Uncle Miltie Sues NBC for His Old Kinescopes

O’er the Rampart we watched . . . Look, Mom . . . Channel surfing . . . Rolling Stone Temple Pilot.

In the early 1950s, entertainer Milton Berle practically invented the television variety show, helped make the fledgling National Broadcasting Co. an early success and found his way into thousands and then millions of living rooms as the radical idea of home entertainment in a box caught on.

Now the man known as “Mr. Television” is suing NBC for more than $30 million, charging that the network has lost about 130 film reels of his early shows. The suit, filed in Superior Court in Santa Monica, seeks unspecified damages and a court order forcing NBC to disclose what happened to those recordings of Uncle Miltie’s early shows.

Before there was videotape or VCRs, Berle insisted that NBC preserve his shows through kinescopes, which involved recording the goings-on by focusing a motion picture camera on a studio monitor.

Berle and NBC signed contracts splitting ownership of the kinescopes. And, Berle charges, NBC was entrusted with storing, maintaining and protecting them.

“NBC, contrary to their agreement, appears to have lost and/or dispersed the original films to others, including donation to entities for NBC’s benefit,” Berle’s suit charges. Among the missing: 84 of the 180 original episodes of the “Texaco Star Theater,” 32 of the 37 original Buick shows and all 12 Berle television specials.

According to the suit by attorney Paul Sigelman, Berle, who is 92, discovered that the shows were missing when he recently approached NBC with an offer to sell copies through infomercials. NBC has refused to discuss the matter with him, and network lawyers now claim that Berle holds no rights to the kinescopes, the suit says.

Our call to an NBC representative in Burbank elicited no response, either.

BUSTED: Two jurors were dumped recently from a misdemeanor case at the downtown Criminal Courts Building after a rookie Rampart Division police officer chatted them up during a court break, griping about how hard it is to convict people in the wake of the worst police corruption scandal in LAPD history.

A city prosecutor watched the whole thing and reported it to Judge Ronni MacLaren, who held a hearing to determine whether the jurors had been tainted, according to a memo circulated last week at the public defender’s office.

One juror acknowledged that the officer had approached her and casually mentioned that “they were having a tough time winning cases because of the scandal,” according to the memo. A second juror also witnessed the conversation and testified about it, the memo said.

Deputy Public Defender Sam Khare asked that the jurors be dismissed, and Judge MacLaren agreed. The only problem, the public defender’s memo said, was that the jurors were then sent back to the jury assembly room, “where they may well have further tainted other jurors.”

OOPS: The magazine came dressed in a slinky gray sheath. But after the envelope was peeled away, there were no skaters, dude. Instead, there was pornography, according to a Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit.

The suit was filed by Celinda Beal-Burns, mother of a 14-year-old subscriber to Big Brother, a glossy for skateboarders. It seeks damages in excess of $50,000 from Hustler publisher Larry Flynt’s LFP Inc. to cover the lad’s “psychological and emotional” damage, and the mother’s “serious emotional shock” at finding a copy of the explicit Taboo in the mailbox.

Flynt attorney Alan Isaacman said all the Big Brother subscribers received copies of Taboo when mailing labels were mixed up. Taboo arrived first, then Big Brother.

The employee responsible for the mailings was quickly fired when he couldn’t explain how it happened, Isaacman said. “We didn’t get a lot of phone calls from complaining 14-year-olds,” he added.

Here’s how such issues were dealt with at the house where I grew up: Upon finding a copy of Hustler hidden under a bed occupied by my 15-year-old brother, my mother complained to my father, “A boy his age should be looking at pictures of the saints.” “Yeah,” Dad shot back, “Jill St. John and Eva Marie Saint.”

TURN OFF: And they say there’s nothing good on television these days . . . Viewer Tracey Naegele is so miffed about the recent Time Warner blackout of ABC and the Disney Channel that she filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court. Naegele is seeking class action status on behalf of 6.5 million other subscribers, a refund of her cable bill, and 10% of the personal wealth of Time Warner Cable President Joseph K. Collins and Time Warner Chairman Gerald M. Levin.

Naegele alleges “bad faith and interruption of cable TV service” in her complaint. She claims that she and other viewers were “caught in a whipsaw between Time Warner Cable and its competitors” and were used as pawns “to attempt to settle a private contract dispute and gain economic advantage.”

All of this caused Naegele to experience “pain and suffering, emotional distress, trauma and loss of enjoyment of life among other damages,” claims the suit, filed by attorney J. Patrick Maginnis.

There was no immediate comment from Time Warner.

THE NEWS STAND: The Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland has nothing but good things to say about Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler in this month’s issue of Rolling Stone. Weiland was one stoned Temple Pilot until Fidler sent him to jail and full-time, lock-down rehab.

Now Weiland is clean, sober and grateful: “I don’t feel resentful toward Judge Fidler,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to write him a letter, to let him know he was a big part of why I am starting to really enjoy my life. I know this sounds strange, but I want to thank him for what he did.”