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1969–70: The fall of 1969 was included a TV milestone: 1,000 broadcasts of post-1948 movies. The achievement took the Big Three a mere 8 years. Despite mixed results overall, NBC stuck with its three nights of movies of Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday. To keep the number of new titles low, Monday included semi-regular Bob Hope specials and Tuesday had First Tuesdays once a month while Saturday repeated previous seasons' movies. A few years ago, that could've been an expensive solution, but now the price of Hollywood movies was dropping. In three years, the cost had dropped 25%. The market had become too flooded. This fall, NBC's asking price for 1-minute of advertising was $53,000 on Monday and Tuesday and $60,000 on Saturday.
On Tuesday: NBC kept First Tuesday as it certainly came with some prestige for the news division and ensured there wasn't a need for that many movies. Only four years ago, 30 films was seen as the minimum number needed for one night for a single season. This season of NBC Tuesday Night at the Movies was comprised of only 17 new titles, of which 13 were from Universal. Of the batch, 5 were original movies. One served as a pilot (McCloud) and two others (My Sweet Charlie and Silent Night, Lonely Night) went on garner some awards recognition. While they weren't the first NBC movies to go on to garner some Emmy consideration at the primetime ceremony, they were the first ones that aired as part of a Night at the Movies lineup.
Programmer's Corner: Revamping its early Tuesday schedule yet again, NBC brought aging sitcom I Dream of Jeannie back to the night to lead-in to newcomer The Debbie Reynolds Show. Directly leading into the movie was Julia, which took a ratings hit because the competition suddenly became intense. After years of searching for something that might match The Fugitive's early success and already having a solid lead-off with The Mod Squad, ABC found fire with the anthology Movie of the Week, which challenged NBC's Tuesday movie stronghold, and Marcus Welby, M.D., which soared in the timeslot. With First Tuesday, NBC intended to challenge the CBS News team, but right behind them was ABC ready to pouch on their movie ability, and that meant First Tuesday would suffer, too, since new documentaries don't always do well. CBS still managed well with The Red Skelton Show while newcomer The Governor and J.J. did okay given the stiff competition. The CBS News Hour / 60 Minutes didn't always bring viewers, but it brought prestige.
NBC TUESDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES, 1969–70
Regular season
16 Sep 1969: The Ballad of Josie (1967, 2 hours)
A widow stirs things up in a western town by raising sheep instead of cattle, and organizing the local women to demonstrate for women's suffrage. (Comedy Western / Color, Universal)
Director: Andrew V. McLaglen; with Doris Day, Peter Graves, George Kennedy, Andy Devine
23 Sep 1969: Tobruk (1967, 2 hours)
A Canadian POW major is rescued by a special British military unit made up of Germans to help lead an attack on a major Nazi fuel depot in Tobruk, Libya. (War / Color, Universal)
Director: Arthur Hiller; with Rock Hudson, George Peppard, Nigel Green, Guy Stockwell
30 Sep 1969: The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968, 2 hours)
In this remake of The Paleface, a pardoned stagecoach robber, becomes government agent and marries a naive unsuspecting east-coast dentist in order to join a wagon train and catch the smugglers who have been selling guns to the Indians. (Comedy Western / Color, Universal)
Director: Alan Rafkin; with Don Knotts, Barbara Rhoades, Jackie Coogan
7 Oct 1969: From Here to the 70s
A two-and-a-half hour news documentary that recaps much of the 1960s and sets up for the next upcoming decade.
14 Oct 1969: The Tiger and the Pussycat (1967, 2 hours 15 minutes)
One day, a middle-aged, married businessman is innocently introduced to a schoolgirl. Years later, that schoolgirl has become a vivacious young woman, and she pursues him, luring him into an on-again-off-again romantic tryst where she pulls the strings and holds all the cards. (Comedy / Color, Embassy)
Director: Dino Risi; with Vittorio Gassman, Ann-Margret, Eleanor Parker
21 Oct 1969: The Lonely Profession (NBC World Premiere)📺 (1969, 2 hours)
TV Movie. A private investigator is hired to trail the mistress of a reclusive billionaire. When the two meet, they hit it off and check in at a motel. However, in the morning, the woman has been murdered and the private investigator is the suspect. (Crime / Color, Universal)
Director: Douglas Heyes; with Harry Guardino, Dean Jagger, Barbara McNair
More: Wikipedia | Letterboxd
28 Oct 1969: Don't Just Stand There! (1968, 2 hours)
A young writer is sent to Europe on an assignment to finish the final chapters of a sex novel by a famous authoress who has decided to stop writing. (Comedy / Color, Universal)
Director: Ron Winston; with Robert Wagner, Mary Tyler Moore, Glynis Johns
More: Wikipedia | Letterboxd
4 Nov 1969: First Tuesday
11 Nov 1969: Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966, 2 hours)
A seductive starlet flees Hollywood and causes chaos for a real estate agent. (Comedy / Color, United Artists)
Director: George Marshall; with Bob Hope, Elke Sommer, Phyllis Diller
18 Nov 1969: Run a Crooked Mile (NBC World Premiere) 📺 (1969, 2 hours)
TV Movie. When he reports a murder he witnessed, there's no evidence of the murder, or that anyone was there. Two years later he wakes up in a hospital room after a polo accident to find he's had amnesia, is now married, and living in Switzerland. Now remembering the incident he returns to England to try to solve the mystery. (Drama / Color, Universal)
Director: Gene Levitt; with Louis Jourdan, Mary Tyler Moore, Wilfrid Hyde-White
Programming Note: Jeannie and Debbie Reynolds were preempted for the nature special The Wolf Men.
25 Nov 1969: Rosie! (1968, 2 hours)
A widowed millionaire announces that she intends to buy a closed theater, the location where her late husband proposed, much to the dismay of her cold-hearted daughters who try to commit her to an insane asylum. (Comedy / Color, Universal)
Director: David Lowell Rich; with Rosalind Russell, Sandra Dee, Brian Aherne
2 Dec 1969: First Tuesday
9 Dec 1969: Something for a Lonely Man 📺 (1968, 2 hours; Original Air Date: 26 Nov 1968)
16 Dec 1969: Silent Night, Lonely Night (NBC World Premiere) 📺 (1969, 2 hours)
Over the Christmas holiday in a small town, a man and a woman share a brief interlude. He is there to visit his wife, who is a mental patient at the university, and she is there visiting her son, who is a student, after discovering her husband's infidelity. Shirley Jones was nominated for an Emmy, losing to Patty Duke. (Drama / Color, Universal)
Director: Daniel Petrie; with Lloyd Bridges, Shirley Jones, Lynn Carlin
23 Dec 1969: White Christmas (1954, 2 hours 30 minutes; Original Air Date: 19 Dec 1964)
Programming Note: The movie, in its fifth airing, preempted Julia.
30 Dec 1969: A Matter of Innocence (1967, 2 hours)
Miss Polly decides to spend a few months with her wealthy spinster aunt as a travelling companion. While in India, her aunt's demise leaves her alone to pursue her freedom and explore an arm's length romance with a local boy. (Romantic Comedy / Color, Universal)
Director: Guy Green; with Hayley Mills, Brenda de Banzie, Dorothy Alison, Shashi Kapoor, Trevor Howard
6 Jan 1970: First Tuesday
13 Jan 1970: El Cid, Part 2 (1961, 2 hours; Original Air Date: 19 Nov 1968)
20 Jan 1970: My Sweet Charlie (NBC World Premiere)📺 (1970, 2 hours)
TV Movie. A pregnant white Southern girl and a black New York lawyer, both on the run in rural Texas, meet up in a boarded-up, abandoned house and realize they both need each other in order to survive. Look closely and you can catch Brent Spiner in his screen debut. Patty Duke won an Emmy for her role, but she clearly wasn't in good mental condition at the ceremony. The movie also won in writing editing. (Drama / Color, Universal)
Director: Lamont Johnson; with Patty Duke, Al Freeman Jr., Ford Rainey
27 Jan 1970: Kings Go Forth (1958, 2 hours 15 minutes)
Toward the end of World War II, two American soldiers fighting in Southern France become romantically involved with a young, American woman. Her background will reveal more about them than her. (War / Black & White, United Artists)
Director: Delmer Daves; with Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood
3 Feb 1970: First Tuesday
10 Feb 1970: Billie (1965, 2 hours; Original Air Date: 20 Jan 1969)
17 Feb 1970: McCloud: Who Killed Miss U.S.A.? (NBC World Premiere) 📺 (1970, 2 hours)
TV Pilot. Marshal Sam McCloud from New Mexico travels to New York City to deliver a witness who is supposed to testify in a murder trial. However, the witness is kidnapped, and in trying to get him back, McCloud finds that the case involves Puerto Rican nationalists, a lady novelist and a dead beauty queen, and a possible frame-up. Later, this movie was titled "Portrait of a Dead Girl." (Crime / Color, Universal)
Director: Richard A. Colla; with Dennis Weaver, Craig Stevens, Peter Mark Richman
Programming Note: Jeannie and Debbie Reynolds were preempted for the paleoanthropology documentary The Man Hunter.
24 Feb 1970: What's So Bad About Feeling Good? (1968, 2 hours)
A new infection that simply makes people feel happy is treated as a threat by the authorities while its "victims" work to spread it to others. (Comedy / Color, Universal)
Director: George Seaton; with George Peppard, Mary Tyler Moore, Don Stroud, Dom DeLuise
3 Mar 1970: First Tuesday
10 Mar 1970: Lilies of the Field (1963, 2 hours)
A travelling handyman becomes the answer to the prayers of nuns who wish to build a chapel in the desert. (Drama / Black & White, United Artists)
Director: Ralph Nelson; with Sidney Poitier, Lilia Skala
Programming Note: Jeannie was preempted for a rerun of Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.
17 Mar 1970: Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady? (1968, 2 hours)
Agatha Knabenshu arrives in Missouri town to sell player pianos but is soon fired after her disastrous sales attempts nearly destroy the town. Stranded, she becomes friendly with an equally bumbling inventor and moves in with his family. (Comedy / Color, Universal)
Director: Don Weis; with Phyllis Diller, Bob Denver, Joe Flynn, Eileen Wesson
More: Wikipedia | Letterboxd
Summer season
(Movies aired entirely in the allotted timeslot unless otherwise noted.)
24 Mar 1970: Exodus, Part 2 (1960)
31 Mar 1970: The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968)
7 Apr 1970: First Tuesday
Programming Note: Jeannie and Debbie were preempted for NBC White Paper's "Pollution Is a Matter of Choice"
14 Apr 1970: The D.A.: Murder One 📺 (1969)
21 Apr 1970: Morgan! (1966; OAD: 30 Nov 1968)
Programming Note: Jeannie and Debbie were preempted for an Apollo 11 press conference.
28 Apr 1970: Destiny of a Spy 📺 (1969)
5 May 1970: First Tuesday
Programming Note: Jeannie and Debbie were preempted for the mountain climbing documentary Once Before I Die.
12 May 1970: The Lonely Profession 📺 (1969)
Programming Note: Jeannie was preempted for the news discussion special Amendment to End the War.
19 May 1970: Ritual of Evil 📺 (1970)
26 May 1970: The Movie Murderer 📺 (1970)
2 Jun 1970: First Tuesday
9 Jun 1970: You're Never Too Young (1955)
16 Jun 1970: Return from the Ashes (1965)
23 Jun 1970: Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady? (1968)
30 Jun 1970: Frankie and Johnny (1966)
7 Jul 1970: First Tuesday
14 Jul 1970: 1970 MLB All-Star Game
The National League won 5-4.
21 Jul 1970: The Mask of Sheba 📺 (1970)
28 Jul 1970: Billie (1965)
4 Aug 1970: First Tuesday
11 Aug 1970: Savage Pampas (1966)
18 Aug 1970: A Clear and Present Danger 📺 (1970)
25 Aug 1970: Help! (1965)
1 Sep 1970: First Tuesday
8 Sep 1970: McCloud: Who Killed Miss U.S.A.? 📺 (1970)
Programming Note: Opening the night was the one-hour special Civilsation: A Preview, which previewed the upcoming BBC docuseries that'd air on public television.
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NBC's NIGHT AT THE MOVIES
Sources: IMDb and Letterboxd for movie and TV specials information as well as Ultimate70s and Encyclopedia of Television: Series, Pilots and Specials, 1937-1973; Cedar Rapids Gazette and San Bernardino Sun for listing and programming information; Broadcasting for various ratings notes; if you see bad links or incorrect information, let me know in the comments.
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