Reunited: An "Adventure" in "Love."

It wouldn't take anyone visiting here too long to grasp that, of all our favorite movies, one in particular stands out. The Poseidon Adventure (1972) rocked this 7 year-old's world upon first viewing it (sadly on TV and not in a theater.) I was hardly alone in watching, though. With a 62% share, it was the sixth most-watched movie ever broadcast on TV to that time. (The rating for it was 39. Today, a network special or even a hot series is lucky to hit a 5!) Most of the stars of the ensemble movie became legends to me, part of a special fraternity which earned lifetime devotion on my part. 

In a cast already brimming with Oscar-winners (Jack Albertson, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters and Ernest Borgnine), Gene Hackman joined the club as filming was underway. His was for The French Connection (1971.) (Interestingly, his BAFTA in 1973 was for both Connection and Adventure!)

As a kid, I was ALL IN when it came to following the survivors of the capsized S.S. Poseidon. They faced continuous peril as they climbed and sometimes swam to the hull of the ship in hopes of being rescued.

As much as the cast is cemented in my mind as a group, it's remarkable that Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters actually share very few moments together one-on-one. Here, she makes a futile attempt to keep Borgnine and Hackman from squabbling.

Their most considerable interaction occurs as he is assisting her out of a tunnel and onto a steep set of steps in an overturned smokestack. For me, these two will forever be associated with the fateful voyage of the S.S. Poseidon. But ten years later they were back on the water again (and not in the soggy Poseidon sequel!)

Yes, in 1982, Borgnine and Winters were reunited for a two-part installment of The Love Boat!

They played a long-married couple of Italian heritage who are aboard to celebrate their anniversary. Their accompanying family members could hardly be more staggeringly random and unlikely.

In red at the far right is Candice Azzara and she I can buy as Borgnine and Winters' daughter, though she doesn't bear any physical resemblance. She's believable as the child of Italians.

The interesting thing here is that Azzara had appeared in the second pilot for The Love Boat! In 1977's The Love Boat II, a 2-hour telefilm, she played Lounge Entertainer Amy Mitchell, intended to be a regular cast member. But in the end, there was no such ongoing role in the popular show. Her role is this voyage is rather thankless. She's only around as an observer of other people's stories.

And, no, you weren't seeing things if you thought you recognized a young Marie Osmond in the photos above...! She played the couple's granddaughter. Her daffodil-hued, ruffled monstrosity sort of put me in the mind of the frock handed to Angela Cartwright to wear in Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979.) Osmond winds up entangled with Dynasty's John James, who is not the man her parents intended her to wed.

Their other daughter is the least likely of all... Meredith Baxter Birney! She falls for a man who was set up as a blind date, but he turns out to be a gigolo! ("Three Coins in the Condom Machine?")

Baxter had met Birney when they were cast on Bridget Loves Bernie in 1972. Is that enough Bs for you yet? The highly-rated show was pulled after one season due to controversy (interfaith marriage.) They wed in 1974 and could be found costarring or otherwise appearing together quite a bit thereafter. They divorced in 1989. (After three husbands and five children, Baxter married a woman in 2013.)

But back to the topic at hand. Borgnine (complete with a heavy Italian accent) and Winters (devoid of any accent other than her usual one!) realize that as they are celebrating their long-time marital union, they actually aren't happy with one another.

Nestled in their cabin, they determine that it might be best to divorce!

Borgnine could sometimes use a little help reining in his big personality and Winters could turn, in the wrong hands, quite hammy and more than a little shrill. There two pull out a lot of stops in order to out-act one another at times.

This Love Boat voyage didn't take place on board the usual Pacific Princess line, but instead was an Italian ship. Ironically, it was the Stella Solaris - Stella Stevens having played Borgnine's memorably sarcastic wife in Poseidon!

A tense family dinner in the salon. Shelley's dusty rose dress is something of a souped-up version of her taupe chiffon from Poseidon.

Playing a Catholic rather than a Jew, she sports a cross necklace this time out instead of the Star of David. Over Borgnine's shoulder is a waiter (also seen in the prior pic) and his gold jacket recalls the ones seen in the 1972 movie.

See what I mean? (Some of you might recall the time I was doing a rundown on The Phynx (1970) and spotted Freida Renti in that wearing this very same getup!)

At any rate, as the voyage continues, the couple keeps discovering that despite their long marital union, they just aren't happy with one-another. 

"You Don't Bring Me Flowers" anymore... (Actually, he never did!)

At times, the ham level is dialed down a notch and Winters is able to put forth some nice emotional touches. (But I couldn't help dwelling on the fellow diner behind her!)

Things finally reach a turning point for the couple outside a Roman church.

I don't think I'm ruining anyone's life too much if I tell you that they ultimately wind up sticking together and drifting along in a gondola all their own. (One hopes that with their history of maritime disaster, the thing didn't soon capsize!)

No, this wasn't Long Days Journey into Night or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but it was nonetheless neat and fun to see these two members of the Poseidon Adventure family acting together on a ship again.

Disastrous Dais

One of our recent purchases was a set of practically every Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, a TV special series that appeared from 1974 to 1984. First beginning as a half hour "Man of the Week" (or occasional "Woman") on the back end of Martin's long-running variety show, it eventually extended into its own one-hour format. At this point the honoree would be called the "Man of the Hour."

Actor-singer Martin would preside over a panel of invited guests who'd each take his or her turn at the mic(s) "roasting" the subject at hand with all sorts of jokes, jibes and humorous knocks, often throwing stones at Martin himself or any of the other celebrities who were on hand. Then at the end, the "honoree" would come up to the mic and throw back some of the shade that he or she was handed for the prior part of the show.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, then you know of my love of all-star casts, random stars being placed together and, of course, 1970s disaster movies. (It ain't called Poseidon's Underworld for nothin'!) Take this line-up for example.

Dean Martin in Airport.

George Kennedy of Airport.

Ernest Borgnine of The Poseidon Adventure.

Shelley Winters of The Poseidon Adventure.

Richard Roundtree of Earthquake.

Darren McGavin of Airport '77.

Telly Savalas of Beyond the Poseidon Adventure.

Alex Karras of When Time Ran Out...

Then toss in Robert Stack of Airplane!...

...and Peter Graves, also of Airplane!

That's quite a disaster assemblage. Thus, it was particularly special to watch the 1974 roast of Telly Savalas (then of the hit cop show Kojak), which contained the very same above downright galaxy of '70s disaster stars. It was so much fun to see the dais filled up with these folks who are special to me, giving me a chance to see them interacting with one another outside their respective movies.

Martin, who was just four years off of the staggering box office success Airport, looks roughly the same as his troubled pilot Vernon Demerest. Martin, who played drunk throughout his variety show, did catch a bit of guff from critics when he accepted the role of an airline pilot, but he acquitted himself pretty well in the part.

Kennedy, who played the role of cigar-chomping airplane maintenance man Joe Patroni, even received a Golden Globe nomination for his part in the movie (the award went to John Mills for Ryan's Daughter) and proceeded to play the role (with increased stretching of credibility) in Airport 1975, Airport '77 and The Concorde... Airport '79. Pairing this with his costarring role in Earthquake, Kennedy was one of the kings of 1970s disaster cinema.

Borgnine's loud, brawny police detective Mike Rogo was practically unforget- table in The Poseidon Adventure, but he also appeared in the TV-movie Fire! and later in When Time Ran Out..., all produced by that Master of Disaster Irwin Allen.

Winters was even more memorable as heroic Belle Rosen in The Poseidon Adventure, winning a Golden Globe and even scoring an Oscar nomination, though the statuette went to Eileen Heckart for Butterflies Are Free. Winters later appeared in City on Fire, a Canadian all-star disaster epic.

Roundtree was something of a rarity for the disaster genre in that there weren't very many black performers given significant parts. His motorcycle-riding daredevil Miles Quade in Earthquake is thus rather significant.

McGavin, who could be a prickly costar to work with, turned in a charming perfor- mance as engineer Stan Buchek in Airport '77. McGavin's turn at the podium was cut from the broadcast, probably for time, along with Dan Rowan & Dick Martin as well as Alex Karras.

Karras' myopic, overweight appearance on this roast is a far cry from the mustached, made-over look he brought to his later acting roles including Paul Newman's oil-drilling pal Tiny Baker in When Time Ran Out... He later enjoyed a fairly long run on the sitcom Webster with his wife Susan Clark (herself a disaster movie veteran thanks to Airport 1975 and City on Fire.)

Graves and Stack turned their ordinarily stern, staid personas (from Mission: Impossible and The Untouchables, respectively) on their ears for the wacky Airplane!  Graves, as pilot Captain Clarence Oveur, kept a straight face while basically trying to seduce a young boy passenger with such come-ons as, "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" or "Do you like gladiator movies?" He also appeared in disaster-flavored TV projects like SST: Deathflight and The Memory of Eva Riker. Stack parodied the severe, domineering Sterling Hayden of Zero Hour in his role of Captain Rex Kramer. He was a sea captain in Irwin Allen's Adventures of the Queen and appeared in the telefilm Murder on Flight 502.

At the time of this roast, though, both gents were still known for their straight (read: often wooden) approaches to their dramatic roles. This quality made them ripe for their parts in Airplane! (the same goes triple for Mr. Leslie Nielsen.) It was nice to see them free and cutting up during this roast at a time when such a sight was pretty rare in their cases.

All of the participants (including, as shown here, Borgnine and McGavin) had his or her turn laughing, thanks in part to jokes from people like Nipsey Russell, Foster Brooks, Don Rickles, Dom DeLuise, Phyllis Diller and Rich Little, but also no doubt thanks to some freely-flowing booze!

Winters, who'd worked with Savalas on The Young Savages, The Scalp- hunters and Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, alluded to something more than a working relationship with the then-hot sex symbol. She'd proceed to guest star on Kojak and appear with him again in The French-Atlantic Affair (as well as popping up in the z-grade comedy Backfire!, inspired by Airplane!)

Winters, surprisingly, had never acted with Kennedy, but in 1986 they both appeared in what was a bit of a throwback to the all-star disaster genre, Chuck Norris' The Delta Force. (Don't believe me? Names like Lee Marvin, Martin Balsam, Joey Bishop, Robert Forster, Lainie Kazan, Susan Strasberg, Bo Svenson and Robert Vaughn dotted the cast list!)

When Savalas had his turn to rebut, he noted the incredible special effects on Poseidon and how hard it must have been to capture that "tub" turning over (referring to Winters, not the ship!!) Winters picked up something - perhaps ice or some sort of debris - and laughingly flung it Savalas' way.

But it was all in fun. In fact, nearly every participant wound up laying a kiss of some sort on Martin and/or Savalas right after shredding him before the live audience.

As I say, some of the panel weren't given their chance to speak in the final cut of the special. McGavin, who was there no doubt due to the detective angle of Kojak, showed up wearing his hat from Kolchak: The Night Stalker, his spooky, short-lived, but fondly remembered show.

Not sure what Karras was doing there or what he had to say when he said it. His acting career was near its start and his role in Blazing Saddles was that same year. He never worked with Savalas until 1980 when they both appeared in Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story. He barely appears in the final cut of this roast (and the same clip of him laughing with his hand up to his face is shown multiple times.)

Roundtree was a burgeoning star from Shaft and its sequels Shaft's Big Score! and Shaft in Africa, but an attempt to make it a TV series fell flat with it being cancelled after seven episodes. (Something he was ribbed about here.) In 1979, he would work with Savalas in the star-filled, yet rather lowbrow, adventure movie Escape to Athena.

One last tidbit, not of a disaster nature. With the detective theme that pervaded this roast, Savalas was at one point given the treatment by a famous cigar-smoking, trenchcoat-wearing investigator.

Yes, at one point he was needled by none other than Columbo! Yet, this time out, the detective wasn't played by the usual Peter Falk. Another performer slid into the part, affecting all the legendary mannerisms, gestures, movement and whatever other body language, but unfortunately not completely rending the voice in a completely convincing way.

That's because his own voice was so incredibly distinct that there was hardly any disguising it. Columbo was played by iconic disc jockey and voice-over specialist Casey Kasem! He did a great job visually enacting the part. The director of the special deliberately never zoomed in too near for a close-up shot, so this is about the best view of him. Kasem, of course, provided the voices for many animated characters and kept radio listeners in thrall for decades with his American Top 40 broadcast.