Top Ten Anniversary: Favorite TV Series

Yes, you're probably beginning to tire of these Top Ten lists, but it must be done! Ha ha! The following programs are the ones that really stuck to me over the years and are my own personal favorites. I don't claim that they are the best, but they speak to me the most. Again, it was hard to whittle the list down, but this is how it panned out.

BARNABY JONES -- First of all, the opening theme song and the introduction of the stars and guest stars. Watching this on grandpa's knee (an appropriate place!) instilled in me a deep affection for most all "Quinn Martin productions," whose shows nearly always began that way (and were divided into "Acts" on screen.) The 1970s were a time for gimmicky detectives: the bald one, the fat one, the one with a cockatoo... This was the old one and even though Mr. Buddy Ebsen lived thirty more years after the show's premiere (!), he was a milk-drinking, supposedly non-threatening geezer. (He was sixty-five at the time of the show's debut!) But he was usually a dead shot with his pistol when the time came. The show, regardless of its real or imagined merits, is so soothing to me to watch. Familiar faces in compelling plot lines with inevitable lines like, "Call Lt. Biddle..." It's comfort food for the brain to me. I adored Lee Meriwether as Ebsen's daughter-in-law receptionist. Less so Mark Shera as a cousin who came on in the fourth season, but he's okay. The real pleasure is seeing people underestimate the old codger until they are tripped up by his forensics and keen intellect. It definitely jumped the shark, though, when Ebsen was shown disco dancing in a late episode!

CHARLIE'S ANGELS -- As a tyke, my bedtime was strictly 9:00pm. Knowing how obsessed I was with Charlie's Angels (the whole world was, it seemed, in 1976!), my mother relented and allowed me to watch it every other Wednesday. However, when previews showed that on my "off" week, the gals were going to be shackled together in a women's prison, my protestations to see the episode were so great that my mom relented and let me watch it (and thereafter I watched it every week... give 'em an inch and they take a mile! Ha ha!) I worshiped Farrah Fawcett, but liked all the Angels, including Shelley Hack, until the last season when the final cast change to Tanya Roberts (and a location shift to Hawaii) turned me off. Watching it now, as I still do on the treadmill, the gals aren't all that hold my attention. The clingy polyester slacks on the men in that era can be real eye-openers!

DYNASTY -- Somewhere out there is bound to be someone who claims to have been a bigger fan of this show than I was, though I can't imagine how. I was utterly, completely OBSESSED with it from almost the moment it started. The fact that it was going to star Linda Evans, who I hadn't seen at all in the interim since The Big Valley and Pamela Sue Martin, who'd figured heavily in The Poseidon Adventure (as well as The Nancy Drew Mysteries) guaranteed that I would be watching the three-hour premiere. The whole notion of a regular gay character was rather mind-blowing to me at age fourteen. Once Joan Collins showed up, it was must-see TV for me and most of the world. I bought every magazine that previewed or profiled the show, called Hollywood long distance to speak to Esther Shapiro directly (!) about a plot line (didn't get through to her... I wonder why not. Ha ha!) and even made certain that my senior prom tuxedo was as close a copy to the morning suits worn to Amanda Carrington's wedding that was possible on my family's budget! The show over the long haul was uneven to say the least and plagued by cast changes, but practically any episode remains fun if only for the clothes and the often chippy dialogue and campy situations.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -- I never saw a single episode of this series in its initial airing or even in reruns (somehow it seemed to disappear in my area for a long while) until one time - late at night - a few episodes began appearing. Eventually, I got the whole series on DVD and became fascinated by the austere performances, the labyrinthine schemes of the missions and just the general team atmosphere, which had always appealed to me from my comic book days. The show was formulaic, but it was a formula that worked. And that theme song!  The show, like more than one Desilu production was racially progressive in that little or no mention was every made about Greg Morris' skin color in the story lines. Cast changes occurred with certain regularity, but generally the concept held up thanks to stalwarts Peter Graves (there after season one for original leader Steven Hill) and Morris hanging in for the long haul. The cool, sleek style of the show (including those wonderful "black & white" apartment sequences) appeals to me greatly.

STAR TREK -- It goes without saying that Gene Roddenberry's short-lived sci-fi series inspired legions of fans into forming a cult of Trekkies Trekkers who've gone on to support a long train of subsequent series and movies.  For me, it all starts and virtually ends with the first show and its vivid colors, passionate performances and glamorous guest stars, often with hair stacked to the stars and diaphanous costumes (by William Ware Theiss) with unusual pieces missing. William Shatner has his detractors, but I happen to love his enthusiastic and heroic line readings. DeForest Kelley's cantankerous doctor is my favorite (apart from the elegant Nichelle Nichols), but I also appreciate the iconic performance of Leonard Nimoy as the emotionless Mr. Spock. Grace Lee Whitney's towering basket-weave hairstyle as Yeoman Rand helped solidify my obsession with such things. I was so captivated by the uniforms of the Starship Enterprise that, as a bored teen working at Wendy's, I used to picture all the customers in the dining room wearing them, after deciding which of the three colors would look best on them, of course!

THE BIG VALLEY -- As a kid with abandonment issues, nothing hit home quite like the extremely strong familial bond of The Barkleys, especially the way they took in a bastard son of the deceased father and made him one of their own. (This development alone was a bit prickly for TV in 1965.) The show went off the air when I was two, so I never saw it until mid-day reruns years later when I became enthralled with the sweeping musical intro, the highly telegenic cast and its wealth of dramatic story material. I thought no one on earth was more beautiful than the Barbie-like Linda Evans or more handsome than blue-eyed Lee Majors. Iron-clad Barbara Stanwyck, fiery Peter Breck and even handed Richard Long completed the quintet (and complimented one another grandly.) Toss in extraordinarily good guest stars and some wondrous music within each episode and it was a total winner in my eyes. To this day, disliking my own last name incredibly, I give "Barkley" to hostesses in restaurants. And I'm still looking to kiss a Jarrod and a Nick, having already tackled the seemingly tougher ones: Victoria, Audra and Heath! LOL

THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW -- Part of my childhood viewing that stayed in my head and heart, I don't think there was anyone as multi-talented as Carol Burnett. Not only that, she was careful to surround herself with stellar supporting cast members such as Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence and Tim Conway, who all complimented her - and each other - terrifically. And early costar Lyle Waggoner was easy on the eyes to be sure. So many incredible characterizations were created on the show whether it be from the many spot-on movie parodies, Mr. Tudball & Mrs. Wiggins, the dotty Stella Toddler, Nora Desmond, the ham actors Funt and Mundane, Conway's old (old!) man and, of course, Eunice Higgins and her crazy family.  Naturally, over time, some of the topical and pop culture humor is diffused, but most of these sketches remain hilarious. Long missing from rerun broadcasts are the huge musical productions that usually closed the weekly show and those are often quite a spectacle to behold (in no small part thanks to the show's incredible costumer Bob Mackie.) Like most of the shows that comprise this list, it was the cast chemistry that truly put this in a class of its own.

THE COLBYS -- With people like Charlton Heston, Katharine Ross, Ricardo Montalban and Barbara Stanwyck among the cast as promised, there was no way I was going to miss the premiere of (what was then called) Dynasty II: The Colbys. (That theme song!!) Whatever glamour Dynasty had, and it had tons, this show outdid, especially at a time when the parent show had managed to saddle Joan Collins with a story line that had her dressed down to the point of being in a nun's habit! This was the year that Dynasty slipped from #1 and never fully recovered. The Colbys was a grand, old-fashioned, meaty family drama and power struggle with (sometimes lunatic) secrets and rivalries. Unfortunately, though I grew to appreciate her own charms, Emma Samms as the long-lost Fallon was positively 180 degrees different in nearly every conceivable area than her predecessor Pamela Sue Martin, which turned a lot of people off. A visibly frail Stanwyck's premature departure was another big hit to the show's life. But there will never be anyone like Stephanie Beacham's Sable Colby, a standout amid the gargantuan cast, as noted elsewhere. For that I will always be devoted to the show.

THE GOLDEN GIRLS -- When I speak of chemistry among a cast, this is the pinnacle of it. It makes no difference if Bea Arthur and Betty White bristled a bit behind the scenes. On screen they, along with Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty, worked extraordinarily well together and generated a hit that, on paper, seemed impossible to the network chiefs: four older ladies living together in a house in Miami, Florida. An expert pilot paved the way for a terrific run in which each gal won an Emmy and created comic hijinks that one can safely say are broadcast almost every hour of every day, time and again, worldwide. Golden Girls fans know all the lines by heart and quote them all the time. We know each other. If we say the cue, another fan knows the punchline. Among my own favorite installments are the ones in which: Dorothy's friend is a lesbian, Dorothy's son is marrying an older black woman, Blanche's brother is gay, the ladies are posing for a sculptor, Blanche and Sophia are dating the same man, Rose dates a dwarf and the ladies are set to meet Burt Reynolds at a film premiere. But it's like choosing a favorite child. There's something great in practically all the episodes (though I am devoted to seasons 1 through 4, before expert director Terry Hughes left, versus the remaining ones.)

THE LOVE BOAT -- Again, the blend/chemistry of the cast made a huge impact on the success of a show, but as able as they are, the crew of the boat are not the reason why I love this show... it's the PARADE OF GUEST STARS! Several series did it, from the more dramatic Fantasy Island to the more elegant Hotel and even the delightful Murder, She Wrote, but The Love Boat was key in unearthing great stars that young Hollywood generally had no interest in, but which nostalgic TV viewers enjoyed giving the once-over to after their time in the sun had passed. While its true that a few old-timers held out and didn't take a cruise, more often than not, any old star who could still draw breath popped up on at least one episode of this show during the course of its long run. Sometimes, if the performer was musically inclined, he or she even got to perform (as in the case of Carol Channing, Ethel Merman and Ann Miller - all at once!) They even excavated long-absent, two-time Oscar-winning Best Actress Luise Rainer, fer cryin' out loud! Much of this was surely due to producer Aaron Spelling, who was a busy 1950s character actor and party host before he turned mega-producer, calling upon old friends to appear on his series.

BONUS PICS!

The initial threesome who made up Charlie's Angels were photographed endlessly as they promoted the TV-movie pilot and eventual series. I thought this one was fun. (The pilot, by the way, was expected to tank, but brought in HUGE numbers. Even then the execs could hardly believe it so they re-ran it two weeks later, thinking it was a fluke, but the ratings were even higher still! So the series moved forward.)

This looks more like something out of Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) than an Angels promo. Clearly the exact style and concept of the show had not been completely honed, even taking into consideration that this was inspired by Helmut Newton (who himslef photographed Fawcett and, later, Smith for publication.)

Raise your hand if you remember "Angels '88" (which was later retitled "Angels '89" due to production delays before being abandoned completely!) Among the carefully-selected, but doomed to being unseen, Angels were Téa Leoni and Claire Yarlett. Dig the fun brooch on the gal with the ginormous shoulder pads!

It's just tough to beat that initial combination of gals...

I liked this shot of Linda Evans and John Forsythe because it's a rare one with Linda's hair much softer (and smaller!) and her eyes look terrific in it.

Just one shot of the four albums I have that are crammed full of Dynasty and The Colbys clippings/photos.

I saved every single picture of any star who was on the show and every picture from the show. If a magazine had photos on back-to-back pages, I bought two copies...! (Now I know where my youth went!)

I give you a campy portrait of spy supreme Cinnamon Carter, as portrayed by Barbara Bain.

Here's a second, even more random - though glamorous - portrait from the shoot. You can read more about Bain right here.

Strange elements in the posing for this The Big Valley portrait. Note the monochromatic blouse and pants (courtesy of Nolan Miller) on Linda Evans' Audra Barkley which would later become a staple of her Krystle Carrington wardrobe as well, often in tones of burgundy and blue.

The transformation of Audra Barkley from golden-haired colt to Brushfire Barbie (under the direction of new husband John Derek, who enjoyed crafting all his women into the same basic ideal...!)

A later version of the cast of The Love Boat. Pat Klous had replaced a substance-addicted Lauren Tewes for two seasons, Jill Whelan as Gavin McLeod's daughter had grown up to be an assistant and humpy Ted McGinley was brought on as ship's photographer.

Were you one of the seven people who watched The Love Boat: The Next Wave?  Doomed from the start thanks to a telegenic, but uninspired, cast, it also suffered the blow of star Robert Urich developing cancer during its run (which he bravely fought through, eventually appearing without hair in the wake of treatments.) Few guest stars of note came aboard, though one episode did reunite members of the first show's cast. The Love Boat ran for 250 episodes. The Next Wave ran for 25...

No matter how humiliating, did you really think I was going to refrain from sharing my senior prom photo with it's "design on a dime" approximation of the Moldavian massacre wedding suits?! Ha ha! Remember... I did say OBSESSED. But that's what TV has the power to do to us sometimes, then and now. I hope you enjoyed this post.

Fun Finds: Who's Who in TV, 1968-1969

This is a pretty big Fun Find. Picked up at an antique show in Burlington, Kentucky, it's a publication that was printed annually to profile the stars of new and returning television shows. We used to live for the annual TV Guide fall preview issue, but this goes even further with its coverage (though sadly, except for its cover, not in color) and tidbits of trivia. The 70-page volume contained no advertisements and is chock-full of mini-bios of all the stars of TV from that era. Thus, you're sure to find a favorite or two (or ten) contained within its pages. I've scanned practically the whole thing and may not comment on each and every page. We'll see how chatty I am as it goes along. This (the mid-to-late '60s) is my favorite time period for the way TV and its inhabitants looked. That said, Judy Carne looks downright deranged on the cover...! Love The Landaus, Kirk & Spock and Miss Carol Burnett.

A section devoted solely to TV specials and their stars gets underway with Sinatra...

The magazine balances a positively exhaustive list of upcoming specials with bios of the stars who will be headlining some of them.

Marvelous Mitzi Gaynor is still going at age eighty-six while Dick Van Dyke has a cameo in the new Mary Poppins Returns (2018) at age ninety-two!

Now moving on to new shows that season. The Name of the Game revolved around magazine publishing and its three stars took turns being featured in episodes (with occasional crossover appearances in each others', though Robert Stack and Tony Franciosa never appeared together) while Susan St. James provided the glue by portraying a secretary in many installments.

Surprising that delightful comedic actress Reta Shaw has her name misspelled here. Edward Mulhare, described as a "real ladies man" never married and died at age seventy-four a bachelor. 

Little Marc Copage of Julia did some acting after that show's three-year run, but wasn't able to sustain a significant, lasting career. His father, John Copage, was a bit player in movies and on TV and didn't manage his son's income from the show particularly well.

As most of her fans know, Miss Day's husband hornswaggled her into this TV series without her knowledge before he passed away. She was miserable until tinkering with the format and making it work for three seasons. Day is now ninety-five and never really acted again once the series had run its course.

Blondie only aired for 13 episodes before being yanked. Peter Robbins of the show was the voice of Charlie Brown in about 8 iconic Peanuts specials, but the wheels came off several years ago and he in in prison as of this writing! I never knew that Will Hutchins was once the brother-in-law of Carol Burnett. Herb Edelman of The Good Guys would later play Stan in a recurring role on The Golden Girls.

In the late-1960s/early-'70s, it seemed as if Wayne Maunder would achieve a notable TV career, but it wound up not to be. He sort of eked along until 1980 loomed and then appeared in Porky's (1981), which was his last credited on-screen acting project. He is eighty now. Ken Berry is eighty-four and has been retired for about a dozen years.

Robert Morse is a show business survivor. Now eighty-six, he was still acting as recently as a year or two ago (portraying Dominick Dunne in the first season of American Crime Story (The People v. O.J. Simpson.)

I can remember coming home from school as a preteen to reruns of Here Come the Brides and being faced with the trio of David Soul, Robert Brown and Bobby Sherman, then unable to figure out exactly why they gave me a thrill. LOL Soul and Sherman are both seventy-four while Brown is an amazing ninety-one at present!

When I was a waiter (at Red Lobster!) in the mid-'80s, my manager would forever go on about Land of the Giants and I thought I'd never get to see it. Finally, the earliest incarnation of The Sci-Fi Channel ran it and I was able to. Gary Conway was a cutie. Amazingly, series notable Kurt Kasznar is not profiled or even mentioned!

When Otis Young's acting career began to fall off, he went into teaching, passing away of a stroke at age sixty-nine. Don Murray, his costar in The Outcasts, is another star with life longevity from this Fun Find who is still with us at eighty-eight.

Tiny Tim always creeped me out in any way possible. I do love Ruth Buzzi's hair in this pic.

I never write about Carol Burnett, though her show was an outright staple in my house growing up. We adored her and her costars and guests. What many people may not realize is that the rerun versions of her highly-popular show eliminate most of the songs by guest performers along with the usually-elaborate musical finales which the performers mounted each week (and often some skits are left on the cutting room floor as well.)

Longtime friends Jack Benny and George Burns were comic royalty. When Benny fell ill from cancer just before filming The Sunshine Boys (1975), Burns was called upon to take his place and was granted an Oscar for his trouble, reigniting his movie career in the process.

I've recently been enjoying Johnny Carson's 1950s & early-'60s appearances on To Tell the Truth. He was an impishly funny devil then.

Fans of The Lawrence Welk Show rejoice! Here we have a two-page spread with info on many of his stable of performers and plenty of pics. Tanya Falan (Welk) looks like she's performing in The Bad Seed!

Love the little cut-outs of the folks on the top. Along the bottom, you may find it interesting to know that Andra Willis later provided Olivia Hussey's singing voice in Lost Horizon (1973.) I love Sandi Jensen's mod hairstyle. Her duet partner Salli later married handsome Welk Show country crooner Clay Hart.

Our addiction to all-star line-ups always means we enjoy organized collections of faces and names such as those that appear on the next three pages. I love watching Nancy Ames on old variety shows and on Password. She is eighty now. John Davidson (seventy-six) has been touring in Finding Neverland and recently visited Cincinnati for the first time since the fateful Beverly Hills Supper Club fire on the other side of the river.

Bobbie Gentry seemed to just utterly disappear at the dawn of the 1980s. She hasn't performed since, but lives a quiet life at age seventy-three. This is a great photo of Liza (and her earrings!)

Ted Bessell, as Marlo Thomas' fiance on That Girl, was taken far to early at age fifty-seven from a brain aneurysm. Thomas is now eighty (say it ain't so!)

The Flying Nun's Shelley Morrison hit a late-career high when she was cast as Megan Mullally's sassy housekeeper-companion on Will & Grace. Needless to say, Sally Field's career took off, so to speak, considerably after this series' demise, too!

Two enduring fantasy-based sitcoms share a page here. While the blonde gals both possessed magical abilities, they really were different enough to sustain their respective runs, with Bewitched running longer and producing more episodes than Jeannie.

Though few could ever compare to the staggering superstardom of Lucille Ball, Lucie Arnaz did ultimately carve out a considerable career of her own, including the Broadway stage, and is a very bright and insightful person. I don't know how I got this far along without knowing that her middle name is Desiree! As for My Three Sons, we dearly love the hunky Don Grady most of all (and his TV wife Tina Cole of The King Family, too!)

The Mothers-in-Law has a cult camp following thanks to its colorful, brash leading ladies and gay-ish sensibilities. Costar Herb Rudley lived to be ninety-six. One of my more enduring posts here is about pint-sized, but tragic, charmer Anissa Jones of Family Affair.

Hogan's Heroes is a show I have never been able to get into, either as a child or an adult. It's just always left me completely disinterested for some reason! Get Smart is another one I never had any interest in, but I did watch season one not long ago and found it surprisingly captivating and clever.

All of these shows were in afternoon reruns on a local channel when I was a kid, though I wasn't slavishly devoted to them. I was petrified of the domineering Frank Sutton and, though I found Eva Gabor enthralling, the rustic setting and bumpkin inhabitants of Green Acres were abhorrent to me. Ha ha!

Again, I was an adult before I understood any of the charms of The Beverly Hillbillies. I did like Petticoat Junction, though the first two seasons were rarely, if ever, shown in my neck of the woods. I finally watched season one a couple of years ago and it was gently charming.

The opening credits of Perry Mason scared the bejesus out of me as a kid, thus I was also averse to Ironside. Later I began to enjoy the show in its early seasons to a degree.

These are two shows that I have seen precious little of. Any time I've caught It Takes a Thief, the lady guest stars have looked spectacular! I've never seen a black & white episode of Felony Squad, but any time I've caught a color one (in which Dennis Cole's hair is its customary blond) they are gorgeous and the women look amazing.

Dragnet, despite being based on actual cases, just never came off as authentic to me, perhaps because of the type of acting employed by its guest actors and the artificial looking settings, especially in the later color eps. I've never seen N.Y.P.D. at all.

The F.B.I. was such a hit and had those wonderful Quinn Martin-esque titles which showed the guest stars up front. William Reynolds, an underrated looker, has his own profile here in The Underworld. He's still alive today at eighty-six! Love you, William. I have never seen a full episode of The Avengers... Truth.

Mannix ran forever, but I must say it never really grabbed me. Sadly, I've never seen any of Judd for the Defense. Carl Betz has a considerable following even now among daddy lovers (for his work on The Donna Reed Show) and Stephen Young, who I don't know, is still with us today at seventy-eight.

Now we're talking. I loved the sleek, elegant feel of Mission: Impossible, especially early on, though I enjoy it in all its incarnations (apart from the comparatively recent movies!) The show, Bain and Laundau have all received attention here.

So has Peter Graves. And Star Trek (later dubbed TOS for The Original Series...) was another huge fave of mine. I still like it when I stumble across an episode being shown. It's interesting how virtually all the bios in this mag note whether a person is single or wed. I can see mentioning wives and kids, but if there weren't any they felt the need to denote that the person was single.

Even thought Dorothy Malone had departed by now, Peyton Place still seemed to have a foothold in the public consciousness considering the pictures and two-page spread it gets here.

I just love the way people looked at this time, though I'm sure it was torturesome to always have on a jacket or suit and tie or have one's hair teased and styled to the nth degree. I've got a couple of DVD sets of Peyton Place in black & white, but I imagine the color ones are more garishly giddy.

I was in my forties before I ever saw a frame of Daniel Boone. Darby Hinton figured into a post here to good effect once.

I was afraid (Jesus Christ, I was afraid of everything as a kid!) of Daktari and never saw Gentle Ben. I did used to be a devotee of Captain Kangaroo as a child. The hoot with that was that I was convinced that costar Cosmo Allegretti and George Maharis were one and the same man....!

Henry Darrow is now eighty-four. You may recall he played the Lothario Fidel Santiago on a key episode of The Golden Girls. That was thirty (!) years ago when he was but fifty-four!

All pictures of Michael Landon from Bonanza ought to have him standing up with his pants drawn close... LOL!

The Virginian was a very popular western and James Drury, who played the title character is still alive (and acting!) at eighty-four. Good for him. Done Quine is seventy-eight. Sara Lane, who is in her late-seventies, was one of the teen girl stars of Joan Crawford's I Saw What You Did (1965) the year before she joined The Virginian.

Gunsmoke, which holds only moderate appeal for me, was the longest-running TV western and had begun prior to that on radio! (With rotund William Conrad playing the role of Matt Dillon.) Dack Rambo is a lifelong crush of ours.

One of my favorite westerns, or series period, is The Big Valley. Linda Evans's Disney film was just Those Calloways, no "Crazy." On The Wild Wild West, Robert Conrad was about as good looking and humpy as a person is capable of being, especially in color.

My mother was an Another World fanatic when I was a baby. As I was born in 1967 and this magazine is from about a year later, I can see now what people she was looking at then. Robin Strasser was, to her, "Rachel" for the rest of her career, long after another actress assumed the part for decades and Strasser moved on! She'd always say, when watching something, "Oh, look, there's Rachel!" LOL

Help me, Jesus! Look at all the faces. Helen Wagner of As the World Turns was an extraordinary person and I have a couple of handwritten letters from her that I treasure. Dark Shadows was noted for having lots of gay men in the cast, two of which are depicted here.

Note Judy Lewis in The Secret Storm. She was Loretta Young's (and, suspected but not known at the time, Clark Gable's) daughter. This is the soap that Joan Crawford's daughter Christina was also on, but - strangely - Christina worked on the show during a period when Judy had temporarily exited, so I don't believe they shared many - or any - scenes together! I recently got hooked on some vintage episodes of The Doctors only to have the local channel who was running it suddenly disappear...

I love game shows, but I have to say I'm completely unfamiliar with both Dream House and Treasure Isle! Both shows were short-lived (especially Isle) and most of Dream House was "wiped" during an era when tapes were erased and reused...

These shows are more enduring (though Concentration, which was very popular then, seems to have less of a following now.) For just plain belly laughs, it's tough to beat Bob Eubanks' original The Newlywed Game (and there are bonus points for the way the ladies did their hair, makeup and clothing!)

Some of these venerable gentlemen of the airwaves are still among us, including Dick Cavett (eighty-one), Tom Kennedy (ninety-one), Peter Marshall (ninety-one) and Bob Barker (ninety-four!) Kudos, too, to Monty Hall who lived until last year and passed away at ninety-six.

Several of the newsmen shown here kept working for decades after. Note Peter Jennings and Harry Reasoner. And Roger Mudd, at ninety, is still with us today.

More newspeople of note. See Morley Safer and Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes. That might be the youngest I ever saw Howard Cosell! You can see and read more about yummy Frank Gifford here. And, of course, Barbara Walters is still around at eighty-eight.

Many of us miss (and I think most of us could use) the old-fashioned style of talk shows in which pertinent issues were discussed or fantastic lives were examined instead of trying to figure out the daddy of some girl's baby or determine whether a person has been cheating with everyone in sight...

I had not heard of Alan Burke, but he was apparently one of the front-runners in the confrontational style of talk show hosts who would either insult or plant someone in the audience to insult guests who were appearing. Les Crane has a small post about him here! I like this (rare) photo of him.

I'm just not able to get on board with Woody Woodbury after For Those Who Think Young (1964), but Mike Douglas was pretty good and I adore Virginia Graham who has a tribute here.

Fascinating that they felt the need to list every movie that would be seen on network television in the coming season...! I hope no one tuned into CBS looking for Barbara Eden in Madison Avenue (1961) because she ain't in it... Eleanor Parker and Jeanne Crain were the leading ladies, however.

The rest of the issue is devoted to listing all the stars of movies who will be appearing on TV that season! Unreal. Among the stars on this page who've been featured here are Julie Andrews, Senta Berger, Stephen Boyd and Marlon Brando.

Underworld faves on this page include Sean Connery, Joan Crawford and Olivia de Havilland (who is at present an incredible one hundred-one years of age!)

Ava Gardner and Charlton Heston have been highlighted here.

Paul Newman is the only one in this grouping to have gotten a post about him thus far.

Eva Marie Saint (God love her presenting an Oscar at ninety-three recently without so much as a walking stick!) has a tribute here. Since I most often tend to highlight the lesser-known stars, it isn't surprising that so many of the people on these pages haven't gotten individual tributes. But their movies have received notice in most cases.

Rod Taylor and, to a lesser extent, Natalie Wood have been written about on my site. Strange that they would select perhaps the only instance in which Jean Simmons was ever blonde for her picture.

If you want to see how the schedule looked in those long-ago (mostly) three channels only days, here it is! (New shows in ALL CAPS.) I for one can never get used to the notion of hour-long shows beginning and ending on the half-hour!

The back cover features caricatures of Robert Wagner in It Takes a Thief, Elizabeth Montgomery in Bewitched (note that she's riding a vacuum cleaner, not a broom!), Marlo Thomas of That Girl, Otis Young and Don Murray of The Outcasts and Frank Converse, Jack Warden and Robert Hooks of N.Y.P.D.

Lastly was this curiosity found in the magazine. The original owner tore this photo out of the Columbus Dispatch and tucked it away. It made me both nostalgic and a little sentimental for, in those long, long years before computers were in our homes (and hands) one had to cling to any tangible photograph of a favorite celebrity if he or she wanted to be able to gaze upon him or her again. I know that up until the late-1980s, I clipped pictures of things I wanted to hang onto and kept them in a folder... Take care until next time!