duaneiac

I always liked the protraits on this series . . .

So what did you think of it? I first saw it as a teen when I snuck into a screening held for a film studies class I was not enrolled in. It wowed me then and I have seen it several times since. It remains my all-time favorite dramatic film. Enjoyed it. Can understand why it was so influential. Not convinced by 'the greatest film of all time' hype but that sort of thing generally passes me by. I'm not a film buff. Have to say I didn't see the 'Rosebud' ending coming until about a minute before the climax. The main flaw in that film is nobody was around to actually hear him say "Rosebud". I kind of assumed the nurse who came into the room and pulled the covers over his head was the one who heard his final word. Surely a man of his wealth would have had an intercom system to connect him with his caregivers 24 hours a day once he became bedridden? I figure she heard his last utterance and the crash of the snow globe via the intercom and then came in to check up on him.

I haven't seen Petticoat Junction in decades, don't recall much about it outside of the wonderful showcase it provided for Bea Benaderet and Edgar Buchanan, and can't say much in its defense. Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres were both far from "juvenile" however. The comedy on each could at times be simple and could be appreciated at that level by juveniles, but each show also had an underlayer of humor that the viewer had to have a little sophistication to appreciate. Green Acres often made fun of its very nature. I vaguely recall one episode that began with Lisa Douglas making breakfast and as the toast popped up it would have the writers' credits on it and as the eggs fried they would have the director's credit on them. She then made some remark about all these strange words showing up in her cooking. I wish I remembered it better so I could adequately describe it, but it was a very funny bit. One of my favorite running gags from the show would be whenever Oliver Wendell Douglas went into one of his stirring speeches about the glory and importance of the American farmer or some such and softly in the background we would hear a fife playing a stirring patriotic melody ("Battle Hymn of The Republic" or some such). That in itself was a satire of the many movies which featured such stirring music coming out of nowhere to augment dramatic scenes. The extra joke GA added is that the characters around Mr. Douglas could also hear this fife music and were just as confused and puzzled by this odd phenomenon as we viewers should have been had we not been inured to it because of countless viewings of scenes using such musical enhancement. I can fully understand people not liking these shows and I would not try to convince any one to like them, but I don't think "juvenile" ia an appropriate word to describe them

I really wish some one would do an anthology series like this again with every week a different story with different characters and different stars. Everything depends on the story/script, of course, so some here fare better than others. Some top flight writers were used including Evan Hunter, Charlotte Armstrong, Stirling Silliphant and one script by Ray Bradbury that seems like it would have been much better suited for The Twilight Zone. It's also a kick to see the collection of actors here -- some former movie stars like Joseph Cotten, Raymond Massey and Laurence Harvey, some rising stars like Dick Van Dyke, Dennis Weaver, Brian Keith (who spends 90% of his episode acting in an iron lung), James Franciscus (and even in supporting roles one finds the likes of pre-stardom Patrick Macnee, Richard Chamberlain and James Coburn), and great character actors like Edgar Buchanan, Harry Morgan, Jackie Coogan, Sam Jaffe, and the wonderful Oscar Homolka. One episode features a young Steve McQueen costarring with a very puffy and not at all well looking Peter Lorre. One of the best episodes features a tense battle of wits between Walter Matthau and Robert Vaughn. The episode Mr. Hitchcock chose to direct this season was very pedestrian and his direction did nothing to enliven the story. So what did you think of it? I first saw it as a teen when I snuck into a screening held for a film studies class I was not enrolled in. It wowed me then and I have seen it several times since. It remains my all-time favorite dramatic film.

Green Acres (another favorite of mine) was a really absurdist program. If CBS had asked Luis Bunuel to come up with a sitcom for them, I doubt if he could have created anything stranger.

I guess the one exception would be Miss Brigitte Bardot, at least according to the song "Zombie Jamboree": "All the men think they're Casanova When they see that she's bare foot all over"

I don't know that I would agree that those two shows "went to shit when they switched over to color". I don't know exactly what years that happened for each show. Both programs were long-running and I think that is a problem for many series -- trying to squeeze yet more juice out of a premise that has pretty much been used up. For me The Beverly Hillbillies really "jumped the shark" that season they went to England, whenever that was. For the Andy Griffith Show, in addition to losing multiple Emmy Award winning Don Knotts, the show also lost Gomer Pyle to his spin-off series, Floyd the barber when Howard McNear suffered his stroke, saw Opie grow from a loveable tyke into an awkward adolescent, and saw the real world around them change dramatically. By 1967-68, it must have been harder for an audience to suspend disbelief to accept this folksy little town of Mayberry that knew nothing about hippies or Viet Nam or civil rights protests or assassinations. I recently checked out from the library Season One of Mayberyy, R.F.D., the sequel series that came about when Andy Griffith decided he wanted to move on from the grind of a weekly TV series. All the locals continued in this series -- Goober, Howard Sprague, Emmet the fix-it shop owner -- and Aunt Bee moved in with widower Ken Berry and his son Buddy Foster (who was to Jodie Foster what Clint Howard was to Ron Howard). Andy Griffith made a few brief appearances in some of the episodes I watched, including getting married to Helen in the series debut. Don Knotts made an appearance as the best man in that episode and was far and away the funniest thing in the show; that man could do funny like nobody's business. I recall watching this program as a kid, but there really just wasn't much of interest to it. Part of that may stem from the fact that Ken Berry is nowhere near the actor Andy Griffith was. (What other programs tried to continue a series after their stars left? I can think of After M*A*S*H and wasn't there a Sanford Arms series after Redd Foxx left Sanford and Son? There was Archie Bunker's Place, but that's sort of a case of a star wanting to continue a show after every one else had left.)

I don't know when I first became interested in history. It's not something I can say I am passionate about, but it did capture my imagination as a kid -- something math and science never did. Perhaps it was because history had stories -- stories of events, of individuals, of collective peoples. I got into stamp collecting as a kid and that was a means of learning about history too. Probably there was a role played by Mr. Peabody and Sherman; one had to understand a little bit about history to get the puns and humor of those cartoons, after all. I do recall it was in 8th grade that I had a dispute with my history teacher. She made the claim that no American president had ever been impeached (at that time). I knew otherwise and told her that yes, Andrew Johnson had been impeached. She insisted he had not, assuming, I suspect, that since he was not removed from office that he was not impeached, but that is not what impeachment requires. He was impeached and tried in the Senate (as was Pres. Clinton later on), but the resulting vote did not remove him from office. My history teacher was a Catholic nun, so there was only so much I could attempt to contradict/correct her, still I recall that disagreement in front of the whole class to this day.

I was surprised no one had mentioned this yet. Donna Douglas, best known as Elly May on The Beverly Hillbillies, passed away last week. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-donna-douglas-dies-beverly-hillbillies-20150102-story.html I remain an unabashed fan of The Beverly Hillbillies. I know some view it as being one of the stupidest shows TV has ever produced, but I loved it as a kid and love it still today. I have a couple of seasons of the series on DVD. In the early seasons, the writing was quite fresh, the humor organic and the characterizations unforgettable. The humor was gentle, never mean-spirited whether it was poking fun at the Beverly Hills elite or the backwoods common folks. It was a typical "fish out of water" comedy premise, but looking at it in retrospect, it was perhaps also an early example on TV of the 1% vs. the 99%. What happens when the dirt poor Clampett family suddenly discovers oil and are thrust into the ranks of the megarich with their access to these new kinds of dollars ("Yeah -- millions they call 'em.")? To what lengths would the elite society of Southern California go to accommodate the "eccentricities" of the Clampett clan? Yes, the show was often silly and it went on far too many seasons, ultimately running its premise into the ground. But it was a very funny show from before the days when all comedy had to be ironic or "edgy", and for that, I like it.

Same score and same question missed here. So does history education for 8th graders basically end at World War II? There was one question about the Challenger disaster, but nothing about the Civil Rights era, the Viet Nam war, the Mercury & Apollo space programs and moon landing, Watergate, the Iranian hostage crisis, Ronald Reagan, Iran-Contra, the Clinton impeachment or even such vital events as the invention of the internet or the iPhone.

Huh! i thought I read somewhere that the next big thing in home audio would be owning/leasing your own personal minstrel(s) for the ultimate in hi-fidelity (and hi-chastity) entertainment.

Wow. One would think a man who was as important a figure in jazz (although he had not been actively performing for several years) as Horace Silver would merit a mention. Charlie Haden and Jimmy Scott both would seem to have been high-profile performers in recent years who should have earned the attention of the NYT.

Yes, Kenton's biggest fans do criticize his work on various levels and that is as it should be. I don't think there is a Kenton fan (or a jazz fan) around who would defend the album he made with Tex Ritter and there are lots of opinions about City of Glass or the Wagner album, for example. Many fans have their particular favorite editions or eras of the band. However, there doesn't seem to be much criticism of the man himself. I belong to an online Kenton discussion group which includes some former band members as well as lots of fans who heard the band in person on one or more occasions. Seeing & hearing that band "live" seems to have akin to a religious experience to many of them and Kenton the man must have been extremely personable and the ultimate schmoozer. The former band members all seem to be fiercely loyal to his memory. If I may criticize the man, clearly he had a drinking problem. He wasn't anything special as a pianist, nor was he particularly prolific as a composer and arranger. But he did have an artistic vision and he was able to lead his bands of loyal men across several decades in constant pursuit of his vision. He was able to hire and develop some fine composer/arrangers -- Shorty Rogers, Bill Holman, Gene Roland, Bill Russo, Pete Rugolo, Johnny Richards, Dee Barton, among them -- but if their work, as good as it might have been, did not coincide with his musical ambitions, it simply did not make it into the band's book. On a sidenote, after my Grandma passed away, I was helping my Mom go through some of her things. In her piano bench there were a few 78s. My Grandma was a die-hard fan of TV's The Lawrence Welk Show and wouldn't think of missing it each week. So I was not surprised to find Perry Como and The Andrews Sisters among her 78's, but was quite surprised to find Stan Kenton there. I think it was "Across The Alley From The Alamo", but I'm not sure now. But at least Mr. Kenton got a one time from Grandma.

I'd say any/all of his albums with Terry Gibbs are worth a listen, Justin. And from his later years, he made a couple of fine albums with Dave McKenna for Concord including this one:

I wholeheartedly agree with your statements BBS! The Kenton band & sound DID evolve and change over the years/decades as new members/composers/arrangers came into the band. The Kenton bands of the 1950's were as different from his band of the 1940's as were those of Basie or Ellington, and his bands of the late 1960's and 1970's were different as well. I think the most notable evolution was that towards the prominence of the trombone section once Kai Winding joined the band. Thereafter, the trombone section remained the backbone of the Kenton band's sound. It may not have always had the big name soloists like the sax section did, but the trombones were the heart and soul of the Kenton sound. In the vast recorded legacy of Stan Kenton, which includes dozens of albums and an untold number of "live" recordings which have seen the light of day as reissues, I'm positive there is some music any jazz fan, particularly any who enjoy big band jazz, could appreciate if they gave it a chance. But for some reason, Stan Kenton seems to be the one artist jazz fans feel they can dismiss out of hand.

This does work quite nicely as a Christmas song -- http://youtu.be/wB5r6HeOA-8

http://youtu.be/jcGrSke2zE0 http://youtu.be/VSCmZU0eFJg

Here's some good news for any one in the SF Bay aRea looking for a New Year's Eve to remember: Bring in the new year with the Bobby Hutcherson Quintet, in a rare coastside performance. http://sanjose.jazznearyou.com/event_detail.php?id=553743