Weekend Videos – Inspiration Is Where You Find It

I have mostly restored my computer after reinstalling Vista (twice – I made a mistake in naming my primary account the first time I reinstalled and my files didn't go to the right place when I restored the back-up) but that doesn't explain why I'm posting this late Sunday-early Monday. No, for that you have to blame lack of inspiration. My first intention was to take inspiration from the song Video Killed The Radio Star; an examination of radio performers whose careers transitioned from what we now refer to as Old Time Radio, and a few who didn't (Fred Allen being the biggest name of all) but quite frankly it just didn't feel right. Next up was the idea of looking at the four Warner Brothers detective shows that debuted at the end of the 1950s – 77 Sunset Strip, Bourbon Street Beat, Hawaiian Eye, and Surfside 6 – inspired by the news that one of the shows likely to be picked up next season is Law & Order LA, because of course law enforcement and prosecution in Los Angeles is so different from law enforcement and prosecution in New York. The idea was of course that this idea of putting basically the same show on with different locations is hardly original with Law & Order or even CSI. The problem was that there is a depressing lack of YouTube clips from most of the shows. There was only a short clip from 77 Sunset Strip that was shown here earlier, three clips from Surfside 6 that features none of the cast members, and a few seconds from Bourbon Street Beat in a compilation of 1959 TV show themes. The only thing that is available in relative abundance is clips from Hawaiian Eye. So that wasn't going to work out.

For a while I thought that I wasn't going to be able to do a video post but then, on Sunday afternoon I came upon this post from Mark Evanier. It references another post from The Mad Blog about an illustration that legendary comic book artist and illustrator Jack Davis had done for NBC to promote their1965 TV season in TV Guide. The work in question was a five part extravaganza (at least) pieced together by the person who posted the image (I have to say that it was badly put together, not only missing the Sunday night shows but also pushing some of the pages together so that it was bard if not impossible to read some of the entries, but that's not the point here). So the obvious answer to my problem was to find material related to the 1965 TV season... like one or more of those network preview shows that the networks always aired at the start of the season. Unfortunately none of those seems to exist. What does exist is the longer than normal for YouTube clip shown here, a preview of NBC's new entertainment shows done for NBC employees and advertising clients, hosted by Don Adams in character as Maxwell Smart. The show is rather funny, in spite of the laugh track, but you can see why it wouldn't be particularly attractive to as a way to introduce the new shows to the general public. It certainly wasn't shot on the best film stock available.

Adams makes a big deal of the fifteen new shows on NBC the most new shows on the network, as Adams puts it, since 1588. I'm not sure that this is something that they really ought to be bragging about since it's indicative of a major problem the season before. And I believe that this would be an accurate assessment. On most nights only one program from the previous season survived from the 1964-65 season. Still the 1965-66 season on NBC would be a turning point of sorts. While most of the shows that Adams enthused about would be gone by the end of the season, there were some stand-outs like Get Smart, The Dean Martin Show, I Dream Of Jeannie, and Run For Your Life. Other shows had long service in reruns. Laredo ran for a long time on the Lonestar cable channel in Canada practically from the beginning of the channel until after most of the other western content was abandoned and the station became Movietime. Even the most monumental failure was memorable, if not necessarily for the right reasons. My Mother the Car is generally regarded as one of the worst shows ever to air... but it ran a full season. In fact the only show that NBC started the 1965 season with that didn't last for a full season was the World War II naval adventure Convoy; it was the last NBC series shot in Black & White (to take advantage of World War II archival footage) and a number of network affiliates refused to air the show.

I have distinct memories of a number of these shows, including some of the more obscure shows that didn't necessarily show up often in syndication. Wackiest Ship In The Army, based on the movie of the same name was a show that I have vague memories of. Although it is generally regarded as a comedy, I remember it as having more than a little bit of a dramatic/adventure edge to it. Certainly it wasn't a "typical" service comedy. Please Don't Eat The Daisies is another show that I have vaguer memories of. I remember it as having been a fairly conventional domestic comedy in a sea of comedies that were filled with gimmicks, like girls who appeared in a puff of smoke. It was pleasant but I can't really say that I remember too much about it beyond the very large dog and the house. On the other hand I do remember Hank, the show about a teenager who was forced to try to support his younger sister through a series of – very – odd jobs but was still determined to get a higher education even if he wasn't registered (or paying) for college classes. For some reason I remember Hank airing as a summer series, but maybe that was how my local station chose to run the show. Whatever the truth was I remember the lengths to which Hank would go to attend classes. There was a warmth to the show as well.

I can't say that I've seen examples of most of the new NBC shows of 1965. I don't recall ever having seen an episode of Run For Your Life despite the fact that the show ran for three seasons. It is as much a mystery to me as the short-lived Convoy or Camp Runamuck. Of course I'm not sure that I've really missed anything by not seeing the TV version of Mister Roberts or The John Forsythe Show (particularly given the way that the show changed at mid-season from a comedy about a career officer inheriting a girls school, to a cut rate spy comedy). On the other hand a somewhat older version of me would have probably appreciated Juliet Prowse, so maybe not seeing Mona McClusky was a bit of a loss.

Anyway here's Don Adams with NBC's 1965 programs.

Update: Here is a much better version of the original Jack Davis artwork that inspire this, complete with the missing Sunday shows.

Sunday Videos – A Sunday In 1957

We lost John Forsythe on Thursday at age 92. That was one hell of a rotten April Fools Joke.

John Forsythe, was born John Freund, in Brooklyn New York, the son of a Wall Street broker. He graduated from high school at age 16 and attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At age 18 he became the public address announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers. At the suggestion of his father he began an acting career and had some bit parts in films before he joined the Army Air Force in 1943. He appeared in the Army Air Corps show Winged Victory and worked with soldiers who had developed speech problems during their military service. After leaving the service Forsythe became a member of The Actors Studio where members of his class included Marlon Brando and Julie Harris. He also appeared in several Broadway plays including Teahouse Of The August Moon. He appeared in a number of anthology TV shows, and larger roles in movies. He was cast in the lead role of Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry, the first of two appearances in Hitchcock films (the other was 1969's Topaz). The Trouble with Harry was a commercial failure and led to his first TV series, Bachelor Father, which had the distinction of appearing on all three commercial networks in the course of its five year career. In 1965 he appeared in The John Forsythe Show which ran for a single, rather schizophrenic, season (it started as a show about an Army Major who inherits a girls' school, and turned into a comedy spy series along the lines of I Spy). This was followed by a two year run in To Rome With Love. In the 1970s he appeared – or rather didn't appear – in Charlie's Angels as the never seen Charlie Townsend, the boss of Townsend Investigations. Beginning in 1981 he starred in Dynasty as Blake Carrington opposite Linda Evans as his wife Krystle. A dark haired Evans had previously appeared on an episode of Bachelor Father as a high school friend of the niece of Forsythe's character, Bentley Gregg, who had a serious crush on him. In 1992 Forsythe played a US senator in a short lived comedy for NBC called The Powers That Be produced by Norman Lear. While the series lasted less than a year it did feature an outstanding cast including Holland Taylor, Peter McNichol, David Hyde Pierce, and John Gordon-Levitt. Thus Forsythe is one of the few actors who had series in five decades.

While the easy way out would be to put up either clips or scenes from the various series that Forsythe starred in, I thought I'd try something different. One idea that I have been playing with in these Video segments is to take one night in one year and try to put together clips from TV shows on the three networks on that particular night. So, for example, I might pick Tuesday nights in 1966 and find clips for the shows from all three networks on Tuesdays in 1966. I thought I'd use the death of John Forsythe as a jumping off point. There's a bit of a problem with that; while it is easy to find clips of Charlie's Angels and Dynasty, some of the other shows have very little material available to them. I've decided to go with Bachelor Father, as Forsythe's first show. But this has a major problem. The only clip I've been able to find for the show has a couple of serious flaws. First, the only clip I can find comes from a commercial outfit selling DVDs of PD TV shows. The clip cuts off Forsythe's name and despite having a stated running time of 2 minutes suddenly stops showing anything new at about the 0:45 second mark.

Still Sunday nights in 1957 was a dream year for TV. Just look at the CBS line-up. The network started the night with Lassie. Next came The Jack Benny Program which alternated with Bachelor Father (the Benny clip here probably comes from before 1957 but it's a classic). That was followed by The Ed Sullivan Show, which featured a young singer named Presley. This clip was probably ripped from a commercial DVD or video tape but I wanted to actually include a clip from 1957 with Sullivan in it. Next up was GE Theater, hosted by Ronald Reagan. This clip is from a 1956 show featuring Judy Garland (the one clip I managed to find from 1957 had the commercials cut out). Following GE Theater was Alfred Hitchcock Presents. This clip is from the first part of the second season and aired in October 1956. Alfred Hitchcock was followed by a spin-off from a game show. The $64,000 Challenge took winners from The $64,000 Question and had them face challengers in their fields. If one of the contestants failed to answer a question at a specific level was eliminated while the other contestant carried on until they were eliminated. The show ran from 1956-1958 and was killed by the game show scandal. Winding up Sunday night on CBS was one of my favourite panel shows (it's really not fair to call it a game show or a quiz show), What's My Line? hosted by the erudite John Daly and an equally erudite and witty panel. They don't make shows that are this intelligent any more.

For the most part Sunday was variety night for NBC. First up, opposite Lassie, was The Original Amateur Hour featuring Ted Mack. The show was considerably less polished than the closest modern equivalent, America's Got Talent, but that may be part of whatever charm it has. Following The Original Amateur Hour, was an extremely obscure situation comedy called Sally as a department store sales girl who becomes the "lady's companion" of a somewhat daffy wealthy woman on a world tour. Sally was played by Joan Caulfield, while Myrtle Bascomb was played by Marion Lorne. A format change at midseason changed the setting to a department store and added the always dependable Gale Gordon as store manager and co-owner Bascomb Beacher Sr. and Arte Johnson as his bashful son Bascomb Jr. There do not appear to be any clips of Sally available on-line (okay Toby, prove me wrong!). After Sally NBC rolled out the big guns. The Steve Allen Show was the prime time show that Steve Allen did after he left the Tonight Show. Well that's not entirely accurate since when the show started Steve had not yet left the late night show, but was working on cut-back hours. By 1957 he had left late night however and was working his hardest to be NBC answer to Ed Sullivan (literally since Steve was on opposite Sullivan). These two clips are fairly typical of Allen's prime time efforts and features Tom Poston as the straight-laced host, Pat Harrington as the "hipster Lawrence Welk." Louis Nye, and Steve himself. After Steve Allen came the Dinah Shore Chevy Show. The show was a typical variety show with singing and comedy bits. This particular clip doesn't feature Dinah singing "See the USA in a Chevrolet" but it does feature a comedy bit starring Shore and her husband George Montgomery, Ernie Kovacs and his wife Edie Adams, and band leader Louis Prima and his wife, singer Keely Smith. The fast cuts between the three couples is almost as hilarious as Louis losing track of the word play. Finally we have the Loretta Young Show, an anthology drama series hosted by Hollywood star Loretta young. Originally titled Letter To Loretta the original "gimmick" of Young reading a fan letter as a way of introducing the episode's half hour play was dropped after about 13 episodes of the show's first season. What wasn't dropped was Loretta's sweeping, twirling entry through the doors of "her home" in those glamourous – and vaguely preposterous – dresses. The only extensive clips from the show (which show the actual acting) on YouTube are from the 1953 season, so we'll have to content ourselves with a Loretta Young entrance from the 1954-55 season.

ABC was "the third network" and their Sunday line-up showed it. There were only two shows of real note. Leading up opposite Lassie was the show that you would have to describe as the "original reality show," You Asked For It. The format of the show was amazingly simple. Viewers would write in to the show asking to see some sort of action or event and the show would present it. I have a memory of seeing this show as a child, with the show's second host, Smilin' Jack Smith. The clip here isn't dated but it is probably before 1957, which was the original host Art Baker's last year on the show. I picked it because it represented the sort of thing that I remembered the sort of thing that I remember the show doing, although apparently Baker liked to get show business people on the show. You Asked For It was followed by another show that I have very real memories of Maverick. This extended clip features Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick rather than the more popular James Garner. The clip also includes a number of stars from other Warner Brothers series that may or may not have been on ABC. Wait till you see what Edd Byrnes is doing with his comb in this one! The rest of ABC's line-up was a show called Bowling Stars (opposite the last halves of The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show, a public affairs show called Open Hearing up against GE Theater and the first half of the Dinah Shore Chevrolet Show and the half hour All American Football Game Of The Week against Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the second half of Dinah Shore.

Please let me know what you think of this idea. It probably won't be the only way that these Video segments could go but I confess that it's an idea that I'm warming up to.

Saturday Videos – Spy Show Themes

We lost another favourite actor from my 1960s childhood. Robert Culp died this past week at age 79. He apparently collapsed and struck his head on the sidewalk outside his home. For those who grew up in the 1980s he may be best remembered for playing the hard bitten, sardonic FBI agent Bill Maxwell in Greatest American Hero with William Katt and Connie Sellecca – of the three he was undoubtedly the best actor. More recently he had a recurring role on Everybody Loves Raymond playing Ray's father-in-law Warren, opposite Katherine Helmond. His first series was the 1957 CBS western Trackdown, in which he played Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman. The series featured a number of noted directors and guest stars including directors Richard Donner and Sam Peckinpaugh, and Oscar winning actors James Coburn and Rita Moreno. The series may be best known for an episode that introduced bounty hunter Josh Randall, played by Steve McQueen. The Randall character was spun off into a series the next year, called Wanted Dead Or Alive which is generally credited with being McQueen's breakout role. However, for people like me, who grew up in the 1960s, Robert Culp is best known for playing CIA agent Kelly Robinson opposite Bill Cosby as Alexander Scott. Rhodes Scholar Scott was the brains of the team while Culp's Robinson was the athletic playboy. Culp not only starred in the show but wrote seven episodes including the first episode to be broadcast (So Long, Patrick Henry) and directed one of the episodes. The series spawned a lifelong friendship between Culp and Cosby, who later teamed up again in the theatrical movie Hickey And Boggs, which Culp directed, and Culp appeared in single episodes of both The Cosby Show (playing a character called "Scott Kelly" – taken from the names of their two characters in I Spy) and Cosby, where he reprised the character of Kelly Robinson in a dream sequence (with Cosby's name being replaced in the show credits with the name of his character in the show, Hilton Lucas). As Mark Evanier explained in his obituary, Culp was very active in union work, both with the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild.

It would be very easy to do this Saturday videos segment using just the themes of I Spy and Greatest American Hero, and maybe trying to find a few clips from both. The one really good clip that I've found of I Spy features a great deal of Walter Koenig (just before he was tapped to play Chekov in Star Trek and very little Cosby and Culp. However in an interesting turn, the first five episodes of I Spy are available in their complete form on YouTube, courtesy of Image Entertainment which has the home video rights to the show. This includes So Long, Patrick Henry.). But just playing those two themes seems a bit pedestrian. In that mid-Sixties period there were a number of series based around spies and espionage on American TV – by 1966 there were a dozen such shows on the American networks. Many of them were done with a varying amount of tongue in cheek humour, ranging from I Spy through Man From U.N.C.L.E. all the way to Get Smart. There was even an odd blending of genres with Wild Wild West, a series that blended the Western with spies. In fact, about the only people who took the espionage genre the slightest bit seriously were the British. Two British series, Danger Man – renamed Secret Agent when it came to CBS – and The Avengers were bought by American networks. The decade ended with one of my personal favourites, It Takes A Thief.

Let's start off our tour of 1960's spy show themes with the one that got me to thinking about this topic, I Spy even though it debuted a year after The Man From U.N.C.L.E. All of these shows drew their inspiration from the James Bond films, particularly Goldfinger, but as we'll see, the title sequence for the first season of I Spy is practically grand theft intro rather than an homage. Subsequent seasons dispensed with this sequence and replaced it with clips from the episodes (and included the title "Emmy Winner Bill Cosby"). In this sequence the emphasis is definitely on Culp's character, who is the one seen in silhouette, but I swear that producer Sheldon Leonard gets the biggest credit of all.

Next up, here's an extended clip, including the opening theme to the British series Danger Man starring Patrick McGoohan as John Drake. The series ran in Britain from 1960-1962 as a half hour show and then from 1964-1968 as an hour series. Thus, in its original incarnation it predated the James Bond phenomenon, while its revival was at least partially because of the James Bond phenomenon.

CBS had been involved in financing he show's first version , which they aired as a summer replacement for Wanted Dead Or Alive but pulled out after the first season. When the show was revived the network again acquired it, and replaced the original theme with its own sequence featuring Johnny Rivers singing Secret Agent Man. Here's the American version of the same episode with the original theme reduced to incidental music (so don't stop the player when the commercial starts).

The biggest of the American made spy series that at least tried to be semi-serious was Man From U.N.C.L.E. which starred Robert Vaughan as Napoleon Solo, Leo G Carroll as Alexander Waverly, and Robert McCallum as Ilya Kuriakin. The show was apparently based on an original concept created by James Bond creator Ian Fleming, and the original plan was to tie the show more closely to the Fleming name. The show itself got increasingly campy as the seasons went on for a variety of reasons, and the quality took a definite downward turn. The show's first season was done in Black & White while subsequent seasons were done in Colour, but while the slide of the show into camp may have coincided with the introduction of colour, the two states were entirely coincidental. The show had a variety of opening sequences during the four seasons it was on the air, but this sequence featuring the bullet proof glass is probably my favourite.

The other big British import was of course The Avengers. The show started in 1961 and actually starred two men – Ian Hendry had the lead role while Patrick Macnee was his partner but his role was secondary to the point where Steed didn't appea in some episodes. It soon became apparent that MacNee's character John Steed was popular and he increasingly became the co-lead. When Hendry quit to do movies after the show's first season Macnee took his place seamlessly. Steed had a number of partners, notably Honor Blackman as Connie Gale, before he started working with "talented amateur" Mrs. Emma Peel, played by Diana Rigg. The two had a definite chemistry, even though Rigg was only on the series for three years. She was in turn replaced by Linda Thorson for the show's final two season... the less said about the better. This was actually the second theme for the series; the first was composed by John Dankworth and was used for the Hendry and Gale episodes. This version of the titles was for the Black & White Emma Peel episodes. The colour title sequence is probably better known but this one features Rigg in her iconic leather cat suit. Edit: Oops, the character played by Honor Blackman was Cathy Gale. There is a character in the current run of the Annie comic strip called Connie Gale and I mixed up the names.

Finally, here's the title sequence for one of my favourite shows of the genre. It Takes A Thief ran for three seasons and featured Robert Wagner as Alexander Mundy, a professional thief who was arrested and given the choice; he could go to prison or he could steal for the government – specifically an agency called the SIA, where his boss would be Noah Bain, played by Malachi Throne, who was replaced by Ed Binns as Wallie Powers in the show's third season. It's not clear when this version of the title is from – I was hoping for a clip from the third season which featured Fred Astaire in a recurring role as Alistair Mundy, Al's equally larcenous but more successful (he never got caught) father, but I can't seem to find one.

Update: This is in fact a third season episode, just not one with Astaire in it. The first two seasons featured the voice of Noah Bain saying, "Hey, look, Al, I'm not asking you to spy... I'm just asking you to steal!"

As I've said, there were a dozen spy shows on TV in 1966 alone. These clips have only scratched the surface of what's out there and I may revisit this area at a later date.

Saturday Video Clips

So I guess it was the other day, when I heard that Fess Parker had passed away, that I had the idea of doing some sort of YouTube video tribute to him. It was an idea that quickly morphed – because just about everyone else was doing just that – into an idea of doing a YouTube based post every weekend. The idea would be to find several TV related videos and posting them on Friday night-Saturday morning. These videos might be related to some news item, like casting for a new version of the Rockford Files, the death of a TV icon like Fess Parker, or just anything that tickled my fancy (or fancied my tickle – no, that doesn't work in this situation). Maybe this won't last long, or maybe it will – let's give it a try.

First up of course is Fess Parker, who passed away on March 18^th at age 85. Parker was born in San Angelo Texas, and after brief service in the Marines in World War II (he wanted to be a pilot but at 6' 6" he was too tall to fit into a cockpit or even serve as an aviation gunner in a bomber) he graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in History, and moved to California to get a Masters in theatre History at USC. He soon found himself too busy because of acting jobs. Initially under contract at Warner Brothers he was nominated for an Emmy in 1954 as "Outstanding New Personality" – he lost to "Lonesome" George Gobel. In December 1954 he debuted in the role that would shape his later career – Davy Crockett. Some people classify Davy Crockett as the first TV miniseries. In three episodes the series told the story (or a highlighted version) of the frontiersman, politician and soldier who died at the Alamo. The series was so popular that it is said to have revitalized part of the fur industry – there was a sudden need for racoon fur for coonskin caps. It also spawn two follow-up episodes – set before the Alamo or even Crockett's time in Congress – in which he was involved with legendary keel boat skipper Mike Fink. Parker was soon under contract with Disney, but the contract restricted the parts available to Parker – he was typecast in roles like Boone in movies for Disney while the studio refused to loan him out for roles outside that persona. Thus he missed parts in films like The Searchers with John Wayne and Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe. So first up we have the complete version of the Davy Crockett theme song. Unfortunately there are no clips of the show on YouTube but this clip includes the complete Davy Crockett Theme (more complete in fact than I can remember it being!).

In 1962 he appeared in the TV version of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington on ABC. The show isn't notable for much, but it did feature the final TV appearance of Harpo Marx. It lasted one full season but it did clear the way for Parker to do the other part for which he was famous, Daniel Boone which ran from 1965-1970. The series is a highly fictionalized version of the life of the legendary frontiersman who pioneered the settlement of Kentucky. The show was hardly historically accurate but as a kid in the 1960s I found it great fun. It was Parker's last hit. After Daniel Boone ended he turned down the role of Marshal Sam McCloud which went to Dennis Weaver he did a short lived sitcom called The Fess Parker Show for CBS before leaving acting to run a well respected vineyard, the Fess Parker Family Winery and Vineyards. Here's the theme from the first season of Daniel Boone with both the opening and end credits.

Casting continues for the new version of The Rockford Files, with Beau Bridges being cast as "Rocky" Rockford (originally played by the great character actor Noah Beery Jr.), Jim Rockford's father. He joins Dermot Mulroney in his first major TV role as Jim Rockford (the role immortalized by James Garner), and Alan Tudyk (best known for playing Wash on Firefly) as Jim's police contact Dennis Becker. Among the parts yet to be cast are the roles of Angel, Jim's slightly less than legitimate former cellmate, Beth Davenport, Jim's lawyer and occasional romantic interest, and Lt. Doug Chapman, Becker's boss who was constantly getting on Dennis's case for helping Rockford...and then taking credit for any arrests that resulted from the work that Dennis and Jim had done. This is being done as a pilot for NBC and while I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the idea of remaking this absolute classic of a show, I have to admit that the casting looks extremely good. Here's the original Rockford Files Theme. I was hoping to find one of the opening segments with the answering machine but any of those that were posted appear to have been taken down at the "request" of NBC. This is a pretty good version of the theme though.

Finally, Nikki Finke reports that there is going to be a big screen remake of 77 Sunset Strip coming from Warner Brothers. Normally the very idea of these things leaves me cold, and for the most part this one does the same. Of interest is that the studio, which produced the original series, will be giving it a period feel. This will presumably include references to the Dodger moving from Brooklyn to Los Angeles (which happened at the end of the 1957 baseball season) and period movie stars. The series, based on several books written by Roy Huggins during the 1940s (and legally stolen from Huggins by Jack Warner who screened the pilot as a feature film in the Caribbean to "establish" that the series derived from a theatrical feature not Huggins's books), featured two former secret agents working as private detectives and "assisted" by hipster speaking Gerald Lloyd Kookson III, better known as "Kookie", who worked as a parking valet at the night club next to their offices – it was a real night club, Dino's, owned by Dean Martin. The original show starred Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Stu Bailey, Roger Smith as his partner Jeff Spencer, and Edd Byrnes as Kookie. Here's the intro to the series.

And here is a clip from the show in which Stu and Kookie "talk." Funny, I vaguely remember the series from my youth, but I don't recall Kookie smoking. The cars and his ever present comb I do remember.

Let's see what next week brings.

1973 – The TV Guide Fall Preview

When I looked at the 1972 TV Guide Fall Preview I described the 1972-73 season as being one of TV's golden years – the equivalent of a year like 1939 in the movie business – when a string of truly memorable series burst onto the scene. If there is an equivalent to the 1973-74 season in movies, I'm not aware of it. Perhaps because it would be the sort of year that no one writes about and few talk about except in the deepest darkest recesses of a studio's executive suites, and even then in hushed, conspiratorial tones. How bad was the 1973-74 season? This bad: out of seventeen series that debuted in September of 1973, on all three networks, only two were in the line-up for the 1974-75 season. Of the fifteen new shows that were cancelled ten were gone after thirteen episodes. Mid-season replacements did slightly better – but not much. Four of eight shows in that group were cancelled at the end of the season. The word carnage springs immediately to mind.

It's difficult to know where to start with a season that was this bad. Do you go with the shows that succeeded? The shows that failed? The trends? Or do you go network by network? Maybe a combination of all of them is the best way to go.

CBS was the network that had the most successful show to debut in the September 1973 with Kojak but not by much. Kojak ran for five years, and even though it debuted a month after NBC's Police Story and ended its run ten days before that show, it had twenty-two more episodes (118 for Kojak; 96 for Police Story). The basis of Kojak was an Emmy-winning made for TV movie called The Nelson-Marcus Murders which had aired during the 1972-73 season. The show was brilliantly cast, with Telly Savalas in the lead role of Theo Kojak and a supporting cast that included Dan Frazer as the detective commander at New York's 13^th Precinct, and Kevin Dobson, Mark Russell, Vince Conti and George Savalas (billed for most of the series' run as Demosthenes to avoid confusion or allegations of nepotism). But it was the charismatic Savalas who was the absolute focus of attention. Kojak was full of character traits that made him stand out from the assorted detectives on TV at the time. (The 1973 Fall Preview puts it this way, even though it doesn't really convey the strength of the character: "Television has a fat detective, a rumpled detective, a Hawaiian detective, a Polish-American detective, black detectives, a detective in a wheel chair, a detective in a loud sports coat. . . . And now at long last television has a bald detective. Let's hear it for Theo Kojak!") Not only was Kojak bald, he stood out in other ways. There were the clothes. Kojak always looked like he was wearing his entire pay check on his back, with beautifully tailored clothes and hats to go with them. And he was never at a loss for feminine companionship, though never the same woman twice. Then there were the lollipops. Not initially a feature of the character – like Savalas, Kojak was a heavy smoker – it was decided to have the character suck on a lollipop as a replacement for the cigarettes (or were they small cigars) that Kojak was always smoking. Finally there was the catch-phrase that couldn't have been adequately delivered by anyone except Telly Savalas: "Who loves ya baby!" No, Kojak was the stand-out series of the 1973-74 season.

Unfortunately the rest of the CBS line-up was nothing to write home (or articles) about. Someone at CBS decided that there needed to be a revival of the character Perry Mason, and with Raymond Burr still occupied with Ironside, it was decided that the series would be totally rebooted as The New Adventures Of Perry Mason. The cast wasn't horrible – Monte Markham played Mason, Sharon Acker was Della Street, Harry Guardino was Hamilton Burger and Dane Clark was Tragg. Up against Wonderful World Of Disney on NBC and The FBI on ABC it died after fifteen episodes. On Tuesday the network had a movie series that alternated with two series that each aired once a month. One was Shaft starring original cast members Richard Roundtree and Eddie Barth. The show altered the character of John Shaft. Instead of being at odds with the cops, he cooperated with the cops, personified by Eddie Barth's character Lt. Al Rossi. The other show in the timeslot was Hawkins, starring Jimmy Stewart as lawyer Billy-Jim Hawkins and Strother Martin as his investigator cousin R.J. Stewart's character was a country lawyer from West Virginia with a national reputation as a defense attorney. Even though the series was loved by the critics and won a Golden Globe for Stewart as Best Actor in a Drama series, the show only aired for eight episodes. CBS also debuted two comedies on Friday night. One was Calucci's Department starring the great James Coco as Joe Calucci, the supervisor of a New York City unemployment office. The most interesting part of this show wasn't the cast, which also included Candy Azarra, Peggy Pope and Bill Lazarus, but the fact that it was written by actors Joe Bologna and his wife Renee Taylor, with music by Marvin Hamlisch. It lasted thirteen episodes against Sanford And Son. The other comedy was just as successful. Someone at CBS apparently decided that M*A*S*H meant the time was ripe for a revival of service comedies so they came out with Roll Out! The show detailed the happenings at the 5050^th Quartermaster Trucking Company of the famous Red Ball Express, which transported supplies and fuel to the American armies after D-Day. The unit (like the units of the real Red Ball Express) was made up of Black enlisted men with White officers. Among the actors were Garrett Morris, Mel Stewart, Stu Gilliam, Val Bisoglio and Ed Begley Jr. It died a quick death against The Odd Couple.

CBS fared somewhat better with their replacement series. The New Adventures Of Perry Mason was replaced with Apple's Way, a family drama with Ronny Cox, Vince Van Patten, and Kristy MacNichol as part of a family that left the hustle and bustle of LA for the calm of the small town founded by one of their ancestors. The show, created by Earl Hamner Jr. who did The Waltons, was strong enough to outlast The FBI but not strong enough to last against The Wonderful World Of Disney. It ran for 28 episodes, from January 1974 to January 1975. The western Dirty Sally replaced Calucci's Department. Dirty Sally was amazingly enough a spin-off of Gunsmoke, starring Jeanette Nolan and Dack Rambo as a mismatched pair travelling to California to pan for gold. It lasted thirteen episodes. Replacing Roll Out! was the biggest success that CBS would have in the entire season: Good Times. A spin-off of Maude, starring Esther Rolle as Florida (Maude's former maid) the matriarch of the Evans family, Good Times ran for six seasons and 133 episodes. It was also the break-out role for a young stand-up comic named Jimmy Walker, who played the eldest Evans son, J.J. JJ's catch-phrase "Dy-No-Mite! became extremely popular as did the character, much to the irritation of Rolle, and John Amos (who played Rolle's husband James for the first three seasons of the show). The show was the first to show an African-American family living in the poverty of the Chicago housing projects, with the Evans family struggling to get by.

Turning to NBC the big success was – as previously mentioned – Police Story. The show was an anthology program created by novelist and (at the time) LAPD detective Joseph Wambaugh who had already written The New Centurions, The Blue Knight and the non-fiction Onion Fields. The series told stories about various LAPD cops. While there were no regular characters there were a number of characters who made repeated appearances. My personal favourites were the episodes starring Tony LoBianco and Don Meredith (yes, the Don Meredith who worked alongside Howard Cossell) as a pair of Robbery Homicide detectives, and the episodes featuring Vic Morrow as a surveillance expert. The series spun off three different series. The most successful of these was Police Woman, starring Angie Dickinson. The other two were less successful. Joe Forrester, starring Lloyd Bridges lasted one season, while Man Undercover with David Cassidy only lasted ten episodes.

NBC debuted three hour-long dramas, The Magician starring Bill Bixby as a playboy philanthropist and magician who uses his stage magic skills to solve crimes and help people in need. Initially the character travelled around the world in a Boeing 720 airliner – which he described as being "like any other mobile home, only faster" – but later moved into an apartment in LA's Magic Castle (a favourite haunt of one of my favourite bloggers Mark Evanier) with an entirely new supporting cast.. Interestingly enough, Bixby did all the magic himself, without trick photography. It lasted the entire season though it moved from Tuesdays at nine to Mondays at eight at the mid-season (about the same time that the location and supporting cast changed). So did another hour long series, Chase, starring Mitchell Ryan, which came from Jack Webb's Mark VII production house. The show started out with Ryan's character Chase Reddick heading a team of young cops who basically used a variety of "alternate" transportation methods to "chase" criminals. About half way through the season the show, which initially aired before The Magician, was moved to Wednesdays at eight (swapping time slots with Webb's Adam-12 as well as the first half-hour of the Wednesday Mystery Movie, which also moved to Tuesday). When Chase moved it also changed its supporting cast. The changes didn't help either series. The third hour-long series was another anthology series, Love Story. There's not much that can be said about this show – literally. TV.com, which is usually a good source for such material, can only manage cast lists for the episodes but not even a bare synopsis of the twelve episodes. This is only slightly better than the website's entry for The NBC Follies, a vaudeville style series that had rotating hosts, although most episodes were supposed to be hosted by either Sammy Davis Jr. or Mickey Rooney. It lasted thirteen episodes.

NBC's big push in the 1973-74 season was in the area of sitcoms. NBC had four of them none of which lasted more than a full season. Diana, starred Dianna Rigg as a newly divorced woman who moves to New York and lives in her brother's apartment. The show lasted thirteen episodes, including one in which Dianna's former flame appeared. He was played by Patrick MacNee in an obvious attempt to gain ratings. It failed (but I'm still running Dianna Rigg's picture here because it's my considered opinion that I should use any excuse to run a picture of Dianna Rigg that I can find). Needles and Pins Featured Norman Fell and Louis Nye as feuding partners in the New York rag trade who hire a young designer from Nebraska. In spite of Fell and Nye, the show died a swift and well-deserved death after thirteen episodes. Lotsa Luck, which started out on Monday nights, was an Americanization of the British show On The Buses, starring Dom Deluise and Kathleen Freeman. TV Guide didn't think too much of the pilot of the show. In their review, the stated that "Bill Persky and Sam Denoff (That Girl) are producing, and Carl Reiner (The Dick Van Dyke Show) wrote the toilet – er, pilot – episode." Despite the cast and the crew it only lasted one season. The Girl With Something Extra also lasted a single season. The show was the sort of sitcom that had been popular a few years before, a domestic situation with a young married couple with a gimmick. The couple were played by John Davidson (?!) and Sally Field, and the gimmick was that Sally Field could read people's minds.

The 1973-74 season was also the second and final season of NBC's Wednesday Mystery Movie. Cool Millions and Madigan were both gone while Banacek was retained for the second season. Added to the rotation were: The Snoop Sisters, with Helen Hayes and Mildred Natwick as a pair of elderly sisters who were also mystery writers and solved crimes; Tenafly, starring James McEachin as a happily married private detective who is a cog in the corporate machine; and Faraday & Company, about an old time private eye who escaped from a South American jail after 25 years and found it hard to adjust to a world where cars didn't have hood ornaments let alone the fact that he had a son with his former secretary who had taken over his agency and made it into a big company. None of these shows was particularly successful, and when the line-up had to be juggled after Diana and Needles and Pins were cancelled Wednesday Mystery Movie moved to Tuesday nights (and was suitably renamed)... and didn't do any better than it had on Wednesdays.

ABC had, marginally, the worst line-up at the start of the year, although it's worth noting that one of the series listed in the Fall Preview issue was a success, but it can't be strictly speaking be lumped in with the rest of the ABC Fall line-up. And in truth there was one show which under ordinary circumstances was a sure thing to be renewed for a second season. That show was called Toma and dealt with the real life of a Newark undercover detective named David Toma. The show, which starred Tony Mussante and Susan Strasberg, was about an undercover cop who was a master of disguise and achieved a tremendous arrest record without once firing his gun. The show earned both critical accolades and strong ratings from the beginning, even as there were complaints about the show's violence. However, in a move which rivals just about anything that David Caruso has managed to pull off in terms of busting his own career, Mussante refused to do a second season of the show. True he had stated that he only intended to do a single season of the series when he signed on for it, but the producers figured that if the show was a success he'd change his mind. When he didn't they looked around for another actor to take over the role of Dave Toma, and settled on Robert Blake. Except that Blake refused to do it. He wasn't going to take on a role that had been created by another actor. So the show was cancelled and retooled to fit Blake, ditching the character's wife and two kids and replacing them with a cockatoo – but that's another story.

ABC put two sitcoms into their Fall line-up that were movie adaptations. Neither ran more than thirteen weeks but they still had some "interesting" qualities. The first was an adaptation of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice – the movie about two couples who experiment with swinging. This version starred Anita Gillette, Anne Archer and a young Robert Urich in his first starring role in a series. One can pretty much guess what the PTC would have said about this show – sight unseen of course – had they existed at the time. The other adaptation was Adam's Rib, an adaptation of the Spencer Tracy-Katherine Hepburn movie. This one starred Ken Howard as the prosecutor and Blythe Danner as his activist defence attorney wife. They had appeared as a married couple the previous year in the movie 1776, as Tom and Martha Jefferson. (In looking at the publicity photos for Adam's Rib one is struck by how much Danner resembles her daughter Gwyneth Paltrow.) The other new ABC show was Griff, which starred Lorne Greene as a former police captain who became a highly paid private detective. Ben Murphy played his associate, the son of a cop killed in the line of duty. The show ran thirteen episodes.

ABC cancelled a number of shows at the mid-season in addition to the new series that they dropped. These were The New Temperature's Rising, Room 222, and Love American Style. Three of the replacement series the network put on, The Cowboys (a continuation of the John Wayne movie of the same name), Firehouse (about a small inner-city fire station, produced by Leonard Goldberg and Aaron Spelling), and medical drama Doc Elliot (starring James Franciscus), were cancelled by the end of the year. Doc Elliott originally once a month in the Wednesday time slot held down by Owen Marshall: Counsellor-At-Law and so was included in the Fall Preview issue. However, when Griff was cancelled Owen Marshall was moved to Saturdays and Doc Elliot took the Wednesday time slot for the rest of the season. Pretty much the same thing seems to have happened with The Six Million Dollar Man. The show, which starred Lee Majors (who was also on Owen Marshall) as Colonel Steve Austin, was originally scheduled to replace the Saturday Suspense Movie once a month, but when Room 222 and Adam's Rib were dropped it became a weekly series. The show ran for five years, made a star of Lee Majors, and made the words "we can rebuild him" something of a catch-phrase.

As for the other series to debut in the winter of 1974, well it had started as a failed pilot that had been converted into an episode of Love American Style. When the teenaged star of the episode was picked by George Lucas to appear in a major motion picture called American Graffiti, it was all that the network needed to revive the pilot, now named Happy Days after the Love American Style episode that spawned it – Love And The Happy Days. There were a couple of changes in the cast, with Tom Bosley replacing Harold Gould as Howard Cunningham, and the addition of a couple of supporting characters named Ralph Malph and Arthur Fonzarelli (initially a minor supporting character who worried the network censors – the forbade the producers to put him in a leather jacket), the circumstances were set for a series that would run for eleven years, and spawn expressions ranging from "Ayyyy" and "sit on it" to "jump the shark." Not bad for a busted pilot.

The end of the 1973-74 season also brought the end for a number of long-lived shows. ABC dropped the venerable – if by now hopelessly elegiac – FBI as well as Owen Marshall: Counsellor at Law, and both The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. NBC dropped both of their surviving variety shows, Flip Wilson and Dean Martin. As for CBS, Sonny and Cher's divorce ended not only their marriage but also their TV show (at least temporarily) but the big shocker (in its own way) was the cancellation of Here's Lucy. With the exception of a two year break between 1960 and 1962, Lucille Ball had been a staple on CBS since 1951.

(By the way, the missing mid-season shows for this season are ABC between 8 and 8:30 on Thursday, and NBC Thursday between 10 and 11. I'll just assume that the Wednesday from 9-11 time slot was given over to yet another movie package.)

Oddly enough there doesn't seem to be a 1973 ABC Fall Preview posted on YouTube, but I have managed to find a copy of the CBS preview for that year. Quality of the promo reel isn't great but it's there.

TV Guide Fall Preview 1972 – The Comments

First up some comments from Todd Mason:

Actually, the bitter Serling line about NIGHT GALLERY was that it was "MANNIX in a shroud."

Me: I grabbed the Serling "Mannix in a cemetery" quote from Wikipedia (naturally). I should have expected Serling to come up with something better.

Leaving aside social pressures on the brass at CBS, the rationale for dumping BRIDGET LOVES BERNIE was presumably the amount of the audience BLB was losing from ALL IN THE FAMILY, a consideration that would, for example, later doom any number of NBC sitcoms on Thursday nights in the '80s into the '90s, good, bad and indifferent.

Me: I'd accept that point – which I think was the point that Mike Dann was trying to make – except for a couple of things. First of course is that Dann was wrong about the show hammocking because it did finish the year with a higher rating than Mary Tyler Moore. If you cancel Bridget Loves Bernie wouldn't you cancel MTM following the same logic? The second thing is probably a bit more important. The show finished in fifth place for the year, ahead of MTM and every other show on CBS except Maude and Hawaii Five-0. Even if you think that the show can't stand on its own without the lead-in of All In The Family, surely it seems too highly rated to not at least try to keep it in the line-up by moving it to another night (a modern example was CBS's decision to move Shark out of the post CSI timeslot on Thursday night to Sunday night; it had strong ratings on Thursday but died on Sunday, but at least the network tried). And given the fate of CBS's new comedies launched on Friday nights in September 1973 – Calucci's Department which was cancelled after 12 episodes and Roll Out! which lasted 13 – I think it's fair to say that a relocated Bridget Loves Bernie couldn't have done worse. So why wasn't it tried unless there was pressure on CBS to dump the show.

(Of course, any reason to dump David Birney is usually a good one, as ST. ELSEWHERE would later discover.)

Me: Not to mention Meredith Baxter

Serling had his own side project at about this time...his radio serial ZERO HOUR.

Me: Serling's writing would be perfect for radio.

Certainly, my Saturday nights didn't improve after the move of M*A*S*H back out of the 8:30 slot till 1975, when I was able to watch AITF, the placeholder CBS put in behind AITF, MTM, BOB NEWHART, BURNETT, MONTY PYTHON on the local PBS affiliate, and over to NBC for the first season of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE or, every fourth week, WEEKEND. As a kid, a great if marathon night.

Me: That show at the start of the 1974-75 show would have been Paul Sand In Friends And Lovers. Not a show I ever warmed to, mostly because I couldn't stand Sand. It was replaced in the time slot by the All In The Family spin-off, The Jeffersons. Then the next season – 1975-76 – the FCC regulation on "The Family Hour" forced All In The Family to move to Monday nights at 9 p.m., which was deemed a "suitable" time for the show.

Todd caught this before I had a chance to post on the subject:

funny how memory goes. By the time SNL debuted in 1975, ALL IN THE FAMILY would've been moved to its Family-Friendly Monday slot, so it would've been an hour of relatively bland CBS programming, which I would still watch, before the MTM/BOB NEWHART/BURNETT/PYTHON/SNL (or WEEKEND) marathon for me.

Me: The thing about what I've dubbed as one of the greatest TV line-ups ever is that it only lasted for the 1973-74 season before the "broke up the Yankees" so to speak. The 1975-76 CBS Saturday schedule started with The Jeffersons, followed by Doc (starring Barnard Hughes), and then MTM, Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett. Speaking of SNL there were actually two shows of that name in the Fall of 1975; the NBC late night show that everyone knows, and a primetime ABC variety show opposite The Jeffersons and Doc hosted by none other than Howard Cosell! I'm enough of a masochist to want to know what that show was like!

The attempt to humanize the M*A*S*H characters killed the comedy, as far as I was concerned. Sharp satire became often bland cuteness.

Me: Or worse, pretentious dramedy.
It's safe to say that the show changed significantly when Wayne Rogers and MacLean Stevenson left. Potter and BJ were interesting characters to be sure but they had what could probably be described as a more realistic quality. They also made Major Houlihan more human – more Margaret and less Hot Lips you might say – so that increasingly Frank Burns seemed out of place; like Yosemite Sam in a live action movie. Winchester was his "human" replacement. I'm not saying that he show didn't work with these changes because quite patently it did, but it was hugely changed (beyond effectively becoming the Alan Alda Show). However you are right that the sharp satire was gone. Maybe for satire to work it has to be largely populated with cartoon characters like the largely incompetent middle management bureaucratic (Colonel Blake), the hyper-efficient "secretary" (Radar), the by the book professional (Major Houlihan),and the gung-ho type with a little power and slightly less intelligence (Frank Burns), that the one or two "humans" (Hawkeye and Trapper) have to do battle with.

Next up more from "Mr. Television" Mike Doran:

The NBC replacement on Tuesday ... surprise, surprise - a movie! NBC had the biggest backlog of theatrical fims , and its long-standing sweetheart deal with MCA-Universal for TV movies, so when two hours opened up anywhere on the schedule, what could be easier? On other fronts, I was a liitle surprised that you didn't mention BANYON's replacement: Bobby Darin's variety show, brought back from the previous summer. The show fared badly and was dropped, and Darin's death followed not long thereafter (but I don't believe there was a connection). One other quick point: if you're wondering why there was so little about Robert Conrad's third of THE MEN, ASSIGNMENT: VIENNA, as opposed to the other two shows, that's because Conrad was a last-minute replacement for Roy Scheider, whose price went up dramatically when FRENCH CONNECTION became a huge boxoffice hit. It was probably still being retooled while ABC was putting the promo together. Back to the vaults now to await your next installment...

Me: Figures that NBC went with movies. Why bother to produce new shows when you can just slot in movies and probably get great ratings with them. And of course any new movies could be potential pilots for next year. Still, it kind of helps to explain why so much of NBC's product in the 1970s was – how should I put it – rather dismal.

The Bobby Darrin Show didn't get a mention because I really haven't been mentioning these short lived shows that often. I probably would have written more about it if I had remembered that he had died so soon after the show ended (about eight months later). And no, the TV work didn't have a connection to his death; it was a series of events starting with forgetting to take prescribe medication after dental work which led to blood poisoning, which led to damage to one of his heart valves which led to his eventual death.

I was wondering about the lack of material for Assignment: Vienna in the ABC preview show. The other two shows were given a lot of time in the show, and Jigsaw in particular looked interesting. Interesting to find this out about Roy Scheider. Twenty years later he wasn't so choosy about TV work (Seaquest DSV of course, a show which I'm sorry to say got progressively worse the longer it ran). It reminds me of the story of the Canadian version of Howdy Doody. The actor originally cast in the role of Timber Tom, James Doohan, wanted more money than the CBC was prepared to pay, so he had to be replaced. The eventual replacement wasn't available for the first week or so of the show so they brought in a temporary replacement named Ranger Bob...played by William Shatner.

And now a little conversation between Mike and Todd:

Mike: In the early to mid 70's ABC aired a program which was similar to Laugh In. It was so over the top it only lasted one episode. I sort of remember watching it. Do you have any idea what it was called?

Todd:
Mike, that was TURN ON. Only ott by the standards of a nervous ABC, but it was they who mattered.

Me: Turn-On was 1969 and Tim Conway, who was the guest host on the one and only episode, has dined out on this story ever since. He has always claimed that the show was cancelled midway through the episode. Not true, well not totally true. ABC officially dropped the show two days after it aired, but there were two local affiliates, in Cleveland and Denver, went to the first commercial break and didn't go back to the show, while some stations outside the Eastern Time zone simply refused to run the show at all while some stations that aired it told the network that they wouldn't be back the next week. To be fair to ABC (Me? Being fair to a network? Well bite my tongue!) this represented a mutiny by affiliates which makes the current business with NBC's Boston affiliate refusing to air the prime time Jay Leno show look minor by comparison. At the time station ownership was restricted to five stations per owner, so no network could afford to have stations dropping one of its shows so publicly. They could stand on principle and air a full 13 episode season on a dwindling network, or they could knuckle under and dump the show. Guess which one they chose? Turn-On was replaced by the squeaky clean King Family Show.

Turn-On was created by Ed Friendly and George Schlatter, who had also created Laugh-In. They had previously offered the show to NBC and CBS, both of which rejected it. A CBS executive reportedly stated that, "It was so fast with the cuts and chops that some of our people actually got physically disturbed by it." This may be a reference to Photsensitive Epilepsy. In 1977 Schlatter went on to do a revival of Laugh-In, sans Rowan and Martin. It too ran for one episode, largely on the strength of one of the cast members, Robin Williams, who between the time that the show was made and the episode was shown had became a superstar thanks to a little show called Mork & Mindy.

And now, some show themes. First up we have a persona favourite of mine, with music by Patrick Williams. Note the first guest star.

Next up, since we talked so much about it, here's the first couple of minutes of the very first episode of Bridget Loves Bernie. If nothing else, it's a pretty damned good cast. By the way, the pilot episode can be found, in three parts on YouTube.

Next week (or so) 1973. It wasn't the year 1972 was, but it wasn't too bad.

1972 – The TV Guide Fall Preview

There are those who say that 1939 was Hollywood's "greatest year" or its "golden year." I know; I bought the book, Hollywood's Golden Year: 1939. It's not a thesis that I'm entirely willing to accept because it is my belief that there have been other years – before and after 1939 – when Hollywood achieved artistic and commercial high points. Similarly I don't wish to suggest that any given year was "TV's Golden Year" but I would suggest that if someone were to come up with a list of "Greatest Seasons," 1972-73 would be very near the top. Even some of the failures were in their own way brilliant. With the possible exception of NBC, 1972 was a hell of a good year for just about everyone, in particular the viewers.

Let's take a look at the network with the biggest problems first. On the surface it didn't look as though NBC was having problems. They debuted five new series in 1972 compared to seven each for CBS and ABC. The problem was that of the new shows only two stuck, and both of them needed major surgery to stay in the line-up. In addition three series that started the season ended their seasons in January 1973. One of these was Rod Serling's Night Gallery. By this point Serling had essentially disowned the series because his contributions were being ignored and his complaints to producer Jack Laird were essentially being ignored. By the final season Serling was so dissatisfied that he labelled the show "Mannix in a cemetery." The situation with Bonanza was even worse and very similar to what happened with Petticoat Junction. The death of Dan Blocker after the 1971-72 season seriously damaged the dynamics of the show – which had suffered a significant ratings loss the season before – and competition from the new CBS series Maude were enough to kill it. As for The Bold Ones, the shows fourth season retained only the New Doctors segment after going to two segments the previous season. It also lost John Saxon as one of the characters, who was "replaced" by Robert Walden (yeah, not really much of a replacement). It ran sixteen episodes and I'm going to suggest that maybe the quality of the scripts was hurt by having to have new scripts every week rather than every other week (or every third week in the first two seasons). Me, I preferred the episodes with Burl Ives and company.

As for the new shows that NBC had that season, the only two shows that got a second season were The Little People with Brian Keith and Shelley Fabares, and the Wednesday Mystery Movie. In The Little People Keith play a pediatrician working with his daughter in a practice in Hawaii. The show was a comedy and did well enough in the ratings to get renewed. However when the show was renewed the decision was made to add a couple of new characters, a child-hating and very proper doctor, played by Roger Bowen, and the woman who owned the clinic – and much of Hawaii – played by Nancy Kulp. This changed the focus from the relationship between the two doctors and their patients (and the patients' parents) to the conflicts between the adults. (They also changed the name of the show in that season to The Brian Keith Show) further distancing itself from the original intent of the series. The Wednesday Mystery Movie was an attempt to expand the Mystery Movie franchise. The original group of shows – Columbo, McCloud, and MacMillan & Wife – were moved to Sunday night. They were supplemented by a fourth show, Hec Ramsey which starred Richard Boone as a former gunfighter and lawman (who in one episode claimed that he once worked under the name Paladin) who had left the west to study modern (for 1900) methods of detection, stuff we now call forensics. The show lasted two seasons and died not because of poor ratings but because star Richard Boone had disagreements with the studio (that doesn't seem to be an uncommon thing with Richard Boone). The Wednesday Mystery Movie was entirely new. It featured three shows; Cool Millions with James Farentino as a globe-trotting private detective who charges a million dollars to take a case (back when a million dollars was big bucks), Madigan with Richard Widmark recreating his role from the 1968 movie of the same name (although in the movie, Madigan dies at the end), and Banacek with George Peppard as freelance insurance investigator out to stick it to the insurance company that his father had worked at for years before. Banacek ran for two years and was picked up for a third...until Peppard quit to keep his ex-wife Elizabeth Ashley from taking a large percentage of his income in her divorce settlement.

As for the rest of the NBC shows, Banyon, was 1930s period piece starring Robert Forster as the title character and '30s movie star Joan Blondell as the owner of a secretarial school that provides Banyon with office employees. The show ran fifteen episodes. The other two NBC shows lasted a full season but while Search – about a high tech detective agency that constantly monitors its operatives – and the anthology Ghost Story (renamed Circle of Fear at the same time that it dropped host Sebastian Cabot) but weren't popular enough to pick up.

NBC also had one show that didn't make it beyond the 1972-73 season, but that was because it had literally run its course. That was America: A Personal History of the United States, writer-broadcaster Alistair Cooke's love letter to his adopted homeland which alternated with the NBC news show NBC Reports. Today no commercial network would put a show like America on; it would be relegated to PBS or to some cable network (after all opponents of PBS constantly say that cable can and will do everything that PBS does). In 1972-73 not only was it a popular success, it won the Emmy for the Outstanding New Series beating The Julie Andrews Hour, M*A*S*H, Kung Fu, Maude, and The Waltons, and was actually nominated in the Golden Globes as Best TV Show – Drama.

Over at ABC, the network unveiled some impressive new shows. In what may be one of the earliest examples of placing a show as a lead-in because of the gender of fans it would attract, the network put the male oriented cop show The Rookies as the lead in for Monday Night Football. The show fit the standard formula of a group of young people, three (male) rookie cops of various backgrounds (Georg Stanford Brown, Michael Ontkean and Sam Melville), being mentored by an older superior officer, played by Gerald S. O'Laughlin. Kate Jackson played the lone woman in the regular cast, a nurse married to Melville's character (years later he played her ex-husband in Scarecrow & Mrs. King). Another highly successful show for ABC was Streets of San Francisco the entire cast of which consisted of a former and a future acting Oscar winner. Karl Malden (Streetcar Named Desire) played Lieutenant Mike Stone, a veteran of over 20 years on the San Francisco PD while his partner, Steve Keller, was played by Michael Douglas (Wall Street). Keller was college educated but had no experience as a cop. Stone was (yet again) a mentor for the younger cop.

The third huge success for ABC was Kung Fu. Supposedly the show was based on a concept created by actor Bruce Lee (this is according to Lee's wife Linda who claimed that Warner Brothers stole the idea) and Lee had been considered for the part of Kwai Chang Caine – the producers decided that they needed someone "serene" for the role and that the only reason Lee was considered for the part was because the network wanted someone more muscular. The producers claimed that they wanted David Carradine of the role of Caine from the beginning even though he wasn't Asian (which stirred quite a bit of controversy in the Asian American acting community). At the time Carradine was in the middle of what can probably be called his "hippie phase" so the part of Caine seemed to be a perfect fit for him. The show was a perfect fit for the early 1970s with its mix of social responsibility, spirituality, Buddhist thought, and pacifism (at least until forced into action).

Kung Fu was initially scheduled to run once a month, alternating with ABC's other western Alias Smith & Jones on Saturday nights. However, the ABC line-up underwent a major reshuffle when the third hour of the Saturday night line-up, the paranormal thriller Sixth Sense died. Alias Smith & Jones was also dropped and Kung Fu and Streets of San Francisco moving to Thursday night in the second and third hours of primetime respectively. Owen Marshall: Counsellor At Law moved to Wednesday night while The Julie Andrews Hour (a variety show that was a major break for impressionist Rich Little) moved to the second hour of Saturdays replacing Kung Fu. The Men, a wheel show featuring Assignment: Vienna (Robert Conrad as an undercover spy in Vienna), Jigsaw (James Wainwright as a cop who chafes at standard police procedures but is effective in finding the missing persons he seeks), and The Delphi Bureau (Laurence Luckinbill as a counter-espionage agent with a photographic memory) moved to the third hour of Saturday nights. Both The Julie Andrews Hour and The Men were cancelled at the end of the season. The other new show cancelled at the end of the season was The Paul Lynde Show, in which Lynde played a family man who had to deal with his wife and two daughters as well as his eldest daughter's new husband Howie, the bane of Paul's existence.

The other ABC show to survive the season was Temperatures Rising, produced by William Asher.It probably shouldn't have survived given what happened to it. In the first season the show starred James Whitmore as the chief of staff at Capitol General Hospital in Washington, with Cleavon Little as Dr. Jerry Nolan, a resident who is also the hospital's chief "operator" (if there was a card game or a wheelchair race in the hospital, his character knew about it). Reportedly the public disliked Whitmore but liked the show and liked Lynde but hated his series so Whitmore was dumped – along with everyone else in the first season cast except Little – and Lynde and a new cast (including Mister John Dehner) were inserted. The result was a mess. Lynde's character, Paul Mercy, was thoroughly dislikeable but not as unpleasant as his invalid mother who bought the hospital. The series was cancelled and then revived, with the mother character dumped and replaced with a previously unknown sister played by Alice Ghostley. Of course, both Lynde and Ghostley were veterans of Asher's previous hit for ABC, Bewitched.

Of course it was CBS that had the greatest success in the 1972-73 TV season. Consider the CBS shows that debuted that year – M*A*S*H, Maude, The Waltons, and the Bob Newhart Show. Even when they failed something good came out of it. Consider the network's only mid-season cancellations of the year; Anna And The King starring Yul Brynner and Samantha Eggar in a non-musical (and allegedly a sit-com!) version of The King And I, and The Sandy Duncan Show which was an attempt to revive Duncan's earlier series Funny Face (which ended when Duncan was hospitalised due to cancer which took the sight in one eye). Both aired on Sunday nights along with M*A*S*H, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, and Mannix. When they cancelled the shows, CBS moved The New Dick Van Dyke Show from 9 p.m. Eastern to 7:30 p.m., shifted Mannix to 8:30 and added Buddy Ebsen's return to TV as a dramatic actor, Barnaby Jones. The show, which had ties to another CBS detective series Cannon, ran for a more than respectable eight years.

I don't think that much has to be said about most of the successful CBS shows in the 1972-73 season. Each of them achieved an iconic status. Who can forget Maude, the "liberal" spin-off of All In The Family where the lead character was the much married, opinionated, liberated force of nature who just happened to be the cousin of Archie Bunker's wife Edith. Then there was The Bob Newhart Show, which wasn't as politically opinionated as All In The Family or Maude but which meshed beautifully with its lead-in The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Both shows managed a near perfect blend of their respective characters' work and domestic lives, filled in each case with interesting and quirky characters in both areas. And of course what can really needs to be said about M*A*S*H, the comedy with dramatic overtones set during the Korean War but really an allegory for Vietnam and the illogic of the military in general. M*A*S*H was one of the most honoured and respected TV shows ever even as it metamorphosed with the various cast changes over the years. Certainly the M*A*S*H that debuted in 1972 was far different from the show that ended its run in 1983, with the regular characters becoming increasingly realistic in tone, and the storylines becoming increasingly dramatic. And, I suppose, with the network becoming increasingly aware that they didn't have an "ordinary" sitcom on their hands (as we'll see in the 1973 season this realization took a while to dawn on them).

Then of course there was The Waltons. It may seem a bit surprising that CBS began airing a new rural series just two seasons after the great "Rural Purge" but I suspect that there were reasons for the network putting it on the air. I have a theory that its period setting allowed it to focus on what today would probably be called "traditional family values"; the children are polite and responsible and obviously don't become involved in drugs or protests, they respected their parents and their elders and the whole family eats dinner together every night. Might I suggest that the material is the sort of thing that would appeal to the Nixonian "silent majority?" At the same time of course writer Earl Hamner Jr. was able to develop storylines that related to the issues of the day. In its own way, The Waltons examined women's rights, race, addiction (in the form of alcoholism) and other issues that people could relate to. And perhaps the most impressive thing about the show is the way that its success seems to have come as a surprise. The 1972 TV Guide Fall Preview issue says the following about The Waltons: "They're descended from pioneer stock and they'll need all the strength they can muster – they're up against Flip Wilson and The Mod Squad." In fact it was those two shows that needed the strength; The Mod Squad was cancelled at the end of the 1972-73 season, while The Flip Wilson Show was cancelled the next season.

CBS cancelled two of its new shows at the end of the season. One was the low rated New Bill Cosby Show which, along with the fifth season of The Doris Day Show, hadn't been able to thrive opposite Monday Night Football. The other show was Bridget Loves Bernie which occupied the Saturday time slot between All In The Family and Mary Tyler Moore. The show was a variant on the 1922 play Abie's Irish Rose, which had been made into a movie twice and even been a radio series from 1942-1944, and dealt with a young Jewish cab driver and writer (David Birney) who married a wealthy Catholic girl (Meredith Baxter). The format is an old one that has been adapted to other situations over the years (the Canadian series Excuse My French dealt with a poor Quebecois girl who married the son of a wealthy Anglophone businessman and had to deal with both of their families; Dharma & Greg was about the son of a wealthy conservative family who married the daughter of unreformed hippies). Bridget Loves Bernie has the distinction of being the highest rated series ever cancelled by any American network. According to the 1972-73 ratings list on the Classic TV Hits website the show finished fifth overall with an average 15.681 million viewers, which means that it finished ahead of The Mary Tyler Moore Show which had an estimated audience of 15.293 million viewers. One suggestion is that the writers ran out of ideas after the first season, but it's generally accepted that CBS cancelled the show because of hate mail and protests from opponents of inter-religious marriage, supposedly various Jewish groups. However, at the time CBS denied the allegation. According to Robert Metz's CBS: Reflections In A Bloodshot Eye Mike Dann claimed that "though the ratings were good they weren't good enough. The show caused a "hammock effect" on the Saturday-night schedule. Sandwiched between Family which drew 46 million homes and The Mary Tyler Moore Show which drew 41 million, Bridget Loves Bernie only managed to attract 31 million." This assertion in particular seems erroneous (to say the least) given the data listed both by Classic TV Hits and The Complete Directory To Prime Time Network And Cable Shows 1946-Present. The story of protests by people who vehemently objected to the show seems most plausible. Whatever the truth, the cancellation of Bridget Loves Bernie, together with mid-season moves that moved the aging Mission: Impossible (which would be cancelled at the end of the season) from Saturday to Friday (for Sonny & Cher) and The Carol Burnett Show from Thursday (where it's time slot was occupied by Sonny & Cher) would set up one of the greatest nights of TV ever, the CBS Saturday night line-up of All In The Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show.

(I'm still doing a bit of research on a couple of replacements for cancelled shows in the season. I need the show that filled the 8:30-9 p.m. slot on ABC and the two hours between 8 and 10 p.m. on Tuesday night on NBC. Help would be appreciated.) (Update: I found the ABC 8:30-9 show. It was A Touch Of Grace starring Shirley Booth, J. Pat O'Malley and Marian Mercer. I still need the NBC show(s).)

Below is the 1972 ABC Fall Preview in three parts. Sorry, no TV criticism from President Nixon this time.