Our favorite stock shots of 1960s, ’70s TV shows

Television shows from 1950s through the 1970s meant doing a lot. A typical season meant 39 episodes in the 1950s into the early ’60s, 30 or more into the mid-60s and 26 or so in the 1970s.

It also required working on a leaner budget than feature films. A show may have stories around the world, but you didn’t have the resources films did.

To stretch the budget, production companies utilized “stock shots,” taken from sources available to more or less everyone. In the 1960s and ’70s, it was common to see some of the same stock shots on different shows.

With that in mind, here are some of the blog’s favorite stock shots. Note: The episodes listed are not a comprehensive list. You may remember these from other series and episodes

Stock shot of airplane exploding during a missile test, used in The Man From UNCLE and Hawaii Five-O.

Airplane/helicopter exploding in mid-air: Based on the longest clip of it the blog has seen, this appears to be some kind of U.S. Defense Department film. An airplane (presumably radio-controlled) is shot down by a missile.

Said longest version appears in The Quadripartite Affair, the third episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. You actually see the missile launched and see it hit the airplane.

Examples: The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Quadripartite Affair, The Love Affair (first season; supposedly the villain’s helicopter explodes after Solo has placed a bomb aboard), Part Two Alexander the Greater Affair (airplane exploding in mid-air).

Hawaii Five-O: Death Is a Company Policy (fifth season, supposedly a helicopter with syndicate killers is shot down by police, led by Steve McGarrett), Death Thy Name Is Sam (eighth season, villain John Colicos shoots down a helicopter piloted by undercover cop George Takei with a portable surface-to-air missile).

Frequently used stock shot of a landing aircraft

Aircraft about to land: One of the most common seen stock shots during the period was of the underside of a aircraft about to complete a landing.

It was used a number of times in Hawaii Five-O (the image at right is from the episode Three Dead Cows at Makapuu Part I), where characters were flying into Hawaii all the time.

I know it was used more frequently than that, but tracking them all down in daunting. The whole idea was to communicate movement to the audience. Sometimes, the lead character might be traveling somewhere and this shot would be used to demonstrate he or she had arrived.

Stock shot of exploding car.

Car Exploding on side of mountain: It costs money to blow up a car or truck. One way to save costs was using a stock shot of one going up in flames.

The image at right was used at least twice. In the first-season Mannix episode Deadfall Part I, an Intertect investigator (Dana Elcar) fakes his own death with his car exploding. Mannix (Mike Connors) investigates and finds out his Interect colleague was was involved in an industrial espionage operation involving a new laser.

The stock shot also was used in an episode of Ironside, Poole’s Paradise.

At the start of the series, the wheelchair-bound detective (Raymond Burr) rode in the back of a 1940 truck. Early in the third season, the truck had to be sacrificed (to throw a corrupt sheriff and his thug deputies off the trail). The stock shot was used to show that vehicle exploding.

The sleuth rode (and eventually drove) a more modern van for the rest of the series.

UPDATE: The exploding car shot also shows up in Nine Dragons, the first episode in Hawaii Five-O’s ninth season.

Arch-villain Wo Fat is at the University of Hawaii, posing as an academic who defected from China in the late 1940s. However, a university faculty member who knew the real academic confronts Wo Fat.

Bad move: Wo Fat has his goons kill the Hawaii faculty member. They put him in a Lincoln Continental, shove the car down a ravine and the car blows up.