NBC Saturday Night at the Movies was the first television show to broadcast in color relatively recent feature films from major studios.
Nevertheless, by the late 1950s, the major studios started to loosen their stance and began releasing more recent movies on television.
[3] During the early 1970s, there was a significantly longer period of time between when a movie was initially shown in theaters and when it was first broadcast on television.
This delay was more pronounced compared to previous years, indicating a shift in the distribution and consumption of films during that time.
Between 1954 and 1972, a theatrical motion picture (even a relatively recent one) had to wait as many as 12 years (as in the case of the 1959 Ben-Hur)[4] before it turned up on the home screen.
On September 23, 1961, Saturday Night at the Movies premiered with the 1953 Marilyn Monroe–Lauren Bacall–Betty Grable film How to Marry a Millionaire, presented "In Living Color".
That initial deal with Fox ended up lasting three seasons (1961–1964) and involved about 90 films, including those run on Monday nights beginning in February 1963.
When Fox found greener pastures over at rival ABC, NBC negotiated releases from other studios, such as MGM and Paramount, that were eager to provide content.
The three major commercial networks did not show worn-out 16mm prints of films, as was then the usual practice on local TV stations.
The films which aired on the network movie anthology series (as well as annually-telecast specials such as The Wizard of Oz) were 35mm prints, invariably in excellent condition.
[8] The first, created during the 1963–64 season, was to have been a new version of Ernest Hemingway's The Killers, with a cast that included Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, and future US president Ronald Reagan, whose last film this was before entering politics.
Although an announcer's voice was heard at the beginning, the program itself simply consisted of the showing of the film and perhaps a movie trailer afterward.
By 2006, the network decided to only occasionally air theatrical films during sweeps weeks in various time slots, so the Saturday movie has been completely discontinued.