Charley and Humphrey Saved With the Magic of Audio Tape

Around 1979 or 1980, I remember my older brother got into the idea of "taping" movies on TV. At that time, this meant sitting in front of a TV with a portable audio tape recorder.

I remember he made a 3-4 tape recording of one of Ray Harryhausen's Sinbad movies. I tried it too, and made an audio tape of an episode of the Muppet Show, complete with commercials. We eventually decided this was a stupid idea and taped over them with either music or the silly stuff kids in the 80's did with tape recorders.

But I am beginning to wish I cared more about those recordings off of TV.

Any kid who grew up in the 70's and 80's in the Bay Area will remember that KTVU aired a series of public service announcements featuring a puppet horse and dog. They were named Charley and Humphrey, and voiced by "Dialing For Dollars" star Pat McCormick.

Unfortunately, McCormick has said that the tapes of those Charley and Humphrey shows don't exist anymore. While this isn't a big loss to humanity, it is still distressing to think that something like this might possibly be forever gone from the face of the earth.

Coming to the rescue, is Sebastian Morgan, who was one of those kids tape-recording TV, and fortunately for us, he SAVED his work. So, here we have one of Sebastian's clips. This is the "I need glue" clip, preserved for all eternity.

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Friday September 21, 2007