Landis’ Lucky Lot : RARE TV CLIPS HAVE A MAJOR ROLE IN NEW HBO SERIES

What would you do if you were president of a movie studio and owned broadcast rights to 400 hours of priceless TV programming from the 1950s? What’s more, the black-and-white dramas contained rarely seen footage of Fred Astaire, Bette Davis, James Stewart, Jack Benny, Joan Crawford, Dennis Hopper, Robert Redford and Zsa Zsa Gabor (acting).

If you’re Sid Sheinberg, president of MCA/Universal, you call the man to whom you’ve been giving free office space the past 12 years.

“They guilted me into this,” John Landis said. The film director, 39, who has never relinquished the temporary office he was given on the Universal lot in 1978 while directing “Animal House,” is executive producer of “Dream On,” a comedy series premiering Sunday at 10 p.m. on HBO.

It took Landis some time before coming up with a way to cash in on the old clips in a new show.

“We approached many people trying to find a way to solve this problem. We spent years. I didn’t want to do something stupid. Finally, I thought, why don’t we use these clips as thought balloons... projections, reactions and fantasies of the main character.”

The character (Brian Benben) is a neurotic New York trash-novel editor trying to make sense of life as he awaits an imminent divorce. His mind is clouded by recurring TV images that flash on the screen, like a bad headache, from a childhood in front of the tube.

For example, Benben’s wife, played by Wendie Mallick, shows up at his doorstep and says, “We have to talk... It’s about us.” Benben smiles dreamily.

Cut to: a blaak-and-white film clip of Anne Baxter pleading to a young brooding Ronald Reagan, “I’m in love with you... I want to be your wife. I want to come back.”

Cut back to: Mallick shattering Benben’s hopes by asking him to sign their divorce papers so that she can marry another man.

Cut to: Lee Marvin as a boxer in a ring getting knocked out and down for the count.

“The clips sort of augment what the whole show is about,” Benben said. “They reinforce the emotional life of a character rather than just exist on their own as a bunch of funny clips.”

Landis, who directed the pilot , says the hours of daffy drama are a treasure chest for film and TV buffs. “MCA in the ‘50s produced a number of anthology TV shows, something like 800 half-hours,” he said. “There’s no actor residuals for any television production before 1960-that was Ronald Reagan’s doing.

“Now MCA owns this stuff free and clear. Stuff like ‘General Electric Theater,’ ‘Alcoa Presents,’ ‘Heinz 57 Playhouse,’ ‘Chrysler Theatre.’ (Sheinberg wanted) to find a way to make money with these films. They’re black and white, mostly dramatic, and mostly bad.”

But not without entertainment value. One drama features Ronald and Nancy Reagan dressed as Indians, with the former president telling his son, Little Feathererall the wonderful things that the government has done for the American Indian.

Landis, a first-time TV producer, was a logical choice to develop the project for HBO because of his reputation for directing such big-budget studio camp as “The Blue Brothers” and “Coming to America.”

He and the writing team of Martha Kauffman and David Crane came up with the thought balloon idea two years ago. They hired a small research staff and began logging hours of “a lot of bad television,” Kauffman said. “What’s sort of ironic, the worse the show is, the more useful it is for us. The really quality stuff with good acting we can’t use.”

As they viewed the dramas, the team wrote down snippets of dialogue and memorable scenes and later entered them into a computer. “We can’t even look at black-and-white television or old movies anymore because we keep wanting to pull clips from them,” Crane said.

Eventually, Kauffman and Crane compiled a data base and several written volumes full of TV clips. When they were writing episodes and needed a corresponding clip they would simply do a computer search for the phrase, image or action to underscore the event.

“We went in knowing that in one of our episodes our central character is told by his doctor to give up caffeine,” Kauffman said. “So we wanted to do an episode where everyone says over and over, endlessly, nightmarishly, ‘How about a cup of coffee?’ ”

To gather material for the first 14 episodes, the research team watched about a third of the 800 half-hours, leaving lots more vintage drama to tap into if HBO picks up “Dream On” for another season. If that happens, Landis’ favor to Sheinberg will have paid off.

“The truth is, television is so lucrative,” Landis said. “That’s why everybody is getting into it. For me, I much prefer feature films. I directed ‘George Burns Comedy Week’ once... I finished the show, completely happy with it, and then it aired. I was told 20 million people saw it. I said, ‘That’s fantastic!’ They said, ‘No, that’s a failure.’ I said, ‘I don’t understand television.’ ”