My list of movie-saves, some from 50's but mostly 60's & up that wish were available as dvd release but sadly are not... or once were and went out of print. We especially enjoy the 70's 'suspicion & suspense', 'teen trauma', and 'tragic but true' made for tv movies that started airing in the 70's as a 'movie of the week'. 

The ABC Movie of the Week and others that followed brought us some of the best... casts of wonderful actors we'd often only seen on the big screen, now in our homes... and these TvMs always had something going on that sucked you in and kept you watching :)

When Looking at my lists please note there is a "Sort By" option, I prefer to look at titles by release date, earliest to latest... but can choose other options to view by using the Sort By option ;)

William R. Moses, Michelle Stafford, and Dani Kind in Like Mother, Like Daughter (2007)

Johnny Flynn, Callum Turner, and Anya Taylor-Joy in Emma. (2020)

Every year, a number of television pilots are filmed -- "test episodes" for potential new shows. Some of them get ordered to series, and those pilot episodes often become episode #1 of the new show. Others, however, are unable to hurdle that barrier and remain unsold -- not picked up as a full television series.

Note that "unsold" does not necessarily equate to "unaired" -- many of the pilots listed here have aired on tv, either as a backdoor pilot (shown as a tv movie, or as an episode of an already-running tv show from which it was intended to spin off) or "burned off" (aired as a tv movie or a one-off episode among the summer reruns, or incorporated into one of several anthology tv series that consisted entirely of rejected pilots). Others have seen the light of day as extra features on DVDs, or straight-to-video releases, or in a few cases were even bumped up to theatrical releases.

I've started moving ones I've seen and/or have (i.e., I know they're at least marginally available) to the top of the list -- so far that's #s 1-976.

Sources: Unsold Television Pilots, Lee Goldberg. Movies Made for Television, 1964-2004 and 2005-2009, Alvin H. Marill. Encyclopedia of Television Shows, 1925-2007 and Encyclopedia of Television Pilots, 1937-2019 and Encyclopedia of Unaired Television Pilots, 1945-2018, Vincent Terrace. Various selective-subject (science fiction, animation, etc.) TV books. Various internet resources - IMDb, TCMDb, TheFutonCritic, etc. etc. etc.

(A work in progress.)

Distinguishing "TV Movies" from theatrical releases is less relevant now than when they were often called "MOW(s)" back in the 1970s, from ABC's Movie of the Week series, the first dedicated showcase of films made for television, starting in Fall 1969.

List of the films I've seen ... Favorite genres: Comedy, Golden Age Hollywood, Biographies, Documentaries , family films and Movie Shorts.

Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, and Penny Singleton in Blondie (1938)

Sinbad: Night at High Noon and the Wonder Gate (2016)

made-for-TV movies and short that spawned a series (or not). Note: Most do not depict airplane or boat pilots.

Robert Young and Ann Sothern in Dangerous Number (1937)

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