An Evening with Fred Astaire

It was highly successful, winning nine Emmy awards and spawning three further specials, and technically innovative, as it was the first major television show to be recorded on videotape in color.

[1] The Jonah Jones Quartet and David Rose and his Orchestra provided the music, and the Hermes Pan Dancers appeared in the ensemble dance numbers.

Early videotape use was confined largely to rebroadcasting programs from the east coast three hours later in the west, and was a cheaper, better-quality alternative to the film-based kinescopes.

Furthermore, early video editing was a highly complicated matter that required the engineer to cover the two-inch tape with iron oxide solution to locate the magnetic tracks and then splice it with a razor blade.

Although it was recorded live, An Evening with Fred Astaire used a number of innovative production techniques that are now commonplace, such as chroma key, and dissolves between scenes.

In 1988, the show earned a further technical Emmy Award for Ed Reitan, Don Kent, and Dan Einstein, who restored the original videotape, transferring its contents to a modern format.

The 1964 rebroadcast used a different beginning and ending that eliminated the advertising for Chrysler; instead, the opening and closing dances were shown, uninterrupted.