Lost TV shows

Teresa Wright as Annie Sullivan and Patricia McCormack as Helen Keller in the Playhouse 90 presentation of William Gibson's “The Miracle Worker”, which aired on February 7, 1957. The Broadway play would follow in 1959, and the film in 1962.

 

The above show exists.

 

I'm going to have to conclude that the English version of the 1968 Odyssey television series is lost.

(Talking about Ulysses here and Homer and all that. That Odyssey.)

 

Country music fans might not be so critical of this fact. I recall a TV critic saying many years ago that he used to tolerate the bad jokes - no worse than the hip drivel on Laugh In, IMO - just so he could hear the music.

 

Laugh-In was actually worse, because at least Hee-Haw wore its yokelness on its sleeve, whereas Laugh-In was pretty much only pretending to be counterculture.

 

I think a factor in Hee Haw's favor is that it wasn't trying to be topical, thus it didn't date itself like Laugh-In. It's only towards the end (when they introduced more modern things like an Aerobics Center) that Hee Haw started to flounder.

I think a reason that episodes of Hee Haw have survived is that, with the exception of the early episodes, the series was syndicated. Plus, by that time the value of reruns created an incentive to keep the episodes. A factor in this is that the episodes contain performances by many country performers who wouldn't appear anywhere else.

As an example, one performance I've always remembered is Lorrie Morgan performing "I Need To Be In Love", my favorite song. This was before she became well known (eventually having a number of country hits).

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That's a thread itself - really lame humor in the 1960s (especially humor intended to be politically and socially insightful). The Smothers Brothers had some decent moments, but many of the jokes and routines are painful to watch today. (And I think all of their musical guests lip-synched their songs. I obtained a bootleg compilation of Smothers Brothers musical guests performances many years ago and was saddened to see they all were lip-synched. The only one that wasn't was a Hartford-Campbell duet of Gentle on My Mind.) And the reliance of repetitive catch phrases like "sock it to me" appealed to this 10 year-old, but when I was 20, "consume mass quantities" and the repetitive drivel (my word of the day) on SNL became tiresome quite fast. But time-filling, tried-and-true audience-pleasers always was (and I believe still is) SNL's forte. It reminds me of Eric Idle's joke, "what's the difference between life and an SNL routine . . . life doesn't last forever". At least M*A*S*H didn't have the sledgehammer social and political commentary . . . as I recall, at least.

 

I doubt these are gone but I would like to see:

1. Occasional Wife
2. Nancy
3. Call To Glory. (This is an 80s show) but doesn't seem to have turned up anywhere.

 

Yeah but that explosion during The Who performance was worth it. TV comedy tends to not age as well as others. I don’t find Laugh In that funny.

 

Laugh-In is pretty much unwatchable today. Whereas the Smothers Brothers, even though rooted in topical humor also, is still watchable because a lot of the civil rights issues are still relevant today, and it's fascinating to view and see what has changed (and what hasn't).

 

I was listening to a Smothers Brothers LP or two awhile back, and thinking how some references were somewhat dated if not topical; like referencing The Whistler radio program, or a folk tune with the line "I talk to the trees" in it. Probably quite known by their audience in 1959-1965 but stretching my limits of awareness as a backward looking pop culture oddball. Laugh-In is maybe even more dated in some ways though making slightly more recent late '60s early '70s references... Artie Johnson and Ruth Buzzi might be half of the laughs available on that show to a modern viewer?

 

Although I can see some humor in Laugh-In, it is one serious bit that sticks in my memory. Working from memory, Dan Rowan is standing in front of a mirror in a WWI uniform. A line from the song "It Was A Very Good Year" plays, the Rowan recounts recent (at that time) events. He then switches to a WWII uniform and again a line from the song "It Was A Very Good Year" plays, the Rowan recounts recent (at that time) events.

As the segment progresses, in the same way he moves to the Korean War, then to Vietnam. Finally, he puts on a National Guard Uniform and heads out once again (this was around the time of the incident at Kent State). What always struck me was despite Laugh-In's reputation for being wacky and silly, it was striking how somber that segment was.

 

Which reminds me and before I forget.

Mel Tormé hosted and co-produced a half hour videotaped show on ABC in 1971 called "It Was A Very Good Year".
It Was a Very Good Year (TV Series 1971– ) - IMDb

I remember liking this show. It was fast half hour run through a specific year. Mel would sing a few songs from that year, and a guest star would help out and talk with Mel, including both sometimes commenting on newsreel film excerpts from that year. No dancing, no skits, no recreations, just Mel and a friend remembering a specific year. I audio recorded a few of these but I have not found those tapes. IMDb claims there were eight episodes which could be right. Totally forgotten and perhaps lost. I hope not.

 

They only did that three or four times, but they had a few, either dealing with the war or smoking. I don't think SNL ever had that particular tone, it was interesting.

I watched the whole run of Laugh-In. I also watched the first five seasons of SNL some years back. I didn't get all the way through Season 5, it's too depressing, but I had watched those in first run.

Honestly, I know how hip and popular SNL was at that time, I lived through it, but I never laughed at those when I watched them again. I had lived through that time and it wasn't the same. Steve Martin's routines in particular. Sheesh. It's not like he was George Carlin or something. When you look at how much actual content was there, what he repeated from show to show... Martin moved on to other things, Letterman did more with irony, but that does not hold up at all for me.

Laugh-In, first three seasons, completely deserved to be a huge hit. I laughed at that. You couldn't pull the material out of the context as easily. It's why the half hour syndicated version didn't work. You need to be in the mindset, week after week. Then, it's great and it was great back then. Just the perfect thing for the late 1960s. Goldie was a joy, Arte and Ruth had a lot of characters. In the early years they were still featuring some crazy "off the street" type performers. That's how Tiny Tim started, but there were others. The show had a level of anarchy that SNL never had. Lorne Michaels doesn't do anarchy and never did. Michaels was a writer briefly for Laugh-In. He evidently didn't enjoy the experience. The first SNL book I read dissed Laugh-In in favor of the ever so hip SNL, and at this point I find that an insult. SNL ripped off Laugh-In plenty, and like I said, Laugh-In did certain things that SNL never touched.

Eventually the 1970s came and times started changing. Most of the original Laugh-In cast left. Some of the "B Team" they brought in were actually good performers with good deliveries; Johnny Brown, Barbara Sharma, and Ann Elder all had their moments. Lily Tomlin with her multitude, of course. But the show faded, and the "B Team" left, and the last, 1972-73 season, the show was on fumes. Patti Deutsch came in and did good work, but she was about it.

But SNL wasn't going to last in the original format anyway. That Season 5, the show had no clue what to do with Reagan and it's painful. They were falling behind. The original SNL was unsustainable, even if Lorne Michaels had hung around and recast. He left and came back, and he changed the style of the show to something more durable, but it's the only way that the show could have lasted.

 

A short lived summer series, NBC’s 1960 “Moment of Fear” presented what author Fritz Leiber considered the best adaptation of his “Conjure Wife”. Filmed, I think, twice as “Weird Woman” and “Burn Witch Burn” (“Night of the Eagle”), I would LOVE to see the TV version.

 

I would like to see that too.
OT: It was also filmed, probably unauthorized, adapted to the present, as "Witches Brew" (1980), an indie with Richard Benjamin, Teri Garr (with darkened hair!), Kathryn Leigh Scott, and Lana Turner, her last film. It's on Youtube.

 

Moment of Fear was aired live. I never checked but if it exists anywhere, it would be on kinescope in the NBC collection at Library of Congress, which is where similar series such as Great Ghost Tales reside.

 

I understand Moment of Fear, except for the Conjure Wife adaptation, was rather unremarkable. I would love to see some of the Great Ghost Tales, too. These pre-dated and post-dated Thriller, which I was a big fan of. Being a MonsterKid, I loved all those; One Step Beyond, Twilight Zone, ‘Way Out.