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50th Anniversary Viewing
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The Ed Sullivan Show
Season 21, episode 15
Originally aired January 26, 1969
As represented in
The Best of the Ed Sullivan Show
From a
Best of consisting of material from two dates in this half of the season, we get the following performances....
First is Shirley Bassey doing a medley of "Goin' Out of My Head" and "You Go to My Head". I'm not familiar with the latter, but the rendition of the former is a little overwrought. Can't find fault with her pipes, though.
Next from this date, "the electrical magic of Marvyn Roy"--magic tricks using lit light bulbs, including an oversized table lamp. This was apparently edited down, because the preview at the beginning of the episode showed him pulling a cloth off a chandelier, which wasn't in the performance shown...nor was the trick in the clip below:
Finally, Shirley Bassey does
"Something's Coming" from
West Side Story, which seems a little more comfortably in her wheelhouse.
Also in the original episode according to tv.com:
Music:
--Tommy James and the Shondells - "Crimson & Clover" & "Mony, Mony."
--George Hamilton - "Act Naturally" & "This Guy's In Love With You."
--The Green Machine (rock band made up of U.S. Marines) - "Stand and Be Counted."
Comedy:
--John Byner - stand-up topics: Apollo 8 launch, Huntley and Brinkley, half-time entertainment during a football game.
--Irwin C. Watson (stand-up comedian)
--John Byner & Irwin Watson - give suggestions to Ed on how to call guests over for a bow.
Also appearing:
--On tape: Joe Namath (sit down interview)
--Ballet America (dance troupe) - Hoedown dance number.
--Audience bows: Elston Howard (of the New York Yankees) with his wife, Arlene.
--Audience bows: Lucien Fontaine (harness racing driver); Stirling Moss (British race-car driver).
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Mission: Impossible
"The System"
Originally aired January 26, 1969
Wiki said:
When a crime boss escapes justice the IMF must trick an underling operating a crooked casino into turning state's evidence. This episode was remade as "The System" (S01/E02) in the series remake.
The reel-to-reel tape in a doctor's office accompanied by pictures hung on the X-ray illuminator said:
Please dispose of this tape in the usual manner. Good luck, Jim.
And the usual manner is dropping it in a closed metal container of maybe-it's-actually-acid-this-time. Rollin shows off his vocal impersonation skills again in the briefing.
At the casino operated by Johnny Costa (James Patterson), Ramblin' Gamblin' Jim enjoys a conspicuous winning streak at the craps table with the help of some loaded dice, getting him in to see Costa. Jim reveals that he's really Hitman Jim and that he was offered a hit on Costa, and tries to sell Costa information about who took the job in his place. Ramblin' Gamblin' Cin has less luck at blackjack, such that she needs to see Costa to get some credit. She takes the opportunity to boast about having a betting system that usually works for her...and implicitly offers herself as payment for the loan. What she really needed was Costa's signature, because Rollin's apparently a master of
all forms of impersonation.
Ventilation Shaft Barney uses a special rig to access the safe in Costa's highly secure counting room from the opposite wall. Elsewhere, George Martin Jim and Rich Little Rollin cut a potential hit record of the above-mentioned crime boss, Mr. Victor (Val Avery), holding one side of a conversation, after which Mob Accountant Rollin pays an official visit to Costa and finds a $25,000 discrepancy in the previous day's count. This causes Costa to call on Hitman Jim for more info about who's after him.
Cin gets Costa to sign a $250 check for her, but it's a $25,000 check that she cashes at the booth. At the blackjack table, she slips the dealer a forged note from Costa instructing him to pay her $30,000. Cin's resultant winning streak is depicted with a moving extreme close-up of the various players' hands, which was a novel technique. Meanwhile, Hitman Jim informs Costa that Rival Hitman Willy is in the house, but Willy eludes Costa and his men with Jim's covert help.
Mob Accountant Rollin confronts Costa about both the check and the blackjack fix, then goes to make an implied call to Victor. Costa sends his men after Rollin, and they corner him in the phone booth, where he hands one of them the phone. Fake Vinyl Victor gives the henchman orders to help Rollin deal with Costa. Meanwhile, Costa twists Cin's arm, causing her to admit that she was sent by Victor to set Costa up. Shotgun Willy bursts into the room to take advantage of some special effects that he and Barney had previously rigged up there. Costa jumps out the window and makes a phone call to Real Victor, who insists that he doesn't have a hit on Costa, but Costa suspects that it's part of the trap...a suspicion "confirmed" when Rollin and Willy get there and report to Victor that his ruse worked. Costa slips away again, takes refuge in his counting room, sets off the alarm, and promises to see Victor in court. The assembled IMF team calmly exits the scene as the local constabulary arrive.
I had a feeling that this would be a solid one when I saw that it was remade early in the later series. It was both intriguing and comprehensible, and moved along at a good pace.
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 2, episode 17
Originally aired January 27, 1969
The Wiki list of guest appearances said:
Jack Benny, Tony Curtis, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Frank Gorshin, George Jessel, Janos Prohaska, Shelley Winters, Samantha Lloyd
Alan Sues said:
I hear the President's family is having trouble getting settled in the White House. Mrs. Nixon's still trying to figure out how to get the barbecue pit out of the Oval Room!
The Fickle Finger of Fate goes to baseball general managers.
A freedom-themed Cocktail Party:
Discovery of the Week Samantha Lloyd:
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The Mod Squad
"Shell Game"
Originally aired January 28, 1969
Wiki said:
Investigating a policeman's death, Pete and Linc infiltrate a gang of thieves, only to find it has kidnapped Julie.
The police detective who gets killed while trying to arrest the group of warehouse thieves is kind of asking for it. He's alone and outnumbered, and on a Mark VII show, even a duo of detectives or patrolmen would have called it in first and probably waited for backup in such a situation. Anyway, the thieves get away with the help of a pair of patrolmen who are part of their operation.
Julie's already working an end of this case, undercover as a nurse in a hospital where an injured member of the gang named Jerry Kane is. Meanwhile Pete and Linc manage to get in with the gang by investigating Jerry. Linc puts on a pretty unconvincing "street voice" for some reason. The Mod Males have to participate in a liquor store robbery, during which Linc refuses to kill the owner. It turns out that it was a test, the store manager is an accomplice, and the Mods passed.
Back at the hospital, Julie's in the process of working Jerry for information when Greer arranges to have him transferred to a police hospital. But the police ambulance drivers turn out to be...guess who? When Julie insists on going along, the crooked cops hold her at gunpoint, but Jerry persuades them not to hurt her. Greer comes to assume that the abductors are actually phony cops who've been jamming up the case and starts looking into former cops who'd have inside knowledge of police frequencies and procedures.
When the crooked cops show up at the gang's hideout with Julie, she doesn't bat an eyelash at the sight of Pete and Linc, though Pete bats one at the sight of her. Of greater concern is that Jerry won't recognize Pete and Linc, as they got into the gang with a story of being old friends of his. Julie doesn't miss a beat in helping to cover for them, though she shouldn't have known anything about their end of the operation.
The gang goes out to do the job while the city's police are tied up with a sign-o-the-timesy riot on the other side of town. As their truck is taking off, Linc slips out the back to help Julie deal with the gang member who's guarding her, then calls Greer. At the site of the job, Pete gets caught letting air out of the truck's tires, but Greer, Linc, and black & white backup show up in time. Greer uses a misleading radio call to lure in the crooked cops, and when they make the scene, he realizes that they really are active-duty cops (which was my impression in the first place).
After a talk with Greer about crooked cops, the Mod Trio do their walk-off outside the police hospital.
A good episode overall, but I found the drama beats between Julie and Jerry to be cringily acted.
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Ironside
"Rundown on a Bum Rap"
Originally aired January 30, 1969
Wiki said:
Mark gets frustrated with the system when he tries to help a friend falsely accused of assault.
Our first-billed guest this week is James Gregory, who plays the suspect, Arnold 'Bakey' Baker, a raspy-voiced, slow-on-the-uptake ex-fighter.
We get a look at Mark's night school life, which includes a pretty, young teacher named Maria (Janet Mac Lachlan) whom he's rather aggressively pursuing, while simultaneously taking out his frustrations about how the system works on her. He enlists her help in offering Baker legal advice. We learn that she's a former lawyer who gave it up because of how rough it was for her to deal with people in desperate situations whom she couldn't help. Maria's efforts to help Baker are undermined by a shady character named Frank Bollo (future Bond movie sheriff Clifton James), who bails Baker out and convinces him to cop a plea to stay out of jail.
Team Ironside uncovers that the victim of the beating, Charles Wilson (Leonard Stone), was employed collecting bets in Bollo's numbers racket. The climax takes place in the courtroom, where the Chief seems very much at home. Ed arrests Bollo because Wilson spilled the beans that it was Bollo who had him beaten.
Other Trek guests include Ken Lynch as Baker's boss at work, and Jason Wingreen as a night school classmate of Mark's who's involved in a courtroom role-play scenario.
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Star Trek
"The Lights of Zetar"
Originally aired January 31, 1969
Stardate 5725.3
H&I said:
The Enterprise must deal with incorporeal cloud-like aliens who have already destroyed the inhabitants of a library planet and plan to eliminate the Enterprise crew if they cannot acquire a human host.
See my post here.
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Adam-12
"Log 33: It All Happened So Fast"
Originally aired February 1, 1969
Wiki said:
For the first time in his career, Reed shoots and kills someone, a 16-year-old sniper, in self-defense. Lieutenant Moore then tries to determine whether it was a justified shooting in this behind-the-scenes look at internal investigations into deadly-force incidents.
Reed and Malloy are driving an uneventful late-night patrol in a residential area when a rifle shot hits the windshield. They stop the car and Reed returns fire, felling the young shooter. Back at the station, the officers are taken into a room where they're questioned by Sgt. Miller and another detective. At face value, Reed seems to be handling the incident very well, but Malloy knows his partner well enough to tell that it's eating at him inside.
Miller's questioning is very thorough and detailed, and as he begins to deconstruct Reed's actions, the officer starts to lose his cool. During a brief break in the interrogation, Miller explains to Reed that this is all routine procedure, and can be expected every time he fires his gun in the field. (Which seems a bit off, as he has fired his gun before, this is just his first time killing somebody.) When the questioning ends, Miller tells Reed off the record that he probably doesn't have anything to worry about. Outside the room, Reed has to face a group of waiting reporters, clearly uncomfortable with the attention.
I'd seen this before, but this time around it couldn't help reminding me of
Dragnet's "The Interrogation".
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Get Smart
"I Shot 86 Today"
Originally aired February 1, 1969
Wiki said:
Max and 99 visit a golf club, getting a tip where the adjacent missile base will be attacked later that day. Recently, two other missile bases near golf courses have also been attacked, and the Chief believes the Pomona Golf Course will be the next place this will happen. Will Max and 99 be able to stop the next attack? Will they at least be able to play through?
The Chief deduces that a nuclear golf ball is the weapon, and believes that Chuck Cramer, a gulf pro who's worked at all of the missle base-adjoining golf courses, is responsible.
An uncredited Sharon Acker appears as Dr. Simon, two weeks after "The Mark of Gideon" aired. Dr. Simon is the latest iteration of the Dr. Steele character. She plays Q here, arming Max with golf-themed gadgets. Max, of course, proves to be as inept at golf as he is at everything else; and has an awkward moment with his golf shoe-phone when he presses the cleats into his face.
It turns out that Cramer and the club's manager, Mr. Upjohn, are partners in the scheme, and have been firing the golf balls at the missile bases using...
Max said:
Of course, the old "mortar in the rocks on the fourteenth hole" trick!
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Hogan's Heroes
"Watch the Trains Go By"
Originally aired February 1, 1969
Wiki said:
With Klink doubling security and London demanding results, Hogan will have to rely on Gertrude (Alice Ghostley) to deliver a distraction while he blows up a train.
The increased guards in the area cause Hogan to call off the team's initial attempt to blow up the train. Newkirk and Carter are caught breaking back into the camp--and let the guards believe that they were trying to break out. The rest of the team gets back in via the tunnel...which makes you wonder why they didn't all do that in the first place.
Gertrude, in case you were wondering, is Burkhalter's sister, who's accompanying her brother on his inspection of Stalag 13. Hogan has Newkirk (who's in the cooler) forge a love letter from Klink, which is sent to Gertrude in advance, such that Klink will be distracted by her romantic overtures during the visit. But the plan briefly backfires when Klink tries to keep himself too busy to spend time with her. Hogan convinces Klink to take her on a ride in his limo so that Hogan can sneak out in the trunk and set the explosives. In the meantime, Klink manages to offend Gertrude by telling her how he really feels.
DIS!Missed!
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I really wish that was available on DVD or something. It would probably be disappointingly unimpressive at this point, but I'd still love to have it for the novelty and historical (and Teresa Graves) value.
Had you heard of it before? I hadn't, until it came up in the Wiki timeline.
Of course, I absolutely love Donovan. This isn't one of his classics, but it's very nice and it features that distinctive quality in his voice that was unique to this period of his career.
Pretty much all of this. Even mediocre Donovan is still enjoyably Donovan.
I also love Three Dog Night, and this is a very good song.
I'd say that they don't do enough with this one to distinguish it from the Otis version.
I just stumbled upon that myself.
Guess what? I also love The Zombies and this is a great song. Of course, they didn't have many-- and were already history when they were still charting.
This single and the album
Odessey and Oracle were released in early-to-mid-1968, by which point the Zombies had already broken up. The single is just now charting, and the album, which is on the
Rolling Stone list, will be following suit. I've been holding off on getting the album until it charts. As for this single...after a four-year absence from the chart, this will be their last one in the Hot 100. But thanks to 55th anniversary business, we'll be hearing from them again for the first time later this year.
Not as great as the others for this week, but still a very nice song.
Classics IV are just generally good, classic period fare in my book.
It took me a while to fully get that...!
We also get a cute Gannon moment in which we learn that his idea of "traveling light" involves packing his toiletries and extra shirt and undergarments on his person in various parts of his suit jacket.