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).
