TV archive releases 1954 student drama

An original TV drama from 1954 is the latest Bay Area Television Archive release added to DIVA and made available for anyone, anywhere, to watch.

Thin Like Tortillas was presented by the Speech and Drama Department of San Jose State College and broadcast live at 4:30 p.m. Nov. 14, 1954, from KPIX-TV’s studios on Van Ness Avenue. 

Set among Mexican migrant workers in the Santa Clara Valley during the Depression years of 1935 – 36, the story follows idealistic lovers Maria (played by Sandra Teboe) and Salvador (played by Joe LoBue) as they fall in love, get married and face personal tragedy brought on by Salvador’s congenital heart disease and love of playing music.

The reason this early TV recording from 1954 has relatively poor picture quality isn’t because of its age but because it was recorded using kinescope technology. This is when a film camera was pointed at a specially synchronized cathode ray tube monitor in the studio as the live broadcast was being aired. Any actual films we have from the 1950s look much better!

The title comes from a line spoken early in the drama by Maria’s mother: “Believe me, music makes very thin tortillas.” Her daughter, who has already fallen in love with fiddle player Salvador, replies: “Oh, music isn’t dreaming! Well, it’s life and hope and a kind of wild happiness.”

Film archivist Alex Cherian collaborated with San Jose State University’s Special Collections & Archives to find historical context for the drama, which is “one of the earliest shows that BATA preserves.” He hopes it will be a useful teaching resource.

BATA, a part of the SFSU Library’s Special Collections & Archives, preserves 6,000 hours of newsfilm, documentaries and other TV media produced in the Bay Area and Northern California, primarily from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.