In an attempt to compete with Mattel, Kenner, et al, when it came to games, Hasbro, now the industry leader in toys, introduced Screwball in 1972. Unfortunately, this puzzle game was a flop, as it was off the market about as fast as it arrived.
Mel Allen narrates this ad, featuring Earl Monroe (then with the Knicks), Bob Griese (Miami Dolphins), & Tom Seaver (Mets) competing with an ordinary dude.
We've seen animation and comics legends such as Stan Lee and Chuck Jones appear on To Tell The Truth. As The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour begins 1984, a future animation legend appears as a contestant.
Butch Hartman was just 19, a college student, when he appeared on the show, which aired on January 3, but taped a couple of weeks prior. Mind you, this was a few years before he began working for Cartoon Network and, later, more famously, Nickelodeon.
I think this is why Butch would later use game show motifs in his cartoons (i.e. Fairly OddParents).
Chad & Jeremy were the featured guests on American Bandstand on Thanksgiving weekend in November 1964, performing "A Summer Song". I realize, yes, it's kind of odd that this was being played in that period between autumn & winter, but, you know the music business.......
Set in the depression, Hugh Harman & Rudolf Ising's "The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives", a 1933 Merrie Melodies entry, sees Santa take an orphan to the North Pole.
In 1964, Adam West (ex-The Detectives) and William Shatner (ex-For The People) filmed a pilot for Alexander The Great, which ABC was producing through their in-house production company, Selmur Productions. However, the final product wasn't satisfactory in the eyes of network suits, and it wasn't until four years later, after Batman had ended its run, and Star Trek was nearing the end of its 2nd season, before Alexander aired.
Nearly 50 years later, West & Shatner were together again, this time in "Batman vs. Two-Face", the sequel to "Batman: Return of The Caped Crusaders", and, unbeknonst to either actor, it would be West's last role, as he passed away prior to the film's release.
Writer-producers James Tucker & Michael Jelenic decided that the traditional origin of Two-Face, his split personality emerging after he'd been scarred with acid, wasn't tragic or dramatic enough for a 21st century audience. Instead, you add Professor Hugo Strange, conducting an experiment at Gotham City Prison, in which he intended to extract the "essential evil" from the villains in prison (i.e. Joker, Penguin). I think you'll get the idea from the following trailer:
The legendary Chuck Berry released "Run, Run, Rudolph" all the way back in 1959. Nearly 30 years later, it was covered by Canadian rocker Bryan Adams on the 1st "A Very Special Christmas" CD.
With classic Christmas tunes being reissued as animated videos these days, it should surprise no one that someone with enough imagination would bring "Rudolph" out, and give Chuck a flying car......
We all know that Wait 'Til Your Father Gets Home started as a back-door pilot on ABC's Love, American Style before beginning a 2 year run in syndication (1972-4).
However, it wasn't the only entry Hanna-Barbera produced for the series.
Prior to "Love & The Old Fashioned Father", the Father pilot, H-B also served up Melvin Danger, Private Eye, about a bumbling private eye who was a master of disguise. The episode was rebroadcast in the winter of 1973, and retitled, "Love & The Private Eye".
Behind the Humphrey Bogart mimic as Danger is Richard Dawson (ex-Hogan's Heroes, Can You Top This?), who would also contribute to H-B's adaptation of Oliver Twist, "Oliver & The Artful Dodger", for the ABC Saturday Superstar Movie. Len Weinrib plays the chauffeur. John Stephenson and Mitzi McCall (Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm) are also heard.
Bozo The Clown (Larry Harmon) pulls into a ghost town, and encounters a couple of crooks. Paul Frees voices the sheriff and one of the crooks, if not both of them, in "Square Shootin' Square".
Note that the intro is complete, unlike other clips, which lack the credits.
Back in the 70's, graffiti wasn't considered a form of art by law enforcement. Instead, it was filed under vandalism, and in some places, still is.
Mumbly (Don Messick) matches wits with Graphooey (Len Weinrib), a French artist who intends to hold the city ransom for $1,000,000, likely because no one recognizes his "genius".
Here's "The Great Grafitti Gambit".
Let's take a trip to the silent film era for this next entry.
Our Gang shorts were distributed through Pathe during the early years, with the series launching in 1922. Joe Cobb and Allen Hoskins are the best known players from this group, appearing in 1926's "Good Cheer", as the kids learn all about Santa while helping capture some thieves at the same time, all during a driving snowstorm.
The late singer-actress Eartha Kitt recorded "Santa Baby" all the way back in 1953 for RCA. It's been covered by a number of artists, including Madonna, LeAnn Rimes, Taylor Swift, and, most recently, Ariana Grande.
Continuing a recent trend of animated videos of songs by artists no longer with us (i.e. Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra), here's a clever toon with Eartha, circa 1953, around the time she recorded "Santa Baby".
To mark the VHS release of A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1991, Shell Oil Company obtained a license to promote the video, using Charlie Brown & Linus, plus Snoopy, driving a car, for a commercial.
Frosty The Snowman returned in an all-new special for the first time in several years in 1992's Frosty Returns.
The basic plot starts off the same way as the 1969 original, only this time that magic top hat that brings life to Frosty (John Goodman, Roseanne) comes from a young, aspiring female magician (Elizabeth Moss). Executive producer Lorne Michaels (Saturday Night Live) stocked the supporting cast with SNL alums Brian Doyle-Murray and Jan Hooks, and SCTV veteran Andrea Martin. Jonathan Winters (ex-Smurfs, Mork & Mindy) is the narrator.
The Muppets of Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, & Fraggle Rock come together in 1987's A Muppet Family Christmas.
Everyone gathers at home of Fozzie's mom for one big Christmas wing-ding, journeying through an ice storm. Jim Henson (Kermit, Ernie, Rowlf) appears briefly at the end of the show.
Robbie Dupree was a fresh face---and voice, of course----on the pop music scene in 1980, and landed a pair of hits with "Hot Rod Hearts" & "Steal Away".
Robbie performs "Steal Away" on The Midnight Special:
Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll spun off their hit radio show, Amos 'n' Andy, first into a feature film, "Check & Double Check", then a pair of animated shorts produced by the Van Beuren studio. Don't be looking for this on cable anywhere, given that in today's society, it'd be considered politically incorrect for the characterizations of African Americans depicted here.
Anyway, Andy gets talked into taking up wrestling......
In discussing Filmation & Warner Bros.' adaptation of Oliver Twist the other day, we noted the studios had previously collaborated on another adaptation a year prior.
Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island has the same cast, headlined by Davy Jones (ex-The Monkees) as Jim Hawkins, and also including Larry Storch, Larry D. Mann, and Jane Webb.
If you've ever wondered what was the motivation behind Hanna-Barbera's live-action/animated hybrid adaptation of Huckleberry Finn in 1968, you simply go back about a year and a half or so to 1967's musical adaptation of Jack & The Beanstalk. The classic tale had been adapted for the big & small screens before, with a previous TV adaptation headlined by Joel Grey 11 years earlier. Abbott & Costello did one in 1952 for Warner Bros., instead of Universal, when the latter studio couldn't fund the project.
Producer-director-star Gene Kelly had worked with Bill Hanna & Joe Barbera nearly 20 years earlier, when they animated a dance sequence with Jerry Mouse for "Anchors Aweigh". Yes, this is a rarity in that Hanna & Barbera didn't direct this entry.
Young Bobby Riha plays Jack, but his singing voice is dubbed over by Dick Beals (Frankenstein, Jr., Space Kiddettes, etc), whose previous singing experience is mostly Alka-Seltzer commercials. Kelly is Jeremy, a salesman whom Jack befriends in a deal involving a certain set of beans. Other voices include Ted Cassidy (Frankenstein, Jr., ex-The Addams Family), Leo DeLyon (ex-Top Cat), Janet Waldo (with Marni Nixon doing the singing), and Cliff Norton.
I had faint memories of seeing this as a youth, and seeing the Abbott & Costello version got me thinking about this offering.
Coincidentally, this premiered on a Sunday night, either pre-empting or airing in back of Wonderful World of Disney. Bobby Riha would later act & sing in a Disney movie ("The One & Only Original Family Band"). Gene Kelly would later shill for Sylvania when not on the dais with Dean Martin.
Rating: B.
Here's an in-show ad from Captain MIdnight as Dr. Aristotle "Tut" Jones (Olan Soule) explains the origins of the show's sponsor, Ovaltine:
Today's generation only knew him as a comedy relief character during the WWE's "Attitude Era". Older fans knew about a French-Canadian emigre who made his first inroads in the US with the late Ray Stevens as 1/2 of the original Blond Bombers, winning the NWA & AWA tag titles before he came to the then World Wrestling Federation in 1979.
At that point, Pat Patterson, managed by the Grand Wizard (Ernie Roth), earned his first singles title in beating a fellow future Hall of Famer in Ted DiBiase. Vince McMahon & Bruno Sammartino describe the action.....
While I don't know how many contestants on Match Game, through its nearly 60 years of existence, came from the 518, we actually had a panelist from the district.
That would be Joe Alaskey (ex-Out of This World, Couch Potatoes), who got to appear during the 1st week of the 1990 revamp, airing on ABC. The Watervliet native was a few months away from the debut of Tiny Toon Adventures, which cemented his status as a primo voice actor.
Also on the panel: Sally Struthers (ex-All in The Family), who voiced Pebbles in 1971's Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm before commitments to Family, among other things, took her off the show, and Charles Nelson Reilly, charter member of the Match Game Hall of Fame, if ya will. Reilly was a long ways removed from taking over the role of Frank Frankenstone (The Flintstone Comedy Show, 2nd series).
As the 21st century began, Cartoon Network was experimenting with anthology shows showcasing the works of legendary creators.
Bob Clampett was one of those legends, along with Chuck Jones and Tex Avery. It's too bad the experiment ended before they got around to Friz Freleng. Joking aside, The Bob Clampett Show ran for about a year on CN before being shifted over to the nascent [adult swim] side of the channel. While season 1 was exclusively Warner Bros. material, some of Clampett's early Beany & Cecil work was added for season 2, which marked the only time that series aired on CN.
During its CN run, the series aired on Sunday nights. Shifting to [as] allowed a little more schedule flexibility. Too bad CN can't be bothered to bring the show back along with the rest of the line (i.e. Toon Heads) to fill space on Boomerang.
From a sample episode, here's a Blue Ribbon reissue of "Farm Frolics":
Here's a treat that was just recently posted to YouTube.
Vin Scully's NBC game show, It Takes Two, didn't last very long, but it did bring some fun.
This episode was taped in late March 1969, broadcast a couple of weeks later, with James Darren (ex-The Time Tunnel), Norm Crosby, and Ken Berry (Mayberry RFD, ex-F-Troop)(w/then-wife Jackie Joseph).
Announcer John Harlan got the most screen time of his career working on this show.
Donald Duck chops down a tree for Christmas, but Chip 'n' Dale see this as an opportunity to steal some walnuts. Here's "Toy Tinkers":
Two years after Hanna-Barbera had adapted Charles Dickens' tale for the ABC Saturday Superstar Movie, Warner Bros. & Filmation took their turn with a feature length adaptation of Oliver Twist.
This version hews somewhere between the original story and the musical adaptation, "Oliver!", with all the music. Josh Albee (ex-Sealab 2020) provides Oliver's speaking voice, with Scottish actor Billy Simpson taking over for musical numbers. The cast also includes Davy Jones, Larry Storch, Jane Webb, Les Tremayne (the movie was released two months prior to Shazam! debuting on CBS), Dallas McKennon (ex-Daniel Boone; McKennon would return to playing Archie Andrews in U. S. of Archie a few weeks later), and Larry D. Mann.
As normal, Filmation recycled some music cues from their TV shows, in this case the dramatic cues from Star Trek & Lassie's Rescue Rangers from the previous season.
Many thanks to contributor Jennifer Schillig for tipping us to this film:
In "Sherlock's Badder Brudder", Mumbly plays his usual tricks on a pair of British crooks who've come across the pond to capture him. Good luck with that!
It's clear that Hanna-Barbera had tried and failed to re-acquire Droopy, as every Mumbly episode followed Droopy's playbook. It took fourteen years before Droopy finally arrived at H-B, with a stopover at Filmation before that (1980's Tom & Jerry Comedy Show).
Rating: B.
Of the four freshman series produced by Filmation in 1973, Mission: Magic! was the weakest of the lot.
Australian singer-actor Rick Springfield had made his debut on the US charts a year earlier, and his handlers were hoping to promote him as a teen idol, figuring that even though the bubblegum pop craze of the late 60's-early 70's was dying out, only to return just three years later, the teenagers would watch the show with their younger sibs.
Nope. Mission was cancelled after 1 season, replaced by The New Adventures of Gilligan.
It wasn't Springfield's fault. The writing was, at best, mediocre. The background score by Ray Ellis (credited as Yvette Blais & Jeff Michael for the balance of the decade) recycled cues from the Archie cartoons, among other places. No originality in the music, save for Springfield's own compositions, which were released on LP in his native Australia before the end of the season, and later imported to the US.
In the series opener, Ms. Tickle (Lola Fisher) and the Adventurers Club (Ericka & Lane Scheimer, also heard on My Favorite Martians, The Brady Kids, & Lassie's Rescue Rangers, and Howard Morris) enter a backward dimension. Literally.
From the ABC Afterschool Special:
"The Amazing Cosmic Awareness of Duffy Moon" centers on a 6th grader (Ike Eisenmann, "Escape to Witch Mountain") who discovers a book that gives him the means to overcome his short stature. Co-starring Jim Backus, Jerry Van Dyke, Sparky (spelled Sparkey) Marcus (in one of his first roles), and Lance Kerwin.
Here's an American Cancer Society PSA, which seems to have backgrounds designed by Peter Max (though that isn't the case). Narrated by Gene Wilder.
The Simpsons kicked off season 5 with "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", which purports to explain how Homer (Dan Castellaneta), Apu (Hank Azaria), Principal Skinner (Harry Shearer), and Barney (Castellaneta) were in a group known as the Be-Sharps, a parody of the Beatles. Bart & Lisa find a Be-Sharps LP at a swap meet, and that leads to Homer explaining the group's history.
The following performance of "Baby on Board", on the roof of Moe's Tavern, is a send-up of the Beatles' famous rooftop farewell concert. George Harrison appears briefly.
While his live-action debut was a bomb, Jonah Hex feels more at home in animated form.
Jonah (Thomas Jane, "The Punisher") is on the trail of Red Doc (Michael Rooker), unaware that a murderous hooker (Linda Hamilton, "Terminator 2: Judgement Day", ex-Beauty & The Beast) has already beaten him to the bounty, even if she didn't realize it.
Novelist Joe R. Lansdale, who authored a pair of critically acclaimed miniseries about Jonah for DC's now-defunct Vertigo line, scripted this tale.
The Inspector (Pat Harrington, Jr.) runs into all sort of problems staying afloat while trying to capture the smuggler, Captain Clamity, in "Reaux, Reaux, Reaux Your Boat".
Before being cast as the voice of Birdman, Keith Andes was a respected character actor. Unless I'm wrong, 1959's This Man Dawson might've been his one and only lead role on TV in front of the cameras.
Dawson lasted just 1 season, but the sample episode offers the idea that maybe it could've lasted longer.
Rocky & His Friends narrator William Conrad has those chores here, and also is a producer.
Edit, 2/15/24: Had to change the video. "Arson Ring" features future announcer Bill Woodson in a supporting role:
Ok, this one's going to be a little confusing.
Winnie The Pooh's final theatrical featurette for Disney was 1983's "Winnie The Pooh & a Day For Eeeyore". It'd been 9 years since the last theatrical release, during which time the previous ones had been airing on television, usually as stand-alone primetime specials for NBC.
The credits shown on the screen as this begins are radically different from the actual product. For example, per other sources, Hal Smith (Owl) doubled as Winnie, though Jim Cummings is credited, not so much as Winnie, but the story is that Cummings, Tress MacNeille, and others were brought in for re-dubs for a later DVD/Blu-Ray release that apparently was aborted. Tress was supposed to be voicing Kanga, but the role actually was performed by Julie McWhirter-Dees (ex-Casper & The Angels, Jeannie, etc.). The obvious constant at the time is Paul Winchell as Tigger.
Laurie Main was given the envious task of succeeding the late Sebastian Cabot as narrator. We know from the later New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh that Cummings would not only assume the role of Winnie, but would also do a near-perfect mimic of Sterling Holloway's characterization, as Smith comes up short there.
Here we go:
Three months after his long time friend and writing/business partner, Joe Ruby, had passed on, Ken Spears, who began his cartoon career as a sound editor at Hanna-Barbera in 1959, has passed away from Lewy's Body Dementia, the same disease that claimed radio & cartoon legend Casey Kasem six years ago.
The team returned to Hanna-Barbera in 1976, and created Jabberjaw, Dynomutt, & Captain Caveman over a 2 year period, during which time they also developed the live-action components (most of them, anyway) of Krofft Supershow, most notably Electra Woman & DynaGirl. They launched their own production company in 1978 with Fangface, and contributed mightily to ABC's Weekend Special series. One such entry, "The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy", led to a weekly series, The Puppy's Great Adventures, a few years later. Their first sales to NBC, Mr. T & Alvin & The Chipmunks, followed in 1983.
The studio was, in fact, still active until recently. Now, we'll see how WarnerMedia, which owns most of the Ruby-Spears catalogue from the early years, honors the team.
Rest in peace.
Dynomutt (Frank Welker) and Blue Falcon (Gary Owens) battle the Gimmick, whose remote control crimes look like a homage to comic strip legend Rube Goldberg. We didn't see "The Great Brain...Train Robbery" the first time, so there's no rating.
Don Coyote (Frank Welker) shares the same mental illness as his human counterpart, Don Quixote. However, something got lost in the translation to a funny animal cartoon. You have to feel sorry for Sancho Panda (Don Messick), who has to keep Coyote's mind on point.
Here's the opener, "Pity The Poor Pirate":
Based in part on the miniseries of the same name, as well as another miniseries, American Alien, and some other recent material, "Superman: Man of Tomorrow" offers a different take on the Man of Steel's early years.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Tiny Toon Adventures' debut on Fox. What better way to mark the occasion, then, by announcing that the beloved denizens of Acme Acres are finally returning.
To paraphrase Stephen King, sometimes, they all come back. Eventually.
Season 2 of Tales From The Cryptkeeper saw EC's other horror hosts, the Vault Keeper & the Old Witch, envious of the Cryptkeeper becoming a TV star, try to replace him.
The Vault Keeper (David Hemblen) traps the Cryptkeeper (John Kassir) in a newspaper so he can introduce "All The Gory Details"
The current rights holders to the Peanuts specials have decided to take the classics, such as It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, off broadcast TV, and move them to the Apple+ TV streaming service.
Six years after he'd charted for the last time, Rick Nelson and his Stone Canyon Band appeared on The Midnight Special to perform "Garden Party", which was Rick's lyrical account of a disastrous appearance at Madison Square Garden in 1971.
Host Wolfman Jack interviews Rick before the song, and they awkwardly close the show.
From season 1 of Recess:
Principal Prickley (Dabney Coleman) decides to replace "Old Rusty", the jungle gym in the playground beloved by the children of Third Street Elementary, with a new, up-to-date model, but the kids have other ideas. Here's "The Great Jungle Gym Standoff":
GEICO acquired a license last year to use Casper as part of their GEICO-ween promotion, which has seen them bring the ads from last year back this year.
Here, Casper makes an uncharacteristically annoying guest on movie night.
Filmation's 2nd generation Ghostbusters travel back in time to the Salem witch trials to save Futura. Here's "Witch's Stew":
CBS blew an opportunity to repurpose this as a Saturday morning special. I'm begging HBO Max to pick this up, since Chumptoon Network couldn't be bothered to run it.
We've previously seen Jackie Joseph on Gomer Pyle, USMC, but her first appearance on the show came in season 1.
Here, she has the attention of Sgt. Vince Carter (Frank Sutton) in this short excerpt.
From the CBS Library:
