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.
Amusing. One YouTube commentator noted how this was in answer to Disney's "The Small One", released the same year. The producers might've also been inspired by Rankin-Bass' Nestor The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, produced for ABC around the same period.
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.
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":
In memory of Danny Seagren, 81, who passed away earlier this week. No rating out of respect.
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........
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.......
Kay would depart a year later, with Tom Morrison (Mighty Mouse) taking over the role of Gandy for the rest of the run.
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.....
Coage would later shave his head, developing the menacing persona we all came to know and loathe.....
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.
CBS knew they were in trouble scheduling this show opposite Wheel of Fortune. I would think this kind of game would lend itself to airing 6 days a week instead of 5, so more children could watch. Another wasted opportunity.
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.
In memory of Bob Caudle, 95, who has passed away this weekend. No rating out of respect.
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:
And, here's Andy, nearly 20 years later:
Of course, Andy was lip-syncing, as the glass of water was just another prop in his act.
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......
DIC was actually programming against itself, as memory serves, since this ALF aired opposite The Real Ghostbusters on ABC. We'll look at ALF Tales, which bowed in 1988, and lasted a year, another day.
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!:
Some things should be left alone. Giving Slimer his own half hour was a mistake. Only one season's worth of episodes were cycled through for three years.
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":
We lost June Lockhart recently, and we weren't doing a rating anyway.
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......
Most of the opening credits were edited off, as you can see. Contrived? Yep.
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":
Turns out the boys are a lot smarter than their uncle ever suspected, and we'd see that even more 40 years later in the original DuckTales.
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.
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.
