Thanksgiving 1958, and What the Heck Was on That Tee-Vee?

I guess you could call this an early Thanksgiving post, but it's really more of a small, personal mystery.

I just started working on a project using my family's home movies. I transferred them to disc years ago, so I've watched this one clip I'm about to play many times. In the past (just as now, stumbling over it yet again), I've analyzed these distant seconds of obscure footage, done Internet searches about what I think I see, and still I have questions.

To be clear about this "mystery," this ain't the Zapruder Film. I know already that the answers are inconsequential, but I believe their resolution will be of interest--however dubious--to nerds of my ilk. (And yes, that phrase is currently playing in my head to the tune of "Peg O' My Heart." Hey, listen to that--now it's playing in your head too!)

Seriously, nerds o' my ilk (but not really, because they are clearly worse off than me when it comes to pointlessly scrutinizing arcane minutiae) regularly leave comments on my YouTube channel to let me know I was, say, off by a day when I wrote the description for an old piece of video I've uploaded. "This couldn't have been a Saturday," they assert, "because the promo for the syndicated run of The Ropers says 'tonight' and it was only on weekdays at that time, although the station would add a Saturday showing some three years later." I can't tell--are they seething when they write such comments, not demanding an apology but perhaps expecting one? Or maybe they're declaring them haughtily, like "You didn't know that?!? And you call yourself a television expert?"

Of course, I would never claim such a thing, although some commenters seem to think I own everything ever aired on television, and thus send me requests for a specific news story as aired on a specific channel on a specific day, like, forty-eight years ago.  <cue sarcasm> Oh yeah, I'll just proctologically produce film from that time your grade school burned down under suspicious circumstances and made it to the local newscast (and yes, just as you feared while sending the request, I totally know you want to see it because it was you, wasn't it, you did it you demented little pyro freak!).

Anyway, no, I am not a TV expert. I am merely the humble Curator of "Hugo Faces," an intermittently-viewed-but-largely-ignored Vintage Video Nostalgia Channel (capitalizing words makes them Important), albeit one which is currently blowing up thanks to a compilation of Loretta Lynn's 80's Crisco commercials. Thanks for the posthumous boost, Loretta! (Oh, and RIP. You did us proud every time!)

Okay, the home movie. The date was Thursday, November 27th, 1958, which was Thanksgiving. The scene we witness is my family's Long Island, NY living room (but this was eleven years or so before I came along), with kids gathered on the floor, watching a good-sized B&W set. (I don't think color sets were common at this time--at least not enough for my family to have one.) For just a few seconds, something is visible on the screen to the right side, but it's hard to make out. To me, it looks like a T. Rex roaring, before it's obscured by something dark which comes from the right. Then the full screen quickly fades into the logo for Ideal Toys.

(This is just a photo, not the video, so you can stop clicking on it, grandpa. I said THIS ISN'T THE VIDEO, THE VIDEO IS AT THE END OF ah forget it.)

Is the dark thing that moves onscreen King Kong? I know the "traditional" Thanksgiving airings of Kong on WOR 9 didn't happen until the 70's and only lasted ten years. But I've heard KK was played on their "Million Dollar Movie" feature, which ran daily showings of a flick, with extra showings on the weekend. So was this like a special, MDM holiday-week programming of Kong? Also, the Ideal logo coming up so fast makes me think it's a "this program is brought to you by" slide and not the beginning of a toy commercial. Would the old MDM go right to this sort of slide from the movie, without one of those familiar "Tara's Theme" bumps? (Maybe that was only a thing in my day.) Obviously, I can't even say what channel this TV was tuned to, or even what time of day it is, so I may be presuming a lot.
(And again, who in their right mind could possibly care about such minutiae. Ahem.)

Here's a link to the clip (times three, slower and slower), on my YouTube channel.
(Hey, while you're there, why not check out one of my thoughtfully-themed playlists? Here's the latest I've assembled, spookyish stuff for Halloween!)

Or just watch the embedded clip below.
I didn't add the rattle of an old projector like I often do. Isn't just silence nice sometimes?