Correll and Gosden were uncertain about what television would mean to them -- but they were willing to try an experiment in the new medium. On February 27, 1939, the performers boarded the Fresh Air Taxicab for a tour of the New York World's Fair Grounds, telecast live over NBC's experimental television station W2XBS. Note that they are being telecast without makeup and in street clothes. Later that evening they would broadcast their regular radio episode from the Fair grounds, joined in a special 25-minute program by Fair president Grover Whalen.
Gosden and Correll step before the Iconoscope camera, outside the not-quite-finished
Radio Corporation of America Pavilion. The performers are gazing down the
Avenue of the Patriots at the Trylon and Perisphere, the enormous white
sphere and spire which formed the Fair's "theme center." (Photo courtesy
the Correll Family Collection)