Saturday Nights 1959-60

It's been a while since I've done one of these, in no small part because I was kind of short on inspiration in terms of finding a day and a year for one. But Christmas is on a Saturday this year, and the abiding image on this blog is my profile photo. The picture, as I think I explained at some point, dates back to a Christmas in either 1959 or 1960. For the purpose of this I'm going with 1959, for no reason except that I'm pretty sure that it was 1959, and even if it wasn't there was some pretty good TV on Saturday night in 1959. At least there was on one of the American networks.

Today we think of Saturday nights as the biggest wasteland on TV. FOX is the only network that puts any new shows on the night, and that's COPS and America's Most Wanted. Some networks put movies on the night; others relegate "encore" performances of episodes of shows – and not always the same show from week to week. And of course when a network has a show that died and they want to burn off the episodes they do it on Saturday night. About the only thing that really draws an audience – besides COPS and America's Most Wanted – are sports events, particularly big college football games. In Canada things are getting to be almost as bad, but to a large degree that's because of our broadcast regulations and the desire of Canadian private networks to get the greatest ad coverage possible. Because the American networks aren't airing new shows on Saturdays, Canadian networks – which normally have the cable companies substitute their shows and commercials over American shows that air at the same time ("Simsub" in Canadian broadcast speak) they don't program "big" shows on Saturdays. Of course the fact that CBC is showing Hockey Night In Canada on Saturday night doesn't encourage putting big shows on that night either.

It wasn't always that way of course (well except for the part about Hockey Night in Canada). I've often cited the CBS Saturday line-up for the 1973-74 season as being the greatest line-up for any American network ever, and I stand by that, but that doesn't mean that there haven't been other great Saturday nights in the history of TV. The 1959-60 season was one of those.

Let's start with ABC, which was the smallest and brokest (most broke?) of the three networks. For them this was pretty much a music and variety night with only one scripted program in the mix. Still, it wasn`t a bad night of TV for them. Starting off the night was Dick Clark`s Saturday Night Beechnut Show, although it was also known as The Dick Clark Show. The half-hour series, produced out of the Little Theater in New York ran for two and a half years, from February 1958 to September 1960. In the show`s 136 episodes (it ran continually for those two and a half years – there were no real "seasons") nearly 100 different acts appeared on the show, which blurred the definitions of genre. Among the performers were Jackie Wilson, Bobby Rydell (the two most frequent guests – 14 shows each) Frankie Avalon, Bobby Darrin, Dion & the Belmonts, Neil Sedaka, Anita Bryant, Conway Twitty, Johnny Cash, Litle Anthony & The Imperials, Frankie Lymon, Sam Cooke, Johnny Horton, and Andy Williams, just to name a few. The clip I have for this show features The Crests, singing Six Nights A Week. Following Dick Clark was John Gunther's High Road, a series of travelogues hosted by John Gunther, an American journalist and writer whose work focused on international politics and leaders. (This is the only one of the ABC shows that I can't find a clip for). Gunther's show was followed by the only scripted series that ABC had on the night, a little offering known as Leave It To Beaver about the misadventures of a young boy and his friends, family, and Eddie Haskell. I mean how else can you describe that show, one of the most fondly remembered of the family comedies of the 1950s. Following "The Beav" was The Lawrence Welk Show sponsored (if you can't tell) by Sinclair Oil. While we tend to think of Lawrence Welk in connection with the accordion, and his show as somewhat corny (certainly we did at the time), I think it might be time to re-evaluate Welk and his orchestra and certainly the pre-syndication version of his show. He certainly seems to have had at least some contemporary music on. This clip, from 1961 features guitarist Neil Levang, who was with Welk from 1959 to the end of the syndicated TV show, playing Ghost Riders In The Sky, with vocal back-up from the Lennon Sisters. Rounding out the night was Jubilee USA which was originally known as Ozark Jubilee. Hosted by Red Foley (who my good friend Ivan Shreve will probably point out was the original host of the radio show Avalon Time which was the big launching pad for Red Skelton), the series was one of the first country music shows on national TV. Broadcast from Springfield Missouri, the show had a regular musical cast that included Porter Waggoner, Sonny James, Webb Pierce, and Leroy van Dyke, while virtually every country music act of the time made an appearance on the show. Carl Perkins debuted Blue Suede Shoes on Ozark Jubilee before the song was recorded by Elvis Presley. Perhaps the greatest discovery the show made was an eleven year-old singer from Georgia named Brenda Lee. In this clip from 1958, guitar god Chet Atkins is introduced by Red Foley.

The NBC line-up has given me a bit of a problem. Two of the five shows on the night have no episodes posted on YouTube... or anywhere else as far as I can tell. Nevertheless it was not a bad night of TV. Leading off the night was the saga of a wealthy ranch family headed by a tough patriarchal figure...in Nevada in the 1860s. The show was Bonanza, and along with Gunsmoke was one of the iconic shows of the late 1950s to the early 1970s, and still has one of the best remembered theme songs. Canadian Lorne Greene (he was known as "The Voice Of Doom" during his time as the news reader for CBC Radio News during World War II), played Ben Cartwright, while his sons were played by Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker and (then) teen heart-throb Michael Landon (I Was A Teen Aged Werewolf). Bonanza was one of the essential parts of my childhood. It aired here on Sunday night after Ed Sullivan, and my routine as a child was to have my bath then watch Sullivan and Bonanza. One thing that I didn't notice until seeing the show in reruns years later was just how funny many of the episodes were. Not every episode was filled with high drama, and the episode that I have a clip from here is prrof of that. Following Bonanza was something called The Man And The Challenge starring George Nader as a research scientist working for the US government, testing people and equipment in extreme situations. The show was produced by Ivan Tors who is (justly) more famous for series like Flipper, Daktari, and Cowboy In Africa. That was followed by The Deputy which starred Henry Fonda – some of the time – and Allen Case. Fonda played Marshall Simon Fry while Case played his deputy, Clay McCord, a shopkeeper who was reluctant to to use a gun. Fonda's schedule provided a problem for series creator Norman Lear. His scenes for an entire season were shot all at one so that he would be available for films. It was the same routine that Fred McMurray used when he was doing My Three Sons, but in this show it apparently led to some problems as there was a definite difference between episodes where Fonda appeared and those where Case was on his own. Following The Deputy was Five Fingers, another show that I have been unable to find a clip of. The series, which starred David Hedison, Luciana Paluzzi and Paul Burke, was loosely based on the 1952 movie of the same name. In this case "loosely based" translates to "taking the name and the most basic premise." The movie was set during World War II and dramatized the story of the German spy Cicero, who while working as the valet to the British ambassador in Turkey was able to take secret documents from the ambassador's private safe. In the series Hedison was a Cold War American agent who worked as a theatrical booking agent in Europe and posed as a Communist to gain information on party activities. The series ran for sixteen episodes before being cancelled (while they were shooting the seventeenth episode), and several well known names appeared in the show, including Eva Gabor, Edgar Bergen, Jack Warden, Peter Lorre and Alan Young (together in one episode) and Martin Balsam. The final show in NBC's line-up for the night was It Could Be You. This game show ran primarily in the daytime on NBC between 1956 and 1961, but also had a night time version on several occasions, notably in the 1958-59 and 1959-60 seasons. The show usually focussed on the embarrassing moments in the selected contestants' (most of them women, at least in the daytime show) lives. The prizes awarded were often humorous, related to the embarrassing incidents. I have no idea of whether the clip seen here came from the daytime or the night time show.

While CBS's Saturday night during the 1973-74 was probably the best night of television that the broadcast networks every put together, they didn't do too bad a job with the 1959-60 season. CBS had three of the top five shows, for of the top ten shows and five of the top twenty-five shows on that particular Saturday night. From just about any perspective that's pretty impressive. The network led off the night with the tenth highest rated show of the season, Perry Mason. Starring Raymond Burr as the lawyer who never lost a case (well almost never) the show had an outstanding support team that included Barbara Hale as Mason's secretary (and unstated love interest; there was definitely unresolved sexual tension there) Della Street, and William Hopper as Mason's personal investigator Paul Drake. On the other side were William Tallman as Hamilton Burger (and to this day I'm surprised that no one to my knowledge ever called him "Ham Burger") and Ray Collins as crusty and dedicated police Lieutenant Tragg. Burr, an experienced radio and film actor who usually played the villain in movies (notably in Hitchcock's Rear Window) was the perfect pick to play Mason. He had a commanding but cultured voice that convinced viewers that he knew what he was talking about. His size also made him convincing in physical scenes. Burr became Mason in the minds of just about anyone who ever saw the series and it may explain why a later attempt to revive the show failed. Monte Markham was no Raymond Burr. Following Perry Mason was the first season of Wanted: Dead Or Alive which finished ninth in the ratings that year. Starring a young (28 year old) Steve McQueen in his breakout role, the series followed bounty hunter Josh Randall on his adventures. McQueen's Randall was a Confederate veteran who was usually well liked by the peace officers he dealt with. He was well spoken and is described in some references as having a soft heart, sometimes giving his reward money to the needy or helping those that he was tracking down if he was convinced that they were wrongly accused, all done with the aid of his "Mare's Leg," a specially cut down Winchester Model 1892. McQueen would say of the series, "Three hard mother-grabbin' years, but I learned my trade and it gave me discipline." The clip here is from the pilot for the show and includes Michael Landon in the sort of role he had before he found Bonanza – a very angry young man. Following Wanted: Dead Or Alive was Mr. Lucky, a loose adaptation of the Cary Grant movie of the same name. John Vivyan starred as the title character who rwhile Ross Martin played his friend Andamo. "Mr. Lucky" (the only name he was given in the series although in the movie the character was named Joe Adams) and Andamo ran floating casino (the Fortuna II) off the coast of an American city, after being forced to leave Andamo's home country with just the shirts on their backs. The series was directed by Blake Edwards – indeed the character of Andamo was supposedly spun off from his other big series Peter Gunn – and the theme was done by his longtime collaborator Henry Mancini. The show finished tied for 21st in the ratings... and was cancelled. Unfortunately the show was sponsored in its only season by Lever Brothers, which objected to gambling as a main point of the show. The show ceased to be about a gambling ship and instead the Fortuna II became a floating restaurant. At the end of the season Lever Brothers and the show's alternate sponsor, Brown & Williamson Tobacco, pulled their sponsorship of the show and the network was unable to find replacement sponsors and so cancelled the show. Following Mr. Lucky was Have Gun Will Travel starring Richard Boone as the hired gun known as Paladin. Paladin was a study in contrasts. He was erudite and urbane – one might even call him something of a dandy – in the part of his life that he spent at San Francisco's Carlton Hotel. However, when someone contacted him for a job outside of the city he became tough as nails and able to trade blows, or bullets with whatever he came up against. The urbanity wasn't skin-deep, it was simply pushed into the background when he was working. Have Gun Will Travel ran for six years, and had a remarkably small cast, just Boone and Kam Tong, playing the hotel bellhop known to Paladin and the other patrons of the hotel as Hey Boy (though his real name was revealed at one point to be Kim Chan). Each episode was populated by a cast of guest characters – for example this clip features Werner Klemperer. Following Have Gun Will Travel was another Western, although calling Gunsmoke "another Western" is damning it with very faint praise. Probably the greatest show of the genre – certainly the longest lasting at twenty seasons and a total of 635 episodes (233 half-hours and 402 hour long episodes) – Gunsmoke was a series that showed remarkable stability while at the same time changing significantly. And I'm not just talking about the cast here, although there was truly remarkable stability where the cast was concerned. Of the four principal cast members in 1955 when the show debuted, two were gone when the show wrapped its final episode in 1975; Dennis Weaver, who left in 1964 and Amanda Blake who left the year before the show ended. While the streets of Dodge City didn't change much, the sort of stories that were being told did, to accommodate the changes in attitudes towards violence and social conditions over the years, and to deal with star James Arness's health issues (caused by wounds suffered during World War II). The final CBS show on Saturday nights in 1959 was a detective show, Markham, starring Ray Milland. Milland played Roy Markham, a successful attorney who became a private detective. Because he had been a successful lawyer he was able to pick and choose cases at his discretion, and was able to tailor his fees to suit the client, ranging from large sums for wealthy and corporate clients to nothing for those of limited means. When the show began Markham had an assistant, John Riggs (Simon Scott), but the character was quickly written out. The show lasted one season. In fact none of the shows that occupied the last half hour of the schedule in the 1959-60 season returned in the 1960-61 season.

These days Saturday night is regarded as a great wasteland by the broadcast networks; a desert where they dare not tread with any new shows because, of course, people will not watch them there. It is difficult to believe that there was a time when networks actively programmed the night. The last hold-out – besides FOX – pulled out of the night in 2004 when CBS replaced the revived Star Search, Hack and The District with reruns and 48 Hours Mysteries, and in Television six years is regarded as ancient history. That there was a time when the top shows on all of TV were broadcast on Saturday nights must be regarded by programmers today as a combination of heresy and apocrypha. But for most of the medium's existence Saturday nights were a vital and important night of TV when great shows – shows that we remember fifty years after they aired – were staples of the night. Maybe it's because those days were a time when networks weren't fixated with the concept of demographics, or maybe it was that people didn't go out as much then. All I know is that there was a time when great TV on Saturday nights wasn't an oxymoron, it was expected.

Weekend Videos – Top Rated Shows 1965-1969

After too many weeks of not being on a regular schedule with this stuff I'm finally back with clips from the top shows of each year (okay so this is a couple of days late for the weekend – I got caught up with a couple of things that kept delaying this). This is the fourth of these articles. In the first I covered the 1950-51 to 1954-55 seasons; in the second I did the 1955-56 to 1959-60 seasons and in the third I took on the 1960-61-1964-65 seasons. This time around I cover the 1965-66 to 1969-70 seasons.

Just to remind you of the rules I have imposed on myself are these: I will list the top three shows for each season along with the percentage of the nation's televisions that were tuned to that show during the season. These figures are drawn from the Complete Directory To Prime Time Network And Cable TV Shows 1946-Present. If the season's top rated show has already been featured either in this post or in the previous post in this series I'll find a clip from the second highest rated show, provided that it also hasn't been featured before, or the third highest rated show if the first and second place shows have been featured, and so on. The same procedure holds true if there are no clips of the show available online. I will be including the overall rating for the show. Previously I've expressed these in percentages however in 1960 the way that A.C. Nielsen calculated ratings changed and I'm not sure that percentages is a precisely accurate manner in which to describe these numbers. Finally I will be including my own comments about the shows.

1965-66:

1. Bonanza 31.8, 2. Gomer Pyle USMC 27.8, 3. The Lucy Show 27.7

I have very fond memories of Gomer Pyle. While it was a spin-off of The Andy Griffith Show, taking one of the most popular supporting characters off of the original series and making him the biggest "fish out of water" by putting him in the Marine Corps, I didn't know that at the time. I don't recall seeing The Andy Griffith Show during the period when Jim Nabors – or even Don Knotts – were regulars on the show. As a result the misadventures of the naive country boy in the Marines (the Marine Corps that didn't go to Vietnam) were totally stand-alone for me, and it works quite well as a stand-alone. Nabors is great as Gomer, who isn't book smart but has a native goodness and way to come out on top despite all of the objects strewn in his way. However the best part of the show was always watching Frank Sutton as Sergeant Carter. Sutton, a character actor who had been an Army sergeant during World War II (ironically he failed the physical for the Marine Corps), was ideal as the gruff, cynical and easily exasperated Sergeant Carter, Sutton, who graduated cum laude from Columbia University's Dramatic Arts program, had one of the best slow-burns in the business. As the year's passed Carter became increasingly friendly and even protective of his naive charge. The episode that I have here is one of my favourite first season episodes in which Carter is teamed with Gomer on a survival test... and finds himself the fish out of water in Gomer's world. Be sure to try to watch the second half of this one.

1966-67:

1. Bonanza 29.1, 2. The Red Skelton Hour 28.2, 3. The Andy Griffith Show 27.4

I'm going to take the name of my good friend Ivan Shreve in vain a couple of times in this piece and here is the first. I know that Ivan has stated in the past that he prefers Red Skelton's radio work to his TV series, and having heard some – but not nearly enough – of the great man's radio work, I can see the point. On the radio Skelton could integrate his characters more smoothly than he could on the TV show. He could switch from Junior the Mean Little Kid to Willie Lumplump in seconds. That meant that the radio show could flow far more than any TV show ever could. And of course it was easier to believe Harriet Hilliard (later Harriet Nelson of course) as Junior's exasperated mother if you couldn't see that the two had only a four year age difference. For my part, I am a huge fan of Skelton's TV work. It lacked the flow of the radio show. Skelton was reduced to the typical comedian hosted variety show, with a monologues, dancers, and sketches, but he made it work. More to the point it allowed him to do things that were impossible for him to do on the radio. On the hour-long show there were long sketches that would span commercials, and of course there were Skelton's pantomime bits that were separate, silent sketches. Most importantly for me is that Television allowed you to see an extra dimension to Skelton's performance, his facial reactions; very visible and inevitably funny but totally lost on a radio audience. Growing up in the 1960s Skelton was my second favourite comedian on TV (the other was, of course, the immortal Jack Benny).

1967-68:

1. The Andy Griffith Show 27.6, 2. The Lucy Show 27.0, 3. Gomer Pyle USMC 25.6

The Lucy Show was a favourite of mine growing up, but I don't think it holds up nearly as well as that show she did in the 1950s. Created, interestingly enough, by Lucy's ex Desi Arnaz (he seems to have wanted to "get the band back together" to the point where he was angry reported to have been angry at Bill Frawley for taking the role of Bub on My Three Sons) and forced on CBS by pressure from Desilu Productions, it became a hit. People were used to watching Lucy and it didn't seem to matter if there was no Desi (CBS feared that Lucy couldn't carry a show without Desi as her co-star) and with Vivian Vance taking her leave. Lucy surrounded herself with friends. Gale Gordon came on in the second season after he completed his contractual obligations on Dennis The Menace. Their relationship went back to the late 1930s when they were both on a variety show with Jack Haley. Mary Jane Croft took on Vance's role as Lucy's best friend. Croft had been a regular on the last season of I Love Lucy (and was married to Elliott Lewis, who had been the Executive Producer of The Lucy Show for two years after Desi left), but their friendship went back to Lucy's radio show My Favorite Husband where she was a frequent guest star. The 1967-68 season was the last for The Lucy Show, mostly because the sale of Desilu Studios to Paramount was completed in that year, and Lucy was not interested in appearing on a show that she did not own. Instead she formed her own production company, Lucille Ball Productions, and created Here's Lucy, which featured much of the same cast (Gordon, Croft, and occasionally Vance) with the addition of Lucy's teenaged children Lucie and Desi Arnaz Jr. This clip features the notorious episode with Joan Crawford. Joan said of Lucy, "Lucy can out-bitch me ANY day of the week!" while Lucy complained that Joan was constantly drunk and unable to remember her lines, and repeatedly asked if she could be replaced with Gloria Swanson.

1968-69:

1. Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In 31.8, 2. Gomer Pyle USMC 27.2, 3. Bonanza 26.6

It always seemed to me that Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In flashed across the TV firmament like a comet that was gone too soon. In fact, the show lasted six seasons, which surprises me. Of course only about half of those seasons were actually good, and the show suffered from cast defections which were part of what killed it. The show was little more than a series of blackout sketches that normally didn't last more than a couple of minutes at that. This was surrounded by various extended bits, like "Laugh-In Looks At the News," but the pace was like a machine gun so that even if a bit failed you might not really notice. Every episode of the show was star studded in a very real way; in the clip that I'm using here we have Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, Guy Lombardo and this guy with a fiddle – and I haven't even watched the full clip. In fact I'm using this clip rather than the "first" clip in this episode (which really wasn't the first part of the show) because of that guy with the fiddle. There are a couple of problems with this show. It was extremely topical, more so than the obviously political Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. It's rooted in the culture of the late 1960s and is probably only watchable today as an historical relic. Nevertheless in its time it was brilliant and, as various producers who tried to replicate its success discovered, unique. We'll never see its like again.

1969-70:

1. Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In 26.3, 2. Gunsmoke 25.9, 3. Bonanza 24.8, 4. Mayberry RFD 24.4

This is my other nod to my friend Ivan. Because the first three shows in the 1969-70 Top Ten have already been done, I have to work with the fourth place show, which is Mayberry RFD. That's a big problem for me because I have never (EVER) seen the show! The one local station here in Saskatoon didn't take the show, and I don't think it has ever rerun on a station that I've had access to. So I can't tell you a damned thing about this show. Fortunately I don't have to. Ivan, over at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear has been running his continuing Mayberry Mondays articles in which he, in his own inimitably sarcastic fashion, examines the goings on of Sam the poor dirt farmer and city council head, the Maybery Brain Trust Goober the town idiot (but forgets to remind people that he's the cousin of Gomer), Howard and Emmett, and of course Mike the idiot boy (who was played by Jodie Foster's brother... and after the book he wrote about her a few years ago I'm betting "Idiot Boy" is one of the nicer things she has to say about him). If you want to find out more about the show I encourage you to read Ivan's take on the show. The clip I have for this is quite obviously a copy digitized from a video tape, but it's the best that I can find online.

Belated Weekend Videos – Composer Of The Month Johnny Williams

I took a break from the Weekend Videos concept for a while, first because of the Emmy Polls and then out of lack of inspiration. However I'm not feeling that well right now and that gives one plenty of time to explore the Internet... when my head doesn't feel like it's bursting. Something I saw a while ago inspired this new theme for the Weekend Videos, and since it's the Thanksgiving long weekend (here in Canada; in the US it's the Columbus Day weekend and only Federal employees are sure to get the day off) I thought it might be time to star singling out the composers of theme music, starting with one who may come as a surprise to you, John Williams.

About the only TV theme that a lot of people would credit John Williams, composer of the scores for Star Wars, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark and a host of movies might be this.

That, of course is the NBC News theme. Or maybe you remember this theme from frequent collaborator Steven Spielberg's 1985-87 series Amazing Stories. (This is not the original opening sequence. While there are episodes of Amazing Stories available on YouTube, including the one of my favourite episodes, The Mission, they all seem to have clipped off the theme music, and no one has posted

Both of these themes have all the qualities that we usually associate with John Williams's movie music: lots of brass mixed with strings, and a certain heroic quality with – dare I say it – a side order of bombast. That's what we think of when we think of John Williams and his music. What a difference the years make. Maybe. Because back in the late 1950s and early '60s John Williams, or as he was known at the time Johnny Williams was doing TV themes. Pretty good TV themes in fact; some of them quite memorable. And there was one theme that could have become very memorable except for the fact that it was totally unsuited to the show. Let's start off with the earliest Johnny Williams theme that I can find, for a childhood favourite of mine, Checkmate starring Sebastian Cabot, Doug McClure, and Anthony George. In this case I'm going with the end credits, not only because they offer a glimpse of John Williams's onscreen credit but because it offers a more complete version of the theme.

There is a certain recognizable Williams quality in this piece, a little brassy and heroic although it doesn't reach the level of bombast in my opinion. Still I think it fits the swirling fog of the title sequence and indeed the show which, when you come right down to it, was a essentially a clone of such Warner Brothers private detective series as 77 Sunset Strip and Hawaiian Eye.

The next theme that Williams composed for a TV show was this one for the Kraft Suspense Theater (I think this is the second version of the theme).

The Kraft Suspense Theater theme does have the brassy quality that we've come to expect from Williams but from there all bets are off. The theme has an eerie, haunted quality about it that is perfect for a suspense series. Coupled with the starkly angular and modernistic "stick figures" in the titles it becomes almost a minor masterpiece in terms of title credits.

We tend to remember John Williams's long, ongoing collaboration with Steven Spielberg, and through him with George Lucas, but before that he had a long association with Irwin Allen. Williams did the scores for two of Allen's disaster movies – The Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno – but he also did the highly memorable themes for three of Allen's TV series. The first Allen series that he created the theme for was Lost In Space. Unfortunately it is impossible to find the actual opening credits sequences for most of the Irwin Allen series on YouTube. You can find it on Hulu...unless of course you aren't an American.

This wasn't the original Lost In Space theme that was used in the unsold pilot. That theme had a much more serious tone to it, and reflected the serious tone of the series itself. However the producers discovered that they couldn't sell the series to CBS unless it was played less seriously, hence the addition of Dr. Smith and the big role for The Robot. And a show with a less serious tone needed a theme with a less serious tone. Williams uses the combination of flutes and string basses (I initially thought a tuba, and there might be one in there, but repeated listening says string basses) as major elements in the score to imply that light tone of the series.

Williams did his next score for Allen for the more serious science fiction series The Time Tunnel (also my personal favourite of his series, though none of them hold up that well).

It has a bit more of what we think of as the typical Williams style, but he uses the ticking clock motif to immediately signal to us that the show is about Time. He leaves it to us to discover what Time is of such importance to the show, besides of course the fact that the show is called The Time Tunnel. At the same time you have the driving, vaguely exotic beat competing with an exciting, adventurous but more conventional beat. It's a nice blend that works in all of the elements of the concept.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of John Williams final score for an Allen TV project, which was for Land Of The Giants. I've never seen the show, and I'm not sure that I really want to, to be absolutely honest with you. I mean the year that Land Of The Giants started was the same year that Allen did The Great Vegetable Rebellion episode of Lost In Space, so I'm not sure I could handle another Allen series at this late date. I've managed to find a copy of the opening of the episode with the music. Unfortunately it appears to have been taken off a Brazilian station, and while the English language credits are intact and the music can be heard, there is a Portuguese speaking announcer jumping in with a translation of every credit, and in a very loud voice, obviously stepping all over the music. Still even this is better than nothing which is what I would have had if I hadn't found this.

I'm really not sure what to make of that theme. It is certainly the most bombastic of his TV themes and it seems to have a certain light-hearted nature to it, particularly with the Season Two theme (note the addition of the "cat sound effect," I suppose representing one of the dangers the little people faced), but as I say I really don't have a sense of how it really fits with the series.

John Williams received his first Oscar nomination for the score for Valley Of The Dolls in 1968, the same year that he did the Land Of The Giants theme, and it pretty much marked the end of his TV series work. His music was sometimes used in TV shows after that, most importantly his music for the John Wayne movie The Cowboys which was used in the TV series of the same name which was a continuation of the story, and just about anything Star Wars related, and he has done commission work, like the music for NBC's Olympics broadcasts. Some of his music was apparently used on Jack & Bobby but I suspect it was music that he had done for something else. However, there is one other TV theme that he did. Quite honestly I think that all of us can be quite grateful that the pilot for this show was reshot and a new theme used. Keep an eye on the end credits.

Yes, John(ny) Williams did write that. Well all except for the little bit over the end credits, which was the closing from the show's we're familiar with. My guess is that they didn't have the music for the credits on the unaired pilot. As for the song, what can I say? Totally unsuitable for a three hour tour out of Hawaii (where the pilot was shot) or even out of San Pedro, but the fact is that Calypso style music was hot in 1963.

Finally a real treat, the man himself in a situation totally unlike what one might expect from the composer of Star Wars and Superman and the former conductor of the Boston Pops. According to IMDB this is one of only two appearances John Williams made as an "actor." And while we all know how reliable IMDB is about cast appearance. This is the end of the first episode The Naked Truth. Keep an eye on the piano player that John Cassavetes as Staccato is jamming with and who takes over on the piano when he leaves. A similar scene is also seen at the beginning of the episode when Staccato leaves the piano and the same guy takes over for him.

That guy is John Williams. Red Norvo was on vibes (him I recognize thanks to the face fungus) while Shelley Mann is probably on drums. Also probable are Pete Candoli on trumpet. Barney Kessel and Red Mitchell but my ability to identify them is limited. According to the Complete Directory To Primetime Network And Cable TV Shows 1946-Present entry for Johnny Staccato: "Working at the club, and often featured in musical numbers, was the jazz combo of Pete Candoli, which included Barney Kessel, Shelly Mann, Red Mitchell, Red Norvo and Johnny Williams." (emphasis mine obviously). Apparently Johnny Staccato will be coming out on DVD. In fact, according to TV Shows on DVD it is supposed to be coming out on October 12 (ie the day that most of you will be seeing this because I couldn't get it finished on time). I think I might have to find a way of getting a copy. The first episode looked so hot it was cool man.

I used to listen to a CBC radio show host who didn't like John Williams. The kindest thing he could find to say about Williams was that he was a thief, who had stolen most of his "ideas" from the likes of Eric Korngold and Franz Waxman. I'm not sure he would have said that if he could have heard some of the TV work that John Williams did, and if anything a lot of what he was to do  later is apparent in this work.

Weekend Videos – Top Rated Shows 1960-1964

Based on the schedule I set up for myself, I should have put these videos up last week when I didn't post any videos. The problem had a lot to do with my getting sick the weekend before last, which in turn led me to have certain problems with my right leg: extreme pain tends to keep me from getting stuff done. Feeling a lot better now, and in fact I felt a lot better earlier this week when I wrote my feelings about that atrocious game show Downfall.

Just to reiterate what is going on here, about two months ago I started posting clips from the highest rated shows overall for each year, done in five year increments. The first part of this dealt with the 1950-51 to the 1954-55 season while the second part dealt with the 1955-56 to 1959-60 season. The "rules" that I am forcing onto myself are these: I will list the top three shows for each season along with the percentage of the nation's televisions that were tuned to that show during the season. These figures are drawn from the Complete Directory To Prime Time Network And Cable TV Shows 1946-Present. If the season's top rated show has already been featured either in this post or in the previous post in this series I'll find a clip from the second highest rated show, provided that it also hasn't been featured before, or the third highest rated show if the first and second place shows have been featured, and so on. The same procedure holds true if there are no clips of the show available online. I will be including the overall rating for the show. Previously I've expressed these in percentages however in 1960 the way that A.C. Nielsen calculated ratings changed and I'm not sure that percentages is a precisely accurate manner in which to describe these numbers. Finally as before I will be including my own comments about the shows.

1960-61:

Gunsmoke 37.3, Wagon Train 34.2, Have Gun Will Travel 30.9, The Andy Griffith Show 27.8

This is the first, and maybe the only, time that I have to go to the fourth place show. This was the fourth (and final) season in a row that Gunsmoke was in first place and the third season in a row that Wagon Train and Have Gun Will Travel were in second and third place respectively. But that's fine because it gives us the chance to look at one of the greatest family situation comedies ever made, The Andy Griffith Show. Created as a backdoor pilot out of Make Room For Daddy (aka The Danny Thomas Show) the series combined small-town charm and eccentricity in the form of Mayberry and it's residents (I almost said denizens) with the heartwarming family relationship between Sheriff Andy Taylor, his son Opie, his Aunt Bee, and cousin Barney Fife. A big part of the show in this early period was the relationship between Griffith's Andy Taylor and Don Knotts's Barney Fife. The show reunited Griffith and Knotts who had appeared together on Broadway and in the movie version of No Room For Sergeants. One interesting thing that people interested in trivia like my blogging buddy Ivan G. Shreve Jr. will be aware of is that the show featured Doc Adams and Chester from Gunsmoke... the radio version, Howard McNear and Parley Baer respectively. This Season Three clip features Parley Baer as Mayor Stoner.

1961-62

Wagon Train 32.1, Bonanza 30.0, Gunsmoke 28.3

Bonanza debuted in 1959 but didn't even crack the top ten – let alone the top three – until the 1961-62 season. This coincided with the show's move from Saturday night to Sunday. The show was an immediate hit in its new time slot, opposite GE Theater and The Jack Benny Show on CBS. The elements of the show success were all in place; the family relationship between Lorne Greene's Ben Cartwright and his three adult sons Adam (Pernell Roberts), "Hoss" (Dan Blocker), and "Little" Joe (Michael Landon), all of them the children of different mothers. What set Bonanza apart from most westerns and probably accounted for its long life was that it was primarily interested in relationships – between the Cartwrights and with other people – rather than focused on the sort of shoot'em up action that was the major aspect of most westerns. The show didn't shy away from comedic episodes either. This clip tends to support that contention

1962-63

Beverly Hillbillies 36.0, Candid Camera 31.1, The Red Skelton Show 31.1, Bonanza 29.8, The Lucy Show 29.8

The dominance of the Western was finally broken by a silly little comedy that probably inaugurated the era that I like to describe as the "gimmick" sitcom. Instead of being about "happy" but normal middle clase families dealing with each other, the "gimmick" sitcoms all had, well a gimmick. The "gimmick" for The Beverly Hillbillies was a pretty simple one, the classic "fish out of water." No fish were as far out of their own patch of water as the Clampetts from the Ozark country – I don't think it's really established where the Clampetts originated from although Granny frequently mentions Tennessee and there are later indicators that they were living in southern Missouri – suffice it to say that they were from so far back of beyond that the results of many Presidential elections hadn't reached them. The contrasts were obvious, between the sophisticated city people, personified by banker Milburn Drysdale, his highly educated (and therefore grossly overqualified) secretary Jane Hathaway, and the snooty social climbing Mrs. Drysdale, and the backwoods Clampetts. The show maintained its popularity even as the Clampetts became increasingly more sophisticated (relatively – they did learn about large appliances, dial telephones, and many of the other aspects of modern life) by emphasising the caricature characters; Jethro's stupidity all while thinking he's the most sophisticated member of the family, Milburn Dyrsdale's insatiable greed, and Granny's ongoing feud against anything modern and in particular her neighbour Margaret Drysdale. The show was becoming increasingly tired, and was losing audience when it was cancelled in CBS's 1971 "rural purge" (it finished 18^th in the 1970-71 season), but would probably have survived until the end of 1973 and the death of Irene Ryan. The clip I have here includes one of my favourite minor characters, Jethro's twin sister Jethrine, as well as Sonny Drysdale, played by Louis Nye. (One final note: the original theme music performed by Flatt and Scruggs is under copyright and none of the clips I've managed to find include the original theme music.)

1963-64

Beverly Hillbillies 39.1, Bonanza 36.9, The Dick Van Dyke Show 33.3

The total opposite of The Beverly Hillbillies was The Dick Van Dyke Show. The series had no gimmick beyond the split between work and home. The show was based on Carl Reiner's experience while working with Sid Caesar, although the character of Alan Brady is less Caesar and more of a combination of Milton Berle and Jackie Gleason according to Reiner. There are two distinctive sets of characters between the work and home stories, although they often overlapped. At work, Van Dyke's character Rob Petrie was surrounded by his fellow writers Sally Rogers (Rose Marie) and Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam), the Alan Brady Show's milquetoast producer Mel Cooley (Richard Deacon) and star Alan Brady (Reiner). At home Rob was dealing with his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore), son Richie (Larry Matthews), and neighbours Jerry and Millie Helper (Jerry Paris and Anne Morgan Guilbert). The two sides weren't mutually exclusive of course since Rob's friends from work would often come to New Rochelle to visit, and of course Laura would often come to New York and even work on the show. There was a genuine chemistry between the various actors, the biggest being between Rob & Laura/Dick & Mary. The great puzzle today of course is how – and why – a man married to the undeniably sexy Laura Petrie (who wore those Capri Pants to far greater effect on the male libido including the young Rob Reiner – than Lucille Ball ever managed) would have twin beds. One of the great riddles of television to be sure. This office based clip features an appearance by the show's producer, Old Time Radio favourite Sheldon Leonard.

1964-65

Bonanza 36.3, Bewitched 31.0, Gomer Pyle - USMC 30.7

Bewitched took the idea of the "gimmick" comedy a step further. Samantha Stevens (Elizabeth Montgomery) seemed like an ordinary housewife, but in fact she was a witch whose mortal husband Darrin (Dick York, and later Dick Sargent) wanted to stop using her witchly powers. There are those of us who feel that making this demand showed how big a Dick Darrin really was, and certainly if the show had been created even ten or fifteen years later at the heights of feminism she would have told him where he could stick his demands, but if Samantha had been free to use her witchcraft unfettered we probably wouldn't have had a show. As it was, Samantha tried her best to fit into the normal suburban lifestyle. It wasn't easy. For one thing using witchcraft was as much a part of Samantha's life as writing ad copy was for her husband. For another thing there were Samantha's relatives from her mother Endora to her Uncle Arthur, her look-alike cousin Serena, and her Aunt Clara (the only member of Samantha's family that Darrin actually liked) none of whom really understood why Samantha was going along with this. In this clip (one of the few Black & White Season One clips I can find – most of the season one material that has been posted features colorized episodes of the show), Samantha immerses herself in local political affairs, with a politician who might just have another kind of affair on his mind.

Weekend Videos – Theme Mash-ups

(Just so you know, I think I might be coming down with something, so if this whole business is a bit more disjointed than usual you'll understand.)

You may have noticed that there are a lot of artistically brilliant people who use computers. (I'm not one of them.) As often as not these people want to show off what they make. The make music and post it online, shoot their own videos and post them online, and edit existing video and put it with a different soundtrack. The result of mixing different video clips and matching them with music or dialog that you don't normally associate with those images are known as mash-ups. In their own way these mash-ups are as much of an artistic creation as the original creations.

I first discovered this business of mashups when I was doing last week's piece on Friday night in 1984-85. There was a particular theme that had a lot of mashups done using it. You won't be seeing those this week. I will be running those next week, so just so you know, you had better have a high tolerance for the Dallas theme.

The first mashup I want to include here uses the theme from Magnum P.I. in combination with footage from various Star Wars movies to create Han Solo P.I.

The interesting thing about this combination – besides the fact that Tom Selleck almost had another Harrison Ford role, Indiana Jones in Raiders Of The Lost Ark – is that the people who made this mashup also provided a second video which showed the original title sequence from Magnum P.I. side by side with what they made so that you can compare them shot by shot (you might want to view this clip full screen to catch all of the details).

Science Fiction shows seem to attract a lot of mashups, perhaps because the fans are extremely fanatical and maybe quite creative. This mashup takes the theme from the TV version of The A Team (aka the good version) and mixes it up with scenes from the original series of Star Trek. It's not bad, but I think that someone is missing a bet by not doing a mashup using either The Next Generation or Voyager as a base to draw from... and using Reg Barclay as Murdoch! If I ever make a mashup (and I might once I really get used to video editing and effects) that's an idea I could wrap my head around – Picard as Hannibal, Data as Face, Barclay as Murdoch, Worf as B.A. and maybe Ro Laren as Melinda Culea's old role of Amy Allen (I liked both characters and it's going to be my mashup).

There are a couple of Love Boat parodies, but I like this one with the crew from The Next Generation, which always seemed to me to be more of a soap opera than the other versions. The only thing this one missed was Wesley Crusher as Vicki.

Some mashups work better than others. Sometimes it's because the timing is off but other times it is because the theme music is just too tied with visuals that can't really be replicated from existing footage. Take this version of the Hawaii Five-0 theme mixed with scenes from Star Trek: First Contact. The pace is right, the cuts are just about perfect, but the result is ... lacking.

On the other hand, this credit sequence for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine using the modern Battlestar Galactica theme is rather good.

Shows with cult followings are ripe with opportunities for mashups, particularly if there's plenty of footage available. There's a version of the Dark Shadows credits mixed with the music of Falcon Crest. (Unfortunately embedding is disabled for this one.) The big negative on this one is that the split screens aren't as complex as they would be on the original Falcon Crest. Also the creator seems to have extended the theme beyond its original length. Compare that with this version using scenes from Torchwood.

Doctor Who parodies are almost a growing industry. I just keep running into more and more of them (Doctor Who (British) Office style, Doctor Who Buffy style, Doctor Who Angel style, Doctor Who Charlies Angels style, Doctor Who Friends style, and the list goes on and on and on, often with several versions of each mashup) but I was rather intrigued with this creative effort using the A-Team music but not the voiceover. Introducing The U Team!

Finally, because I love both shows and because I love the theme from Firefly, and because I haven't really given you much of a sense of the vast variety of the Doctor Who material that's out there, Doctor Who Firefly style.

Next week, what got it all started for me – Dallas style credits.

Weekend Videos – Friday Night 1984-85

This post was delayed from before the Upfronts. When I started writing this I was concerned that the 2010-11 season would see the broadcast networks largely abandon Friday nights to no-scripted reality programming, which was the way that many of the networks have been going in the past few years. Friday was seen as the "new Saturday," and not in the sense that Saturday night was once the home of some of TV's iconic series. These days the networks have all but abandoned programming anything serious on Saturday nights except sports and FOX's combination of COPS and America's Most Wanted. In the past few years Friday nights were going in the same direction with only CBS having scripted programming in all three hours in the 2009-10 season. There are hopeful signs in the current schedule, with CBS, FOX and The CW all having scripted programming scheduled for all of their time slots – at least for a while – and the other networks having some scripted programming on the night. Still there's a sense that the networks – except for CBS – are one bad ratings period away from abandoning Fridays forever to the likes of Supernanny and Wife Swap.

It wasn't always thus of course. There has been a long history of good TV shows on Friday nights. While it was never featured the powerhouse programming that Saturdays featured for many years it was a big night for the networks for many years. The tendency was to cater to an older and a younger audience – teens and single young adults were assumed to be out on dates – but before the dominance of the 18-49 demographic in the skeevy little minds of network executives, that was enough. Consider the 1975 Friday line-up ABC had the Jack Webb produced Mobile One with Jackie Cooper and a movie – Mobile One lasted 11 episodes before being cancelled. CBS had Big Eddie, a comedy starring Sheldon Leonard as a former gangster with a heart of gold (it died after 13 weeks because of what was on NBC) followed by M*A*S*H, Hawaii Five-0 and Barnaby Jones. NBC had Sanford & Son, Chico and The Man, The Rockford Files and Police Woman. Can you imagine any network putting shows of that quality on Friday nights today? Well maybe Mobile One and Big Eddie but not the other shows.

And yet that's not the line-up I'm going look at. The 1980s saw an even better group of shows. It marked the beginnings of ABC's TGIF line-up that would really flower in the 1990s, while CBS had two of its big primetime soaps, and NBC was running dramas of varying quality. I thought I'd like to look at the 1984-85 season.

ABC opened the night with Benson, then in its last season. What I have is a truncated version of title sequence from that season. Missing from this clip are Rbert Guillaume, who played the title character Benson DuBois and James Noble who played Governor Gatling. I've chosen this version of the show's title sequence because the only other clip from Benson available on YouTube features the original cast of the series which, except for Guillaume, Noble and Inga Swenson were replaced within two season, and I happen to be a fan of the interaction between Benson and Rene Auberjonois's character Clayton Endicott III. Next up, at 8:30 Eastern was Webster, starring Emmanuel Lewis, Alex Karras and Susan Clark. The show was about a newly married couple who on returning from their honeymoon suddenly find themselves the parents of a small black child whose parents had died. This clip features Heather O'Rourke and is something of a compilation of her scenes in the episode. At 9:00 came a rather obscure show called Hawaiian Heat with Jeff McCracken and Robert Ginty playing a pair of Chicago cops who finally get tired of the cold snow and lack of women in bikinis (which was apparently a big selling point of this show) and arrange to transfer to the Honolulu PD. Given that it was up against Dallas and Hunter it isn't surprising that it only lasted 13 weeks. Finally, in the third hour ABC had the third and final season of Matt Houston, starring Lee Horsley and Pamela Hensley. Added to the cast in this season was Buddy Ebsen as the title character's Uncle Roy. Houston was a millionaire oilman who was a private detective as a hobby. Hensley played his lawyer and personal assistant. The worst thing about the addition of Buddy Ebsen – besides the image of Barnaby Jones firing an Uzi – is that it meant less Hensley...who was the main reason why I watched, given the absurd nature of most of the plots in the show.

Over at NBC the night led off with the first series version of V. Adapted from the mini-series of the previous two seasons (May 1983 and May 1984). Since the second mini-series ended with the apparent destruction of the Visitors thanks to the Red Dust and the capture of Diana, the show needed a way to bring the Visitors back, which they accomplished by having a greedy corporate type free her and then having government collapse when the Visitors came back. It was a reach and the series ran out of ideas after 19 episodes. Following V was one of NBC's genuine successes, Hunter, starring retired football player Fred Dryer and Stepfanie Kramer as a pair of detectives with something of a "Dirty Harry" attitude when it came to dealing with the criminals. The relationship between Dryer's Rick Hunter and Kramer's Dee Dee McCall was at times fractious, although by the second season this was toned down by Roy Huggins, who had been called in by series creator Stephen J. Cannell to serve as Executive Producer. Huggins emphasised the chemistry between Hunter & McCall although he never took as far as latter producers did. The series ran for seven years but fell apart in its last season after Kramer left the series. NBC round off the night with Miami Vice, also in its second season. Starring Don Johnson, Philip Michael Thomas and Edward James Olmos. The premise of the show is pretty much summarized in the title; the lead characters – Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs – are vice cops in Miami, although in this case the principal vice is the importation and sale of drugs. Since I included the Miami Vice theme a couple of weeks ago I've decided to offer a scene featuring Phil Collins's song "In The Air Tonight." The show was often accused of being essentially a music video masquerading as a TV show, and scenes like this tend to support that theory.

CBS had the powerhouse line-up of the three networks. In the first hour was Dukes Of Hazard which was in its final season with the network. "Them Dukes" were John Schneider and Tom Wopat playing cousins Bo and Luke Duke who were under the watchful eye of their Uncle Jesse (played by the great character actor Denver Pyle) and a host of supporting characters including James Best and Sorrel Booke. The show was a basic battle of Good (the Dukes and their friends) versus Evil (Boss Hogg and Sherriff Roscoe P. Coltrane) but played in an extremely light-hearted manner, with the bad guys being caricatures who were not quite lovable but somehow not hate worthy. Daisy Duke, played by Catherine Bach provided sex appeal – in a very chaste way since she was yet another Duke cousin, and therefore unavailable to the heroes and unapproachable by anyone that she one her family didn't approve of. Following The Dukes Of Hazard was Dallas which was in its seventh season. The 1984-85 season was the one in which Barbara Bel Geddes retired from the show following her heart surgery and was replaced by Donna Reed, and that is the version of the titles I've included here. Dallas was of course the iconic prime time soap about the Ewing Family. The character of J.R. Ewing, the philandering, "ethically challenged" head of Ewing Oil brought Larry Hagman, who had previously played the straight-laced and scrupulously ethical Major Anthony Nelson on I Dream Of Jeannie back to prorminence and eventually eclipsed his fame for his previous role. Finally the network had the third season of Falcon Crest a prime time soap created by Earl Hamner, who had previously created The Waltons. Starring Jane Wyman as Angela Channing the conniving matriarch of a California winery who is in conflict with just about anyone who gets in her way... which is just about everyone. There was a huge turn-over in cast over the years which meant that new characters suddenly shot to prominence, and at times the plot lines became convoluted and down-right ridiculous, but through it all the series was dominated by Wyman's presence.

I doubt that we'll ever see the networks put forward line-ups like these on Friday nights again, but I'm not entirely convinced that the night is a lost cause either if there were a network besides CBS that was willing to think outside of the 18-49 Demographic box and program the night for families with younger kids who can't go out and the right groups of older viewers who don't want to go out. Those are markets too.

Weekend Videos – Top Rated Shows 1955-1959

(This post delayed by Blogger - I still can't post directly from Word 2007 which has never been a problem until now.)

About a month ago I started posting video clips from the top rated TV shows of the year. My first postings were for the period from the 1950-51 season to the 1954-55 season. This post will feature the period between the 1955-56 season to the 1959-60 season. Here are the rules or at least the guidelines. I will list the top three shows for each season along with the percentage of the nation’s televisions that were tuned to that show during the season. These figures are drawn from the Complete Directory To Prime Time Network And Cable TV Shows 1946-Present. If the season’s top rated show has already been featured either in this post or in the previous post in this series I’ll find a clip from the second highest rated show, provided that it also hasn’t been featured before. The same procedure holds true if there are no clips of the show available online. Finally I’ll also try to make a few comments on the three top rated shows of the season.

1955-56:

The $64,000 Question 47.5%, I Love Lucy 46.1%, The Ed Sullivan Show 39.5%

The $64,000 Question was a phenomenon in its day, and the basic concept of the show – a ladder system in which players win more money as they answer tougher questions – is a major part of many modern game shows like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? The thing that was both the big gimmick and the cause of The $64,000 Question’s eventual downfall was that the players were asked questions in areas where they claimed expertise. The producers were able to select contestants, often based on the incongruity of their areas of expertise. Thus you had a shoemaker who was an expert on opera, a jockey who knew a tremendous amount about art, or an attractive young woman psychologist who knew all about boxing. However this meant that the producers could tailor the questions they asked to whether they and the audience like the contestant. While The $64,000 Question was never “rigged” in the way that other game shows of this period were by giving contestants the answers to the questions, the producers did vary the difficulty of the questions at the higher levels in an attempt to let popular contestants win more money and make less popular contestants lose. Debuting in June 1955 the show was off the air by November 1958, a victim of the game show fixing scandals, although it should be noted that the show’s ratings had begun to slip even before the scandals. The sound track on this clip is slightly out of sync with the visuals.

1956-57

I Love Lucy 43.7%, The Ed Sullivan Show 38.4%, General Electric Theater 36.9%

We’ve already seen I Love Lucy in a previous instalment of this so we have to turn to the second place series for this season, The Ed Sullivan Show. The show started in 1948 as Toast Of The Town and was renamed The Ed Sullivan Show after its host in 1956. Sullivan soon became a television institution (and a favourite of anyone who even thought of doing impressions during his lifetime – including on his own show) in spite of the fact that all he did was introduce the acts at the beginning of the show and shook hands with them at the end. What exactly did Old Stone-Face do on his “really big shoo?” Well the fact is that Sullivan, who had started as a boxer and a sports writer and became and entertainment writer (really a gossip columnist) in the competitive New York newspaper market, had an incredible eye for talent and for knowing what the public wanted. Moreover he was presiding over what was really a vaudeville show. He was able to put together a mix of established acts and newcomers, acts for kids and for adults that would attract a diverse audience. Sullivan knew the established acts and as I’ve said had a great eye for what would work as combinations. But it all needed something to hold it together. That was what Sullivan did on his really big shoo – he held the diverse acts together. This clip from 1964 features the great Frank Gorshin.

1957-58

Gunsmoke 43.1%, The Danny Thomas Show 35.3%, Tales of Wells Fargo 35.2%

Gunsmoke had debuted on TV in the 1955-56 season, although the property would have been familiar from radio where it had debuted in 1952. It failed to crack the top 30 in its first season but had finished seventh in the 1956-57 season. The arrival of Gunsmoke on the scene is responsible for the rise of the “adult” western as a genre on TV. In the 1957-58 there were five westerns in the top ten (Gunsmoke, Tales of Wells Fargo, Have Gun Will Travel, The Life And Legend Of Wyatt Earp, The Restless Gun). Gunsmoke offered viewers strong likeable characters and a definite “Good vs. Evil” motif. As the series developed – and it did run for 20 years so there was plenty of time for development and shifts in focus, which helps to explain why it lasted for 20 years – more characters and greater depth were added to the show. This episode is the first episode of the series from 1955.

1958-59

Gunsmoke 39.6%, Wagon Train 36.1%, Have Gun Will Travel 34.3%

The 1958-59 season may have been the high point of the Western’s popularity. Of the year’s top ten shows only three weren’t Westerns: The Danny Thomas Show, The Real McCoys and I’ve Got A Secret. Wagon Train was one of the great westerns. Inspired by the John Ford movie Wagon Master it starred one of Ford’s stock company, Ward Bond from 1957-1961 when Bond died. In fact Ford directed one episode with Bond that aired eighteen days after the actor’s death of a heart attack in 1961. The show had fairly small regular cast – Bond’s trail master Major Adams, (replaced by John McIntire after Bond’s death) the scout played for five seasons by Robert Horton and for three more by Robert Fuller, the assistant trail master played by Terry Wilson, and the cook played by Frank McGrath. or the most part the episodes weren’t about them, they were about the people in the wagon train and the people that the train encountered as they travelled from St. Joseph Missouri to California, making it more of an anthology series than most westerns. This clip, from 1960, features Peter Lorre and Robert Horton.

1959-60
Gunsmoke 40.3%, Wagon Train 38.4%, Have Gun Will Travel 34.7%

Have Gun Will Travel was another of the classic Westerns. Richard Boone played the man called Paladin (real name unknown), a cultured and erudite former army officer, who is also a professional gun for hire. Dressed entirely in black, Paladin would usually leave his residence at the Carlton Hotel in San Francisco to fulfill a contract – or not, since sometimes he felt more sympathy with the people that he was hired to deal with than with the people who hired him. The only other recurring character in the series was the hotel Chinese bell hop known as Hey Boy played by Kam Tong, although in the fourth season he was replaced by a new character, Hey Girl (played by Lisa Lu) because Kam Tong had taken a somewhat larger part in a different series. Because of this the series had numerous guest stars, some of whom appeared numerous times, many of whom would be instantly recognizable. One unique aspect of Have Gun Will Travel is the fact that there are themes, and that the closing theme is the one that is better known. The music that is most associated with the show, Johnny Western’s Ballad of Paladin made its first appearance after the first season, and was never the introduction to the show. The show’s actual theme was composed by Bernard Hermann. This clip features frequent guest star Charles Bronson, and Harry Carey Jr. I’m also including a clip of the closing theme done by Johnny Western.

Upfronts 2010 – Video Previews

I want to publicize the new network shows. Really I do, even though there are some that I don't think will make it – and I've expressed my opinion on those in an earlier post – and there are some that I don't want to make it, and I like to think that I've tried very hard not to express that, though it may have slipped out. At this point I'm willing to keep my critical barbs in check on the grounds that I really can't judge a book by the blurb on the dust jacket, which is about what we have right now. But like I say, I want to publicize the new shows which is why some of the actions by some of the networks irritates me. Considerably. As I have reminded you repeatedly (ad infinitum, ad nauseum) I'm a citizen of that mass that separates Wasilla Alaska from the Oval Office, and no I don't mean the intelligence of more than half of the American electorate I mean Canada. And some of the networks – by which I mean ABC and CBS – have decided that my being Canadian somehow makes me a risk. They've cut me off from even seeing the previews for new shows for copyright reasons. CBS told me (on their website at least) that the previews were "not available for your geographic region," although their YouTube site clearly states on every video that I want to see that "This video contains content from CBS, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds." ABC is pretty much the same thing. Setting aside the fact that I don't think you use "who" when referring to a corporate entity like CBS or ABC, I'd like to know how come it is a copyright violation to show these clips to someone in Canada? FOX and The CW don't have any problem with me seeing their trailers. Neither does NBC which has their trailers on their website rather than YouTube. Fortunately there are other avenues to explore, but as you can imagine it is an irritant, particularly when you realize that those other avenues are through a European source which has posted the video clips I'm looking for. Why is it that Europeans can post these trailers "in the clear" so that I can see them and put them into playlists but I can't get them from the source? It is ... puzzling. Rant over.

I did manage to find trailer for most of the new shows at YouTube, thanks to that "other source" that I mentioned. I'll start off with the ABC trailers. Which unfortunately happen to have the most technical difficulties of all of them in terms of video problems. I've decided to arrange the clips by the day on which they appear with mid-season replacements after the current season of shows air. For ABC this means the running order is: No Ordinary Family, Detroit 1-8-7, Better Together, The Whole Truth, My Generation, Body of Proof, Off The Map, Mr Sunshine, Happy Endings. Here are a few first impressions based on what I've seen – remember when I wrote up my opinions of the shows earlier I deliberately hadn't seen the teasers that I was able to see. No Ordinary Family looks like about what I was expecting, family oriented and essentially the Fantastic Four origin with fluorescent water instead of Gamma Rays and different powers as a result. It could do okay. Detroit 1-8-7 looks like it could be okay. Not sure what to think about The Whole Truth. I like the leads but I'm dubious that the split focus will work long term. My Generation isn't going to work, and I don't think Off The Map will either. The show in the mid season that I'm looking forward to? Mr. Sunshine just because of the great cast.

Next up is CBS. The running order is Monday's Mike & Molly and Hawaii Five-0, Wednesday's The Defenders, Thursday's $#!* My Dad Says, and Friday's Blue Bloods. For fun I've also included the theme for the new version of Hawaii Five-0 – and Ivan you're right, it burns. Based on the clips Mike & Molly seems like a rather innocuous comedy although not one that's likely to set the world on fire. If you ignore the title, $#!* My Dad Says really doesn't seem that ground breaking either. The Defenders is probably going to be the weakest of the Wednesday night court shows, and I really don't see it as a good fit out of Criminal Minds. Still it's a different look for Jim Belushi from his time on According To Jim. The two really big shows are Hawaii Five-0 and Blue Bloods. I give the nod to Blue Bloods as the better show. Based on what the network has chosen to reveal from Hawaii Five-0 and what I've seen of the NBC series Chase (not to mention the only returning show in the time slot, ABC's Castle) I'm not entirely convinced that it will win the time slot. I have to wonder if network would have been better to schedule Blue Bloods on Monday, Hawaii Five-0 on Wednesday and The Defenders on Friday.

FOX has Lonestar on Monday, comedies Raising Hope and Running Wilde on Tuesday, with drama Ride Along and comedy Mixed Signals along with animated comedy Bob's Burgers coming in the mid-season. While trailers for most of the FOX shows are available the trailer for Bob's Burgers has been pulled by the network. FOX's new shows seems pretty dismal to me. The cast on Lonestar is about the only thing recommending it. I just can't see the public warming to this show about a conman who is thinking about doing the right thing. I see no hope in Raising Hope, and while Running Wilde has a dark comedy feeling to it, where the protagonist is rather unlikable, I'm not sure that this is going to be popular with the public. Ride Along looks like it could do well. It's scheduled to replace Lonestar and I think that will happen sooner rather than later. Mixed Signals breaks no new ground but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing under the circumstances.

NBC has the largest number of new shows for the 2010-11 season. There was no trailer online – either on YouTube or on the NBC website – for Law & Order: Los Angeles. For once it may also be the line-up that I anticipate the most. On Monday they have The Event and Chase, on Wednesday Undercovers and Law & Order: Los Angeles, On Thursday Outsourced and Love Bites and on Friday School Pride and Outlaw. At the mid-season they have Perfect Couples, Friends With Benefits, The Paul Reiser Show, The Cape, and Harry's Law. While The Event looks good (and by "looks" I mean the physical appearance and casting) I have my doubt about how well it will do. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't know how much patience the public has for these ongoing serialized thriller type shows. Chase doesn't have that problem. It looks to be self-contained in every episode, and if the public actually give it a look it could give Hawaii Five-0 and Castle a real run for the top spot on the night. As I expected Undercovers looks like it could be real fun. Think of it as what happened to Harry and Helen after True Lies, with more than a little Hart To Hart added for flavour. I haven't managed to watch the clip of Outsourced through to the end, but it has a lot of qualities that are reminiscent of The Office. It could work, but it isn't my sort of show. I think that Love Bites and School Pride are due for a quick exit from the line-up and deservedly so. While I like Jimmy Smits I am unimpressed with the concept behind Outlaw. Of the mid-season dramas, The Cape looks like it could quickly turn into a cult favourite that I'll probably be watching. It seems like a suitably dark and yet enjoyable story but whether it will take off with a mainstream audience is the question. I'm sadly inclined to think they won't. I really don't care too much for Harry's Law either. I like Kathy Bates but the show looks too much like a quest for redemption and a purpose. Of course it is a David E. Kelly series and that has always carried with it a certain amount of "quirky." Of the comedies, we all know that if Friends With Benefits gets a series finale, the two leads will decide that the people they've been searching for all this time is each other, and the less said about Perfect Couples the better; it seems formulaic to me. The one comedy that I'm really looking forward to from the NBC list is The Paul Reiser Show. It may not be a winner but it brings together elements that we normally see on cable shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm. I'm looking forward to it and that's not something I generally say about comedies.

The CW has only two new shows at the beginning of the season, and only two trailers available. Actually they are more like clips than trailers. The Hellcats trailer doesn't tell us much about the show beyond the fact that it is about cheerleading. For the life of me I don't even know if we've seen the lead character in this clip. Obviously not aimed at me, but I think it may find an audience with the young women who watch America's Next Top Model. Hey, cheerleaders are probably more relatable than the models, from last year's failure The Beautiful Life. However I think the show that is going to be the biggest success for The CW is going to be Nikita. It's appeal should cut across gender lines because of Maggie Q and the "kick-ass" quality of the lead character.

I've given you all my opinion of these shows based on the clips that I've seen. I cold most assuredly be wrong, because right now all I can judge on is these little three minute clips. I've read a commenter on another site describe the completed versions of The Paul Reiser Show as "godawful." But, base on these clips maybe you, my readers would be willing to give me your opinions – based on what you see here – of the coming new shows in Comments..