A Love Letter to Jack Benny-1981

A little more than 6 years after Jack Benny's death, NBC gave him one last farewell special, a two hour tribute hosted by his friends and frequent guests/co-stars, George Burns, Bob Hope and Johnny Carson. It was a fun and classy event given the royal treatment by TV GUIDE in memory of one of the great TV legends. 

Happy Birthday Julie Newmar

From PLAYBOY

Fred Foy

Best known for his work on radio, mainly as the legendary announcer on THE LONE RANGER, Fred Foy was also a part of TV history as the announcer on Dick Cavett's late sixties talk show, itself now legendary for having guests ranging from Groucho and Jack Benny to Jimi  and Janis!

This article is from a 1970 TV GUIDE when Cavett was still on the air.

My wife and I were privileged to have dinner with Mr. Foy when he first appeared at the Cincinnati Old-Time Radio and Nostalgia Convention back in the nineties. Seen below are some clips form a re-creation that day in which Fred plays the announcer as well as the Ranger himself while I play Burly Scott. Little Karen Hughes, the world's greatest Jack Benny fan, plays my daughter in the episode but that's her real dad, Dan, playing opposite me.

Barnaby Jones Meets Frank Cannon

In its entirety, here's the pilot/first episode of BARNABY JONES. In the seventies, when every TV detective seemed to have a particular identifying trait--the bald detective, the black detective, etc--Barnaby was the geriatric detective. After a lifetime which included two careers--one as an eccentric dancer and one as a character actor specializing in "hick" roles, Buddy Ebsen here successfully re-created himself as a retired,cagey sleuth.

In this pilot, his son is killed while attempting to turn to his friend Frank Cannon for help. Cannon was TV's "fat detective" played by radio veteran (and ROCKY & BULLWINKLE announcer) William Conrad. Barnaby comes out of retirement and enlists his now widowed daughter-in-law (lee Meriwether) as his secretary/sidekick. The show went on to run for seven seasons.

Ron Ely

Ron Ely was, at the peak of his fame, almost impossibly handsome. He had started out in small roles in major films and ended up co-starring with Jeremy Slate in THE AQUANAUTS by the early sixties. Filmmaker John Derek (later Bo's husband) gave Ely a showy role in his independent film, ONCE BEFORE I DIE in 1966, the same year he was to be cast as TV's Tarzan after Mike Henry, the most recent film ape man, passed on the series.

For a time, it was Ely's face on Tarzan merchandise, books and models.

The series ran two seasons with some good scripts, big name guest stars and its mostly naked star in the fan mags as he played a more erudite, intelligent Tarzan more in keeping with the actual character in the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Like many American TV stars of the sixties, Ron Ely ended up in Europe getting starring roles including this one as the spaghetti western preacher/gunfighter, Halleluja, originally played by George Hilton. 

He was back in the US for the title role in DOC SAVAGE, THE MAN OF BRONZE. Most fans and critics thought he was perfectly cast in the iconic role but few were impressed with the film itself. 

After Doc's lack of box office success, Ron Ely returned to the guest star route before re-inventing himself as a TV gameshow host. Around that same time, he did two years of hosting the post-Bert Parks MISS AMERICA PAGEANT.

SLAVERS was a little-known starring role for the hunky star, fronting a major international cast in a drama that was just a bit above the exploitation level. 

In the mid-eighties, he returned to his AQUANAUTS roots on TV as the star of a short-lived remake of Lloyd Bridges' classic SEA HUNT. 

Starting today, August 9th, and lasting through Saturday the 11th, you can meet Ron Ely yourself at the 2012 MID-ATLANTIC NOSTALGIA CONVENTION in Maryland. Go here for details. Quick!

http://midatlanticnostalgiaconvention.com/

 

Star Wars Holiday Special

Volumes have been written about this ill-fated TV special from 1978...or could be. George Lucas himself has been said, perhaps metaphorically and perhaps not, to deny it ever existed. Never legally released, Lucasfilm seems to look the other way regarding its appearance on the so-called "grey market." I'll just add that as the first official follow-up to STAR WARS (and the debut of Bobba Fett!), we all had such hopes for this back in the good ol' days. Sigh...

James Stewart

Yesterday, SIGHT & SOUND's poll declared Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO as the best film ever made, replacing the champ for the past five decades, CITIZEN KANE. While it was never a favorite of mine, I'm rewatching it for the first time in many years as I type this, reminded of just how good James Stewart is.

The first time I ever noticed Jimmy Stewart was when he got his own TV sitcom in 1972. If I had seen him before that, he made little impression on me. With the sitcom, however, came lots of press about what a big star he was and about something called HARVEY.

In 1973, Stewart revisited HARVEY in a TV special co-starring the great Helen Hayes. I believe it was the first time I had ever seen or at least noticed her in anything.

 

When his sitcom ended, Stewart returned quickly in a T movie entitled HAWKINS ON MURDER which led to another series, HAWKINS, this time a dramatic one with the actor as a lawyer.

  

A popular talk show guest, he remained in the TV eye on shows such as Johnny Carson's TONIGHT where he famously recited a poem that made audience members tear up. This led to a best-selling book of poetry by Stewart.

In 1980, Jimmy Stewart gave a lovely performance in a half-hour syndicated holiday special made by the Mormon Church entitled MISTER KREUGER'S CHRISTMAS. By that point, I had seen many of his classic films from THE PHILADELPHIA STORY to WINCHESTER '73 to DEAR BRIGITTE and James Stewart had taken a permanent lace on my favorite actors of all time list.