May 28, 2021

Around the dial

A busy week awaits us, as we were preempted last week, so let's get right to it.

At bare•bones e-zine, the Hitchcock Project continues, as Jack looks at William Fay's season six boxing story "Ten O'Clock Tiger," adapted from his own short story. And for some additional background on Wiliam Fay, you might want to check out Jack's story here.

Fresh off last weekend's Christopher Lee blogathon, Realweegiemidget is back with the 1971 TV-movie Dr. Cook's Garden, the last movie apperance for star Bing Crosby. It's a sinister story adapted from Ira Levin's sinister play, co-starring Blythe Danner and Frank Converse.

At Classic Film & TV Cafe, Rick reviews a couple of '60s westerns: Death Rides a Horse, with Lee Van Cleef and John Philip Law; and Alvarez Kelly, with William Holden. I've seen Death Rides a Horse, and I'd watch it again just for the terrific title; there's a real art form to coming up with one like that.

It's not only kids who have TV heroes as role models; I've always said that John Charles Daly, the host of What's My Line?, is who I want to be when I grow up. At Comfort TV, David asks what TV figures you wanted to emulate, whether you were a kid or not. Do you see any of them in David's list?

I've been doing some Twilight Zone research for an article I'm working on (you should be reading it in a month or two), so I'm in a TZ frame of mind, and Jordan at The Twilight Zone Vortex fills the order with a review of the May/June 1983 issue of The Twilight Zone Magazine.  

Speaking of Twilight Zone, Shadow & Substance notes that the show will be going off of Netflix at the end of June, probably destined for Paramount +. That's probably not good news, and as Paul points out, every time a classic show becomes more difficult to see (and the episodes on MeTV and Syfy are really butchered with cuts), it risks falling down the cultural memory hole. My Blu ray set is on the way.

Garroway at Large is no longer at large; Jodie's back with the final episode of Wide Wide World ?from June 6, 1958, in which the Master Communicator takes a look at "The Western." You can see the complete episode over there, too.

The Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland links to a wonderful article at The Guardian titled, "Your most annoying things about TV." A few of my favorites are there, as well as more in a story from a few years back. As much as I enjoy TV, if you were to ask me to compile a list like this, it would be, I don't know, a couple of books worth?

At Television's New Frontier: the 1960s, we're in the year 1962, and Death Valley Days, for it's 11th season, is experimenting with color. The series may not be the most historically accurate, but television's longest-running syndicated series remains one of the most popular among classic TV fans, and it always boasts an impressive lineup of stars. 

A couple of interesting news items at Television Obscurities: first, on June 3, the UCLA Film & Television Archive will be streaming Rod Serling’s “It’s Mental Work,” an episode of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, with Lee J. Cobb, Harry Guardino, Gene Rowlands, and Archie Moore. Also, there's a Kickstarter campaign out there, courtesy of the 3-D Film Archive and ClassicFlix, to support the release of the first season of The Abbott and Costello Show on Blu-ray. Anything to upgrade the quality of television history.

Terence at A Shroud of Thoughts has an appropriate appreciation of the career of Charles Grodin, who died last week at 86. I always felt that if What's My Line? was ever revived, he would have made an excellent panelist in the Bennett Cerf chair.

Finally, over at Cult TV Blog, John (who has some very kind words for me, BTW) takes on "The Wrong End of Time," the first serial from the 1970 children's sci-fi series Timeslip. I so identify with something John says here about his fondness for this show, as well as several children's shows from the early 1970s, "because they embody a probably imagined time before I was born." Isn't that so much of what the appeal of classic television is about? TV  

2 comments:

Thanks for writing! Drive safely!