The ABC Sunday Night Movie

History

After NBC found success with Saturday Night at the Movies, ABC launched its own film series in April 1962, buying fifteen late-1950s United Artists movies to start. To fill any time left over when a movie ran short of the two-hour slot, United Artists Television supplied short featurettes promoting their upcoming theatrical releases. This program was the first to show major theatrical films on network television. The movies were trimmed for objectionable content and to fit the schedule.

For example, the 1962 broadcast of John Huston's 1956 film Moby Dick, a Warner Bros. picture that runs 117 minutes uncut, was squeezed into a two-hour block including commercials. Often, though, the network expanded the broadcast to two and a half hours for longer films, as it did with two 1966 airings of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel (the 1956 film version, not the 1967 TV adaptation ABC also aired). The first network showing of Superman in 1982 was split into two parts and included previously unseen footage.

Extra scenes were also added to ABC's broadcasts of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1983, Superman II in 1984, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1985. Since letterboxing hadn't been introduced for television, all films were pan-and-scanned to fit the standard 4:3 screen.

In 1972, ABC acquired the broadcast rights to the James Bond series, also from United Artists, and aired Goldfinger first. Unlike in Britain, the Bond films were not shown in production order. ABC cut the Bond movies for violence, sexual content, and time, but the most controversial edit was for the 1969 film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which aired on the ABC Monday Night Movie. It was split into two parts on February 16 and February 23, 1976. The first part featured a voiceover, meant to sound like George Lazenby, that began during the ski chase and then jumped back to earlier scenes as flashbacks. When the film was re-aired years later, it was shown uncut in a three-hour time slot.