Ensign Parker (Tim Conway) is assigned by Captain Binghamton (Joe Flynn) to teach self-defense to a new corps of nurses. Girl-shy Parker bumbles this assignment, but at least one nurse seems to have her eyes on him.
Joyce Bulifant guest stars in "Today, I Am a Man!":
Once production begins on Greg Berlanti's live-action adaptation of Scooby-Doo, the titular dog will have a familiar voice.
Frank Welker has been associated with the franchise from day 1, and took over the voice role of Scooby with What's New Scooby-Doo in 2002, shortly after Neil Fanning had essayed the role in the first live-action movie.
Netflix might want to consider landing a deal to repurpose this Scooby on TNT.......!
There's a reason HBO Max dumped Mindy Kaling's Velma after 2 seasons. Fans of the franchise will only take so much darkness.
Stay tuned.
From season 3 of Room 222:
Mrs. Higgins (Ruth McDevitt, ex-Pistols & Petticoats) is teaching a class on sex education, but when a student has questions about STD's, the student's father (Walker Edmiston) is upset, and threatens the teacher's job...
Lily Tomlin brings her precocious 5 1/2 year old persona of Edith Ann back to television in the 3rd & final primetime special for ABC.
Edith Ann's Christmas (Just Say Noel), written by Tomlin's long time partner, Jane Wagner, sees Edith Ann (Tomlin) run away from home, but you know that won't last.
Tomlin & Wagner hired an independent studio to animate this show, after Klasky-Csupo had produced the first two specials, though the designs are similar to the K-C style.
From season 2 of McHale's Navy:
Ensign Parker (Tim Conway) is recruited to impersonate a British general (Conway in a dual role) while the general is on a mission. Henry Corden, Rolfe Sedan (who'd recur on The Addams Family a year later), and Walter Brooke (later of The Green Hornet) guest star in "The Great Impersonation":
The Fleischers decided to take on Lewis Carroll's literary classic, Alice in Wonderland, by sending Betty Boop (Bonnie Poe) to "Blunderland" in this 1934 short. There was also a feature length version.
Some independent studio in Canada released The Little Brown Burro, or, as its now known, The Little Christmas Burro, in 1978, as a means of explaining how Mary & Joseph acquired the titular animal for their trip to Bethlehem.
I don't recall seeing this here in the US until now. Lorne Greene (Battlestar Galactica) is the narrator.
First recorded for Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1964, "A Holly Jolly Christmas" merited a flash animated music video to mark its 55th anniversary in 2019. Not sure if Burl Ives got far on the charts with it back in '64.....
We posted this at The Land of Whatever years ago, and I can't think of anything better to start our annual Countdown to Christmas.
From season 1 of McHale's Navy:
McHale (Ernest Borgnine) is playing Santa Claus for some children, but trouble arises, and that forces Captain Binghamton (Joe Flynn) to aid McHale, despite their differences.
Anna Lee would later reunite with Bob Hastings (Carpenter) on General Hospital.
Here's "The Day They Captured Santa Claus":
From the original Electric Company:
Spider-Man (Danny Seagren) takes a side gig as a window washer, which comes in handy when a failed singer-turned-repairman (Luis Avalos) is running a scam on a mother (Judy Graubart) and her son (Todd Graff). The Short Circus' June Angela narrates "Spidey Fixes The Hum":
The 70's gave rise to the Tex-Mex sound of country music, creating iconic sounds comparable to the legends active at the time, such as Johnny Cash & Waylon Jennings.
Freddy Fender scored a mammoth hit in 1975 with "Before The Next Teardrop Falls", which landed him a gig on The Midnight Special. Seems to be more of a stripped down, acoustic version here.
We've seen some automakers, like Kia, for example, use CGI animals driving cars in ads, so for Progressive Insurance to get in on the action takes some cheek.
Yes, there's the predictable gag about the deer in the headlights, as Flo (Stephanie Courtney) narrates, but Flo is also so oblivious not to notice the AI used in this CGI-driven ad changed her, too........
Rick Derringer sings lead on the Edgar Winter Group's 1973 smash, "Free Ride", on The Midnight Special.
Yeah, I know, winter's still a month off, but we've seen it snow on Thanksgiving before, so what's the worry about a winter themed toonfomercial to start the week?
None.
Anyway, Johnny Hart licensed characters from B. C. for advertising in the 70's & 80's. Not just those PSA's produced for the Ad Council that we've seen, but, for example, this 1983 spot for Uniroyal snow tires, narrated by the inestimable Orson Welles.
"The Underground Railroad" is the series premiere of US of Archie, and dramatizes how the ancestors of the Riverdale kids supposedly had a hand in helping some runaway slaves. The dramatic music used here had debuted a year earlier (Star Trek, Lassie's Rescue Rangers).
It is the spring of 1941 when Gandy Goose's "The Home Guard" is released, nine months exactly before Pearl Harbor. Still, Terrytoons and distributor 20th Century Fox thought this might be a good idea to satirize the developing war that had not yet engulfed our country.
Gandy (Arthur Kay) leaves his girlfriend behind to join the Home Guard, and, while his commanding officer covets said girl, there's a twist at the end of the film.......
Think of this as found media.
Everyone, I'm sure, knows that Allen Coage was signed away from Stampede Wrestling in Canada in the late 80's, and memorably feuded with Bret Hart, whom he knew from Stampede, and Roddy Piper. Then, he was known as Bad News Brown.
But, a decade earlier, he had been signed to the then-WWWF, and given Fred Blassie as a manager, when he didn't have a mouthpiece during his later run. Coage was also allowed to use his own name. The "Bad News" nickname was his own, but, by 1989, trademark-happy Vincent K. McMahon needed to merchandise anything & everything about all of his wrestlers.
Check this match from March 1979. Coage actually has to redirect Blassie toward the camera during the introductions. Seems the dude had more on the ball than his manager before the match vs. Tony Garea.....
A recurring theme in the 1960's Popeye shorts had the sailor (Jack Mercer) reluctantly getting involved with modern culture.
A beat poet we could see ("Coffee House"), but ballet? Oh, the pain!
Poor Olive (Mae Questel). She's fighting a losing cause in "Ballet de Spinach":
The popularity of the board game Pictionary not only evolved into its own show (3 iterations), but also Win, Lose, or Draw, which Burt Reynolds & Bert Convy sold to NBC in the late 80's.
A teenage version landed on the Disney Channel, back when it was a premium service, in 1989, and ran for 3 years (1989-92), with actor Marc Price (Family Ties) as host. Disney produced the series themselves the 1st year before turning it over to independent producers Stone-Stanley Productions for the final 2 seasons.
Mouseketeer Brandy Brown is the announcer, perhaps the youngest in broadcast history, for this sampler with Danny Pintauro (Who's The Boss?) and Lecy Goranson (Roseanne).
This next item was previously posted a ways back over at The Land of Whatever, but it's also worth posting here.
It's for a fleeting moment or three, but for the first time, the three Howard brothers (Moe, Curly, & Shemp) are together on screen in this Three Stooges offering, "Hold That Lion". Curly is a sleeping passenger, with a full head of hair. Footage was later reused when "Lion" was remade as "Booty & The Beast" 5 years later.
I think I had this next item up before, but the previous video had been deleted from YouTube.
Anyway, Mark Goodson & Bill Todman took the general concept of Art Linkletter's Kids Say The Darndest Things, a component of House Party back in the day, and turned it into a game show for CBS in 1982.
Child's Play is, as host Bill Cullen explains, a game played by adults, who have to figure out what the children being interviewed are talking about. Two pilots were produced in 1982 before the series launched a year-long run in September of that year.
Future actors Breckin Meyer & Tara Reid were among the tots who appeared on the show, but you won't see them in this pilot.
The National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) had their own television programming opposite the AWA and the WWWF during the 70's. During the territory era, the NWA had programs geared for specific territories such as Florida, Georgia, and, here the Mid-Atlantic, which covered territory between Maryland & the Carolinas.
Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling began airing in 1973, and ran for 13 years, ending when promoter Jim Crockett began to consolidate his programming to counter the at-the-time WWF (now WWE) and its national expansion.
Bob Caudle was the play-by-play man, often working solo, often with guest analysts until the 80's, when David Crockett began as a color analyst, a gig he also would have with World Championship Wrestling on TBS for a few years.
Let's go to 1983 for this sampler with the likes of Rick Steamboat, Greg Valentine, and Sgt. Slaughter.
Goofy spoofs college basketball in 1946's "Double Dribble". Pinto Colvig narrates, and voices Goofy.
We all know that the late actor-performance artist Andy Kaufman introduced us to the full lyrics to the theme from Mighty Mouse on Saturday Night Live. However, while Andy used a recording of the original theme, another icon released a version of the song years earlier.
Mitch Miller released his version, with vocals by the Terrytooners, in 1958:
Coinciding with season 2 of ALF on Mondays, NBC added a Saturday morning prequel featuring the Melmacian wise guy born Gordon Shumway (voice of Paul Fusco).
ALF: The Animated Series ran for three seasons, as it ended when the Monday show ended. Fusco bookends each episode with the live-action Gordon introducing each episode as a chapter in his memoir, and closing the same way. In the cartoon, Gordon is a teenager hanging with his buds, Skip, Rick, & Rhonda, the latter Gordon's girlfriend. Skip & Rhonda, as adults, would later show up on the Monday show.
In "Gordon Ships Out", chaos ensues when the boys decide to co-hab on a houseboat......
While the NFL currently restricts the availability of archival footage, including its old, syndicated recap shows, the American Football League, which merged with the NFL in 1970, had its own show, simply known as AFL Highlights.
When the league was launched in 1960, telecasts aired on ABC, which lost the rights to NBC five years later. ABC would get back into the game with Monday Night Football in 1970, and, well, we know that story, of course.
Charlie Jones, long associated with NBC, is the series host. as we turn back the clock to October 1968. The program is bookended by the teams that would play in the infamous "Heidi game" that year, the Jets & the Raiders, and not in a good way....
In 1988, as a means of appealing to toy-centric kids, ABC, DIC, & Columbia decided to expand The Real Ghostbusters to an hour, giving the 2nd half of the show to the team's mascot, Slimer. The exclamation point in the title is due to Slimer (Frank Welker) signing his name over the logo.
The Slimer half of the show had three short features, with a completely different animation style (if you had been a Real Ghostbusters fan up to this point, you know what I'm talking about). It was during this season that Buster Jones (ex-Super Friends) took over the role of Winston from Arsenio Hall, whose talk show was still four months away when the season began, and he'd spent the time between seasons filming "Coming to America" and recording an album.
If Slimer! wasn't your cup of tea, I can well understand, and sympathize.
Following is a sample half hour of Slimer!:
The Ad Council got a ton of mileage out of the characters from Johnny Hart's B. C. in the 70's.
Here, Wiley (Don Messick) plays a doctor, with Grog (Bob Holt) as his assistant. As before, Lloyd Bridges is the ending narrator.
With the help of the music collective PNAU, Elton John and Dua Lipa hit #1 on the UK charts with "Cold Heart", off "The Lockdown Sessions". You'll recognize the medley as including some of Sir Elton's earlier hits, including "Rocket Man", "Kiss The Bride", and "Sacrifice", the latter of which gives us the title of this track.
I had originally written a review piece on this next item years ago, but stupidly deleted it when the video accompanying it was deleted.
These Are The Days, a Hanna-Barbera cartoon inspired by CBS' The Waltons, was part of the ill-fated class of 1974, a group of series between CBS, ABC, & NBC that were all cancelled after 1 season of 1st run episodes.
If it wasn't for ABC's equally brainless decision to schedule Days at the bottom of the lineup leading into American Bandstand, this might've gotten some legs and lasted a while, which at that time would be rare.
The usual H-B repertory players (i.e. Don Messick, John Stephenson) were joined by primetime vets Henry Jones (ex-Channing), who was a yeoman character actor at this point, Frank Cady (ex-Green Acres, Petticoat Junction), and June Lockhart (ex-Petticoat Junction, Lassie, Lost in Space), all making their toon debuts, although Lockhart could've had hers a year earlier when H-B adapted Space for the ABC Saturday Superstar Movie. Jackie Earle Haley was also heard on another H-B frosh, Valley of The Dinosaurs, over on CBS, and Days brought ex-Monkee Micky Dolenz (also heard on Devlin) and Pam Ferdin (ex-The Roman Holidays) into the mix, after Ferdin had been heard in "Charlotte's Web" a year earlier, and Dolenz had worked on Butch Cassidy.
Following is the series opener, "Sensible Ben":
Lee Michaels was still trading off his 1971 top ten hit, "Do You Know What I Mean", which landed him on The Midnight Special in 1973.
Popeye travels to the village of Puddleburg after acquiring the town newspaper (don't ask). Olive tags along to take a job as a school teacher, even though they both know that the citizens have little to no interest in learning or reading, and a trio of bullies mean to keep it that way......
Donald Duck is working a carnival booth, and cajoles his nephews, Huey, Dewey, & Louie, into playing. And, oh, is that ever a big mistake, because that leads to a family feud in "Straight Shooters":
Disney's educational arm, I must assume, released 1982's The Energy Savers, to schools. The studio repurposed some old footage dating back to at least the 40's, from what I can see, for this tutorial, narrated by Gary Owens (ex-Space Stars), with Hal Smith (Davey & Goliath) as Goofy.
The Thing (Joe Baker, ex-The Rich Little Show) steps in when "Decepto The Great" turns out to be a major fraud.
From Mister Rogers' Neighborhood:
Fred Rogers reads Looking For Letters while an animated video of the book's illustrations plays. This came from the same season in which the Children's Television Workshop had contracted Filmation to record short bits for Sesame Street with Jughead Jones and Superman.
Popeye spins a yarn for Swee'pea in which he casts himself as King Midas. Unfortunately, the writers had to include the Sea Hag as the villain.
Here's "The Golden Touch":
Today, parents will be walking their children through their neighborhoods after school, or venturing out to friendlier, outlying areas. Most kids today either have their costumes made for them, cobbling together some used clothes and makeup, or, they go old school with traditional costumes.
Yes, they still make Halloween costumes, but they don't promote them like they used to.
Most of us grew up with Woolworth's, and their annual Halloween sales. Ben Cooper & Collegeville were the two biggest brands of costumes back then. The last costume I had was a Spider-Man model from Ben Cooper, circa 1974, for a school party. Unfortunately, it didn't survive the day, due to tearing when I had to make use of the little boys' room in a pinch.
Anyway, here's a Woolworth's/Woolco ad from 1977.
The Mary Jane Girls, proteges of Rick James, hit #1 on the dance chart, #3 on the R & B chart, and in the top 10 on the Hot 100, with 1985's "In My House", which merited an appearance on Soul Train.
Based on Jill Murphy's novel, The Worst Witch became a TV-movie airing in the UK in 1986. Fairuza Balk has the title role, as part of an ensemble also including Diana Rigg (ex-The Avengers), Charlotte Rae (The Facts of Life) in a dual role, and Tim Curry ("The Rocky Horror Picture Show").
Professor Weirdo runs afoul of the Mayor, and needs to prove that Milton The Monster is not a threat. But, an accident turns Milton into a "Monstrous Monster":
From season 4 of The Streets of San Francisco:
A fugitive (Billy Green Bush, who'd been recurring on Baretta) reconnects with his "Runaway" daughter (Pamelyn Ferdin, ex-The Paul Lynde Show, Lassie, Curiosity Shop), but the reunion is anything but pleasant.
In reality, it wasn't just Porky Pig, as Daffy Duck got him into a mess with a hotel charging exorbitant rates.
I can recall when this aired on WNEW (now WNYW) & WSBK on cable back in the 70's. Here's "Porky Pig's Feat":
From season 2 (syndicated) of The Real Ghostbusters:
A carnival owner develops a roller coaster ride in the image of Ecto-1, and uses the team's likenesses, all without permission. When the ride is haunted by animal ghosts, the carny has little choice but to call in the Ghostbusters.
To think this all started with Egon (Maurice LaMarche) out on a date with Janine......
From season 2 of The Jackson 5ive Show:
Michael solos on a cover of The Supremes' #1 hit, "Love is Here & Now, You're Gone", which topped the Hot 100 5 years earlier. Taken from the episode, "Jackson & The Beanstalk":
From the Fleischers' Color Classics series comes "The Fresh Vegetable Mystery", in which sentient foodstuffs are treated like ordinary folks, especially when a family is abducted.....
Ub Iwerks took his turn to adapt Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but with a few twists, in 1934's "Headless Horseman".
It's been a long time since we took a look at the short-lived Joker! Joker! Joker!, a weekend spinoff of The Joker's Wild, from 1979.
As we look in on the game play, a 9 year old champion has already racked up over $4000 in cash & prizes for his family. Jack Barry is host & executive producer, with Jay Stewart as the announcer.
Happened across this compilation of ads, some of which were in-show spots from The Bugs Bunny Show during its primetime run (1960-2), and some we've used before, for Alpha-Bits and Tang. Voices by Mel Blanc, except for Elmer Fudd (Hal Smith, The Andy Griffith Show):
From either season 5 or 6 of Sesame Street:
David (Northern Calloway) and The Count have an issue with stacks of newspapers, presumably at Mr. Hooper's shop. While the Count knows how many are there, David is perplexed until Easy Reader (Morgan Freeman), visiting from The Electric Company, lends a hand.....
From season 1 of the 1st Lone Ranger animated series:
The Ranger (Michael Rye) and Tonto (Shep Menken) run into what appears to be an insurmountable foe, but is really anything but, in "Night of The Vampire":
Legendary songwriter Hoagy Carmichael signed on with PBS to host a children's music program, Hoagy Carmichael's Music Shop, which aired back in 1970, produced at WGBH in Boston, the same affiliate that also produced shows like Zoom during the decade of the 70's.
Hoagy's son, Hoagy B. (Bix) served as a producer for the series. Background music was performed by the group Stark Reality, which released a 2 album set of material from the show.
Following is a sample entry:
It's been a long time since we checked in on the Spidey Super Stories feature from The Electric Company.
Spider-Man (Danny Seagren) has his work cut out for him against "Dr. Fright" (Skip Hinnant is under the top hat). Hattie Winston is the narrator.
Back when the Academy Awards were handed out on a Monday night, instead of Sunday as it is now, NBC got the bright idea to preface that year's Oscars with an animated special from Rankin-Bass, their first entry for the network since Mouse on The Mayflower in 1968.
The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians uses some classic routines with comedy legends like Jack Benny, George Burns, Phyllis Diller (who previously had done "Mad Monster Party" for R-B), Henny Youngman, Flip Wilson, Groucho Marx, and George Jessel. Paul Frees recreated a classic WC Fields routine, and also impersonated Chico & Zeppo Marx, in addition to being the announcer. He'd record some music doing his Fields mimic later in 1970. Joan Gardner voices Josephine opposite Groucho's Napoleon in a recreation of the Marx Bros.' famous "I'll Say She Is". The Smothers Brothers' musical numbers, it is said, are a big reason why past YouTubers' copies of this special were removed. Pray it doesn't happen here, though the fellow that posted this added in some more contemporary advertising for VHS tapes.....
Billy Boid (Carl Reiner, The Dick Van Dyke Show) decides to trick out the "throne" of Linus The Lionhearted (Sheldon Leonard) with remote controls-----with predictable results. Here's "Billy's Inventions":
From season 1 of Linus The Lionhearted (now on MeTV Toons):
Lovable Truly (Bob McFadden) has to deliver a parcel to a strange, possibly haunted house. Here's "Truly Scary":
Porky Pig owns a diner in this 1942 Chuck Jones farce, "Porky's Cafe". The lone customer would feel right at home in a Capital One commercial today as he orders virtually everything from the menu.
Stuffy Durma was one of the rotating back-up features in Hal Seeger's Milton The Monster, which turns 60 this year.
Because of the rotation format, only four shorts were produced. Dayton Allen came over from Terrytoons to voice all the characters in these shorts, as, in "Nuggets to You", the final short, he recycles his Sheriff voice from Deputy Dawg to play an Arizona landowner who stands in the way of Stuffy's plans for land development in the desert.
Sans her puppet entourage, Shari Lewis was a featured guest for a week on the short-lived CBS game show, Musical Chairs. Shari shares the stage with host Adam Wade (later of Super Globetrotters), Broadway star Larry Kert, and future chart toppers Sister Sledge (4 years before "We Are Family" topped the charts).
Shari performs "Talk to The Animals" from "Dr. Doolittle".
The post-John Kricfalusi era of Ren & Stimpy proved to be where the series jumped the shark on Nickelodeon. The plots were even more bizarre, such as 1995's "The Scotsman in Space", with special guest star Alan Young (ex-DuckTales). Co-written & directed by Bob Camp, who had taken over after Kricfalusi was given the heave-ho by Nick. Fellow comics vets Stephen DiStefano & Bill Wray also contributed, with DiStefano in a voice role as well as a producer.
Halloween is 3 weeks away, so let's serve up a Halloween themed episode of The New Adam-12.
While the kiddo's are doing some trick or treating, with 2 officers costumed for the occasion, someone's taking advantage of the occasion to commit crimes. Marvin Kaplan (ex-Alice, Top Cat) makes a now-rare appearance as a store owner who is one of the robbery victims.
Paramount was doing a lot of experimenting in the 60's, starting with creating a comedy team in Jeepers & Creepers. Unfortunately, save for airings on, say for example, Nickelodeon, or, more recently, Me-TV/Me-TV Toons, the four shorts this canine duo did together have been largely lost media.
Jack Mercer (Popeye) voices Jeepers and co-wrote "Trouble Date".
Following is an in-show ad from Linus The Lionhearted:
Rory Raccoon (Bob McFadden) dreams that a giant crow steals his corn, or, more specifically, Post's Toasties corn flakes.
But, then, the dream comes true, or does it?
The Real Ghostbusters (Lorenzo Music, Maurice LaMarche, Frank Welker, & Arsenio Hall) decide to take a vacation, and end up on a haunted "Dairy Farm". Peter falls for the young farmer in charge, and, of course, there's chaos.
Comes with the bumpers from the syndicated run with a talking "No Ghost" logo. Wikipedia claimed it was only Arsenio Hall, but when one bumper gives the ghost Slimer's voice, figure Frank Welker contributed as well.
We all know dogs like bones. Well, as Sabrina is about to discover, a "Wishbone" that Aunt Zelda discards in the garbage ends up in the paws of Chili Dog & Hot Dog, Jr. (Don Messick & Howard Morris), which of course leads to chaos.
While this uses the open to Sabrina's 1971 solo series, this is actually from 1969's Archie Comedy Hour.
We had this up before, here and at The Land of Whatever, and, then, it was deleted by YouTube. Well, now, it's back, thanks to a Sanford & Son fan channel. We posted this at The Land of Whatever about a week or so ago, so now we'll bring it here, too.
Scatman Crothers (Chico & The Man, Hong Kong Phooey) guest stars on Sanford & Son as an old friend of Fred (Redd Foxx). Next thing ya know, we get a duet of "All of Me". Foxx would do a few more musical numbers during the series run, with the likes of Della Reese and series regular LaWanda Page, among others.
Miles Laboratories' ad agency hired comics icon Wally Wood to design this 1968 spot for Alka-Seltzer. What we can't be sure of is if this harried fellow is dreaming all of this.
The Drak Pack have to stop Dr. Dred from the "Perilous Plunder of Pirate's Park", which, in this case, is an amusement park.
Nearly 20 years after production ceased, Reading Rainbow is returning, this time refocused for today's generation.
With original host LeVar Burton busy at the moment with the CW's revival of Trivial Pursuit, which officially begins season 2 next month, viral librarian Mychal Threets (Mychal The Librarian) takes over as the host, with the show now set in an actual library. Threets made his debut on social media during the pandemic 5 years ago, and, fittingly, the new Rainbow, which is set to start Saturday, will be streaming on YouTube through Sony's KidZuko channel, which also serves up this trailer:
Prior to being elected Senator from NY, Robert F. Kennedy began what would be a 4 year run of annual appearances on WNEW's Wonderama with host Sonny Fox. RFK's compassion for children, unfortunately, has been lost on his son, now the brainless head of the department of Health & Human Services.
Let's go back to 1965.
This is listed on YouTube as episode 2 of The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show. Among the highlights:
The Hudsons, Billy Van, & Peter Cullen play a staff of Frankenstein monsters, operating on a patient, from the looks of things. Cullen was also the show's announcer, and voices the Bear (likely Janos Prohaska in the costume, just like on The Andy Williams Show) in a skit.
Unfortunately, Wikipedia has no info on the young boy playing the "network president".....
Some genius at Paramount thought having Sylvester Stallone direct "Staying Alive", the sequel to 1977's "Saturday Night Fever", would create another monster hit.
Uh, not so much.
"Alive" was one of two films John Travolta headlined in 1983, the other being "Two of a Kind", reuniting him with "Grease" co-star Olivia Newton-John. But, enough about that for now.
Stallone managed to get his brother, Frank, onto the "Alive" soundtrack, producing a 1-hit wonder with "Far From Over", which landed Frank on American Bandstand:
From Schoolhouse Rock:
"Do The Circulation" is a bouncy Science Rock entry that teaches kids how blood circulates. Funny how the aerobics craze was starting around the same time........
The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program was founded by then-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates in 1983, and expanded its reach to the UK in the 90's.
Before that expansion, the DARE program was the subject of an episode of The New Adam-12. Ron Glass (ex-Barney Miller) and Bridget Hanley (ex-Here Come The Brides) are the guest stars.
Who says nerds can't play?
Steve Urkel (Jaleel White) is the manager for his school's men's varsity basketball team. When the team suddenly is down to four healthy players due to injuries and players fouling out, Urkel talks his way into the game, with the team down double digits in the 4th quarter.
IIRC, White may have taken part in some of MTV's Rock 'n' Jock basketball games in the 90's, but all of America got to see him show some skills.....
Apparently, Jon "Bowzer" Bauman always wanted to be a game show host.
That said, it explains why he has the MC's role for a parody of Family Feud involving The Ramones. Post-game, the punk icons perform "Rock & Roll High School".
In addition to being cast as Aquaman in the initial Super Friends, character actor Norman Alden (ex-Rango) began recurring on Owen Marshall, Counselor-at-Law, as part of a 3-man rotation with Pat Harrington and Russell Johnson (ex-Gilligan's Island) as prosecutors. We've seen Harrington on Owen Marshall before, so now, from season 3, Norman takes his turn in "The Prowler", with Donna Mills, Jed Allan (Celebrity Bowling, Days of Our Lives), and singer-turned-actress Michelle Phillips (The Mamas & The Papas).
From Famous Studios' Noveltoon series comes this farce from 1946, "Sudden Fried Chicken".
Now, we're all familiar with Herman (Arnold Stang), who teamed with Katnip in the 50's, but it turns out Herman had already appeared in a number of shorts with Henry, a rooster, and his wife, Bertha. "Sudden Fried Chicken" spelled the end for Henry & Bertha, and it would be a few years before Katnip made his debut.
Here, Henry is coaxed into fighting in a boxing match to win some money and respect.
And here I thought this started sooner than it did.
"This" would be The NFL Today, CBS' pre-game show ahead of their NFL coverage, which launched in 1975. Brent Musburger was the show's 1st anchor, aided by a revolving door cast of analysts and co-hosts, including Phyllis George, Jayne Kennedy, former player Irv Cross, and the infamous Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder, whose run with the show was torpedoed in the 80's due to some ill-timed remarks.
Today, James Brown is the anchor, having come over from Fox a few years back, aided by former players Matt Ryan, Nate Burleson (CBS Mornings, Hollywood Squares), and Hall of Fame coach Bill Cowher.
To mark the 50th anniversary, Musburger was brought back as a special guest, and the panel honored him with some throwback wardrobe, breaking out some wigs and polyester suits.....
In the wake of Rubik's Cube becoming a cultural phenomenon in the 80's, Ideal came out with a copycat in Alexander's Star. Check this ad:
The "friend" in question is rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot, who'd score a big hit on the Hot 100 with 1992's "Baby Got Back". It's his voice you hear in this ad.
We all know that Beetle Bailey was adapted for television, with the first shorts rolling out in 1963.
Ah, but what is this? A short from 1960? Yep.
Seems that King Features, which launched their animation division with Popeye in '60, had tried out Beetle with a pilot produced, and presumably written, by Joe Oriolo and Pat Sullivan, Jr., more closely associated with Felix The Cat and Casper.
The voice actors remain the same, Howard Morris & Allan Melvin, as this is a 2 man show. Here's "Labor Shortage".
Today, Peter Pan peanut butter is one of a zillion products under the ConAgra banner.
Back in 1972, it was still manufactured by Derby Foods, whose advertising agency felt the product needed a live-action mascot.
Enter Alan Sues (Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In), who donned the green costume for a series of spots, including this one.
From season 4 of Dragnet (2nd series):
Sgt. Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) probe the death of a juvenile, and find that the parents don't seem to mind that they're toking right in front of three kids......
One week ago, Supertramp co-founder, co-vocalist, and songwriter Rick Davies had passed away. In his memory, we present "Goodbye Stranger", off 1979's "Breakfast in America", as presented on The Midnight Special.
Sometime in the 70's---no one's exactly sure, it seems---Johnson Wax (now SC Johnson) added a lemon scent to its line of Glade air fresheners. The couple depicted in the ad look & sound like they might've migrated from a certain yellow brick road...........
The Houndcats get a rematch with The Raven (Michael Bell in a dual role), who's after some government plans after escaping prison.
The Lone Ranger (William Conrad) meets up with some lumberjacks in "Tall Timber".
What happens when prisoners try to escape? Chaos, sure, but also some silliness, in "Bars & Stripes Forever".
Warden Paws is modeled after Hugh Herbert, a popular comedian of the day, and this wouldn't be the last time Herbert was used as a model for a character.
Haaaaiiiii-yaaaaaahhhhh!!
USA Network had something when they decided to bolster their Saturday afternoon block with Kung Fu Theatre, with all the high impact, high camp martial arts adventure you could ever want. If memory serves me, USA would schedule 2 movies every Saturday afternoon, a practice adopted by the now-defunct El Rey network a few years ago when owner Robert Rodriguez wanted to pay homage to the cult favorite block of the 80's.
2025 marks Beetle Bailey's 75th anniversary, as the strip debuted in 1950, and the Walker brothers, Neal, Greg, & Brian, sons of creator Mort Walker, are keeping the series going to this day.
In 1963, Beetle (Howard Morris) and friends scheme to get into a dance that is meant "For Officers Only", although Sgt. Snorkel (Allan Melvin) is saddened to deliver the bad news, because he knows his men deserve a good time as much as he does.
Co-author Bruce Howard also worked on a number of primetime shows in the 70's.
If you're a fan of Teen Titans, or the insipid, still-on-the-air, still unfunny Teen Titans GO!, this hurts.
Greg Cipes, who voiced Beast Boy ever since the 1st Titans series launched on Chumptoon Network in 2003, revealed that he was fired earlier this year due to his having Parkinson's Disease. In Instagram posts shared earlier this year, Cipes proved that he could still do the job, and executive producer Sam Register was being blamed for the firing. Cipes had essayed the role for 22 years, including some DTV's.
In this writer's opinion, Register is just the messenger/scapegoat. The true blame lies with WBD CEO and professional dweeb David Zaslav. On orders from Zaslav, who has all the compassion of a dead tree, Register told Cipes in February that he was being let go.
How Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool News, which broke the story, missed that part of the equation, I don't know. Cipes says Register told him they were looking at finding an impressionist to take over the role of Beast Boy. And this was despite the fact that the rest of the show's regular cast (Scott Menville, Khary Payton, Tara Strong, Hynden Walch) "had his back" and were supportive.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if this starts the end of the line for Teen Titans Go!, which has been on the air for over 10 years, outlasting the previous iteration. Five actors, working together for 22 years, like a family unto itself. Take one away, and the domino effect could be in the offing. Just sayin'.
Parkinson's claimed Muhammad Ali. Michael J. Fox has it, and is still with us. Prayers to Greg as he recovers.
This Tom & Jerry offering, "The Outfoxed Fox", has nothing to do with a children's book of the same name, but is, rather, a clever tale of a fox (Len Weinrib, impersonating Paul Lynde) and a hound (John Stephenson) running a scam on our boys, but make a fatal mistake.........
In 1957, CBS had asked Terrytoons to produce a promo reel for network affiliates. No, you wouldn't see classic Terrytoons characters like Mighty Mouse (who had made his CBS debut 2 years earlier) or Heckle & Jeckle, but an experimental new style of animation under the direction of Gene Deitch.
Depth Study, I don't think, was ever shown over the air. All the voices, apparently, are performed by Allen Swift. There's also vintage footage of I Love Lucy, The Ed Sullivan Show, Person to Person, & The Jack Benny Program, among the CBS shows.
I had done a piece before on our next subject, but it was deleted at a time when YouTube had removed every last video available on Courageous Cat.
Courageous was, along his sidekick, Minute Mouse, a parody of Bob Kane's most famous creation, Batman, and produced by independent producer Sam Singer for Tele-Features. 130 shorts were produced over 2 seasons (1960-2). The music was credited to Johnny Holliday, and, per Wikipedia (take it with a grain of salt), Roy Halee (Heckle & Jeckle) & Dayton Allen (ex-Howdy Doody) worked on the series along with primary voice actor Dallas McKennon.
Have to guess it might be either McKennon or Allen impersonating Edward G. Robinson as Chauncey Frog, Courageous' arch-nemesis, in "The Case of The Prison Break":
From Tom & Jerry's 1955 entry, "Pecos Pest", comes this little novelty.
Jerry's Uncle Pecos (Shug Fisher) sings & stutters his way through "Crambone". To think this was 70 years ago.
OK KO: Let's be Heroes! ran on Cartoon Network for 3 seasons over 22 months (2017-9), but the network made the mistake of running the series on weekdays instead of Saturdays. Had they made the show weekly, it might still be on the air, but for the network's obsession with Teen Titans Go!, which had one crossover episode with OK KO that also involved other CN series such as Steven Universe & Uncle Grandpa.
Full episodes are not available on YouTube, just excerpts, like this one, in which Captain Planet (David Coburn, essaying the role for the first time in 21 years) appears, as does Kwame (LeVar Burton).
The Spinners hit #1 with "Then Came You", a duet with Dionne Warwick. However, while Warwick was either ill or on tour, Joni Sledge (Sister Sledge) stepped in to pinch hit when the Spinners appeared on The Midnight Special:
The writers of The Houndcats borrowed from the Scooby-Doo playbook for the episode, "The Ruckus on The Rails Mission".
Clerow "Flip" Wilson, given an opportunity by NBC to develop a story based on his childhood, produced two specials for the network during the course of his variety series' run.
"Clerow Wilson & The Miracle of PS 14" is the first of these, with DePatie-Freleng regular Bob Holt as our announcer. The animation, under the direction of Corny Cole, a veteran who'd been with WB & DFE for years, isn't the usual DFE product by any stretch.
The Man From UNCLE had ended its run by the time DePatie-Freleng served up "The Ant From Uncle", not so much a parody of the spy series, but, a standard The Ant & The Aardvark short.
From season 1 of The Beatles:
The band is in Paris, and it's left to Paul (Lance Percival) to retrieve some blueprints of a fashion designer from a thief.
Space Ghost (Gary Owens, The Green Hornet) has to overcome the black magic of "The Sorcerer" (Alan Reed, fresh from The Flintstones), who has cast a spell turning Jan & Jace (Ginny Tyler & Tim Matheson) into surrogate siblings of Blip (Don Messick).
Goofy (Pinto Colvig) is eager to start "Two Weeks Vacation" the second he clocks out of work. Unfortunately, a series of mishaps follows.
Alan Reed narrates, and voices the supporting characters in one of his first cartoon jobs.
"American Girl" was one of the first hits for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, which landed them on The Midnight Special in June 1978.
NBC & Screen Gems took a chance on a sitcom set at a summer camp. Like another Screen Gems series from the same period, Gidget, Camp Runamuck lasted just one season, partially due to its opposition, including another Screen Gems entry, Hanna-Barbera's The Flintstones, and the 1st year Western, The Wild, Wild West.
25 years after the series ended, MTV Networks (now part of Paramount Global) acquired rerun rights to the series, and ran it in the daytime on Nickelodeon. Runamuck then moved to Comedy Central the following year, and hasn't been seen since, save maybe for Sony-owned Get TV (no longer available in the 518).
Following is the pilot, "Who Stole My Bathtub?":
The late WWE Hall of Famer Iron Sheik was never a babyface in WWE. But, like fellow heel King Kong Bundy, advertisers saw value in the Sheik in doing commercials.
So, when Toyota introduced the Bundera LandCruiser in 1985, they eventually got in contact with Vince McMahon, who not only loaned out the Sheik, but announcer Gene Okerlund, who handles the voice over for this super short (15 second) spot.
Behind The Scene takes a look at comics and comics conventions in this 1979 documentary that appears to have been produced for use in schools. Actor-comedian Jonathan Winters is the narrator.
"Color me Dredful" is the series premiere of Drak Pack, and establishes almost immediately that this should've taken longer to develop before hitting the air.
Dr. Dred (Hans Conreid) decides to remove all color from everything & everyone but himself & his team.
Seems as though that's a familiar plot......
