I love this video from our Spidey playlist that accompanies this week's podcast:
Sanger-Harris was a Texas-based department store chain that was eventually absorbed by Macy's. This ad looks like it could be unauthorized. There is no trademark notice, the name "Spider-Man" is not vocalized, and, well, if it were official, wouldn't you make a bigger deal of it?
Maybe not! There was apparently a Spidey/Hulk promotional comic book distributed in Dallas newspapers to promote Sanger-Harris, so there was some kind of official relationship there. I never saw this ad before we did this podcast episode, and I'd love to know more about it.
1): Spider-Man: One of our favorite fictional characters gets his spotlight on the podcast this week as we examine the 1970s CBS live-action series that, for whatever reason, has remained on the virtual sidelines even as the character has had spectacular success in the movies.
2) Clones: The series was way ahead of its time with its depiction of the ethical dilemmas of cloning, not to mention practical realities like the possibility that the process is bound to create an "evil" version of the person. Wait, no, that probably happened in many other shows. Well, anyway, we got to see a frog cloned!
3) Michael Pataki: I want to give a shout-out to the former Captain Barbara on The Amazing Spider-Man. He may have been an inessential character--the producers certainly showed they thought so by jettisoning him before the second season--but I enjoy Pataki's performance and the dynamic he shares with Nicholas Hammond's Spider-Man and Peter Parker.
4) Spider-sense: The series is inconsistent with how it handles this power, and I feel that while it's cool that it does attempt it, it's a missed opportunity to create a distinctive presentation for a super power that you can depict on screen without blowing the budget.
5) Grant Tinker: The former producer and head honcho of NBC would have turned 100 today, and if he were, I'd ask him if he gave up too soon on Jennifer Slept Here.
6) American Guild of Variety Artists Entertainer of the Year Awards: 50 years ago, The Great One hosted this special on CBS, and it sounds amazing. In addition to Gleason hosting, Edye Gorme was honored as Singer of the Year. John Denver, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Liberace, and Tony the Wonder Horse also made appearances!
According to Cathy Rudolph's biography of Lynde, as cited on Wikipedia, he was honored as the funniest man of the year and then gave his award to Gleason, calling him the funniest man ever/
7) National Milk Day: It does a body good, or so we were told.
8) The Protectors: Roku Channel just added the 1972 ITC British series with Robert Vaughn to its lineup.
9) The Love Boat: John Siuntres of Word Balloon just launched a Love Boat rewatch podcast, E-Motion Sickness, which makes it at least 3 regular pods devoted to the series now, two launching in recent months. This comes after we reran our own Love Boat episode this season. Coincidence?
Yeah, probably, but I am kind of amazed that there are now two episode-by-episode Love Boat podcasts! Well, what did we expect, an Omnibus rewatch?
10) R.I.P. T.K. Carter: There is a lot of interesting material about the 1984 sitcom Just Our Luck in The Sweeps: A Year in the Life of a Television Network by Cameron Stauth and Mark Christensen.
On this week's pod, we mention the recent Marvel Legends action figure based on the CBS Spider-Man TV show. It was hard to find, but Laurie found it while we were shopping, and of course I had to snag it. Welcome to the collection! There is Nicholas Hammond head, but this is pretty cool, and I like the backdrop and packaging.
To expand on the discussion about how CBS handled the 1977-1978 Amazing Spider-Man series: After reading references to the show being bumped all over the place, I found some details. It looks like Season 1 was actually consistent!
After the September 14, 1977 pilot movie, the show itself ran Wednesdays at 8:00 P.M. EST beginning April 5, 1978. Then things got a little off kilter.
Season 2 premiered September 5 at 8:00 P.M. EST, and the next episode debuted the following week at the same day and time. This was against the killer ABC combo of Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, by the way.
Then for some reason The Paper Chase moved into that slot, and Spidey didn't return until Saturday, November 25, once again at 8:00. The following Tuesday, CBS put Rhoda and Good Times at that hour for a couple weeks, then ran specials until December 30, when Spidey finally came back.
The show took another hiatus until Wednesday, February 7, but the week after that, the network ran Valentine's Day specials. Spidery returned February 21, but then he vanished again as CBS slotted Married: The First Year at 8:00 EST on Wednesdays.
The final episode, the two-part "The Chinese Web," aired July 6, leading off Friday night. Everything else that evening, including lead-out Dallas, was a rerun.
My conclusion is that the series had a steady time slot for its first handful of episodes in Spring 1978, but when it returned in Fall, it never had a chance to establish its second season. CBS did appear to be holding back episodes for some reason rather than attempting to build it out as a successful ongoing series.
*Thank you for listening to your favorite friendly neighborhood podcast! We hope you enjoy this week's look at a series that is officially unavailable for some reason but is very available unofficially!
*Amazing Spider-Man aired on CBS 1977-1979 in a variety of time slots for a total of 13 episodes.
*We talk about Spider-Man and His Amazing Friendshere and Spider-Womanhere.
*29 episodes (short segments) of Spidey Super Stories aired on PBS' Electric Company from 1974-1977. A children-focused Marvel comic series of the same name ran from 1974 to 1982 for 57 issues.
*The 1982 Incredible Hulk cartoon remains unavailable for official viewing.
*The Challenge of the Super Friends is the third season of Super Friends, premiering in 1978. In it, the Legion of Doom, a collection of villains, challenges the heroes.
*The second-season theme song is credited to Dana Kaproff.
*The episode with Joanna Cameron is the two-parter "The Deadly Dust."
*Vince Howard was active from 1963 to 1993. He was a regular on Emergency!
*I wondered about the sporadic scheduling of this series, and tomorrow I'll post some more info on how CBS handled it!
*Please enjoy our video playlist for this episode with promos, intros, commercials, and more! Click below to go right to it, or you can always visit our official YouTube page for all of our past episodes and similar lists for each one of them!
At a time when Superman made us believe a man could fly, the Hulk rampaged across American TVs, Wonder Woman dazzled audiences, and even Doctor Strange and Captain America starred in TV movies, one of comics' greatest heroes also swung his way onto the airwaves--Spider-Man! In a short-lived, often rescheduled TV series, Nicholas Hammond starred as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, and while the translation lacks in many areas, it has a certain charm. The season one episode "Night of the Clones" comes closest to capturing elements from the comics from a grumpy J. Jonah Jameson to weird science and Spidey facing off with Spidey!
