Just learned that Joe Egan, the co-founder of Stealers Wheel, along with Jerry Rafferty, passed away at the age of seventy-seven the other day.
The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread
- Thread starter The Old Mixer
- Start date
Nice try, but not quite.
Jewelry or furs?
Keeping watch because Eddie is going to rob the pool hall? Was he armed? With a machine gun?
Good thing Pete wasn't driving or Condon would be dead.
"You knew I was the criminal element when you married me!"
Ah, those lazy, crazy days on the Black Lagoon.his wife, Nancy (Julie Adams)
Indeed. Sesame Street teaches kids to be kind!
If this keeps up, Lucy will be looking for a job.
Dug. Though how, I don't know. It must have come up in this thread before.
Jewelry!
Who is otherwise never referenced.
Roy talks tough but he cracks like peanut brittle.
What does everybody have against the FBI? This is kind of their wheelhouse.
This is a good idea. Kind of surprising that we don't see it more often in these situations.
When Julie asked Nancy if she had any ideas about the kidnappers, as I'm sure she must have, she or her husband should have thought of these two immediately, which would have made it easier to track them down.
Horrified doesn't count if you don't call the police, lady.
All sorts of timely relevance in the backstory.
"Pete will beat the kidnapper senseless until Linc pulls him off."
Usually this type of character would be estranged from the kid and need to learn a lesson and so on.
Time for the action!
Again with no SDs?
Not a bad episode, with only a handful of flaws. The usual sloppy setup, the missing girlfriend, and the apparent lack of questioning the parents. Both of the parents were portrayed sympathetically with no family drama, which was refreshing. I'd just like to know what Greer's grudge against the FBI is about.
Yeah, she had a nice heart-to-heart with both parents. I think we talked about the reunion movie once and I said that they should have moved her on to some job in social services, and this really supports that idea.
Or perhaps a time traveler. Was he hanging out with a hot Black woman?
That would have been funny.
We're an acquired taste.
What a shame. RIP, Joe Egan. Seventy-seven seems pretty damn young these days.
Yeah, they were really reaching there.
But Pete's accidents never actually kill anyone...He's gonna be soon anyway.
No doubt...possibly more than once.
In this case, I believe they were referring to the Old Lady of the Black Lagoon.
It was lampshading to work around the fact that the police were handling the case instead of the FBI.
There was mention of looking into their servants.
Possibly used in the long shot, but nothing to write home about in this case.
And just that she was in the thick of the situation getting to act like a pro.
Not kepped.Or perhaps a time traveler. Was he hanging out with a hot Black woman?
True, I shouldn't be too mean.
He bought a hot rock for his mom? Interesting....
Indeed.
Oh, that one! I wasn't even thinking about that scene, my mind was on the interrogation scene.
Right, the interrogation. He was written as way too naive, but it was a lighthearted film so it didn't bug me that much.
50 Years Ago This Week
July 15
July 16
July 17
July 18
July 19
July 20
T-minus 20 days and counting.
Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week:
Leaving the chart:
New on the chart:
"Clap for the Wolfman," The Guess Who
(#6 US)
"Beach Baby," The First Class
(#4 US; #38 AC; #13 UK)
_______
Timeline entries are quoted from the Wiki page for the month and Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles Day by Day, with minor editing as needed.
_______
July 15
- The President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios III, was overthrown in a coup d'état carried out by the Cypriot National Guard on orders of General Dimitrios Ioannidis, leader of the military junta ruling Greece. President Makarios, who was able to escape before the destruction of the presidential palace in Nicosia, was replaced by Nikos Sampson, an Enosis activist who supported the annexation of the Greek and Turkish island by Greece. Sampson would be forced to resign eight days later after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the collapse of the Greek regime.
- Christine Chubbuck, a 29-year old TV news announcer for WXLT-TV Channel 40 in Sarasota, Florida, became the first person ever to commit suicide on live television, shooting herself after her delivery of the local news on the talk show Suncoast Digest. At 9:38, Ms. Chubbuck, upset over a recent change in the talk show's format to emphasize crime news, told viewers "In keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guns in living color, you are going to see another first—attempted suicide." She then pointed a .38 caliber pistol to her right ear and fired the gun as thousands of viewers watched.
July 16
- British troops rescued Archbishop Makarios III, the Greek Cypriot leader who had been overthrown as President of Cyprus, from the coastal city of Paphos and flew him to Malta and then to the UK.
July 17
- The bombing of the Tower of London by terrorists of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) killed one person and injured 41 others. The blast was from a time bomb, planted under a cannon on display, and took place while tourists and sightseers were in the 60-by-30 foot Mortar Room of the Tower. Dorothy Household, a London librarian, died of her injuries after the blast.
- France conducted an atmospheric nuclear bomb test over the Mururoa Atoll test site in the south Pacific, roughly 780 miles (1,260 km) southeast of the French colony at the island of Tahiti. The test, code-named Centaure, had been carried out at 7:04 in the morning local time based on inaccurate weather predictions and the cloud of radioactive fallout passed directly over Tahiti and surrounding islands 42 hours later, on July 19, 1974, exposing as many as 110,000 people with 500 times the maximum exposure to radioactivity.
- The Northern Ireland Act 1974 became effective upon receiving royal assent by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
- Baseball pitcher Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals became the first player in National League history, and only the second in Major League Baseball, to strike out 3,000 batters in his career, retiring César Gerónimo of the visiting Cincinnati Reds. Walter Johnson had been the first to reach the 3,000 strikeout mark.
- Once again John Lennon is ordered to leave the US within 60 days. Once again he lodges an appeal.
- Dizzy Dean (Jay Hanna Dean), 64, U.S. baseball player and inductee in the Baseball Hall of Fame, died of a heart attack.
July 18
- In Hanoi, capital of North Vietnam, General Vo Nguyen Giap of the People's Army of Vietnam gave the go-ahead to General Hoang Van Thai for preparation for the conquest of South Vietnam, starting with a preparatory mission on December 13, 1974, and a larger general offensive to complete the reunification of Vietnam under Communist rule by the end of 1976. South Vietnam would be conquered less than five months after the start of the invasion, with Saigon falling on April 30, 1975.
July 19
- Hospitalized for phlebitis, Spain's dictator Francisco Franco signed a decree appointing Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon y Borbon as the acting chief of state.
- Joe Flynn, 49, American TV and film actor best known for the comedy McHale's Navy, died of a heart attack while swimming at his home.
July 20
- Five days after Greek Cypriot activists overthrew the government of Cyprus, armed forces from Turkey carried out a massive invasion and occupation by land, sea and air of the northern portion of the island republic, which was primarily occupied by Turkish Cypriots. After departing from the Turkish port of Mersin the night before, four battalions of 3,500 Turkish soldiers began coming ashore at Glykiotissa, near the northern port of Kyrenia at 7:15 local time, and engaged in battle against the Greek-commanded Cypriot National Guard. At the same time, Turkish warplanes bombed the airport at the capital, Nicosia, and both a Cypriot National Guard camp and a Greek Army contingent near Nicosia. Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said that the decision to invade was made at an emergency meeting of his cabinet before dawn.
- On the fifth anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins spoke at a press conference, where Armstrong confirmed a statement by Collins that Armstrong had exercised his right as mission commander to be the first person to walk on the Moon, despite early flight plans that gave the assignment to Aldrin. Armstrong said that since he was closest to the hatch, he left the lunar module first even though the practice was for the module pilot to leave first, allowing Aldrin to go first "required that the two crewmen change places in pressurized suits in a cramped area. It was not impossible, but it was very difficult and possibly dangerous." Collins had written in his book, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys, that Aldrin and Armstrong had argued about the decision prior to the mission launch, and said "I did not mean to imply in my book that there was anything abnormal about the reversal. It was a normal thing and made the best sense." Aldrin told reporters "I do what my boss tells me to."
- The first rock concert to be held at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, UK, featured The Allman Brothers Band, Van Morrison, Tim Buckley and others, and was attended by an estimated 60,000 people.
T-minus 20 days and counting.
Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week:
Leaving the chart:
- "Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing," Stevie Wonder (15 weeks)
New on the chart:
"Clap for the Wolfman," The Guess Who
(#6 US)
"Beach Baby," The First Class
(#4 US; #38 AC; #13 UK)
_______
Timeline entries are quoted from the Wiki page for the month and Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles Day by Day, with minor editing as needed.
_______
A touch of Glam, Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. I have memories of roller skating to this song in the mid to-late seventies at the local rink.
The lead singer is wearing a "ZZ Top" t-shirt.
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Fifty years and still going strong.
One of the freakiest stories of all time. I think there's some question about whether a recording of this still exists, hidden away somewhere.
Even if you have a weatherman, you don't know which way the wind blows.
Resulting in one of the most memorable Doonesbury strips ever:
I guess they were serious.
Then he added, "Missed it by that much."
Tick tickety tock.
Cute little homage to the good old Wolfman. I remember this, but not from when it was released. Must be either Lost 45s or the Time-Life series or something.
A nostalgic fave.
The song or this particular performance?
I remember this.
Both. Until 'The Midnight Special' uploaded their performance on YouTube, I didn't know the Guess Who had a song called 'Clap for the Wolfman'. I never heard it played on the radio, in my recollection. Must be a regional thing.
Post-50th Anniversary Viewing
The Mod Squad
"The Night Holds Terror"
Originally aired February 15, 1973
IMDb said:
You know how we've been teasing Julie about wanting to keep that baby in Season 4's "Shockwave"? It's all earned here! Greer finds that Julie's in a funk because she visited the O'Rourkes, the couple who adopted Sally Ann, and feels that she may have made a mistake in "giving up" the baby that was never really hers in the first place; so the captain sends her on vacation, feeling that a little peril should take her mind off things. As she's driving on a dark, rainy country road, she has flashbacks to the prior episode, mainly centering around talking to the priest about wanting to adopt the baby. While she's in Caine mode, she almost collides with a pickup truck not driven by Pete, which sends her swerving off the road and into unconsciousness. A passing couple who happen to be a doctor and pregnant nurse, Ed and Cathy Chase (Ben Piazza and Brooke Bundy), take her back to their place so he can have a look at her; and leave her in the nursery while they go to the hospital (where they, y'know, might have taken her...). Julie wakes up in the room of the expected child to find a note from Cathy. Meanwhile, a soaked figure walks toward the house and sees Julie in the window--Richard Dreyfuss! Julie hears a clattering and goes down the basement to find a window blowing in the wind...not noticing the figure watching her from under the stairs...
Cathy, who was going in to get checked for late-pregnancy pains, calls Julie to tell her that they're going to be late returning. While they're talking, the lights go out, and Cathy directs Julie to the fuse box, which is under the cellar stairs with you-know-who, who grabs Julie from behind...which is smart, because even Julie could mess someone up with one of those big honkin' metal flashlights. Greer learns from Highway Patrol about what happened to Julie and tries calling the Chase house, but YKW won't let her answer the phone. Julie learns that he's there for the Chases, and when he sees the crib in her room, he has a strong reaction--envisioning a child in it, and then smashing it to bits with a chair. While he's in his berserker rage, Julie makes a run for the phone and has just gotten through to an operator when he pulls the cord out of the wall.
Julie engages the intruder in conversation to try to learn more about him. He says that he was married to Cathy; then, while alternately brandishing a cleaver and a chef's knife in the kitchen, goes on that he escaped from a farm for the criminally insane, where he was put for AWD, though he prefers not to remember the details; and that he's there to kill Cathy and her husband. Julie asks him about smashing the crib and he indicates that Cathy killed his son. When he acts unconcerned that the woman he plans to kill is nine months pregnant, Julie tells him off. Cathy comes home alone, her husband now on duty, and while the intruder is watching her out the window, Julie makes a break for the kitchen door to try to warn Cathy, but he catches up and pulls a gun. Cathy recognizes him, calling him Cal and indicating that it's been five years since they were a couple. Something Julie says triggers a moment of confusion in which Cal admits that he has trouble separating fantasy from reality. Then Cathy doubles over with pains and Julie lies her down on the floor. Cathy informs her that it's time--Chekhov's Ninth Month of Pregnancy!
Cal doesn't want to cooperate in getting Cathy to the hospital, but goes to try to get the lights back on. Cathy tells Julie that he tried to kill her before when she was filing for divorce, which is why he was put away. When Julie asks about their son, she's initially confused, and then realizes that it's about a miscarriage that she had, which he'd blamed her for. When Cal returns, Julie gets him more invested in the situation by messing with his head and telling him that Cathy's about to deliver his son, which confuses him at first. Meanwhile, Pete, who's been driving around in the rain unable to find the Chase home, tracks down Dr. Chase at the hospital, and the two of them head for the house...where Cathy has Julie grab supplies and runs her through all the usual TV baby delivery schtick. (At least they're not stuck in an elevator.) Just as the baby's cries are heard and Cal reacts happily, Pete and Ed arrive and Cal runs into the living room to fire a shot off. Pete and his SD engage Cal in melee while Ed goes to the kitchen to see to his wife and newborn son. Having taken down Cal, Pete joins the others in the kitchen to take in the new arrival.
The coda has Greer with the gang at the hospital, where we learn that Cathy and the Ed III are doing fine. Julie walks with Ed II to go see them.
Ironside
"The Ghost of the Dancing Doll"
Originally aired February 15, 1973
Wiki said:
The titular tiny ship is towed in by the Coast Guard, and Ed and Fran arrive to investigate, finding the bullet slug in a railing and droplets of blood on the deck below. The anchor is also missing. Fran describes it as a ghost ship. Emergency!'s Ron Pinkard plays the NCO who meets them, Chief Borden, and I wouldn't have recognized him. The boat belongs to a friend of Ed's from the service named Jerry Denton, who invited Ed and Fran to go fishing that morning but didn't show. Ed has reason to believe that the Doll had been chartered. The Chief already has a case from the commissioner about a convergence of out-of-town gangsters on Frisco, supposedly all taking vacations; but he lets the team investigate the Doll affair.
After consulting with Borden about where the Doll may have drifted from, Ed and Mark take her out and end up finding a shot body weighed down by an anchor. Meanwhile, Fran talks to Jerry's fiancée, student barmaid Debbie Dwyer (Jess Walton), who tells her that the boat was chartered the previous day by someone Jerry knew from serving time for armed robbery after he got out of the service. The body is identified as that of Sam Blount, who's both the charter and one of the gangsters. Fran goes back to the bar, where Debbie has just gotten a call from Jerry and slips out on her. Fran stakes out Debbie's room above the bar and a pair of men claiming to be police pay a visit (Del Monroe and Dean Smith, whose character names of Tom and Joe I didn't catch being used), thinking that she's Debbie. Fran plays along until Debbie returns, which blows her cover. The men are starting to lean on Debbie when Ed enters downstairs looking for Fran, who alerts him by breaking a lamp. The imposters slip out the window as he rushes up and screech away in a blue Corvette.
Back at the Cave, investigation by the Chief and Mark has turned up that a gangster named Matty Millane has sailed in from Lima on a ship called the Inca Queen, and they deduce that he's trying to put together a West Coast syndicate that he could run from South America. Fran brings in Debbie, who's persuaded to take them to Jerry (Christopher Connelly) for his own good. Jerry indicates that what appeared to be a routine fishing trip took a turn when Sam hijacked the boat and made them rendezvous with the Inca Queen. He notes having witnessed signs of friction between Sam and Millane before taking an opportunity to slip overboard; and it's news to him that Blount, whom he thought he was hiding from, is dead. He and Ed go back to the Doll to look for pencil impressions on a chart that Sam used to trace a course, but find that the charts are gone.
Jerry works out what he can of the course from memory, and a combination of something he heard Blount say and Mark's tedious investigation of wiretap tapes of the gangsters turns up conspicuous repeated use of the word "daisy". We cut to the yacht Shasta Daisy, where the gangsters have assembled--including Jack Farrell (Rob Townsend), Sal Reiger (Abner Biberman), Carlo Denata (Pedro Regas), and Eddie Caldwell (Paul Factor). When Millane (Warner Anderson) enters, his first order of business is to out Caldwell for plotting to kill him. Caldwell puts up a struggle as Tom and Joe drag him out into a sedan and drive off. The team having since made a connection with the yacht, the sedan is intercepted by a roadblock, and the team, uniformed CLE, and a Coast Guard cutter converge on the yacht as Millane is discussing how the operation will establish itself. Millane covertly dumps something incriminating overboard, but the Chief confronts him with enough circumstantial evidence to implicate him in Blount's murder.
In the coda, Jerry and Debbie join the team for dinner at the Cave. Whatever ending gag they were leading up to with the Chief's criticism of the bouillabaisse was cut off by the Frndly recording (which routinely happens, though if the next episode was airing next, I can catch it at the beginning of that recording).
I have no in-the-day recollection of this, and can't recall if I ever heard it on oldies radio. It's an odd, belated final major hit for the group whose brief hitmaking streak otherwise petered out a few years prior.
A cute little homage to the surf music era. Can't say that I'm noticing a glam connection, but glam wasn't really a sound, it was a style of presentation.
That's exactly why I always post it when he comes up. Seems like his ongoing death must be about to start soon.
I'm not sure if I'd ever heard of this.
Bobbed.
Reminding me of how I totally dropped the ball with 50th anniversary reading of Doonesbury around the same time that the Guess Who last came up...Resulting in one of the most memorable Doonesbury strips ever:
Looks like we just lost him...hot on the heels of Dr. Ruth and Richard Simmons!
I guess that means I didn't hear about it from Time-Life, or else you would have too.
Wow, that's some serious continuity. Unfortunately, it turns out to be the only good thing about this episode.
Good thinking on his part.
That has to take the prize for most ridiculous plot hole in the series.
They left an unconscious crash victim alone in their house to wake up (or not) on her own. At this point, I would have assumed that the couple were psychos pretending to be a doctor and a nurse, because no TV show could possibly be this stupid.
You know, I never liked Richard Dreyfuss. Completely random, he just rubs me the wrong way somehow.
It's Halloween in February.
Okay, so that means they must have called it in. So why didn't CLE show up at the Chase house before now? The police in this town are as bad as the doctors.
Do not scold the man with multiple sharp weapons, Julie.
So she was pregnant at term, having labor pains, and went to the hospital-- and they sent her home in a storm. In 1973.
Okay, I'm re-thinking her qualifications for social work.
But racking up the pedestrian points.
Token action scene.
"I'll just be in the room where the bullets aren't."
Having experienced no resolution to the character arc that triggered this whole story. I thought she was going to ask Pete to inseminate her or something. And where the hell was Linc during all this? Bad, bad episode.
I sense a crime has been committed.
Two spooky episodes!
Of course it does.
Call Greer. Julie's in trouble.
That seems remarkably easy.
Ed's old friend from the service is also an ex con. Drink!
Did she identify herself as a cop at this point?
So Jerry's old friend from stir chartered this fishing trip for the purpose of smuggling Millane ashore-- why did he even invite Jerry along?
I wonder what he dropped overboard. It would probably be easy enough to find if the ship is docked.
At least Jerry wasn't involved in the crime, but his status as an old friend of Ed's seems to have impacted the plot not at all.
It does kind of qualify as a novelty number.
I don't recall how I first found out about it, but my research often takes turns for the weird.
Highly recommended. It really turned into quite an epic record of an amazing period in history.
Aw, I heard about Dr Ruth and Simmons, but not Captain Styles. RIP.
Harsh.At this point, I would have assumed that the couple were psychos pretending to be a doctor and a nurse, because no TV show could possibly be this stupid.
In this pre-stardom era, he does a pretty good job playing intense, disturbed types.
Did they have a reason to?
Give her a break, she did something useful, playing him pretty well.
At this point, I'm hoping that we get one last, glorious Lucy moment before the end.
He appeared briefly as Greer and the guys started trying to track down Julie, but was completely sidelined after that.
Only if she's also on vacay.
Was the last one an ex-con? Or was there another one?Ed's old friend from the service is also an ex con. Drink!
Nope. Probably better for her life expectancy.
It's Jerry's boat.
Taking another look, it appeared to be his murder weapon.
Indeed, it seemed tacked on, except for Ed and Fran already being familiar with him and Debbie.
It's certainly no "American Woman".
I checked my Time Life series and it's not on any of them. That doesn't mean it's not on a Time Life series, just one I don't have.
I've never seen the footage, but I know the story through one of my books on cruel and unusual deaths. I wonder if it was the inspiration for Peter Finch's character Howard Beale in the movie 'Network', who suffers a similar fate at the end of the movie.
Yeah, but deserved. Two health care providers pull an unconscious young woman from a car wreck and dump her at home before heading to the hospital-- without even trying to get her to regain consciousness? That sounds like the setup for a Night Gallery episode or something.
I can believe it.
It was a car wreck, so presumably they would want to talk to the operator-- especially one that was injured to the point of unconsciousness.
It was a pretty cruel trick to play on someone who's mentally ill, even a knife-wielding psycho. It seemed out of character for a delicate flower child.
The last freeze frame before the final fade out.
Maybe Clarence just couldn't deal with the stupid script.
Well, there was that one who was falsely convicted, at least. Maybe more. I'm sure it happens more often on Mod Squad, due to the backstory, but it seems to be a frequent part of the trope.
I'd think they'd be more reluctant to kill a cop.
Ah, okay.
Probably should have ditched that earlier.
No.
I remember noticing a few things missing from the series. Rights issues, I assumed.
Good point. I'd say that's very likely, now that you mention it.