My Journey Through 1970s TV; Sunday Nights, 1974

 

My journey through the 1970s arrives at last to 1974, and without looking ahead I’m trying to remember if that it is going to be a good year or not. The previous year featured a high number of quickly canceled shows, so I’m anxious to see if the three networks’ collective return to the drawing board is going to yield better results. 

 

Sunday, 1974

 

CBS

Apple’s Way

Kojak

Mannix

 

There were great expectations for Apple’s Way, not just from the network but also from the companies that saw profit potential in the kind of tie-in merchandise that was big business with a hit series in the 1970s. 

 

A new show from Waltons creator Earl Hamner Jr., about another large family with deep roots in a warm rural community? How could it miss?

 

But it did miss, disappearing after just 28 episodes across two seasons, leaving manufacturers wondering what they were going to do with all those Apple’s Way lunch boxes, board games and Viewmaster reels. 

 

 

I watched it, though not regularly, and though it’s been 50(!) years I can still picture that familiar water wheel in the opening credits. In fact I can recall that more clearly than any of the characters, which may have been part of the problem.

 

Ronny Cox starred as architect George Apple, who gets fed up with the rat race in Los Angeles and moves his family to Appleton, Iowa, which was founded by his ancestors. The Apple clan included wife Barbara (Frances Lee McCain), Grandpa (Malcolm Atterbury), and kids Paul (Vince Van Patten), Cathy (Patti Cohoon), Steven (Eric Olson), and Patricia (Frannie Michel, replaced during the run by Kristy McNichol). 

 

 

My view? It failed for two reasons. First, it offered wholesome family entertainment in a time slot opposite The Wonderful World of Disney, which had practically trademarked that concept by the early 1970s. Uncle Walt may have been gone by 1974 but his successors strived to maintain his legacy*, and viewers trusted they could leave their kids in front of the set as long as it was tuned to NBC.

 

Second, Ronny Cox never struck me as an actor who radiated warmth. Over his long career he would specialize in obnoxious authority figures (St. Elsewhere, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Robocop) so his casting here was less than ideal.

 

Despite the poor lead-in the series provided, both Kojak (#14) and Mannix (#20) remained among the season’s 20 most watched shows.

 

* Of course this was the era before Disney dispatched a guy dressed as the evil queen from Snow White in its theme parks, and thought that would be just fine with the family from Kansas that saved up all year for a trip to Disney World.

 

NBC

The Wonderful World of Disney

The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie (Columbo, McMillan and Wife, McCloud, Amy Prentiss)

 

Sunday was also a strong ratings night for NBC, with Disney at #18 and the Mystery Movie at #22. New to its rotating lineup was Amy Prentiss, starting Jessica Walter as the newly appointed Chief of Detectives at the San Francisco Police Department. Of course, she faces hostility and sexism from the rank-and-file and struggles to win their respect. 

 

 

The title of the series’ pilot is “Prime Suspect,” which is ironic since that is also the title of a British series starring Helen Mirren as a Detective Superintendent in London who also confronts institutional sexism. That series is better in every way than Amy Prentiss, which got the hook after just three episodes. Walter usually brings the fire to any character she plays but seems surprisingly muted here; yet, she still won an Emmy for her performance. Go figure.

 

ABC

The Sonny Comedy Hour

ABC Sunday Night Movie

 

Sonny Bono is deserving of more respect than he usually gets.

 

He gladly played a self-deprecating role to shift more of the spotlight to Cher, and he’d be the first to tell you as a singer he barely gets by. But he wrote most of Sonny & Cher’s hits, produced their records, and had most of the ideas that launched the duo to success in nightclubs and on television. If you listen to Cher’s commentaries on the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour DVDs that came out a long time ago, she acknowledges everything he did to put the former hippies over with mainstream America. 

 

All that said, it was a strange idea to give him his own series. 

 

Maybe it was just part of the divorce settlement – Cher got custody of the duo’s network – CBS – for her solo series. Sonny moved to ABC but retained custody of the repertory company that populated the Sonny & Cher show comedy segments – Ted Zeigler, Murray Langston, Peter Cullen, etc. Somehow Cher got to hold on to Teri Garr. 

 

I’m sure everyone tuned in once out of curiosity and then forgot it. I did. Cher’s show lasted longer but was also canceled, and then the duo reunited for another season of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. 

 

1974 is off to a good start – no new shows to add to the “Missed” list. We’ll see if that continues.  

 

Shows Missed:

The Don Knotts Show (1970)

San Francisco International Airport (1970)

Nancy (1970)

The Headmaster (1970)

The Man and the City (1971)

Search (1972)

Assignment: Vienna (1972)

The Delphi Bureau (1972)

Jigsaw (1972)

The Little People (1972)

The Sixth Sense (1972)

Tenafly (1973)

Faraday & Company (1973)

Love Story (1973)

Needles & Pins (1973)

Calucci’s Department (1973)

Lost 1970s Show Found! The Chicago Teddy Bears

 

If you’re even an occasional visitor to this blog you know I’ve been making my way though the network prime time schedules for every night in the 1970s. The next feature in this series, covering Sunday 1974, will appear next week. 

 

My goal for this excursion, beyond the nostalgic fun of revisiting my favorite decade of television, is to find out whether it’s possible to watch at least one episode from every ‘70s prime time series. Those that remain elusive are added to a “Shows Missed” list. 

 

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to see them all, but thanks to YouTube I can now remove one show from that list. 

 

The Chicago Teddy Bears debuted on CBS in September of 1971, and was canceled less than three months later. Only 13 episodes were produced. The odds were remote that any series this short-lived, that aired before most homes had a videocassette recorder, would be accessible outside of archives like the Paley Center. But about three weeks ago, the fourth episode of the series, entitled “The Alderman” suddenly popped up. 

 

Ready to take a closer look? Me, too. But first, some background.

 

The Chicago Teddy Bears was a situation comedy set in Prohibition-era Chicago, certainly a captivating and intense time in that city’s history. Most of the action takes place at Linc & Latzi’s, a speakeasy owned by Linc McCray (Dean Jones) and his Uncle Latzi (John Banner). The third member of the family, “Big” Nick Marr (Art Metrano) is Linc’s cousin, a gangster always looking to take over the action. He is aided by two bumbling assistants, played by a pre-MASH Jamie Farr and a post-Bowery Boys Huntz Hall. Marvin Kaplan, who will always be Choo-Choo on Top Cat to me, played the club’s nebbishy bookkeeper. 

 

 

According to Wikipedia, the series was originally conceived as a comeback vehicle for Ann Sothern, who would have played a flower vendor that tried to keep the peace between Linc and Big Nick – but she was written out of the show after the pilot. Maybe that was a mistake, because anyone who remembers her appearances as the Countess on The Lucy Show knows how she can perk up a sitcom. 

 

“Alderman” was certainly a familiar term from my Chicago-area upbringing, and you didn’t have to go back as far as Prohibition to find plenty of crooked ones. So it’s not surprising that in this episode, Big Nick decides to run for that office despite his shady past. Linc sees how dangerous power would be in someone that corrupt, and tries to sabotage his election. 

 

What’s the verdict? I guess it isn’t surprising that the show didn’t work for me, given its quick exit from the CBS schedule. Wikipedia says it ranked #70 out of 78 shows. I liked Dean Jones, though, whose natural leading man charisma shines through even here. He had such an interesting career, from those frothy Disney films with Hayley Mills and Herbie the Love Bug, to starring in the original Broadway production of Steven Sondheim’s groundbreaking musical Company. Here the role isn’t much but when he’s in charge of a scene he holds your interest.

 

John Banner is so closely associated with one classic TV character that it can be hard to see him in anything else. But if he hoped to avoid further Sgt. Schultz typecasting, he probably should not have played another character in Uncle Latzi who is also lovable, loud, and mostly clueless. 

 

As for Art Metrano, I’m convinced he was hired because of resemblance to Al Capone. But as a gangster he’s about as intimidating as Riff Raff on Underdog.

 

 

Why was the show called The Chicago Teddy Bears? This episode did not provide any insight on that. But if you’re still curious to check it out, you can
watch the episode here.

As for me, the next time I want to get some laughs out of vintage gangsters, I’ll re-watch the Star Trek episode “A Piece of the Action.” 

 

 

 

The Moving Days That Weren’t

 

One of the most common plotlines in classic TV shows introduces the possibility of moving from one residence to another. In almost every case the idea at first generates much support and excitement, then gradually loses some of its appeal, until the third-act epiphany that results in our characters realizing they’d rather stay where they are. 

 

Viewers are usually ahead of the characters on this story, because they know an actual move would necessitate new sets and a series that looks different from what it had to that point. That’s why it was so surprising that when Mary Richards talked about moving, she actually went through with it. 

 

And maybe that’s another reason it didn’t happen more often. Mary’s original apartment had a quirky charm, with its multi-levels, Palladian windows, stained-glass kitchen divider, and that eponymous brass ‘M’ on the wall. After five seasons it was a place we looked forward to visiting every Saturday night. 

 

But when she left that space in the second episode of season six (“Mary Moves Out”), it was like losing another beloved character on a show that already weathered the departures of both Rhoda and Phyllis. 

 

Her new place was pleasant, if a bit drab, and not as easy to recall in one’s memory even if you recently watched an episode. Even Mary took some convincing. After hanging up her “M” she took a long look at her new space and admitted, . “I don’t like it.” But at least we finally got to see her bathroom (“Mary’s Insomnia”). 

 

The Bob Newhart Show, which followed Mary on many a Saturday night, also did the moving story in the first episode of its final season. But the floor plan of the Hartley’s new apartment was so similar to the one they left that many viewers probably thought they just redecorated. 

 

On I Love Lucy the Ricardos eventually moved as well, from a New York apartment to a house in rural Connecticut, a move that inspired the longest laugh in series history. 

 

 

But these were the exceptions. Most moving stories end with the family staying put.

 

Which came closest without following through? That would be another family moving from New York to Connecticut – the Davises on Family Affair. In “A House in the Country” Uncle Bill decides Manhattan with its “dirty air” and “everybody pushing and shoving” is no place to raise kids, so he takes the family to a beautiful country estate which they love – until they realize the move is permanent. It is only after the movers arrive and clean out their apartment that Bill realizes the move is a mistake, and reverses course. 

 

One element I’ve always respected about this series is how it never forgot the traumas the children suffered before arriving on Bill’s doorstep. The thought of being uprooted and leaving another home, the first one they’ve been truly happy in, brings back all of their old anxieties. 

 

They’re content where they are, and have already become acclimated to the native New Yorker perspective that  everything outside the city is untamed wilderness. “Is it past 63^rd Street?” one of Buffy’s friends inquires about where to find Connecticut. “It’s past 65^th Street!” Buffy responds, unable to conceal her astonishment at such a foreign concept. 

 

By contrast, the Bradys hadn’t even started boxing up the kitchenware before the kids decided, after repeated cries of “Mom, we need a bigger house!” that they really didn’t want to leave (“To Move or Not To Move”). But as much as the Brady residence has become as iconic as any classic TV home, this is one time when moving probably makes sense. One bathroom for six kids is hardly practical - especially after those dinners where Alice serves enchiladas. 

 

Like the Bradys, the Partridge family also toyed with moving (“For Sale By Owner”) only to realize they’d rather not. Unfortunately, by the time they all changed their minds, Reuben has sold their house. Spoiler alert: they get it back.

 

Ozzie and Harriet Nelson never reached the packing stage either, though like many soon-to-be empty nesters they wondered whether their house was too big for just two people, and whether an apartment might be more suitable and require less upkeep (“The Nelsons Decide to Move”). 

 

It’s an understandable impulse that I will have to grapple with as well. The time will come when I will be alone in a 2,500 square-foot house that may be too big for one person. But I love it here, and I’m locked into a 30-year mortgage at 2.5%, having closed escrow long before Mr. Build Back Better tripled that rate.   

 

Loving where you live – that’s the motivation that keeps most classic tv families where they are. Like the Bradfords on Eight is Enough. In  “The Return of Auntie V” Tom’s wealthy and impulsive sister buys a stunning estate for the family, a massive upgrade on their somewhat ramshackle residence. 

 

But Tom doesn't want to leave. “This house speaks to me,” he says, and it’s one of those simple lines that resonates well beyond what its writer intended. There’s a feeling of comfort, and stability, and security in the place where you raised your kids and celebrated holidays. Complaints over small closets and leaky pipes are no match for the disinclination of living elsewhere. And when most people feel that way about their homes, it brings a promise of sociable neighborhoods and closer-knit communities.

 

It seems that is no longer as common as it used to be. As Carole King once sang, “Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?” They do in the land of classic TV, which is yet another reason why it is such a welcoming place to visit.

My Journey Through 1970s TV: Saturday Nights, 1973

 

My journey arrives at last to Saturday nights in 1973, and the unveiling of perhaps the decade’s most celebrated prime time schedule. When crotchety old geezers like me reflect on how television was so much better back in my day, it’s the CBS lineup from this season that will always figure prominently in those recollections. 

 

 

How we got from this era of television to where we’re at now, with people dancing and singing about their diseases in commercials, I’ll never know. But that’s why so many of us prefer looking back to a time when television brought us together.

 

Saturday, 1973

 

CBS

All in the Family

M*A*S*H

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

The Bob Newhart Show

The Carol Burnett Show

 

As you might expect, this powerhouse lineup dominated in the Nielsen ratings, and in the pre-VCR days likely kept many folks home on Saturday nights. Sure you could go out to a movie or a concert, or you could change into comfort clothes, order a pizza, and settle in for hours of entertainment from five now-classic shows. I know which choice sounds more enticing to me.

 

All in the Family was the year’s top-rated series, as it was last year and the year before, and as it would remain for another two seasons. M*A*S*H finished the season at #4, followed by Mary at #9, Bob at #12, and Carol Burnett at #27. 

 

 

Surprisingly, given how many people fondly remember CBS as the place to be on every Saturday night in the 1970s, this was the only year that this lineup remained intact. The network would repeatedly try to introduce a new series amidst established hits, but that strategy did not boost interest in shows like Doc and Paul Sand in Friends & Lovers. 

 

 

What could the other networks possibly do to steal a few viewers away from these iconic shows? Let’s find out.

 

NBC

Emergency!

NBC Saturday Night Movie

 

In its second season Emergency! pulled in enough viewers to stay on the schedule, and would remain the network’s best counter-programming option on Saturday nights through the end of the decade. 

 

 

ABC

The Partridge Family

ABC Suspense Movie

Griff

 

Ratings had already started to fall for The Partridge Family, and the move to Saturday night in its fourth and final season would seal its fate. The addition of Ricky Segall only made viewers change channels faster before he could start singing. 

 

 

Instead of standard movie-of-the-week fare, ABC tried a new concept with a focus on thrillers and horror stories. Two of the offerings this season are still fondly remembered by classic TV fans, and were popular enough to earn DVD releases decades after being first broadcast.

 

Satan’s School for Girls was an Aaron Spelling-Leonard Goldberg production, starring two actresses who would work together later in the decade on Spelling/Goldberg’s Charlie’s Angels – Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd. After a young woman dies in mysterious circumstances, her sister suspects a connection with the private school she attended, and enrolls to get some answers.  

 

 

It’s never that scary but it’s fun, and I confess I fell for its one character twist the first time I watched it.

 

The Girl Most Likely To… was co-written by Joan Rivers, and starred Stockard Channing as a plain college girl who is repeatedly ridiculed by her fellow students.

 

Fleeing from one especially embarrassing experience, she gets in a car accident, undergoes extensive plastic surgery, and when the bandages come off she is suddenly beautiful. How does she celebrate her good fortune? By plotting murderous revenge against everyone who humiliated her. 

 

 

It didn’t do much for her career at the time but Channing is wonderful here, and Ed Asner plays the police detective who wants to arrest her, while also admiring her spunk. Definitely worth a look on YouTube if you’ve never seen it.

 

As for Griff, it was a standard 1970s detective show starring Lorne Greene as a former cop turned private eye. Now, me, I’d rather watch a ‘70s detective show than anything on Netflix, but there was nothing special about this one that made it stand out from a crowded field of similar series. 

 

Ben Murphy costarred as Griff’s partner, and that was probably a bad omen because few actors appeared in more short-lived shows. As for Lorne Greene, after 14 seasons on the Ponderosa he was probably just happy to be off a horse.

 

Shows Missed:

The Don Knotts Show (1970)

San Francisco International Airport (1970)

Nancy (1970)

The Headmaster (1970)

The Man and the City (1971)

The Chicago Teddy Bears (1971)

Search (1972)

Assignment: Vienna (1972)

The Delphi Bureau (1972)

Jigsaw (1972)

The Little People (1972)

The Sixth Sense (1972)

Tenafly (1973)

Faraday & Company (1973)

Love Story (1973)

Needles & Pins (1973)

Calucci’s Department (1973)

My 50 Favorite Classic TV Characters: Ricky Nelson as…Ricky Nelson

 

Was Ricky Nelson an actor, a television character, or a person? The answer is yes. And maybe no, too. 

 

As every reader of this blog should know, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was a family situation comedy featuring a real family – parents Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, and their two sons David and Ricky. It was scripted but several stories were based on real family events, elevated into clever and often brilliant situational comedy.

 

The series originated on radio in 1944. At first the two boys were played by child actors. That had to be an odd experience for David and Ricky, to hear their parents calling other kids by their names. Both then joined this dramatized version of their family in the show’s fifth season, which began in 1949. Ricky was just eight years old, and thus already a seasoned veteran at playing himself when the show began its television run in 1952. 

 

 

In its early seasons the skinny kid with the classic 1950s buzzcut was billed as “the irrepressible Ricky,” acknowledging his propensity for straight talk.

 

Ozzie: “Do most of the girls in school like you?”

Ricky: “Oh, sure, they all do. They think I'm cute.”

David: “Oh, Ricky, stop bragging. You're not cute at all.”

Ricky: “I don't know. I was lookin' in the mirror today, and I'm not bad.”

 

The writers fed him the lines but he had to be convincing in saying them, and he was. He even had a catchphrase for a while: “I don’t mess around, boy.”

 

Ricky would play Ricky for the next 14 years, long enough for him to finish high school, become more gracious and less irrepressible, go to college, date guest stars that were all among the most beautiful young ladies of the decade (Roberta Shore, Cheryl Holdridge, Yvonne Lime, Linda Evans, Lori Saunders, Tuesday Weld, Nina Shipman),  get a job at the law firm where his brother works, and get married (to Kris Harmon, who would join the show in its final seasons, also playing a pseudo version of herself).  

 

 

Actors are often asked how they are alike or different from the characters they play on TV – but here that question takes on another dimension. If your name is the same as your character’s name, and you’re playing yourself but with someone else’s script, where does the person stop and the character start? Or to borrow a line from another 1950s series, “Will the real Ricky Nelson please stand up?”

 

The media back then were not as mercenary as they are now, so there was no concerted effort to expose any uncomfortable truths to shatter the image of “American’s favorite family,” as they were described in the show’s opening credits. Magazine features offered glowing tributes to a supportive, loving family, one portrayed as more authentic than the Andersons and the Cleavers because they were actually related.

 

Thankfully (and perhaps surprisingly) subsequent years have not tarnished that image too severely, though neither David nor Ricky stayed married to the wives featured on the show. Ozzie, who served as producer, director, and cowriter on hundreds of episodes, has occasionally been described as a stern taskmaster, and not the laid-back, affable guy on the show. And one can only speculate about whether David and Ricky wanted to be part of the family business for so many seasons. But when they were old enough to leave, they didn’t, which I think says something. 

 

 

The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet is one of my three favorite classic shows, so I admit I’m more inclined to buy into the presumption that the Nelsons at home aren’t much different than the Nelsons playing parts on sets built to resemble the rooms in their actual residence. But who can say for certain?

 

One thing I do know for sure about Ricky – he was good at everything. Over the course of 14 seasons viewers saw him landing axle jumps on ice skates, riding horses with a natural ease, excelling at golf and tennis, breaking boards with judo, and even flying through the air on a trapeze (and being caught by his brother).  

 

Given the show’s shooting schedule, you wonder where he found the time to acquire all those skills before the age of 20, while working on a series that churned out as many as 39 episodes in a single season.

 

And when Ricky the person wanted to start a singing career, TV’s Ricky did the same. On television, he formed a band with his high school and college friends and played fraternity dances. But the real Ricky rivaled Elvis in popularity and record sales – 53 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, 19 in the top ten.  He was inducted (by John Fogerty) posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.  

 

 

All that talent plus teen idol looks (seriously, if they ever begin cloning gene pools, they could do a lot worse than starting with the Nelsons) could form a character that girls loved but left male viewers envious, especially after their girlfriends flocked to the performing stage at the first notes of “It’s Late” or “Believe What You Say.” “What’s he got that I haven’t got?” these disgruntled dates might grumble, while hoping that no one would actually answer that question honestly. 

 

 

 

Twenty years later, producers of The Partridge Family recognized that potential dilemma. David Cassidy was the Ricky Nelson of the 1970s – a talented singer who rose to fame on a hit TV series. But here they didn’t want Keith Partridge to seem too faultless, which is why he was so often the butt of jokes from Laurie and Danny, and why he often pursued girls that couldn’t care less about his music.

 

It’s interesting how that was never a concern with Ricky, or maybe as he was playing himself he didn’t want the Ricky on TV to be that different from the actual person. He had the basic decency that was more commonly found in the shows of that era, and he seemed to personify all of the qualities that parents hoped to see made manifest in their children at that time. 

 

 

Teenagers in the 1950s had the same hormones and temptations felt by subsequent generations, and certainly television didn’t portray those moments that were not suitable for family viewing. I’m sure Ricky and David both sowed some oats and occasionally drank more than milkshakes. And so what? This series is about my favorite classic television characters. I’ll never know where or how often Ricky Nelson the character departed from Rick Nelson, as he preferred to be called as he grew older. But for a time that character was the emblematic American teenager of the 1950s, as well as a pioneering figure in rock and roll. 

 

It’s a remarkable legacy, one I think should be better remembered. Hopefully the recent DVD release of all 435 episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet will introduce America’s favorite family to new generations raised on harsher fare. If they like what they see, there may be hope for us yet.