Dancing With the (Classic TV) Stars

 While most of my TV viewing time is devoted to shows that aired their last episode anywhere from 30-60 years ago, I do make time for some current series. One of them is Dancing With the Stars.

I’ve been a fan since the first season and have never missed an episode. It’s a beautiful show to watch in HD, with the elegant ballroom set and colorful costumes. And host Tom Bergeron is the best in the business – he has perfect live TV instincts and knows exactly how much to add to a moment while always keeping the focus on the performers.

The celebrities are ostensibly the primary draw, to see if they take to the samba like seasoned pros or get dragged around the floor like a wet sack of potatoes. But like many fans I am drawn more to their professional partners, who represent the apex of the species, and would easily sail past the cutline if eugenics ever made a comeback.

Ultimately, I am a fan because dancing is a beautiful thing to watch, especially when it is done well. It is an art form that elevates the spirit.

Of course, long before Dancing With the Stars there were memorable dance moments on television, dating back to Arthur Murray’s Dance Party in the 1950s.

These are a few of my favorites:

Happy Days (“They Shoot Fonzies, Don’t They?”)

This is the dance marathon episode, where Fonzie partners with Joanie even though he’s exhausted from pushing his bike 12 miles. At the climax, the Fonz performs a Russian folk dance called the Kazatsky with an athletic, showstopping virtuosity that is completely unexpected from the character or from Henry Winkler. Who else was shocked at how good he was? Plus you also get Charlene Tilton as a snotty cheerleader, so this is a win-win all around. 

 I Love Lucy (“Lucy Does the Tango”)

In its final season, I Love Lucy was still capable of comedy greatness. The scene in which Lucy and Ricky dance the tango, while Lucy has dozens of eggs hidden under her shirt, generates the longest sustained laugh in the series’ history – longer than the chocolate factory assembly line, Vitametavegamin or the grape stomping in Italy. 

The Monkees (“Everywhere a Sheik, Sheik”)

This is my favorite Monkees scene. It’s an ideal showcase for Davy Jones’ English dance hall panache, and it comes off as both polished and silly at the same time. The girl, by the way, is Anita Mann, an Emmy-winning choreographer who has worked on everything from Sesame Street to Solid Gold. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation (“Data’s Day”)

Dr. Crusher teaches Data how to tap dance. While the scene is mostly played for laughs, it is obvious that both Brent Spiner and Gates McFadden know what they’re doing.

Taxi (“Fantasy Borough: Part 2”)

I was never a big Taxi fan, to be honest, but even if it never quite connected with my personal taste I can certainly recognize its outstanding writing and remarkable cast. The series’ second season concluded with a big Broadway number performed to “Lullaby of Broadway.” Maybe the dancing here isn’t so precise, except for Broadway vet Marilu Henner, but the scene wins you over on enthusiasm alone. You can’t watch this and not smile. 

The Honeymooners (“Young At Heart”)

Jackie Gleason was a big guy who was remarkably light on his feet. Along with the golf lesson (“Hellooooo, ball!”) Ed Norton teaching Ralph to dance “The Hucklebuck” certainly ranks among the best moments in the classic 39. 

Frasier (“Moon Dance”)

Niles’ unrequited love for Daphne had percolated for more than a season, before the duo danced a sizzling tango that brought his hidden feelings to the surface – and crushed them moments later. Still, Daphne in that devastating red dress was a sight to behold.

Friends (“The One With the Routine”)

Siblings Ross and Monica get on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, and introduce their “famous” brother-sister dance routine to a nationwide audience. It was a toss-up between this and Elaine’s dancing on Seinfeld for a best-of-the-worst dance moment. Friends rates the edge for the performance’s go-for-broke gusto, and for inspiring years of tributes at proms and weddings. 

The 10 Biggest Emmy Acting Snubs

The Emmy Awards are this month, an annual tradition always followed by another tradition – criticizing the results of the Emmy Awards.

When compiling a list of the 10 biggest Emmy snubs, the challenge is not to find ten but to narrow a list down from 30 or 40. I’m sure you have your own Emmy outrages, and I’d love to hear about them. Here’s mine.

1. Jackie Gleason (The Honeymooners)

The only two shows from the 1950s still in daily syndication around the world are I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners. As blustery bus driver Ralph Kramden, Jackie Gleason created one of television’s most iconic characters, and with this series and his variety shows he was a staple of the medium for decades. But he never won an Emmy. 

2. Agnes Moorehead (Bewitched)

A four-time Academy Award nominee who played opposite Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, Agnes Moorehead always considered Bewitched to be a pleasant but hardly challenging endeavor. But her portrayal of Endora was sly and refined, particularly in the series’ first two seasons when the scripts were more sophisticated. Moorehead won an Emmy for a guest appearance on The Wild, Wild West, but was never so honored for Bewitched, though she was nominated six times. 

3. James Arness (Gunsmoke)

For 20 years and more than 600 episodes, Marshal Matt Dillon kept the streets of Dodge City safe on Gunsmoke. The challenge of keeping one character compelling to audiences for that length of time, particularly during the tumultuous period of history from 1955 to 1975, would be daunting for any actor. But while the outside world progressed from “Rock Around the Clock” to “The Hustle,” from Marilyn Monroe to Farrah Fawcett, Arness was a Gibraltar-like presence on television.

4. Patty Duke (The Patty Duke Show)

At age 16, Patty Duke was already an Oscar winner (for The Miracle Worker) when she began a three season run as “identical cousins” Patty and Cathy Lane. The dual-role bit has been done dozens of times on TV, but the subtleties Duke brings to how she varied her two roles went far beyond an accent and a change of hairstyle. Watch the dinner scenes, where she makes one cousin left-handed and one right-handed. When playing opposite herself, she collapses her posture as Patty, so Cathy actually appears taller. It’s an absolutely extraordinary performance on an otherwise lightweight sitcom. 

5. Andy Griffith (The Andy Griffith Show)

The recent passing of Andy Griffith was felt by generations of fans who grew up with his performance as Mayberry Sheriff Andy Taylor. The long-running series brought five Emmys for costar Don Knotts, but Griffith was not similarly honored. In fact, he was never even nominated. Watch his performance in the episode “Opie the Birdman,” then tell me why anyone still takes the Emmys seriously.

6. David Janssen (The Fugitive)

When the final episode of The Fugitive aired in 1967, it receiving an astonishing 75 share and was watched by 78 million people. That record stood for more than 10 years. That’s how invested viewers were in the fate of Dr. Richard Kimble, an innocent man convicted of murder. And that’s a testament to the performance of David Janssen, who so thoroughly embodied Kimble’s haunted desperation for four seasons. 

7. Michael Landon (Little House on the Prairie)

From Bonanza to Little House to Highway to Heaven, Michael Landon was one of television’s most beloved leading men. Little House on the Prairie was probably his best chance at an Emmy win, but voters didn’t respond to the series’ homespun charms as much as the rest of the country.

8. Patrick Stewart (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

Emmy looks at sci-fi shows as inferior to “real” television dramas, and ST:TNG also suffered by being a syndicated series in an era when the major networks had a near-monopoly on the nominations. Even Stewart’s Royal Shakespeare Company pedigree didn’t merit him serious consideration. During the series’ 1987-1994 run, Emmy nominations for Best Actor in a Drama Series went to the likes of Robert Loggia in Mancuso, F.B.I. and Kirk Douglas in an episode of Tales From the Crypt. But show me another actor who did more memorable work than Stewart’s performances in “The Inner Light,” “Chain of Command, Part 2” and “All Good Things.” 

9. Alexis Denisof (Angel)

As with Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel rarely received any Emmy attention outside of the technical categories. Fans could make a convincing case for any number of cast members, but I’ve singled out Alexis Denisof for creating a character that started as comic relief, and evolved into a dark, brooding authority on the paranormal. In “A Hole in the World,” Denisof’s Wesley has to confront the loss of his beloved colleague Winifred Burkle, and his performance helped inspire one of the most gripping hours of television I watched that year.

10. Lauren Graham (The Gilmore Girls)

I can’t even begin to explain this one. Gilmore Girls fans know it was one of the best shows of its era, and television critics were even more impressed. But during a seven-year run the series received just one Emmy nomination – for Best Makeup. At least it won. Yay. Meanwhile, Lauren Graham delivered Amy Sherman-Palladino’s sparkling rapid-fire dialogue with a virtuosity that would have crushed a lesser actress. The ignorance of Emmy voters takes nothing away from her current status as the Myrna Loy of her generation, smart, sexy and sassy, even in lesser material like Parenthood. 

Enjoy the Emmy Awards. I think I'll be watching some of these shows instead.  

My Journey Was Beginning: Dark Shadows

 The first time I wrote a magazine article about television, the subject matter was Dark Shadows.

I was not of the generation that ran home from school to catch this groundbreaking gothic soap opera; in fact I had never watched an episode until the series debuted on home video back in the VHS era. It’s a testament to the show’s enduring popularity that all 1,200+ episodes were released on more than 200 sequential videocassettes. Nobody tried that with Search for Tomorrow.

Dark Shadows aired for five years, barely a blip by daytime drama standards where success is measured in decades. But its legacy is a powerful one, having inspired a prime-time series in the 1980s, a feature film earlier this year and a cult following that endures more than 45 years later. 

I was working at a radio station when a colleague suggested I check it out, and after Volume One of the tape series I was hooked. Distributor MPI Video wisely began the VHS series not with the first Dark Shadows episode in 1966, but with the story arc the following year that introduced vampire Barnabas Collins, so memorably played by Jonathan Frid. It was that story that revived the series’ dwindling ratings, and transformed Dark Shadows into a phenomenon (and had 40-something Frid sharing Tiger Beat covers with Davy Jones and Bobby Sherman).

Vampires are everywhere in pop culture these days, but long before Twilight and True Blood and The Vampire Diaries, and even before Buffy first picked up Mr. Pointy, Barnabas Collins became the most famous bloodsucker since Dracula.

The genius of Dark Shadows was its adaptation of classic gothic horror themes into a sophisticated modern setting that appealed to housewives, college students and even Jackie Kennedy, who was a big DS fan. Vampires, werewolves, mad scientists, witches, ghosts – Dark Shadows had them all. But these weren’t monsters to be vanquished – they were supernatural creatures with souls. As a reluctant vampire repulsed by his very nature, Frid established an archetype that was revived by David Boreanaz in Angel, and that sparkly Twilight dude.

As I neared the end of my first trek through the series, a new magazine debuted called Baby Boomer Collectibles. Its subject matter was all the stuff I already loved – classic TV, boomer era toys and collectibles and cult films. I pitched them on a Dark Shadows piece and they bought it.

I wanted to interview someone from the cast and figured the most accessible would be Kathryn Leigh Scott, who portrayed both Maggie Evans and Barnabas’s true love Josette DuPres. I selected Kathryn because she was one of my favorite actors on the show, and because she had written a book on the series, My Scrapbook Memories of Dark Shadows. I always like when I can acknowledge my appreciation for help with an article by offering something like a book plug in return.

Kathryn consented to the interview, which went very well. Still in my first flush of DS fandom, it was a real treat to speak with one of the stars that made such an indelible impression on generations of soap opera and horror fans.

The article was published a couple of months later – coincidentally, the same month that a Dark Shadows convention was scheduled at a Marriott in Los Angeles. I attended with the friend that introduced me to the show, and looked forward to meeting Ms. Scott and the rest of the cast in person.

The nice thing about Dark Shadows cons, as opposed to Star Trek cons, is that the atmosphere is more relaxed and informal. It’s much easier to have a conversation with the talent without obtaining a colored wristband, paying for the Deluxe Super Gold Convention Package, or being manhandled by the power-hungry morons usually entrusted with security at these affairs.

So it was that on the first Friday night of the con, I found Ms. Scott seated at a table outside one of the ballrooms where most of the attendees had gathered to watch video clips. I introduced myself and held up a copy of the article.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “How are you?” Then she paused and added, “There were a lot of typos in that piece, weren’t there?”

At the time, that felt like getting gut-punched by the head cheerleader just as you had worked up the courage to ask her out. But she was right – there were a lot of typos in there. That early dressing-down probably made me more conscientious about careful proofreading than any editor’s red pencil ever did. So thank you, Kathryn, for that.

I stayed with Baby Boomer Collectibles for the next three years, writing stories about the Adam West Batman series, Mission: Impossible, Bozo’s Circus, Rocky & Bullwinkle and several other shows. Kathryn and I stayed in touch after that first convention, and a few years later her publishing company, Pomegranate Press, published my book on Charlie’s Angels, which also began as a Boomer article. 

So in a way, much of my career as a TV historian and author actually began with that first episode of Dark Shadows. As Victoria Winters says in the series’ first episode, “My journey is beginning, a journey that I hope will open the doors of life to me, and link my past with my future.” My journey may have been less eventful than Victoria’s, but it’s been less stressful as well.

Labor Day Lost: The Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon

 Growing up, Labor Day meant two things – the start of another dreaded school year was just around the corner, and I would get to stay up later than usual to watch the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon.

This past Sunday night, the Muscular Dystrophy Association broadcast a three-hour “Show of Strength” featuring pre-taped performances from a variety of entertainers, but there was no tote board, no phone banks and no Jerry Lewis, who was summarily discharged from his duties in 2011 after 45 years of service.

There’s no disputing that, in its last few years with Lewis as host, the telethons had become antiquated affairs. “Watching the stars come out,” meant performances from Charo and Norm Crosby, the same people who were there when I was still in high school. And Jerry Lewis was now turning in earlier than I used to, only to return at the end to unveil the final tote board and sing, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” as the last confetti fell. 

But even well past their prime, there was something comforting about these annual broadcasts, and how they conjured childhood memories of struggling against sleep after midnight, and surviving the boring local segments, which didn’t have the glitz and star power of the Las Vegas national telecast.

Back then there was something exciting about a television special being on all night, and I always vowed that one year I was going to be in for the duration, but I never made it. This was once a show millions of people actually looked forward to watching, despite the grim realities that inspired its creation. And whatever else one can say about Jerry Lewis, it was clear this was his personal crusade. He was strongly invested in every broadcast, and genuinely grateful for the support of the firefighters and the corporate and civic groups who made an annual pilgrimage to drop off a check, and then introduce a short film about their fundraising activities that was never very interesting.

Each year we looked forward to the same regular bits; the tympani roll as the tote board added another million, as the orchestra played "What the World Needs Now is Love"; Lewis receiving a seven-figure check and exclaiming, “Oh, yeah, Oh, YEAH!” in an exaggerated Brooklyn accent, sporting the same awestruck look that Taylor Swift has when she wins another country music award. Other Lewis traditions – banter with Ed McMahon, some good-natured jibes at the floor director, and his comedic orchestra conductor bit. And being Vegas there was usually an Elvis impersonator. In the earlier days it was a guy named Alan, who was actually booked as “Alan,” which may be one reason why he never went anywhere.

And then there were the personal stories of the families touched by neuromuscular disease. These were tougher to watch, but once again it was apparent that Jerry cared about “his kids,” and how much he enjoyed making each year’s “poster child” smile and laugh, while knowing there was a chance that child wouldn’t be around next year. 

When I was a kid, organizing MDA carnivals was a popular fundraising idea, and when I was 5 I held one in my front yard. My parents and I fashioned a few crude games and served refreshments, and had a pretty good turnout from the neighborhood, resulting in our largest ever donation – more than $100. A few years later, I went to Arlington Park racetrack on Labor Day, and said if I hit the Daily Double, I’d donate the winnings to Jerry’s Kids. I called both races correctly, and MDA received a $250 donation.

But telethons were not created for our more cynical times, and even I lost interest over the past decade. I might donate via the MDA website but wouldn’t manage more than an hour or two of the broadcast. Those annual Parade magazine covers of Jerry and the new poster child were now accompanied by stories of disgruntled adults who bristled at the condescension they heard in the “Jerry’s Kids” label, and viewed the telethon as shameless exploitation.

I also felt that after all these years (and more than $1.6 billion in donations), it would have been encouraging to see a little more progress on the treatment front. It’s comforting that our dollars went to buy wheelchairs and send kids to camp, but the goal of a cure seems no closer than when the telethon was visited by Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. You can only hear about “promising gene therapies” so many years before wondering if that promise is ever going to be realized.

I can’t be angry at MDA for taking their show in another direction, but what they gained in higher-profile celebrities they lost in heart and sentiment. Whatever the cause of the falling out between Lewis, a still healthy 86, and the charity he served so well, there should have been a more gradual transition that allowed Jerry to step aside with dignity intact. 

But with the end of the traditional Jerry Lewis MDA Telethons, "broadcast across the Love Network," another example of Comfort TV slips away, never to return. 

'Wings' - An Appreciation

 It has been 15 years since the last new episode of Wings aired on NBC – and probably about 15 seconds since the last Wings rerun aired somewhere on cable. 

During an eight-season run, the series anchored several NBC lineups that popularized the tag line “must-see TV.” But unlike The Cosby Show and Cheers, it is rarely afforded the same respect.  I don’t think that’s fair. We can debate about whether it qualifies as classic TV – I say it does – but it certainly deserves recognition as Comfort TV, and here are ten reasons why.

1. A classic(al) theme song

Before it was phased out halfway into the third season, Schubert’s Sonata in A set the delightful tone for a lovely 60-second opening credit sequence featuring picturesque aerial shots of Nantucket, where the series is set. Thanks to Wings, if you’re ever with some friends and this piece starts playing on a classical radio station, you can casually observe, “Ah, Schubert’s Sonata in A – one of my favorites” and everyone will think you have culture. 

2. The pilot

A show about pilots should have a great pilot, and Wings delivers. The first appearance of Joe Hackett’s ne’er do well brother Brian is one of the series’ best moments. The black sheep hits Tom Nevers Field like an insult comic propelled by a tornado, immediately setting the tone for the sibling rivalry that would play out over the next eight years.

3. Holiday episodes

Holiday shows have fallen out of favor in today’s TV landscape (don’t get me started on that topic), but even in the classic TV era most shows managed only one or two Christmas episodes no matter how many seasons they aired. Wings did six of them, all of which deserve a spot in your next holiday TV marathon. My favorite is “The Customer’s Usually Right” from season four, in which Joe’s refusal to pay a 50-cent rewind fee on a rented videocassette (it was 1992) gets a sweet little old lady fired on Christmas Eve. His attempts to make amends lead to unexpectedly hilarious complications. 

4. William Hickey as Carlton Blanchard

William Hickey was an Oscar-nominated actor and one of the most distinguished acting teachers of his generation (his students included Steve McQueen and Barbra Streisand). But for classic TV fans, he will always be best remembered as Carlton Blanchard, the most annoying man ever born. Hickey appears in just three episodes, but they’re all gems.

5. “Joe Blows”

Two-part episodes are difficult to pull off for the average sitcom. “Joe Blows” from season five overcomes the odds and became one of the show’s best stories. On the surface it’s basic role reversal – irresponsible Brian is forced to take over the day-to-day operations of Sandpiper Air, while button-down brother Joe becomes a Caribbean beachcomber. But it's also the best exploration of their always complicated relationship.

6. It could pull off a touching moment

Some of the most memorable scenes in any comedy are the ones bereft of laughs, when the writers dropped the punch lines and created dramatic moments that made the characters seem more authentic. Wings had its share, beginning with the standout season two episode “It’s Not the Thought, It’s the Gift.” The story is an escalating game of amusing one-upmanship between brothers Joe and Brian to find the best birthday present for Helen, but the poignant final scene is unexpectedly moving. And in the season six opener “Whose Wife Is it Anyway?” Joe proposes to Helen in the emotional high point of the series. 

7. The Frasier crossover

I don’t care if it was shameless network cross-promotion, the season three arrival of Drs. Frasier and Lilith Crane to Nantucket inspired several classic moments, including Joe’s reference to Lilith as “Morticia,” and Helen demanding her money back after one of Frasier’s vacuous self-esteem seminars. 

8. The Trivial Pursuit game

It’s hard to single out any one scene as the funniest out of 172 Wings episodes, but many fans point to the Trivial Pursuit game in the season two show “Sports and Leisure” as the series’ comedic pinnacle. 

9. The classic TV salutes

For a TV fan, some of Wings’ best scenes featured the cast acknowledging its classic sitcom ancestors. After Helen and Joe came into some money, Helen loses control at a memorabilia auction and outbids guest star Peter Tork for the Monkeemobile (“She’s Gotta Have It”); in “A House to Die For,” there’s a dream sequence in which Helen plays Marcia Brady opposite the cast of 1995’s The Brady Bunch Movie. 

10. A satisfying finale

“Final Approach” provides a fitting send-off that may not quite reach the heights of the last Mary Tyler Moore Show or Newhart episodes, but surpasses the finales of Cheers, Seinfeld and many other, more celebrated classics.

Redeeming the 1%: Family Affair

 

If you’ve watched television across the decades you may have noticed that rich people are rarely portrayed as admirable. Usually millionaires will either be corrupt and immoral (J.R. Ewing), a Scrooge McDuck caricature (Thurston Howell III), shallow and materialistic (Blair Warner) or just a dimwit (Edward Stratton).

Family Affair is an exceptional sitcom, not just in the sense of being well written and performed, but also in how it varied in both content and style from other situation comedies of its era. This was particularly true in Brian Keith’s portrayal of Bill Davis.

Here was a guy with a blue-collar work ethic and a white-collar lifestyle. He lived in a stunning Manhattan apartment, employed a British gentleman’s gentleman servant, and spent his evenings with a different woman every night. The last thing this bachelor wanted was custody of two six year-old twins and their teenage sister. But he took them in, because it was the right thing to do.

Family Affair is also remembered as one of the most cloyingly sweet sitcoms in history. Yet for all those moppet cries of “Uncle Bee-ill!” it was often a very dark show grounded in the harsher realities of life.

In the very first episode, we learn that the parents of Buffy, Jody and Cissy were killed in a car accident, and the kids were shipped off to separate relatives, none of whom provided a warm welcome. The circumstances of their arrival on Uncle Bill’s doorstep were not forgotten after the pilot – the twins’ insecurity and separation anxiety inspired several first season shows. Contrast this with any other series from that era that featured a widowed parent – The Brady Bunch, My Three Sons, The Partridge Family – in which none of the children ever displayed a moment of sadness over such a traumatic experience.

My favorite episode is “The Good Neighbors” from the series’ fifth and final season. In it, Buffy wonders why the residents in their apartment building don’t all know each other and socialize like neighbors did back in her home state of Indiana. She sets out to change that, by inviting everyone in the building to a get-acquainted party in the lobby.

On a typical sitcom, the residents would all be so charmed by adorable little Buffy that they would cast aside their big city cynicism and realize how much they’ve been missing by their withdrawn ways. But here, Buffy waits by the elevator to greet all her New York neighbors with punch and cookies, and…nobody shows up. Nobody. How great is that? It’s exactly what would happen if this scenario occurred in the real world, whether in 1970 or 2012.

I hope I’m not making the series sound like a downer, in case anyone is considering taking another look. There’s a remarkable grace and compassion that permeates these shows, and an emotional honesty that is extraordinary for escapist entertainment.

As previously stated, Brian Keith is wonderful here, and Sebastian Cabot as Mr. French was a perfect foil for three rambunctious kids. Anissa Jones is almost spookily effective as an actress, meriting comparison to Jodie Foster at that age. It takes Johnnie Whitaker (Jody) a couple of seasons to catch up but he gets there eventually. And Kathy Garver’s Cissy was a first crush to many boys and one of TV’s most virtuous and well-behaved teenagers – which made her occasional moments of rebellion all the more interesting.

For all of its serious underpinnings, perhaps the most amazing thing about Family Affair (besides those weird doorknobs to the Davis apartment) is that, over the course of five seasons, I can’t recall a single moment of any member of the family raising their voice in anger. What a refreshing change from today’s sitcoms, where the theory that punch lines are funnier when shouted still pervades. 

Ringing Up Roberta Shore

 I have interviewed more than 1,000 people in my life, 90% of whom were not famous. But whether it was a celebrity interview for a book or a q&a with a bank vice-president for a business magazine article, I still get a little nervous every time.

Usually, my apprehension results either from not wanting to ask a stupid question, or finding out after the interview that the tape recorder didn’t work. Both have happened more than once. I remember a time when I worked for a real estate publication, and had just finished a substantive interview with a broker about the Las Vegas property market. When I got back to my car I rewound the tape just to make sure it was there. The tape was blank. I still do not know what happened.

After sitting in silence for a few moments. I calmly got out of my car, placed the tape recorder behind my left rear tire, and backed over it.

Every interview brings its own unique concerns, but one that generated more excitement than any I’ve faced in more than a year was with an actress and singer named Roberta Shore. The opportunity arose from an article I was offered on a 50^th anniversary cast reunion for the western television series The Virginian. The publicist was willing to set up time with any cast members I selected, but after the obvious choice of top-billed series star James Drury, I immediately inquired about Ms. Shore, though my interest had nothing to do with The Virginian.

I wanted to speak with her because Roberta Shore, billed as Jymme Shore, appeared in the “Annette” serial on the original Mickey Mouse Club, as well as the Disney film The Shaggy Dog. In both projects, she played essentially the same role – a sophisticated teenage temptress whose mission in life was to make Annette Funicello miserable.

I first experienced the Mickey Mouse Club when it aired in syndication in the early 1980s, and rarely missed it when it was featured in the “Vault Disney” segments on Disney Channel. There’s something magical about it. Yes, it’s corny and antiquated, but I want to live in a world where people don’t scoff at this kind of entertainment. As Lorraine Santoli writes in her book about the Club, “It was a great time – innocent and full of the notion that it was a beautiful and uncomplicated world.”

The “Annette” serial in particular is a remarkable depiction of idealized teenage life in a small but affluent Midwestern town. Dance parties at someone’s home required donning suits and dresses, the local malt shop was the big meeting place, and there was nothing more exciting than singing “Polly Wolly Doodle” on a hayride.

And yet, as wholesome as it may seem to us now, there were also class distinctions, cliques, and worries over fitting in, the same type of issues that high schoolers deal with today.

As Laura Rogan, Roberta Shore was adolescent elitism personified. She mocked the simple manners of farm girl Annette and even accuses her of stealing a valuable necklace. The entire serial is on YouTube – if you start watching the 10-minute segments, don’t be surprised if you’re in for the duration. There is still something compelling about this Eisenhower era 90210, and about the remarkable Annette, who had a naturally sympathetic underdog quality rarely associated with a beautiful young woman. I will never have the chance to speak with her, or tell her how much I’ve enjoyed her work. So I treasured – and fretted over – the chance to interview one of her costars from the Mousketeer days.

I wish I had a great climax, or an unexpected twist, or even a decent punch line to this entry. It would be better for the story if Roberta and I hit it off like old friends and she shared wonderful memories of working with Annette, and asked me to look her up next time I was in Utah. Or if I could reveal how rude and abrupt she was, just like the snotty characters she played. 

But life is rarely like a sitcom, with a big act three climax. The interview lasted about 15 minutes. She was distracted at the beginning by some stuff going on in her home, answered my questions politely, if not enthusiastically, and thanked me for my praise of her Disney work but didn’t have much to say on the subject. She did her job, and I did mine. Sometimes that’s all that happens with an interview. Most of the time, that’s all that happens.