Sunday, February 2, 2025

My Journey Through 1970s TV: Wednesday Nights, 1975

Continuing our journey through the prime-time schedules of the 1970s, and we’re now halfway through the decade, and halfway through the week in 1975. How many of these new hits, returning favorites and forgotten misfires do you remember? 

ABC

When Things Were Rotten
That’s My Mama
Baretta
Starsky & Hutch

ABC continues its trek toward late 1970s ratings dominance, introducing two new shows that both found an audience. Starsky & Hutch cracked the Nielsen top 20, finishing the season at #16, and spawned the same merchandising blitz that most of their hit shows produced. It was a standard maverick cop series that coasted largely on the chemistry of stars Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul. 


As I wrote in this blog in 2023, “Good scripts help, but there are only so many urban crime stories and criminal investigations to dramatize. Viewers watch to see characters they like inserted into narratives no matter how familiar. And when there are two or more leads, camaraderie is another essential. We want to believe the friendships between the characters, to the point that we’re sure they would enjoy each other’s company after work as well.” That’s what the show got right, and that’s why it lasted four seasons. 


Baretta, a reworking of the Toma series starring Robert Blake, finished the season at #22. It paired well with Starsky & Hutch, keeping the “guys who play by their own rules” vibe going for another hour. Unfortunately, Blake played by his own rules away from the show a little too often as well. 

I’m sure ABC thought it had a third hit in When Things Were Rotten, given Mel Brooks’ name among the creators. But this spoof of Robin Hood was nowhere near as clever as the James Bond spoof created by Brooks and Buck Henry a decade earlier. 




Fifty years later Get Smart remains a classic, while When Things Were Rotten faded quickly after a highly rated pilot. Still, it’s an interesting curio now with its cast of familiar TV faces – Dick Gauthier, Misty Rowe, Bernie Kopell, Dick Van Patten – and if you were about eight years old at the time, it was probably your favorite show. 

That’s My Mama was the only holdover from the previous year, but casting changes were not enough to save it from an abbreviated second season. 


CBS

Tony Orlando & Dawn
Cannon
Kate McShane


As with other variety series back then, Tony Orlando & Dawn was introduced over the summer and proved popular enough to earn a spot on the fall schedule. The music, provided by the trio of hosts and guest stars like Dr. Hook, Freddy Fender, Steve Lawrence, Tanya Tucker, Johnny Cash and many others, was wonderful. The comedy skits were lame, as they were on most of these shows. But there was a segment in every episode in which Orlando would hop off the stage and interact with the audience, and my mother, bless her soul, always loved those sweet moments and concluded that Tony must be a pretty wonderful guy. 


This would be the final season for Cannon after five solid years, and the first and final season for Kate McShane after just nine episodes. I wish I could offer something nice to say about the latter series, but this was a real dud of a legal drama with a poorly miscast Anne Meara in the title role. 


Charles Haid, so good on Hill Street Blues, did not fare any better as her brother, a priest who seemed to know more about the law than she did. Not the best way to strike a blow for feminism, CBS. 


NBC

Little House on the Prairie
Doctors’ Hospital
Petrocelli

It wasn’t yet the ratings powerhouse it would become, but in its second season Little House on the Prairie drew enough viewers to insure a bright future. There would be nine total seasons and more than 200 episodes.

That solid lead-in did nothing to help Doctors’ Hospital, a new medical drama that focused more on the staff at Lowell Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles than on the patients they treated. There were 15 regular and recurring cast members, enough perhaps to outnumber the audience for some episodes. You’ll recognize some of the names – George Peppard is top billed, and supported by Zohra Lampert, Albert Paulsen and John Larroquette among others. 



There’s one episode on YouTube that didn’t do much for me – Peppard as a surgical chief was still in arrogant Banacek mode, without the underlying Polish charm. 

Petrocelli entered its second season with good but not great ratings, so someone decided what this courtroom drama needed was more action. Suddenly our crusading attorney (Barry Newman) now found himself being chased by helicopters, having his camper run off the road, getting shot at and getting jumped in biker bars. But that was not enough to stave off cancelation. 


And despite some obscure and short-lived series on this night, no new additions to my “missed shows” list. Let’s see if my luck holds out when we get to Thursday.  




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)
Kodiak (1974)
The New Land (1974)
McCoy (1975)
Joe and Sons (1975)
Beacon Hill (1975)


Wednesday, January 22, 2025

My 50 Favorite Classic TV Characters: Don Adams as Maxwell Smart

Let's first acknowledge the obvious reasons why Get Smart remains one of the crown jewels of television comedy.



Start with the clever foundation laid by genius creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry; the perfect casting of Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, with equally memorable support from sultry Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 and Edward Platt as Max’s exasperated Chief; the movie spoofs (“Bronzefinger,” “Witness for the Persecution”); the catchphrases (“Missed it by that much”); surefire visual gags like the Cone of Silence; guest characters that would be delightfully offensive to easily-triggered modern sensibilities (The Claw, Harry Hoo).






And many, many more. But there’s one ingredient in this remarkable mix that is not always acknowledged: the show was perceptive enough to not make Max stupid all the time. 

Even if part of the intent was to spoof both James Bond and U.S. covert agencies that had come under increased scrutiny in the late ‘60s, making Max a complete moron would have quickly become tiresome. He would often be clueless and clumsy, but usually he would also complete his missions, knock out a few bad guys, and keep the world safe from the evil plots of KAOS.

Contrast this with, say, Gilligan on Gilligan’s Island. In every episode, a rescue plan is foiled because Gilligan screws up. The only suspense is in exactly how he’s going to doom his fellow castaways to another week on the island. There was no point is rooting for him to be a hero. Max, despite his mistakes, could still save the day, much to the amazement of everyone around him. 



The stars seemed to align to bring this series to magnificent fruition, though there were some bumps along the way. The pilot was first offered to ABC with Tom Poston cast as Max. When ABC turned it down, NBC picked it up – not because they had a lot of confidence in the idea, but because they already had comedian Don Adams under contract and wanted to get something out of that investment. 

They didn’t know how fortuitous that decision would prove. With Adams in place, Maxwell Smart was not a character that had to be developed or shaped by the first scripts. He was fully formed before the first scene of Get Smart was shot. If you watch Adams as hotel detective Byron Glick on The Bill Dana Show, you’re seeing the birth of Max – same mannerisms, same line delivery – he was even using the “Would you believe” routine that became one of Get Smart’s best recurring bits.

Another reason I believe this is one of the most perfect matches of actor to role of the Comfort TV era, is how, in a different world, Don Adams could play it straight and make an audience accept him as a dashing secret agent - at least when he wasn't talking into his shoe. 




That debonair quality would be on display early in several scenes, as he’d walk confidently into a potentially fatal encounter, gun drawn…and then fall down the stairs. 

As gifted a physical comedian as Adams was, it’s his voice that is first recalled as a defining characteristic. The network asked him to tone it down a bit after the pilot, but thankfully it wasn’t dialed back far enough to lose that nasally quality inspired by William Powell in the Thin Man movies. Adams was also a gifted mimic, working in credible impressions of Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Colman in some of the series’ most fondly remembered episodes. 

Fifty years later Get Smart remains one of the most laugh-out-loud comedies ever created. In 1965, when one of the Gemini 7 astronauts suffered a minor technical malfunction in his space suit, the response from Mission Control was “Sorry about that, Chief.” That’s how you know a series has fully penetrated the pop culture.

Even on a tenth viewing of an episode when you know the jokes are coming, they still land. That’s a testament not only to Adams, who won the Emmy three years in a row for his portrayal of Agent 86, but to the entire cast, including occasional regulars like Hymie and Larrabee and Agent 13, not to mention the villainous Siegfried (Bernie Kopell) and William Schallert as the first Chief of CONTROL. 



Classic episodes? Where do you even start? The pilot, pitting Max against a villain known as Mr. Big (when you see him you’ll know this show was politically incorrect from day one); “Washington 4, Indians 3,” in which a Native American tribe threatens to take back their stolen land by force with a weapon that, to me, may be the best sight gag in 1960s television; “A Man Called Smart, Part 1,” featuring a masterpiece of slapstick comedy starring Don Adams, a stretcher and a revolving door.  

And about 50 or 60 more. Yes, the series did start to run out of gas in its fifth and final season, with Max and 99 married and becoming parents (did that ever work to save a troubled show?). But by then viewers had already been gifted with more laughter than most sitcoms manage in twice as many seasons. And Don Adams was doomed to a typecasting fate that befell many other creators of iconic television roles. 

Sorry about that, Don. But I wouldn’t trade a minute of this series for anything. 



Sunday, January 12, 2025

Doorbells

"Not Knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson

The first time I saw comedian Sebastian Maniscalco was when he was performing the routine that brought him to the attention of a national audience. It focused on doorbells and how, back in the day, the sound of your doorbell in the evening brought joy and excitement because it meant an unexpected but welcome visit from friends or relatives. Maniscalco then contrasts that reaction with how people now react to a night-time doorbell – with anger and trepidation. 


It’s a routine that has been viewed more than ten million times on YouTube.  Deservedly so, because not only is it funny, but it’s also true to life for so many of us whose time on earth spans the decades from the Comfort TV era to the present day. When we were young we remember how we responded to a doorbell at our parents’ home. And that’s not the same way we feel about them now. 

It’s a good thing we were more open to those visits, because back then doorbells rang far more often than they do now. Milk was delivered and diapers were delivered, and the dry cleaners brought your newly cleaned clothes back to you. Neighborhood children sold tickets to school events and Girl Scouts sold cookies. Or, in the case of Peter on The Brady Bunch, Sunflower Girl cookies. 



And there were door-to-door salesmen. They were often selling either vacuum cleaners or encyclopedias, which in retrospect seem like two of the most impractical things to sell that way, given the exertion of lugging them around an entire neighborhood. 

Lucille Ball was on TV long enough to be on both sides of the vacuum transaction. On I Love Lucy she was talked into buying a vacuum from a fast-talking salesman (“Sales Resistance”). On The Lucy Show she is selling vacuums and accidentally sucks up a rare stamp from Mr. Mooney’s collection (“Lucy and the Missing Stamp”). 



Of course, we still get stuff delivered now, but the men and women who execute those deliveries just drop the package and leave. I like that, but on the older shows they’d be just as likely to stop and chat for a while about the weather or if the rain will hurt the rhubarb, and perhaps even be invited in for a glass of lemonade (summer) or hot chocolate (winter). 

Some companies, like Avon cosmetics, built their entire business around home visits. “Ding Dong! Avon calling,” was once as familiar a phrase as “Ring around the collar.” 



Around the holidays, the doorbell turned into another Christmas bell, with everyone from the mailman to the paper boy providing extra personal service, while hoping for a little something in return. The Christmas episode of The Donna Reed Show featured several such scenes, in which Donna passed out fruitcakes instead of cash. Knowing Donna they were probably home-made, but that didn’t make them any more desirable. 



Then there were the types of visits that no one could anticipate. A strolling Shakespearian actor stops by the Nelson residence to help them stage a reading of Hamlet. “An Evening With Hamlet” is one of the more unique episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, made more special by the guest appearance of John Carradine.




Uncovering an essential truth can be a sobering, even disturbing experience. I must confess that me, Mr. Comfort TV, who would gladly hop in a time machine and return to that kinder, gentler era, am no different than anyone else these days. I want to be the person that opens the door with a smile, the way Fred Rogers always did when Mr. McFeely stopped by. 



I know that’s the better way to go through this life – but as Alice says in Wonderland, “I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.” 

It shames me to confess that there is a “No Solicitors” sign on my front door. I do not react well to doorbells in the evening, or even in the afternoon. And anyone who rings that bell before 9 am better be telling me my house is on fire. 

Of course, society has changed too. Cities are more crime-ridden, communities aren’t really communities anymore – most people aren’t even on a first-name basis with their next-door neighbors. Friends or relatives who want to pop in for a visit will likely call or text first, so no one panics when they hear the doorbell.

From the Comfort TV era, we have progressed to the Ring Video Doorbell era, when we can tell whoever’s out there to get lost without leaving the couch. 

Among the comments left on the Sebastian Maniscalco video was this: “I’m crying knowing those times will never come back but I’m grateful I had a chance to experience that era.”

Me, too. 

You can watch the Maniscalco doorbell routine here: 


Tuesday, December 31, 2024

My Journey Through 1970s TV: Tuesday Nights, 1975

If you’ve been keeping track on our journey through the 1970s, or if like me you’re old enough to remember when these shows were new, you’ve noticed that the first half of the decade largely belonged to CBS. The Norman Lear shows (All in the Family, Maude, Good Times), and some iconic Saturday night lineups featuring such classics as M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show all became mainstays among the 20 top-rated series each year.

But as we approach the latter half of the decade, and look at Tuesday night in 1975, we begin to see a shifting of audience tastes and preferences toward perennial underdog ABC. The network that led the medium in one-season-and-out losers finally started homing in on a successful formula, one that relied heavily on youth, titillation, fantasy and escapism. Critics hated it, of course, but viewers welcomed a chance to forget their troubles – and the nation’s - for a little while. 

ABC

Happy Days

Welcome Back Kotter

The Rookies

Marcus Welby, MD

In its first season, Happy Days introduced the Cunningham family of Milwaukee – dad ran a hardware store, mom was a housewife, Richie went to high school, Joanie to junior high. A third sibling named Chuck was introduced and subsequently forgotten even by his closest relatives.

And then a supporting character named Arthur, unbilled in the opening credits, became the most popular television character in America. Soon The Fonz would be the focal point of nearly every episode. Some (like me) may prefer the gentler tone and quieter stories of season one, when the series was not filmed before a studio audience. But it was episodes like “R.O.T.C.” (Fonzie takes on the army) and “A Star is Bored” (Fonzie plays Hamlet) that catapulted Happy Days into one of the decade’s biggest successes. 


And if that show didn’t add enough expressions to be parroted on junior high school playgrounds, it was followed by a new catchphrase generator in Welcome Back Kotter, featuring such additions to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations as “Up your nose with a rubber hose.”


Kotter soared into the top 20, and was then moved to Thursday nights in January so Happy Days could be followed by its spinoff, Laverne & Shirley, a series that, for a time, would surpass its predecessor in popularity. 

This would be the final season for both The Rookies and Marcus Welby, MD. Kate Jackson would not be absent from TV long, as her next project would be the pilot movie for Charlie’s Angels, which drew an extraordinary 54 share in the ratings. 

CBS

Good Times

Joe and Sons

Switch

Beacon Hill

As Fonzie began his rise to pop culture prominence, the same ascent was happening to Jimmie Walker on Good Times. J.J. and his “Dy-no-Mite!” catchphrase expanded the show’s audience but were not as welcomed by top-billed stars Esther Rolle and John Amos. 


Joe and Sons seemed like a natural pairing with Good Times, being a show about another working-class family struggling to get by. It lasted just 14 episodes, none of which I’ve seen, and I’d be tempted to dismiss it as just another short-lived failure if it were not for one name in the cast – Barry Miller, who played Joe’s oldest son. 



He's certainly not a household name, but Miller is an actor I’ve liked and remembered in everything I’ve seen him in. He made a dull Wonder Woman episode almost interesting and played a troubled (for Saturday morning) teenager in episodes of both Shazam and Isis, and outperformed everyone else in every scene. If you know him from anything it’s probably a supporting role in Saturday Night Fever. Ten years after Joe and Sons, he won the Tony Award for his performance in Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues, proving what I already knew at 12 years old – this guy’s really good. 

I’ve been hoping for a Switch DVD release for 20 years and am still hoping, though I’ve been told it’s stuck in some legal limbo over a profit-sharing issue and may never see the light of day again. That would be a shame – the partnership between Robert Wagner as a reformed con man and Eddie Albert as a former cop had great chemistry, and they were ably assisted by an ex-con played by comedian Charlie Callas and Sharon Gless as the team’s secretary. 



The early stories were the best, in which the team set out to foil the schemes of con artists with elaborate cons of their own. It was part Mission: Impossible, part Rockford Files, and even when the plots were simplified in the latter seasons the cast made it worth watching. 

As for Beacon Hill, it was CBS’s attempt to emulate the success of the PBS series Upstairs, Downstairs, a 55-part(!) serial drama about the Bellamys, a well-to-do family in Edwardian England. While it had the sophisticated look and style of a precursor to Downton Abbey, the show was pure soap opera in its stories, a formula that could have adapted well to Boston in the 1920s, where viewers met Beacon Hill’s Lassiter family. But after a promising debut in September, the series was gone by November. 


NBC

Movin’ On

Police Story

Joe Forrester

I’m tempted to just say “Oh, and NBC put out some shows this year too,” but that would be unfair. The third season of Police Story delivered another batch of widely varied stories exploring different facets of law enforcement. One episode from the previous season, “The Return of Joe Forrester,” starred Lloyd Bridges, and was picked up as a series the following season. It didn’t last, but it provided an accurate depiction of community policing the way it ought to be. 



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)

Kodiak (1974)

The New Land (1974)

McCoy (1975)

Joe and Sons (1975)

Beacon Hill (1975)



 




Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Some Things Change…Others Don’t

When we watch classic TV, we may be struck by how American life, culture and attitudes are different now than they were in the era in which these shows were set - sometimes progressing to a more broadminded outlook, and often regressing, ironically in the name of progress. And sometimes we are dismayed by how we are still struggling with issues that challenged our society decades ago. 

And sometimes, it can be tough to tell the difference. 

“Lift, Thrust and Drag,” a season four episode of Room 222 that first aired in October of 1972, illustrates both perspectives. It introduces us to Eddie, an African American student who is indifferent to Pete Dixon’s classroom lectures about history. “I’ve never been able to find the key to that kid,’ Pete tells Principal Seymour Kaufman.



Eddie isn’t interested in any of his subjects, so Walt Whitman High begins the process of transferring him to another school, hoping the change will stimulate some engagement. Pete, a licensed pilot, is headed to the airport that day and on a whim invites Eddie to join him. 

Almost immediately the apathetic student finally seems enthusiastic about something. That reminds Pete of a flight-training program started at another California high school that raised the GPAs of every student that participated. 

There were and still are actual programs like this. My high school had one. But I went to a well-funded suburban school that could afford it.


When Pete proposes the class be tried at Whitman, he already knows it will be shot down by the school board over budget concerns. 

Fortunately, the flight instructor offers to volunteer his time, so for this one semester at least Eddie and other students can learn the rudiments of aviation. And it does stimulate an interest in math and science – for the first time, Eddie’s grades go up, as do those of his classmates.

Failing schools and education funding are two issues that haven’t gone away and are usually linked together in the debate over what’s wrong. It’s easy to contrast the school I was fortunate enough to attend with an inner-city high school like Whitman and conclude that the only problem is money – or the lack of it. But like other proposed solutions to complex issues that are presented as quick and easy, they don’t tell the whole story.

Fact: The United States spends more per student than the UK, Sweden, Australia, Canada, Germany, France and many other countries where better results are achieved. So perhaps it’s not just funding. Maybe it’s administrators not allocating funds toward programs that would inspire better engagement. Perhaps the wrong lessons are being taught (hold that thought). Or perhaps we no longer have enough teachers like Pete Dixon. 


A school board rep meets Pete at the airport, is impressed with the flight program, but as expected regrets that they can’t afford it. Eddie overhears the conversation and is ready to drop out, this time for good. Without the program, he asks, how am I going to learn how to fly?

“How bad do you want it?” Pete responds. “Get a job – washing planes, pumping gas, scrubbing floors, anything.” But then Eddie offers another reason to quit: “Do you think they would ever hire a black pilot?”

“Sit down,” Pete says, getting peeved in a way he rarely did with a student. “The times are over for that ‘I’m black’ cop-out. Because that’s just what it is – an excuse not to try. If you’re willing to give it everything you’ve got, you can do anything you want to.” 

And unless it emanates from home, I would guess that, for many black teens in 2024, this episode would be the first time they hear that message. How terribly depressing, especially following so much of the divisive rhetoric that emerged from one side of the debate this election year. Who could blame anyone exposed to that poison to believe that we were still in the 1960s – or the 1860s. 

Racial disparity in opportunity was certainly more likely 52 years ago when “Lift, Thrust and Drag” originally aired. But there was Pete Dixon, a black teacher, telling a black student in 1972 not to buy into the vile programming emanating from media and politicians that the deck is stacked so high against him that he might as well give up now. And if you want something, it won’t always be handed to you from a school or government program – you need to work for it. I hope that lesson is still being taught in many of our schools, but I fear that too often schools and society are now sending the opposite message. 

Television once had the prominence to inspire, to educate, to advocate paths to success and fulfillment when such options were not provided elsewhere. In its current fractured landscape, I’m not sure the medium could still do so. But even if it could, are there any shows like Room 222 willing to do it? 









Sunday, December 1, 2024

My Journey Through 1970s TV: Monday Nights, 1975

 

Monday blues? Not around here – it’s time for a look at another Monday night in the 1970s, with the usual mix of hits and misses. And thankfully no new shows to add to my “missed series” list – have you seen all of these as well?

 

ABC

Barbary Coast

Monday Night Football

 

In his book Star Trek Movie Memories, William Shatner reflected on the state of his life and career in the years between the cancelation of Star Trek and his return to the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Part of that time was spent living out of a camper and taking whatever jobs were offered, from appearing on the game show Tattletales to promoting a frozen food sale at Loblaws, a Canadian supermarket.

 

Better times seemed imminent when he was at last offered another top-billed role on a network series. In Barbary Coast he played Jeff Cable, an undercover government agent in San Francisco, circa 1860s. Doug McClure costarred as Cash Conover, a casino owner and card sharp who (reluctantly) helps Cable in his missions. 

 

 

“I thought the show was absolutely great,” Shatner writes. “In no time, I mused, people would stop typecasting me as a starship captain and start pigeonholing me as a cowboy.”

 

During a break he visited the Star Trek soundstages on the Paramount lot and ran into Gene Roddenberry, who told him he was now working on a new project – Star Trek – The Movie. Shatner thought the very idea was ridiculous: “Didn’t he know the next big thing was going to be Barbary Coast?”

 

Well…about that. Barbary Coast was canceled after 13 episodes, while Star Trek remains a cultural phenomenon more than 50 years later. 

 

I think Barbary Coast failed because, consciously or unconsciously, it was unmistakably derivative of other – and better – shows. Cable’s reliance on elaborate disguises and makeup recalled that of Artemus Gordon in The Wild, Wild West. Cash’s card-playing cons were reminiscent of Maverick.  

 


I also didn’t really buy the relationship between Jeff and Cash as friends or frenemies or reluctant allies. There’s a connection between actors and characters that either happens or it doesn’t. It didn’t for me, but there’s a DVD release if you’re interested.

 


 

 

CBS

Rhoda

Phyllis

All in the Family

Maude

Medical Center

 

CBS easily won the night, even with Gunsmoke no longer anchoring its Monday lineup. All in the Family remained the season’s top rated series, followed by Rhoda at #6, Maude at #7, and Medical Center at #27.

 

 

Scheduling Phyllis after Rhoda seemed like an obvious decision. Viewers who watched one Mary Tyler Moor Show spinoff would likely stick around for a second one. But it didn’t work – Phyllis struggled through two underperforming seasons before being canceled. In retrospect it’s easy to see why: Rhoda always had the audience on her side as she struggled with her various insecurities. Phyllis was the pretentious, self-absorbed neighbor who almost ruined Rhoda’s wedding. That’s not a character audiences would be likely to follow into her own show – even the series’ theme song made fun of her. 

 


 

NBC

The Invisible Man

NBC Monday Night Movie

 

There have been at least a dozen films and television series inspired by the H.G. Wells story of a man who finds a formula for becoming invisible. In this version, David McCallum plays Dr. Daniel Westin, whose experiments are successful – until he discovers he can’t find a way to become visible again. 

 

 

The series made the cover of Dynamite Magazine, suggesting that hopes were high that the show would draw a younger audience, and that another generation of teenage girls would take to McCallum the way they did on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. ten years earlier. But this invisible man disappeared after 13 episodes. 

 


 

 

 

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)

Kodiak (1974)

The New Land (1974)

McCoy (1975)

Thursday, November 21, 2024

Men of Action: New Book Celebrates Four TV Classics

 

The community of people still writing books about classic television is rather small, and I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and/or have some interaction with many of those who do it well. One of them is Ed Robertson, whose books about The Fugitive and The Rockford Files are in my classic TV library, as they should be in yours. 

 

 

Ed’s latest title is Men of Action: Behind the Scenes of Four Classic Television Series. What makes this book intriguing is that only one of the four series he has selected would be considered a success by the usual criteria – popularity, longevity, etc. Yet all of them contributed something memorable to the TV landscape, and still have fans 50 years later. 

 

 

The four shows covered are The Magician, The Untouchables, Harry O and Run For Your Life, all of which were (not coincidentally) covered by Robertson in articles he wrote for the magazine Television Chronicles. The book expands on those pieces, and also includes interviews with cast members and creative personnel.

 

Outside of perhaps The Untouchables, these are shows that were too obscure to have entire books devoted to them, or even to merit a detailed history, even in this internet era when nothing is obscure anymore. It’s a treat to have someone remember them and celebrate them, especially when it happens from a writer that really knows his stuff. 

 

 

Men of Action answered a lot of questions that I had about these shows but was too lazy to search out the answers myself. Like why did The Magician’s Anthony Blake (Bill Bixby, wonderful as always) stop living and working out of a private plane? Turns out the show’s producers were concerned that having one man fly everywhere by himself would make him unsympathetic, at a time when Americans were waiting in long lines at gas stations during the energy crisis.

 

And since I always preferred the early episodes of Harry O that were shot in San Diego, I wondered why the series moved to Los Angeles. Ed provides the details, and I guess I can’t blame them now. 

 

 

Run For Your Life was the series with which I was the least familiar. For several years it has been on my back burner of shows I’ll get to one of these days, maybe because, given the premise and how it ended, there would always be the disappointment of an unfinished status to its narrative. But Ed’s tribute has reinvigorated my interest, and thankfully there are still several episodes on YouTube I will soon be checking out. 

 

 

Of course I knew The Untouchables, which Ed describes as “simultaneously the most loved and most despised television show of its time.” But once again I learned more about the series that will enrich future repeat viewings.

 

If you were a fan of these shows, or just curious to know more about them. Men of Action is certainly worth picking up. You can do so here