New Bowling Ball" had appeared on a Gleason TV special in the late-1980s, and my first copy before the DVD release was dubbed from that special so anything is an upgrade from that. "The Turkey" appears to be straight from 16mm, and had lines and blemishes throughout but did not take away from the viewing. I also scanned through "Six Months To Live" which had also appeared on a Gleason special, and it looked ok, nothing special but it also is a 59 year old kinescope.

I watched the bonus material. The 15 minute history was very enjoyable, highlighted with nice clips including the home movie footage that was written about (I believe this is the only place on the set that footage appears) and even a sharp, clean copy of the original opening titles to the "Classic 39." (For those who have not seen the original titles when the show aired at 8:30 on Saturdays, it is not the moon over the city opening - you'll be pleasantly surprised to see something a bit different.) The Joyce Randolph interview was also enjoyable. I wish it was longer and went into more of her TV and Broadway career pre-Gleason, and what she's done since 1957 and her involvement with the Lambs Club, but that's ok. It was still great to see her, what a class act!

I listened to a few minutes of the radio shows. "Letter To The Boss" sounds like it was specially produced for the radio, while "Love Letter" sounds like the audio from the broadcast was used and edited for radio broadcast. (During the "intro" an audible cut in the music is very noticable, as is some cross fading from when the June Taylor Dancers would appear to the Jack Lescoulie intro.) The scripts were hard to read, I did not spend much time on those.

From what I watched it appears that the left screen is cut off more and more of the right screen is shown where there is not any action happening at all. I don't know if this was from the original kinescopes and how they were filmed, or if it's part of the restoration. If the film had lines on the left side of the screen, and the only was to get rid of those lines involved cropping the picture, then I'm not sure how much "restoration" terms I would use.

Even with the on and off quality of the kinescopes, this is still well worth it I feel. And the shows I did watch like "The Turkey" with all its film blemishes, there was something charming about it and watching it just like it was coming off a movie projector. I am looking forward to this weekend with a wife away and just the dog and me and the Kramdens and Nortons!

 

actually I would not expect anything more from MPI...I was not thrilled when I found out they were the ones releasing this set...thanks for the review...my expectation were not high from the beginning so I'm sure I'll be happy having a complete (as it could be) box...

 

Yeah, and like someone else pointed out (maybe on the sitcomsonline site) that "it is what it is." I think that overall you'll be very happy with the set. MPI has an agreement with the Gleason Enterprises/Estate, they released the original VHS tapes of the lost shows back in the 1980s, the "Color Honeymooners" and 3 of the 4 1970s reunion shows on DVD. While MPI itself is part of the reason for these blemishes (or minute errors in the booklet), I also think that the producers of the disc are the blame. The Arnaz children are working with MPI to release the entire Here's Lucy series, and those releases have been excellent from the quality of the print of the episodes to the bonus material provided. So not all the blame goes to MPI. However, I have seen other releases of stuff they have put out, so I also understand why you weren't thrilled.

When you get this set, I think you'll be very happy! (Just a warning, if you have the DuMont Christmas episode taped from Disney or in your collection from when Disney aired it several years ago, that is the source - not the DVD - that you will want to watch the show on. The audio on that episode is terrible.)

 

First, thanks for the opinions on this set. I agree the content dictates the buy here.

The 1951 would not have been originally recorded on videotape. Too early. That doesn't mean you're not seeing videotape issues of course. It might be a taping of a kinescope playback for later distro to TV stations, for all we know.

Enjoy!

 

I was in a hurry last night when I was typing. I should have said that the first DuMont show, with the video glitch that is detected, that I think maybe a video master dubbed from the original film was used instead of the original film elements or when the show was being mastered there was a flaw in the mastering. Still, too small of a blemish to be a make-or-break on the set.

How I wish there was videotape back in 1951 because the quality of these shows would be oh-so-better, but there is still that appeal and charm to watcing these old kinescopes

I'm looking forward to digging into this box more starting later today and this weekend. I will report anything else interesting that I see, and can't wait to read other opinions as well!

 

I think you're right. Some of the artifacts on the first Dumont sketch sure look like it's a modern videotape copy of the kinescope.

And the loss of the left edge of the picture in some of the sketches is disappointing. I compared "Cold" to the old release, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the left edge that should have made them purposely re-frame the picture.

 

I thought maybe it was just me seeing things with the left edge of the screen. Too bad about that. Even if there was damage on the left side of the screen, for home video releases I would have been perfectly fine for that. For broadcast purposes I understand not wanting a defected picture, but for home viewing towards a niche market? I think the majority of us would understand.

 

So who else watched the entire Showtime marathon in the mid-80s when the vault was opened and we could see episodes besides the Classic 39 for the first time since they aired?

 

I did and it was great!!

 

A lot of people that do the initial film scanning don't understand that the default sizing does not work for all images. My feeling has always been, you have to scan a little more than the actual image size, all the way out to the camera aperture, and then let the final colorist decide what sizing to use. I would always rather they matte one or more sides of the film than cut off some image on one side.

But it's also possible that who ever did the kinescope 50 or 60 years ago just didn't align the film camera properly, and was overshooting the image on the tube. So it's possible you were already seeing everything there was to see on the film.

I can't say for sure without looking at the raw film myself.

 

Who the hell was losing all these episodes of half the TV shows ever made, and where did they find them all again?

 

They were never really "lost" as Gleason had them in his private vault before revealing their existence in 1986...

 

Exactly. As I said, it seems like half the TV series ever produced have had recent DVD releases of "lost" episodes. I'm still waiting for "Lost": The Lost Episodes".

 

Anyone know what might be "wrong" with this DVD set? I ordered a copy from Amazon back in August. It supposedly shipped on Oct 4, but I never received it and shipping tracking never budged. I called Amazon today to indicate that I never received my copy and they said they had to refund my money. The reason was that they indicate there is a problem with their stock and they removed it for sale from their website.

They couldn't tell me what the problem was, or refused to do so. Meanwhile it seems everyone else has the set in stock and I can't seem to find any issue about a problem with this set that would cause Amazon to currently remove it from their website so that they are not selling it directly.

 

Hmmm....that's odd. I got mine from Amazon and am halfway through disc 2 now (plus some of the bonuses on disc 15).

Sometimes I do worry about these large sets because if there's a problem with, say, disc 13, it might be months before I find out, or even years if I peter out, which sometimes happens with sets this large.

From Amazon's product page for this item:

 

I'm guessing this has to do with the glitch on a few of the discs that makes you wait a really long time before you can select an episode.

Then there's the snafu with one of the scripts on the last disc - two selections play the same script, so one of them ("Missing Pair of Pants") is missing. This was the most disappointing to me - since the film for this episode is lost, having the script would be the next best thing. I hope this is deemed important enough to fix.

I tried contacting MPI several times about these issues but have gotten absolutely no response.

 

That crossed my mind too. You have to wait for one full cycle of the music before the cursor appears.

Didn't try the scripts yet.

 

Thanks. Well I found a copy at Best Buy last night that was about the same price as the copy I ordered and was supposed to receive from Amazon. Amazon refunded my money, even though they indicated they shipped my copy Oct 4. If the Amazon copy shows up I will send it back to them.