Timeless TV

TV Land will tape its sixth annual "TV Land Awards" event Sunday, June 8, at The Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif. This year, for the first time, the ceremony will also honor favorites in motion pictures along with the best of television.

The show will premiere on TV Land the following Sunday, June 15, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

The 90-minute telecast will also feature reunions of some of the most popular casts from TV and movies and its annual television show parody (the best part of the show for me, anyway). Last year it was "Ugly Betty White" ... great stuff.

Historical Curio Dept.: In 1959, NBC broadcast a 90-minute prime-time posthumous tribute to a man few outside of entertainment circles had ever heard of: Manie Sacks, a Columbia Records and later an RCA and NBC-TV executive who died of leukemia in 1958 at the age of 56.

Mounting a show like “Some of Manie’s Friends” was an unbelievable thing for a network to do even in 1959; today it would be unthinkable.

What made it possible was the star power behind the special—Manie, he of sage advice and a penchant for matching material with artist, endeared himself to a slew of popular music and other entertainment heavyweights who he had mentored, many of whom lent their star power to the occasion (and raised $200,000 for leukemia research along the way). Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Eddie Fisher, Kay Starr, Bob Hope, Sid Caesar, Danny Thomas Rosemary Clooney, Jane Wyman and Harry James all showed up in a big way for Manie. And the money Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co. paid for its ads in the show was donated to the cause as well. (Check out the painfully long cigarette commercials!)

Ed Rothhaar of KVCR-TV’s “I Remember Television" unearthed this black-and-white copy of the show; there’s no telling if a color copy still exists. But color or not, it’s a precious gem.

The first season of “Father Knows Best” comes out on DVD April 1 from Shout Factory.

And that’s just fine with Elinor Donahue, who played the oldest daughter Betty (or “Princess”) on the 1954-60 series, which, uniquely, appeared on all three major networks over the course of its prime-time run.

The show, with its happy little nuclear family, has gotten a bum rap over the decades for being too removed from reality. But Elinor knows its strengths.

“It’s nice for people to have a little window on the past like that,” she told me over the phone recently. “It’s a sweet show and has good moral values. And good acting! Billy Gray was just superior as a kid, and Robert Young and Jane Wyatt were wonderful, and they worked so well together.”

Her performance as Betty was nothing to sneeze at, either. It’s hard to think of anyone so eternally identified with a character. But does Elinor personally identify with the outgoing, overachieving Betty Anderson? Not really. “She was kind of my alter ego, everything that I was not,” she explained. “I was shy and unsocial and quiet, and she had the moxie. So it was fun to be her.”

That initial season was a particularly memorable one for Elinor. First, she flubbed her lines during her audition and only by the grace of star Robert Young was she given a second chance. Then the show itself had performance issues. “The problem was we were on at some terrible hour, 10 o’clock Sunday night. It was really a bad spot for that kind of show,” she recalled. “We didn’t even know we had an audience. After the first season it was dropped [by CBS]. There must have been somebody out there watching, because there was this big hue and cry about putting it back on, and NBC picked us up.”

NBC had it for three seasons, then it moved back to CBS for its final two. Then it reran in CBS prime time, mind you, for two more seasons before moving to ABC for another season of prime-time reruns. Can you imagine?

Among the gems on the upcoming DVD is the episode “Sparrow in the Window,” a moving little morality tale about the importance of freedom, in which Lauren Chapin (as little sister Kathy, or "Kitten") nurses an injured bird back to health and then must return it to the wild. For Elinor, that particular show had a somewhat different significance. “The things that go on behind the scenes,” she related. “I can’t think of anything else but [this] when you mention [that episode]. They couldn’t get the bird that was in the tree to stand still, so somebody said, “Tie it to the branch.” And they did, and it pulled its foot off [trying to get away]."

The upshot? “Lauren went hysterical, of course. I was like, ‘Ewwwwww, gah, look at that. Yuck!’”

Now that sounds like a typical teenager from any era.

Elinor as she is today is interviewed in the bonus material in the four-DVD set. But the release has its own, private bonus for her: “It’s nice to be able to have my grandchildren see more of the episodes,” she said.

t/y Steve Beverly

David Groh's death Tuesday at a far-too-young 68 years old reminded me just how high the hopes once were for the "Rhoda" show in particular, and for Rhoda Morgenstern's relationship with Groh's bright and handsome Joe Gerard character in particular.



Those of us who followed Valerie Harper's development as the weight-challenged, kooky Minneapolis neighbor Rhoda on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and came to love her New York humor (and failures with the opposite sex) were ecstatic when she finally got her own series; plus, not only did she slim down and return to New York for the spin-off, she met her Prince Charming the first season to boot. What vindication! But Groh, for all of his manly appeal, proved to be Rhoda's undoing. Suddenly she wasn't as funny; she was beautiful now, and had a perfect mate. What's to laugh at? And even attempts to transfer her previous ugly-duckling plight onto schlumpy sister Brenda fell flat despite consistently brilliant turns by Julie Kavner.

The writers realized where they went wrong and tried to salvage matters by splitting Joe and Rhoda up by the beginning of the third season, but it was too late. The show had jumped the shark. It ran a couple more seasons then vanished mid-season.

I recently came across the old “Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” show on KVCR-TV, the public broadcasting station in San Bernardino, Calif. It had been a long time since I’d seen that series, and I had a vague memory of it being very “radio”; by that I mean not very visual—if you close your eyes while it’s on and just listen, you don’t really miss anything. My interest piqued, I set the DVR to record it anytime it ran.

Viewing several episodes from the course of its 1952-66 ABC run confirmed my original opinion; after all, it did start out as a radio show way back in the ’40s. But even though it’s a stand-there-and-deliver-your-lines-to-a-laugh-track sort of affair, upon revisiting “Ozzie and Harriet” I found it to be disarmingly intriguing. That the Nelsons—Ozzie, wife Harriet and sons David and Ricky—were a real-life family imbued the dialog with a kind of shorthand, and the entire clan spoke with the same ironic inflection, making for an interesting sociological subtext to alleviate some of the more mundane plotlines. That, along with the outsized success Ricky Nelson experienced as a rock ’n’ roll idol right before your eyes, distinguished “Ozzie and Harriet” from similar contemporary family sitcoms like “Father Knows Best,” “The Donna Reed Show” and “Leave It to Beaver.”

In the middle years, when Ricky was at the peak of his success, the show was something of a cultural force; whitebread, to be sure, but nonetheless potent, as folks gathered around onscreen and off for one of his shoe-horned-in musical performances. (Apparently Ozzie, ever the astute businessman, would only allow Ricky to perform on the family show; no “Ed Sullivan” or “Tonight Show” for him. As million-seller records bolstered Ricky’s popularity, the show’s must-see appeal to younger viewers took off.)

In the assortment of shows aired by KVCR were a couple of color episodes from the final season (who even knew it ever went to color?). But by then, its time was up. The boys were way grown with families of their own, and Ozzie and Harriet were pretty much left to themselves and their cloying middle-aged neighbors (Joe and Clara Randolph, anyone?).

Who else is watching PBS’ “Pioneers of Television” series? I caught the Jan. 2 opener on sitcoms and last night’s installment on late-night shows: essentially Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson. I thought both were pretty well done, and especially liked the Paar stuff and the vintage color footage from Carson’s version of “Tonight.”

The sitcom segment seemed a bit on the cheap side when it came to clips, however. For example, to represent “I Love Lucy” it used a lot of kinescope footage from the 1952 CBS special “Stars in the Eye” (celebrating the opening of Television City in Hollywood) and a couple of sketches featuring Jack Benny with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz shot on the sitcom’s set. Not a bad approximation of the show’s content, but in no way a prime example of what made it so popular; there are so many (no doubt expensive to run) classic moments that should have been cited instead. Plus, one of the reasons “I Love Lucy” was a pioneering show is that it was shot on film in order to deliver the highest-quality picture possible—and the kinescopes used here looked awful.

However, the footage from “The Andy Griffith Show” pilot from “Make Room for Daddy” was a nice touch. Here’s a bit from the rather overly worshipful segment on “The Honeymooners,” apparently a sentimental favorite of the producers.

Next up: Variety shows Jan. 16, then game shows Jan 23.

Half of the first season of “Love, American Style," the anthology series (if you can dignify it with that adjective) that ran on ABC from 1969-74, is due out on DVD Nov. 20.

Nah, it wasn’t all that bad—basically three romance-themed comedy sketches glued together by silly “Laugh-In”-style interstitial blackouts and featuring a parade of B- and C-list celebrities. Consider it the run-up to “Love Boat” except that the storylines didn’t intertwine.



At the time, the best part of the series was the title music, sung by the Cowsills. But revisiting it today, it’s fun to recall all those performers and wonder whatever happened to them—the few that are still alive, that is.

Just to name a few: Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Bill Bixby, Sid Caesar, Michael Callan, Judy Carne, Hans Conreid, Yvonne Craig, Bob Crane, Broderick Crawford, Bob Cummings, Richard Deacon, Rosemary DeCamp, Brandon De Wilde, Andy Devine, Phyllis Diller, Shelley Fabares, Gail Fisher, Kathleen Freeman, Alice Ghostley, Sandra Gould, Carolyn Jones, Patsy Kelly, Ozzie & Harriet Nelson, Margaret O'Brien, Regis Philbin, Aldo Ray, Robert Reed, Ann Rutherford, Tommy Smothers, Ann Sothern, Connie Stevens, Larry Storch, Jessica Walter, Lesley Ann Warren, Flip Wilson Estelle Winwood and Jane Wyatt.

Historical footnote: The unsold pilot for “Happy Days,” which was rejected by the networks the first time around in 1971, was burned off as a “Love, American Style” segment during the 1971-72 season. Owing to the success of “Grease” on Broadway, where it opened in June 1972, and of “American Graffiti,” a smash hit in movie theaters in 1973, the series finally ended up selling to ABC in 1974.

The most-watched 89 hours and 54 minutes in television history is coming to a retailer near you—the whole thin, as Ricky Ricardo would say. CBS and Paramount Home Entertainment are releasing the entire "I Love Lucy" canon on DVD tomorrow; the series has until now been available in season-by-season sets, but this 34-disc, $199 compendium ties everything up nicely in an elaborate heart-shaped box and as a bonus throws in the unreleased 1953 "I Love Lucy" movie—a compilation of three episodes stitched together with special intro, outro and interstitial footage. The movie was designed to be released in theaters for folks in the flyover states who didn’t have TV sets (or even stations) yet. But because stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz signed with MGM right at that time to do the motion picture "The Long, Long Trailer,"

contractual issues forced plans to release the "Lucy" movie to be scrapped. Of particular historical interest is that the movie shows the then-innovative Desilu Playhouse stage, where three-camera sitcom production in front of a live audience was born. As were, of course, all those timeless episodes.

“Leave It to Beaver” turns 50 years old this week, and to mark the occasion, TV Land is telecasting a 24-hour salute this weekend. I’m there.

“Beaver” is one of the few ’50s sitcoms that can still elicit a LOL from me—and I’ve watched every episode a million times. I love seeing things from Beaver and Wally’s perspective. And those sharply drawn supporting characters. How great was Larry Mondello? His mother? Eddie Haskell? Lumpy Rutherford? Every one of them quirky and totally believable. Rusty Stevens, the kid who played Larry, should have an Emmy.

TV Land also is airing the little-seen pilot for the series, “It’s a Small World,” which featured different actors in the roles of Wally and the father.

Here’s an amusing tribute on YouTube.

Alice Ghostley, who died Friday at age 81, was one of the great character actors who made “Bewitched” such an extraordinary sitcom.

She made a mastery of playing befuddled characters on long-running series, first as Esmeralda the diffident housekeeper on “Bewitched” and later as the retiree Bernice on “Designing Women.”

With her quavering voice and head-waggling delivery, she was unique, and while her many roles over the decades were similar, she never became tiresome.

This tribute cobbled together on YouTube mainly highlights her film work, but a couple of TV appearances are included, notably her role as an Ugly Stepsister (with Kaye Ballard) in the 1957 made-for-TV Rodgers & Hammerstein musical “Cinderella,” and, in the run-up to her regular role on “Bewitched,” her appearance as housekeeper “Naomi Hogan.” Rest in peace.