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50th Anniversary Viewing
(Part 1)
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The Ed Sullivan Show
Season 21, episode 12
Originally aired January 5, 1969
As represented in
The Best of the Ed Sullivan Show
In the intro, Ed acknowledges that Diana Ross & the Supremes had performed "Love Child" earlier in the season. That version wasn't in a
Best of installment, though I previously posted a clip of it. This one was on
Best of, and the ladies are back to wearing matching outfits with shoes:
Unusual for
Best of edits, we proceed straight into the Supremes plugging their spanking new, not-yet-charting single, the thematically compatible "I'm Livin' in Shame," which deals with how the narrator has regretfully come to disown her mother as a reminder of her lower-class origins:
Best of edited down this performance, bringing it to an abrupt end, but we have the full song here.
After the commercial break, Ed requests an audience bow from Jack Lord, "CBS TV star of Wednesday night's
Hawiyah 5-O". Then it's on to another comedy routine by Burns & Schreiber. Schreiber pretends to be a coin-operated "Vendor Buddy" on a subway platform, who wants more dimes to keep his canned half of a casual conversation going. "How about that trouble in Vietnam?"
After another break, it's another audience bow, this time from skier Jean-Claude Killy, who's described as having won three gold medals in 1968's Winter Olympics and brought a little footage to prove it. From there Ed introduces Shani Wallace, claiming that a prior appearance on his show got her cast in the film version of
Oliver! Wallace performs
"As Long As He Needs Me" from the musical. (Fun Fact: Worf's future mom Georgia Brown, then in the Broadway cast of
Oliver!, had previously performed this number as part of
Sullivan's legendary February 9, 1964, broadcast.) Following Shani's performance, Ed wishes her a Happy New Year.
Next Henry Mancini and his orchestra team up with Johnny Mathis for a performance of what tv.com identifies as "'Moment to Moment' and a medley of Latin songs". They then proceed straight into
a medley of the Mancini-written songs "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Moon River". Here we also have "Dear Heart," which was edited out of the
Best of version. Ed also wishes them a Happy New Year afterward.
tv.com indicates that the Supremes also did
"I Get a Kick Out of You" (with flourishes of "I've Got You Under My Skin" included). Thanks to The Supremes Archive, we've got that, too.
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Mission: Impossible
"The Exchange"
Originally aired January 5, 1969
Wiki said:
Cinnamon is captured behind the Iron Curtain, and Jim must kidnap, break, and trade an enemy agent before she breaks, bargaining with a treacherous officer (John Vernon) in the process. This is the first episode which begins in medias res, showing the IMF team in the middle of an ongoing mission before Cinnamon is captured and imprisoned.
No tape! No briefing! Definitely no stinkin' portfolio! The episode opens with Jim, Rollin, and Cin posing as military officers in an Eastern European country, where Cin is breaking into somebody's vault to take pictures of some documents. She makes no mistakes, but a pigeon flies into the window that she carefully opened, tripping the electric eyes surrounding it. Her last act before capture is to toss her camera down to her teammates. This is followed by a rare scene of the team with their pants figuratively down, Jim clearly distraught over the turn of events. Speaking of pants down, we're then teased with a brief scene of Cin being strip-searched, implying more than it shows. Her captors have deduced that she's a highly trained agent working for an unknown organization and intend to learn more.
The team proceeds to improvise a rescue plan that involves an exchange with Rudolf Kurtz (Will Kuluva), a prisoner on the Western side of the Curtain whom the enemy wants...as well as, perhaps implausibly under the circumstances, some specialized gadgetry. Jim makes it clear that their plan to break this prisoner out will pit them against friendly authorities...and that he's under no illusion that Cin's capture will end with anything other than her ultimately being broken and then killed. But good guys that they are, the IMF won't turn over Kurtz until they've at least gotten the intel that the friendly authorities have been trying to get out of him...so its dueling interrogations between the IMF and their enemies of the week.
As Cin's interrogation under Colonel Strom (Vernon) commences, she maintains her composure, falling back on a Fake True Identity. But in an adjacent room, a Dr. Gorin (Robert Ellenstein) monitors her pulse through sensors in her chair. The only thing that registers significantly is her reaction upon being faced with the possibility of long-term solitary confinement in a very small cell. Her captors decide afterward to take advantage of this weakness to break her.
Horn-Rimmed Jim pays a visit to Strom, pretending to be a representative of the country that Cin is claiming to be from...making it clear that Cin must be using a pre-established backup cover. He negotiates for her release while covertly taking pictures of Strom's office with a disguised camera. Meanwhile Rollin pays a visit to Kurtz (Will Kuluva), replacing him with a lifelike inflatable dummy and smuggling him out in his large, paneled wheelchair.
Strom and Dr. Gorin put their plan into motion, which (again implausibly) includes a cell with a ceiling that lowers and a ventilation shaft with panels that close in around Cin. As she begins to panic, we hear a distinctive music cue that sounds familiar from Trek...I think it was used in "Is There in Truth No Beauty?," and also popped up in this week's "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield". I'm not sure how to describe it, but it sounds vaguely like the Bionic sound effect. Anyway, as Cin delves further into drug-enhanced panic, they question her remotely, getting Jim's first name and probing for his last.
Pretending to be operatives from Kurtz's side, the IMF fakes smuggling him across the border by sealing him in a crate and using taped noises and a platform rigged to simulate the movement of a truck. Seriously, where did they get ahold of all this stuff on the fly and while in the middle of an operation already in progress on foreign soil? It gets worse when they release Kurtz from his crate in a re-creation of Strom's office! Fake Colonel Jim proceeds to attempt to debrief Kurtz on tape, and convinces him that Strom committed suicide after being outed as a double agent, aided by a fake newspaper and fake files! Kurtz is sufficiently convinced to give them all the info they want about his operations. As soon as that's accomplished, they drop the pretenses and proceed with the exchange.
The West Zone authorities swoop in during the transfer, but the IMF players maintain their covers and negotiate for the exchange to proceed using the information that they extracted from Kurtz as incentive. However, as Horn-Rimmed Jim is walking way with Cin in his arms, Strom fires an automatic rifle at the two of them...which they survive thanks to the bullet-proof trenchcoats that the team brought along!
Sigh...this really wanted to be a fun episode...in a different context, the twists and turns of the perfectly good operation would have been quite entertaining. But it was all undermined by the ludicrous implausibility of the IMF improvising such a complex scheme while already in a foreign country. The one thing that kept me guessing was, as Cin's interrogation intensified, whether her increasing terror was an act that she'd been trained to pull off. But there was no reveal in that department, so we're left to believe that it was all genuine. It was pretty bold of the show to go there with one of the regulars, but I have to wonder if they'd ever put a male agent in the same sort of compromising position.
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The Avengers
"My Wildest Dream"
Originally aired January 6, 1969 (US); April 7, 1969 (UK)
Wiki said:
Acme Precision Combine's directors are dying. A series of quite ordinary men have been hypnotised into committing the murders—by making them believe it's all a dream.
This one appears to have been produced early in the Tara "series"...Thorston's back to wearing wigs and driving her plum-colored sports car, and Mother's not in it. We get another glance at Thorston looking really good in a longer wig, though it's only for one extremely brief scene that appears to have been inserted as an afterthought to provide a smidgen of connecting exposition between major scenes. (Or perhaps it was a more substantial scene that was edited down drastically for syndication.)
This episode is about as formula as the show gets...a series of people are dying via some odd, mysterious means. This show is getting very tiresome for me, I'm afraid. In this case, Steed and Tara are on the scene for both of the first two killings, which is in accordance with the villains' plan...to have them serve as "unimpeachable witnesses" to the murders.
Dr. Jaeger, a quack whose signature technique is to have his patients "kill" an effigy of their greatest enemy while in a dream state, actually isn't in on the scheme...his nurse and a male accomplice have been secretly arranging for the patients to be used as actual killers, acting on behalf of one of the members of the Acme Precision Combine board...who, again according to formula, we'd been led to believe was one of the potential targets. For the convenience of the story, Tara suddenly has a bumbling young would-be suitor, whom the villains bring to Jaeger so they can use him to attempt to kill Steed.
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 2, episode 14
Originally aired January 6, 1969
The Wiki list of guest appearances said:
Jack Benny, Peter Falk, Marcel Marceau, Garry Moore, Flip Wilson, Henny Youngman
Henry Gibson sings a song about a bluebird.
The Fickle Finger of Fate goes to the drug industry.
Laugh-In covers noteworthy events of 1968:
The Peter Falk Joke Wall:
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The Mod Squad
"The Sunday Drivers"
Originally aired January 7, 1969
Wiki said:
Linc joins an automobile thrill circus in Las Vegas to investigate the death of a stunt-driver friend.
The episode begins with the trio off-duty in Vegas, where Linc's friend Tommy is killed by TV physics, his car going up in a pillar of flame as soon as it tips over. They do acknowledge that the car's tank was loaded, which it shouldn't have been for doing the stunt.
Linc gets himself in as a replacement driver despite the manager's racism by showing off his impressive stock-footage driving. Linc comes to believe that Tommy was hustling when he finds out that his friend was bringing home a lot more dough than the manager pays his drivers. He also does some snooping around the garage and confirms with local police help that Tommy's car was sabotaged. Linc lets Tommy's brother in on his real job to get him to talk about where Tommy's money was coming from. It turns out the cars are being used to smuggle drugs in from Mexico.
Greer, who's reluctantly allowed the Squad to investigate out of their jurisdiction, makes the scene, where he recognizes the manager's accountant as George Albert (Woodrow Palfrey), a hustler with whom he's tangled in the past...but Albert also spots Greer hanging out with the trio. Albert catches Linc searching one of the cars, and has mechanic Larry (Paul Carr) nab Julie (who's been working undercover as a waitress and trying to get info out of Larry); and Julie is in turn used to lure Pete in. We learn that Tommy was blackmailing the smugglers, whose number includes female driver Sally (Quentin Dean), with whom Pete has been connecting. The only major character working at the circus who's not in on the operation is the manager, who walks into the garage while the Squad are at gunpoint, giving them the distraction they need to overpower their would-be killers. Sally fatally takes a stray bullet in the struggle.
The trio do their customary end-of-episode walk-off on the Vegas Strip.
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Well, that's interesting. He apparently had quite a career, too.
Your memory must be failing you, Old Timer...his career came up in The Other Thread when he was a three-time guest on
The Incredible Hulk.
Hey, the Dixiebelles again. Perky!
That is, however, their second and last Hot 100 single, and thus the last we'll be hearing from them.
Didn't make much of an impression.
Another one-hit wonder. Slow year so far.
At least you noticed they were there. That's progress.
I'll give LBJ credit where it probably isn't due...the British Invasion happened on his watch.
Mine, too, until the plastic surgery.
I forgot about that. *shudder*
On a slight tangent, I visited Mom yesterday evening instead of the morning, and I found out that she had a crush on James West-- I didn't even know she was aware Wild Wild West existed.
Ah...if you had H&I, I'd suggest it would be a good opportunity to check out
Black Sheep. A good amount of Conrad running around shirtless, sometimes just in his boxers. And generally just playing a pretty enjoyable character.
The best song of that week by far, and one of the best of 1963/64.
Well, I can appreciate your enthusiasm for this song, which is a personal favorite, if not your lack of appreciation for the most game-changing debut single of the decade.
