The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread

55 Years Ago This Week

January 8 – Operation Cedar Falls started in the Vietnam War, committing the largest number of U.S. forces (30,000 troops) to battle up to that time, in an objective to drive the Viet Cong out of the "Iron Triangle" region in South Vietnam's Binh Duong Province. After the first phase of the "hammer and anvil" operation began, the main Viet Cong force escaped into the jungle before the "hammer" phase could start, and the attack ended after 19 days. Foremost of the towns that were to be evacuated and destroyed in the 40 square mile target area was Ben Suc, a base of operations for the Viet Cong, with a population of 3,500. Troops moved in, removed all of the inhabitants (and 2,500 from surrounding villages) to a resettlement area at the Phu Loi Base Camp, then burned the houses and crops and leveled the city with Rome plows, the large armored bulldozers used by Army engineers.

January 9

• A raiding party from Laos carried out the Ban Naden raid, the only successful rescue of prisoners of war during the Vietnam War; no American prisoners were among those freed from the camp.
• Two parodies of the popular superhero genre premiered on the same evening on American television, with CBS showing attorney-turned-actor Stephen Strimpell in the title role of Mr. Terrific at 8:00 Eastern time, followed by NBC's Captain Nice portrayed by William Daniels. Both were rolled out as midseason replacements in response to the success of ABC's Batman. Nationally syndicated TV critic Rick Du Brow wrote, "Television this week pays homage to the first anniversary of Batman in the way it knows best — imitation."

January 10 – President Johnson delivered the annual State of the Union address to Congress, and told the gathered legislators "I recommend to the Congress a surcharge of 6 percent on both corporate and individual income taxes--to last for 2 years or for so long as the unusual expenditures associated with our efforts in Vietnam continue." Regarding the war, Johnson said "I wish I could report to you that the conflict is almost over. This I cannot do. We face more cost, more loss, and more agony," and he delivered a record 135-billion dollar federal government budget proposal.

January 11 – The Intelsat II F-2 communications satellite was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 17.

January 12 – Following his death from cancer, Professor James Bedford became the first person to be cryonically preserved with the intent of future resuscitation. Dr. Bedford, a psychology professor at the Glendale College in California, had taken advantage of an offer by the cyronics advocacy organization, the Life Extension Society, to freeze the first candidate postmortem at no charge, and had moved into a nursing home so that the procedure could be started immediately after his death. When his heart stopped beating at 1:15 in the afternoon, his body was frozen in a solution of dimethyl sulfoxide as a protectant against skin cell damage, then transferred to storage in liquid nitrogen until the day that science might be able to restore him to life; after 1982, Bedford would be housed at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he would still be maintained 50 years after his death.

January 13

• A military coup occurs in Togo under the leadership of Étienne Eyadema.
• The board of directors of the 45-year old Douglas Aircraft Company voted to accept a $68.7 million offer from McDonnell Aircraft Corporation to purchase its stock, after the Douglas company had run deeply into debt during the research and development of its DC-10 jetliner. On April 28, the forced merger would be completed and new enterprise would be named the McDonnell Douglas Corporation.
• Members of the New York Police Department saved about 300 sleeping residents of the Jamaica section of the borough of Queens, running from house to house in the 20 minutes before a natural gas explosion leveled houses and started a fire that eventually destroyed 22 buildings. The NYPD was alerted at 5:11 in the morning, and the underground gas lines exploded at 5:30, but only four people were hurt, none seriously.
• Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr go to the Bag O'Nails night-club to see a performance by the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

January 14

• The New York Times reports that the U.S. Army is conducting secret germ warfare experiments.
• Louis Leakey announced the discovery of pre-human fossils in Kenya, evidence of the earliest known ancestor of Homo sapiens and dating back 20,000,000 years. Leakey, whose team unearthed the fossils at Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, announced that he had named the species Kenyapithecus africanus.
• The Sound of Music closed out its 2,385th and final performance at the Palace Theatre in London's West End, where it had started on May 18, 1961, while the Broadway production in New York City (which had 1,443 performances) was still in progress.
• Organized by counterculture publisher Allen Cohen and artist Michael Bowen, the Human Be-In took place at the Polo Grounds in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, with 20,000 hippies gathering in the Haight-Ashbury district to see performances by the Grateful Dead, poet Allen Ginsberg, comedian Dick Gregory, activist Jerry Rubin, and psychologist and LSD advocate Timothy Leary, who urged the audience to "turn on, tune in, and drop out". Media coverage of the event introduced the American public to the hippie movement and set the stage for what would be described as "The Summer of Love".

Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week:

Leaving the chart:

• "Lady Godiva," Peter & Gordon (14 weeks)
• "Let's Fall in Love," Peaches & Herb (2 weeks)
• "Mame," Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass (8 weeks)
• "Whispers (Getttin' Louder)," Jackie Wilson (12 weeks)

New on the chart:

"Go Where You Wanna Go," The 5th Dimension

(#16 US)

"Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye," The Casinos

(#6 US; #28 UK)

"The Beat Goes On," Sonny & Cher

(#6 US; #29 UK)


And new on the boob tube:

• The Ed Sullivan Show, Season 19, episode 18
• Gilligan's Island, "Court-Martial"
• The Monkees, "The Case of the Missing Monkee"
• The Rat Patrol, "The One That Got Away Raid"
• The Invaders, "Beachhead" (series premiere)
• Batman, "The Zodiac Crimes"
• Batman, "The Joker's Hard Times"
• Star Trek, "The Squire of Gothos"
• That Girl, "These Boots Weren't Made for Walking"
• The Green Hornet, "Corpse of the Year: Part 1"
• The Wild Wild West, "The Night of the Feathered Fury"
• Tarzan, "The Day the Earth Trembled"
• The Time Tunnel, "Visitors from Beyond the Stars"
• Hogan's Heroes, "The Great Brinksmeyer Robbery"
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E., "The Deadly Smorgasbord Affair"
• 12 O'Clock High, "The Hunters and the Killers" (series finale)
• Get Smart, "Someone Down Here Hates Me"
• Mission: Impossible, "The Reluctant Dragon"

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Timeline entries are quoted from the Wiki pages for the month or year and Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles Day by Day, with minor editing as needed.

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OK...and how does that connect to the Brady house?

I googled that and I still don't know what it means...

If you mean a hardcopy, no. Artie received it on his telegraph while the train was in motion.

Jim was on foot, so yeah.

Having watched this before the Adam-12 episode helped me to recognize who Malloy was referring to...it's been a long time.

What about in the US?

 

50 Years Ago This Week

January 9

• The RMS Queen Elizabeth (QE2), largest ocean liner ever built, was destroyed by a fire as it sat in Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong. The ship was being renovated to become "Seawise University".
• The Los Angeles Lakers finally lost after 33 consecutive wins, falling to the Milwaukee Bucks, 120–104.

January 10

• Independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to Bangladesh after spending over nine months in prison in Pakistan.
• First UK release of the triple-album set The Concert for Bangladesh.

January 11

• Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declares a new constitutional government in Bangladesh, with himself as president.
• Bill France, Jr. succeeded his father as President of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing NASCAR. Over the next 28 years, France oversaw the growth of stock car racing to a multibillion-dollar industry and one of the most popular sports in the United States.
• The Night Stalker, starring Darren McGavin, was broadcast as the ABC Movie of the Week. Watched by 75 million viewers, it was the highest rated made-for-television movie to that date, and would lead to a weekly television series for McGavin.

January 12

• In a 10-hour siege, a cell of 4 left-wing insurgents hold off a task force of 2500 army soldiers and police agents in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: eight members of the security forces and the entire insurgent cell are killed in the course of the siege.
• The first regulations limiting exposure to asbestos were announced by the United States Department of Labor. Widely used in construction because of its fireproof nature, asbestos had been proven to be carcinogenic in the long term.

January 13

• U.S. President Richard Nixon announced that 70,000 American troops would be pulled out of Vietnam by May 1, cutting the existing force of 139,000 by half.
• Alabama Governor George C. Wallace announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination....With Nixon and Hubert Humphrey having announced their candidacies earlier in the week, all three major contenders in the 1968 election were in the 1972 race.
• Prime Minister of Ghana Kofi Abrefa Busia is overthrown in a military coup by Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong.
• John Lennon and Yoko Ono appear live on US television on The David Frost Show.

January 14 – At 8:00 pm Eastern time, Sanford and Son premiered on NBC. Starring Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson, the show ran until 1977. Based on the BBC comedy Steptoe and Son, the show replaced The D.A., a legal drama.


January 15

• Queen Margrethe II of Denmark succeeds her father, King Frederick IX, on the throne of Denmark, the first Queen of Denmark since 1412 and the first Danish monarch not named Frederick or Christian since 1513.
• American boxer Joe Frazier retained his World heavyweight championship by knocking out Terry Daniels in the fourth round at the Rivergate Convention Center in New Orleans.

Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week:

Leaving the chart:

• "Baby I'm-a Want You," Bread (12 weeks)
• "Stones" / "Crunchy Granola Suite", Neil Diamond (9 weeks)
• "Superstar (Remember How You Got Where You Are)," The Temptations (10 weeks)
• "Theme from 'Shaft'," Isaac Hayes (13 weeks)
• "Tightrope Ride," The Doors (7 weeks)
• "Where Did Our Love Go," Donnie Elbert (13 weeks)

New on the chart:

"Jungle Fever," The Chakachas

(#8 US; #11 R&B; #29 UK)

"Hurting Each Other," Carpenters

(#2 US; #1 AC)


And new on the boob tube:

• Hawaii Five-O, "The Ninety-Second War (Part 1)"
• Adam-12, "The Princess and the Pig"
• The Brady Bunch, "Dough Re Mi"
• The Partridge Family, "Fellini, Bergman, and Partridge"
• The Odd Couple, "Speak for Yourself"
• Love, American Style, "Love and the Big Surprise / Love and the Security Building / Love and the Ski Lodge / Love and the Happy Unhappy Couple / Love and the Topless Policy"
• All in the Family, "Archie and the FBI"
• Emergency!, "The Wedsworth-Townsend Act" (pilot movie)
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show, "The Slaughter Affair"
• Mission: Impossible, "Image"

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Timeline entries are quoted from the Wiki pages for the month or year and Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles Day by Day, with minor editing as needed.

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Maybe kinda like Manimal and Automan for me...

The debut of a seminal sunshine pop act. I've gotten used to the Mamas & Papas original, but this is a solid cover, putting the album track to good use.

This one I might like better in the era that it wants to be a part of. 1967 is too soon for '50s / earlier '60s retro.

Their other stone-cold oldies radio classic. So are they saying that they didn't start the fire...?

Well you know damn well then that Bobby's gonna open it.

Well, thanks for trying.

I think a leap to actual radio would be more likely. Or just chalk it up to bad TV science.

I also vaguely recall that there was a Saturday morning cartoon in the early '70s, The Chan Clan.

No shout-out to the Human Be-In? I thought that would totally be your bag, man.

 

And Sanford and Son...?

Sounds like somebody's enjoying themselves.

Kind of an undistinguished one.

If one had to come up with an explanation, I don't think it should involve infrastructure in the tracks, because then why wouldn't it be in general use? If Artie has access to radio, I could see him having a stationary telegraph receiver that broadcasts the message to him.

And I'm fairly sure I would've been seeing it first run--it was definitely on Saturday mornings--which means by summer of '73, so relatively strong memory back that far.

It's something to have on in the background at best...absorb some of the vibe of it.

Interesting...I, too, was named after an actor--one who was a television series lead in 1969.

The "glass half full" way of looking at that would be that it was arguably subversive. They didn't go out of their way to advertise something that a decent segment of the moviegoing audience would have objected to at the time, but got them in the theater to find out for themselves. And whether or not she was promoted in the film's publicity, Hendry was definitely a Bond girl...she plugged right into the standard formula as the girl whom Bond gets intimate with relatively early in the film, who's often an agent, but usually gets killed off.

 

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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 1)

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Hawaii Five-O
"Bait Once, Bait Twice"
Originally aired January 4, 1972

A bicycle-riding dude (Ric Marlow, whose character is billed as The Pro) goes into a hotel room carrying a bundle. Inside he rigs a phone to give him open speaker contact with somebody he reports to while setting up his tripod and AR-15 rifle to aim at a facing high-rise hotel. A woman goes out onto the ledge as planned (Loretta Swit), and hearing the resulting sirens attracts the attention of McGarrett, who's getting a haircut nearby. The Pro sets up his line of sight on the woman and McGarrett, who's since made it up into the woman's room to talk her down, and then sits back and waits. Dr. Kamekona (Danny Kamekona) arrives on the scene to advise McGarrett, and tries talking to her himself. The girl makes it on the news, which catches the casual interest of a shady-seeming character (Malachi Throne) who's consulting a lawyer named Bart Mariss (James Olson). A tip from a jeweler identifies the woman as Betty Landers, who recently ordered wedding rings with her fiance. Steve talks to her armed with this information, and she says that she wants to talk to her fiance, Howard Miller.

Scoping out Miller's dress-making shop turns up that Betty's a designer there and that Miller's been making calls to a John Manicote (Glenn Cannon), who's a district attorney. Steve calls the D.A. and he's evasive on the subject, wanting to see Steve personally. Manicote takes Steve to Miller (Norman Dupont), who's locked up in protective custody as he's set to testify against Throne's character, Barry Bonamo. (Miller's cell includes an anti-pot poster that I recall a youth group making on Dragnet.) The Pro takes an interest as Miller's party arrives, and up in the hotel room, McGarrett sets Miller up to talk to Betty from behind a curtained window to better position himself to try to grab her when she gets close enough. Howard talks her into edging toward him, and as he reaches out to take her hand, the silenced rifle is fired and Miller takes a dive out the window.

Five-O promptly raids the hotel from which the shot was fired to find the abandoned sniper's nest. Getting more details from Manicote about how crucial Miller's testimony was against Bonamo, who runs a crooked gambling operation, McGarrett realizes that his own presence was part of the plan to get Miller there fast. Steve goes to see Betty at the hospital and tells her that she's an accessory to murder to get her to talk about how her daughter from a previous marriage was kidnapped as leverage to get her to go out on the ledge and flush Howard out of hiding. Elsewhere, in a conversation with his lawyer, we get indications that Bonamo wasn't involved in the murder. A car stolen from Bonamo is fished out of the drink to reveal the hitman, identified as Johnny Froman, and his payment inside. McGarrett has Bonamo brought in, accompanied by his lawyer. Five-O reveals that Froman was killed before the car went under, and that Bonamo's prints were found all over the cash and the attache case it was in. Bart quits and Bonamo desperately insists that he had no motive, as Miller was still making payments to him, but is booked. Five-O discusses the possibility that Bonamo was framed.

Bonamo calls Mariss to go see Betty. She describes how Miller's obligation to Bonamo involved cutting Bonamo into a percentage of his company, which would decrease dramatically in the event of Miller's death. Something Betty says sets off Mariss into blurting something out that he shouldn't know, and Betty realizes that his was the voice that instructed her on the phone. Mariss grabs her to toss her off her balcony into the drink, and Steve and Danno pop out to reveal that they were using Betty as bait to lure Mariss in.

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Adam-12
"Citizens All"
Originally aired January 5, 1972

When they respond to a 484 PS, indignant victim Laura Thomas (Jo Anne Meredith) tells the officers how a pick-up truck hit her car and the passenger stole her purse when she got out to look at the damage. She isn't able to share the most helpful details, describing the colors of the plate.

On patrol, the officers stop in Griffith Park for a man standing beside a car with the hood open (Myron Healey). Reed looks under the hood and notices the engine isn't warm. The officers get out on foot further along to watch the man, who's met by a man in another car, and pounce in the squad car when they witness an exchange, which turns out to involve a briefcase full of cash. Afterward, the officers actually stop at an outdoor stand for a seven, because they didn't call it in on camera. Mac drops in to inform them that the cash was counterfeit.

Back on patrol, they're assigned to a 507 hi-fi. Jason Walters (John Gallaudet), the neighbor who called in, describes how Everett Jones (Vic Perrin) went strange after his wife died and started hosting hippie kids. They go to the door and Jones, wearing a robe and medallion, doesn't want to let them in, but steps out to talk to them while his guests watch through the window. The officers don't have anything on him, but caution him about potentially contributing to the delinquency of minors.

Next the officers drive up to break up a fight in a parking lot between two angry men. Actor Ron McKee (John Smith), whom Malloy recognizes, describes how the other man picked the fight. The other guy (Michael Lane, who appears to have been a wrestler) claims that McKee hit him first, but the waitress contradicts that. The other man, however, gets arrested for traffic warrants.

The officers go back to have another look at Jones's place, see a red pickup parked outside, and find a Nevada plate inside the vehicle, which matches Thomas's description. Inside the house, a guy named Ray (Hampton Fancher), who's apparently been one of Jones's guests, is holding him up for money. Once the officers have resolved the situation, Jones acts contrite about how he treated them before and sends his guests home.

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The Brady Bunch
"Big Little Man"
Originally aired January 7, 1972

Bobby tries to help Greg while he fixes a shutter on the girls' window. When Greg takes a call about the board he wants to buy, Bobby climbs up to the very top of the ladder to try to do it himself, and ends up hanging by his fingers from the window ledge. Greg pulls him up through the window and refers to Bobby as a "pee-wee," but Bobby promises to pay Greg back for saving his life. The parents scold Bobby, but try to encourage him regarding his newfound sensitivity about his height. Sam delivers to the house because he just lost his delivery boy, and Alice recruits Greg, who's eager to have the chance to earn money for the board. Sam jokingly refers to Bobby as Shrimpo, and has to apologize and console him afterward about how he used to be a pee-wee himself. Newly motivated by the story of Sam's six-inch growth spurt, Bobby takes to doing stretching exercises on the swing set, but is disappointed at his lack of results. The girls try to encourage him by each separately lowering the marker on his door a half-inch. When he learns the truth, he's back to despondency.

Bobby comes home with a shiner from picking a fight with a larger boy, and Carol tells him how Napoleon tried to compensate for his height and got clobbered...leaving out the history-making empire he built along the way. She encourages him to focus on his brain power, so Bobby checks out books and tries to impress everyone with random facts, though nobody's very interested. Seeing an opportunity to give Bobby something to do, Alice sends him to Sam's to get some sausage at the last minute. At the shop, Greg volunteers to close up for Sam and takes Bobby's order. Bobby follows him into the meat locker and accidentally locks them in. After some unsuccessful attempts to break open the door with an axe, Greg busts out the small window on the door and helps Bobby crawl through. The door won't open because they damaged the inside handle, so Bobby calls Sam at the house, and he and Mike pry the door open. Greg thanks Bobby for saving his life (not mentioning that he endangered it in the first place).

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The Partridge Family
"Home Is Where the Heart Was"
Originally aired January 7, 1972

When the kids decide to run away, Shirley encourages them to pack sensibly, figuring they'll be back inside of an hour and reminding Keith and Danny that she'd been through the same with each of them. The Partridges learn from the neighbor whom each of the kids visited for brownies before coming home that Chris and Tracy had left some time ago, then get a call from Reuben that they've come to his apartment, which has access to a pool. Shirley doesn't want to get them, wanting them to decide to come home on their own, so she encourages Reuben to show them the bad side of living alone. Chris brings in the neighbor's sheep dog, which Reuben is allergic to; and Tracy overfills the bathtub with bubbles. After he sends the kids to bed, a stewardess girlfriend named Bonnie Kleinschmidt (Elaine Giftos) comes over, but leaves in a huff when she finds they're not alone. Shirley decides to go get them after all, and pretends that she's also running away, about to hop a freight train. The kids plead with her not to, because she's needed. Everyone makes up, the kids decide to go home, and we cut to the family performing "Summer Days" at one of their club gigs.

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The Odd Couple
"Security Arms"
Originally aired January 7, 1972

Oscar wakes up to find Felix tied to a chair and gagged, and the apartment robbed, including of the TV and Oscar's typewriter. They call Murray, though Felix's description revolves around details of untidiness, and it comes out that Oscar, who takes the whole matter in stride, doesn't have insurance. Murray brings up maximum-security apartment buildings, and Felix moves out, staying temporarily with Gloria. Felix finds a place called the Security Arms and wants Oscar to look at it with him. Oscar isn't interested at first, but changes his mind when there's a shootout on the street.

The duo go to talk to the building's manager, Mr. Duke (John Fiedler). Oscar is immediately turned off by all the security precautions and the ultra-modern sterility, which includes bolted-down furniture, and is paranoid of surveillance, referencing Big Brother. Felix invites Gloria over for dinner, but as she's an unregistered guest, Duke holds her in the office and treats her like a criminal while calling up to the apartment. Felix tries to go down to straighten things out, against protocol, and it turns out that the inside lock of the apartment requires a key, which Oscar lost.

Duke: The only way now is to break the door down!
Oscar: Well get your axe up here and do it!​

Once Duke has gotten the door open, Felix becomes outraged to learn that he manhandled Gloria, tells him off, and declares that they'll be leaving at once. In a nice bit of poetic justice, it turns out that the place was robbed as soon as Duke left his post.

There's a funny bit of business when Felix goes into Oscar's room in the middle of the night to talk to him, nudges the bundle under which he's sleeping, and Oscar's head pops up from the foot of the bed. This is called back to in the coda, when, having returned to their old place, Felix goes in to talk to the bundle again, and Oscar walks in the room brushing his teeth.

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Somebody who was a TV series lead in the fall of 1969.

 

i shall not confirm or deny, but I was just noting that it was a current show at the time of my birth; it didn't necessarily start in the fall of '69.

It's also not a show that I've been covering.

FWIW, they played up having Sam say that it was an outdated freezer and he needed to modernize it.

 

I assume the doctor was named after the actor. IIRC, this is the guy who appeared in a previous episode billed under a more Germanic sounding name, but they used the actor's last name in the episode. Now the billing matches.

Almost, but not much like him.

It makes me wonder if the poster originated with Dragnet; was a pre-exiting prop; or was a pre-existing actual poster.

Mariss did...he was calling the shots.

Yeah, that wasn't clearly addressed. The whole argument was that the stipulation in the will made Miller worth more to Bonamo alive than dead.

Bonamo called him and pleaded for him to do it.

You never miss an opportunity to make me go back and rewatch. Unclear, but when Mariss learned of the stipulation in the will, he was kicking himself because Bonamo's larger cut would have been his, for whatever reason.

Unclear and unclear.

We were told she was released unharmed. It was Betty crying about her daughter's life being threatened that caused Mariss to snap on that point.

Unknown.

The really odd thing that I didn't understand either time around is that Mariss didn't know about the percentage stipulation because it was all in Miller's will, which he didn't have a hand in...including Bonamo's original, higher cut. Why would the percentage that Bonamo was getting while Miller was alive be dealt with in Miller's will?

Anyway, next week is Wo Fat in his yellow submarine and double your McGarrett!

It tends to come with the price of an expository visit from Mac. He chided them about needing to get back on duty this time.

Well, he did climb to the very top rung of the ladder to try to reach things.

Trouble in paradise.

Beg pardon?

The Partridge Family often is, and Antenna's obvious hacking doesn't help. I've been hanging onto it for its general times-signiness, but it's definitely the weak link in my current lineup.

Oscar was living alone before Felix showed up at his door; and routinely kicks Felix out or threatens to.

I thought that was pretty edgy for TV of this period.

I'm sure there must be, particularly in cases in which a show's premise was reworked. I can think of a couple of examples offhand in which new settings were introduced and old ones were deemphasized. On MTM, Mary eventually gets a new apartment; by that point in the show, Rhoda and Phyllis have both been spun off and, from what I've seen of the later seasons, it went from a balance of emphasis between Mary's work life/friends and home life/friends, to her work friends also being her after-hours friends. When All in the Family was retooled as Archie Bunker's Place, the bar became the new main setting, though the house was still in use.

You're just starting at the beginning of the list, aren't you?

 

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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)

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Love, American Style
"Love and the Lady Athlete / Love and the Lady Killers / Love and the New Size 8 / Love and the Single Sister"
Originally aired January 7, 1972

"Love and the Lady Athlete" opens with a Russian man posing as a female skier named Carla Striker (Michael Callan), accompanied by a commissar (Kathleen Freeman), being checked into "her" quarters for the winter games by Oliver (Bernard Fox). The room has a brass bed, of course. Wilma Evans of the American ski team (Tina Louise) comes by from next door to introduce herself. "Carla" struggles to maintain his cover in her presence, so he pays her a visit out of drag, introducing himself as Carla's brother, Carl. Just as they're starting to hit it off, Oliver comes by to see Carla, whom he's smitten with, so Carl has to excuse himself and resume his alter ego. Carl feels the need to go along with Oliver until the commissar intervenes. Wilma goes to Carla to arrange to have the place alone with Carl for the evening, so Carla accompanies Oliver to a movie, somehow slips away, and goes back to the lodge to be with Wilma. Later, after skiing together, Wilma accidentally pulls off Carla's wig, and is happy with the revelation, so Carl declares that he'll defect to marry her. The commissar is despondent and motivated to defect at her ruse having been discovered, but Oliver swoops in to woo her.

In "Love and the Lady Killers," Dan (Lloyd Battista) and Pete (Jack Burns) are looking to hire a new girl to organize their travel agency office. In walks Penny Bannister (Carol Wayne) for an interview, they're clearly struck by her, and despite her lack of qualifications, they don't have to twist each other's arms too hard to try her out. Dan makes the first move and asks the new girl out to dinner. Though she doesn't let him in her place, the next day, Dan makes Pete think he had a wild time with her. Pete then has his shot, and does the same with Dan. An important client, Mr. Tobias (Richard X. Slattery), comes in and takes an interest in Penny, and Dan and Pete accommodate his desire to ask her out. The next day they fish for how her date went, and learn that she didn't let any of the three men in her apartment. Tobias then comes in to sign a contract, and also makes like he had a wild time.

"Love and the New Size 8" has Duncan (Alex Henteloff) telling Mrs. Stokes (Thelma Pelish) that he's going to ask her plus-size daughter Patty to marry him. Patty returns from a trip to reveal that she's been at a health ranch and is now half the weight she used to be (and thus played by Shelley Fabares). She's still committed to Duncan, but he starts acting jealous of any potential competition, which includes various unseen admirers who call her and send her flowers. He tries to encourage her to eat, and it comes out that he was attracted to her because she was unattractive to other men. Duncan disappears and days later Patty receives a postcard from the health ranch...but when he returns, it turns out that he flunked because his roommate was a food smuggler. She tells him that she likes him exactly the way he is, and he indirectly pops the question.

In "Love and the Single Sister," Diana (Judy Carne) has to break it to her husband Larry (Bill Daily) that her sister Beatrice is visiting, but he already knows and doesn't mind. Bea arrives (Kristina Holland), depressed from a breakup. Diana and her friend Lois (Alice Borden) try to find a man for her, but she meets one on her own, a soft-spoken Texan named Will (Will Hutchins). Will makes a plan to elope with Bea before he has to return home, but Diana and Larry move the garbage cans that Beatrice told her were under her window. Will ends up climbing up to Larry and Diana's bedroom instead, and after separately groping each of their unseen arms, enters while Larry's out of the room. Will hides under Larry's covers when the doorbell rings, then slips back out when Diana gets up to answer it. It turns out to be Larry, who was chasing the neighbors' dogs away from the garbage cans and locked himself out...to Diana's confusion, as she thought that she'd just left him in the bedroom. Not having gotten her expected visit, Bea goes downstairs and Diana gives her sleeping pills, causing her to conk out on the couch. Lois then comes over, having had a fight with her husband Carl (Dick Yarmy), so Diana puts her in Bea's room. Carl comes over angry, as he thinks that Lois has been seeing Will. Will makes it into Bea's room, but Carl and Diana come in before he sees that Lois is in the bed. Diana sees Will and tries to keep the other two from noticing, but Carl finds Will and punches him out. In the end, things are straightened out, and Will carries the still-drowsy Beatrice away over his shoulder. Larry and Diana retire to the bedroom and learn that each had their arm tickled by someone they thought was the other.

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All in the Family
"Edith's Problem"
Originally aired January 8, 1972

Archie and Edith are planning a trip to Florida to see that new Disney World, but Edith's been acting strange lately. When she gets home from the market, she yells at Archie, to everyone's astonishment...then, when she comes back out of the kitchen, she acts normal and doesn't seem to know what she just did. She starts having hot flashes, and snaps at Archie again when he tells her to stifle. A dumbstruck Archie decides to go out for air, and Gloria sends Mike with him to run an errand, wanting to talk to Mom alone. Gloria, who's been reading a magazine article on the subject, asks Edith some questions and explains that she's going through the change of life. Edith's response is denial, thinking that this will make her an old woman and that Archie won't love her anymore. When Archie and Mike return, Edith experiences more emotional outbursts, telling Archie to stifle and running upstairs in hysterics.

Gloria has Archie take Edith to a "groinocologist". While they wait at a diner to talk to him about the results, Gloria talks to Archie about Edith's change, and actually drops the M-word, which I was expecting they wouldn't do. Back at home, Mike tries to talk to Edith about it, but she's embarrassed. He brings up the possibility of grandchildren, which she likes the idea of at first, but the thought of being a grandmother sends her running upstairs again. Archie comes home with pills for Edith and himself, and advice that he has to be patient with and nice to Edith, but she takes his behavior as indication that he's thinking of her as an old lady. When the trip comes up, Edith declares that she wants to go to Scranton to visit a cousin instead. This finally causes Archie to erupt into his regular self, giving Edith thirty seconds to finish her change. All of this seems to briefly make Edith feel better, but she ultimately snaps at him again.

In the coda, Archie and Edith return home from their trip wearing mouse ears.

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The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"Feeb"
Originally aired January 8, 1972

The episode opens with the WJM gang at a restaurant for Ted's self-promoted birthday. Murray gets him a Dick and Jane book. The waitress (Barbara Sharma, who was a Laugh-In regular last I was watching it) gets everyone's orders wrong except Murray's, because he ordered something under pressure that he didn't really want. By check time, everyone's frustrated with her service, which includes having forgotten to bring out a piece of cake for Ted. Mary slips her a tip regardless, but when prompted by the maitre d' (Jack Manning), tells him of the bad service. Later, Mary's screening applicants for a secretary job at the station, one of whom turns out to be the now-former waitress, Randy Willner. Lou leaves it to Mary to decide between her and another girl. Weighing her choices with Rhoda at home, Rhoda, from Mary's description, compares Randy to a friend from school whom she describes with the titular epithet...but it turns out that Mary has already hired her.

Randy proves to be incompetent in typing, shorthand, and filing, and can't keep the names of the station or boss straight. Murray eventually realizes who she is. Mary takes Randy into Lou's office for a talk, and confesses that she's the one who got Randy fired from her previous job. Then Mary offers to help keep her from getting fired again, but Randy doesn't want to put in the effort. Oblivious because Mary's been covering for her, Lou thinks that Randy's doing great, so Mary tries to tell him the truth, but he assumes she's jealous of Randy. Mary then abstains from helping Randy type a letter, Lou sees the difference, it comes out that Randy's the waitress, and Lou wants to fire her. Mary, being Mary, then hesitates about bringing her in to see Lou.

In the coda, Mary--relieved to again be working without "help"--has to deal with Randy on the phone because she's gotten a job with an affiliated station...thanks to a letter of recommendation from Mary. The end credits break the usual format by running over a scene of Mary explaining the titular epithet to Murray.

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Mission: Impossible
"Stone Pillow"
Originally aired January 8, 1972

"Cellmate Jim"...they're using my naming convention! Alas, it's not a Turkish prison...

The episode opens with Vincent Vochek (Robert Ellenstein) being shown a film that places him at the scene of a murder by extortionist Larry Edison (Bradford Dillman), who's scheduled to start serving time the next day. (Do they just let convicted criminals roam free for last-minute errands?)

After exchanging passphrases with a fire ranger...

Edison's welcomed to his new digs by Acting Warden Barney, who's sporting gray temples for the occasion. Prison guard Joe Fort (Arthur Batanides) is Vochek's man on the inside. Edison is locked into his new quarters with Horn-Rimmed, Chess-Playing Cellmate Jim, whose character is nicknamed "The Professor". At night, Edison pretends to sleep while watching Professor Jim hide a folded paper in his bedstand. Out in the yard the next day, Prison Guard Willy uses a gun concealed in a lighter to fake an attempt on Edison. Fort desperately argues for Edison to be put in protective isolation, but Warden Barney defers to Psychiatric Doc Casey and keeps him in his cell...where Edison finds a diagram of the prison in Jim's book and confronts him about how he's apparently planning a bust-out. Edison later finds a miniature gun and ammo concealed in Jim's chess pieces and demands to be cut in on the attempt.

At Doc Casey's group therapy session, Jim pulls his mini-gun on her and commences with the escape attempt...which is real, as the IMF doesn't know who in the prison might be an inside man, though Willy's manning the tower from which they're shot at while using a tunnel to go under the outside gate. Jim TV Fus Edison in the car and lets Casey go, to be picked up by a pursuing party of guards led by Fort. Jim switches cars and sends the first one down a hill in gasoline-and-detonator-assisted flames. The papers report that he and Edison died in the car...even though no bodies would have been found. Edison comes to in a motel hide-out and demands to use a phone to get in touch with his contact, Leona Prescott--a woman who, unknown to Edison, conveniently just died in an auto accident, whom Casey will be impersonating...and who Vochek's men are onto because of a letter Edison sent to her.

Barney goes off-duty to man an IMF van with Willy while Casey assumes her Prescott identity (Brooke Mills). She's forcibly confronted by Vochek's goons while checking her mail. Edison calls her and she leads him to believe that she turned the film over to the D.A. per his instructions, thinking he was dead. Prof. Jim expresses an interest in Edison's blackmail scheme, wanting a cut. Jim makes a call to the van, pretending that he's talking to an informant who indicates that Prescott's lying to Edison, following which Jim takes Edison to Leona's place...where Vochek and his chief goon (Jock Gaynor, whose character is billed as Cliff) see that Edison is alive.

Fake Leona holds a gun on Edison and indicates that she's after the blackmail money herself. Prof. Jim fake shoots her, following which Edison retrieves a hidden key, takes Leona's gun, and splits in Jim's car. Edison is tailed to a warehouse by the IMF van as well as Vochek and goons. Edison retrieves the film, and Cliff takes shots at him in the dark while the others attempt to surround Edison...but are quietly taken down by Barney and Willy. Jim walks up to Edison while holding Cliff at gunpoint, Edison tries to shoot at them, and finds that Leona's gun is loaded with blanks. Outside, Edison and Vochek are both taken into custody by conventional law enforcement officers while the IMFers mill about in plain sight.

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I presume not, as H5O was shot in Hawaii.

I meant to include that the daughter was nothing more than a plot device...we never saw her, not even a picture.

It would have been a nice touch if the imposter had been unable to duplicate his hair...

Not ringing a bell.

I thought you were just playing along, but I'm beginning to get the impression that you don't remember that you already knew this...

 

55 Years Ago This Week

January 15

• The Rolling Stones appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show for the second time, but only after acceding to a demand by Sullivan to alter the words of their hit song, "Let's Spend the Night Together". After Sullivan reportedly said, "Either the song goes or the Stones go," Mick Jagger sang the refrain as "Let's spend some time together."

[Not from the Sullivan account]

• The Green Bay Packers of the NFL defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL, 35–10, at the First AFL-NFL World Championship Game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to win the first interleague championship of American professional football. At the time, the name "Super Bowl" was unofficial. The highest price for a ticket was only $12.00 (equivalent to $87 fifty years later), but the stadium was filled to only two-thirds capacity.

January 16

• At St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, gynecologist Gordon Bourne led a team of surgeons in performing the first fetal exchange transfusion on a human being, replacing the blood of an unborn child who was endangered by Rh factor incompatibility. Because a safe premature delivery was deemed unfeasible, the Rh positive blood of the fetus was completely removed and replaced with one fifth of a pint of the mother's Rh negative blood, two months ahead of the March 21 due date.
• Jacqueline Kennedy, the former First Lady of the United States, settled her lawsuit against author William Manchester and the Harper & Row publishing company, which had temporarily enjoined the publication of Manchester's book, The Death of a President.

January 17 – The UK's Daily Mail printed a story about a custody hearing following the suicide of a minor celebrity and another story about holes in the road in Blackburn, Lancashire. Both events would be turned into lyrics in the song "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles, released later in the year.

January 18

• Jeremy Thorpe becomes leader of the UK's Liberal Party.
• Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler", was convicted of numerous crimes other than the 13 homicides of which he had been accused, and was sentenced to life in prison. The life sentence was for armed robbery, while the other indictments were for breaking and entering, assault and battery, and "unnatural and lascivious acts", for which DeSalvo's attorney, F. Lee Bailey, had sought to argue that the defendant was not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury's rejection of the insanity plea marked the first loss for Bailey in a major case; the defense had already admitted that DeSalvo had committed the lesser crimes and framed the issue as whether DeSalvo was legally insane. Pending an appeal, DeSalvo would continue to be confined at the Bridgewater State Hospital.
• A Fistful of Dollars, the first significant "spaghetti Western" film, was released in the United States.

• The United States Air Force launched eight communications satellites into orbit on a Titan IIIC rocket, increasing its "globe girdling satellite communications network" to 15 located above the Earth and closing the gaps between the seven launched in 1966.

January 19 – Major Bernard F. Fisher of the United States Air Force became the first person to be awarded the Air Force Medal of Honor, the design of which had been authorized on November 1, 1965. From 1947 to 1965, USAF members who were awarded the highest order of valor in the United States were presented with the Army Medal of Honor. Major Fisher's recognition came for his heroism on March 10, 1966, when he risked his life by landing his A-1E/H Skyraider plane on a short airstrip in the A Shau Valley in South Vietnam to rescue a fellow pilot who was about to be captured by the North Vietnamese Army.

January 21

• In the first encounter between a computer and a master-rated chess player in a tournament, the "Mac Hack" computer program designed by Richard Greenblatt of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology program almost defeated another MIT student, Carl Wagner, who was rated at "a little above master" by the United States Chess Federation. Wagner was playing at the monthly chess club tournament at the YMCA building in Boylston, Massachusetts, while the Mac Hack (entered in the tournament as "Robert Q. Computer") remained at MIT while the moves and responses were relayed by teletype.
• At Omaha, Nebraska, skater Peggy Fleming won her fourth successive women's figure skating title at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week:

Leaving the chart:

• "You Keep Me Hangin' On," The Supremes (12 weeks)

New on the chart:

"The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game," The Marvelettes

(#13 US; #2 R&B)

"Let's Spend the Night Together," The Rolling Stones

(#55 US; #3 UK as double A-side w/ "Ruby Tuesday")

"Ruby Tuesday," The Rolling Stones

(US B-side of "Let's Spend the Night Together"; #1 US the week of Mar. 4, 1967; #3 UK; #303 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time [2004])


And new on the boob tube:

• The Ed Sullivan Show, Season 19, episode 19
• Gilligan's Island, "The Hunter"
• The Monkees, "I Was a Teenage Monster"
• The Rat Patrol, "Two for One Raid"
• The Invaders, "The Experiment"
• Batman, "The Penguin Declines"
• Batman, "That Darn Catwoman"
• Star Trek, "Arena"
• That Girl, "Kimono My House"
• The Wild Wild West, "The Night of the Gypsy Peril"
• Tarzan, "Captain Jai"
• The Time Tunnel, "The Ghost of Nero"
• Hogan's Heroes, "Praise the Führer and Pass the Ammunition"
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E., "The Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Rum Affair"
• The Avengers, "From Venus with Love" (US season premiere)
• Mission: Impossible, "The Frame"
• Get Smart, "Cutback at CONTROL"

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Timeline entries are quoted from the Wiki pages for the month or year.

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Well, my family used to go down annually in the '70s, and we weren't swimming in dough, but were aided by having relatives in Florida. But yeah, maybe.

They're routinely slipping saucy stuff into Archie's mangled phrases.

Nowadays, they'd be calling Mary a Karen...

Wasn't meant to be...it was all about how far Mary would go for such an insufferable person. America's Doormat Sweetheart.

I don't know how "Warding" slipped by at least two reads...

"Can you move that squad car so we can do our Mission: Accomplished drive-off?"

I found the episode on IMDb and it still wasn't coming back to me. Tried to find my own review by searching for "refrigerator," "fridge," and "freezer," but no luck. Dragnet's episode title scheme doesn't help: "The Big Search".

I dug up the old PM...it's from 2015, and apparently PMs from the previous software show up as individual posts in this software, rather than full threads. I could bump it for you, but maybe I should let you keep guessing...

Darren was on the right track with his Robert Reed guess, in that it's a first/last-name combo that makes for a natural-sounding first/middle-name combo.