The Make-Believe Clubhouse

The Make-Believe Clubhouse seems, on reflection, to have been a magical experience for many of us. One of the children who guested on the show at about aged 7 still remembers it as magical to this day.

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A stranger in a strange land

From Fred Barzyk: Bill insisted I try to get into the scholarship program. You studied for your graduate degree at Boston University and worked three days a week at the Educational Television station. Free tuition and you got $600 to live a year in Boston!

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Discovery (1955-56)

Photos from John “Rocky” Coe — March 2002 Don Hallock: Thanks to “Rocky” Coe’s persistence in weeding through his collections of old slides, here are some of the best images we have from the first year or two in studio A at 84 Massachusetts Avenue. We believe they’re from Discovery‘s 1955-56 season, and seem to…

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Photos From the ‘GBH Archives (1950s)

Photos from Mary Ide, WGBH Archives Photo by Brooks Leffler, 1958 Studio A under construction. From Larry Creshkoff I think I can provide some specifics for the pic of Studio A under construction. Time: The date may have been December ’54 or January ’55 (or even later). People (from Left to Right): Hartford Gunn (partly…

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Science Experiments Gone Wrong (1957)

  From Peter Hollander It must have been in 1957 that we did a science series hosted by Mary Lela Grimes. It was in the wonderful days of live TV and Mary Leila had gotten the world’s leading expert on the behavior of bats to appear on her show. He was either from Harvard or…

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Discovery with Mary Lela Grimes (1955-56)

From Mary Lela Grimes (now Mary Sherburne) Here are some [stories] from the very first days of WGBH-TV that may interest the oldies and provide images of the primitive days of TV for the young. Snakes During the first year WGBH was on the air, an early Discovery program with Mary Lela Grimes was on…

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Discovering Discovery (1956)

From Don Hallock This 1956 film about the making of Mary Lela Grimes (Sherburne’s) kinescoped NET series on science for children was resurrected for the reunion. It is a show within a film, showcasing the 84 Massachusetts Avenue facility and many of our best remembered WGBH friends. A teleprompter mounted on the front of Frank…

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The Party XX

268. Lo Hartnett, Moon Nimon, Nora Sinclair, Fred Barzyk, Jo Madden and Emily Lovering. 269. Henry Morganthau and Al Kelman. 270. Mary Lela Grimes Sherburne. 271. Judy Osborne and Dan Beach. 272. Wil Morton with John Labounty. 273. Lilly Hollander. 274. Brooks Leffler and Paulette Noble with the class of ’58. 275. Ed Donlon and…

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Then and Now (1955-2000)

From Don Hallock The Buildings Then: The station in 1958, occupying a rather dusty second and third floor roller-skating rink in an old brick building located opposite MIT at 84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge. (Photo by Brooks Leffler.) In 2000, WGBH sprawled over extensive real estate near Harvard. This is the main studio building at 125…

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Footprints in your heart

From Rocky Coe – 1999 To Larry Creshkoff on the occasion of his seventy fifth birthday I remember a very exciting evening in a funky old building on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge when I switched on the lights in the little glassed-in room we then called studio B and you cued the cameras and the…

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One Way to Run a Railroad (1946-59)

From Ray Wilding-White: The station was made reality by a bunch of dedicated, overworked and underpaid young maniacs who hardly knew a microphone from a zebra when they started on radio. I know. I was there.

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