Happy 100th birthday to the late Richard Kiley

Today would have been Richard Kiley's 100th birthday, and while he is known and celebrated as a fine performer of stage and screen, I personally remember him best for one specific host/narration gig--no, not Jurassic Park, but a documentary that aired on HBO many, many times in the early 1980s:

Some Call Them...Freaks is a 1981 HBO documentary spotlighting "different" individuals like Robert Wadlow, Julia Pastrana, Tom Thumb, and others. It has a simple, often stark style, reliant on basic recreations, still photos, and Kiley's sober voice-over. Yes, there is some showmanship--Kiley dresses like a magician and appears on a stage set up to resemble a sideshow backdrop--but the overall pace and tone are subdued.

Check out the dedication at the beginning. The plain white text on black background with no music prefigures something serious. At least, it did when I was a kid. I knew this was something strange yet meaningful, and this special haunted me a bit. It was meant to humanize the spotlighted people, and it did so in a way, but I was also, for lack of a better word, freaked out by the presentation.

I still watched it, though! I must have seen pieces of this many times on HBO. Years later, I got into the "Hey, you can find old stuff on YouTube" phase of my life, and I was thrilled to find this special. It was more subtle than I remembered, and today it really stands out for being less hyper than what we see today. The style is much more akin to the kinds of educational films we used to see in school than current documentary fashion. And you know what? I like it!

Kiley does a great job in this special, and it will always be my favorite role of his. Happy 100th!

It's National Doctors Day and a great time to celebrate our favorites, like Dr. Johnny Fever.

Wait, isn't MUSIC the doctor?

Well, we can just slide over inside the office, then, and celebrate this guy"

Or do we have it wrong again?

This Day in TV History: The Academy Awards and the NCAA Championship!

Nowadays, putting a big event like the Academy Awards on the same night as the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, or vice versa, might be seen as a slap in the face. Yet back then the hoops wasn't as big a deal as it is today, and things were just different. So it wasn't that unusual that 40 years ago tonight, March 29, 1983, both events went head to head in prime time.

In the 1982 Oscars, hosted by Johnny Carson on ABC, the big winners included Chariots of Fire (most wins and Best Picture), Raiders of the Lost Ark (tied for most wins with 4), and On Golden Pond. The stars of the latter film, Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, won the major acting honors, so this night was sort of a commemoration of two screen legends.

Over on CBS, starting an hour earlier, North Carolina got coach Dean Smith his first title in a win over Georgetown. The Tarheels featured a young guard named Michael Jordan, who hit the go-ahead bucket with 15 seconds left. So this was kind of like the first step in the creation of a legend (and don't forget Hall of Famers James Worthy and Patrick Ewing, who also starred in the game).

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With its hour head start, the basketball drew an average of 17 million viewers, but the Oscars' rating was over 46 million! it seems strange to see two huge events going against each other, but as we mentioned in a bonus episode a while back, it was not unprecedented. The previous year, both events were scheduled to go head to head, but the attempted assassination of President Reagan made the Academy and ABC move the awards a night, while the NCAA deliberated before deciding to continue the game as planned.

A look at the new RetroFan magazine

I joked in our Facebook group that if there was any doubt that RetroFan was a magazine for me, it should be dispelled by one of the stories in the latest issue: "Rare Pro Wrestling Erasers." That piece is indeed a brief but informative look at the Japanese items in question and the M.U.S.C.L.E. toy line inspired by it. There's a lot more for us Seventies/Eighties TV fans in the ish.

Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse is a product of the early Sixties, but I remember watching reruns as a kid, and Will Murray has a great history of the Bob Kane (sort of--read the article) cartoon. Andy Mangels has a typically thorough look at the confusing story of how two competing Ghostbusters animated series hit the airwaves at the same time.

Other stories are only tangentially connected to the BOTNS zone but are still worthwhile, like the interview with cover girl Caroline Munro and a summary of Watergate that gets into the pop culture aspects of that saga. The Wacky Packages history touches on many products we all saw on TV ads, of course. There's a short "retro crush" appreciation of Kim Richards. A piece on the Red Skelton Museum of American Comedy is basically a promo for the place (it's co-written by the museum's director), but I enjoyed it and had no idea the building existed.

It's a bit less focused on our era than some other issues but another fine issue. You can find out more here, and I point out again, this is not a compensated promo, but just me passing along the latest on my favorite magazine.

Top Ten #170

1) Magnum P.I.: The OG Magnum--you know, what, forget it, we don't need to distinguish here; this is just Magnum, and the other one can be Reboot Magnum--is now on Blu-Ray thanks to Mill Creek. The company has a spotty record, but Cereal at Midnight says this set is pretty good:

2) Academy Awards: We have a gentleman's bet with the producers about whether the show gets a higher rating than the Battys. I doubt anything as interesting as what happened on the show that aired this date in 1973:

3) Al Michaels: The veteran broadcaster is gonna get paid--straight up P-A-I-D for calling Thursday Night Football for Prime next season. I hope he replaces his patented sly references to the point spreads with sly references to  The Jeffersons reruns on Prime.

4) Candid Camera: Shout! Factory bought the rights to the long-running franchise and plans to start airing episodes on its streaming service later this year. The joke will be on me if they are all from the 2001 PAX run.

5) Mannix: Stop me if you heard this one before: Decades' Weekend Binge features Mannix. I guess ol' Joe does well for them.

6) ABC Double Feature: 50 years ago tonight, the network used this fancy title to burn off two unsold pilots: Wheeler and Murdock and The New Healers. The former stars Jack Warden as a P.I. who teams up with his slain partner's son (Christopher Stone) to solve a crime involving "the syndicate." In the latter, Leif Erickson is the main doctor in a rural community, aided by Robert Foxworth and Kate Jackson. Lee Goldberg's Unsold Pilots quotes series creator Sterling Silliphant saying he hoped to sneak in an attack on "the good ole boy (BS) of the AMA" in the guise of a standard medical show.

7) National Joe Day: Hey, is this why Mannix is featured again this weekend? Here is one of my own favorite Joes:

8) The Wizard of Oz: The classic film, a venerable favorite even then, aired 40 years ago tonight on CBS. I keep thinking the network aired the movie around Thanksgiving each year when I was growing up, and I keep being proven wrong!

9) National Scribble Day: Here's one fellow who might participate:

10) Scoey Mitchell: R.I.P.

Blow me down! It's National Spinach Day!

If any food item ever needed a PR campaign, it's spinach. Why don't we celebrate National Spinach Day by enjoying some Popeye? 

Uh, unfortunately I couldn't find a Popeye Spinach ad, but you can wash down all that green stuff with a cool Dr. Pepper!

This Day in TV History: Cagney and Lacey premieres

40 years ago tonight, CBS premiered Cagney & Lacey, a cop show notable for featuring two female leads. Quick, which one was Cagney and which one was Lacey?

I never could tell because I didn't really watch the show when it was on; it was something I was always aware of but rarely on my TV. The show had an interesting, sometimes checkered off-screen background with controversy, recasting, and even an early cancellation (It would make an interesting subject for our show someday) but ultimately lasted 7 seasons and 125 episodes plus a handful of TV movies--not bad considering many doubted audiences would watch a show about two "lady cops."

Cagney & Lacey is not shown often today, and it's even spotty in streaming. You can find some of it on Pluto and some of it on Roku Channel, though I think the whole series was available elsewhere in recent years. 1980s drama is not at all common on TV these days, though. Action/sci-fi shows--maybe. Dramas like this one, Hill Street, Elsewhere--10:00 PM shows that covered serious issues and attempted to win Emmys? Not so much.

By the way, Tyne Daly was Lacey, & Sharon Gless was Cagney, and though my perception was that Daly got 95% of the acclaim, each won multiple Emmys and other awards for their work on the series,