As we wind up our “Go West Young Man” blog series, we turn our attention to CimarronStrip for the last blog of the series. This show was only on the air for one season, from 1967-68. It was produced by the creators of Gunsmoke, America’s most beloved western. Like The Virginian, it was a 90-minute show.
📷mubi.com
Set in the Oklahoma in 1890, the series occurred in a geographical region called No Man’s Land, an ungoverned area for several decades. Marshal Jim Crown (Stuart Whitman) tries to bring law and order there. Crown arrives only to learn that the sheriff has resigned, and it’s up to him to bring peace to the area with no Army support. We get to know Dulcey Coopersmith (Jill Townsend) who comes to live with her father, but upon her arrival, she discovers he is dead. Her father’s partner MacGregor (Percy Herbert) has let their Wayfarer’s Inn become a bit dilapidated, but Dulcey is determined to bring it back. Marshal Crown stayed there when he was in Cimarron City. Francis Wilde (Randy Boone) often served as Crown’s deputy.
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Rounding out the cast is the bartender at the Inn, Fabrizio (Jack Braddock); Major Covington at a nearby Army fort (Andrew Duggan); a Dr. Kihlgren (Karl Swenson); and Hardy Miller (Robert J. Wilke).
The show was on Thursday nights, up against Batman, The Flying Nun, and Bewitched on ABC. It faced Daniel Boone and Ironside on NBC. Definitely some tough competition.
The theme song was composed by Maurice Jarre, who was the scorer for the films Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago for which he won two Oscars.
The show never attained the ratings numbers it needed to keep its place on the schedule. From what I have been able to find out, it was well written and well cast. Guest stars kept it interesting, and the scenery was beautifully filmed.
📷tvmaze.com
I’m guessing the main reason the show didn’t make it was just viewer fatigue with the western genre. There were already shows like Bonanza and Gunsmoke which were hugely popular. One more western might just have been one too many, no matter how good it was. In addition to the western series, some of the shows that were on the air when Cimarron Strip debuted included That Girl, Hogan’s Heroes, Mannix, Batman, Lost in Space, Get Smart, and Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In—very different choices than westerns. I do remember Arnold the pig on Green Acres always wanting to watch westerns on television. We still fall prey to this on the major three networks. After ER became popular, the next season featured ten new medical shows. And then most of them get cancelled, not necessarily because they’re bad but because it’s just an overload of medical shows.
Most people don’t want the same supper every night even if it’s steak or lasagna. That said, this seemed to be a steak kind of show, so just because it couldn’t survive the mass onslaught of westerns in the sixties doesn’t mean it’s not worth watching. If you check it out, let me know what you think.
As we celebrate westerns this month in our blog series “Go West Young Man,” we are tuning in to Stagecoach West which traveled across the air waves from 1960-1961. The show debuted in October of 1960 with the final episode airing in June of 1961. For the summer, reruns of the show continued. The thirty-eight episodes were on Tuesday nights.
📷wikipedia.com
The show features two Civil War veterans, Luke Perry (Wayne Rogers) and Simon Kane (Robert Bray), who own a stagecoach line and share driving duties in the Wyoming territory. It was fun to see a young Rogers decades before he showed up in Korea bantering with Alan Alda. During their trips they run into murders, robberies, range wars, renegade soldiers, and passengers who have their own drama. Simon’s son Davey (Richard Eyer) often travels with the men.
They are based in Outpost, a small frontier town. We get to know several townspeople including Dan Murchison (John Litel) who runs the general store and bank; Zeke Bonner (James Burke) who rents rooms at The Halfway House; Hugh Strickland (Robert J. Stevenson), the Marshal in Timberline; and Doc Apperson (played by J. Pat O’Malley and Sydney Smith).
📷rottentomatoes.com
Vincent M. Fennelly was the producer and there were several directors, with Thomas Carr taking the helm most often. There was also a long list of writers, but D.D. Beauchamp and Mary Beauchamp penned many of the scripts. From what I could learn about the Beauchamps, they didn’t work together but wrote their own episodes. Mary was known for her work on Bat Masterson and Tales of West Fargo in addition to this show. D.D. (Daniel Deronda) is best remembered as a writer for Daniel Boone. His third wife was Mary Mitchell, so I am guessing that Mary Mitchell and Mary Beauchamp are the same person. Sounds like she and her husband were cremated, so there is no findagrave site for her.
The theme song was composed by Skip Martin and Terry Gilkyson. This was the only time I could find where this duo worked together. They had very different careers. Gilkyson was part of The Weavers and The Easy Riders. In 1960 he went to work for Walt Disney and was nominated for an Oscar for “The Bare Necessities” in Jungle Book. Martin worked with jazz and swing bands in the 1930s and 40s including Count Basie and Glenn Miller. With Les Brown, he was given credit for writing “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” In the 1950s he moved to Hollywood where he worked on Singin’ in the Rain and A Star is Born.
📷westernserieswiki.com
Richard Eyer in an interview said the show “kept me busy and was usually fun. It was a very positive experience. When they hired me, it was sort of a transitional point . . when we did the pilot I was 13 and quite young . . . we started production eight months [later] . . . I was into puberty and adolescence.”
Tuesday nights’ competition in 1960 was Thriller on NBC and The Tom Ewell Show and The Red Skelton Show on CBS. Thriller was an interesting show hosted by Boris Karloff. It began as an anthology focusing on crime but later transitioned to gothic horror stories. The Tom Ewell Show also began and ended in 1960. Ewell plays a real estate agent who lives with a lot of women, namely his wife, daughters, and mother-in-law. ABC aired The Rifleman and The Legend of Wyatt Earp before Stagecoach West.
The show never gained viewers, so it was cancelled in June. If you follow me, you know I don’t have the most positive feelings about Red Skelton and how he treated the people who worked for him, but it was a very popular show and some of the episodes were in color, so a lot of people were tuning into to watch him. I wonder if because two westerns were on earlier in the evening, people were ready to watch another genre. In addition to this night of programming, there were another 15 westerns on during the evenings on the other days of the week. The other factor that comes into play is that both The Rifleman and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis on CBS were in the top thirty. I wonder how many viewers watched The Rifleman on ABC and then switched networks to Dobie Gillis on NBC and then never returned to ABC for the rest of the evening.
It would be a fun and easy binge watch if you want to tune in even to see the guest stars and learn some of the issues that were dealt with during this era of travel.
This month we are taking a look at some classic sitcoms that many people don’t remember anymore.
Blondie is one of those shows. It was based on the Chic Young comic strip and debuted on NBC in 1957, lasting one year. The series was resurrected in 1968 and the reboot also lasted a season.
📷wikipedia.com The 1957 version
Blondie had become very popular with fans. Beginning in 1938, 28 movies were made starring Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake. Blondie also showed up on the radio from 1939 to 1950. Many products had been based on the characters including comic books, coloring books, lunch boxes, and board games.
The 1957 series starred half the movie duo. Lake took on his role of Dagwood Bumstead, but Pamela Britton was offered the role of Blondie Bumstead. Their kids, Cookie and Alexander, were played by Ann Barnes and Stuffy Singer. Florenz Ames was boss J.C. Dithers with Elvia Allmana as his wife Cora. Rounding out the cast was Harold Peary as neighbor Herb Woodley.
📷imdb.com The 1968 version
A decade later Will Hutchins and Patricia Harty play Dagwood and Blondie, Jim and Henny Backus play the Dithers, and Pamelyn Ferdin and Peter Robbins are their kids. The only advantage this series had over the original was color.
The comic strip, movies, radio show and both sitcoms all encompassed the familiar Bumstead elements: Dagwood being physically and socially awkward; their dog Daisy, and Dagwood’s love of napping and huge sandwiches.
The reboot was produced by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, the faces behind Leave It to Beaver and The Munsters. There was room in the schedule after the network cancelled He and She, a sitcom starring real life spouses Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin. The show is described on imdb.com as “Dick and Paula Hollister are a couple living in New York. Dick is a comic-book artist who has become famous for creating a superhero called Jetman, which has been turned into a TV show starring egocentric actor Oscar North.” During its one season of 26 episodes, the show received seven Emmy nominations, including a win for writing. It’s too bad that show was given the axe and Blondie moved in because the Prentiss-Benjamin show was much more creative and felt new, while Blondie felt extremely old.
No surprise, the ratings were not great. This is even worse when you see what the show was in competition with: The Ugliest Girl in Town, which would also be gone by 1969, and Daniel Boone. The one new 1968 show to return on CBS was Hawaii Five-0 which seems so much more sophisticated than Blondie; it’s hard to believe they both debuted the same year.
📷yahoo.com Hawaii Five-0
Perhaps the fans didn’t tune in because the critics panned the show before it aired. The Milwaukee Journal’s Wade Mosby said it was “a horrendously contrived piece of fluff that should have never been snatched from the comic pages.” Don Page of the Los Angeles Times called it “an unmitigated disaster,” and Cynthia Lowry of the Associated Press described it as “dismal.”
By November, rumors were that the show was already cancelled, and its last episode aired in January. The show probably relied too much on slapstick and unsophisticated humor; things that might have been fine in the 1930s but were passe by the 1960s. Sometimes a show is cancelled just because it’s a badly written and executed show. It seems Blondie fell into this category not once but twice.
Off the top of my head, I can only recall two comic strips becoming popular television shows: The Archies and The Addams Family. Because the Blondie characters were not very dimensional and got into the same situations over and over, they just never were able to translate into sustainable television characters. I think there’s a good reason that many people don’t remember this show and perhaps it’s better that way.
This month we are Riding the Range, exploring some of the westerns from the fifties and sixties. One of those shows that was on the air from 1957-1962 was Tales of Wells Fargo.
The show was produced by Revue Productions and set in the 1870s and 1880s. Gene Reynolds was one of the creators of the show, along with Frank Gruber and James Brooks. Reynolds would go on to great success as a director, producer and writer, and my favorite of his was M*A*S*H. Although this show was set in the same time as Daniel Boone, it was better at getting history correct. The show featured special agent Jim Hardie (Dale Robertson) with his horse Jubilee. It was loosely based on the life of real detective Fred J. Dodge. Sometimes Hardie ran into characters from history including Jesse James and Belle Starr.
📷pinterest.com Fred J. Dodge
Fred Dodge was born in California in 1854. He went to work as an undercover agent for Wells Fargo, working in California, Nevada, and Arizona. In 1979 he was in Tombstone and recommended hiring Wyatt Earp as guard for the stage line. He became great friends with Earp. Later Dodge became constable of Tombstone while working undercover. In 1890 he left his undercover work and became a known employee of Wells Fargo in Texas. He purchased a 2,000-acre ranch near Boerne, Texas and when he retired in 1917, he lived there with his family. Dodge was described as an intelligent and successful investigator. He wrote 27 journals during his career, noting his activities and travels in them. Some of these were used for Tales of West Fargo.
I had always assumed this show was about stagecoach travel, but it was not, although stage coaches played a part. In the mid-1800s, the Wells Fargo stage line was the primary connection between the East and West coasts. Wells Fargo did not operate a stage coach line, but they did use that form of transportation for money, gold and other valuables to be delivered. Trains are involved in many of the plots. One of the trains used in the show would eventually travel to Hooterville and be renamed the Cannonball.
📷imdb.com
The first five seasons were black and white half-hour shows, while the final season switched to a color, hour-long show. During the last season, Hardie settles on a ranch near San Francisco and several recurring characters (Jack Ging, William Demarest, Virginia Christine, Lory Patrick, and Mary Jayne Saunders) were added to the series. Earle Lyon replaced Nat Holt as producer in 1960.
The theme song was written by Stanley Wilson and Mort Greene. Wilson was a prolific composer, amassing 147 credits for composing and 278 for music department credit on television and in movies. Mort Greene was best known as a writer for The Red Skelton Show and for his musical role for Leave it to Beaver.
The number of well-known actors who appeared on the show was surprising. Here are just a few of the huge number: Claude Akins, Eddie Albert, Hugh Beaumont, Dan Blocker, Charles Bronson, Edgar Buchanan, Harry Carey Jr., Chuck Connors, Buddy Ebsen, Beverly Garland, George Kennedy, Tina Louise, Steve McQueen, Jack Nicholson, Leonard Nimoy, Denver Pyle, Jason Robards, Vito Scotti, Dawn Wells, and Adam West.
📷mysteryfile.com
It was an NBC show. The pilot premiered on Schlitz Playhouse of Stars. Its biggest competition was Father Knows Best in seasons two and three. It was very popular with the viewers. The show was in the top ten during seasons one through four. For the sixth season, with an entire new cast, new theme song, and color, it was almost like a new show. NBC moved it to Saturday nights against Perry Mason and ratings declined drastically, costs went up significantly, and it was canceled.
Robertson thought the key to the popularity of the show was because it was not geared specifically to adults or kids. It was a family show. When Robertson first read the script, it was terrible, but he owed Nat Holt a favor, so he accepted the role, assuming that it would never make it. Robertson received a 50% ownership in the show, so he said of course it made him want the show to be better and he convinced them to replace most of the original script. He said that he enjoyed his time on the show a lot and that the crew was close and professional. They never went over schedule or over budget during the entire run.
📷thehollywoodreporter.com
The first two seasons were released on DVD in 2011 if you want to check them out. It sounds like this was a solid show. The network supported them, the cast was close, the production team was on top of things, and they all enjoyed their time with the show. That is a rare thing to hear in the television business. They took a gamble in the last season, and it didn’t work out, but perhaps it was for the best. It sounds like the actual show ended the season before because the last season things changed so much it was a completely new production. I would like to read more about Fred Dodge. His life sounds fascinating.
This month we are Riding the Range. Up first is Daniel Boone. I remember watching this series with my son when he was in second and third grade and loved everything western. He bought vintage western board games and read western stories. He wore a cowboy hat around the house with a pair of boots. Email was somewhat new then, but he was able to contact Fess Parker and Clayton Moore. They both sent him back nice emails, and Clayton Moore sent him an autographed biography.
When I decided to do a series about westerns and include Daniel Boone, I was surprised to learn that it was on the air from 1964-1970. That means it went off the air when I was in fourth grade—I always assumed it was produced in the fifties.
The series was on NBC during those years. It starred Fess Parker as Daniel Boone and Ed Ames as Mingo, his Cherokee friend. Boone’s wife Rebecca was portrayed by Patricia Blair and his son Israel was played by Darby Hinton. Dallas McKennon played store owner Cincinnatus. For the first two seasons before just vanishing, his daughter Jemima (Veronica Cartwright) was on and for the final two seasons, Rosy Grier, former NFL player, was Gabe Cooper.
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From Cartwright’s complaints, it seems that Blair complained about having an older daughter and felt it made her seem older than she wanted to appear, so the show just got rid of a kid. If you have read my former blogs about disappearing characters, you realize that this is just one of many shows that insult viewers’ intelligence enough to just remove a character without an explanation, assuming everyone will just accept it.
Unfortunately for kids who tuned in to learn about their hero, the show did not contain a lot of historical accuracy. The show is set in the 1770s and 1780s in the town of Boonesborough, Kentucky. Daniel Boone had ten children, but only two in this show. In real life, Boone was an explorer, but on the series, he was much more of a family man. One episode was centered around Aaron Burr, but it was about an event that happened in 1806?!?!
The inconsistencies were so bad that at one point, the Kentucky legislature condemned the show. A coalition of activists asked the local television station to not air 37 different episodes in reruns because they were offensive to the local Native Americans.
Oddly, one area they did try to stay true to was the construction of the fort. They used authentic wooden pegs to build it like it would have been at the time, and it collapsed, having to be replaced by modern construction. Why the fort was the only authentic fact they worried about is beyond me.
📷military.com
Ed Ames did not love playing Mingo on the show. He admitted that he signed on for a regular paycheck, assuming the show would not last long. In 1968, he told TV Guide “Work is tight and if you get a decent part on Broadway every three years, you’re lucky. Whereas you can just keep hackin’ ‘em out week after week on TV. And then, of course, you have to eat.” He ended up getting more fan mail than Parker, and it caused some bad blood between them.
There were three versions of the theme song used during the show’s run. It was written by Vera Matson and Lionel Newman. Fess Parker originally sang the song for the show, but later seasons used a version by the Imperials. The song played up Boone as a larger-than-life hero:
“Daniel Boone was a man. Yes, a big man.
With an eye like an eagle and as tall as a mountain was he.
Daniel Boone was a man. Yes, a big man.
He was brave, he was fearless, and as tough as a mighty oak tree.
From the coonskin cap on the top of ol’ Dan to the heel of his rawhide shoe,
The rippin’est, roarin’est, fightin’est man the frontier ever knew.”
Parker not only sang for the show, but he directed five of the episodes.
📷dvdtalk.com
Although the history was embarrassing on the show, the series is often celebrated for the attitude Daniel Boone displayed that every man was to be treated with respect and as an equal. That is not to say that it was ever politically correct, as we think of that term today, but for the era it debuted, it was a refreshing, perspective. One episode that demonstrates this is season 2, episode 4. Rafer Johnson (an Olympian and civil rights activist) plays a former enslaved person who is stealing trappers’ furs to sell to earn money to return to Africa. Boone tells him he can’t condone the stealing and “arrests” him for that crime. However, he takes him into his custody to protect him and raises enough money for him to travel to Africa, refusing to return him to the former slave owner.
📷wikipedia.com
Before the show ended, Parker wanted to open a Daniel Boone amusement park in Kentucky. He bought some land near the junction of I-71 and I-75, but before he could build Frontier World, another park opened nearby in Ohio and Boone’s never happened. He did later buy a ranch in California and started the Fess Parker Winery.
I guess Fess Parker enjoyed making people dizzy whether it was riding a roller coaster, drinking wine, or trying to figure out if the television Boone was a good or bad influence on the fans who watched the show.
In this last blog in our series of Supportive Men, today’s actor might not be someone most people expect to see when talking about television. When most people think about Leslie Nielsen, they think of Airplane! and some of his other movies. While he did have a prolific movie career, he also has a well-deserved place in television. This guy amassed 259 (150 in television) acting credits during his six-decade long career.
📷tmdb.com
Nielsen was born in Saskatchewan, Canada in 1926. His mother was from Wales, and his father was a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman. His older brother served in politics, being a Canadian Member of Parliament, a cabinet minister, and a Deputy Prime Minister of Canada. I read several sources that said his father was abusive, and Leslie wanted to move out as soon as possible.
Leslie enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force, serving until the end of WWII. He was legally deaf, wearing hearing aids most of his life, but he was able to train as an aerial gunner.
After the war, he worked as a disc jockey in Calgary, Alberta before enrolling at the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto. He was offered a scholarship at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York.
📷wikipedia.com Bonanza
He made five television appearances in 1950 with the first being on The Actor’s Studio. He continued working in television, primarily on dramatic theater series, through the 1950s. In 1956, he had his first big-screen roles, appearing in four movies that year including Ransom, Forbidden Planet,The Vagabond King, (Nielsen later referred to this film as the “Vagabond Turkey”) and The Opposite Sex.
Leslie discussed his role in Forbidden Planet: “Supposedly a science fiction version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest . . . The Trekkies today regard it as the forerunner of StarTrek. I just had to wear a tight uniform and make eyes at Anne Francis. I was pretty thin back then.”
He became an American citizen in 1958 but continued to be proud of his Canadian citizenship as well.
While most of his credits for the late fifties were movies, he jumped back into television in the sixties, appearing in forty different shows. Many of them were dramatic theater roles, but you can spot him in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Route 66, Wagon Train, DanielBoone, The Wild Wild West, Dr. Kildare, Bonanza, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and Gunsmoke. His only recurring role during this decade was on Peyton Place where he played Kenneth and Vincent Markham in 18 episodes.
📷pinterest.com on M*A*S*H
The seventies were almost a repeat of the sixties. His recurring role was on The Bold Ones. He also appeared in Medical Center, Mod Squad, M*A*S*H, Barnaby Jones, Hawaii Five-0, Kojak, Columbo, and The Love Boat.
1980 brought him the role of Dr. Rumack on Airplane!. Nelson’s deadpan delivery of lines in that movie is what most fans today remember about his career. Of course, his response to the line of “Surely you can’t be serious?” of “I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley” is still repeated today. Leslie said, “he was pleased and honored that he had a chance to deliver that line.” Film critic Roger Ebert once called him “the Laurence Olivier of spoofs.”
📷themoviebuff.com Airplane!
He continued in these types of roles in Police Squad and Naked Gun and the sequels. His movie roles increased in the eighties and nineties, but he continued to accept television roles off and on. You can catch him on Murder She Wrote, Highway to Heaven, Who’sthe Boss, The Golden Girls, and Evening Shade.
His roles continued throughout the 2000s until his death, but the last decade included fewer memorable shows, although he worked less overall. When reflecting on this, Neilsen said that “I’m afraid if I don’t keep moving, they’re going to catch me . . . I am 81 years old, and I want to see what’s around the corner, and I don’t see any reason in the world not to keep working. But I am starting to value my down time a great deal because I am realizing there might be other things to do that I am overlooking.”
📷npr.org Police Squad
While Nielsen was very successful in his career, he was not as successful with his marriages. From 1950-56, he was married to Monica Boyar. His longest relationship was with wife Alisande Ullman from 1958-1973. He then married Brooks Oliver for two years from 1981-83 and then Barbaree Earl from 2001-2010.
One of his hobbies was golfing, and he later did some humorous instruction videos about the sport. He once said, “I have no goals or ambition. I do, however, wish to work enough to maintain whatever celebrity status I have so that they will continue to invite me to golf tournaments.”
Nielsen died in his sleep in 2010 from pneumonia.
He received two Walk of Fame stars: one in Hollywood in 1988 and one in Toronto in 2001. Nielsen was known for his flatulence gags, especially on movie sets, and his tombstone says “Let ‘er Rip.”
While Nielsen’s career is impressive, what I loved most about him is that he seemed to thoroughly enjoy life. That’s a great reminder for us all. Our best role should be enjoying life to the best of our ability.
We are winding up our series: Bam! Pow! Batman Villains. Today it’s all about The Joker: Cesar Romero.
📷turnerclassicmovies.com
Romero was born in New York City in 1907. His father was an import/export merchant, and his mother was a concert singer. He grew up in Bradley Beach, New Jersey. His father lost most of his money during the 1929 Wall Street Crash.
Romero teamed up with dancer Lisbeth Higgins and they formed a professional dance partnership, appearing in nightclubs and theaters throughout New York City including the Ambassador Roof and the Montmartre Café. Although he had no professional training, he was often compared to Fred Astaire. He also was cast in several off-Broadway productions including “Stella Brady” and “Dinner at Eight.”
Later Romero would refer to himself as the Latin from Manhattan and he provided for his family members who followed him to Hollywood. He played the stereotypical Latin lover during the thirties and forties, including The Devil is a Woman with Marlene Dietrich in 1935. However, he also made westerns and did a bit of dancing during these decades on the big screen.
His friendship with Frank Sinatra brought him roles in Around the World in 80 Days, Pepe, Marriage on the Rocks, and Oceans’ 11.
📷imdb.com Wagon Train
In 1942, Cesar enlisted in the US Coast Guard, serving in the Pacific Theater of Operations. After his military career ended, Romero returned to his acting career.
His television career began in 1948 in the show, Variety. During the fifties he was primarily appearing on dramas, but he did show up on Private Secretary with Ann Sothern and continued his western roles on Wagon Train, Zorro, and Death Valley Days.
The sixties kept him extremely busy on television. He kept people laughing on Pete and Gladys, The Ann Sothern Show, Get Smart, and Here’s Lucy. He rode the range on Stagecoach West, Bonanza, Rawhide, and Daniel Boone. He stayed dramatic on shows including 77 Sunset Strip, Dr. Kildare, and Ben Casey.
📷wallpaper.com
However, the show he was best known for in the sixties, is the show that made him part of my blog series this month, Batman. He had to endure a long time in the make-up chair. He refused to shave his mustache for the role, so white face makeup was smeared all over his face until it was hidden.
Romero admitted that this role reinvigorated his career. When he was offered the role of the Joker, he was 59 years old. Romero said the role was “the kind of part where you can do everything you’ve been told not to do as an actor. You can be as hammy as you want.”
He discussed how surprised he was when William Dozier called him about the show. He said Dozier told him that “the important characters were all villains. They had done the first two with the Riddler and the Penguin with Frank Gorshin and Burgess Meredith, and now they were ready to do the third, and the villain was the Joker. He said, ‘I would like you to play the part.’ So, I said I would like to read the script and know what it is all about. He said, ‘Come on over to the studio, and I will show you the film of the first episode.’ Of course, it was great. I said, ‘Let me read this Joker part, and if it is as good as the first one, hell yes, I will do it.’ So I read the script, and I thought it was a gas, and I said, ‘Sure, I’ll do it.’”
No serious villain, the Joker was cheerful and extroverted. He oozed goofiness and always appeared to be having a great time carrying out his nefarious activities. Dressed in his famous purple costume, he had his own automobile that could rival the Batmobile.
📷facebook.com
While most of the villains saw Batman and Robin as roadblocks in their evil schemes and problems to take care of, the Joker found great joy in taking down the superheroes. In one episode he says “Oh, but I must, I must! Why, outwitting Batman is my sole delight, my heaven on earth, my very paradise!”
You couldn’t miss him if you watched almost any television in the 1970s and 1980s. He appeared on a ton of shows, just a few of which included Bewitched, Nanny and the Professor, Love American Style, The Love Boat, Night Gallery, Mod Squad, Ironside, Medical Center, Charlie’s Angels, and Hart to Hart.
From 1985-88, he was a regular on Falcon Crest. Earl Hamner Jr., the creator of The Waltons, created this show featuring the Gioberti family, owners of Falcon Crest Winery. Romero played the love interest of matriarch Angela Channing, played by Jane Wyman.
He finished his career in the 1990s. He was in his eighties when he appeared on The Golden Girls, and Murder She Wrote, his last television role.
Romero also played a role in politics. As a registered Republican, he was very involved in many campaigns. He worked for Nixon-Lodge in 1960 and later supported Lodge in his run for President. When Lodge did not get the results that he hoped for, Romero turned his support to Barry Goldwater for the general election. He also worked for his friend George Murphy in his run in the California senate race. He later helped Ronald Reagan in his gubernatorial runs in California as well as his presidential campaigns.
It was reported in many articles that Romero had 30 tuxedos and more than 500 suits. That is not surprising because he had a clothing line, Cesar Romero Ltd. He was also a model and spokesperson for Petrocelli suits in the sixties.
Romero stopped acting in 1990. He remained busy though with several ventures including hosting classic movie programs on television. In 1994, Romero died from complications of a blood clot on New Year’s Day. He was being treated for bronchitis and pneumonia.
I enjoyed getting to know a bit more about Cesar Romero, but, I have to admit, that I don’t feel like I know him much better than I did before. He seemed to have been stereotyped as a Latin lover and then again as the Joker. I would like to go back and watch some of his appearances on westerns. It was hard to find much information about Romero beyond his career and political interests.
📷etsy.com
I know The Joker was not his most challenging role, but he will always have a place in America’s heart for the work he did on Batman as will these fun super villains we got to know this month.
Bam! Pow! It’s Batman Villain Month. We will be looking at the career of an actor who played a Batman baddie every week this month. We are beginning with my favorite, The Penguin, played by Burgess Meredith.
📷pinterest.com
Oliver Burgess Meredith was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1907. His father was a physician, and his mother was born into a family of Methodist revivalists. Burgess followed his Methodist faith for his entire life. After high school, he enrolled at Amherst College, until 1932 when he became a reporter for the Stamford Advocate. He worked in a variety of jobs while getting started in acting including retail, an editor, a merchant marine, and a runner on Wall Street.
He joined Eva Le Gallienne’s Civic Repertory Theatre in New York City. His Broadway debut was in this company’s “Romeo and Juliet” in 1930. His film debut came in 1935 in Winterset. Later in his career, he would return to Broadway as a director. He shared a Tony Award with James Thurber for their collaboration on “A Thurber Carnival” in 1960, and he earned a Tony nomination for his staging of “Ulysses in Nighttown” in 1974. In the late seventies, he directed Fionnula Flanagan’s one-woman play, “James Joyce’s Women” which toured for several years.
Meredith had more success in acting than marriage. Helen Derby Merrien Burgess was his wife from 1932-1935. His marriage to actress Margaret Perry only lasted two years, ending in 1938.
In 1942, Burgess enlisted in the US Army Air Forces for WWII, reaching the rank of captain. He was discharged in 1945. Meredith married another actress, Paulette Goddard, and they were together from 1944-1949. However, in 1951 he married Kaja Sundsten and they were together until his death.
Meredith would appear in 80 movies during his career, as well as a number of made-for-television movies. He might be best known in the past few decades for Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men in the 1990s.
However, it was television where he found the most acclaim. His first appearances came in 1949 on the Ford Theater Hour and The Silver Theater. Throughout the fifties he continued receiving offers for theatric roles on these types of programs. During the early sixties, he was everywhere. You could catch his appearances on dramas such as The Naked City, Ben Casey, The Twilight Zone, The Bold Ones, Room 222, Ironside, and Mannix. He rode onto many western sets including Wagon Train, Rawhide, The Wild, Wild West, Bonanza, Daniel Boone, and The Virginian. He found his way onto several comedies such as Please Don’t Eat the Daisies and The Monkees.
Given the astounding number of drama shows that he chose roles on, it is a bit surprising that one of his best-known roles was the campy, humorous 1960s series Batman. From 1966-1968, he made 21 appearances as the Penguin. When he appeared on The Monkees, it was also as the Penguin. Originally the producers wanted Spencer Tracy for the role of Penguin. Tracy said he would not accept the offer unless his character was allowed to kill Batman. So, Meredith got the role. The cast loved him, and the producers made sure there was always a Penguin script waiting so whenever Burgess was free, it could be filmed.
📷dcdatabase.com
He was perfect for the role with his raspy voice and that iconic Penguin laugh. The laugh came about because Burgess had given up smoking but had to smoke for his role on Batman. When he coughed, he covered it up with his trademark laugh. When asked why he did Batman, he replied that he did it “for two reasons, one of which was the salary. The other was that, after the first few episodes, Batman became the in-thing to do. Everybody would either play a villain or appear as himself in that cameo showcase where a celebrity would poke his head through the window of a building that Batman and Robin were climbing. Actually, we didn’t get as much money from the show as you might think, although we were paid decent money for the feature film version. The main impetus to continue appearing on Batman—beyond the desire to get some TV work—was that it was fashionable.”
Later in his career, Burgess continued appearing on the big screen and provided voice-over work and a bit of animation. Unfortunately, he was named as an unfriendly witness by the House Un-American Activities Commission which ended his studio work for several decades. Burgess also did commercial work and was known for his roles for Skippy Peanut Butter and United Air Lines.
📷imdb.com
Meredith was a life-long Democrat and was generous to the Democratic party. He was an environmentalist and tried to end pollution. He was also fascinated by intelligent animals, especially dolphins. One night he said he felt a dolphin needed help while staying at a friend’s beach house. He ran out to the beach and found a dolphin caught in a net under a dock and was able to save its life. He was nominated for two Academy Awards, both for Supporting Actor in Rocky and The Day of the Locust. A 21-acre park in Pomona, New York was named for him; he provided the funding to incorporate the village.
In 1997, Meredith died from complications of Alzheimer’s. His former Batman costar, Adam West, spoke at his memorial service.
While almost all of the bad guys on Batman were memorable, the Penguin and Cat Woman were by far my favorites. We will look at the career of Julie Newmar next week.
This month’s blog “theme is “Kinda Creepy.” These are not shows that will give you nightmares or have you sleeping with the nightlight on. But they did have a touch of ghoul or terror. First up is one of our All-American families, The Munsters.
The creators of Leave It to Beaver, developed this series to be a satire of suburban life. The opening credit shows Lily handing her family their lunches as they run out the door just like Donna Reed did in The Donna Reed Show in the fifties. The Munsters are a perfectly normal family except for a few eccentric and trivial things like Herman (Fred Gwynne) being a Frankenstein, Lily (Yvonne De Carlo) being a vampire, Grandpa (Al Lewis) who can turn into a bat, and werewolf son Eddie (Butch Patrick). In real life, Lewis was a year younger than De Carlo who played his daughter and Gwynne was four years younger than De Carlo.
Photo: ebay.com
Living with the family is Lily’s niece Marilyn (Beverly Owen/Pat Priest), who seems a little abnormal to the family but looks like any high school girl of the time, except a little bit prettier. Owen was engaged when she got the part and did not think the show would be picked up. When it became popular, the cast convinced the network to release her from her contract, and Priest, who looked very similar, took over. Gwynne and Lewis had previously been part of the cast of Car 54, Where Are You? and were good friends. (To learn more about their friendship and their individual careers, see my blog from July 10, 2017.)
This series aired on CBS, and ABC featured The Addams Family whom we’ll meet next week. Both shows debuted in 1965 and were off the air after two seasons.
There were a few recurring characters including Paul Lynde as Dr. Edward Dudley (Dom DeLuise also played Dr. Dudley in one episode), Herman’s boss Mr. Gateman (John Carradine), and Clyde (Chet Stratton), a colleague of Herman’s.
Paul Lynde Photo: pinterest.com
The family lives at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. Herman works for Gateman, Goodbury and Graves, a funeral parlor, as a grave digger. In an interview with Daily Variety, Al Lewis, explained that with the unusual family, “they could do a lot of satirical pointed things on society that you couldn’t do on an ordinary show.”
The show actually had four pilots which I don’t think I have ever seen before. The first one was filmed in 1964 with Gwynne, Lewis, and Owen. Joan Marshall was Phoebe, Herman’s wife and Nate Derman was Eddie. For the second pilot, De Carlo replaced Marshall and changed her name to Lily. In the third edition, Patrick was brought on board to replace Derman. The cast stayed intact for the fourth pilot, but Eddie’s character was changed a bit. He was a bit of a brat and they toned it down.
The family had a pet dragon named Spot that lived under the stairs. When the staircase opened up, you could see the fire he was breathing and sometimes you would see his tail only.
Photo: hagerty.com
Makeup for the show was credited to Bud Westmore who had worked for Universal during their monster movie phase. However, the actual work was done by several people. Perc Westmore worked with Grandpa. Abe Haberman applied Lily’s new face, while Michael Westmore worked with Patrick and Priest. Bill Mumy was the original choice for Eddie, but his parents said “No” when they learned about how much makeup would be used for each episode.
Patrick was asked about the cast and how they got along in an interview with Fox News. He said it was a good relationship. If he had to pick another actor whom he bonded with more than another it would probably be Lewis. He discussed the amazing comedic timing that Gwynne and Lewis shared. He said that the person he enjoyed working with the most was his makeup man, Westmore. He said he was the first person he saw every morning. He also mentioned Westmore was a very handsome guy who owned a Jaguar and was a bachelor, so he looked up to him as a role model also.
Photo: vintageeveryday.com
Karl Silvera did Herman’s makeup. Gwynne had the toughest time of all the characters. He had to spend two hours in the makeup chair first thing in the morning. He wore forty pounds of foam rubber padding and drank copious amounts of lemonade. Despite that, he lost a lot of weight doing the show. In one month, he lost ten pounds. They also put a piece of foam latex on his head to flatten the top. His shoes were asphalt paver’s boots with four-inch soles. The producers rented a compressed air tank and would poke the nozzle inside his collar to blow cool air on him.
The show aired on Thursday nights at 7:30. Many shows began filming in color in the mid-sixties, but the studio did not want to pay the extra $10,000 per episode, so it was shot in black and white. For its debut year, it was number 18, tied with Gilligan’s Island, but it took a drastic drop for season two and landed at number 61. The show competed with The Flintstones and Daniel Boone in year one In year two, Batman debuted in color and The Munsters’ viewers switched networks in droves. The show was canceled with 70 episodes for syndication. From the comments that I read, I’m not sure Lewis and Gwynne would have continued another season anyway. They wanted a different type of humor and, of course, Gwynne had to endure so much with his costume.
If you were looking at the merchandising that accompanied the show, you would never guess it was only on for two seasons. Between 1965-68, 16 Gold Key Comics were produced. The show rolled out Colorforms, car model kits, both a Herman Munster doll and a puppet, and View Masters. You could also purchase several different action figure sets, a board game, and a lunch box, among other items.
Although the show, not surprisingly, never received an Emmy nomination, it was up for Best Television Series for a Golden Globe in 1965 which did surprise me.
The theme song was an instrumental, simply titled “The Munsters’ Theme.” It was composed by Jack Marshall. It was nominated for a Grammy in 1965. There are lyrics for the song, written by Bob Mosher, but they were never used on the air.
For a show that was only on the air for two seasons, it has had a lot of staying power. I think that it was so different and the fact that The Addams Family was also on two seasons and very similar just provided it with that perfect fan base. I do remember watching the show and buying The Munsters coloring books and paper dolls, but I don’t remember it being a “must see” for me. Of course, I was only five when it was canceled, so I primarily saw it in reruns. Sadly, I would also choose Batman over The Munsters, so I understand why the viewers drifted. However, it is never a waste of time to watch Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis in action. If you never watched the show or want to binge watch it, seventy episodes is an easy one to get through.
As we look at some of our favorite character actors, today we learn more about Hazel’s friend Rosie: Maudie Prickett. Prickett had a prolific career with more than 300 credits between the stage, film, and television.
Photo: bewitchedwikifandom.com
Maudie was born in 1914 in Oregon. Her birth name was Maudie Marie Doyle; she married Charles Fillmore Prickett II in 1941 and used her married name for her career. Charles was the co-founder and manager of the Pasadena Playhouse and later became an orthopedic surgeon. They remained married until his death in 1954 and had two children.
Prickett would amass 64 movie credits, with her first being Gold Mine in the Sky in 1938. Her last three movies were made in 1969: The Maltese Bippy, Rascal, and Sweet Charity. She typically played maids, secretaries, spinsters, or nosy neighbors. One of her most recognized movie roles was as Elsie the Plaza Hotel maid in North by Northwest.
In 1952 she received her first television roles, appearing on This is the Life, Hopalong Cassidy, The Doctor, and The Adventures of Superman. While most people are familiar with Hopalong Cassidy and Superman, they may not recognize the other shows. This is the Life was a religious show that began in 1952 and ended in 1988; each episode was a mini-drama that ends with someone becoming a Christian. The Doctor was a medical show where Warner Anderson as the doctor presented a story and then provided comments after the episode. Most of the series dealt with some type of emotional problem.
The look we were used to with Maudie Photo: imdb.com
For the next two decades, Maudie was quite busy with her television career. She often made multiple appearances on a show as different characters. She had a nice blend of both dramas and comedies on her resume.
In 1961 she married Dr. Eakle Cartwright who died in 1962. In 1966 she would try marriage one more time when she wed the mayor of Pasadena, Cyril Cooper who lived five more years.
While watching your favorite classic television shows, you will see her on westerns including Wagon Train, Bonanza, and Gunsmoke. She made her mark on medical series including Ben Casey and Marcus Welby MD. She also appeared in quite a few dramas including The Millionaire, The Untouchables, Lassie, Daniel Boone, The Mod Squad, and McMillan and Wife.
However, it was the sitcom genre that kept her busiest. During the fifties, she could be seen on Topper, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and The Donna Reed Show. The sixties found her on Dennis the Menace, Bachelor Father, The Danny Thomas Show, Mister Ed, My Three Sons, Petticoat Junction, The Andy Griffith Show, The Doris Day Show, Gomer Pyle USMC, and Get Smart. During the seventies, she took roles on Mayberry RFD, Bewitched, Love American Style, and Room 222.
Best Friends – with Shirley Booth on Hazel Photo: pinterest.com
All of her recurring roles were on sitcoms: Date with the Angels, The Jack Benny Show, and Hazel. Date with the Angels was Betty White’s second sitcom, and Maudie played Cassie Murphy, a neighbor of the newlyweds. On The Jack Benny Show, she played Mrs. Gordon, the secretary of the Jack Benny Fan Club. Many people remember Prickett from Hazel where she played Rosie. Hazel and Rosie were best friends and always came through for each other but were also very competitive, especially when an eligible bachelor was involved.
In 1976, Maudie passed away from uremic poisoning at the young age of 61. Uremia occurs when there is an increase of toxins in the blood and usually occurs when the kidneys no longer filter them out. It can be treated with medication, dialysis, and transplant surgery, but for some reason, hers must have been untreated which lead to her death.
On Bewitched Photo: sitcomsonline.com
Maudie was a very busy lady, accumulating 164 acting credits between 1938 and 1974. I’m not sure if she was okay with being typecast or if she would have liked some other types of roles, but she certainly made the roles her own. You have to wonder how much more she would have accomplished if she had lived another twenty or thirty years. Her personal life was sad, having three husbands die before her and then she herself dying as middle age was beginning.
I know you read this comment a lot if you follow my blog, but we have another one of those character actors I wish we knew more about. The Television Academy rarely interviews them, and it is tough to find much information beyond their professional resume. One day I will make good on my promise and write a book about these wonderful people who made classic television so fun and believable.
thewritelife61 
