my favorite house guest

Before Bill Bixby was Eddie's father or The Hulk, he had a favorite Martian. Ray Walston played the stranded anthropologist alien. MY FAVORITE MARTIAN (63-66) was one of my favorite sitcoms as a kid. Bill Bixby played Tim O'Hara, a mild mannered newspaper reporter who takes the illegal alien into his home. In order to conceal the Martian's identity - Exigius 12 1/2 takes on the identity of Uncle Martin. Tim keeps Uncle Martin's wreaked spacecraft in his garage. Like GILLIGAN'S ISLAND (the more renown work of Sherwood Schwartz) the Martian never could seem to launch his ship either.

You can put this show in the I DREAM OF JEANNIE and BEWITCHED, MR. ED and MY MOTHER THE CAR category. The sixties were chock full of shows of people that had to hide identities of unusual house guests.

This YouTube video is part 1 of 5 of the original pilot. It's a very breezy little situation comedy. Smothers Brothers had a short lived sitcom that had almost the same story line. Instead of an Martian in the apartment - Tommy Smother's was an angel.

love and the happy days

George Lucas had asked to screen the unsold pilot of Garry Marshall's, NEW FAMILY IN TOWN (1971) to decide if he were going to use Ron Howard in his movie American Graffiti (as character Steve Bolander). The television pilot never sold, but was used as as an episode of the comedy anthology LOVE AMERICAN STYLE. The episode was renamed LOVE AND THE HAPPY DAYS. I remember seeing this show when it aired as a Love American Style episode.

AMERICAN GRAFFITI generated an huge nostalgia of the 1950's (early 60's), so ABC offered Howard the series HAPPY DAYS. I remember enjoying this show the first few years, and lost interest long before Fonzie jumped the shark. The early seasons were very enjoyable - even though they were a candy coated idealization of yesteryear. Graffiti, I don't see as such an idealization.

where were you in 62

Did you ever see American Graffiti? This is movie was written and directed by George Lucas in 1973. I saw this movie in the back seat at the Rebel Drive-in with my brother Brooky and his friend Jamey Moore. They often let me tag along when they went to the drive-in. That's how I first experienced Easy Rider, Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, Hammer and American International gothic horror films.

American Graffiti was the first time I remembered ever seeing Richard Drefuss. It's also the first time I'd ever seen Harrison Ford in a film. Ron Howard's face was of course a very familiar one - Opie grown up. Charles Martin Smith played my favorite character, Toad, among all the other great characters. This movie is chock full of actors that you'd never seen before but would see become bigger stars as the seventies played out.

The story isn't complex at all. It's about a guy's last night in his small town. All the youth had little to do but cruise the strip and and find love or trouble...most often trouble. American Graffiti isn't candy coated, but is a fun ride. The characters are not stereotypical but somehow very familiar. The music blaring clearly from the cruising cars through out the night - tie together the mood and the different adventures of individuals playing out in a single night in Modesto. Lucas mind you, had pulled out all his 45's and wrote every scene with a specific single in mind.

This was a coming of age film that connects with those who came to age in the sixties. I know that Brook and Jamey seemed to have a different reaction to this film than I did. I am what some call a shadow-boomer (born in 58) and didn't relate to the imagery and characters of American Graffiti as my older siblings.

The movie was an unexpected success. George Lucas had only 500.00 to his name when he started out with the project. The film made him millions, which gave him the initial capital for some Flash Gordonish space movie idea he had been working toward.

In 1995, the Library of Congress deemed American Graffiti as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." This movie really is significant. American Graffiti reflects a moment in time before America lost her innocence - all that turmoil to follow in the sixties.

Curt Henderson wakes the next morning to board a plane for college. If and when he comes back - it will be a different place all together. Yes. This is a very good movie.

kill the wabbit

This is the What's Opera, Doc cartoon. It's one of my all time favorite of the classic Warner Brothers cartoons. Like I said in yesterday's 3 Stooges post, most these early Warner Brother's cartoons were originally made for the big screen - before the advent of television. Any time I see an old WB cartoon, I think of Saturday mornings, all the Finlayson kids sitting on the living room floor on a blanket in front of the old Zenith.

3 Stooges

When we were kids, television was still a new medium. The classic made for television shows we see as re-runs today were in their first run. Baby-boomer enjoyed comedy shorts, cartoons, and adventure serials that were made for the theater. Saturday mornings were not filled with Hannah-Barbera cartoons - but more about Warner Brother cartoons, comedy shorts, and cliff hanger serials from the silver screen days of our parents.

Most of us baby-boomer boys loved the slap-stick comedy of The Three Stooges. Their two-real shorts were released by Columbia in 1958 and introduced Moe, Larry, and Curly to a my generation. When the Three Stooges came to television, it birthed a new interest in the stooge franchise. The boomer generation loved the stooges and still do!

Moe Howard and Larry Fine were a constant down through the years - Shemp Howard was the first third stooge. Later Shemp trained his brother Curly Howard to take over the part of the third stooge when he began to get rolls in feature films. Shemp returned after Curly's death. Both Shemp and Curly had their own styles and enjoyable to watch - but Curly is most people's favorite stooge of all. The best shows were the ones made in the 1930's and 40's. When Shemp died, the shows were produced for decades more with other third stooges that never measured up to the likes of Shemp and Curly.

Moe Howard always played the impatient and bossy stooge. Larry Fine once said of his old friend and stooge partner that people assumed that Moe was as mean as his character. Larry said that Moe was a very nice fellow. Years ago I came across a site developed by a guy named Bob Bernet who corresponded with the aging Moe Howard. Bob was twelve years old at the time he wrote his first piece of fan mail. Years later Bob went to visit Moe at his home in Californ after he graduated high school in 1973. The correspondences are available at that site as well as some rare photos. Both Moe and Larry died in 1974, so the letters, stories, reflections, and images are very interesting. I really enjoyed the My Pal Moe site - you might too.