Top Ten #419

1) Ted Danson, Jean Smart, Ed Bradley: These three and others were inducted into the TV Academy Hall of Fame this week. In case you're wondering, and you should be, Danson won a Batty in our Season 6 for Outstanding Performance by a Male. Smartt and Bradley have not won one, but maybe if we have an Outstanding Earring category someday...

2) The Cartoon Iceberg: Kudos to Secret Galaxy for another entertaining installment of this look at obscure Eighties cartoons. 

3) Honeymoon Suite: This ABC late-night special that aired 50 years ago tonight is described as "bridal suite high jinks," but it stars Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie. I'm-a scared, folks. I'm a-scared.

4) Georgia Championship Wrestling: the WWE Vault YouTube channel is posting vintage episodes from 1983 this week. See early glimpses of The Road Warriors, Ole Anderson and Stan Hansen as babyfaces, and Iron Sheik mere months before he would become WWF champ.

5) Highway to Heaven: The 1980s Michael Landon vehicle landed on Prime Video this week along with The Ray Bradbury Theater. Now, there's an interesting double bill!

6) The Babe: ESPN reaired this one-man show 40 years ago tonight. It's a filmed version of a Broadway play starring, as legendary slugger Babe Ruth...Max Gail? I mean, I guess it's better than Morey Amsterdam.

7) National Roller Coaster Day: Go and make some memories while not getting in a horrible freak accident of some kind!

8) Steve Allen's Laughback: There wasn't much on TV for non-sports fans and non-political junkies 50 years ago tonight since the GOP convention and Monday Night baseball dominated prime time. If you were lucky enough, though, you could watch Foster Brooks, Andy Griffith, Steve Lawrence, and Jayne Meadows (That last one is a great get for Steve) on this series.

9) Lesley Ann Warren and Anita Gillette: Happy 80th and 90th birthdays, respectively.

10) R.I.P.: Jon Cypher, Ben Jones:

Top Ten #418

1) Spider-Man: The hero continues to dominate pop culture, though some are sorry they didn't see a Nicholas Hammond cameo in the new movie.

2) John Candelaria: 50 years ago tonight, the Candy Man no-hit the Dodgers on ABC's Monday Night baseball.

3) Flo's Place: Not to be confused with 1980s spinoff Flo, this 1976 unsold pilot, airing this night in 1976, stars Della Reese--yes, not even Florence Halop! Reese is a widow who runs a boarding house in San Pedro. Interestingly, this version is a reworking of a previous failed pilot called Twice in a Lifetime with Ernest Borgnine and Vito Scotti. This version subtracts those two but adds Art Metrano!

4) National Book Lovers Day: Ideally celebrated by reading a book about television!

5) Billy Crystal: Don't Get Me Started: An HBO original special airing this date in 1986 combining sketches, standup, and quite possibly a few things that produce cringes 40 years later.

6) The Second Annual Unofficial Bachelor Awards: We go back to 50 years ago for this one, a repeat installment of ABC's Wide World of Entertainment. Joan Rivers hosted this pageant that, according to TV Party, featured competitions in swimsuit wearing plus agility and speed.

7) Flannery and Quill: If Flo's Place didn't do it for you in 1976, this one came next on NBC. it had already been shown months earlier, but this Carl Reiner sitcom paired Red Buttons with Harold Gould as mismatched roomies.

8) STAR Comics: I wish there would have been more TV ads about comic books when I was a kid:

9) National Dog Month: Shoutout to the great Heinrich of Midvale!

10) Gus Brown and the Midnight Brewster: We close with yet another unsold pilot that aired on this date. Hey, it was summer! This movie-length effort premiered in 1985 but was rerun on NBC in 1986. Here is the letterboxd description:
Two ex-GIs, a fast-talking hustler from Detroit and an Oklahoma hayseed, just returned from WWII, team up with the latter’s bubble-headed fiancée to make a killing racing on the Southern dogtrack circuit they had bought. 

The cast: Ron Glass, John Schneider, and Teri Copley. How amazing would it be if Glass were the Oklahoma hayseed and Schneider the Detroit hustler?

RetroFan #44 and #45

I am running behind on my RetroFan posts and just got another issue this week! I need to step it up.

My favorite magazine, RetroFan from TwoMorrows Publishing, gives us another winner with issue 44. I must say, though, it is relatively light on BOTNS-adjacent material. However, Will Murray's deep dive into The Rifleman is a great read about a show Mike and I enjoyed covering on the podcast a few years ago. Heck, we gave it a Batty for Outstanding Episode!

An interesting article covers It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman! The stage musical debuted in 1966 but had an ill-received TV version in 1975.

James Bond and the Monkees aren't exactly BOTNS subjects, but the latter was on in reruns a lot, and, hey, the Bond movies were on TV a lot! The coverage is welcome regardless. There are also pieces on Dr. Dememto and Little Shop of Horrors.

In #45, RetroFan goes all out to cover the Bicentennial. This is a tremendous issue that really summons good feelings and nostalgia for a different time, and I don't mean 1776. The musical 1776 has a feature article in here, but I was even more interested in Mark Voger's general look at the phenomenon of how America celebrated it's 200th anniversary. There is a cool examination of themed comics of the time, too.

The mag has a story on The Match Game, and my only qualm is that it doesn't address Richard Dawson's infamous grumpiness when he left the series. Ark II gets a two-part profile that begins here, and Will Murray contributes an informative account of The Green Hornet.

I always enjoy RetroFan, and issue 44 is no exception, but 45 is one of my favorite editions of the magazine's run! Now I need to dive into 46!

Top Ten #417

1) Spider-Man: After seeing the new movie, I am confident in saying they got the costume and the effects even better than the 1977 series did!

2) Poor Devil: The fun Retro Rules YT channel took a look at this TV movie the other day. As I said in our Facebook group, first he talked Killdozer, now Poor Devil; surely Pray for the Wildcats is on the way!

3) New York local TV stations: The Outstanding Entertainment Hour released a fun episode devoted to memories of my beloved channels 5, 9, and 11. The guys' memories lean a tad earlier than mine--more Seventies than Eighties, perhaps--but it's a great episode that is right in my wheelhouse.

4) National Friendship Day: Celebrate with an iconic set of TV friends, like Working Stiffs:

5) Amelia Earhart: Yet another effort to find traces of the famed aviator will begin in October. Yet another effort will be stubborn in its avoidance of Leisure World in New Jersey.

6) Hasbro Legends: This new free OTA channel airs reruns of programs like Transformers, Jem, and G.I. Joe. It's also on Prime Video and perhaps other streaming platforms.

7) Knight Rider: It looks like a slow month for new-to-streaming BOTNS-era shows, but Tubi has added the original Knight Rider to its offerings.

8) The Rifleman: This brief story on Me-TV's site has some thoughtful 1961 comments from Chuck Connors on the Western series Mike and I discussed a few seasons ago.

9) Bill White: The MLB veteran received the Buck O'Neill Award at the Baseball Hall of Fame last weekend. Among his many accomplishments in a life devoted to the game: Putting up with Phil Rizzuto for years in the WPIX Yankees booth!

10) Butch Patrick: Happy birthday to the former Eddie Munster, and shoutout to our Facebook friend Jason for showing off some recent cool Munsters purchases!

Top Ten #416

1) Bridget Loves Bernie: In an outta-nowhere kind of move, Sony announced it would release this one-season wonder (Canceled due to controversy, not ratings) on Blu-Ray in September. Maybe more short-lived series are on the way.

2) Ace: In this unsold pilot airing 50 years ago tonight, our boy DVP (Dick Van Patten) appears, but the star is Bob Dishy as bumbling private detective Edward R. Ace.

3) Network: This British company appears to be back in business, and though it does not distribute in the USA, it has brought many British shows to disc and seems set to deliver more!

4) The Bureau: Another unsold pilot from 50 years ago. Richard Gilliand and John Lawlor are two mismatched government agents in this sitcom. Other names in the show include Phil Leeds, Barbara Rhoades, Henry Gibson, and Arnold Stang.

5) National Aunts and Uncles Day:

6) San Diego Comic Con: Many of the entertainment industry's stars are gathered in San Diego this weekend to make announcements, hype stuff, etc. I think if I were there, I'd be focused on finding affordable reading copies of Jackie Gleason or Bilko comics!

7) Factory Entertainment action figures: Mike posted about this in our Facebook group:

Airwolf, Battlestar, Magnum, Miami Vice, and bionics! These are not all spectacular-looking, and they will likely be super pricy, but I think I want just about all of them.

8) "J. Digger Doyle": I haven't listened to this episode yet, but The Columbo Podcast recently released one of its "Cosy Crime Classics" installments devoted to "J. Digger Doyle." Longtime BOTNS fans may recall we discuss that very same show (and it's a good one) in our Magnum P.I. episode.

9) We're Puttin' on the Ritz: 40 years ago tonight, CBS ran this unsold pilot, which pairs Leah Ayers and Matt McCoy as secretary and chauffeur for a reclusive multimillionaire. They get into lighthearted adventures and capers. As Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times, "Mr. McCoy is no Cary Grant or even Fred McMurray, but he plays the role with a cheeky insouciance, projecting the air of a man with an eyebrow perpetually arched."

10) An Evening with Perlman and Zuckerman: Also on this night in 1986, Bravo featured this program devoted to the music of Mozart. Yes, Bravo.

Top Ten #415

1) Amazing Stories: Secret Galaxy devoted a fun episode to the 1980s Spielberg series this week. One thing that stands out is how many commenters talk about how much they loved the show. And, hey, how cool would it have been to get a Spielberg TV boxset from Universal with episodes of Night Gallery, Owen Marshall, and the like?

2) Voyagers! Here's a cool video showcasing an amazing replica of the Omni:

Just don't look at the price. I think I'd have to do my own time travel, going back 40 years and playing the stock market, to afford it.

3) The Tonight Show: 50 years ago tonight, guest host Don Rickles (Seriously, did Johnny take the entire summer off?) welcomed Jack Klugman and Charo!

4) Emergency!: FETV has a marathon of the series today to honor the late Randolph Mantooth. As I write this, Mother Nature seems to be wreaking havoc on me, perhaps trying to pay tribute to the series by creating emergencies.

5) July 19, 1976: ABC had the Summer Olympics from Montreal, but CBS offered Christmas in July with a rerun of the "Christmas Party" episode of Maude. I don't remember offhand, but I wouldn't be surprised if Maude bellowed, 'Who am I, MARK SPITZ?" in that episode.

6) Perfect Strangers: Warners is releasing the complete series on Blu-Ray. Surely Search is right behind it.

7) Unsold pilots: 40 years ago tonight, 3 unsold pilots hit the network airwaves in prime time. 

Maggie is a lighthearted international intrigue series with Stefanie Powers working at a PR firm owned by Ava Gardner! Here's a clip:

She's With Me is from the team of David Duclon, Ron Leavitt, and Michael Moye. Dinah Manoff and Jerry Hall are comically different friends. The episode is below:

Crazy Dan from Glen Larson is described by Lee Goldberg as a "Dirty Harry spoof" starring John Beck. Goldberg adds, "The concept bears a striking resemblance to the subsequent 1986 ABC sitcom Sledge Hammer." A Larson show reminiscent of another series? A coincidence, I'm sure.

8) Just Men: Retro Rules took a look at the short-lived Betty White game show this week, and once again, you can get a glimpse of Robert Pine in the video (Of course, you will want to seek out one of the full episodes on which he appeared).

I find White's catchphrase at the intro kind of odd: "Why are we here? Because it's just men!"

9) Soccer: My heart is with Argentina today, but the rest of the year it's with the NASL.

10) R.I.P. Hal Williams, Scott Bryce: Obits seemed to highlight Sanford and Son, but I remember him best for his work as the cool dad Lester on 227. Bryce's character was on late-stage Facts of Life and actually married Jo at the end.

More BOTNS-related stuff on YT: "Killdozer"

There have been a few new videos related to beloved (?) 1974 TV movie Killdozer! Mike and I discuss the movie in this episode.

Here's a vintage promo for the original broadcast. I believe we shared it before, but I saw it on a channel I follow:

And here's a fun video from Paul Van Scott looking at the movie: