Screen Gems Television

From The TV IV

Screen Gems Television

Founded	1948
President	—
Notable Works	Route 66 Bewitched I Dream of Jeannie The Partridge Family

Screen Gems Television was the first incarnation of the television production company now known as Sony Pictures Television (a unit of Sony Pictures Entertainment).

1 History
2 List of shows produced by Screen Gems
3 Trivia
4 External links

[edit] History

Screen Gems had its pre-television origins in 1939 when Columbia Pictures purchased the Charles Mintz animation studio, which had been notable for producing animated theatrical short series such as Krazy Kat, The Fox and the Crow and Color Rhapsodies. The newly-renamed Screen Gems continued production of its animated shorts until Columbia closed the studio in 1946, although Screen Gems had produced enough output to allow continued new releases until 1949.

Screen Gems was subsequently revived by Columbia in 1948 to serve as its television production and distribution unit. It became a prominent studio beginning with the Golden Age of television in the 1950s as it produced shows like Father Knows Best, Dennis the Menace, Route 66, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie and The Partridge Family for the American networks, and it syndicated old Three Stooges theatrical shorts and Universal horror films (under the title Shock for that syndicated package) [1], leading to a revival in popularity for the Stooges and for Universal Horror (and the horror film genre in general) due to the new TV exposure.

Screen Gems also formed a partnership with Hanna-Barbera Productions where Screen Gems provided working capital to the animation studio to produce its TV cartoons in exchange for the distribution rights. The first animated series to air under the H-B/Screen Gems partnership was The Ruff & Reddy Show, which debuted on NBC on December 14, 1957. Other shows produced by Hanna-Barbera under Screen Gems during the 1960s, both for the networks and for syndication, included Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Yogi Bear Show, Top Cat, Jonny Quest, Magilla Gorilla and Peter Potamus. Hanna-Barbera became independent of Screen Gems in 1967 when Taft Broadcasting bought the studio, which then began producing and syndicating (through its distribution unit, Taft H-B Program Sales) its own output. Screen Gems (and successor Columbia Pictures Television) continued syndicating the pre-1967 Hanna-Barbera shows until the mid-1970s, when Taft H-B picked up the distribution rights; those were passed to Taft H-B's successor company, Worldvision Enterprises, in 1979.

Screen Gems also operated as a broadcasting company through ownership of several American TV stations, including KCPX-TV (now KTVX) in Salt Lake City, Utah (1959-75) and WVUE-TV in New Orleans (1965-77).

The Screen Gems name was retired in 1974 by Columbia, which then renamed its TV division as Columbia Pictures Television. Most shows produced under the Screen Gems banner (with a few exceptions noted below) were later distributed by Colex Enterprises (a joint venture of CPT and LBS Communications) from 1984 to 1988, but are now distributed by CPT's successor-in-interest, Sony Pictures Television. Most of Hanna-Barbera's output produced during its partnership with Screen Gems is now owned and distributed by Warner Bros. Television (through parent Time Warner's 1996 purchase of Turner Broadcasting, which had bought Hanna-Barbera in 1990), with the exceptions of Jeannie (an animated spinoff of I Dream of Jeannie) and Partridge Family 2200 A.D. (a Partridge Family animated spinoff), which SPT owns the rights to due to the animated series' connection to their parent shows.

The Screen Gems name and logo were revived in 1999 and are currently used by the genre film unit of Sony Pictures.

[edit] List of shows produced by Screen Gems

Note: Shows produced by Hanna-Barbera are listed separately in that company's article.

Title	Format	Network	Years
Burns & Allen	Comedy	CBS	1953–58
The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin	Adventure	ABC	1954–59
Father Knows Best	Sitcom	CBS	1954–55
		NBC	1955–58
		CBS	1958–60
Treasure Hunt	Game show	ABC	1956–59
The Donna Reed Show	Sitcom	ABC	1958–66
Tightrope	Crime drama	CBS	1959–60
Dennis the Menace (1959)	Sitcom	CBS	1959–63
The Three Stooges	Comedy	Syndication	1959–present ¹
Route 66	Drama	CBS	1960–64
Hazel	Sitcom	NBC	1961–65
		CBS	1965–66
The Farmer's Daughter	Sitcom	ABC	1963–66
Bewitched	Sitcom	ABC	1964–72
Days of our Lives	Soap opera	NBC	1965–present ²
Camp Runamuck	Sitcom	NBC	1965–66
Gidget	Sitcom	ABC	1965–66
I Dream of Jeannie	Sitcom	NBC	1965–70
Love on a Rooftop	Sitcom	ABC	1966–67
The Monkees	Sitcom	NBC	1966–68
The Flying Nun	Sitcom	ABC	1967–70
The Johnny Cash Show	Variety	ABC	1969–71
The Partridge Family	Sitcom	ABC	1970–74
Bridget Loves Bernie	Sitcom	CBS	1972–73
Temperatures Rising	Sitcom	ABC	1972–74
The Young and the Restless	Soap opera	CBS	1973–present ²
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice	Sitcom	ABC	1973
Police Story	Crime anthology	NBC	1973–78 ³

¹Distributed after 1974 by Columbia Pictures Television, Columbia TriStar Television and Sony Pictures Television
²Produced after 1974 by Columbia Pictures Television, Columbia TriStar Television and Sony Pictures Television
³Produced from 1974 to 1978 by Columbia Pictures Television

[edit] Trivia

Screen Gems is remembered by many fans of classic TV through its 1965 introduction of its famous closing logo (see infobox above) and accompanying jingle, composed by Eric Siday and Van Alexander, consisting of six short notes followed by two long tones produced on violins and processed through a synthesizer. The jingle, combined with the rough animation of the logo, was disturbing to many TV viewers of that time period (particularly if they were children then), which later led to the logo being nicknamed the "S from Hell" on the Internet by those now-adult viewers.