Hiatus Highlights

During the period from Christmas until the other day, when I hadn't compiled any kind of post, I was occupying my time in a few ways. Working, of course, recovering from a minor surgical procedure and, naturally, checking out as much crazed vintage television and film as I could. There seems to be a bottomless wellspring of such sunken treasures thanks to the streaming service Tubi, which finds the damnedest "lost" projects and makes them available to us now. 

As a kid reared on the travails of Alice, I was aware of the sitcom's spin-off Flo, but never in my life watched it. Many people don't recall it at all, even though it ran for two seasons! I don't necessarily adore the show. A little goes a long way. But one installment I came upon had a startling feature on display. 

It's Christmas and our title character, played by the gaudy and wisecracking Polly Holliday, is champing at the bit to attend a local party. Circumstances warrant that she first stop by a barn where a horse is about to give birth.

Her series costar in the yellow rain slicker is Geoffrey Lewis, a longstanding character actor (and the father of often-weird Juliette Lewis.) In the earlier pic, I thought I saw something going on in those blue jeans. 

It's his horse that's in the family way. 

Lewis isn't someone who ever appeared on my radar much other than for his gift at playing half-wacky (or full-on wacky) supporting roles. But as you will see, he had other hidden gifts which did make their way to the screen in this episode. 

Having glimpsed this, I can say that there was more than one stallion who made his way into that barn...! 

On the subject of bumps in the road, this one surprised me. I checked out a (really) obscure Italian-made caper flick called Grand Slam (1967), which starred Janet Leigh and Edward G. Robertson. Also among the international cast was the man shown above-right. 

I only really knew him as an actor who played some petrifyingly fearful roles in horror flicks like Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Schizoid (1980) and Crawlspace (1986) among others, so it was a shock to meet him as the muscle-bound toughie shown here. (His character can nonetheless be interpreted as gay. And this sailor get-up doesn't help!) Klaus Kinski was not only an often-scary actor, but was frequently a scary person! 

He's seen here roughing up the movie's leading man Robert Hoffman. Kinski's pants seem to be indicating an impression of some sort. 

And, as seen here, that impression is just what we thought it was... 

This next item was found on YT, not Tubi, and it blew my mind. I'd never heard of it in my life! The year was 1975 and daytime TV was giving us a new game show called Musical Chairs. This camp scream had contestants trapped in little sliding cubbies which emerged onto the set, whereupon they had to guess the actual lyrics of both hit and standard songs.

Plus-size contestants need not apply!

A live band played all the music while the host and a rotation of notable guests sang the songs. Nothing was recorded as the vocalists were compelled to sing wrong lyrics as part of the game. 

Chairs has the distinction of featuring US TV's very first black game show host, Adam Wade. The silky smooth vocals of Wade, along with his suavely amiable personality, lent an interesting flair to the show. As it was 1975, his (and some of the contestants') clothes tended to provide some funky flair, too. 

As it was based out of New York, many of the show's featured guests were Broadway performers, such as Larry Kert, the first Tony in West Side Story. 

Guests would legitimately sing a song, showtune or standard...

...sometimes revealing that special part of his or herself...

"See what I mean, Vern?"

...before reaching a crucial point during which they'd give three various renditions of the lyrics, with the contestants locking in their answers at the earliest possible moment. 

For songs with novelty value, the poor guests were also handed props and costume pieces in order to put the number across. 

Any given week could bring who knows who...! Some others performers included Marilyn Michaels, Marilyn Sokol, Bobby Rydell, Jonelle Allen, Lou Rawls, Dede Warwick, Julie Budd...

...and this singularly untalented trio, who appeared frequently (and unfortunately.) 

I was particularly excited when personal favorite Margaret Whiting showed up. For those who may not be aware, Ms. Whiting (apart from a long vocal career in recordings and on the road, among other things) was the voice behind Susan Hayward in Valley of the Dolls (1967), belting out that lunatic number, "I'll Plant My Own Tree!" 

I happen to be acquainted with Whiting's delightful daughter, who was kind enough to send me these ruby slipper ornaments (which had been her mother's) to accent my Hollywood tree! Can't wait to find a spot next Christmas near the Oz characters. This provided a much-needed lift to my spirits during the recent recovery period. 

Anyway, if you love vintage music, vintage singers and - another thing I adored - vintage commercials, you need to visit this channel and check out the show. The episodes are straight from 1975 just as they aired with all the charming ads from that time. 

Every year on New Year's Day or New Year's Eve, I watch The Poseidon Adventure (1972), but this year, since I saw it on the big screen not terribly long ago, I went to Plan B and watched the monumentally terrible sequel, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979) which, asinine as it may be, remains a favorite. Very much of that is due to the lady shown here, Miss Shirley Knight. 

It takes seemingly forever for Ms. Knight to make her appearance in the film and when she does, it's screamingly hilarious! The other ragtag survivors are clearing out a debris-filled passageway when she nonchalantly applies her hand to one of them, Angela Cartwright, as if out of nowhere. Miss Cartwright's understated reaction is shown here.

The elegant, refined Knight is just about the last thing one would expect to find in an overturned, exploding cruise liner...! 

She plays Hannah Meredith, sitting out the cataclysm with her husband Harold, played by Jack Warden. 

The reason they've stayed put, despite the chaos and danger, is because Warden is blind. 

The other survivors are appalled at Peter Boyle's suggestion that they just leave him behind. In a fleeting moment, Knight slips him a serene, but pointed look.

As they set out on their journey to survival, she gently reminds her beloved spouse that he must remember that everything is upside-down. Every single line this woman says and every gesture she makes are broiled onto my psyche! LOL I just could not possibly admire her more. It goes against my religion to approve of rust, velvet, slack suits, but I can't help it! 

She and my other favorite performer in this debacle, the luminous Veronica Hamel, share no scenes, really. It's almost like a relay in which Hamel helps get me through until Knight appears. This scene above is when the hand-off occurs.  

Probably Knight's biggest "moment" is when she dislocates her shoulder and ship's nurse Shirley Jones has to pop it back into place. 

Like everyone, Knight becomes wetter and more disheveled as the thing plays out.

The shot depicted here, is literally a nanosecond. But I've spent my whole adult life mimicking both Knight's expression and her hand placement. Ha ha ha!!! She's reacting to a tantrum of Boyle's. He screams at Jones, "You're reading a book, fer Chrissake!" This is never explained in the film, though there IS a reason. You see, it's because Knight's backstory was mostly trimmed out! She and Warden are famous mystery writers. Jones is a huge fan and this is their latest manuscript, which may never see the light of day. So, while waiting for Michael Caine and Sally Field to return from a scouting expedition, she was leafing through it.  

To me, it's the crime of the century that so much as a frame of Knight's would be trimmed from this movie, but quite a bit was. This sequence is one of them, in which Warden expresses his adoration for his attentive wife. The only place to see this and the other cut footage (25 minutes in all!) is to shell out for the $80.00 Irwin Allen Master of Disaster BluRay collection, which I will not do because I already have everything contained within it except this footage! The lost material was aired on TV only and wasn't part of the movie's 2014 DVD release.  

The snippet above is from a 30-minute "Making of" special which was produced to promote the film. Therein we get a little bit more of Shirley Knight as she describes her character and how she was impressed by the sketches and models of the sets. 

Appearing as herself, she's much like Hannah Meredith and I couldn't help but grin as the gentle actress described the filming as "rambunctious!" The special can be viewed on YT here. 

A true oddity came in the form of a long-lost TV-movie from 1983 called Intimate Agony, starring then-hot Anthony Geary. As half of the General Hospital super couple Luke & Laura, Geary was near the peak of his fame, and, though I was a fan of that show, I think it's possible that his ratty mop of a hairdo is responsible to my life-long affection for short hair on a man. Anyway, here he plays a young doctor taking a summer position in the Hamptons, where (it seems to me, anyway) a disproportionate number of residents are afflicted with herpes!

Among the unfortunates suffering from this intimate agony is Brian Kerwin.

His sitch is made even more troublesome because his wife is pregnant and he's failed to let her in on his condition! 

Also on hand is Robert Vaughn as a shifty real estate mogul. He doesn't have herpes, but he and his wife (Penny Fuller) have to contend with the news that their daughter does. 

Then there is Judith Light, who finds herself in a burgeoning relationship with Geary. But perhaps she's got a problem as well...! 

Finally, and the reason I'm bothering with this, comes local tennis pro Mark Harmon. He's an old pal of Geary's and they hit the courts during those fleeting moments when Harmon isn't getting busy with almost any local gal.

He swings. And not just a tennis racket! As you can guess, he soon discovers that he too has been infected. 

In the movie's best scene, he comes home to his anchored yacht and takes a shower. 

Then he is forced to take a good look at himself in the mirror. (We don't mind doing it with him!) 

Harmon had finished the too-brief run of Flamingo Road and was embarking on his notable role on St. Elsewhere. (There, he would eventually play the first regular character on a TV series to be infected with AIDS.) 

Three years after this, Harmon would be voted People Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" - the second man to receive that title after Mel Gibson was the inaugural recipient the year before. 

Incidentally, Harmon was also in Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and is interviewed in that promo film I mentioned before. He enthusiastically reveals that he'd be glad to make a million movies like that one! (Then it was released.....) 

There's no truth to the rumor that he sported a mustache here because he was still in hiding from that disaster. Ha! It's more likely due to the fact that thickly-mustached Tom Selleck had hit the scene with Magnum, P.I. in 1980 and that was now "the thing."

For reasons I won't go into, these next shots are of inferior quality, but I think the message will poke through nonetheless. I love and adore the early-'70s anthology Police Story, so I dug into some of those as well. The caliber of the show went a bit south in its later episodes, but this one stood out for me. It's season 4, episode 7 "Thanksgiving." (If you follow the link, the video is clearer than the pics here.) 

We've provided shots of Mr. Fred Williamson here before from various things, notably in a prior installment of Police Story as well as Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970.)

As you'll see here, he does make an impression in this episode, too.

Our final highlight comes from a virtually-forgotten basketball comedy from 1978 called Fast Break, which starred Gabe Kaplan in his feature debut. No, we're not giving you Kaplan... Of course, we're turning to the blond man on the right, Underworld favorite Reb Brown, the sole reason we glanced at this movie.  

Some of you may be old enough to remember when teams of male sports activities would be divided into "Shirts vs Skins." (And tubby kids like me prayed to any god available that we would be on the Shirts!) Fortunately, Brown is a Skin and he is looking divine both coming and going in some very abbreviated gym shorts!

Apart from Brown's name in the credits, I also hoped for a (cliched) sequence in the shower, but it wasnt' to be. The closest we got was this fleeting glimpse of an actual university shower room. Those were the days... 

But at least we are given loving glimpses of Mr. Brown, the bronzed hunk who plays a character called "Bull!"

Somewhere there is a story line about Kaplan trying to forge a winning team out of so-so players and of one guy being suspected of homosexuality because of his affection for a teammate (but it turns out she's a chick whose posing as a male in order to play because she's that good!) I was only in it for Brown.

At least this story is about university-age players and no one's trying to pass off these dudes as high schoolers! 

I was eleven when this came out and would never have dreamed of going to see such a film, but, man, I love the way Brown looks and would have thought him a god. I missed out. Which brings us to...

The End!