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50th Anniversary Viewing
(Part 1)
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The Ed Sullivan Show
Season 21, episode 20
Originally aired March 2, 1969
As represented in
The Best of the Ed Sullivan Show
Well, this is an underwhelming bit of
Best of business...all we have from 50 years ago this week are two songs by Paul Anka...who had some half-decent youth-oriented pop hits in the late '50s, and then became Paul Anka.
Ed said:
Leading [?] American recording star now sings "Goodnight My Love."
A perfectly decent performance, but squarely in the Easy Listening / trad pop category.
Paul returns later in the
Best of episode to do the more uptempo but, to my ear, less enjoyable
"It Only Takes a Moment".
Also in the original episode according to tv.com:
Music:
--Paul Anka (singing and playing drums) - "Hallelujah, I Love You So" with his brother Bill on drums.
--The Checkmates Ltd. - "Baby I Need Your Lovin'."
--Nancy Ames - sings a Latin medley.
Comedy:
--Flip Wilson - comedy monologue.
--Alan King - comedy monologue.
--Nancy Walker and Alan King (comedians) - play an angry couple in a "Hostility" sketch.
Also appearing:
--Gwen Verdon (dancer-singer) - "Sultan's Delight" production number.
--The Ethiopian Peace Corps Orchestra (aka Orchestra Ethiopia, East African musicians and dancers)
--The Three Hermanis (novelty act) - spin tops.
--Audience Bow: Werner Klemperer (actor from "Hogan's Heroes").
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Mission: Impossible
"The Bunker: Part 1"
Originally aired March 2, 1969
Wiki said:
Imprisoned underground in an Eastern European nation, a brilliant scientist is being forced to develop a deadly missile.
The old transparent eight-track tape in a car trick said:
This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim.
The scientist in question is Dr. Erich Rojak (Milton Selzer). As leverage, the baddies are holding his wife, Anna (Lee Meriwether). Complicating matters to fill this out as a two-parter, an assassin from another, rival nation, Alexander Ventlos (Ray Baxter), is after Rojak and shares some skills with Rollin, allowing him to take the place of the security officer overseeing Rojak, Captain Praedo (Jack Donner, a.k.a. Tal from "The Enterprise Incident").
There's a brief bit of Rollin posing as a famous surgeon sans a disguise, though that didn't pay off in any way this episode. Cin goes brunette and Rollin makes masks of her face and Lee Meriwether's. You can see where this is going, right?
The IMF rigs up a special effects display to make it seem like Colonel Ziegler (David Sheiner)'s convoy is being ambushed by automatic weapons fire, giving Jim the opportunity to bond with the Colonel under fire in his role as a newly assigned security officer. Brunette Major Cin shows up and Major Jim exposes her as an impostor and likely confederate of Ventlos, for whom Major Jim has developed a method of detection: a chemical solution hand stamp that registers on a Geiger counter-like device. Secure on the inside, Jim puts Barney's remote control UFO (demonstrated in the briefing, of course) in a ventilation shaft for purposes unseen this episode. In another bit of Part 2 setup, Colonel Z shows Jim how the door to Rojak's lab can only be opened by one of three voices. They make it seem like this is an automated system, but for some reason this involves printing out a transparency of the voice print and manually viewing it on a lit panel without even a display of the correct voice print against which to compare it.
Cin is taken to Stat Securit HDQ, where Mrs. Rojak is being held. Stakeout Painter Willy sneaks in, frees Mrs. R, and has Cin--who was wearing the mask of her own face over the mask of Lee Meriwether's--take her place. The episode ends on a fairly weak cliffhanger of Willy and the real Mrs. R escaping via a winch up an incinerator shaft while the fire is being lit below them.
I hadn't been noticing them much lately, but this one's chock full of Gellerese signs.
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The Avengers
"Who Was That Man I Saw You With?"
Originally aired March 3, 1969 (US); March 19, 1969 (UK)
Wiki said:
Whilst on a top-secret security assignment, Tara comes under suspicion of being a double agent. She must cast similar suspicion on Steed if she is to prove that she has been framed. An enemy agent, Gregor Zaroff, hopes to put the Government's new anti-missile defence system, codenamed 'Field Marshall', out of action by convincing Steed and Mother that Tara has betrayed the system's secrets.
Early in the episode, Tara's engaged in an infiltration exercise to test the security of a computerized missile defense system, wearing what's supposed to be camouflage makeup, but it looks a little too minstrel show...and it's not like she was threatening to blend in with anything in the brightly lit complex. On a different note, if she's supposed to be making repeated attempts at the security, it doesn't make a lot of sense for the director there to explain how each security measure that stops her works. And FWIW, the security measures that foil her attempts were designed by Steed.
It's a bit ludicrous how easily and fully some planted circumstantial evidence spotted by another agent turns Mother against Tara. And for some reason Mother doesn't seem to know about Tara's infiltration assignment, as he considers it suspicious that she's requisitioned cameras, which she's been using on that assignment. Steed cleary does know about her assignment, but doesn't bring it up in her defense. And Mother's version of house arrest involves having an agent sitting in her apartment twitching at her every move with a gun drawn. Tara doesn't help matters by allowing herself to be so easily implicated. Does she always go wherever anonymous phone callers tell her to? (That's a rhetorical question....it's proven to be a common method of setting up our protagonists on this show.)
The description writer spoils a brief twist that occurs well into the episode in which Tara--free of her minder and on the run--plants similar circumstantial evidence against Steed just to convince him that she was framed. Steed brings an elderly lip-reader to Mother (who's operating out of a dungeon this episode) to prove that the enemy agents Tara was filmed talking to were saying innocuous things to her like asking for directions.
The episode's main villain is about as pretentious as Mother. At his lair he sits in an area roped off like a boxing ring constantly being primped--getting facials, pedicures, etc. He also seems to be under the impression that once that defense system is taken down, an attack on Britain will be imminent. I'm pretty sure that's not how nuclear deterrence works.
In the middle of the episode, Steed lifts a house of cards that he'd built as if it's glued together, but Tara tries and it collapses. Then in the coda, he creates a champagne fountain by stacking several glasses one inside the other and pouring into the top glass. He should have been on
Sullivan.
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 2, episode 22
Originally aired March 3, 1969
The Wiki list of guest appearances said:
Tony Curtis, Ann Miller, Smothers Brothers, James Garner, Forrest Tucker, Robert Wagner, Shelley Winters
Gladys and James Garner:
Various female cast members trying to shake hands with James Garner becomes a recurring gag throughout the episode. After James walks offstage with Chelsea in a suggestive manner...
The German Solider said:
Very interesting...but right now in Birmingham, they're running a test pattern. You believe it.
Dick Smothers: Hey, Tommy, I finally figured out why this show is so popular. You see, the straight man has a mustache and his partner's a dumbbell. And you know, they do satirical material and they're always in trouble with the censors.
Tommy Smothers: Why didn't we think of that?
Another new segment,
We Can't Top This.
The New Discovery of the Week:
The First String Quartet of Beautiful Downtown Burbank.
James Garner introduces the News segment:
A book-themed Cocktail Party:
The Fickle Finger of Fate goes to the Winchester Rifle Company:
The closing Joke Wall, featuring James Garner:
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Indeed. Kind of a rare thing. I think the same would have been true of John and Yoko.
Their wedding's next week...this is Paul and Linda's moment.
Just kind of a party song, but I like some of that guitar stuff.
I included this because its album is on the
Rolling Stone albums list. Vital stats:
Kick Out the Jams
MC5
Released Feb. 1969
Debut: Mar. 8, 1969
Peak (#30): May 10, 1969
RS500: #294
It's noteworthy as an example of a retroactively designated genre known as
proto-punk. I chose to bypass it because punk isn't really my thing and definitely isn't what I'm looking for in '60s music. I like plenty of the earlier garage rock that also gets lumped under the "proto-punk" label, but the 1969 variety is getting a bit hardcore for my ear.
Not their best work, but I could listen to Diana Ross all day and all night.
Pretty meh for a combo consisting of two of the greatest Motown groups.
I was thinking that it's kind of bland, but then it got to the the punchline.
What's that? I'm not hearing or seeing it. That the singer wants the woman to whom he's singing is pretty obvious from the get-go.
Long intro... oh, wait, it's one of those things with no words.
To repurpose a couple of lines from Peter, Paul & Mary: They've got a good thing goin' / Where the words don't get in the way.
Now we're funkin'!
Ah, another all-time Hippie classic.
The '60s aren't going down without a fight.
I'd love to see Friday give one of his five-minute speeches on the subject of temporal paradoxes. "Sure you think it would be a good idea to go back in time and kill Hitler, son, we all do...."
Now I'm picturing Jack Webb as a starship captain....
