1. "I watched an old episode of 'What's My Line?' and it had 2 'mystery guests' instead of the usual one. The one who came on last and was called the 'mystery guest' was Liberace, but the first guest, though not called the 'mystery guest,' was an immense celebrity who was recognizable thus requiring the panelists to wear blindfolds: Frank Lloyd Wright. How did that happen? My guess is that Wright screwed up in some way and they got Liberace to fill the space Wright had vacated and then Wright came around and they had to scramble. Wright was incredibly awkward and I felt very uncomfortable watching him. What's the backstory?"
2. "After watching that on YouTube, we watched an episode of 'Highway Patrol' that had Clint Eastwood appearing as a well-behaved member of a motorcycle club called the Lightning Bugs. Tell me about that. I thought it was inspired by the Marlon Brando movie 'Wild Ones,' except the motorcycle guys were not wild and the guy that ran the diner actually turned out to be a violent nut."
3. "I only watched those shows because my husband put them on and I chose not to leave. YouTube suggested them, I presume, because it knows he watches things from 1950s TV. Why do I watch? I grew up with 1950s TV like he did."
4. "Not being able to control what's on next is itself a 1950s experience."
You don't really need Grok's answers, but I'm not withholding them: here.
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53 comments:
Can't wait to see what Grok does with Leave It To Beaver.
Junior Brown - Highway Patrol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_wLVCLPx0M&ab_channel=BVMTVOutlawCountry
@mezzrow Thanks. That was great.
May I recommend this Jim Carrey impersonation of Broderick Crawford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVBf_rEOvcI
FLW was 89 on day of broadcast.
'I noticed an anomaly in a 69-year-old TV show and the computer agreed with me that it might have been caused by Frank Lloyd Wright running late.'
Fascinating times.
"FLW was 89 on day of broadcast."
Asked if his work had anything to do with law, he said "Unfortunately."
re: Carrey
The physical dis-resemblance to Crawford makes it that much funnier. He goes all jowly before our eyes. He sounds like the character from the Firesign Theatre that replayed Crawford's role as "Huey Duck" in "All The Kings Oscar Nominations" that I recall from some long-ago dorm room memory.
That Lightning Bug insignia on those leather jackets was kinda sissified.
My guess about the WML booking:
I can remember other WML episodes where they had a minor celebrity appear early in the show, where the panel would have recognized the contestant by name or appearance.
I'm suggesting maybe the show's producers surmised that Wright would not be known by enough of the mass audience to justify using him in the celebrity spot. Or, that he would be such a downer they didn't want to end the show with him.
“ "I only watched those shows because my husband put them on and I chose not to leave.”
Haha, that’s our house.
FLW has a perfect record as an architect. The roofs at 100% of his designs leaked. Including the doghouse 😜
On a personal note, when asked if he was working on anything new FLW said the Price Tower, which happens to be where my work has me much more involved these days. I've not seen a his designs in person, that I can remember, but that's the one that I knew as when I was out there they made a big deal about having a FLW building in town.
Get Smart is the series to buy. Barbara Feldon became America's sweetheart not by being hot (she isn't hot, see the failure in her tiger ads) but because she never failed to show Max that she was satisfied with him after this or that failure in whatever quest the episode featured.
The marriage loop. Send man on a quest; man - being normal - often fails; woman shows man she's satisfied with him. It can repeat forever.
Cut out the showing satisfaction step and it's nagging.
Feminism has no man to show anything to so it's always nagging, aka progress realized by marching in place.
Liberace didn't take them long. FL wright was a dignifed, intelligent, successful man. Wonder why he was on this TV show? Born 1867!
There was one episode of Letterman where his two guests were Bob Dylan and Liberace. Dylan performed with his back to the audience, and Liberace cooked.
Clint was 26 and looks it. Not a very good actor. But he was a star in the right role.
If you're looking for excellent old TV shows to watch, may I recommend the Mannix episode "Gather Round the Money Tree?"
Get Smart (2008) is worthwhile but a different dynamic. Feminist 99 is dismissive of enthusiastic rookie 86's attempts but 86 turns out to have impressive analytical instincts. Sort of like women in math vs men. The movie is two movies, one the writers writing gags at 86's expense, the other on sexual difference.
I suspect Ms. Kilgallen recognized Wright's voice after a time.
Barbara Feldon was very hot, but it was a girl-next-door hotness.
Very early in his career, Clint Eastwood had two bit-part outing with the Amazing Wood Man, John Agar -- Revenge of the Creature (1955), and just days later, Tarantula (1955). In both cases, produced by William Alland and directed by Jack Arnold. They must have seen something bankable in the kid with the big hair. I wonder if Eastwood saw that Highway Patrol casting as a step up or a step down?
It occurred to me watching the game show that Liberace bore a more than passing resemblance to Lawrence Welk.
Gemini tells me Liberace never appeared on the Welk Show.
It's amazing that in the lifetime of a few people here "What's My Line?" featured someone who had witnessed Lincoln's assassination as a child -- maybe not the actual shooting, but the hubbub in the streets afterwards.
Wright himself was born in 1867, a long time ago now. Someone who was 89 in 1867 could have met George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. The nation's history fits into three long lives.
Centenarians aren't often good conversationalists. They've forgotten too much. In the future, everything they've said or seen could be digitized and put through AI and it might be fun to virtually talk to them.
A few days ago I indulged in "In the Line of Fire," starring Eastwood and Rene Russo. I enjoyed looking at Rene Russo, but other than that it's a waste of three hours.
"confronts the pair with a shotgun and orders them to leave. When Nick disarms and punches Sills, the situation escalates."
WHY do people Do this?
protip:
if someone (in their place of business) orders you to leave: LEAVE
if someone (in their place of buisness) has a gun pointed at you, and orders you to leave: LEAVE
What POSSIBLE good could come from trying to take his gun?
Will you THEN be able to stay? how does This make sense?
background..
back in 1986, a friend's brother did this EXACT thing at a motorcycle dealership in Billings Mont.
(it was a pistol, not a shotgun)
The brother decided, that THE THING TO DO.. TO BE SAFE!
was to attempt to take the business owner's gun from him.
Needless to say, the brother was shot and killed..
Needless to say, the police had NO PROBLEM with this.
At the time, it seemed 'odd' to me. My friend said that his brother was 'always doing that, when ever someone pulled out a gun'..
because he WANTED TO BE SAFE..
It was hard being polite to my friend, while thinking about what an idiot his brother was.
I'm sorry he died..
I'm sorry he broke into the cycle shop..
I'm sorry he tried to disarm the owner..
I'm sorry that people said that it was a tragedy.
do NOT try to disarm a business owner that is pointing a gun at you; it CAN'T Possibly end well
i think about this shooting a lot.. it was stupid in SO MANY ways
I can't watch that stuff either but my cousin does. She likes the shorter format
But I do like old movies. TCM showed Mae West movies in May (get it?) and she was a riot. And a shrewd lady IRL. It's nice when they're smart and not stupid.
rhhardin said...
"Get Smart is the series to buy. Barbara Feldon became America's sweetheart not by being hot (she isn't hot, see the failure in her tiger ads) but because she never failed to show Max that she was satisfied with him after this or that failure in whatever quest the episode featured."
A scene from an episode of Get Smart was filmed at a golf course near our home in SoCal. We saw Don Adams and Barbara Feldon as they got into a limo afterward. She was a bitsy little thing.
You really don't seem to like your husband the way you treat him. Maybe ask Grok if staying in the same room as your husband while the tv is on needs approval. Maybe some spouses just like being with each other, ann. Your Grok boyfriend might not be able to tell you that... Do you have any human friends?
Perhaps the appeal of those two shows in particular lies in Escapism + Nostalgia. A different world and in many ways a better one. Seems on the primitive side to us with the medium so young, but that too is a plus in some eyes. I like Twilight Zone. I was disappointed by Perry Mason.
For those who have no appetite for b&w TV, I recommend the 9, 10, 11 whatever number of seasons of X Files. Only 30 years ago, but they have their own kind of purity to them. The later years drifted into an odd complexity, but those first 5 or 6 seasons were terrific. Where the early Twilight Zones always had a famous actor featured, the X Files had many quasi-unknown guests who turned out to be excellent actors. I suspect there are a fair number of X fans reading on this blog.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Hunt
Mead must be checking in to Ace of Spades HQ.
“Alright you lousy punks!”
—— Broderick Crawford
WTF…Barbara Feldon was a very sexy woman! In what world wasn’t she hot!?
What's My Line was a wonderful show - the interplay among the regulars was fantastic. The two women panelists, Arlene Francis and Dorothy Kilgallen, were both brilliant and Bennett Cerf was a titan of the publishing industry, but he wasn't a stuffed shirt. The guest panelists were usually stellar, too - Steve Allen and Martin Gabel were the most frequent, but they'd get prominent comics (Ernie Kovacs, Johnny Carson, Buddy Hackett, Woody Allen) as well. The host, John Charles Daly, was also wonderful; he was sophisticated and had a wicked sense of humor. And the guests included all manner of luminaries - all the big stars of stage and screen and people like FLW and various titans of industry and governmental figures. It's a great look at a world that's largely gone away.
No self-respecting biker would call himself a "rod hopper".
Liberace would.
"... Clint Eastwood appearing as a well-behaved member of a motorcycle club called the Lightning Bugs. Tell me about that. I thought it was inspired by the Marlon Brando movie 'Wild Ones'...."
In "The Wild Ones," Brando's motorcycle gang was called "The Beetles."
This guy has the best police stop videos on YouTube .
"Get Smart" came out in 1965. Culturally, that's a world away from 1956.
Look at the hair on Arlene Francis and Dorothy Kilgallen. A woman with hair like that in 1965 could not possibly appear on TV.
I'm struck by the pacing and dialogue of shows prior to the 80s. There's a lot of just casual interaction and being just people with each other, instead of the tight pacing and fast beats of anything after the 80s. Been watching through Emergency! and even as late as the 70s, the pacing is just more real to life. Even in a fast paced topic like that. The writing is honestly a lot better too, not in all the details but they really did capture some real drama and spent time with it in a way we lost later on (though the first seasons of ER somewhat have this). I was born in '74 so only know this show from reruns but it really is better than I thought it'd be as an adult watcher (instead of my KTLA viewing growing up in the 80s). The show really has a Law&Order but in a medical emergency character to it as well, the ER docs (including Bobby Troup and Julie London!) are equally featured.
KTLA daytime reruns really was a big part of my growing up, with a little KCAL thrown in, of course. Kids with their crappy courtroom reality, and other crap, don't know what they're missing in being handed good shows to watch we'd never find on our own. Which is is the problem with streaming. We can find anything but tend to stay within our already narrow choices.
It also has hit me how almost no shows are guy oriented anymore, like Emergency! was.
They had a hard time keeping Broderick Crawford sober long enough to get his scenes finished, in Highway Patrol. He was having trouble remembering his lines. They finally hired a young actor to help him along - Stuart Whitman, just a year or two into his career. Crawford was well-known during that time by the real California Highway Patrol, who usually drove him home when they caught him on the roads, because they didn't want to charge the guy that was giving them so much great publicity with his show.
I thought that the WML episode was utterly charming. A different era long far away.
- Krumhorn
An Emergency! episode I watched the other day, episode 2 of season 2, had a young John Travolta in it. His first credited role.
Host John Daly also served as the "emergency mystery guest" in case the planned mystery guest didn't show -- apparently there were some close calls, as little as one minute! (Daly finally appeared as the mystery guest in the final episode of "What's My Line" in 1967.)
One episode of WML the mystery guest was BIshop Fulton J. Sheen, who appeared in mufti. When he signed in, he wrote AMDG first, which stands for Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, and which a Good Catholic writes at the top of each page. There is a commenter who uses this as a handle
Fastest Gun Alive movie, obese Broderick Crawford is somehow cast as the most feared outlaw gunslinger in the west.
However, In the western frontier town of Cross Creek, storekeeper George Temple is a polite and soft spoken man with a secret past.
When he gets frustrated with a woman returning a dress at his store, he goes to the bar, has a couple of drinks..and..”Do you know who I am? I’m the fastest gun alive”.
FLW may have been Bidenesque at his age, so Dorthey had been given his name with instructions to cut it short just prior to cut to commercial.
That Highway Patrol episode has sure gotten around. I am a Life Member of the AMA as mentioned in the episode. Thankfully, not many think like that anymore. And, there are a lot fewer crazy people riding two wheels anymore.
Amazing music video, mezzrow. Never heard of Junior Brown. That was brilliant.
I was too young for Highway Patrol. And as a fast driver who didn't like speeding tickets, I was more a Bandit man than a Smokey man.
Here's Jackie Gleason as Buford T. Justice
Later in life I would discover that Coors is really overrated. Imagine going to prison for smuggling Coors! Now that's just sad.
Of all the serendipity: stopping at Cloquet Minnesota to (again) see the world's only Frank Lloyd Wright designed gas station.
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