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50th Anniversary Viewing
(Part 1)
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The Ed Sullivan Show
Season 21, episode 19
Originally aired February 23, 1969
As represented in
The Best of the Ed Sullivan Show
Ed said:
And now the 5th Dimension...who really hit the big time with "Up and Away," now sing their latest hit, "California Soul".
Oddly, they're not plugging their about-to-chart new single. "California Soul" kinda grew on me with playlist listening, but it's a Lilliputian next to "Aquarius".
Here's the video, but not the original performance audio. The ladies in the group are looking good as always.
Ed said:
And now from England, comedy star Dickie Henderson!
Henderson does a routine in which he demonstrates how it's not easy to imitate what Sinatra does while singing "One More for the Road".
This low-quality video doesn't include Henderson's long spoken intro in which he explains what he's about to do.
Ed said:
Ladies and gentlemen, the world-famous star of Zorba, Herschel Bernardi.
Bernardi sings a song called "Life Is" while holding and occasionally picking at what a quick Google tells me is a bouzouki, accompanied by three instrumentalists in his immediate vicinity and either a canned or offstage orchestra.
On
Best of, Ed then does a mumbly, rambling audience bow intro for Broadway producer/director Hal Prince. tv.com indicates that this and the Bernardi song were parts of a larger tribute to Prince.
Next it's "comedy star Myron Cohen," who does a routine about a player dying in a gin rummy game...then switches with no transition to speak of (likely sacrificed by a
Best of edit) to a man going to a bakery on a miserable winter night.
Ed said:
Now here from California, the wonderful group, the 5th Dimension!
Closing the
Best of edit, they perform a medley consisting of an overly uptempo, swingy lounge rendition of "What the World Needs Now," combined with a more straightforward cover of "All You Need Is Love," during which the show gets trippy by indulging in some kaleidoscope effects on the band members. The part where they sing lyrics from the two songs on top of each other works best, as they're not doing the former song as fast. I think this video has the original audio, but the poster is confusing things by tossing in an image of a cover from a live album:
Also in the original episode according to tv.com:
Music:
--Glenn Yarbrough - "When the Honey Wind Blows" & "Baby, the Rain Must Fall."
--Michele Lee sings "Steady Steady."
Tribute to Harold Prince (theatrical director and producer) Songs from his productions:
--Harry Goz sings "Sunrise Sunset" (from "Fiddler on the Roof").
--Anita Gillette, Martin Ross and the "Cabaret" Broadway cast - "Wilkommen."
--Herschel Bernardi - sings "Life Is" and performs the "Mime Dance" (with the "Zorba" Broadway cast).
Also appearing:
--Audience bows: US Air Force Col. Joe M. Jackson, Buddy Rogers and Bob Thomas.
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Mission: Impossible
"Live Bait"
Originally aired February 23, 1969
Wiki said:
An enemy internal security chief (Anthony Zerbe) uses his own assistant (Martin Sheen) in the hope of out-foxing the IMF and exposing a high-ranking American agent.
The reel-to-reel tape in a telescope at Griffith Observatory that I'm pretty sure they've used more than once before said:
This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim.
Selby, the agent the IMF is trying to help maintain his cover (John Crawford, a.k.a. Commissioner Ferris from "The Galileo Seven"), is having an interagency dispute with Kellerman (Zerbe) over custody of Marceau, the operative currently being interrogated by Kellerman who might be able to identify Selby as a double agent. Rollin is brought in as an investigator to settle the dispute, and Selby seems to know that they're on the same side.
Kellerman seems to think that Rollin is on his side, and conspires with him to feed false information to the Americans through his own man, Brocke (a very young-looking Sheen, though he was pushing 30 at this point). Meanwhile, Barney doctors some footage so that it looks like Kellerman has been conspiring with Jim, and nobody seems to miss Willy, who isn't in the episode. Cin plays the part of an American agent who takes the false information from Brocke. Jim plays the contact to whom Cin passes the information, making Kellerman think that he's the big fish on the opposite side.
Brocke's girlfriend, Stephanie (Diana Ewing, appearing the same week that her episode of Trek is airing), is held captive by Jim and allowed to see the doctored footage through a peephole, projected in a way that it looks like it's happening in the next room. Stephanie is allowed to escape and she calls Brocke and tells him that she was being held by Kellerman, and shares things that were being said in the doctored conversation about Brocke being Kellerman's pawn. Brocke goes to Selby with his newfound belief that Kellerman is a double agent. Brocke fears that Kellerman will try to silence him, but Selby leaves Brocke to his own devices.
Meanwhile, Kellerman takes Rollin to see Marceau in his interrogation cage. Rollin learns that Marceau is rigged to blow up real good if somebody tries to free him. Rollin conveys this info to Jim on the phone via code phrases.
Brocke is caught trying to run and tries to convince Rollin that Kellerman is a double agent. Stephanie points the finger at Brocke for some reason that escaped me. The IMF use some gas for which they have immunity pills to knock everyone in the facility out and free Marceau, with Barney using liquid nitrogen to freeze the explosive. As they're making away with Marceau, Brocke is revived early by Rollin, and Brocke and Rollin find Kellerman unconscious outside of Marcaeu's now-empty cell. Rollin promises to smooth things over with Selby and leaves Brocke to shoot Kellerman as he's coming to.
This one had a much more complicated scheme than last week, such that I was having trouble following everything that was going on. At the same time, though, it felt a lot closer to standard spy vs. spy espionage fare than the next IMF scheme.
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The Avengers
"Stay Tuned"
Originally aired February 24, 1969 (US); February 26, 1969 (UK)
Wiki said:
Steed returns from holiday with no memory of where he has been or what he has been doing for the past three weeks. He is behaving oddly, and seems to have been brainwashed—implanted with a post-hypnotic suggestion to kill someone in the department.
The episode takes place in October, for whatever that's worth! I thought this would be a formula-defier, but there are three incidents of Steed losing his memory, after each of which he repeats the same leaving-for-vacation routine as is shown in the teaser, which fits the "series of attacks/incidents" bit.
This episode we meet Father (Iris Russell), a blind woman who's more intriguing in one episode than Mother has been in however many he's been in.
Tara, of course, believes in Steed, and there's a cute scene of Steed and Tara dictating messages to each other on tape recorders simultaneously. Despite the premise of Steed being a victim, Tara still gets captured investigating.
The bad guys' scheme involves an enemy operative whom Steed has been conditioned not to see; he kills a fellow agent right in front of Steed. Steed was being programmed to kill Mother, who turns up in the climax for that purpose. Mother does get a good moment when Steed fires a revolver at him four times, and we're teased into thinking that he's killed Mother until it's revealed that the four shots hit the wall behind Mother, aimed neatly around his head.
An unphased Mother said:
Steed always was a superb marksman.
In the coda we get a parallel scene of Tara preparing for a holiday.
Despite being yet another use of the same ol' story template, this one was a bit more intriguing than the next. It almost could have been an episode from the black & white Peel season.
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 2, episode 21
Originally aired February 24, 1969
The Wiki list of guest appearances said:
Mel Brooks, Peter Falk, Lena Horne, Rock Hudson, Peter Lawford, Bob Newhart, Connie Stevens, Tiny Tim
This one opens with a full-cast Vaudeville musical number, and includes a new segment that looks like it's going to be a regular feature, Quickies:
The Fickle Finger of Fate goes to the Auditor of the city of Dallas, TX:
We only get a middle-of-episode Cocktail Party this time around.
Continuing a theme from last week, more reflection on the Good Old Days:
The Mod, Mod World of Offbeat People:
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The Mod Squad
"A Reign of Guns"
Originally aired February 25, 1969
Wiki said:
The Squad tangles with a wealthy arch-conservative who is forming a private militia armed with stolen guns.
I got a bit of deja vu at the opening...a group of warehouse thieves is loading crates of guns onto a truck when a middle-aged night watchmen comes on the scene, and instead of doing something sensible like calling the police, he goes all action hero, fires his handgun at the truck, and pursues a straggler on foot over rooftops and up a water tower. But instead of killing the watchman, a sniper among the thieves take out the straggler.
Greer has reason to believe that an inside man was involved, and the most likely suspect was the regular watchman, for whom the watchman at the scene that night was subbing.
Linc said:
So we watch the watchman.
Hurm.
Except that next thing we know, the Squad are tailing some other guy at a gun club who isn't the watchman, but is an ex-Army sharpshooter named Coles (Sean Garrison). I'd like to think that something was inadvertently cut for syndication, because I couldn't make any sense of this. Pete and Linc approach Coles as illegal gun dealers. In the meantime, somebody's assaulted a cabbie who knows where the watchman is, specifically to find out where the watchman is. So they know who the watchman's cabbie is, but can't find the watchman? Huh?
Anyway, Coles sets up a meeting between Pete and the guy that he works for, a shipping magnate named Marney (J.D. Cannon). There's definitely a race angle in this one...Marney makes his displeasure known that Pete's partner is a [then-considered-more-polite version of the N-word].
Another bit of deja vu...Greer has the Squadders pulled over again to make contact, only this time, instead of riding shotgun, Greer is in the role of the patrol car cop. The Captain is particularly alarmed at the prospect of a bigot who's hoarding guns. When Greer gets a call on the radio, it's addressed to "Car 144" (or whatever the number was)...I suspect that Jack Webb's police radio protocol is more authentic. Greer gets info as to where the watchman is, but finds him dead.
Julie is only in this one sporadically. Greer draws attention to her absence in the initial briefing scene. After that, she mainly appears in meeting scenes with Greer, several of which seem to have been shot at the same location, and only gets involved in the actual operation when she plays Pete's date at a meeting with Marney, where she and Pete witness Marney receiving info from a man who turns out later to be a guy named North who works at City Hall (John Harmon). From that point, she's on a mostly off-camera and unsuccessful side quest to tail North. I have to wonder if something was up with Lipton's availability at the time. This one had more than one scene of Greer noting that she looked sad and making gestures to lift her spirits...perhaps covering for illness?
Assembled with Pete and Linc present, Marney's group of uniformed militia men looks particularly Aryan, and Linc doesn't pretend not to notice. Pete helps Marney set up a robbery from an armory that involves the Mod Duo and Marney's men posing as soldiers, and Marney as an Army officer. That all seems...a little unlikely. Later Pete and Linc sneak around Marney's place and find that--Was this supposed to be a surprise at this point in the story?--he's hoarding a shitload of guns. Then they get caught.
Marney goes by the Bond Villain Handbook and shares his plans with the Mods, which involve sign-o-the-timesily picking up the pieces after all the radicals, militants, and whatnot running amok in the country kill each other off. When Marney says that he plans to expand his private militia to a total of 10,000...
Linc said:
That's a lot of bed sheets.
But the episode pretty much drops the race angle at that point, with Marney claiming that he's not excluding anyone, and the Mods establish enough benefit of the doubt that he lets them come along when his men hijack a truck of arms by posing as state troopers at a roadblock. But North spots Julie with Greer, having seen her previously with Pete and Marney, so he calls Marney's mobile phone in the middle of the heist with the info that Pete's a cop. Pete and Linc, in the cab of the hijacked truck, manage to overpower Coles and drive the truck into a gully, bailing out before it goes over and getting the drop on Marney and his men.
They have another little philosophical moment in the coda when Julie wishes that all the guns in the world were going to be dumped in the sea like the ones from the heist (Don't they belong to whoever Marney was stealing them from?), and Linc offers that it wouldn't make a difference, because it's not the guns, it's the people who use them.
Overall, this one suffered a little too much from holes in story logic, and Julie popping in and out randomly didn't help things.
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Sounds like they're channeling The Jackson 5 a little bit.
Channeling the...
who at this point? Any influence more likely goes the other way.
A beautiful song, of course.
Funny, how this group has the same name as the one that did
Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations"....
Whoever these guys are, this will be their last Top 40 single until the mid-to-late-'70s, when they start scoring sporadic chart success from milking the nostalgia angle.
Classic! Four out of five Squiggies agree-- no lyrics needed!
Coming from 80% of Squiggies, that's high praise indeed. But it is the Coolest TV Theme Ever.
Sooo groovy. This is where it's at, man.
One of those seminal sign o' the times tracks.
Wow, didn't expect any of that.
I was planning to get into that one way or the other, but you handed me the perfect launching point! It is gratifying to know that even somebody who isn't familiar with the history of the song can hear what the Blue Jeans are doing there.
I was thinking that the subject matter of a guy singing about his daughter's wedding isn't very Top 40-- but I suppose even when I was a kid there was a song about a guy saying good-bye to his baby girl as he goes off to work.
Lotsa sappy crap that I ignored was still doing well on the chart through most of the decade.
A wonderful sub-genre.
LOOKOUT!LOOKOUT!LOOKOUT!LOOKOUT!!!
Sweet. How does one become a Wiki Elf?
It's surprisingly easy, though it took me a bit of trial and error to figure out the link coding.
Oh, I almost forgot: We were watching one of the Ed Sullivan DVDs that I gave to Mom for Christmas yesterday, and I saw the most disturbing and hilarious sequence that was ever on the show. He had Clyde Beatty the Lion Tamer on and the guy lost control of the lions. So, in order to distract the audience, Ed walked up the aisle and just started interviewing some of the celebrity guests. In the background, as they chatted amiably, you could hear the roar of the lions punctuated by random gunshots. We were in tears of laughter.
I wish I could find it on YouTube.
Holy crap--that definitely didn't make it onto
Best of!
