Harry Fries and His Musical Saw
experimental television program from 1932
Harry Fries and His Musical Saw is an early experimental television program aired in New York City during 1932. As the title suggests, it consisted of Harry Fries playing the musical saw. Time-slots ranged from 15 minutes to 25 minutes, and it aired on W2XAB (now WCBS-TV).
A technical problem with one of the telecasts was reported in the radio section of several newspapers on 22 April 1932. Fries was wearing a red neck-tie against a white shirt. The red tie was photographed as white on the early television equipment, resulting in a phone call from a viewer to ask why the performer wasn't dressed properly.
No footage remains of the series, as it aired live, and methods to record live television did not exist until 1947.
The public source identifies “Harry Fries and His Musical Saw” as experimental television program from 1932. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Harry, Fries and Musical.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20084484. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1932 and 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Harry Fries and His Musical Saw” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.