The Following Cartoon is Brought To You in Living Color

Anyone watching TV in the ‘60s will remember kaleidoscopic animation unfolding to form the NBC peacock, assuring us the “following program is brought to you in Living Color” (even on black-and-white sets). The version best-known was produced over a four-month period in 1962 by Elektra Films in New York.

There have been other animated versions of the peacock, but the coolest may be one produced for the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show sponsored by the Ford Motor Co. Whether footage still exists I don’t know, but a book called “Design in Motion” published in 1962 preserved some or all of the frames from it.

This animation was made at Playhouse Pictures. If Mike Kazaleh is around, I’ll bet he could tell you who animated it.



The peacock first appeared (non animated) on NBC in 1956; you see an ad from Variety of December that year to the right. The cast of the George Gobel Show used the newly-invented (at NBC) Chroma-Key to pop out from behind the peacock in 1957. But the Tennessee Ernie animation may be the most charming use of the network bird.

By the way, you can click on each set of 12 panels to make them bigger.