This 1949 TV show “Paradise Island” is one of 26, 15-minute episodes produced by Jerry Fairbanks, Inc. It stars Danny O’Neil and Anne Sterling and features Everett Hoagland and his orchestra. “Paradise Island” was the first musical series produced for television, and to save money it used a lot of original songs. Over the course of its run, 90 songs and 26 musical productions were performed. The 15-minute format, which press materials indicated was the equivalent of “six full length films”, were produced by Fairbanks in Mexico. At the time it was released, the show was syndicated on only 22 stations. It was nevertheless considered a success, and Fairbanks planned to follow up with a Western version — but that never got off the ground.

The music in this episode include O’Neil singing the theme song “Paradise Island” and “Easy Street”, a performance by the orchestra, and Anne Sterling performing “Pedro Gonzalez” (5:13). At 6:37, a Hawaiian hula dance is performed with live musical accompaniment. At 9:20, the Irish ballad “Come Back to Erin” is sung by O’Neil.

We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: “01:00:12:00 — President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference.”

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com