DEBBIE WATSON (the movie "Marilyn Munster" and the final "Tammy") stars as a defiant Go-Go Girl who has a fit during a taping of the hit show "Whizbam" and creates a new dance craze called "The Tantrum".
Before chubby songbird Grammy-sensation Adele , there was Cass Elliott.
Look at her backup singers- The blonde on right is Edna Wright (later of "The Honey Cone" and Darlene Love's kid sister). Yes! Cass opens the show with backup vocalists Clydie King, Carol Willis and Edna Wright. Both Willis and Wright were in Honey Cone a few years later.
I betcha 1969 audiences had never seen a female singer as "HEAVY SET" on television before
-- little did they know what Americans would look like 40 years later.
If you had your first TV special - wouldn't you have Buddy Hackett and Martin Landau as your guests?
Watch Cass, Edna and Buddy shine despite the lackluster CBS Television City audience who seem to be looking for Cher or The Smothers Brothers. LINK is HERE
In her final successful sitcom until her CBS-imposed retirement in 1974, sixty-something Lucille Ball played Lucy Carter and pimped her real-life teen kids to audiences (Desi Jr was a hot box- but he eventually left the series and his mom's on set screaching). By then, Lucy heavily relied on cue cards and a parade of guest stars to cover the lack of physical comedy. Below you will find a swingin' 60s Liz Taylor; a caftanned Shelley Winters; Lawrence Welk; Wally Cox; fearless Flip Wilson; and sitcom guest 'must have' Eva Gabor who arrives wearing her sunglasses at night. Vivian Vance agreed to come on once a year but was more content to stay in Connecticut with her (gay) hubby/companion. Our Donna Lethal joked that the credit-sequence top-hatted Lucy marionnete was (for her) the most terrifying sight on television.
What do Roger Corman, Peter Bogdanovich, Boris Karloff and deranged Texas sniper Charles Whitman have in common? Targets, the 1968 Corman produced exploit flick that sought to mix silver screen behind the scenes drama with the violent current events of the mid 1960s.
Tim O'Kelly plays the young insurance salesman slowly unraveling ostensibly due to his experience in Viet Nam. On the other side of town a self-centered and eccentric director played by Peter Bogdanovich (of course) is trying to convince Karloff, the aging horror star, not to quit the business. He's got a new script cultivated straight from the current newspaper headlines, a mysterious story of real modern terror and he needs Karloff to make the picture.
After a few veiled warnings and a half-hearted attempt to explain his troubling thoughts to his wife our insurance salesman loses it. He guns down his family in their own home and heads for a nearby oil tank field where he can find his vantage point and start picking off drivers on the LA freeway. The whole thing ends with a showdown at the local drive-in. Karloff, Bogdanovich, et al. are there for the big bloody finish. An absurdist finale if there ever was one.
When Bye Bye Birdie went from stage on Broadway to a Hollywood film it brought its 2 male stars Dick Van Dyke and Paul Lynde. (Sorry Chita Rivera - your part is going to Janet Leigh). Paul joked that the film should be called "Hello Ann-Margret" since all the focus was on her sizzling sexpot appeal.
Charles Strouse was asked to write a title song (which the play didn't have) and he came up with this. It was referenced in Mad Men season 3.
Eyebrows manicured, Vaseline on the lens, axe ready---roll camera, Mr. Castle.
William Castle directs this nutty B-horror classic starring the delightfully off kilter Joan Crawford.Straightjacket opens with a flashback of Lucy Harbin (Crawford) arriving home, finding her husband drunk with another woman in their bed. Their daughter, Carol, is asleep in the next room.Lucy spies her cheating husband through the bedroom window and in a rage she grabs an axe, charges the house and chops the pair up in glorious Bill Castle fashion.
When Lucy arrives at the bus station we immediately see that she’s slow to aclimate to life outside the institution.Carol does her best to help her mother relax by buying her new clothes, jewelry and a perfectly creepy wig.This seems to help her state of mind, save for her bizarre conversations with the farmhand slaughtering chickens (played by a young George Kennedy) and a drunken flirt fit with Carol’s soon-to-be husband, Michael.But it isn’t long before the axe starts swinging again.
Michael’s parents don’t approve of his marriage to the daughter of a convicted and questionably rehabilitated axe-murderer which leads to a showdown between his mother and Lucy.When confronted with the rumor that she was away in a sanitarium Lucy finally lets it rip in blood-curdling Crawford screech, “No, it was an asylum!And it was hell!Twenty years of pure hell!”
At this point Castle kicks the crazy into high gear with bizarre plot twists, subliminal suggestion, rubber masks and a Crawford vs. Crawford showdown that will blow your mind.
I want to bawl like a baby when I hear/read the last lines of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory. That thing about kites and heaven ...oh shit...pass the hanky!
The story of young "Buddy" and his elderly cousin Sook was immortalized in the 1966 telefilm. The incredible (and loveable) Geraldine Page won a well deserved Emmy for her unforgettable performance. The film was narrated by Truman Capote himself.
For some the film was too grown-up and dull for a "Christmas Special" and it took them until adulthood to appreciate the beauty of this storytelling.
Stephanie Rothman (more on her in another post!) directed "It's a Bikini World" in 1967. Here's a groovy clip, featuring the Castaways and Carolyn Brandt in a red fringy bikini:
They're playing inside a sabre-tooth tiger's(?) mouth! Then I saw this clip from Ted Mikels' "Girl in Gold Boots":
(Thanks, Butch!)
Coincidence? Was this a location or a set that was recycled? A YouTuber commented that it was shot at a place called the Haunted House on Hollywood Blvd. Any LaLa Landers know? And why should I care? Both clips are FANGTASTIC!
I look forward to the 3rd season of Mad Men to see how 1963's Bert Cooper - President of Stirling Cooper - has made out with his merger.
Bert is played by actor Robert Morse who in 1963 was on Broadway in the middle of his 4 year run as a coffee achiever in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying". He won the Tony, learned how to do things "the company way" -- and reprised his role in the 1967 film.
In these harsh economic times - the lyrics are pretty spot on. Q. "Is there anything you're against?" A. "unemployment"
How this movie was included in the Critic's Choice catalog, heaven only knows, but I had to look it up once I read the description: "Biller's faithful homage to '60s and '70s sexpolitation-with a feminist twist..."
And then the more I read about her, the more convinced I was that this chick is "one of us"! Hooray!!! It's on Netflix, too!
Now, I have two questions: How did she raise the $$ for this? It doesn't look that cheap! AND: ANNA, will you give ME a job??
