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50th Anniversary Viewing
(Part 1)
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The Ed Sullivan Show
Season 21, episode 16
Originally aired February 2, 1969
As represented in
The Best of the Ed Sullivan Show
From a mixed
Best of installment consisting primary of material from this date, we get the following....
The Temptations open
Best of singing their "newest hit recording" (actually just entering the chart the following week), "Runaway Child, Running Wild," which continues the funkadelic sound established by its predecessor.
After a commercial break, it's back to "the recording sensations of the country," doing an energetic but brief rendition of their previous hit, "Cloud Nine". tv.com says that it was originally done as a medley with the third number below...which the matching stage dressing supports.
Next from this date, "especially for you youngsters, is one of the hottest rock groups in the entire country". That's definitely upselling the Vanilla Fudge, who've only had one major hit, which they haven't been able to successfully follow up on. Their latest attempt at a psychedelicized arrangement of an established hit is "Shotgun"--originally a #4 hit (#1 R&B) for Jr. Walker & the All-Stars in 1965. It is a pretty groovy rendition, accompanied here by swirly light show, but they'll only get it to #68. (It enters the chart on Mar. 8, and won't be covered in the regular posts.)
Time to eat your musical vegetables, kiddies. Jacques d'Amboise & Allegra Kent are here from the New York City Ballet to perform to
"Meditation" from Thais. Well, Allegra wasn't hard on the eyes, at least. This clip shows a bit more of the act than
Best of did.
Best of ends with the Temptations performing their other current hit, "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," sans the Supremes. Needless to say, they're up to the job. And this clip also shows a bit more than
Best of did.
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Mission: Impossible
"The Glass Cage"
Originally aired February 2, 1969
Wiki said:
Barney and Willy get arrested in an Eastern Bloc nation to fake the escape of a resistance leader, who is in an escape-proof cell.
The hand-cranked nickelodeon in what looks like a small airport or bus depot said:
This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim.
Fortunately, there's a major in the country in question who looks a lot like Martin Landau made up in a blond wig and mustache. And the true identity of the female head of the country's prison system is a secret, allowing Cin to pose as her. Major Zelinko (Lloyd Bochner) tests her by having somebody arrive who claims to be the same person, but Cin stays icy cool and passes. Once she's got access to the prison, she swaps some of the Major's files and starts planting stuff, including covertly dumping a boatload of gear for Barney in the cell that he's sharing with Willy...well, a trick briefcase-load, anyway. She also shares with Zelinko that she has an uncomfortable history with Major Rollin, who's there with Colonel Jim (who doesn't seem to need a disguise of somebody he resembles), and asks for Zelinko to accompany her when she has to go deal with him personally.
While the boss is away, a gas gadget knocks out the men in the control room. Properly equipped and with no guards actually walking the corridors, Barney and Willy niftily break out of their cell and the maximum security wing, which includes horizontally climbing over an electrified floor. They get into the control room, mess with the cell controls and a security tape, and give some instructions to the resistance leader, Reisner (Richard Garland), before allowing themselves to be recaptured.
The clues they've planted convince Zelinko that they've somehow switched Reisner with somebody else, and he blurts out his intention to pass off the guy in the glass cage for the real Reisner to his superiors to cover his ass...while everyone in the control room is watching and listening. A fingerprint file that Cin had swapped into his cabinet serves as evidence that their prisoner isn't the real Reisner. Cin, Jim, and Rollin pull their fake weight to have Zelinko arrested, free Supposedly Fake Reisner, and have Barney and Willy put into their custody.
I thought this one fell a wee bit too far on the hokey side. After Barney and Willy's breakout, everything went off a little too easily. Their plan relied on the main bad guy being a total idiot once he was caught with his pants down.
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The Avengers
"Love All"
Originally aired February 3, 1969 (US); February 19, 1969 (UK)
Wiki said:
Steed investigates a publishing house which specialises in romantic fiction, when looking into a mystery in which top civil servants are unexpectedly falling in love and betraying military secrets in 'pillow talk'.
Mother's Roost of the Week is an underground cricket practice range accessed through an open manhole cover.
Sir Rodney is betraying secrets due to infatuation with an enemy agent who's posing as a homely cleaning lady, but cleans up reasonably well when the time comes to drop the charade. She kills him when he outlives his usefulness and moves on to other subjects, more than one at a time. Book uses microdots to subliminally project their command to fall in love with the next person they see. Reading a book of top secret information that's being distributed around the ministry is making them fall in love with the next woman they see. We later learn that the book uses microdots to subliminally project its commands to the reader.
Steed investigates the publishing house by pretending to be a fan. Romance novels are being written by a computer that uses a baby grand piano keyboard as its control interface. Martha sends one of the men under her spell after Steed by making him out to be a romantic rival.
The book works on Tara, too, making her fall in love with the man behind the scheme. In the climax, Steed has to knock her out with his bowler. Then wears a batch of the not-so-micro-dots (button-sized at this point) on his vest to put the bad guy and all of his henchwomen under his spell.
In the coda, Steed has a mob of screaming teenage girls outside his flat because he's been walking around in public still wearing the dots.
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 2, episode 18
Originally aired February 3, 1969
The Wiki list of guest appearances said:
George Jessel, Tom Kennedy, Liberace, Rich Little, Don Rickles, Cliff Robertson, John Roach
Dr. Dan: I don't know how to tell you this, Mr. Rickles, but you're pregnant.
Don: That's what I get for doing a show on ABC!
Another early joke wall, as part of the opening...
...and an onscreen blurb announces that the first cocktail party is cancelled.
Rickles joins the ladies in the news intro song. 1989's president this week is Goldie Hawn.
Mod, Mod World has no specified theme this week.
In one skit, Don Rickles dresses as a Gladys lookalike.
Closing Joke Wall:
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The Mod Squad
"Fear Is the Bucking Horse"
Originally aired February 4, 1969
Wiki said:
The Squad works a rodeo undercover to protect a TV cowboy star whose life has been threatened.
The cowboy star is Billy Kilgore (Monte Markham), who got his start at the rodeo and is appearing there as a favor to his old friend, Charlie (Ross Elliott). Greer has a good, light-hearted moment spouting Western cliches as he assigns Pete and Linc to the case. Linc gets a job as a rodeo clown. Doing some snooping around, he finds that Kilgore owes money to a shady Vegas gambler; later, when he's looking for Kilgore in the stable where Billy's old horse is kept, Linc is assaulted by a cowboy and gets into a fistfight with him outside, which is cut short by a sniper taking out the cowboy.
After seeing the fight, Kilgore gets suspicious and drunkenly breaks into Linc's room, finding his police ID. Between that and an encounter with Charlie's wife, Chrissie (Nina Shipman), his old flame, he's too drunk or hung over to perform the next day. A substitute performer is killed by poison on Kilgore's rope, which the performer holds in his mouth as part of the routine.
Later Billy drunkenly confesses to Linc that the first attempt on him at the studio was his own doing, a publicity stunt to save his flailing TV show. They track down the poison to Charlie, who insists that if he wanted to kill Billy for what happened between Kilgore and Chrissie, he'd have done it a long time ago. But as Pete's leaving with the evidence, he gets knocked out from behind and the poison is taken from him.
The Mods set their eyes on the rodeo owner, Mitch Bates (Ed Begley), so Pete breaks into is trailer during a show and finds both the poison and a motive--Bates still has a large insurance policy on Billy from their old days running a business together. The Mods set things up so that Mitch has a shot at poisoning Billy again in the stable, but they've switched out the poison, and Billy's confession-evoking "death" is an acting job. The Mod Music used in the climax seems rather incongruous with the rodeo setting.
The Mod Quintet (Greer included) do their walk-off on the rodeo grounds.
Julie is in the episode, but her role is pretty small. And she pronounces "rodeo" like the drive in Beverly Hills.
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I've got this because I got some Louis from that period when dabbling in the era. And this is not just a Top Ten song, but the song that will break the Fabs' 14-week domination of the top spot (via three singles).
