March 29, 2016
And so, it's hot dogs and crêpes Suzette in Heaven today....
We have to say good-bye to another icon of our childhood....
"Patty Duke, an Oscar-winning actress renowned at midcentury as a child star of stage, film and television, who, amid public struggles with bipolar disorder, went on to cultivate a respected screen career in adulthood, died on Tuesday at a hospital near her home in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. She was 69."
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What is shocking is that her identical cousin died at the same time. What are the odds?
Since celebrities die in threes, we're already 2/3 there.
...a hot dog makes her lose control.
"A Hebrew National for the lady, and keep them coming!"
Watching the credits roll by, and I saw the name William Schallert. He did a lot of television in the 60's. I was surprised to learn that he is still alive at 93 years of age.
She had a terrible childhood. Those wounds are serious. I hope she found peace in her 60s. RIP Patty. Many loved you.
Her identical cousin, Cathy, is inconsolable.
We have to say good-bye to another icon of our childhood....
Speak for yourself.
We were having this conversation the other day. Which would be more difficult? Growing up in a third world country in extreme poverty and making a transition to a first world country, or growing up in a mentally ill family and transitioning to a normal adulthood?
I discovered the Patty Duke Show in my 20s on Nick at Nite. It wasn't a *good* show, and it wasn't *funny* in a modern sense. But it was watchable as hell, and I did watch it. It was comfort food. I grew up a little later on the Brady Bunch and Happy Days, but they followed the same formulas pretty slavishly. I could watch Patty Duke and feel, "That's what TV is." For good or ill.
That's bad news, or at least news I didn't want to hear.
"... I saw the name William Schallert..."
He played one of the teachers on my all-time favorite 60s TV show, "Dobie Gillis."
And a weird thing was that the actress who played his wife on "Patty Duke" also played one of the teachers on "Dobie Gillis."
William Schallert, one of the faces you recognize from TV but don't know the name. Just checked, he's still alive.
One of my 4 successive pre-teen tv crushes in the 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1965 seasons, along with Donna Douglas, Tina Louise and Diana Rigg.
She looked older than her age too.
...my all-time favorite 60s TV show, "Dobie Gillis."
Propinquity!!
I was maybe two years too old to watch the Patty Duke show. But it always sounded like a ripoff of Parent Trap.
Patty Duke in stunning black and white sweaters, what a memory!
So much better watching rock & roll legends overdose themselves at a young age when I was a teen in the 1970s. Provided a true coda to their careers, passing on like out of control freight trains on a downhill track with lotsa curves and cliffs.
And then came Punk, and Hip Hop, where self-desrtruction or gangsta capping, before the release of a 2nd album, was rejoiced as culmination of a well-led life of artistry.
Lasting a while after one become famous is a learned skill.
I was born in the 1980s, but thanks to Nick-at-Nite I grew up on sitcoms from the 50's and 60's. Loved "Patty Duke" and "Dobie Gillis." Bob Denver's beatnik was hilarious.
At my back, I always hear.....You can really hear the rumble of the wheels when the child stars start croaking........Tuesday Weld is still alive. I wonder if I'll outlive her.
Her advocacy for mental health issues was laudable. RIP.
As long as Hailey Mills is still alive.
FWIW those critics who claim the SATs are slanted towards middle-class white America and thus put minorities at a disadvantage may have a point. When I took my SATs in Spring, 1962, one of the vocab words was Zeldas "Propinquity." I smiled and thought to myself that this world would never have had a sno-balls chance in Hell of making the test, were it not for YVs Dobie Gillis, lol.
YV=TV
Identical cousins are almost as rare as identical bellhops.
Or identical cheese hostesses.
Thursday at 9 Char Char.
Patty Duke was great. RIP.
Re the SAT's, I remember black folks watched Dobie Gillis, too, especially youngsters like us. My black friends and classmates used to vocalize the one-season, jazzy, be-boppy Dobie Gillis opening theme a capella. Very cool.
With only three channels then, there was a considerable commonality in TV viewing.
The Patty Duke Show was not a favorite of mine, but my sisters loved it.
"A hot dog makes her lose control"?
I think it was Nick at Nite that used to call William Schallert "the hardest working man on TV." He was everywhere you looked. I can even remember seeing him in an episode of the original Star Trek series. And I see from IMDB that he had an uncredited role on 2 Broke Girls as recently as 2014 (and also see that I had forgotten his recurring roles in Get Smart and The Wild, Wild West, two shows that I watched a lot back in the day).
Chris Kimball of America's Test Kitchen gives me some of the same vibe as the typical Schallert role, complete down to the bow tie. The test kitchen is a mile or so from my apartment. I just heard from someone who works for GBH that Kimball is leaving the Test Kitchen/Cook's Country and doing some kind of new venture of his own.
In addition to vague memories of watching it in my youth (I'm just about three years younger than Althouse) and later in reruns on Nick at Nite, my Dobie Gillis connection is that Sheila Kuehl was in my law school class. Saw her around campus a few times (she was unmistakable for anyone familiar with the TV show), but I didn't know her and don't remember being in any classes with her. I recall her being the "class marshal" (and Wikipedia says she was president of the student council), but I didn't know anyone who gave a hoot about such things back then.
--gpm
P.S. A propos of nothing, the nice young woman at DDs (Dunkin' Donuts) asked me tonight if I wanted the senior discount. I said "Sure, why not? It's just great to get old!"
People used to know words like "propinquity" because they used to read something called "books."
who was the dad..he was a constant too
old enought to have watched the first episodes..but their cousins
Sad to hear this today. My sisters loved this show (they are your age Ann), but like most TV shows before my time (the Munsters, My Three Sons) I enjoyed on local And UHF channels as a child. Identical cousins, good gravy, but I can sing the song in my sleep.
It seems she married a nice man who loved and took care of her the last 30 years. Seems her son's appreciated and loved him for that. Nice that she found that stability and love later in her life. God bless Patty.
William Shallert will always be Nancy Drew's dad to me. The kind of guy who relaxes while still wearing a tie. Sunday night was always about Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew mysteries. Another theme song I can hum!
oh ..it was the dad
I had the theme song in my music library (a member of it for many, many years), so that was easy to dial up. RIP, Patty Duke.
Also:
"The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" ran from '59-'63. "The Patty Duke Show" ran from '63-'66.
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Somewhere in the (too many) still unpacked boxes of books & etc. & etc. around here are Max Shulman artifacts, passed down to me in later years from those very same folks in my family who intro'd me to those things from very earliest childhood.
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Eh, maybe someday.
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OTOH, there really is no rush to unearth them. I mean, what would that matter? The quiet revolution that Shulman launched has been traveling steady on for a half-century now. It hardly seems worth the time to go back, no matter the impetus.
This the "jazzy" opening theme song. By then the name of the show had been shortened to just "Dobie Gillis". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WnWSy7PVnM
William Schallert was also the admiral on Get smart. He was only on four episodes.
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