voranis
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Posts posted by voranis
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>C. Bogle wrote:
>I'm usually not around to catch the Saturday ones, so sometimes I get stuck.
Well, we all got stuck last weekend. No Andy on TV Land Saturday or Sunday. At least our local channel showed it on Saturday.
>Remember the game in The Price Is Right where the little hiker would go up the mountain? I think he wore that same type of headgear. Oh Millie, you don't know how lucky you were.
She really dodged a bullet on that one.
>The one where Barney buys the car is a good one, with the harpsichord music when Ellen Corby is there, and the steering wheel rising up along with the "swami" music. Didn't Allan Melvin play one of her associates?
He sure did--in fact, he was the driver waiting in the other car for her after she sold the lemon to Barney. He played a lot of bad guys on TAGS. I was surprised to learn from shemp that he only appeared in 8 episodes on TAGS--it sure seemed like a lot more. He only occasionally played a non-bad guy, like the recruiter who rejected Ernest T. Bass.
Ellen Corby was great in that role because it really does seem like she couldn't be a bad person, and the harpsichord music is perfect to support that. When the steering column starts coming up, Andy very calmly said something like, "I don't believe I've ever seen that before." What an understatement!
Corby played the leader of a gang of liquor store robbers in an episode of Gomer Pyle, USMC, and a pickpocket in another episode. They really knew how to use her to play against type.
>Wow, I haven't seen Star Trek in years. I vaguely remember that episode. Didn't Kim Darby play the title character?
She did. The episode was a little frightening when the kids were beating Kirk while it showed one very little girl smiling--a Lord of the Flies thing seemed to be happening.
Of course everyone knows her movie role with John Wayne, but Kim Darby was also in a low-budget TV movie called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark which I now see has been remade as a motion picture. (Does Hollywood have any original material left? All the movies are remakes of earlier movies like Planet of the Apes or True Grit or TV shows like Charlie's Angels, or based on existing characters like comic book heroes. Many TV shows are remakes of earlier TV shows now, like 90210 and even a new TV version of Charlie's Angels. I hear new TV show versions of Dallas and Wonder Woman are in the works.) Anyway, the trailers for the new motion picture have been appearing on TV. The TV movie was low-budget but it still scared me a lot as a kid. William Demarest (Uncle Charley, My Three Sons ) was in the TV movie as well. Hopefully the motion picture will be better.
Robbie
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>C. Bogle wrote:
>Andy wasn't on TV Land this Sunday. They had a Hot In Cleveland marathon on instead. Thanks, but no thanks. It worked out well because I wanted to watch Mutiny on the Bounty on TCM which I haven't seen in a long time.
That's why I try to catch it on Saturday now since you never can tell about Sunday. I'm really glad I caught the "Howard and Millie" episode.
>Yes, it looked like Clara was about to spill the dirt on Cousin Bradford, but he was able to pull one more con on her. This time the city mouse won.
Clara was her usual persnickety self all the way throughout. It's neat seeing Mabel Albertson's brother in this episode.
>The Howard and Millie episode is one of the funniest of the color ones, again due to the comic character of Howard. This time it was his cheapness and that silly hat he wore. Didn't he want to go to some cave for the honeymoon trip? That's Howard. Millie got a huge break when they decided to call the whole thing off. My theory is that Mrs. Sprague was so traumatized by the idea that her boy would get married (and to a bakery salesgirl!!) that she had to take to her bed.
Regarding the hat--he looked like he was ready to climb the Swiss Alps. Maybe he was going to climb a mountain in West Virginia. I noticed Millie was ordering a porterhouse steak, shrimp cocktail, and possibly a fancy dessert as well--"we'll see." :-)
Mrs. Sprague having taken to her bed--that's a good one!
>I remember one of the early manhunt episodes where Andy got a kick out of the little magnetized cars the big city types had.
That's in the "Manhunt" episode with Ken Lynch I was talking about.
>This weekend the local station ran the episode where Barney's cousin Virgil from New Jersey visits and he is even more clumsy than Barney. Michael J. Pollard played the cousin. When he has to be left alone to get Otis out of the cell Andy retreats to the back room...and smokes a cigarette.
My first notice of Pollard was as the leader of the "onlies" in the Star Trek episode "Miri." It was hard to believe they could create a character clumsier than Barney, but they did. Although Barney once broke the glass in the bookcase as well with Opie's slingshot, and in the end of the episode he tears down the back wall of Otis' jail cell, so who's really the clumsier one? :-) In the tag for the episode, as he talks to Andy about Virgil being clumsy, he steps out into traffic and almost gets run over.
Our local station showed "Barney's First Car" on Saturday. Gotta love Grandma Esther Walton (Ellen Corby) as the ringleader of the car theft gang...
Robbie
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>NewYorkGuy wrote:
>Not to take this thread's focus off Lucy, but I tried watching some of the sitcom episodes on Hallmark the other night and had to stop. Hallmark's intrusive station IDs and promo crawls completely ruined the viewing experience, and I didn't want my memories of "I Love Lucy" spoiled by it.
>
>More and more channels are getting worse and worse about this these days. IFC is the same way now -- and they even split up 15 minute Three Stooges shorts into three segments with commercial breaks!
>
>Well, I guess I can bring Lucy back into this. One of her most throw-away appearances was in one of the earliest Three Stooges shorts. She even got billing and was fine but that part could've been played by any bright young actress.
I have the same problem. I used to love TV Land but they began having pop ups which I found very distracting. One year Kelly Ripa was hosting the TV Land Awards. I was trying to watch Gunsmoke but the logo in the bottom was promoting the TV Land Awards and it had Kelly Ripa dancing, wiggling, and thrashing about and it was just too distracting.
Hallmark has gotten really bad as it sometimes promotes its original movies by throwing up a banner that takes up the entire bottom third of the screen! Nick at Nite is the same way--I was trying to watch That '70s Show and a huge banner appeared taking up the bottom third of the screen.
That's why I like MeTV, Antenna TV, THIS TV, and Retro TV (unfortunately, we don't get Retro TV anymore as MeTV replaced it in our area). They do have commercials but at least they show the openings and closings full-screen and there are no annoying pop ups. I don't mind commercials because, hey, these TV shows were originally shown with commercials anyway, so I'm used to that. I can handle the static MeTV logo in the bottom right corner of the screen, just like TCM has, but fortunately they do not have the annoying pop ups and crawl.
Hallmark Channel's split-screen closings are particularly bad for I Love Lucy because not only are the credits shrunken, but for I Love Lucy the guest stars were announced verbally, and you can't hear them because Hallmark doesn't play the music! I love listening to the names of the guest stars when I watch the closing credits of I Love Lucy on MeTV.
Some of our local stations show older shows like The Andy Griffith Show and they still show the full closing credits. The cable channels have gotten really bad. Perhaps they assume the younger crowd doesn't mind banners and junk, because young people seem to be able to multitask and assimilate information at a greater rate. But these classic TV shows are typically loved by older viewers who generally don't want to see all that garbage on the screen. They want to watch the shows the way they originally saw them. It seems like they just don't care about fans of classic TV. They are the AMC of the TV show world.
Thank goodness TCM is staying true to its mission of showing movies the way they are supposed to be shown.
Robbie
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Did anyone see the I Love Lucy episode "Ricky Loses His Voice" on MeTV on Sunday, August 7, at 9:30 p.m. EDT? This is one of my favorite episodes and I have missed it the last three times it has aired on MeTV, including tonight. I think it is supposed to air again on August 23.
I have been wanting to see this episode on MeTV to see if it has the "first take" of Fred and Ethel's performance of "Carolina in the Morning." This was the rehearsal performance, not the performance they did during the actual show. There were actually two performances by them of this, one being the rehearsal and the other the actual show. Both performances are included on the DVD but most TV networks like Hallmark and TV Land cut the rehearsal performance for syndication. MeTV tends to have less editing for commercials than those other channels, and I have been curious to see if MeTV airs the rehearsal performance as it would give me an idea of how edited their syndication package is for commercials.
Robbie
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>markbeckuaf wrote:
>Robbie, great to read your post! I agree, yesterday was like being totally immersed in Lucy all day long, with the great TCM film lineup, and the great shows being aired on Me-TV (actually all day today also on there!)!! Oh and I guess the Hallmark Channel did that also! I haven't seen THE LUCY SHOW in ages, so that was fun for me! I wonder why they didn't air the hour long I LOVE LUCY episodes in their original format? Oh well, still great to see them!
Mark,
Yeah, MeTV's 100th Birthday Celebration for Lucy actually started at midnight on Friday and runs until 8 a.m. EDT on Monday, I think. Supposedly they are airing 100 episodes for the "100th Birthday" tribute. I just wish I had been able to see more of it. I have been in a "low energy" period for the past few weeks and haven't been able to do much. My energy just started improving Saturday evening, so I was only able to start enjoying the Lucy-Fest on TCM and MeTV then.
As far as MeTV not running The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour in its original format--maybe all they have access to is the syndication package. The syndicated version, with the episodes split in half and retitled We Love Lucy, allowed stations to run both I Love Lucy and We Love Lucy back-to-back in a 30-minute time slot.
TV Land once ran the show in its original hour-long format, and also ran I Love Lucy with its original title sequence, which was an animated sequence of matchstick versions of Lucy and Desi indicating something about that particular episode's sponsor (although TV Land replaced the sponsor logo with its own). Of course, this was all a while back when TV Land was actually good and cared about classic TV.
The "heart on satin" opening was actually not the original opening--this was created for network daytime rebroadcasts and syndication. Of course, since I grew up watching the "heart on satin" opening, I still love it.
I'm glad MeTV ran my favorite episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour with Tallulah Bankhead. That episode is so funny I believe I like it even above my favorite I Love Lucy episodes. I was watching the one with Danny Thomas last night and there was a great scene which I have always loved in which they are angry at each other and a snowball fight has erupted. The snowball fight was somewhat amusing but Lucy took it up a notch when she takes the head off Little Ricky's snowman and smashes it down on Marjorie Lord's head. I actually laugh out loud, which I rarely do, every time I see that, even though Lord grabs her head as if she's in pain afterward. No one tops Lucy's brand of comedy.
I wish they had shown the one with Fred MacMurray. That was also a great one--I love it when the Ricardos, Mertzes, and MacMurray are all racing back to be the first with their uranium site claim and MacMurray runs his car into the unfinished road tar and gets stuck. As the Ricardos drive past him, Lucy leans out the window and sticks her tongue out at him and yells, "Nyah!" It's vintage Lucy.
Robbie
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>Im4movies2 wrote:
>Lucy was truely a beautiful woman. It was hard to tell sometimes with all the crazy antics and contortions of her face to make us laugh.
I agree, she was a beautiful woman, although that fact did often get lost in the comedy. She was quite a good dancer, too! I remember the episode of I Love Lucy in which she was learning to jitterbug. Even as I watched her trying it for the first time, it was clear she had to be a very good dancer to even do the fumbling steps she was doing in the beginning. I love seeing her dance the jitterbug, especially the first take, before her vision gets messed up, and her dancing with Van Johnson to "How About You?" as well as the Anniversary Waltz with Ricky.
It's been great seeing her all over TCM, MeTV, and Hallmark Channel today. Especially great seeing the episodes of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour on MeTV, even though they are not being shown intact as hour-long specials the way they were once on TV Land. They are broken into the 30-minute 2-parters We Love Lucy for syndication on MeTV, but TV Land used to show them in their original format. Also great seeing some of my favorite episodes of The Lucy Show on MeTV, even though I like I Love Lucy better.
And I love the fact that her 100th birthday fell on a Saturday, so lots of her films on TCM got commentary today, rather than the typical dreary 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. slot on a weekday in May or June to honor her birthday when she is not scheduled for Summer Under the Stars--the dreary, commentary-less 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekday slots. And sometimes not even all of that on a weekday--sometimes just a half-day of her movies on a weekday to honor her birthday. But today, because it was her 100th birthday, all the stops were pulled out! It's on Saturday, when many of us can be home to watch and not have to rely on DVR! And because it's Saturday, she not only got commentary for the prime time hours, but the afternoon hours, too! Thanks, TCM, for the great Lucy blast!
It's great to see so many folks really DO love Lucy!
Robbie
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Some interesting episodes of The Andy Griffith Show aired today (Saturday) on TV Land:
Mabel Albertson's brother Jack ( Chico and the Man, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ) guest starred as "Aunt Bee's Cousin." Clara was her usual persnickety self.
Maudie Prickett played Mrs. Larch, one of Andy's laundromat customers, in "The Investment." Ken Lynch appeared as the head of the SBI in this episode. He played a similar role in the second episode of the series, "Manhunt," in which he was the head of the state police unit that descended on Mayberry, only to have Andy show them up by tricking the convict into taking his leaky rowboat. Lynch also played a state police officer in "Jailbreak" and an FBI agent in "A Black Day for Mayberry."
Howard barely pries open his wallet in "Howard and Millie."
>Andy: You know what I might have? The special--fish cakes. Might just hit the spot.
>Howard: You know something, Andy? I had my eye on that baby, too.
>Andy: Did you really?
>Howard: Yeah. You know what I like about fish is it combines a high nutritional value with flavor at a modest price.
>Andy: Can't ask anything more of a fish than that, can you?
>Howard: Anything to start with?
>Andy: Oh, I don't know. Maybe a roll.
>Howard: Well, we certainly have the same tastes. I'm a roll man myself.
I still like C. Bogle's line about Howard springing for pats of butter. Again, where was Mrs. Sprague? The episode in which she gets married and moves away ("The Wedding") comes 14 episodes later.
Charles Thompson steps up from bank guard and veterinarian to become the people doctor, Doc Roberts, in "Suppose Andy Gets Sick?" Interestingly, his character's name in "Goodbye Dolly" was also Dr. Roberts, although supposedly he was a veterinarian in that episode. Maybe Mayberry is not just a one-sheriff town, as Goober calls it (of course, what town isn't a one-sheriff town? A town usually has one sheriff even if it has multiple deputies), but also a one-doctor town: one doctor for both the people and the animals.
Robbie
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>C. Bogle wrote:
>Haven't seen The Wild One in a while and forgot he was in it, but I can certainly picture him as a cranky solid citizen who has no use for motorcycle punks.
I also saw Will Wright playing an ornery judge in a movie on the Encore Westerns channel last night: The Iron Sheriff. And I remember he played an ornery sheriff in Tennessee Ernie Ford's hometown as the Ricardos went across country to Hollywood on I Love Lucy, as well as having played an ornery locksmith on I Love Lucy. The question was asked whether Mabel Albertson ever played a pleasant character, and I have to wonder the same about Will Wright.
>I don't think Andy and Barney would stand much of a chance against a horde of tough guy motorcyclists, especially if they came to Mayberry while Barney was tooling around in his own sickle. That would be the end of Checkpoint Chickie. And imagine what they'd do to the diner. Ouch. This is no time for a sheriff without a gun. You need a sheriff with an AK-47.
It didn't seem that the lawman in charge in The Wild One was doing much better of a job handling them than Andy and Barney would have. Now, if Mrs. Sprague had been around, that might have been a different story... :-) I loved Checkpoint Chickie in "Barney's Sidecar"! That was hilarious. At first he was tossing the term around tentatively to Andy, but after riding roughshod over the first truck driver he got more confident and as he pulled the next truck driver over, it was "Welcome to Checkpoint Chickie!"
Robbie
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>C. Bogle wrote:
>I'm not very familiar with soccer, so I don't know the rules. Football has a replay system to look at disputed calls and baseball has a restrictive replay that can only look at home runs during the playoffs, at least I think that's the way it works. Of course back in the mid and late 1960s there were no replays and you were stuck with the officials' call. And naturally there wouldn't be anything in Little League. Andy dodged a bullet on that one, at least after the good citizens settled down after reading Howard's column.
I seem to remember something last year about an adjustment being made days after a World Cup game due to a bad call, and a commentator saying that would never happen in baseball, and it sparked a brief discussion about the differences in the sports. I seem to remember someone saying in football they can replay immediately to determine the accuracy of the call, but not so in baseball. I always wondered why there is so much difference in the use of technology to determine accuracy between the different sports. As you can see, I wasn't kidding when I said I am definitely a "Howard" when it comes to sports, although I probably do know the rules of baseball better than he does since I did play Little League as a child. I just don't know much about the national teams. I do know some of the teams, like the Dodgers (and I know they used to be the Brooklyn Dodgers), the Mets, the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Cubs, the Orioles, etc., but I couldn't name them all.
I noticed one of the "good citizens" of the town in The Wild One on TCM last night with Marlon Brando was Will Wright--the first (and best) Ben Weaver from The Andy Griffith Show. He was the first one to get in an auto accident with one of the bikers. He seemed to be playing the same ornery character he did on TAGS. Wonder how Andy and Barney would have handled that gang coming through Mayberry?
Robbie
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>C. Bogle wrote:
>More coffee for old Barn--that's all we need. It seems to me that Andy usually smoked when he had some kind of problem or a tough decision to make. If I remember correctly, one time he lit up was when the ex-convict was coming to visit him and he wasn't sure exactly what it meant, though it all turned out fine in the end.
Yeah, I can picture Andy standing on the front porch all alone, smoking, mulling something over. Seems to me he did something like that before deciding to go down to the courthouse to see the female prisoner (Susan Oliver) again, and catching her escaping right as he arrived.
>If Andy's mistaken call had happened today, there probably would have been about 50 photos and tapes of his call. He was lucky there was only Aunt Bee's photo. Usually in baseball the call stays, especially days or weeks after the game, so he didn't have to worry about that aspect of it.
That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure. Does it vary from sport to sport? Like, I thought I heard once that after a bad call in a soccer game for the World Cup, something was done to adjust the outcome days afterward, and someone commented that would never happen in baseball.
>I love the part in the rock band episode when Opie is told his playing is good, but he needs to work on his image, and then he goes slang crazy. Hey those are some groovy potato chips, and this onion dip is so cool. Wow, dig these far out paper napkins. I saw all four episodes on Sunday and the green and orange shirt didn't turn up in any of them--that's very unusual, though in one episode Arnold had on a very bright reddish plaid shirt. Opie's other plaid shirts sort of fade into the background, they were very muted compared to old faithful.
Aunt Bee must have been washing the shirt on Sunday :-)
One episode TV Land showed on Saturday which they did not show on Sunday was "Howard's Main Event." This was the one in which Howard "dukes it out" with Millie's ex-boyfriend, played by Allan Melvin.
Robbie
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The TAGS episode "Aunt Bee, the Juror" was on TV Land yesterday. This was Jack Nicholson's second appearance on the show, the first being "Opie Finds a Baby."
They also showed "The Tape Recorder." Boy, Opie and Arnold sure got into some weird stuff--finding babies, tape recording prisoners. Of course, in the real world the prisoner would have used what Opie and Arnold did to get himself acquitted (or a mistrial, or whatever) due to his rights have been violated. But it did make for a nice sentimental story.
And speaking of weird, they also showed "Opie's Group." The turtlenecks make me cringe--bring back the green-and-orange plaid shirt! :-) Actually I noticed in "Opie Steps Up in Class" last week that he had three or four different plaid shirts in that episode, so he didn't always were the green-and-orange one. But I think I like that one best!
Robbie
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>C. Bogle wrote:
>I had guessed that Mabel was in about half a dozen episodes, but according to imdb it was only four, so she was there for a very specific role, which she was hilarious in. It would have been interesting to see how she interacted with Aunt Bee or Clara. I imagine she would have been as stubborn in other matters as she was with anything concerning her boy Howie. It would have made an interesting what if.
Actually she did interact with Clara--Aunt Clara on Bewitched. :-)
Well, half a dozen is not very far off from four. :-) I think I would have guessed four, as that seems right to me--I knew she was only in a very small number of episodes. I was actually more surprised to find out from shemp how few times Allan Melvin guest starred on the show--I thought he had been in a lot more than 8 episodes of TAGS.
When this thread first started I wondered the same thing about how Mrs. Sprague would have interacted with Bee and Clara. All three could be catty--who would have won? I'm guessing Mrs. Sprague, because Bee and Clara would usually only go so far--there seemed to be a line of courtesy they usually did not cross. It seems to me I remember some B&W episodes in which Bee acquiesced to some difficult people, although I cannot remember any specifically at the moment. Well, actually, Bee often acquiesced to Clara. Clara was less likely to acquiesce to anyone, but even she would only be catty up to a point. Still, it could have made for some great fireworks on the show if all of them had gotten into it. :-)
Speaking of difficult TAGS character--this reminds me of one time about ten years ago when there was a web site for guessing a sitcom character--you think of a character, and the web site asks you questions and tries to guess the character. It was basically a database that built up its knowledge by being used--if it didn't guess the correct character, it would add the character using the facts that had been learned by asking the user questions. The site may still be around, although I don't remember the URL anymore. Anyway, I chose what I thought was the relatively obscure Emma Watson from TAGS. I knew it was all over when the web site asked me, "Are you a hypochondriac?" It correctly guessed her, which means someone else had tried earlier and it had "learned" about Emma Watson from that person.
Robbie
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>C. Bogle wrote:
>I had forgotten the details of the episode about Andy's bad call and that Howard admitted he didn't know a whole lot about sports. I guess it makes a difference if you're not trying to impress the kid brother of a pretty dance hall employee.
Or Gomer's girlfriend. :-)
>I guess Barney was a bit hyper to fit into a small town, a little bit of TV exaggeration. There were times he seemed to be on a natural form of speed, though he dozed off quite a lot too.
What you said earlier about Barney being a goofball--I have seen plenty of those in small towns. It is the hyper part, as you say, that seems a little out of place to me. But it's always funny. It is funny that there were quite a few episodes where Andy caught him napping and played tricks on him, like hiding his shoes, or changing his cap.
>They just happened to run the Aunt Bee the Warden episode on the local station last Saturday. She really put the kibosh on Otis, though his pledge to not drink again didn't take. I liked how Barney gave out the work sets--wood working, metal working, leather working and-- a Mr. Potato Head set. Huh? I don't think that was of much help in terms of future employment prospects. Of course they used the metal working set to make a skeleton key and escape. Deputy Fife strikes again.
Yeah, I mentioned most of this when we were talking about the episode in which Warren tried to rehabilitate Otis by getting him into painting. Even though Barney's craft kits are directed at the other four prisoners instead of Otis, the two episodes share some similarities, including the fact that craft kits are being used for rehabilitation (Warren gives one to Otis). In the end, neither attempt to rehabilitate Otis stuck, although he had given up the bottle by the time of the TV movie.
Otis did not appear at all in the last season. I often wondered why, and someone said maybe someone decided drunks were no longer funny. I know they toned down the drinking on MASH at some point in the show.
I like how one of the hardened criminals says with some enthusiasm, "I'll take the Mr. Potato Head set!"
An interesting fact--Andy's hand being bandaged in this episode, and in one other episode before or after, was real--Andy had hurt his hand in real life somehow. I read once that he claimed he got to laughing so hard at something that he punched his hand through a wall and that's how he hurt it, but this story seems a little hard to believe.
>I don't have the DVD's, but I'll bet the commercials are fun to watch. Are there any cigarette ones? Andy didn't smoke very often, but every once in a while he'd light up. It seems he did it more in the bw episodes than in the color ones.
I haven't seen any cigarette commercials yet, but I haven't watched them all. A lot of them are commercials for coffee--Sanka, I believe. They did a lot of coffee drinking on the show--they were all drinking coffee in the barbershop when Barbara Eden got off the bus. Howard had his own coffeepot in his office, there was one in the back of the courthouse--there was coffee all over.
You're right, I don't remember him smoking in any of the color episodes.
>I saw Sitting Pretty a year or so ago on FMC. I think I recognized Betty Lynn as much by her voice as by her face. I've never caught any of the sequels for whatever reason.
TCM aired the Belvedere sequels earlier this year. I recognized Betty Lynn the same way you did once when FMC was airing Mother Was a Freshman -- I was in another room and heard her voice and instantly recognized it, and went into the room where the TV was to see if it really was her (OK, grammarians, "she"), and it was.
>It doesn't help that there are now 32 baseball teams. so they're even harder to remember. I was watching the national news last night and they ran the story of the umpire who missed the call at home plate in the Braves Pirates game. This one wasn't as close as Opie's slide into home, so Andy needn't feel too bad, though it was still probably a good idea for Helen and Aunt Bee to destroy the evidence.
I always wondered what would have happened if Helen and Aunt Bee had revealed the evidence? Can the results of a game like that be changed if new evidence is revealed days or weeks later? Is there a "statute of limitations" on it? I don't know enough about sports to know whether the ruling is "final" immediately, or if it can be overturned weeks later or not.
>I had brain lock on which actress was playing the role of the wife in the episode where Opie meets all the rich kids. Then it hit me that it was probably Joyce Van Patten. I'll have to check it out on imdb just to make sure.
You are correct, sir! I looked it up on tv.com and it is Joyce Van Patten. She sure looks a lot like Swoosie Kurtz to me, although I had already checked tv.com several years ago when I saw this episode and found out it was not Swoosie Kurtz. I had forgotten that it was Joyce Van Patten, though.
Robbie
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Look for Betty Lynn (Thelma Lou from TAGS, credited as Betty Ann Lynn here) in her film debut in the TCM premiere of the first Mr. Belvedere film, Sitting Pretty, which is airing right now...
This movie aired several times on Fox Movie Channel back when TCM was airing the second and third Belvedere movies. It's good to see it again, though.
Robbie
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>C. Bogle wrote:
>It seems I've seen the bw episodes more often over the years and thus the color episodes seem fresher.
I think that may have something to do with why I'm enjoying the color episodes now when I didn't watch them at all as a kid--because I've seen the B&W episodes so much, the color episodes seem a little "newer" to me. BTW, if you have the DVDs of the show, the first several seasons have the original commercials that were done by Andy and other cast members. Often they found some way to work something from the episode into the commercial. For instance, the commercial for "Aunt Bee, the Warden" included the four prisoners that were being housed at the jail while Otis was at Andy's house.
I really enjoyed watching these commercials. It was almost like watching some recently uncovered, never-before-aired episodes of TAGS. The commercials often had the same heart-warming feeling and humor of the episodes.
>I always figured Barney was sort of the small town oddball or whatever word you want to use, and so he fit into that environment for the most part, though such characters usually aren't in law enforcement. That's a bit scary.
I've lived in a number of small towns and I've never seen anyone as hyper or frenetic as Barney in any of them.
>I was out Saturday afternoon and watched the ball game when I got home. I'll probably watch it today, along with Beaver, which makes a good "double bill." Do they just repeat the episodes they ran on Saturday or do they show different ones on Sunday?
Sometimes they repeat some of Saturday's episodes on Sunday, but they didn't this Sunday, because the slot for TAGS was only an hour long. I think Leave It to Beaver and TAGS make a good combination. I usually am not able to watch on the weekends, but I was able to watch them last Saturday and Sunday. They showed different episodes on the two days this past weekend.
>Here's a minor contradiction. Before displaying his lack of baseball knowledge in the Big Brother episode, Howard was assigned to cover the baseball game where Andy made the unpopular out call on Opie. I suppose he at least knew the name of the Mayberry team.
Howard admitted at the beginning of the episode that it was odd he was covering the game because he didn't know much about sports. He also included that fact in the column he wrote about the game.
As I said before, I don't know much about sports. But when I was a kid, even though I didn't know the names of all the national teams, I did know the name of all the teams in my own town. Even now, as an adult, I probably could not name all the national teams or their locations, but I do know the names of the teams where I live. So Howard knowing the name of the Mayberry team does not seem like a contradiction to me.
>The other episode is a bit like the bw one where Andy and Barney are invited to The Esquire Club, and Barney puts on a big front and just makes himself look foolish. This time Andy doesn't follow his own advice to "be ourselves," but finally realizes what he is doing and learns his lesson. I was waiting for the green and orange number to show up, and in the last scene it did. Shazam. I know I've seen the pipe smoking Dad (O boy, meatloaf) on other TV shows, but I don't know his name. The mom looked familiar too.
As I wrote previously:
>voranis wrote:
>TV Land is showing the TAGS episode "Opie Steps Up in Class" today. I always liked this episode. It had a nice moral lesson, but they don't hit you over the head with it.
>
>The first time I saw this episode on TV Land, I thought the actress playing the mother in the wealthy family was a very young Swoosie Kurtz. But it turned out it wasn't. The actor who played the father was a character actor in a lot of TV shows. I used to get him mixed up with Ken Berry (who would play Sam on TAGS) at first before I learned to tell them apart.
Robbie
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Look for Betty Lynn (Thelma Lou from TAGS, credited as Betty Ann Lynn here) in her film debut in the TCM premiere of the first Mr. Belvedere film, Sitting Pretty, which is airing right now...
This movie aired several times on Fox Movie Channel back when TCM was airing the second and third Belvedere movies. It's good to see it again, though.
Robbie
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TV Land is showing the TAGS episode "Opie Steps Up in Class" today. I always liked this episode. It had a nice moral lesson, but they don't hit you over the head with it.
The first time I saw this episode on TV Land, I thought the actress playing the mother in the wealthy family was a very young Swoosie Kurtz. But it turned out it wasn't. The actor who played the father was a character actor in a lot of TV shows. I used to get him mixed up with Ken Berry (who would play Sam on TAGS) at first before I learned to tell them apart.
And the actress who played the relative who was having relationship problems and came to stay with the Taylors...Andy is reluctant to have anything to do with her at first, but Aunt Bee and Helen nag him to be nice to her and do things with her...then they both get mad with him when he does. Anyway, I used to think the actress was Mariette Hartley, but it turned it out it wasn't.
A strange thing often happens to me...I see an actor or actress who I think is a certain person. It turns out they aren't, but then I see the person I was thinking of in another show or movie an hour or two later. Deja vu!
Robbie
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TV Land showed the TAGS episode "Howard, the Bowler" today...
Robbie
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>C. Bogle wrote:
>Some of the color episodes were a bit out of the usual, but the show mostly kept to its small town concerns, and I enjoy most of them.
As I said, only some of the color episodes were a bit too much. I really don't care to watch the Howard on an island episode anymore. The Aunt Bee learning to drive episode was OK because the instructor was laid back which kept it from getting too crazy.
When I was a kid, I didn't like the color episodes at all--mostly because Barney was not there--and would stop watching until it wrapped back to the B&W episodes. As an adult, particularly since the show began running on TV Land, I find that I enjoy the color episodes a lot more than I did as a kid. In some ways, the color episodes, with the exception of a few wild ones like the ones I've mentioned, capture the small town flavor more realistically than the B&W episodes, because Barney's crazy antics aren't there. His high energy level often detracts from the easygoing pace one would expect in a small town (and I grew up in one).
I still think the B&W episodes tend to be funnier, however, because of Barney.
C. Bogle, do you like the color episodes better? I notice you cite far more from the color episodes than from the B&W episodes.
Robbie
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>helenbaby wrote:
>Flipped over to Andy this afternoon and Opie was wearing the orange & green plaid shirt. I thought of this thread and whoever mentioned he wore it a lot. It was the episode where Aunt Bee has a TV cooking show.
That reminds me of another unusual thing about TAGS. There sure were a lot of people in Mayberry appearing on TV. Aunt Bee had a cooking show on TV; she appeared on a game show on TV when they were in Hollywood; she and Clara appeared on TV briefly to discuss their writing of the song that Keevy Hazelton sang (although in a different arrangement). Howard appeared on TV to tell his jokes.
Things were wild in the B&W episodes with Barney's antics, but somehow most of them seemed to fit in within Mayberry because they still seemed to fit within the parameters of a small town. With the color episodes, they began to do a lot of things that didn't seem to fit within the parameters of a small town. Aunt Bee learning to drive was believable but learning to fly a plane seemed a bit much. Howard leaving his job to go live on an island seemed a bit much.
Although the show was not as good after Barney left, I never felt it really "jumped the shark" as a whole, but there were some individual episodes that seemed to "jump the shark."
I saw Doris Packer on two shows on MeTV today. She played the widow Fenwick in an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies today, "Elly Starts to School," and she will appear again tomorrow in the followup episode "The Clampett Look."
I also saw Doris Packer in an episode of I Love Lucy today. She was one of the theater goers sitting behind the Ricardos and the Metzes in the box for the show The Most Happy Fella, in the episode "Lucy's Night in Town."
It's great seeing her in all these old shows. I'm glad I can see Dobie Gillis, The Patty Duke Show, I Love Lucy, and all the others on MeTV and THIS with the full closing credits. Now, if we could just get MyTV so I could watch TAGS during the week that way as well. Right now I can only watch TAGS on TV Land on the weekend and also on one local channel on the weekend, but usually those times are not good for me. At least the local channel shows TAGS with the full closing credits as well.
Robbie
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>helenbaby wrote:
>Warren Beatty played Milton Armitage on The Many Love of Dobie Gillis. Chatsworth P Osborn Jr was played by Steve Franken. I was not aware that Doris Packer played Mrs. Armitage as well as Mrs. Osborne (checked the credits & she's only credited with the Osborne part.) Remember her saying "What a nasty boy" or something to that effect. I loved that show as a kid. ETA: Checked again--She was Clarice Armitage in the 1st 2 seasons & then Clarice Osborne in the rest of the series. Was she supposed to be the same person who remarried or a different character altogether. I mainly remember her as Chatsworth's mom.
I think they were different characters. She was Milton's mother and then Chatsworth's mother when Chatsworth's character replaced Milton as Dobie's nemesis when Warren Beatty left. I remember the guy who plays Chatsworth Osborne (if I haven't gotten him mixed up with someone else--I haven't been watching Dobie long) playing the man who is checking out the Stephens' house on Bewitched when they wanted to add a gazebo and he is looking for a reason to turn down their loan request and he sees a pink elephant that Clara conjured up. In an earlier episode he worked for one of Darren's clients and hired nasty detective Charlie Leach to investigate the Stephens. He seemed to always be playing "difficult" characters like Mabel Albertson did. He also played Juke who was supposed to marry Samantha--his mother Carlotta was played by the great actress Mercedes McCambridge. He also played a warlock who was turned into the Loch Ness Monster by Serena. He was in quite a few Bewitched episodes.
I'm also enjoying, after getting to see them together on The Patty Duke Show, which I just started watching last year on THIS TV, seeing William Schallert and Jean Byron on Dobie Gillis, which I just started watching a few months ago on MeTV. Eddie Applegate was in an episode recently, so at least three regulars from Patty Duke appeared together earlier on Dobie Gillis. I'm really loving these classic TV digital subchannels!
>The Andy Griffith show has been on one of the local stations in my town ever since it was in syndication. It has moved from the CBS affiliate to the MY TV affiliate but it's still on the air every day. They even took the color out of the seasons that were in color because I guess some people preferred it that way, which I thought was weird.
That is interesting. I wish we could get it every day on something. We don't get MY TV, just THIS and MeTV. TV Land has relegated it to the weekends at a time when I rarely can see it. I miss having it on weekday afternoons.
>Was Mabel Albertson ever a nice person in anything? I don't remember it if she was.
She played a mother who was tough but not vicious in one of the B&W episodes of Gunsmoke.
>Jack Dodson was in an episode of Matlock as well--it was an episode where his son is in a cult & Jack's character is charged with the cult leader's murder. Don Knotts spent a season or two on the show as Matlock's neighbor.
I'd seen them both on Matlock but had forgotten about them! Don Knotts disappeared after a while, the way Matlock's partners kept changing. Andy Griffith really tried to bring a lot of his friends into the show.
Robbie
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>C. Bogle wrote:
>I don't know if that was Floyd's last appearance or not. I did notice the close-ups, which make Floyd appear even angrier and out of sorts. He did seem to have a nice suntan though.
From my earlier post:
>voranis wrote:
>His face was very stiff and his speech very slurred in "Goober's Contest." At one point it seemed to me that George Lindsey, as he was talking to McNear, moved to the other side of the barber chair so McNear could read the prompts more easily as they were talking. I'm not sure if that's true or not; it was just an impression. It was very noticeable that someone else was driving Floyd's car when he drove away from the filling station. This episodes is always very sad for me to watch. Floyd seems to be out of character a bit when he immediately cries, "Fraud! I charge fraud." The character was so easygoing in the early episodes, and while he could get angry sometimes, he seemed a little too easily angered against Goober in this episode. *Knowing it was his last episode always made this one hard for me to watch.*
Robbie
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>C. Bogle wrote:
>One of those strange coincidences. I did watch it on Sunday. Howard asked the kid which team is his favorite and he says the Dodgers. Yeah, St. Louis, Howard answers. Oops. Then he confuses the Orioles with the Cardinals. "Guess I got my birds mixed up." Yeah, I guess so. I knew the actress who played the big sister was on Gomer Pyle, but I haven't watched it in such a long time I didn't remember exactly what role she played.
I probably know as little about sports as Howard did.
>The episodes on Sunday were from the last of the seventh season and the first of the last season. In three out of the four Ope is wearing that green and orange shirt. I don't have anything against plaid shirts, it's just that it showed up so often it became funny.
I liked the color, so I didn't mind seeing it often. I misunderstood you though--I see what you mean that it was the frequency of him wearing it, rather than the color itself, that suggested Andy might not have been making enough money. In a lot of these sitcoms, the characters wear the same clothes over and over again. Edith was often shown wearing the same green or orange dress over and over again on All in the Family. I'm not sure if they did it to save money on costumes, or to enhance character identification in the viewer's mind.
>The man who ran the print shop in the Goober's contest episode turned up as the salesman in the men's store in the episode where Opie gets stood up by Mary Alice Carter for Arnold's birthday party. Mayberry must have had a very fluid labor market.
Yeah, I mentioned that just a few posts back in this thread. I'll paste that in here:
>voranis wrote:
>His face was very stiff and his speech very slurred in "Goober's Contest." At one point it seemed to me that George Lindsey, as he was talking to McNear, moved to the other side of the barber chair so McNear could read the prompts more easily as they were talking. I'm not sure if that's true or not; it was just an impression. It was very noticeable that someone else was driving Floyd's car when he drove away from the filling station. This episodes is always very sad for me to watch. Floyd seems to be out of character a bit when he immediately cries, "Fraud! I charge fraud." The character was so easygoing in the early episodes, and while he could get angry sometimes, he seemed a little too easily angered against Goober in this episode. Knowing it was his last episode always made this one hard for me to watch.
>
>Rob Reiner was in that episode as one of the printers (and Jack Nicholson was in two episodes, I believe--the abandoned baby episode and the episode with Aunt Bee as juror). The man who had previously run the clothing shop where Opie got his suit was now running the print shop. I believe he was called Mr. Jason in one of the episodes in which he was running the men's clothing store.
>C. Bogle wrote:
>The Darlings and Ernest T. Bass were okay, but they were never particular favorites of mine. I did like the episode where Goober lowers the owl from the tree onto the Darlings car and they never make the connection. I don't think Malcom Merriweather was ever considered as a regular, and he wasn't as out there as the Darling or Ernest T., and he was a nice guy, but like those charcters, a little of Malcolm went a long way.
The only thing I ever thought really funny was when Barney was trying to stop Ernest T. Bass from breaking the new window for the courthouse, but ended up breaking it with his own gun instead. As usual, Andy had to take Barney's gun away, although this time it was not for having accidentally fired it.
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>C. Bogle wrote:
>After Don Knotts left the show and Jack Burns didn't work out, I think they started to highlight other characters to fill the void, such as Goober and Howard Sprague and Emmett, though I don't remember the exact chronology.
Goober came first...in fact, there was a slight overlap between him and Gomer, so I think Goober had to have been introduced in the fourth season, as, if I remember correctly, Gomer left at the end of season 4 to do his own show. Goober had been mentioned by Gomer in at least two episodes before he actually appeared with Gomer (they ended up with the "Fun Girls" in one episode--"Judy, Judy, Judy!"). Ironically, both of the mentions of Goober in which he didn't actually appear (there may have been more, these are just the two I remember) occurred in "slow pace of Mayberry" themed episodes. One was one of my favorites, "The Sermon for Today" ("could be spiders!"), in which Goober couldn't help out because he had to wash his mother's car but he had loaned Gomer his tools. The other was "Man in a Hurry," in which Gomer said Goober could fix the man's car but Goober was away fishing. Then Goober returned and fixed the man's car, although the man had had a change of heart about leaving by then.
Howard came sometime after Warren left. Emmett didn't show up until the last season, as a replacement for Floyd.
Another inconsistency: in "Man in a Hurry," only Wally and Goober could fix the man's car, and Wally refused to work on Sunday. Wally was depicted as being the real mechanical expert. Gomer could only provide water and gas and seemed to be as dumb as a post. Then in the episode "Gomer the House Guest," Gomer's customers follow him to Andy's house when Gomer is fired, because they trust Gomer to work on their cars more than they trust Wally. What a switch!
>I remember reading, in particular reference to Ernest T. Bass, that certain characters were so vivid that they couldn't be regulars but had to be limited in the number of episodes they appeared in. That might apply to the Darling family too, whereas Goober or Howard could appear in quite a few episodes. I really never thought too much about Helen being a pain. I sort of accepted her jealousy as a comic device that came in handy in a plot situation and didn't take it all that seriously. Outside of that she was usually a kind character. The confusion about what grade she is teaching was probably one of those things that the writers switched around to suit a story and didn't think too much about, just as certain characters get a political position and it's never mentioned again. It might have been a good idea to have a story about Howard the landlord and Emmett as the new tenant. I think Emmett was just as tight with a buck as Floyd (or Howard).
In one of the cast reunion specials (not the TV movie Return to Mayberry ) shown on CBS, one of the producers--I think it was Aaron Ruben, but I'm not certain--said Ernest T. Bass was the only broadly drawn character the show ever had. I'm not sure I agree that he was the only one. The Darlings seemed pretty far out, too, sometimes recognizing Andy's authority and sometimes holding a shotgun on him (which I think technically he could have arrested them for.) I never liked the episodes with the Darlings or with Ernest T. Bass very much. I didn't think the plots were very good, believable, or funny. I did like the music of the Dillards a lot, however. I also enjoyed Charlene singing "Salty Dog" and especially "There Is a Time."
I've thought of a few others over the years that also seemed broadly drawn to me, but I can't remember any of them right now.
>Mayor Pike was a slightly confused soul, but was usually pretty nice, but Stoner (you can't go by a name) was a pure pompous pain in the neck. I suppose there are a few characters like that in a small town, though he seems more suited to the city. Either way, a little of him goes a long way.
A lot of fans I've talked to had the impression he was a big city slicker--possibly not even from a Southern city--that had moved to Mayberry.
>In the last few seasons Opie wore a shirt with a large orange and green check pattern that he seemed to wear in every third episode. It's hard not to notice it. I know Andy didn't make a lot of money, but it couldn't have been that bad.
I like plaid shirts so it never bothered me. The orange turtlenecks in "Opie's Group" were a bit too far out for me, though.
>I never caught the contradiction about Howard and the bowling team. I just remember that after he bowled his perfect game, Andy let him keep the shirt and it was presumed that was the end of his being on the team.
It was definitely there. Howard had been referenced as being part of a bowling team or league with Andy in season 7. Perhaps it was his first time and his thumb condition caused him to drop out, so technically he never played. :-) Yet it's unlikely he would have been part of the team/league if they didn't know if he could bowl OK or not.
>I remember the episode where Howard was acting as a big brother and fell for his pupil's sister. He tries to pretend he knows about baseball and can't even get the names of the teams straight-the Baltimore Cardinals or the St. Louis Orioles. Another nail in the nerdy coffin.
Ironically, that episode aired on TV Land just a few hours after you posted your message yesterday (Saturday). It also repeated again on TV Land this afternoon (Sunday). Gomer's girlfriend from Gomer Pyle, USMC played the sister.
>You've got to hand it to Asa, from bank guard to doctor, and at an advanced age too. It's quite an accomplishment.
Let's not forget veterinarian! (I guess it's not as big a leap from "critter doctor" to "people doctor" as it is from bank guard to the other two.)
>Poor Beaver was apt to be tricked by his friends, over and over again. Larry and Richard were bad enough, but Gilbert was really tricky. Beaver never learning his lesson reminds me of Barney, who would be embarrassed by one of his brags or exaggerations, but next time he started it all over again.
Yep, Barney would go overboard and arrest everybody in town when Andy was away, then he would become super militant all over again in other episodes in Andy's absence as well. "Let's break out the teargas!" Of course, at the end of that episode when Andy gets everybody to turn themselves in to Barney--including himself--that may have countered any lesson Barney was supposed to have learned.
Warren seemed to be overly gung-ho as well, like when he arrested Aunt Bee's group for gambling (bingo?). These guys were the Frank Burns of Mayberry. Hmm, Andy does seem a lot like Henry Blake in terms of being very easygoing. I would have thought they would have tried to have Barney's replacement be very different from Barney, yet Warren seemed to be overly gung-ho and a goof-up much of the time as well.
Robbie
Mabel Albertson
in General Discussions
Posted
>helenbaby wrote:
>I remember Michael J Pollard from early on when he was on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis--I think he was Maynard G. Krebs' cousin or something and caused problems. It's been a while so it's hard to remember exactly. Did you know he once was married to Beth Howland, who played Vera on the tv show Alice?
I saw him in a episode of Dobie Gillis on MeTV not too long ago, so maybe that was the one. I didn't know he was married to Beth Howland--that's interesting. Hmm, he can break the windows in bookcases and she can spill straws all over the floor. Their home must have been a mess. :-)
Robbie