Fun Finds: 1958 TV Radio Mirror Magazine

Hello, my loves. Sunday, August 24^th marked the fifth birthday of Poseidon's Underworld and I had hoped to mark the occasion with a special post, but unfortunately life got in the way. Instead I give you a lesser offering, another one of my infamous “Fun Finds,” this time a 1958 issue of TV-Radio Mirror magazine. Retrieved from oblivion at an antique mall in Dayton, Ohio, this periodical is notable in that the cover (practically exclusively) features the face of legendary game show host Bill Cullen. Popular as he was, he doesn't seem like your standard cover boy material to me, though it's interesting to see him in color during a time when he existed in black & white on the television airwaves. (These remaining pages may need to be viewed in a new tab or window for maximum clarity.)

This page may be amusing to some of you for the menstrual cramp product Midol, which seems to be able to not only cure the pain, but bring one's sexual orientation into question? (Just kidding... I know that's not what “gay” meant back then.)

Here we learn the scoop on some recently released 1958 movies, Me and the Colonel with Danny Kaye (which would later inspire a short-lived Broadway musical called The Grand Tour with Joel Grey and with music by Jerry Herman), Wind Across the Everglades (the cinematic debut of Christopher Plummer) and The Badlanders (with Ernest Borgnine, during which he, still married, met Katy Jurado and began a relationship that would lead to marriage the following year.)

“East Coast News” serves up photos of Jackie Gleason and Julie Harris (who was partaking in the TV project Johnny Belinda.) Johnny Belinda (1948), for which Jane Wyman won an Oscar, was redone for television twice in 1955 (with Betta St. John and Katharine Bard), then this time, then again in 1967 with Mia Farrow and again in 1982 with Rosanna Arquette, along with a few foreign versions. My apologies for the annoying level of pixilation in some of these scans...

This page shows us The Brady Bunch's Florence Henderson as Meg in a TV rendition of another oft-filmed property Little Women (with Jeannie Carson, Zina Bethune and Margaret O'Brien as the other sisters. O'Brien was still playing Beth, having already done so nine years prior in the June Allyson feature film!)

For “What's New on the West Coast,” we see a picture of Maurice Chevalier and one of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, co-founders of Desilu Studios, and who would unfortunately be divorced within two years.

Then we see Erin O'Brien-Moore (who I thought was Dana Wynter!) and Keith Larsen, who was then costarring on Northwest Passage, a French & Indian War-set drama that only lasted for one season. The article refers to Larsen and his costar Don Burnett as bachelors, though Burnett would soon marry the troubled Gia Scala while Larsen wed Vera Miles in 1960. Burnett later wed Ironside's Barbara Anderson in 1971 and they are still together today while Larsen's third marriage in 1983 lasted until his death in 2006. Finally, there's a shot of young Charles Bronson from his 1958-1960 series Man with a Camera.

The words “rip-roaring” and “Lawrence Welk” were seldom used together, but here we see them as he and his band throw a large picnic shindig.

As clean and wholesome as these photos are, we all know that every single person in attendance got drunk and then fled into the woods to get naked. Ha!

Now we get to see the mother-daughter relationship between Ann Sothern and Tisha Sterling as it progressed though the years. I love the way Ann looks in the lower left-hand photo.

Tisha looks so pretty in the shot below. She undertook a sporadic acting career on TV and in movies (such as Coogan's Bluff, 1968, and Norwood,1971), later playing a younger version of her mother's character in The Whales of August (1987), which was Sothern's only Oscar nomination (Olympia Dukakis took home the award for Moonstruck.)

I'm including quite a bit of the Bill Cullen feature because I know some of my loyal readers are fans of classic game shows and Cullen is a fixture of the TV game show.

Cullen often mentioned his wife Ann while hosting shows such as Blockbusters or Child's Play, though she was actually his third wife! He'd been wed once briefly in his hometown of Pittsburgh, then to a singer named Carol Ames, and finally dancer-model Ann Macomber.

Look how pretty Betsy Palmer is in the group shot from Cullen's hit show I've Got a Secret.

Everything indicates that Bill's wife was “Ann” and yet she's referred to as “Anne” throughout the article!

I can remember watching I Dream of Jeannie in reruns as a child and being surprised to learn later that the imposing Blue Djinn of one episode (played by Michael Ansara) was Barbara Eden's real-life husband. He guest-starred on the show three times in all, though as a different character on each occasion. Here we get a glimpse of their domestic life while she was starring on the TV version of How to Marry a Millionaire. Her character on the show was a sort of hybrid of the ones portrayed by Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 film.

The Ansaras seemed as if they were going to last as a couple, but they divorced in 1974. Eden had undergone a harrowing pregnancy in which she knew ahead of time that it would be a stillbirth. She is currently wed to a third husband and has been so since 1991. Fans of hers are sure to enjoy this color portrait of the actress still in her early years of TV stardom!

I don't know where I've been, but I had never heard of Jack Linkletter before this next article. I had to look him up! Obviously, I am familiar with Art Linkletter, who hosted many programs during TV's early days and beyond, but I wasn't familiar with his son (profiled here along with his young wife.)

Toothy and with an elongated face not unlike the Van Dyke boys, Jerry and Dick, he was nonetheless a handsome fellow.

The article continues to dwell on the new marriage and the career of Jack (as well that that of his famous father, shown interviewing a Miss America, Marilyn Van Derbur, who is the one right before Miss Mary Ann Mobley.) It's unclear just when, but this marriage ended after three children. He rewed in 1993 to a woman who was with him until his death in 2007.

Jack provides some welcome beefcake (almost Richard Chamberlain-like) in the accompanying photo spread.

After looking him up, I just had to share some of these other portraits of him not found in the magazine. He's rather dreamy, don't you think?!

Furbies will undoubtedly love his arms in this final shot:

Classic daytime drama fans might enjoy this profile of Ann Flood, a Broadway musical performer-turned TV actress. At this time, she was newly engaged to a network executive and was just beginning a star turn on the soap opera From These Roots (1958-1961.) Later, she would enjoy a long run on Edge of Night (1961-1983.)

It may interest you to know that Ann Flood is still married today to the same man, as she closes in on eighty years of age. She's seen below in a portrait that shows off her trademark mane of red hair.

Now we come to the delicious young costar of Lawman (the title role played by tall and lean John Russell), Peter Brown. Brown has his own Underworld profile here.

In the article, he discusses how he landed his Lawman (1958-1962) role and we meet his fiancee, actress Diane Jurgens.

This marriage between the youngsters (he was twenty-one and she was twenty-two) ran into trouble within months and they soon separated. Various attempts at reconciliation continued until finally they split for good in 1960. He married four more times, the last one in 2008 still going.

This color portrait of young Brown was a real treat to find inside the magazine!

I can't say I know much about television (and sometimes movie) hairstylist Ernest Adler, but I figured that fans of 1950s performers might enjoy seeing him do them up. Adler was also a prolific Broadway hair designer, fulfilling that task on many high-profile shows from the early-'50s through the early-'70s.

He shares his views on hairstyling (with advice for Mamie Eisenhower and Anna Magnani) as we see him getting to work on Gisele MacKenzie, Faye Emerson and Patti Page.

Do you know Hoby Gilman?

You probably will when I explain that Hoby Gilman was the name of a character played by Robert Culp (later to find fame on I Spy and in many movies) on Trackdown (1957-1999.) At the time of this profile, he was married to Nancy Asch, whose matrimony to him led her to be known as Nancy Culp (not to be confused with The Beverly Hillbillies' Nancy Kulp!)

Culp went on to father four children with this, his second, wife, but like Peter Brown he was wed five times in all and it was the fifth one that stuck.

We also get a tad more beefcake as Culp poses in some trim trunks. By the way, Nancy never was able to get much of a foothold as an actress. She did one of Culp's Trackdown episodes and just a little bit beyond that. Perhaps being a perennially-pregnant mother of four didn't help that cause!

Finally, we come to Darren McGavin, who was at this time playing Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer in an early TV incarnation (an '80s rendition starred Stacy Keach.) The well-regarded, but violent and ahead of its time, series had 78 episodes and was syndicated.

Like so many marriages in Tinseltown, the happy one depicted here began to fall apart around 1966 after more than two decades and four children. McGavin finally divorced Melanie in 1969 and soon married actress Kathie Browne, who he worked with in several TV projects and would again as the years went on. They remained wed until her death in 2003 while McGavin passed away in 2006.

The back-inside cover of this magazine features a striking color photo as part of an ad for Modess, a feminine hygiene product, though only those already familiar with it would know since this picture and the two words below it complete the entire advertisement! I figured some of my pals who appreciate old-style glitz would enjoy this glamorous portrait (though I wonder about the streaks of red around a white rectangle in the background for a sanitary napkin promotion! Ha!) Till next time!