A while back (in this case “a while” is about a year and a half) I noticed an interesting item on eBay. The seller described it as “2 Rare Audio Tape "I SPY" #62&36 Hydra Location 1967 TV.” Here are the pictures included with the auction:
And this is what the seller said about the tapes:
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Many years ago my brother and sister-in-law bought an old house to renovate. Inside one of the outer sheds was a large box of audiotapes. Each audiotape has a Sound Report sheet inside the box. The audio tapes were for shows like I SPY, MOD SQUAD, MY WORLD, WAKE ME UP WHEN THE WAR IS OVER, TONY, THE MONK, THAT GIRL N.Y. DAILIES (Desilu Productions), HOWARD ANDERSON~THE NEW PEOPLE
These were all taped in the 1960's by GLEN GLENN SOUND, 6624 Romaine St., Hollywood, Calif 90038 Hollywood 9-7221 and have a Sound Sheet from this company. The Sound Sheet lists the company, production, location, recorder, crew, scenes.
I am unable to listen to the one-of-a-kind tapes as I do not own the proper device to do so. I randomly grabbed one of the audio tapes out of the box and am going to list it in this auction. So, this auction is for just one audio tape. I am posting a picture of all the others so that you are able to see the large box of audio tapes that I have. If anyone has information that pertains to these tapes, I would love to hear from you.
All-in-all the box of tapes includes 35 I Spy tapes, 12 Mod Squad, 3 That Girl, 3 The New People, 1 Wake Me Up When The War is Over, 1 The Monk, 2 Tony, 5 The New People.
This auction is actually for two tapes. One does not have the sound sheet, so I am adding it to this auction. The outside of the box states that it is from 11/14/1966 #36. The other on is:
Roll #G008
Date: 5/16/1967
Tape Speed: 7 1/2"
Company: 3 F Productions
Production: "I Spy" #62
Location: Hydra
Microphones: SENN 804, SENN 404
Recorder: NAGRA
Crew: TRASK, NIGHTINGALE, O'HAR
Good luck, this could be a very entertaining auction to win!
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That description piqued my interest, and I do have “the proper device” to listen to tapes like these--a couple of stereo reel-to-reel tape decks. The tapes had the potential to be very interesting, I bid on the two tapes, and won them. I was almost immediately contacted by a guy named Jim who had won a previous auction for another I Spy tape, and was the only other bidder on the tapes I won. He gave me some idea of what I would find on the tapes and asked if I was interested in sharing, which I was. Jim and I decided that rather than trying to win all the auctions for individual tapes, we should contact the seller and attempt to buy all the tapes. Tatia became a third partner in the transaction. Jim handled the negotiations and we ended up buying the entire lot of I Spy tapes. Initially all the tapes were sent to me and I converted them all to digital audio WAV and mp3 files.
Okay, so what’s on the tapes? First a few technical details. These are 5 inch diameter reel-to-reel tapes, recorded in mono on one side at a speed of 7 ½ inches per second. They contain anywhere from a few minutes up to about 15 minutes of audio recorded on location for I Spy. Not having any film production experience, I’ve always assumed that the audio was recorded directly onto the film as it was being exposed. Clearly, at least for these location shoots, an audio engineer is recording dialogue (and other sound) onto reel-to-reel magnetic tape with a portable (Nagra) tape recorder.
The episodes represented on these tapes are “The Warlord” (production 36), “Oedipus at Colonus” (production 57), “The Beautiful Children” (production 60), “Let’s Kill Karlovassi” (production 62), “Laya” (production 64), and “Carmelita Is One of Us” (production 81). The number of tapes, locations and dates for each episode are:
The Warlord – 1 tape – Spain -14 November 1966
Oedipus at Colonus – 1 tape – Marrakech, Morocco - 19 April 1967
The Beautiful Children – 1 tape - Casablanca, Morocco – 23 April 1967
The Beautiful Children – 1 tape – Athens, Greece – 24 May 1967
The Beautiful Children – 4 tapes – Exterior near Athens – 30 May 1967
The Beautiful Children – 5 tapes – Alpha Studios, Athens – 1 & 2 June 1967
Let’s Kill Karlovassi – 1 tape – Delos Island, Greece – 11 May 1967
Let’s Kill Karlovassi – 7 tapes – Hydra, Greece – 15-18 May 1967
Let’s Kill Karlovassi – 5 tapes – a studio in Athens – 20-23 May 1967
Laya – 1 tape – a studio in Athens – 22 May 1967
Laya – 6 tapes – Acropolis – 25 & 26 May 1967
Carmelita Is One of Us – 1 tape – Guadalajara, Mexico – 21 October 1967
It is interesting to note that on 22 May 1967 scenes from “Let’s Kill Karlovassi” and “Laya” are on the same tape. Assuming that the break occurred at lunchtime, scenes in which Kelly, Scotty and Ruth Roman are being held prisoner on Walter Slezak’s boat in “Let’s Kill Karlovassi” were filmed in the morning, and scenes from “Laya” with Scotty and Janet MacLachlan dancing in a restaurant were filmed in the afternoon.
The Warlord tape contains an intense scene between Catherine and Chuang Tzu. This was the first tape I heard. A fellow with an English accent announces the production, scene and take numbers, Alf Kjellin, the director asks for quiet and calls action, and after some rustling of clothes, Jean Marsh begins her speech: “All my life I have hated words…”, sounding like she is in the room with you. It gave me chills the first time I heard it. There are several takes of various parts of this scene, and something else I did not immediately appreciate, dialogue from the script which did not make it to the finished film. Tatia actually anticipated this, being familiar with the script, and I will leave it to her, if she is inclined, to elaborate on this subject. The mood here is very somber and serious, and Bill Cosby is not present.
The “Oedipus at Colonus” tape contains scenes from the first meeting between Kelly, Scotty and Maurice Evans. The director here is Christian Nyby (not Earl Bellamy as it says on IMDB). There are little hints of some playfulness between Culp and Cosby before and after takes. Unfortunately the audio tape is turned off almost immediately after the director calls cut, so there isn’t much between take banter. (There is one notable and very entertaining exception which I’ll mention below.)
The first “Beautiful Children” tape is from early in the episode when Kelly and Scotty board the ship in Morocco. The second tape, from a month later, documents the initial meeting between Kelly, Scotty and Zarkas (posing as a taxi driver) in Athens. There is a long (roughly 8 minute) segment in which they try to film the scene in which Zarkas (Harold J. Stone) drives away from the airport with his two passengers (Kelly and Scotty). This is the exception to the rule I mentioned above. I’m not quite sure how this was being done, but the tape recorder must have been inside the cab with the actors because it continues to run between takes. Mr. Stone is having a hell of a time with the cab—he can’t seem to get it in gear—and the f-word is flying. He sounds like he was a real character. Culp and Cosby are having a great time back seat driving, and the language gets salty all around. At one point you can hear Mr. Culp say something about having “had a lot of beer myself” and they do sound a little inebriated. This may have occurred after a liquid lunch. However no one has any trouble with lines. It is the props that are the problem. You can hear the ever patient voice of Earl Bellamy from outside the cab, receiving good natured ribbing from the actors. If you carry one impression away from listening to these tapes, it’s that Earl Bellamy was an immensely pleasant and patient fellow.
The next group of “Beautiful Children” tapes comes from out in the wilds, somewhere outside of Athens. These comprise scenes involving waiting for Andeas to bring the children through the fence. I don’t have much to say about them except that they are interesting to listen to. The final group of “Beautiful Children” tapes is from an Athens studio and contains scenes between Kelly, Scotty, Zarkas, Andreas (Paris Alexander), Charamboulis (Eduardo Cianelli) and Philipa (Anna Brazzou). These scenes provide some idea of the tedious nature of film production as they make take after take, from various angles. Often Earl Bellamy or script supervisor Michael Preece can be heard reading the Kelly and Scotty parts when their characters are not on camera.
The “Let’s Kill Karlovassi” tapes are, on the whole, more interesting than the “Beautiful Children” ones. There’s a lot of Ruth Roman, Walter Slezak and Peter Wyngarde. Interesting problems occur, such as passing fishing boats messing up the audio, and trouble with the wireless radio microphones. There is some fun between-takes Culp-Cosby interaction, and also in scenes they have all to themselves, a lot of differences from take to take. As we always suspected, there was a lot of improvisation going on. Christian Nyby was the director for this one, and he is audibly amused by some of the stuff that Culp and Cosby come up with.
The “Laya” stuff is mostly from early in the episode (and very late in the episode) around the Acropolis. There’s good stuff with Troy (Keith Andes) and Laya (Janet MacLachlan). (Alas, no Michael Rennie, but his scenes were probably shot in a studio in Hollywood.) Again, the radio microphones sound like they were a real pain in the ass to work with.
The single “Carmelita Is One of Us” tape was a real disappointment for me. It’s early stuff from the episode, shot in a market place in Guadalajara. There’s very little dialogue. Mostly it’s chase/action stuff, though it’s interesting to hear Christian Nyby and his Spanish speaking assistants shouting instructions to the extras via megaphone.
And so that’s a brief summary of what is on these 34 tapes. Some of it is fascinating, some of it is boring, a lot of it falls somewhere between. In total, it’s about six hours of stuff. In 128 kbps mp3 form, the total size of the 34 files is 388 Megabytes. There are also 31 “sound sheets” like this one:
Three of the tapes did not contain a sound sheet. I scanned them all at a high resolution. The size of the 31 sound sheets in jpeg format is about 3 ½ Megabytes. You won’t see the episodes quite the same way again, once you get the extra insight into their production which these audio tapes provide.
I have spent some time searching the web for free file hosting services that allowed mp3 files. I found one called MediaMax. I have edited the 8 minute sequence featuring Culp, Cosby, Harold Stone (and Earl Bellamy and Fouad Said) from the larger file, producing a 7.4 Megabyte mp3 file. I’ve uploaded this file to my MediaMax account. I believe I can link to it here allowing it to be downloaded. Here is the Culp, Cosby and Stone show.
http://www.mediamax.com/jimmymitchell/Hosted/children.mp3x
Note: I had to add an 'x' to the end of the link, because it wouldn't show up when it ended in '.mp3'. There must be some kind of filter. So to link to the audio file you will have to first remove the final 'x'.
Jimmy
