Outside of actually buying tickets to the theaters, how did we ever become movie lovers, all those years ago, watching Hollywood films on our little square black and white TVs? Because movies were always big business on TV, and they reached an even wider audience on the tube.
I've often thought about this over the years, wondering how I was able to connect so strongly with works of art that were so seriously compromised through their subsequent exhibition on television. How did that happen? It came home again to me this last week when I was preparing a review of 1953's The Robe (for an Easter deadline I missed), the first movie shot in the CinemaScope widescreen process.
Growing up in the 1970s, during Easter week, The Robe was a regular on our local TV station's afternoon "Big Show," along with other classics like Barabbas, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and King of Kings. All of these religious epics sported original projected screen dimensions far outside the limited 4:3 ratio of American TV monitors prior to the late 1990s, and yet they still seemed thrilling to us, as did so many other post-1953 widescreen movies shown on television.
Seeing how good the The Robe's Blu looked, I was curious to compare that experience with watching movies the way I used to, so I dug out my old VHS copy of The Robe (that had been helpfully "formatted to fit my screen"), and played it on my restored 1970s 13in 4:3 black and white GE TV. How in god's name did ghostly, cramped, mangled images like those capture at least two generations of TV watchers? Why did we put up with it? After all, no one goes to the Musee du Louvre expecting to view the Mona Lisa through blinds or a keyhole (although they do make you stand way back now).
When I was a kid I knew those TV dimensions weren't right. I mean, it was obvious. You went to see The Poseidon Adventure at the drive-in and you got a pretty good (but probably not exact) approximation of its Panavision 2.35:1 image ratio. A year later you see it on TV, and the image is square and people are yelling at other characters who aren't in the frame (and they're yelling in black and white, too).
I tried to explain that once to my old man, who brushed me off with a simple, "You got it wrong; it's just because the screen is bigger at the theater," before he want back to his newspaper, which was part of my point, the larger implications, however, he entirely missed. He didn't seem to care at all, as I would image most consumers of movies and TV felt back then. The technical aspects of widescreen movies largely functioned as marketing--not a science experiment. If audiences thought Ice Station Zebra might be better in Super-Panavision 70 because the ads screamed it was, they bought a ticket. They didn't bitch later that their TV didn't follow suit. It just was what it was.
After all, for my parents and myself, this miracle of television was still just that: a miracle. 2-dimensional images that brought dawn to midnight entertainment, including old Hollywood movies, "free" of charge (if you didn't mind the commercials...which were often just as entertaining, because they had to be), right into your home, was a modern marvel that made the previous game-changer, radio, seem staid and limited. When I, purely by accident, snagged a cast-off portable 13in TV from a elementary school friend moving out of town, I felt like I held some sort of mystical, magical portal to a thousand thousand other worlds, when I'd hit all the lights and let that gray, ghostly light bathe me in total passive electronic love (Jacqueline Susann was right...).
So who cared (or for most: knew) that what was showing up, at least in terms of old movies, wasn't being correctly shown. And yes, I am talking about old movies, too, the ones shot in the old Academy ratio. They may have seemed to fit our boxy square TV screens perfectly, but the exhibition was still wrong. After all, these old movies were meant to be seen on big screens, in a theater, on a silver screen, with no commercials. If you think that doesn't make a difference, it does. Check out a revival screening sometime of an old black and white movie you've seen on TV. Just the sheer enlargement of the image makes an impact you can't anticipate.
When you look back at the actual timeline, it's surprisingly short, the span between the widespread introduction of television (let's say, the late 1940s) and the beginning of the cable and specifically the home video revolution (let's say, the late 70s, early 80s), where getting movie aspect ratios correct suddenly became a selling point (RCA's CED videodisc system was the first, apparently, to employ letterboxing). Only about 30 years, give or take, where we went from passive watchers of TV, to the beginnings of the more sophisticated consumers of "film" (blech), a small online segment of which still engage in arcane debates about ratios and screen sizes and what have yous.
Any kid paying attention, though, could see that letterboxing occured way before the CED, albeit in very brief fashion. As a kid, I remember quite well seeing most Universal library titles, such as several Don Knotts outings, employing letterboxing for the opening and closing credits, when shown on television (Universal employed this fancy drawn scroll work in the black bars, in the hopes of cluing in panicked viewers that their TV tube wasn't on the fritz). Why they went to the trouble of that, I'm not sure. Maybe it was a legal thing, getting everyone's name displayed? Maybe it was just someone in the telecine lab having fun.
And now...everything's fixed, right? The wonks have had their say, the TVs are all widescreen, the DVDs and streaming follow the law (of course there's no law...) and display everything at the correct ratio, right?
Wrong. I was flipping through Tubi the other night (reams of weird, old exploitation movies are just one of their many treasure troves) when I came upon Lord Jim, the 1965 epic mangling of Joseph Conrad's classic. The opening credits were 2.35 (which wasn't really the Super Panavision 70's intended 2.20, but why quibble?), before it switched to "full screen" 1.75. Curious, I checked some other notable widescreen offerings on Tubi--most were incorrectly formatted. Tubi used to be pretty good about this kind of thing--apparently not any more.
You see what's happening, don't you? Our TVs are again dictating how we see things. It's probably just easier for everything to fit our widescreen 1.75 monitors, right? We even now have the downright perverse procedure of "stretching" old 4:3 images to fit our monitors. M*A*S*H and Leave it to Beaver and even early Friends episodes certainly weren't shot or displayed in widescreen, but they are now. Nothing's settled. Nothing's fixed. We're regressing, oddly enough.
Remember my original question: how did we become lovers of movies on that little square box? I guess the answer is, again: who cares.
Increasingly, I'm finding myself avoiding like the plague Netflix and Max and Hulu and all that other streaming garbage to instead troll through YouTube for anything, anything, that smacks of pre-1990s, non-ironic content. Content that its makers took seriously, no matter how silly they knew it was. Content that has real people trying to be actors and failing. Content that doesn't involve Ryan Gosling or Walton Goggins or that British girl who looks like Bugs Bunny, and that didn't cost tens of millions in laundered drug money (you think these streaming movies and series really cost that much? You're adorable!).
And when I'm hitting YT, my absolute first go-to subscription is Skip Elsheimer's A/V Geeks 16mm Films (and particularly his daily grab-bag A/V Geeks 16mm Lunch compilations), where I can kick back and pretend I'm at Wayne Trail Elementary School again, and it's time for the teacher to cool out in the back of the room while we kids sit rapt, learning about proper hand washing hygiene, cabinet making in colonial America, future key punch operator careers, and a thousand other subjects that were automatically more interesting than what the teacher had to say, merely by being projected onto our silver-backed DA-LITE fold-up screen (I've written before about educational films at Drunk TV--check out this review of one of Skip's awesome compilations).
Already knowing the answer (any vintage media lover is a masochist at heart), I've asked some of my grown kids if they watched educational shorts like these when they were in school. I was of course condescendingly informed that they either watched actual Hollywood movies, or newer documentaries that might have referenced an old Encyclopaedia Britannica or Coronet Films clip...before tearing it apart for gender, racial, religious, ageist, and 37 other biases. Natch.
With each kid now symbiotically joined to a cell phone, it's simply impossible to convey to them how exciting it was to have your teacher suddenly give up the will to live and instead roll a 16mm movie, just so they could get 20 minutes of peace and quiet in the back of the darkened classroom (a "quick snooze" was usually the goal, but I'm not ruling out "snapping one off" when that weird art teacher with the hairy arms would substitute).
After all, these kids can watch anything on their phones, instantaneously, from endless TikTok inanities to Instagram reels to illegally downloaded Hollywood blockbusters. Why the hell would they care about something like 1976's Walk Safe Young America, from Lee Stanley Films, where hot af crossing guard host June Lockhart blithely slinks around casually warning all those clueless youths that without proper walking etiquette, they are going to get splattered all over the streets.
Then again, I'm betting school is just as boring as it ever was, so maybe, just maybe...they might welcome any interruption, particularly if such an interruption comes via a noisy, ridiculously outmoded form of exhibition known as the 16mm film projector (about 10 years ago, when some of my kids for the first time saw a record on a turntable, they marveled at it like those apes gaping at Kubrick's black slab).
Okay, so...it's 1975, and America, soon to be dazzled by its own Bicentennial, is lumbering towards a disaster known as James Earl Carter, Jr (a classic serial killer name if there ever was one). But before the world slips into darkness, young Los Angeles suburbanite transplant Tommy (Shane Stanley), is having a nightmare, crying out for, "Sandy! Sandy!" (when I do that, I'm dreaming about Sandy Duncan, giving me that look). And who is Sandy? Sandy is Tommy's disobedient German Shepherd (and a dead ringer for the fleabag from Run, Joe, Run).
You see, Sandy, a country dog, didn't know the rules of the 'burbs: you gotta stop and look both ways before entering the street...which you certainly don't do from between parked cars. Before you can say, "Ladies and Gentlemen...the Flying Wallendas!" Sandy is airborne, thanks to a sweet red GMC truck (you know that just threw that poor pooch into the air). And viola: instant nightmare for Tommy. Mom comes in and reassures a terrified Tommy that Sandy (like Mary Richards) might just make it after all, but just to be sure that Tommy doesn't take a header as well, Mom informs Tommy that two older boys from the school's Safety Patrol are coming for him (uh oh).
Just when the story's getting good, though, our "hostess," LAPD Crossing Guard June Lockhart (that's what it says on her patch. The one on her hat, I mean) shows up to lay down on us some rules and shit, from the Man. And just in case Tommy isn't taking things seriously, she gently admonishes him to listen up real close, because the community's real proud of their Safety Patrol, you hear? You better hear, Tommy.
You better hear, Tommy, because merely walking on the sidewalk in your typical L.A. suburb is akin to taking your life into your own hands. Sexy CG June lays it out: drivers don't have time (or frankly, the interest) to look out for your scrawny asses: they're looking out for other psycho drivers. So whether or not you make it home alive is up to you, kid.
Potential dangers covered by Miss Lockhart include sirens (the only thing missing from her emphatic, "That siren means, 'Get off the street," is a concluding, "asshole!), red lights (they mean, "Stop," stupid), and homicidal motorcyclists looking to kill kids who hang back from the group (watch him deliberately slow down and head right for that little girl, before kicking over her dolly's carriage).
Oddly, Miss Lockhart then checks out of the short for a little bit (I'm betting they promised 8 hours pay, and by lunchtime, someone got a call from their agent...), and little Tommy takes over, giving us a country flashback, showing some old groaner fisherman stealing a child (at least he correctly walks his victim on the side of on-coming traffic). Rainy sidewalks and night-time walking are discussed (use a flashlight and wave it, you tards), before June, having verified that her salary had indeed cleared escrow, comes back and shows a bunch of rowdies how to get off a bus ("It's a lot smarter to be careful, a lot more fun than being hurt," she smirks as she tries half-heartedly to fend off a young Paul Mavis palming her ass).
Next, a believably pissy mom yells at her son and daughter to get into her car through the correct door (what's the correct door? Whichever one you didn't choose, morons), before she utterly humiliates them in front of their friends when they dare to step one foot outside of the crosswalk ("No! HOLD IT! Walk safely!" she barks, while her son, young Richard Ramirez, decides once and for all what he wants to be when he grows up).
Best of all, we're introduced to the neighborhood's delightfully curmudgeonly ice cream truck driver, Angelo Anthony Buono Jr., who menacingly warns a jaywalking Tommy, "Sonny, you must be new in this neighborhood--nobody gets ice cream from this wagon who doesn't walk safe." Not content to viciously rebuke young Tommy for his walking skills, the frozen treat jockey has the nerve to yell at Tommy again, this time for laughing at the kid who drops his ice cream cone when he's almost T-boned by a passing car (the vendor isn't upset enough, though, to give the kid a replacement).
Properly reproached, and eating his frozen lolly (while the poor kid in the background is still in shock, looking at his dropped cone), Tommy recounts what he (and we!) learned about walking safely, before he finds out Sandy is gonna live! She's gonna live, do ya hear me? While the happy family (his old man is actually Shane's father and the director, Lee Stanley) goes inside (at least they can't get run over there), a proto-Crips gang brazenly marches down the street, chanting, "WALK SAFE! WALK SAFE!", over and over again, Warriors-style, as a sinister warning to those who either follow the rules...or get their fucking legs broken like Sandy.
Clearly the most interesting element of Walk Safe Young America is the sinuous presence of June Lockhart as our dishy L.A.P.D. Crossing Guard. What is she doing in this non-existent budget educational short? Did she know Lee Stanley? Was she doing him a favor? Did she know someone who was creamed in a crosswalk, and this was her way of helping?
It's always fun to speculate why an actor takes a certain role, but 999 times out of 1000, the answer is crushingly simply: for the dough. And I would imagine that was Miss Lockhart's prime motivator, too. Looking at her career at this point, she had just come off a brief two year stint on Petticoat Junction (replacing deceased star, Bea Benaderet), with pickings a little slim after that. Some episodic one-offs, like Love, American Style, Marcus Welby, M.D., and Adam-12, and even an ABC Afternoon Playbreak...but no real starring, important parts for the still-lovely 50-year-old. Even the most popular actors are one role away from unemployment, so a couple of grand for a day's work on an education short that most adults and Hollywood won't see? That's easy money.
Languidly strolling around in those sexy slacks and that tight sweater (and don't forget that cap tilted at a jaunty angle), she's got to be the most sensuous crossing guard ever. Watch the scene where she lazily intones, "You see...streets are for cars...and trucks...and motorcycles...and other vehicles," while her hand brushes off any urgency to her warning. She follows this up with a full-on close-up, her beautiful, kitty-kat eyes instantly putting a hypnotic whammy on you, with this faintly dirty smirk that has no business showing up in a kid's educational short (if you watch this at night, the effect is definitely witchy). Looking and acting like that...who the hell is listening to her paranoid ramblings about cars jumping the curbs looking to pulverize you? 9-year-old me probably listened tight to what she had to say (I always took these at face value), but what she has to say to grown Paul has nothing to do with safe walking, I can guarantee that.
Easter Weekend always leaves me with a strangely nostalgic-yet-bemused feeling, certainly not surprising considering I grew up within a traditional God-fearin' midwest Methodist framework (lots of pot lucks, basketball games at the weekend MYF, Sunday school homework guiltily thrown in the wastebasket, and even more guilty prayers over every single youthful hijink)...followed, as the years passed, with the inevitable "checking out" into world-weary agnosticism.
Despite the doubts, though...you can, to paraphrase somebody somewhere, take the boy out of church but the not the church out of the boy. So, in lieu of actually stepping inside a house of worship, it's fun to go back and check out vintage TV programming that reminds me of that long-gone, lamented time. A better time, undeniably, in some small ways.
And nothing says "nostalgia" to me better than Schick Sunn Classic Productions. CBS DVD and Paramount have released Greatest Heroes of the Bible Volume One: Bible’s Greatest Stories,
a rather awkwardly-monikered single-disc gathering of four episodes of
the NBC…miniseries? series? special events? that aired sporadically
during the 1978-1979 season. Produced by the legendary Schick Sunn
Classic Productions indie (I’m about to faint…), Greatest Heroes of the Bible looked to be an effort by the studio and NBC to hopefully recreate the success of their previous joint effort, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.
As far as I can tell–and reliable info is scarce on this series/miniseries–Greatest Heroes of the Bible didn’t repeat that ratings victory. However, lovers of all things Sunn Classic (and that would most fervently
include me) will absolutely not want to miss these. All the gamey
qualities that you loved about that indie producer/distributor–including
ridiculous scripts, ridiculous special effects, and ridiculous
performances are here. It’s straight-faced hilarity, on the cheap
(please, God, for my Easter wish: put the whammy on some releasing
company and get all the Schick Sunn Classic movies out in a box set,
pronto. Thank you and amen, big guy!)
I’ve written many times before about my childhood love affair with
those insanely hyped Schick Sunn Classic Productions from the
early-to-mid 1970s–that golden age of whacky
pseudo-science/pseudo-history–when the nation’s pop culture was
saturated with B movies and sketchy documentaries and pulp books and
magazines and TV shows and toys dealing with UFOs, Bigfoot, the Bermuda
Triangle, crystal power, ESP, the Loch Ness Monster, and ancient
astronauts (to list just a few). Certainly in my memories Schick Sunn
Classic Pictures was one of the central drivers for all that giddy,
hysterical fun, during a time of my adolescence when anything
supernatural seemed not only possible but completely
plausible…depending, of course, on the marketing skills of whatever
company was flogging a product connected with that particular
phenomenon.
And nobody beat Schick Sunn Classics at marketing and
promoting “must-see” family-friendly exploitation entertainment. Based
out of Salt Lake City, Utah, indie Schick Sunn Classic Productions
compensated for their relative inexperience in actual moviemaking, by
taking a full-court press approach to pre-production marketing research
(to better determine target audience and choice of subject matter: why
waste money making a movie nobody wants to see?). This “scientific”
approach was then followed by strictly-controlled, low, low-budget
production costs for the feature, and then smacked home for maximized
profits by “four-walled” releasing schemes (renting the movie theaters
outright for 100% of the ticket sales), and then hyped by
ballyhoo-worthy saturation promotion on television, radio and print ads.
With an almost foolproof, low-risk method of producing and/or
releasing movies that were in essence “pre-sold” to a waiting public,
Schick Sunn Classic Productions produced and/or released one insanely
profitable family adventure/documentary/drama after another: When the Wind Blows, The Outer Space Connection, The Adventures of Frontier Fremont, The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena, The Mysterious Monsters (that one scared me), In Search of Noah’s Ark, The Lincoln Conspiracy, Beyond and Back, The Bermuda Triangle (same), In Search of Historic Jesus, Beyond Death’s Door, Hangar 18, and perhaps their most recognizable title, the 1974 theatrical version of The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams
(which by various accounts pulled in somewhere between $25-35 million
in ticket sales–most going directly into Schick Sunn Classic’s
pockets–on a paltry $500,000 dollar investment). I saw them all,
and absolutely loved them all, and the day someone puts out a widescreen
boxed set of those Sunn Classic titles, that’s the day I drop dead from
the vapors.
With the kind of profit margin success that the mainstream studios
could only dream of, it was inevitable that savvy, chintzy Schick Sunn
Classic Productions would be approached to produce for television, with
the studio’s most famous effort being 1977’s The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams
series. According to what I’ve read, NBC approached Sunn when a
televised airing in 1976 of the same-named 1974 movie won a sizeable
chunk of the night’s demographics. Third-placed NBC, with nothing to
lose, signed up Sunn’s one-man-band producer Charles Edward Sellier, Jr.
to gather the movie’s cast together for a 13-episode mid-season
replacement tryout in February, 1977 (in addition to producing the
original movie, Sellier also wrote the highly-fictionalized 1972 novel
from which the movie was adapted). It was a demographic (but
short-lived) hit for the network, so it’s not surprising that desperate,
struggling NBC would ask for more.
And that’s where Greatest Heroes of the Bible comes in.
Or at least that’s what I’m assuming happened, since hard, reliable
info on the show is surprisingly scant. Sellier and star Sunn house
director James L. Conway are listed as executive producers here (with
Conway helming some of the first episodes), while various sources list Greatest Heroes of the Bible
episode counts at either 17 or 15 (two episodes are listed as
two-parters in the notoriously iffy IMDB, but that may be partially
incorrect, since The Story of Noah, presented in this volume, seems complete in one episode). And that’s all I could find.
Was Greatest Heroes of the Bible initially a miniseries
offered in the fall of ’78, which led immediately to more episode orders
for a quasi-series in the spring of ’79 (sort of like ABC’s How the West Was Won)?
Or was it always an official series that got preempted and bumped
around a lot? Or were these episodes “special events” for one of NBC’s
umbrella titles that were just slotted in and “burned off” to fill in
weak spots in the schedule (…which would have been the whole schedule on
NBC)? I don’t know (and if there are any Greatest Heroes of the Bible
experts out there, by all means comment below, and I’ll amend the
review). Hopefully, James Conway will call me, and we’ll talk about Sunn
for three days straight, and then we’ll all know.
I wracked my brain to try and remember either watching Greatest Heroes of the Bible back in ’78-’79, or seeing it listed in the TV Guide,
but for the life of me I couldn’t summon it up. None of the episodes
rang a bell, although they did instantly feel as if I had seen them
before, owing to their unmistakable–and thoroughly delightful–Schick
Sunn Classic house style: amusingly portentous narration, shaky-at-best
production values (that’s being nice: they’re cheap as hell), a certain
barely-contained hysteria in the dialogue, and wildly varying
performances from the casts of familiar faces. What delicious crap! The
dialogue is oftentimes comically overstated (in that delightfully
florid, declarative, faux-Biblical style from so many earlier Hollywood
religious epics); the productions are simultaneously outrageously
ambitious and incredibly chintzy (who else but Sunn would attempt the
entire Flood/Noah story on what looks to be a $143 budget?), and the
performances range from quite thoughtful to, um…awful.
The disc opens with The Ten Commandments, where we get a credit sequence that looks like “The Wide, Wide World of Biblical Sports” (“…and the agony of self-doubt!”), while a suspiciously similar old-school Battlestar Galactica theme plays as Schick Sunn Classic god Brad Crandall enthusiastically reads the card for tonight’s fight. Greatest Heroes of the Bible
pretty much got a “highly recommended” from me right then and there,
but when the cast was announced, ending with, “…and Anson Williams as
Nabar,” it took all my willpower not to fall to the floor and speak in
tongues in a combined paroxysm of religious mania and Aaron Spelling-ish
synergy. What genius decided Potsie Weber would make a believably
treacherous, murderous Nabar? And yes, he is Potsie, because they even cast his Happy Days girlfriend, Lorrie Mahaffey, here, too (her orthodontia has been blessed by Jehovah).
To be fair, though…Potsie isn’t any worse than his more accomplished—but way more hammy—co-stars, including Kojak‘s Dan Frazer as Araziah, Soap‘s
Richard Mulligan as Aaron (he’s so awful here, he should have pulled
that finger-snapping “Burt invisibility” shtick for real), and a
hilariously literal John Marley as the big man himself, Moses (whom I
guarantee was cast strictly for his shock of gray hair, to save another
wig from the budget). Give the moviemakers credit, though: we open right
with the Red Sea parting (DeMille made you wait hours). It’s comically
inept, as are the subsequent “golden calf” scene (it’s so tiny, like
Stonehenge in Spinal Tap) and the orgy (the “corruption and degradation” mentioned by narrator Victor Jory looks like a few Yahtzee
games spread out amidst a rather lackluster petting party). Kristoffer
Tabori as Eleazar, and particularly Granville Van Dusen as Joshua,
actually achieve performances: the only winners—besides the delighted
viewers—here.
Next up is Samson and Delilah. There’s a different credit
sequence for this and the remaining two episodes, featuring old-timer
Victor Jory giving a brief rundown on the Creation (it only took seven
days) before we close-in on the Bible, aaaaannnnddddd……cue Brad Crandall
with tonight’s players. Samson and Delilah is another good
example of Schick Sunn Classic’s chutzpah (welcome to the Old
Testament). A lot of viewers know this story, at least on film, from
Cecil DeMille’s insanely lavish epic with Victor Mature (“The only thing
‘mature’ means to me is ‘Victor Mature'”) and Hedy Lamar. Sunn, with
nothing much more than chewing gum and bailing wire here, doesn’t flinch
from the highlights, though; we get a downright righteous jaw bone of
an ass ass-whompin’, some lion ‘rasslin’ (at least it’s a real
one…that’s real doped up), and an entire foam block temple pushed down
like a set of Lincoln Logs (instead of squishing the infidels, the
lighter-than-air blocks bounce right off of them, like in a cartoon).
The cast is pretty solid, with pro James Olson as Polah working up
some friction against beautiful Ann Turkel as Delilah, while Victor Jory
(with a hair cut that makes him look like a cross between Ish Kabibble
and Edith Head) and Holmes & Yo-Yo‘s John Schuck goofing around in the background (I love referencing that show…). As for our Samson, he of the lantern jaw John Beck, other than a rather disturbing modern-day resemblance to a post-op Bruce Jenner, he’s understated and effective as the Mr. Magoo muscle-man…even if he doesn’t look particularly big and beefy.
Scrolling down chapter and verse, we come to David and Goliath. Directed by Conway, from Brian Russell’s and S.S. Schweitzer’s script, David and Goliath is certainly the most ridiculous entry in this Greatest Heroes of the Bible
volume…which is just another way of saying it’s the most entertaining
of the bunch, hands down. A good cast of familiar faces—Jeff Corey, John
Dehner, Hugh O’Brien, John LaZar, Lurch the Butler—all vie to strike
the silliest poses when reading their outrageously broad, overripe
lines, with voice-from-the-tomb Ted Cassidy winning the elocution
competition, and swaggering, unintentionally humorous O’Brien nailing
the pose-off (a combination of Jack Cassidy, Paul Lynde, and Charles
Nelson Reilly couldn’t have pulled off a more hysterically fey stance
than butch O’Brien’s cocked-hip preening when Roger Kern’s David grasps
his hand in servile fealty).
Cassidy as Goliath, still looking like a heathen Lurch (did he actually wear any make-up during The Addams Family?),
glowers painfully while spitting out hilarities like, “Is there not one
man of courage, you vermin!?” and “You spawn of maggot-eaten carrion!”
before Dehner, looking pissed-off at his agent for landing him in Page,
Arizona opposite Lurch, wearily warns, “Perform well, you great hulk of
flesh…or by Dagon’s blood, I’ll have you hacked up and rendered for your
tallow,” (I would suggest a higher yield on the hambone…). My favorite,
though, has to be obliviously bad actor Daniel J. Travanti (oh come
on—he and Hill Street Blues were awful), grimacing and screeching and flailing his arms around like he’s understudying Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker. That is the kind of thing I live for in these Schick Sunn Classics—thank you, Mr. Travanti!
And finally, as we close our prayer books, we end the day’s services with The Story of Noah,
a relatively straight-forward rendering of the Flood story that looks
like it was padded out with a lot of stock footage from Sunn’s In Search of Noah’s Ark. IMDB says this was a two-parter, but it feels complete in just one episode, as Lew Ayres
conscientiously objects to decadent despot Ed Lauter’s immoral,
licentious society, and promptly drops-out with God’s help, getting his
head together on a big ‘ol ark…along with two of every species of animal
on earth. Lauter, one of my favorite ’70s psychos, is strangely
ineffectual here (maybe it’s that stupid crown of black antler horns),
but the comically undernourished representation of his morally debased
city at least gets right to it: we only get a shot of some kids chained
up, while buyers cackle and poke at them (when typically disgusting
Robert Emhardt licks his chops over a poor, expressionless cipher Jan Brady Eve Plumb, we don’t know whether to question his morals, or his taste in women).
Fletcher from Guiding Light shows up as Ham (ask Grammy),
while Ayres staggers around in a dirty nightshirt, saying things like,
“I am but a voice, crying in the wilderness!” (wasn’t that Charlton
Heston’s line?). All the animals of the world are represented by some
goats and deer, a tiger, two monkeys and a parrot (watch a clearly
terrified Plumb look off-camera at the tiger’s trainer, a smile frozen
to her face, as she dutifully waits for the beast to devour her).
However, the best part is when the toy ark bobs on the completely
sea-covered earth…and we briefly see the shore of a lake appear at the
top of the screen (nice “Psych!”, God). I wouldn’t expect anything
less–or more–from a Schick Sunn Classic.
I was sad to see that Dennis the Menace's Jay North passed away yesterday at the (relatively young) age of 73. Jay, a true vintage TV icon was, according to his and others' recollections, one of the real victims of the television industry, suffering physical abuse at the hands of his caretaker aunt and uncle, and just as debilitating emotional stress, being a little boy tasked with the enormous burden of "carrying" his own television show. In many interviews, Jay would disparage the quality of Dennis the Menace (honestly...who could blame him?). As a viewer, though, I strongly disagree, so check out my defense and celebration of the series here, one of hundreds of similar reviews I have up at Drunk TV.
Awhile ago, Shout! Factory, that little dickens of a DVD releasing company, came up with one of many of their “must-have” sets for the vintage TV fan: Dennis the Menace: Season One,
a five-disc, 32 (!) episode set featuring the complete episodes from
the series’ 1959-1960 premiere. Based on the internationally popular
comic strip, Dennis the Menace is a beautifully written
and constructed sitcom, featuring witty scripting and inventive
direction. The laughs come with a consistency matched by the
perfectly-drawn performances—particularly Jay North’s intensely funny,
insistent turn as the well-intentioned but mischievous devil, Dennis.
Suburban Hillsdale, America (no rioting yet), circa 1959. If you
round the bend on Mississippi Street, you won’t have to get too close to
627 Elm to hear a strident, “Helloooooooooooo, Mr. Wilson!”
called out by little Dennis Mitchell (Jay North). A rambunctious,
inquisitive, tow-headed walking disaster zone in striped shirt and
overalls, Dennis means well, but this red-blooded, all-American boy
(look it up on the internet under “endangered species”) simply can’t
help but lay down a path of destruction wherever he goes…particularly
when he visits “good ol’ Mr. Wilson” (Joseph Kearns), the Mitchell’s
next-door neighbor.
Retired to the good life of 1950s suburban America, George Wilson
wants nothing more than to putter around his house with his various
hobbies, including astronomy, coin collecting and especially his garden,
before settling down every afternoon for a quiet snooze on the couch.
Unfortunately, Mr. Wilson is driven to gulping straight out of his nerve
tonic bottle, such is the ruckus caused by hero-worshiping Dennis, who
likes Mr. Wilson so much, that he’s very probably going to kill George
with hyper-kindness. George’s saintly wife, Martha (Sylvia Field),
thinks Dennis a dear, sweet little boy, but even she knows there are
times when Dennis shouldn’t be around grouchy George…and those are precisely the times that Dennis strikes with completely innocent mayhem.
The parents of such a child could rightly apply for sainthood, too.
However, engineer Henry Mitchell (Herbert Anderson) and lovely housewife
Alice (Gloria Henry), get exasperated with Dennis, as well, until they
realize he’s just a boy with good intentions…and zero impulse control
skills. Rounding out the gang are Dennis’ good-natured, willing best
friend Tommy (Billy Booth), and that “dumb ol’ Margaret” Wade (Jeannie
Russell), who is forever trying to wrangle a horrified Dennis into
playing house as her “husband.”
A syndicated staple on afternoon TV when I was growing up in the early 70s, the first season of Dennis the Menace
holds up remarkably well over 60 years (!) after its first season
premiere. A “kiddie” show that plays as well with adults as it does with
the small fry, Dennis the Menace is yet another
example of beautifully-crafted entertainment that was the norm in
television’s golden past, a fact that shouldn’t, but does, continually
surprise me the more I re-visit these often-maligned treasures.
Based of course on cartoonist Hank Ketcham’s phenomenally popular comic strip of the same name, Dennis the Menace
was an immediate hit with the public (a great time slot helped, no
doubt—more about that below), and it’s easy to see why, even after all
these years. An interviewer in the 1980s once asked Jackie Gleason why
the “classic 39” Honeymooners were still revered by
audiences after 30 years, and he said quite plainly, “Because they’re
funny,” a deceptively simplistic statement that actually sums up their
intangible appeal quite nicely.
When Jay North starts rattling off a machine gun-fire line of
questions at some exasperated adult, it’s still funny…and it’s going to
be funny for as long as people recognize the humor in a peripatetic kid
who can’t help but say the wrong thing at the wrong time, or whose
actions cause bigger calamities than he was trying to avert. “Funny” is
funny, as the saying goes, and deeper meaning is fine if you can find
it…but it’s not necessary. It’s enough to laugh at Dennis’
well-intentioned sincerity, marred by his incredibly bad judgment of his
actions’ consequences, along with the surrounding adults’ mortification
as they watch this well-meaning train wreck in action.
With crack lead writers William Cowley (Hazel, The Eve Arden Show) and Peggy Chantler (apparently every sitcom ever made, from Bewitched to Leave it to Beaver)
penning many of the 32 episodes here, and with solid support from
most-often used directors William D. Russell and Charles Barton (one of
my favorite studio comedy directors), Dennis the Menace is simply and cleanly constructed, episode after episode…and invariably funny. In the brilliantly-realized pilot episode, Dennis Goes to the Movies,
the premise is simplicity itself: Dennis’ parents want to see a movie
without him…and he’s having none of it. The situation is set, so Cowley
and Chantler expertly build complication upon complication, until Dennis
uses his friend Joey (Gil Smith) as a Dennis-substitute for an
unwitting babysitter, so he can sneak out of the house and sneak into
the movie house.
There, he causes havoc, firing his six guns (they’re watching Cowboy,
with Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon), asking the projectionist to play back
a good part, eating out of a guy’s popcorn, and even shushing his
(literally and figuratively) in-the-dark parents. The evening culminates
with Alice and Henry, looking down on their adorable child…who’s faking
sleep (Buehler, anyone?). It’s a hilarious episode, expertly built and
timed and performed, and even though the Dennis character would never be
quite this conniving or scheming again, Dennis Goes to the Movies
sets the bar high for the series, a standard it maintains remarkably
well throughout this first season (apparently, too-cautious CBS and some
no-good do-gooder groups complained about this Dennis, and his character was immediately softened in subsequently-produced episodes).
Unlike similar sitcoms like Leave it to Beaver or The Donna Reed Show, Dennis the Menace
usually avoids scenes of overt sentiment (or sentimentality) to
concentrate on the basics of the genre: situational comedy. Of course
there are sweet, tender moments, such as Dennis singing Silent Night in The Christmas Story, or Mr. Wilson feeling guilty about possibly destroying the neighborhood kids’ world of fantasy in Innocents in Space.
Dennis’ actions, no matter how destructive, always come from impeccable
motivations; his Mom is the “best Mom in the whole world!”, and “good
ol’ Mr. Wilson” is always sought out for renewed friendship after their
last disastrous encounter.
But by and large, the show sticks with carefully-designed slapstick
(which is never overt or crude), and surprisingly witty scripting for
what is often dismissed as merely a “kiddie” show. A great example of
the two in action comes in the opening teaser sequence (where Dennis is
ready to—or has already—done something terrible) for Grandpa and Miss Cathcart.
As Alice, distracted by her housework, absentmindedly tells Dennis, “no
clothes,” when he asks to run through the sprinkler, the camera then
fades to Alice coming downstairs, picking up one article of Dennis’
clothing after another…until she grabs his crumpled-up underwear on the
floor. Racing outside, she screams his name in horror as we imagine the
sight of (off-screen) naked Dennis running through the water.
While Dennis’ problems with his parents balance as much screen time
as his pesterings of Mr. Wilson, I would imagine most people, when they
think back on this comedy, remember best the conflicts between Dennis
and his crotchety next-door neighbor. Of course, chemistry is
everything, and luckily, Kearns and North are an inspired pairing. No
matter how funny the lines and the situations are from Cowley and
Chantler (and also frequent contributor George Tibbles), they wouldn’t
work if we didn’t buy Dennis and Mr. Wilson, and North and Kearns are
letter-perfect from episode one.
With North bright and chirpy to the point of metallic screechiness,
and Kearns—hands flapping ineffectually and eyes goggling out past his
lens-less glass—in dyspeptic despair of mythological proportions, their
teaming is comparable to other great TV sitcom teams, like Denver and
Hale, Jr., Griffith and Knotts, and Nabors and Sutton.
North in particular is an accomplished little comedian. There’s
something very strange and almost otherworldly to his overly-emphatic
delivery. It’s sometimes insanely direct and intense…and always
hysterically funny in contrast to everyone’s barely-sustained horror at
his irrationally insistent tone. Watch North’s eyes when he really
starts up; if ever a kid had the devil in his eyes, it’s North.
Uniquely, though, he can switch right back to a sweet little boy with
his delivery—a realistic, naturalistic, curious kid who looks
believably happy when he’s interacting with his screen parents or the
sometimes-kindly Mr. Wilson (I love the moment in The Christmas Story
where Dennis and Tommy pile on-top of napping Henry, bouncing up and
down on him unself-consciously). It’s a testament as well to the acting
skills of lovely Gloria Henry and gentle Herbert Anderson (who looks exactly
like his cartoon inspiration) that they come across as well as they do
here; they could have easily been lost amid the gags and set pieces.
There isn’t a single misfire in the bunch here for this first season of Dennis the Menace, but memorable episodes include Grandpa and Miss Cathcart,
where the magical Mary Wickes introduces her husband-hungry
down-the-street neighbor to great effect (the scripters do a brilliant
job of mirroring Dennis’ and Grandpa Mitchell’s flight from Margaret’s
and Miss Cathcart’s attentions). Innocents in Space is a sweet,
funny story about the wonder of children’s imagination, as amplified by
an afternoon kiddie show starring Parley Baer’s “Captain Blast.” Dennis’ Garden
is perfectly constructed in its back-and-forth gags about dahlia bulbs
being removed and reburied constantly. Exquisitely-built episodes of
mounting comedic misunderstandings—some of them of Seinfeldian
proportions…just another indication of how much that “groundbreaking”
show owed its hipness to mining long-since forgotten TV comedy
conventions—appear with regularity, including Mr. Wilson’s Award
(when Mr. Wilson learns Dennis may be moving to New York, he giddily
exclaims, “I feel exactly the way I did the day the war ended.”).
Dennis and the Cowboy is a funny spoof of TV cowboys of the
day (Brad Johnson is hilarious as the cowboy with “sensitive feet,” and
Isabel Rudolph is simply marvelous as the drama matron who passionately
implores, “Realism! Realism!” to Dennis and his gang as they rehearse a
town pageant), while Dennis and the Open House is an
expertly-staged “comedy of attrition” that finds every freeloader in
town showing up at the Mitchell’s business “open house,” courtesy of
Dennis’ unwelcome help (Dub Taylor is great as the unpretentious fix-it
man, Opie Swanson). Director Charles Barton contributes some of the
season’s best, too, particularly Alice’s Birthday, where the
boys hassle Charles Lane as the owner of a five-and-dime that has the
misfortune of Dennis as a customer, and certainly my favorite episode
this season, Dennis and the Swing, written by George Tibbles,
Paul West and David Schwartz, where Dennis sets into motion multiple
comic misunderstandings that result in a series of beautifully
simple-yet-hilariously staged set pieces.
Snug in its permanent 7:30pm Sunday night slot it would occupy during its four-year run, Dennis the Menace
proved to be a monster hit right out of the gate this 1959-1960 season,
landing at an impressive 16th for the year in the Nielsen ratings
(impressive because of the implication that it was merely a “kiddie”
show). Following strong lead-in Lassie at 7:00pm (a combination that must have pleased families, considering it brought Lassie back into the Nielsen Top Thirty), Dennis‘ direct competition over on NBC, Darren McGavin’s Riverboat, didn’t stand a chance, while over on ABC, the previous year’s massive hit, the comedic Western Maverick,
took a direct hit from the precocious little monster Dennis, dropping
from 6th overall for the 1958-1959 season, to 18th this year—two notches
lower than its “kiddie” competition. With The Ed Sullivan Show as its lead-out (roaring back into the Nielsen Top Fifteen, at 12th for the year), and other big hits later in the night (Alfred Hitchcock Presents at 25th for the year; What’s My Line? at 27th), Dennis the Menace was set up for an even better showing in next year’s Nielsens.