Archive for the ‘TV’ Category

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Obit watch: January 4, 2021.

Monday, January 4th, 2021

It is the stated policy of this blog that, if you were a Bond girl, you get an obit.

Tanya Roberts has died at the age of 65. She was, of course, “Sheena: Queen of the Jungle”, Donna’s mother on “That ’70s Show”, and one of Charlie’s Angels (for the final season). She was also the Bond girl, Stacey Sutton, in “A View to a Kill”, the movie that caused me to punch out of the Bond franchise.

Edited to add: Lawrence sent me a link from TMZ that claims Ms. Roberts is still alive. However, I don’t trust TMZ any further than I can sling a piano, and THR has not retracted their story yet. I will try to keep an eye on this one.

Lawrence sent over obits for Floyd Little, noted running back, and Paul Westphal, noted basketball player and coach.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 31, 2020.

Thursday, December 31st, 2020

This is a couple of days old, but I missed it until someone mentioned it to me: William Link.

Mr. Link and his partner, Richard Levinson, created a bunch of famous TV series: “Columbo”, “Murder She Wrote”, and, of course, “Mannix”.

Link and Levinson created the character of Lt. Columbo, the cigar-chomping, perpetually underestimated detective, for an episode of the Chevy Mystery Show in 1960. Eight years later, they revisited the character (and the initial story) with a telefilm called Prescription: Murder, which starred Peter Falk as Columbo. It became a regular series in 1971, running for seven years of wealthy and powerful killers thinking themselves a step ahead of Columbo, but always slipping up just enough for the detective to catch them in a lie that cracked the case.

Burning in Hell watch: Samuel Little.

Mr. Little had confessed to having committed 93 murders between 1970 and 2005, at least 50 of which have been verified by law enforcement officers, the F.B.I. said. He had been convicted of at least eight murders, some of which were solved using D.N.A. analysis.
Many of Mr. Little’s victims were marginalized, young Black women who were estranged from their families and struggling with poverty and addiction. In many cases, their deaths did not draw the same level of attention or outrage as other killings.

Posted in Law, Mannix, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 30, 2020.

Wednesday, December 30th, 2020

Mary Ann is dead. Ginger is the last one standing.

THR:

Wells appeared in about six dozen different stage plays but was less prolific on the big screen, though her star turn in the horror film The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976), where she played a real-life murder victim, has become a cult classic. She starred in another horror film, Return to Boggy Creek (1977), after playing alongside Denver Pyle and Woody Strode in a 1975 Western, Winterhawk.

I’m sure it is documented somewhere – I can’t remember if it was discussed at all in the supplement for “Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues” (which she does not appear in) but I’d really like to know how Ms. Wells got involved with Charles B. Pierce. (Noted: he also got Jessica “Suspiria” Harper to star in one of his films, alongside Vic Morrow. I don’t know: maybe people held Pierce in higher regard back then.)

Joe Clark, the principal with the baseball bat who inspired “Lean On Me”.

Mr. Clark, who oversaw a poor, largely Black and Hispanic student body, denounced affirmative action and welfare policies and “hocus-pocus liberals.” When “60 Minutes” profiled him in 1988, he told the correspondent Harry Reasoner: “Because we were slaves does not mean that you’ve got to be hoodlums and thugs and knock people in the head and rob people and rape people. No, I cannot accept that. And I make no more alibis for Blacks. I simply say work hard for what you want.”

Pierre Cardin, fashion designer.

Posted in Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Friday, December 25th, 2020

It isn’t “I Saw Three Ships”, but I stumbled across this on the ‘Tube and knew I had to use it.

Werner Klemperer and John Banner sing. Plus Robert Clary.

Yes, you read that right. Colonel Klink and Sargent Schultz sing “Silent Night”. In German. And then Corporal LeBeau sings, too.

I would make fun of this, but I think all three of them are actually pretty good.

(I don’t think that part about the organ is true.)

Because it is a tradition, and because I really like this:

I like this, too:

This isn’t “I Saw Three Ships”, either, but it is a Christmas song that I like (and haven’t used before) from a totally unexpected source: Annie Lennox sings “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”.

Merry Christmas, one and all!

Posted in Christmas, Music, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 267

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020

I’m going to ride this Christmas donkey until it drops.

(No, that’s just a Rifftrax promo clip, that’s not the full movie. Though I believe you can find the full movie on YouTube.)

And now for something completely different: “Never Mind The Baubles – Christmas ’77 with The Sex Pistols”.

Johnny Rotten handed out badges, posters and other Sex Pistols-branded goodies. Teens and young children hit the dancefloor with Sid Vicious to boogie to pop hits such as Baccara’s Yes Sir, I Can Boogie and (yes, really) Daddy Cool by Boney M. Then Rotten leapt into a giant Christmas cake and the band and audience smeared each other with food.

Bonus: I’m kind of marginal about “Retail Archaeology”, but “A Very Dead Mall Christmas” provided me with about 15 minutes worth of amusement.

Bonus #2: “Cooking for the Queen At Christmas”.

Posted in Christmas, Food, History, Music, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 266

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2020

I’m hoping I won’t be doing this next Christmas. I’m hoping that we will be back to “normal” (whatever the new “normal” is) and that we won’t be scrounging for paper goods or wearing masks everywhere and that I’ll even be able to get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

But in the meantime, I intend to have some fun with the Christmas theme.

“Rankin/Bass CBS Christmas Special W/Vintage Commercials”. Four hours of Christmas specials.

The main features of this simulated CBS Rankin Bass Christmas special include Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, The Little Drummer Boy, Santa Clause is Coming to Town and Frosty the Snowman. A few bonus classic Christmas cartoons are also included near the end, And all commercial breaks are packed full of nostalgic Christmas commercials from mostly the 70’s and 80’s.

Bonus video: I had a video I was thinking about putting here, but she turned out to be dull. (And she had good material to work with, too.) So today’s bonus video is really a question for the huddled, wretched masses yearning to breathe free:

Is it just me, or does Alton Brown:

kind of look scarily like Walter White these days?

(I picked a season 2 clip because Lawrence and I have only gotten through season 2. The resemblance may be more pronounced in later seasons, but since we haven’t watched those…)

Posted in 1970s, Christmas, Food, History, TV | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 263

Friday, December 18th, 2020

A little long today. I thought it might be fun to continue with the Christmas theme, and ran across these two:

“The Judy Garland Christmas Show” from 1963.

And as a bonus (“…in color!”), the “Dean Martin Christmas Show” from 1968.

Tragically, while there are short clips on the ‘Tube, I am unable to find a complete version of any of Kathy Lee Gifford’s Christmas specials.

Posted in Christmas, History, TV | Comments Closed

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

Friday, December 11th, 2020

The holiday is only two weeks away, so here’s a little morning musical interlude to cheer you up and put you in the spirit.

Posted in 1970s, Christmas, Music, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 7, 2020.

Monday, December 7th, 2020

As previously noted, I got a little behind yesterday, so I’m playing catch-up.

David Lander, prominent TV actor perhaps best known as “Squiggy” on “Laverne and Shirley”.

Interesting connections:

He and his comedy partner, Michael McKean, were members of the cast of “Laverne & Shirley,” a sitcom about boy-crazy brewery workers in 1950s Milwaukee, from its debut in 1976 until it left the air in 1983.

…

Lenny and Squiggy were not the brainchild of the show’s creators. Mr. Lander and Mr. McKean invented them in college (Squiggy was called Ant’ny then) and had been performing as those characters with the Credibility Gap, a comedy performance ensemble that also included Harry Shearer.
The characters sometimes broke away from their own series. Mr. Lander and Mr. McKean appeared on the fictional talk show “America 2-Night,” hosted by Martin Mull.
Portraying two imaginary actors who supposedly played Lenny and Squiggy (but looked and talked just like them), they made small talk and sang “Creature Without a Head.” That song was also on the 1979 album recorded by Lenny and the Squigtones, their imaginary musical group (which included Christopher Guest on guitar). Principal Squiggy (Mr. Lander) appeared in “Scary Movie” (2000), and Squiggy himself turned up on a 2002 episode of “The Simpsons.”

Of course, Guest, McKean, and Shearer were all in Spinal Tap. I kind of wonder why Lander wasn’t involved. (According to Wikipedia, Guest was actually credited as “Nigel Tufnel” on the Lenny and the Squigtones album.)

Lawrence sent over an obit for Pamela Tiffin. She had what seems like an odd career: Billy Wilder’s “One, Two, Three”, “Harper” (a Ross MacDonald adaptation), “State Fair”. “The Hallelujah Trail”…and a bunch of Italian movies.

Paul Sarbanes, the man who put the “Sarbanes” in “Sarbanes-Oxley”.

Also by way of Lawrence, and this is breaking as I write it, so no links yet: Fred Akers. Links probably tomorrow.

For the historical record: NYT obits for Warren Berlinger and Walter E. Williams.

Posted in Law, Obits, Politics, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 4, 2020.

Friday, December 4th, 2020

Warren Berlinger, prolific TV and movie actor.

He was in a lot of stuff: “Cannonball Run”, multiple appearances on “Happy Days”, “The Shaggy D.A.”, “Operation Petticoat”, and the list goes on.

Hamish MacInnes, mountain climber. I note this for two reasons:

1) Not making fun of his name, but if “Hamish MacInnes” isn’t the most Scottish name imaginable, it’s in the top ten.

2) Not only was he a climber, he was also one of the pioneers of mountain rescue:

As inventive as he was adventurous, Mr. MacInnes built a car from scratch when he was 17. He later used radar to search for bodies in the snow and, in 1961, founded the Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team. He also trained dogs to help search for avalanche victims. His friends called him “the fox of Glencoe” for his cunning in finding lost climbers.
Perhaps his most famous invention was the first all-steel ice ax. It was a significant improvement on the wooden-handled ax, which snapped under pressure.
He also developed a foldable lightweight mountain rescue stretcher that is still in use today and an avalanche information service. His “International Mountain Rescue Handbook” (1972) became the go-to manual for rescue teams all over the world.
All told, his inventions and services saved countless lives.
“No one man has done more to help put in place the network of emergency response efforts designed to keep climbers from harm’s way,” The Scotsman newspaper wrote after Mr. MacInnes’s death.

Scary story:

When he was 84, he was found unconscious in front of his house. He was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he was deemed demented and held against his will for 15 months. During that time, he was sedated and put in a straitjacket, his weight plummeted, and his memory vanished. He made several attempts to escape; at one point he scaled the outside wall of the hospital, only to end up on the roof with nowhere to go.
Doctors eventually discovered that he had been suffering from a chronic urinary tract infection that produced dementia-like symptoms.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 248

Thursday, December 3rd, 2020

Travel Thursday!

Here’s an exotic destination we haven’t done yet: from Pan Am sometime in the 1960s (possibly before the invention of reggae) “Wings to Jamaica”.

Bonus: “Pan Am Makes the Going Great”, a compilation of commercials from Pan Am’s 1969 ad campaign.

Posted in Planes, Travel, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 27, 2020.

Friday, November 27th, 2020

Geoffrey Palmer. He did a lot of film and TV work: his most famous role may have been Lionel Hardcastle in “As Time Goes By”, which shows up on PBS a lot.

Daria Nicolodi, Italian horror actress and co-author of the screenplay for the 1977 “Suspiria”. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

This is a noteworthy Twitter thread:

“Law is the manifest will of the people, the conscious rule of the community. And when the mechanics of law enforcement break down, they must be re-established.”

Posted in Movies, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 26, 2020.

Thursday, November 26th, 2020

Dena Dietrich.

She had a strong TV career, and an interesting theater one:

What would have been her Broadway debut — “The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake” (1967), a generation-gap comedy — closed in previews, reportedly because its Hollywood star, Jean Arthur, was ill. Ms. Dietrich’s first official Broadway appearance was also brief: “Here’s Where I Belong,” a musical based on John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden,” opened and closed on March 3, 1968.
Then her luck changed. Ms. Dietrich played a sensible older sister in Mike Nichols’s Broadway production of Neil Simon’s “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” (1971). The play, starring Peter Falk and Lee Grant as Manhattanites struggling through a bad economy, ran for almost two years and won two Tony Awards.

She was most famous, though, as “Mother Nature” in those 1970s commercials for a margarine company. (“It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”)

Ian Finkel, the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest xylophonist”.

Mr. Finkel’s path took him from the borscht belt resorts in the Catskills to playing with the New York Philharmonic. He also worked as a composer and musical arranger for stars like Sid Caesar, Tito Puente and Ginger Rogers, his brother, Elliot Finkel, said.
As a percussionist, he worked in orchestras that accompanied the likes of Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Diana Ross and Tony Bennett.

Posted in 1970s, Music, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 239

Tuesday, November 24th, 2020

Techmoan is kind of a fun channel, but one that I try to avoid overusing. I’m using it today because this video popped up, and it answers a question that’s been in the back of my mind.

Whatever happened to portable televisions? Remember the Sony Watchman?

Obviously, the digital transition killed off the old analog portables. But why don’t we have portable digital televisions?

Short answer: we do, but not from any major manufacturers, and they’re pretty much crap as televisions. (Some of them may be decent portable media players, but do they do anything you can’t do with a small laptop or tablet?)

When I’m out shopping in thrift stores and other odd places, and see one of those cool looking old portable devices with a TV built in, I think about picking it up and hooking up a converter box, just for the lulz.

Bonus: “Prison Tech”. Not really the kind of thing people in prison improvise, but rather what kind of tech you’re allowed to have (and can purchase) for prison use.

(Previously on WCD.)

Posted in Geek, History, Radio, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 24, 2020.

Tuesday, November 24th, 2020

An obit roundup, because I’m a little behind.

Jan Morris, British writer and historian. I haven’t read any of Morris’s work, yet. But John Crowley in his beautiful novella “Great Work of Time” cites Morris’s history of the British empire as a major source, and I’ve been hunting for reasonably priced copies. (Like I need three more volumes of history to read, in addition to Gibbon and the two volume history of the Canadian transcontinental railroad.)

Ken Spears, co-creator of “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!”. The other creator, Joe Ruby, passed away in September.

Daniel Cordier, one of the legendary figures of the French Resistance. He was 100.

David Dinkins, former mayor of New York City.

Posted in Books, History, Obits, Politics, TV | Comments Closed

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