Saturday cartoons, The Beatles on Sullivan, Oscar winners on TV and more on Around the Dial!

My bad for not answering this earlier: a couple of weeks ago, an anonymous reader included a request in a comment on the September 8, 1974 issue of TV Guide:

"If you have that issue, could you please post the ad that appeared for the Saturday ABC Superstar Movie? It was an awful adaptation of 'Lost In Space' from a time when Saturday morning cartoons were starting to do animated versions of old prime time shows. The artwork for the ad, however, is superb looking and hilariously has nothing to do with the cartoon version it alleges to depict."

Anonymous, your wish is my command!  Here's the ad in question, in full:

Now let's take a look at the detail of that "Lost in Space" Superstar Movie:

They're right - that is pretty funny.

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I'm not a big fan of The Beatles, so I'm going to let Dixon at TV When I Was Born speak for the 50th anniversary of the Fab Four's initial appearance with Ed Sullivan.  He does so with an affectionate remembrance of how this three-week-old self sat on his mother's lap as she watched the historic telecast. Loved that article!

Terry Teachout also uses the Beatles/Sullivan anniversary as a quick look back at Ed's show.   I think we've covered some of this before, but Teachout does a nice job of showing how eclectic Sullivan's lineups were - the most frequent guest was opera star Roberta Peters (41 appearances), followed by comedian Alan King (37) and The Muppets (25).  Teachout nails it when he says that "I've long been fascinated by Sullivan's role in the formation of our now-defunct middlebrow common culture."  That's me in a nutshell, though written much more elegantly than I usually put it.

Quick hits - Cult TV Blog looks at "The Avengers Lost Episodes."  If the Hadley credit card bill goes up, John, I'm telling my wife it's your fault.  How Sweet it Was and Comfort TV both remind us of the Oscar winners who started (or finished) on the small screen.

And finally, Classic Film and TV writes about a new DVD issue of Red Skelton: The Lost Episodes, but as was the case with his Elke Sommer interview, Rick has totally distracted me with the picture for the upcoming interview with Shirley Eaton.  Now, what was I writing about again?

Oh yeah - see you on Saturday with another great TV Guide (featuring another rather fetching young woman on the cover...) TV