Congrats of a Prize-winning and Birthday Nature 2: Texas Blood Money

I’m not entirely sure if I do this sort of thing deliberately or subconsciously but the days I announce winners in the Thrilling Days of Yesteryear giveaways always seem to coincide with a family member’s birthday.  Today is the natal anniversary of my Mom (Irene to ClassicBecky), and I’d reveal which one it is except that I’m perilously close to being written out of the will as it stands.  That’s my Mom in the photo above, by the way; my nephew Davis made a rare breakfast appearance and was scarfing down sausages like he had a date with the electric chair.  (Kid has a jones for pork.)

But now on to bidness—as always, I want to thank everybody who entered and just wish I could send a copy of the Radio Spirits CD-set The Life of Riley: My Head is Made Up! to everyone who floated me an e-mail…I always get a little down when I have to draw the winners out of the hat, particularly when I stop to think that there will be some people who are disappointed.  The winners of the two sets are longtime TDOY supporter Mike Galbreath of the great city of Kalamazoo, MI and the man who tidies up around Cultureshark Tower, Rick “Ka-ching!” Brooks himself.  Congratulations to the pair of you, and I will shoot the Riley collections out to you by next week.

This coming Monday, I’ll have another giveaway planned—it will be for an older Radio Spirits set, but definitely a goodie…and there’ll be two of those to hand out as well.  In the meantime, I need to finish up this week’s Serial Saturdays and then later my father and I will not take my mother out for her birthday because she told us in no uncertain terms she did not want to go anywhere.  (“Don’t spend your money on me…” she whined.  I have the only Jewish mother who’s a confirmed Catholic.)

Thursday's checklist

As a gentle reminder to the TDOY faithful—the deadline for entering the latest Thrilling Days of Yesteryear giveaway is Friday evening at 11:59pm EST…and the prize (and there are two of them) is the latest Radio Spirits CD set (a $31.95 value), The Life of Riley: My Head is Made Up!.  Eight discs containing sixteen classic broadcasts of the 1944-51 situation comedy that starred William Bendix, plus you get a collectible booklet penned by yours truly.  If you’ve been meaning to e-mail me an entry—the address is igsjrotr(at)gmail(dot)com (and just stick “Life of Riley giveaway” in the subject header), and I’ll draw two winners from the Random.org hat and get those prizes out to them posthaste.

By now you’re probably wondering if you may have perhaps stumbled onto the wrong blog, what with all the recent activity going on of late.  I haven’t been able to sit down and scribble down the sort of material I like to post here in the past, but with the massive outside project over and done with, I’ve in essence “found my voice” and am ready to start doing a little yard work around the blog (because I have just noticed that we have a serious crabgrass problem).  I made myself sort of a New Year’s resolution that I would put forth an effort to post more often, and I thought it might be kind of…oh, I don’t know—organized…if I did it in the form of regular features at TDOY.  Yesterday was the premiere post of “B-Western Wednesdays,” and I want to thank both the people who commented here and at Facebook on how much they enjoyed the review.  I really am going to knuckle down and work hard at this, unless I get…hey!  Who threw that Frisbee?

All seriousness aside, you may have also noticed the return of a moldy oldie on Tuesday in “Grey Market Cinema.”  GMC will be a part of a larger feature that I’m attempting to coordinate with Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom blog—every Tuesday he posts links to blurbs about “overlooked movies” from such TDOY chums as Bill Crider, Evan Lewis, Yvette Banek, Stacia Jones and many, many more.  Todd has been nice enough to link here on so many occasions…even when I haven’t anything prepared, so I’m going to move Heaven and Earth to make sure there’s something here on Tuesdays for him to point to—and I also want to apologize for not reciprocating his blog in the blogroll; I rectified that error as soon as I discovered my fox paw.

“Overlooked Films” will consist of GMC reviews, not to mention a bodacious stack of promotional films that the good people at VCI were nice to send me…and I’ve also got some stuff I swi…er, recorded off The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ (ka-ching!) that I’ve been telling myself I should watch but keep procrastinating like a madman.  I’ll have a little more time to tackle the TCM material simply because…well, let’s be honest, cartooners...my father has established such a formidable blockade with regards to the new living room TV set—my mother cracked the other day: “If a movie doesn’t have a horse or isn’t in color…he’s not interested.”  (You know, you try to raise parents right…and still you make mistakes.)  The other night he was watching—I swear I’m not making this up—some program about security people spying on shoplifters in stores.

When TCM starts their Saturday morning scheduling of films in Columbia’s Boston Blackie series March 10, that will be TDOY’s cue to review each movie a day ahead of schedule (Fridays)—I bought the entire Blackie collection a while back and I just thought it’d be kind of fun to review each movie scheduled to be shown so you can decide for yourself if it’s worth the time investment.  Personally, I rather like the Boston Blackie movies—they’re certainly not great art by any stretch of the imagination but they’re witty, character actor-rich little mysteries that barely run over an hour and 10 minutes, making them pleasant little time-killers.  (They’re definitely more entertaining than the radio show, that’s for certain.)

In the “longest-wait-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop” department, I’m going to resurrect a feature I started back in 2009—“Serial Saturdays.”  This one went great guns for a while, and then I found myself facing a rather formidable obstacle in the dullness that is the 1945 serial Jungle Queen.  I did one chapter and then got preoccupied with something else…and because of this, I get an e-mail every now and then asking me when I plan to pick it up.  Well, if all goes well—I’ll start on Chapter 2 (“Jungle Sacrifice”) this coming Saturday…and if you need a refresher, here’s Chapter 1.  (I could tell you that my plan to add screen caps to the posts will make this a much more enjoyable experience…but that would be a big stinky fib.)

Finally…I get more e-mails asking for the return of “Mayberry Mondays” than anything else on the blog—and the story behind its disappearance is similar to “Serial Saturdays” (got distracted by something else, etc.) except for an added wrinkle.  When the ‘rents and I made the move to the new Castle Yesteryear back in May of last year I utilized a rather complex packing system that, boiled down to its simplest interpretation, consisted of me throwing shit willy-nilly into any open box.  As such, when I went to retrieve the Mayberry R.F.D. DVDs from where I put them…I discovered that one of the discs was missing.  Not such a big deal, of course…except for the fact that was one episode on that disc that I had yet to do a write-up on—so there was a considerably lengthy passage of time (you had to have noticed the glaciers moving) before I stumbled across it again (and no one was as surprised as I was to see that it wasn’t where I thought it was).

Again, if all goes well this weekend…look for the return of “Mayberry Mondays” in its original time slot (don’t think I don’t hear you groaning out there).  The rest of the time spent here at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear will no doubt be devoted to my usual ramblings on nostalgia-related subjects and award-winning tales about just how insane my mother and father really are.  There’ll be cute pictures of my nephew and niece; there’ll be shout-outs to the many people I’m fortunate to be friends with…anything that crosses my mind may and probably will appear on the blog because I really have missed sitting down and coming up with something to make at least one person laugh and smile.  I apologize for being away for so long, and I’m ready to make up for it.

Oh, just one more thing…if you haven’t already heard the news, my BBFF (pronounced “buh-biff”) Stacia has now become a full-fledged film critic, with all the prestige and perks that such an honor bestows.  (Free screeners!  Complimentary Donettes!)  You can read her magnum opuses (opi?) at Spectrum Culture Online, beginning with her dissection of Samuel Fuller’s Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1973)—a movie I tried to watch one time on IFC when I was still in my Morgantown exile…and sad to say, simply could not stay awake during its showing.  So Stacia already gets props for accomplishing what I could not.

B-Western Wednesday: Night Time in Nevada (1948)

Because the ‘rents were nice enough to bestow upon me a wonderful Christmas gift of two honkin’ big DVD collections of B-westerns (America’s Greatest Westerns Volume 3 & 4) last December, I’ve been wanting to watch some of the content and write up some of these nifty little oaters for the blog for quite a while now.  And then my muse whispered into my ear: “Why not do this every Hump Day and call the feature ‘B-Western Wednesdays’?”  (Okay…maybe not the most clever or inspirational of muses…but all the good ones were taken.)

So I decided to inaugurate this feature with a film starring my favorite of the B-western heroes—none other than the “King of the Cowboys” hizownself, Roy Rogers.  I’m on the record as saying that while I certainly can enjoy an oater starring “America’s favorite cowboy,” Gene Autry…I always preferred Roy because he was a better actor (and better singer, to be honest).  And yet Autry played an important role in jump-starting Rogers’ film career; Roy (billed alternately as “Dick Weston” and his real name, Leonard Slye, at the time) made his earliest movie appearances in several Autry films as a member of the Sons of the Pioneers.  When Autry got into a tiff with his movie studio, Republic Pictures, and walked out on his contract the studio went auditioning for replacements…and lo and behold, Roy Rogers was born.

My favorite Roy Rogers pictures are the ones he made toward the end of his stay at Republic; together with ace serial director William Witney, he appeared in a series of action-oriented westerns that appealed both to adults and his loyal Saturday matinee fan base…and yet retained many of the elements of the oaters he appeared in since his starring debut, Under Western Stars (1938)—songs, comedy relief, etc.  Night Time in Nevada (1948) is a superb example of the kind of Rogers vehicle I enjoy—it would be among my first choices of movies to show any individual who’s not normally a fan of the genre.

Ran Farrell (Grant Withers) has been corrupted by the shiny precious metal known as gold—and he’s hatched a plan to dispose of his partner, Jim Andrews (James Nolan), by dynamiting the mine at which the two men are working (banking on Andrews being killed in a cave-in).  Andrews doesn’t immediately draw his rations, however…with his dying breath, he asks Farrell to keep an eye on a trust fund that consists of the money from the gold he’s saved, and to make certain his young daughter Joan gets the inheritance when she turns 18.  (Farrell then demonstrates that he’s just the man for the job by concealing Andrews’ body in a mine that has turned out to be utterly worthless…carelessly leaving not only a lucky money piece bearing Jim’s name but an article of his clothing hanging on a tree.  We will return to this, by the way)

With the passage of time, we learn that Ran has been dipping into Joan’s account—which shouldn’t come as any huge surprise, since a guy what croaked her pa is probably not someone you’d entrust to keep watch over a tidy sum—and that Joan is headed to Nevada claim her inheritance.  Farrell tells a panicky (and oh-so-very-crooked) lawyer named Jason Howley (George M. Carleton) that he has everything under control—he knows that a gi-normous herd of cattle to be sold will be traveling by train and that all he has to do is hijack the bovines, sell them and replenish the missing trust fund with the ready cash.  Farrell and his henchmen succeed with their illegal cattle acquisition…but during the hi-jacking, a beloved train engineer named Casey (Joseph Crehan) is rubbed out.

Casey was a pal to retired state policeman Roy Rogers…who is also the owner of the cattle, along with his ranch hands, The Sons of the Pioneers (Bob Nolan, Pat Brady, Tim Spencer, Lloyd Perryman, Karl and Hugh Farr).  Roy rides into town, looking for information on his friend’s death…and in doing so, gets himself reinstated into the agency by Sheriff Cookie Bullfincher (Andy Devine), who for the purposes of this film provides the comic relief.  Roy and Cookie, disguised as tramps, travel out to a hobo’s camp to ask some of its inhabitants what they know about Casey’s murder, but they are unable to help.  (However, it’s not a total loss—one of the tramps is played by Hank “Fred Ziffel” Patterson, who does a little shuffling footwork to Roy’s rendition of Big Rock Candy Mountain.)  Our heroes then run into Joan Andrews (Adele Mara) on their way back to town; Joan and her gal pal Toni Borden (Marie Harmon) are on their way to claim Joan’s inheritance, traveling by trailer.  (Toni is Joan’s comedy relief—because why shouldn’t the leading lady get the same perks as Roy?)  Roy and Cookie surreptitiously hitch a ride with the two women after first being refused a lift by sneaking into the trailer, and a wildly comic action sequence results with them being bounced around when the girls get wise to their shenanigans.

After explaining to Roy how she and Toni happen to be so far west, Joan pays lawyer Howley a visit to set in motion receiving her fundage…and the wily shyster stalls her by telling her that there is much paperwork to be filled out (I’s crossed, T’s dotted) because in actuality—there are insufficient monies to replace what that rat bastard Farrell has swiped out of her trust fund.  Joan goes on her merry way, but the treacherous Ran has decided that he wants all of the money…and makes plans to eliminate Joan and Toni while they sleep peacefully in their trailer.  He just so happens to spot this outside the rig:

Subtle it is not.  But fortunately for the girls, Roy rides out to deliver a telegram to Joan and catches Farrell doing his deviltry…and gives him a right pummeling in the process.  Then, he instructs his trusty golden palomino Trigger to keep an eye on Farrell (“Watch him, Trigger!”) while he checks on the girls (I swear I’m not making that up)…so Farrell decides to make tracks for the horizon.  He’s just wasting his time—Roy and “the smartest horse in the movies” easily catch up to the evil Farrell, and Ran is locked up in the town pokey, over the strenuous protests of lawyer Howley.

Howley can do nothing for his client until after Roy and the Pioneers serenade the ladies with the title tune.  By morning, however, the devious Howley has hit upon a surefire way of springing his client: they inform Roy and Cookie that Farrell is not who he says he is—he’s actually Jim Andrews, Joan’s father!  (Suffering synopsis, Batman!)  Farrell gives the two lawmen a cock-and-bull story about how he concealed his identity because he had once served a stretch in the pen, and had promised Mrs. Andrews that he would keep his jailbird past a secret from his daughter.  Roy releases “Andrews” (knowing full well Ran is full of it) but goes out to the location of the gold mine with Joan to see if he can find out what happened to “Farrell.”  Once there, Roy and Joan the previously mentioned discarded objects that had belonged to her father and conclude that Farrell is responsible for murdering her pa.

Roy and Joan were trailed to the mine by a weaselly henchman named Mort (Holly Bane), and Mort rides back to Howley’s office to report on their activities.  As Roy and Cookie make plans to ship out the last of Roy’s cattle, Farrell, Howley and Mort dupe Joan into thinking Roy has been killed (this is accomplished by her being held prisoner in an adjoining room while Farrell and his goons do a little “play acting”—but it becomes a little too real when Farrell dispatches Howley with his shootin’ iron) and that they’re planning to hijack the cattle train at station called Devil’s Pass.  Roy hides in the cattle car to surprise Farrell and Company—but Farrell and his men are actually planning to jump the locomotive at a different junction, and carry out their nefarious bad guy work while Cookie, Joan and the SOP (Sons of the Pioneers) are waiting at the wrong place.  It looks hairy for our hero—particularly when he would appear to be outgunned—but his friends come to his rescue in the nick of time, and that no-goodnik Farrell gets his comeuppance falling into a crevasse (where he is presumably devoured by pumas) after an exciting knock-down, drag-out fight with Roy behind the wheel of a fleeing truck.

Despite its occasional plot contrivances and coincidences (the screenplay was penned by Sloan Nibley, who also authored such classic Rogers westerns as The Far Frontier and Quentin Tarantino fave The Golden Stallion), Night Time in Nevada is a most entertaining western—an artifact of a bygone era when the good guys and bad guys were easily delineated, and a hero cared more for his horse than he did his lady friend.  The print of Night Time is even in fairly good shape for a public domain offering, though it’s presented here in black-and-white because the original Trucolor (an inexpensive alternative to Technicolor owned by Republic) print wasn’t available (there are a number of Rogers’ Trucolor films that only exist today in black-and-white versions).  The movie is for the most part intact—I clocked the running time at about 67 minutes, which seems to jibe with the info at the always reliable IMDb.  (There is also a truncated 54-minute version of this movie floating around; so it’s nice to have the full version even in its monochromatic form.)  The dark tone of Night Time is considerably lightened by some great musical numbers (my favorite is Over Nevada, written by Pioneer Tim Spencer and performed by the group as they make repairs to a fence on the ranch) and reliable comedy relief (Devine, Harmon and Pioneer Pat Brady—a few years before he became Roy’s TV sidekick).  If you can find the 2003 DVD release of this film at a good price I’d recommend it—Oldies.com also has a version that they released in 2009 (paired with Roy’s The Man from Colorado) at a tariff that’s easier on the wallet.

No more calls…but we do have more fabulous prizes!

Holding the old-time radio giveaways on the blog is a tremendous amount of fun…the only downside is that I can only choose one winner, and if I could swing it I’d mail out sets of Our Miss Brooks: Boynton Blues to everyone who entered (particularly since the responses were so staggering, entry-wise).  Pushing that disappointment aside, I’d like to congratulate Richard H. of Van Nuys, CA (population: 136.443…saaalute!) for winning the CD set, a collection valued at $39.98 and provided to us here at TDOY courtesy of Radio Spirits.  I have contacted Richard to let him know that his prize will be swiftly on its way courtesy of the USPS (swines…).

Since that giveaway was such a smashing success, I thought I’d whip up another contest…and this time, I’ve got two copies of the prize to hand out.  It’s the brand Radio Spirits The Life of Riley collection (“My Head is Made Up!”), a 8-CD set (valued at $31.95) containing sixteen broadcasts of the 1944-51 family sitcom starring William Bendix in his signature role as lovably lunkheaded Chester A. Riley, with Paula Winslowe (as wife Peg) and John Brown in the dual roles of none-too-helpful neighbor Jim Gillis and one of the funniest characters in the history of OTR, Digby “Digger” O’Dell…the friendly undertaker.  (“You’re looking fine, Riley….very natural!”)  Riley has long been one of my favorite radio comedies; a mainstay on Victor Ives’ Golden Age of Radio Theater when I listened to that show on Savannah’s WWSA back in the 1980s…I would even stay up during the wee a.m. hours to watch the TV reruns when they got a workout on CBN.

As I said, I have two of these to give away—so if you’re interested in snagging one just drop me an e-mail at igsjrotr(at)gmail(dot)com before next Friday (February 24) at 11:59pm EST…I’ll select two winners via the Random.org chapeau and get the prizes out to the lucky people with all deliberate speed.  It will make a splendid addition to your burgeoning old-time radio library or if you have a family member or friend with a birthday coming up, a swell gift.  Don’t delay—enter today!  Thrilling Days of Yesteryear—where the winning tradition continues!

The TV-on-DVD gods answer our prayers

Yes, the sounds erupting across the blogosphere are those of champagne corks popping and general merriment…because according to TVShowsOnDVD.com, Warner Home Video will at long last be releasing the first season of the classic TV western Maverick to DVD on May 29th.  And this will not—I cannot stress this highly enough—be a MOD Warner Archive deal, but a top-of-the-line Cadillac release: a 7-DVD set containing all twenty-seven episodes of the series’ freshman season (1957-58).  Furthermore, the SRP on this bad boy is $39.98, so you might be able to poke around for a better deal online…and as the copy in the press release trumpets, “just in time for Father’s Day gift giving”—which is perfect, because as luck would have it…I just so happen to have a Dad.  (By the way, the second I found this announcement in my e-mailbox I “fast” forwarded it to the biggest Maverick fan I know, Laura at Miscellaneous Musings, and to the dean of 1950’s movies oaters, Toby at 50 Westerns from the 50s…and as you can witness for yourself, they are positively giddy at the news.)  As for me—I didn’t think it was ever going to happen, but I’m ever so pleased that it has come to pass…so I hope nobody from WHV has been reading the nasty things I’ve said about them from time to time in the past.

So now that I’ve got the grand news out of the way, as Red Skelton observes in my favorite of his feature films, A Southern Yankee (1948): “It’s nice to be back among the magnolias again.”  I know the blog has been running on fumes for the past couple of weeks, but I hope to get up a full head of steam now that my outside project is finished (more on this later) and all obligations finalized.  I’ve got a classic movie/TV/OTR itch that desperately needs scratched because part of my hiatus was spent fooling around with a laptop out in the living room, where my parents watch mind-numbingly awful things on TV that I can’t describe in deference to the younger TDOY readership.  So I figured it would be keen (as those same younger readers say…don’t they?) to get caught up with some of the classic TV-on-DVD announcements that have been bookmarked in my browser for the past couple of months.

I made myself a promise a while back that I was going to limit my spending on TV-on-DVD sets to $25 a collection…I won’t be paying any more than that (though I did make one exception, but that’s a later post) and in fact I was sorely tempted to violate this rule when I spotted that The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Series box set over at DeepDiscount.com last week for thirty-nine bucks and change.  But I held firm, and…okay, what actually happened is that by the time I got some funds into my bank account to grab it the price shot back up to $47, so I missed out on the deal.  Nevertheless, I have made some crafty purchases of late—I bought The Donna Reed Show: Season 4 from an Amazon Marketplace peep for $21.99, found Hazel: Season 2 (due out February 21st) at DVD Pacific.com for $21.18 and picked up Here’s Lucy: Season 5 (which will be released February 28th) for $21.99 at Amazon.com.  (You can actually buy this last set cheaper at DeepDiscount.com—where it’s $19.38—but I paired the Lucy set with Tales of Wells Fargo: The Complete First and Second Seasons, which was marked down to $24.49.  I presented this latter set to my mom as a token of my esteem, and she was floored to get it.  My father, on the other hand, reserved comment.)

Sometimes, however…I am not so lucky.  The Laramie: Season 2 collection that came out from Timeless Home Video on February 7, I was able to get from Barnes & Ignoble for $21.77…and then the other day I saw Amazon.com was selling it for—wait for it—$18.99.  (Swine e-tailer…)  But I now own all four seasons on disc, and since I now have the free time I’m going to have a look at some of the shows one weekend and issue a full report.

Timeless Media Video has announced that the next releases of Wagon Train (season five on 10 DVDs) and The Virginian (season six, a 9-DVD set) are scheduled for May 1st of this year, and on April 10th the company continues the Gene Autry Show sets with a 4-DVD collection that will feature both the third and fourth seasons (both of these seasons had thirteen shows each, which is probably why they decided to combine them).  But the big news is that Timeless will introduce another TV rarity in a 6-DVD collection entitled Cimarron City: The Complete Series, due out on March 6th.  City was a short-lived western that starred movie cowboy George Montgomery as the mayor of an Oklahoma oil boom town, and featured John Smith as the sheriff (Smith would later go on to star in the previously mentioned Laramie the following season) and TDOY fave Audrey Totter as the proprietor of the town boarding house and Montgomery’s main squeeze.  I’ve only seen one episode of this show—I talked about it in a previous post about a Timeless box set of westerns—and while I don’t like to make judgments based on only one airing I’m not sure I’d care for City simply on the basis that in the episode I watched Totter didn’t get much to do, which is a crime as far as I’m concerned.  (Bonanza fans might be curious to check it out for Dan “Hoss” Blocker’s early stint as “Tiny,” the town blacksmith.)  The show has already seen a little disc action in the form of a “Best of” collection that was released by the company back in 2007, but this set will contain all twenty-six episodes of its sole season, with a SRP of $39.98.

So with the TMV news out of the way, let’s mosey on over and check out what’s due to roll off the assembly line at the Factory…Shout! Factory, that is.  I mentioned getting a pretty good deal on the second season release of Hazel a few paragraphs back, and I’m also stoked to learn that the company will put out Season 3 on May 15th.  The TDOY faithful are well aware that I’ve made this series a sort of a cause celebre (French for “he won’t stop whining about it”) since Sony first released Season 1 in 2006 and then refused to answer the doorbell when fans clamored for Season 2.  (“Baxters?  No, I think they moved…”)  The fast tracking of this show is reminiscent of the company’s attention to Dennis the Menace, so I’m optimistic that the season-by-season releases will continue and that I won’t end up having to complete my collection by writing a check for that Shout! Select program that I find equivalent to consorting with paid female escorts…if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

I may have mentioned this before, but Shout! Factory is stepping up to the plate to resurrect classic TV series on DVD that have been orphaned by the companies who originally introduced them to disc and then left the show on a park bench while they hauled ass and elbows toward a waiting automobile.  Kojak is a good example of this—the veteran cop show was first “DVD’d” by Universal in 2005, but its second season didn’t turn up in a lineup until six years later (back in September of last year).  Now comes word that Season 3 will be released on March 20th (a 6-DVD set containing 23 episodes), and after that the fourth season will hit the streets the first of May (also a 6-DVD set, with 25 episodes).  I kinda sorta wish I had hung onto my first season set (I bought it with my mother in mind; she was a fan of the program when it was on) but I think I hawked it on eBay when it looked as if it was going to be “one and done.”  But the show is part of Me-TV’s lineup (weekdays at 4pm), so if I’m jonesing for a fix there’s always that…in the meantime, if you’d like a nice critical look at the series I can’t recommend highly enough these observations from Stephen Bowie at The Classic TV History Blog.

In the “longest-wait-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop” department this week, Shout! Factory is going to make good on an earlier announcement that they would finish up the run of the 1970s cop show S.W.A.T. with the second season release on May 29th…nearly nine years after the first season of the show was released by Sony in 2003.  (My reaction to this one, by the way, is “meh”…I don’t think I watched it the first time it was on, though quite a few of my friends did.  It’s on Antenna TV on Saturday nights if I ever get curious.)  But a show I did watch that’s been out of disc action for a long time is Fantasy Island; its initial release (first season) was in November 2005, the Factory will apply the defib paddles to its second season on May 8th with a 6-DVD set containing all 25 episodes.  (Oh, and the company that issued the first season of Fantasy Island?  You guessed it…Sony.  Sony and my nephew seem to have a lot in common, particularly in the area of short attention spans.)

The Factory has also announced that the final (seventh) season of Adam-12 will be released to stores this April 10th in a 4-DVD set containing 24 episodes.  Again, as far as Rancho Yesteryear goes—I had the first set (Universal Home Video release) but when it looked as if it wasn’t going anywhere that puppy was up on eBay faster than you can say “Meg Whitman.”  I don’t dislike the series, but it’s nothing I needed to hang onto…but I’m glad it’s out there for the fans (like Page, for example).

I realize I’ve been singing the praises of Shout! Factory to a large extent…and now I have to sound a discordant note.  The company has announced that this May 22nd a 24-DVD collection entitled Route 66: The Complete Series will be released.  This shouldn’t be too surprising, since the Factory announced back in November it had acquired the rights to the show from the previous owner, Roxbury Entertainment.  The only problem is—Roxbury already released the first three seasons of Route 66 to DVD, and a certain party here in the House of Yesteryear dutifully bought them; but now it looks as if he’s going to have to fork over major simolians for the Factory release if he wants to complete his collection with the final year.

It’s a sore subject with me, to be sure—though in the company’s defense, when I first mentioned the acquisition of the rights to Route 66 on the blog back in November, I mentioned that there were some serious problems with the previous Roxbury releases (many of the show’s fans noticed that a few of the prints used were substandard…there was even an occasion where they had to re-issue sets due to some bad cropping) and that I hoped that Shout! would consider re-releasing them with improved prints.  So technically, I’ve got no kick to rant about this…but I was also gambling that they’d make the fourth season of the show a separate release so that schmoes like me wouldn’t have to double-dip.  It doesn’t appear as if they’re going to do this, and I am a little discouraged; I don’t know who makes the decisions on these matters but the practice seems to be applied arbitrarily in that they nixed the idea on separate seasons for when they acquired Barney Miller but accommodated consumers on Leave it to Beaver and Rocky and Bullwinkle.  I can only speculate that it might be because the fan base is larger in the case of the latter two shows, but I’m simply going to state for the record that I am most displeased at having to buy a huge honkin’ set just to get the fourth season, and sticking an “extra DVD” entitled Great Cars: Corvette is not going to get the job done, SF.

Besides (I’m going to drop this, just give me a minute)—how can I be expect to pony up the tariff on the Route 66 set when MPI is planning to re-release in its entirety the only daytime soap I ever truly liked, Dark Shadows, in a special 131-DVD collection (!) April 10th?  The company has made this cult series available in a myriad number of collections for many years now (32 sets released between 2002 and 2008), but in Dark Shadows: The Complete Original Series you’ll get all 1,225 episodes of the ABC daytime gothic treat that aired from 1966-71.  (I have decided that I must have this…though to be honest, I’m not all that wild about that “coffin” packaging.)  The TSOD blurb reports that there are a couple of fixes that have been made to this new release (including restoring a famous blooper in one episode)—so to those fans who dutifully purchased all the other collections, I feel your pain

Well, after that rant I’ll need some good news to cheer me up…and that will come in the form of the announcement that Shanachie Entertainment and eOne Entertainment will roll out Season 2 of the cult TV classic Car 54, Where are You? on April 10th, a 4-DVD set containing all thirty episodes (in proper broadcast order this time) of the comedy cop sitcom starring Joe E. Ross and Fred Gwynne.  I have talked about this series on the blog in the past as you well know…and though there’s at least one member of the TDOY peanut gallery who will no doubt receive this news with boundless ennui, the rest of us who cherish and revere good TV will no doubt knock people over to grab this when it hits the shelves (I’m already keeping an eye out for the best price).

Also on my “must-have” list is a sitcom concoction that’s a bit out of the classic TV jurisdiction but I remember watching it when it first aired and enjoying it tremendously.  It’s Bob Newhart’s short lived 1992-93 sitcom Bob, on which he played a comic book artist whose creation was now being featured in a weekly TV series, despite the fact that Newhart’s character had long since left the comic book industry and was making a living designing greeting cards.  The show never garnered the ratings of Newhart’s previous sitcom successes (though the fact that it was originally occupying a death time slot of Friday nights at 9:30pm had a lot to do with it; when CBS moved it to Monday nights later on in its first season the numbers got better) but it got a lot of good critical buzz and the writing was really first-rate (from Cheers alumni like Bill Steinkellner, Cheri Steinkellner and Phoef Sutton)…plus I thought the chemistry between Bob and longtime TDOY fave Cynthia Stevenson was marvelous.  The show got renewed for a second season, but they completely revamped the show and insisted on bringing in Betty White…who may be all that and a bag of chips to a great many folks out there on the Internets but she drove a stake straight into the heart of this show, and it was cancelled soon not long after.  Since another company (*cough* 20th Century Fox *cough*) seems intent on leaving both The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart in DVD limbo, I guess we’ll have to make do with this CBS-Paramount release, due out in a 4-disc set (all 33 episodes) on April 3rd..

And now, a quick look at some other notable TV-on-DVD releases in the pipeline:

The F.B.I., Season 2: Volumes 1 and 2 (available now, 2 sets of 4-discs, $39.95 each) – Fellas, I’d snap up this show in a heartbeat if it weren’t a split-season Warner Archive release…and I’d even be willing to overlook that if the tariff wasn’t so darn high.  Alas, it is not to be…Pasadena.

Lawrence Welk: Classic Episodes, Volumes 1-4 (February 21, 4-disc set, $34.98 SRP) – Film Chest and Synergy Entertainment have put together this “wun’erful, wun’erful” collection of some of the highlights from The Lawrence Welk Show—a TV institution that aired for so many years I actually had to check to see if it wasn’t still on (I think it’s still rerun on some PBS stations).

Night Gallery: Season Three (April 10, 2-disc set, $29.98 SRP) – Yet another one of those Universal Home Video releases that I removed from the dusty Thrilling Days of Yesteryear archives when it looked as if it wasn’t going to move past its initial first season.  (I kind of regret that in retrospect, even though host Rod Serling did refer to Gallery one time as “Mannix in a shroud.”)

Ernie Kovacs: The ABC Specials (April 17, single disc, $14.97 SRP) – Eight TV specials that aired on ABC in 1961 plugging Dutch Masters cigars (talk about the perfect product for the perfect pitchman) and starring one of the funniest men to ever walk the planet.  The perfect compliment to the earlier April 2011 box set release The Ernie Kovacs Collection, which my Facebook pal Ben Model had a hand in.

Eight is Enough: The Complete First Season (April 17, 2-disc set, $24.98 SRP) – Here’s the thing: I remember this show—I had to have watched it, because it was the lead-in to Charlie’s Angels, a series my sister Debbie never missed for fear of major tantrum retribution—but I couldn’t remember a single solitary episode or plotline if you held a gun to my head.  But kudos to Warner Home Video for releasing this one; there are other people out there who have fond memories of it (and are even able to tell the difference between Dick Van Patten and Tom Bosley).

Vega$: The Third Season, Volume 1 (May 8, 3-disc set, $36.98) – Another split-seasoner (seriously, CBS-Paramount—you have to break these up into 11-episode collections?)…though I probably wouldn’t purchase this one even if they did make it available in one package (which they have since done with the first two seasons).  I prefer watching Robert Urich investigate around Boston, if you want to know the truth.

On the cold-cereal-and-footy-pajamas front, TSOD has a blurb that speculates (nothing definite, just gossip) on a possible DVD release of The Jackson 5ive, the 1971-72 Rankin/Bass cartoon series that cashed in on the teen music phenomenon of Jackie, Jermaine, Tito, Marlon and Michael…badly written and animated as it was.  (And that laugh track…oy!  The R-B people also did a series based on the Osmonds in 1972—they ought to release both shows in one set.)  However, a Saturday morning favorite that is making its way to DVD (street date is March 6th) is the 1972-73 series Around the World in 80 Days, a show that I remember quite fondly as a young coach potato even though it’s even money it’s probably not as good as I remember.  The series has seen previous DVD action (it was released in Canada in 2008 through VEI) but will make its way south in a 2-disc collection (all 16 episodes) with a none-too-stingy SRP of $7.98.  (This show shouldn’t be confused with Around the World in 79 Days, a reworking of the Jules Verne classic that was one of the segments on Hanna-Barbera’s The Cattanooga Cats between 1969-71.)

The big cartoon news, however, is the announcement that come March 6, Shout! Factory will compliment its Underdog: The Complete Collection release (due February 21) with Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales: The Complete Collection.  Hot cookies, Agnes!™  When I first mentioned the Underdog box set on the blog I was a little disappernted that Tennessee Tuxedo, one of my cartoon heroes (“Tennessee Tuxedo will not fail!”) wouldn’t be included but helpful TDOY commenter Vinnie of the inestimable TeamBart (I’m pretty sure it was Vinnie) pointed out that although Tennessee and Chumley were featured on The Underdog Show when it was in syndication they weren’t present during its original network run.

So on the Tuxedo 6-disc collection you’ll get not only the adventures of everyone’s favorite penguin-and-walrus team but the segments Klondike Kat (I actually had as a tadpole a toy Klondike whose tail would spin around when wound up—damn, I wish I had kept that), Tooter Turtle and—perhaps Kenny Delmar’s finest moment in cartoondom—The Hunter.  Here’s the thing though: those last two features may have been on Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales when it premiered over CBS on September 28, 1963…but they were originally supporting segments on the first series that came out of the Total Television stable, King Leonardo and His Short Subjects.  (“The King and Odie” segments will also be on the box set, according to the info at Amazon.com.)

One final note: I have been overwhelmed by the response to the Our Miss Brooks: Boynton Blues giveaway—I think I’ve received more entries for this contest than any of the others I’ve held on the blog save for the Johnny Dollar: Confidential giveaway back in April 2011 (and I had J. Kingston Pierce beating the bushes over at The Rap Sheet for that one, which explained the impressive turnout).  The deadline for entering the OMB giveaway is 11:59 EST this Thursday (February 16); Friday morning I will pick a winner and mail that sucker…so send your entry to igsjrotr(at)gmail(dot)com with the subject header “Boynton Blues” for a chance to win.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

My pal Laughing Gravy, at the Facebook branch of his wonderful nostalgia website In the Balcony, asked the members of the FB group what their favorite love song was in honor of the occasion.  This is mine (I can’t embed this on the blog, so if you'd rather not make the hike it’s Ethel Waters’ version of Taking a Chance on Love from Cabin in the Sky), and apologies for not getting this up sooner but I had a few last minute details to take care of…there will be a post tomorrow, I promise.

“…you’ll be seein’ me…every time you bed down for the night you’ll look back into the darkness and wonder if I’m there…and some night I will be…”

Sixty years ago today, Universal released Bend of the River (1952) to motion picture theaters—the second of eight film collaborations between director Anthony Mann and actor James Stewart, and the second of five westerns for which the two men would team up.  I stress this because my imperfect memory often wants to credit Mann and Stewart with only six films (the westerns and 1953’s Thunder Bay), when they also partnered on The Glenn Miller Story (1954) and Strategic Air Command (1955).  (You can just imagine how red-faced I was to learn this, and I even had to go back and correct this detail in an essay I wrote for Edward Copeland on Film…and More on Winchester ’73 back in 2010.)

Which brings me to the subject of the esteemed Mr. Copeland’s blog (smooth as glass), for it is there that you will find a paean to Bend written by yours truly.  It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Winchester ’73 (my favorite of the Mann-Stewart oaters) but with each successive viewing of Bend of the River I find it to be an equally rewarding experience, often noticing details I didn’t catch the first time around.  Much of the credit should go to writer Borden Chase, whose screenplay (based on Bill Gulick’s novel Bend of the Snake) is a splendid mix of action and levity; TDOY fave Arthur Kennedy also co-stars with Jimmy in this one, demonstrating an amazing acting range (I’ve always admired how Kennedy could effortlessly shift from rat bastard to good Joe—this was also the year he played the hero in Rancho Notorious)…and there are first-rate contributions from character faves like Jay C. Flippen, Chubby Johnson, Frank Ferguson, Royal Dano, Harry Morgan and the evilest woman in the town of Mayberry, Francis “Aunt Bee” Bavier.  (I also always get tickled when I hear the unmistakable voice of announcer Howard Petrie, whose radio work includes working the shows of Jimmy Durante and Judy Canova, as Bend’s villain.)

So you can mosey on over to Mr. C’s and read my tribute when you get a free minute or two…and I also cannot recommend highly enough this piece by my pal Laura of Miscellaneous Musings, who got the opportunity to see Bend of the River on the big screen back in October of 2011, the way Nature intended.  (And as promised, I will be bringing the blog back to full steam once Valentine’s Day has come and gone.)

“Something go wrong, Mr. Conklin?”

To the winners of both the Burns and Allen: Treasury and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon: Arctic Odyssey giveaways—I just wanted to let you know that I will have your free swag out to you by Saturday.  It’s been another one of those crazy busy weeks, but I have to stop by the post office eventually to check on my mail and to see what dastardly deed they’re concocting to make my existence a hell on Earth, so the packages containing your winnings will be making the trip as well.

The policy here at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear is that if you’ve won one of the blog giveaways we’d like you to wait at least thirty days until you enter another…that way everybody out there in YesteryearLand gets the opportunity to take home free stuff.  Which allows me to segueway (smooth as glass, I tells ya) into the latest contest here at TDOY: a chance to win a 10-CD collection of Our Miss Brooks: Boynton Blues—the newest Radio Spirits set (valued at $39.98) containing twenty broadcasts of the popular sitcom heard over CBS Radio from 1948 to 1957 (and also making the boob tube transition in the fall of 1952 for a four-season run).

Many old-time radio buffs often argue that the comedy of that era doesn’t particularly date well (and anyone who’s ever listened to broadcasts starring TDOY idol Fred Allen will no doubt agree) but Our Miss Brooks holds up better than most because it’s primarily character-based comedy, with the topical jokes usually kept to a minimum.  Writing the notes for this set was pure unadulterated joy because the series is one of my favorites; the writing is sharp and funny, and the timing of the actors (Eve Arden, Jeff Chandler, Dick Crenna, etc.) is simply sublime.  People of my generation remember Gale Gordon as the irascible employer of Lucille Ball on such shows as The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy, but I truly think Osgood Conklin is his finest portrayal, both on radio and TV.  There’s a moment at the end of one of the broadcasts on this set (“Game at Clay City,” 12/11/49) where I was literally crying with laughter at his performance…and I have a sworn affidavit from my mother attesting to this.

So if you’ve had a particularly trying day at the office and would like nothing better than to come home and chase those cubicle blues away by listening to some first-rate radio comedy, all you need to do is send me an e-mail with the subject header “Boynton Blues” to igsjrotr(at)gmail(dot)com before 11:59pm EST on Thursday, February 16.  Friday morning, I will select one winner (sorry I only have one of these to give away—I promised the other set to a friend) via the Amazing Random Number Generator at Random.org and will speed the prize to the lucky recipient ASAP.  As always, it will be a wonderful addition to your old-time radio library or, should you be feeling especially generous, a nifty gift for that OTR fan you know.  Thrilling Days of Yesteryear—where the winning tradition continues!

Congrats of a prize-winning and birthday nature…

Profuse apologies for not having the winners of the Sergeant Preston Arctic Odyssey Giveaway up sooner, but I’ve been quite busy this morning celebrating the eightieth natal anniversary of the man who my Mom tells me is my father (and that’s good enough for me), the beloved patriarch of Rancho Yesteryear, Ivan, Sr. (pictured above with his faithful grandson sidekick).  Yesterday, he received a visit from his sister Natalie (“Aunt Nat” to me) and her husband Ted (to your right), and after a delicious dinner (prepared by mi madre) of baked ham, Julienne potatoes, broccoli, baked beans, salad and cornbread, they stayed in our guest room suite and then took the family out to breakfast the next morning before continuing on to Marietta to spend time with their son (“Cousin Emery” to me).  I always enjoy when Aunt Nat and Uncle Ted get together with my parents because a good time is truly had by all—Ted was one of my father’s roommates during his carefree bachelor days in the Windy City in the 1950s…where he of course met Dad’s little sis, and the rest is history.

So as I set aside that little nostalgic excursion, I’d like to congratulate my Facebook chum and Munsters devotee Doc Quatermass on being one of the winners in TDOY’s Sgt. Preston Giveaway…and the other is longtime TDOY supporter Bill “You kids get off my lawn” Crider, renowned pulp mystery author and caretaker at Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Blog.  Bill was one of the very first people to promote my ‘umble little scrap of the blogosphere, a decision I’m sure he wished he could journey back in the WABAC machine and rectify…but as Don Gibson assured us in song, they don’t give gold statuettes for tears and regrets.  Kudos to the both of them, and my only regret is that I couldn’t send a Preston collection (an 8-CD set valued at $31.95) to everybody who entered (and I had quite a few who e-mailed this time).  But there are more goodies to give away just around the corner, so stay tuned to this space for further details.  Once again, thanks to all who participated and congratulations to Doc and Bill!

“On, King! On you huskies!”

I am busier than a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest these days, but I wanted to slap this up as a reminder that if you’re interested in entering Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s Sergeant Preston of the Yukon Arctic Odyssey giveaway, you need to get an e-mail to me at igsjrotr(at)gmail(dot)com before the Friday February 3rd deadline of 11:59pm EST (just make sure you put “Sergeant Preston Giveaway” in the subject header).  As an added incentive, I managed to acquire an additional copy of this 8-CD set (thanks to the folks at Radio Spirits) so it’s almost like your chances of winning are doubled—but keep in mind I’m not a mathematician, so what do I know.  I’ll draw two winners via Random.org on Saturday morning and with all deliberate speed get their prizes out to them without a team of Huskies.

The winner of TDOY’s last giveaway, Ellen E., e-mailed me the other day to inform me that she was out of town at the time her name was called and was stranded in beautiful downtown Smyrna, GA without e-mail access.  Smyrna, if Google Maps is to be believed (and if you dismiss Atlanta traffic as a fiction…which you most assuredly cannot), is only 70 miles from Rancho Yesteryear…so if I had contacted her sooner she might have been able to stop by and say hi-dy.  But that’s as may be: a package containing her prize will soon be winging its way to her home environs in Louisiana (or as we say here at the Ranch, Loo-siana) next week.