Retro. Vintage. Nostalgia. Paraphernalia. Ephemera. Pop culture. Exploring the past. Original photos, scans, reviews, writings. Blogging from Australia, so a lot of the content will be from downunder.
Some of the personalities who made the cover of Australian TV week in 1964. - Stars of Bonanza, Hawaiian Eye and Dr. Kildare as well as Paul Newman and UK stars Hayley Mills and Cilla Black
Two glossy TV magazines dominated Australia in the 1960s. TV Week here (still going) and TV Times (ceased publication in the early 80s). Elvis Presley was a very popular cover boy, and these are only a few of the issues where he graced the cover.
MANY of his admirers think it's a shame for Alan Young to be wasting his comic talents playing straight man to 'Mr. Ed, the talking horse in the series of the same name.
Alan himself is more philosophical about it. He doesn't believe the horse is out to bury him.
"Maybe I'm kidding myself," Alan says, "but I figure I can always break away and do another show, but Ed might run into real trouble if he tried it, and I think he knows it."
"But isn't Ed getting the best lines?" I asked.
"He certainly gets his share," Alan admits. "Don't forget, though, that I've always got to be there to hear Ed's lines."
(For those who have spared themselves the sight of a grown man conversing with a horse, it should be explained that Mr. Ed only talks to and is understood by Wilbur, who is Alan Young.)
"Are there times when you feel pretty silly about the whole thing?" I probed further.
"Only when I sometimes catch myself talking about the idiot horse after I've left the studio. But I'm not as bad off as some of the viewers."
"You mean . . . ?"
"Exactly. They write fan letters to Ed. The ones I really worry about are those which are signed by other horses."
"What is the gist of such letters?"
"Horseback riding. I'm convinced that riding is bigger in this country than bowling," says Alan, incredulously.
"You ever try to answer any of this horse mail?"
"I used to do it, and sign Ed's name. He can talk, as you know, but never learned to write. Now, however, the mail is too much for me. A girl named Millie in our office does it now. Writes a nice horse-hand, too."
Occasionally someone at the network decides it's a great idea to wire TV columnists around the country and tell them that Mr. Ed will be telephoning them the next day.
The fellow who does Ed's voice then calls the columnist, hoping that the latter will go along—asking questions and playing along with the gag ("It's a horse on you.")
"Later I get letters from these guys," Alan reports, "and they admit feeling 'like a nut,' but I guess they get a kick out of it. There was one columnist who suggested I go to an analyst."
Except for France, where Brigitte Bardot is still the national idol, Mr. Ed is very big on European TV. Alan went to his native England last summer, and planned to extend the vacation to the Continent.
"I cancelled it when the network told me I would have to tour so many cities and attend so many cocktail parties where Mr. Ed was seen on TV. It wouldn't have been a vacation, and anyway I didn't have that much time," Alan explains.
I am inclined to share the feeling of those Alan Young admirers mentioned at the beginning here. It is a shame his talents are being frittered away on a series which too often is more ridiculous than whimsical.#
What else was screening in Australian cinemas and Drive-ins in 76?
I think all of these movies are a few years old but it wasn't unusual in the Pre-VHS-DVD days for movies to have a return season, quite often on a double bill like these
ABOVE: James Bond always popular in Australia. Young Frankenstein is a classic. Don't think The Marseille Contract is well remembered, even with that classy British cast.
ABOVE: Italian and Greek film screenings at the Nova.
BELOW: Couple of 1950s classics get a return season. Imagine these would have been popular. Australia didn't get colour TV until 1975, and not everyone could just afford to buy one new.
ABOVE: Sundown Drive-In delivering the schlock action double. Wild women anyone? Meanwhile, the Center Cinema is showing The Ruling Class from 1972, a savage critique of the British class system apparently. Did people really rock up at 11.15pm AT NIGHT for a film like this?
BELOW: This film is a TV movie from 1974, but it wasn't unusual in the 1970s to screen this sort of film in cinemas.
BELOW: Karen Black was everywhere in the 1970s.
ABOVE: The Deserter from 1970 is a spagetti western with a Dirty Dozen premise. Sports an impressive cast. Airport 1975 probably NOT an in-flight movie.
Beatles fans! Both of these books are excellent and well worth your time.
Mal Evans was the long-time roadie and friend of The Beatles. He died tragically in the mid-70s but left diaries, first started when he met them. Womack has used those diaries as a major source, giving us an unique insight into his life with the Fab Four.
Radio host Elliot Mintz became a close friend and personal assistant to John and Yoko in 1971 and tells a story that only he can tell because he was there. He continued his relationship with John up until his death in 1980 and maintains his friendship with Yoko to this very day.
I'd give these 5 stars out of 5. Both very insightful and informative.
Columnist BUNNY LEWIS who has met Elvis several times, gives you a close look at the Memphis singer who is still on the Hit Parades after fourteen years . . .
★ HE is thirty-five and after 14 years in the recording industry he has more hits under his Tennessee belt than even his record company can add up.
A remarkable achievement, but then Elvis Presley is a remarkable artist. A phenomenon who has defied the vagaries both of taste and time.
The most expendable commodity in the record world is an artist. For a brief span the fortunate ones touch the stars and appear invincible.
Then, after their allotted time, they quietly fade out of the limelight into relative obscurity.
The appetite of teenagers, who buy most of the records, is voracious. For them, the greatest crime a recording artist can commit is to be around too long.
Like tomcats on the tiles, teenagers are incessantly in search of something new. Not necessarily good, just different.
Only one popular artist in the world has survived these pressures on an international scale — Elvis.
Elvis’s only rivals are the Beatles, and they have to serve a longer apprenticeship before they can legitimately challenge him.
In the early days of his career, Elvis worked for about $140 a week.
He hip-shaked his way through the South surrounded by his boyhood buddies, in particular his cousin, Jim Smith, a kind of mascot who always had to be around, and his first guitarist, Scottie Moore.
Over these last 14 years his hobbies and habits have changed, but not dramatically.
He rarely smokes and I have never seen him drink alcohol; he eats at “lunatic hours.” He loves and has all kinds of animals, from pheasants to donkeys.
He spends hours listening to pop records and is genuinely interested in the work of other artists.
He hates flying and always travels with his “caravan” of a dozen or more cars, trailers, and so on.
This is how he travels between Bel Air, his home in California, and Memphis, where he has his Southern-style mansion.
This was a genuine old Southern home which Elvis bought “to get away from the glare of publicity.”
It is rather surprising, therefore, that across the large and imposing wrought-iron gates is the design of a guitar picked out with neon lights.
There used to be a comfortable colored lady who looked after the place somewhat vaguely and, when necessary, cooked somewhat badly.
When the gang was around the great sport used to be snake hunting.
The requirements were one machete knife, one rubber suit such as you use for skin diving, and unlimited energy.
It has always been a source of surprise that Elvis has never visited Australia or the British Isles where his fans are countless.
While undoubtedly his manager has used Elvis’s time to the best possible advantage, there are probably other reasons, and one is his hatred (or perhaps fear) of flying.
(continued overleaf) SORRY NOT AVAILABLE.
★ ABOVE: Elvis looks tired, bored and a bit plump. Keeping his weight down has been a never ending problem since entering show business. He eats at “lunatic” hours . . .
Another look at what was screening in Australian cinemas in the 1970s. I like investigating some of the more obscure titles.
STANLEY - Never heard of it, but apparently a revenge film where the guy uses his pet snake to get back at his enemies.
MACABRE SERENADE - Towards the end of his long career, Boris Karloff made several cheapies that were poorly received but were nevertheless trotted out. This one also went under HOUSE OF EVIL and DANCE OF DEATH.
KONG back on the big screen.
Big star vehicles in films that probably ring no bells today. ANDERSON TAPES is a techno-crime thriller directed by Sidney Lumet.
One of MANY Agatha Christie adaptations with all-star casts produced in the 70s. This one not as big as others but they snared Bernard Herrman for the music. CONQUISTA likely to be a short film about Native Americans from 1971.
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE was a controversial release in 1968. Interesting that it resurfaces here. Perhaps ahead of its time.
Kubrick's controversial classic with a blurb for intellectuals. WITH LOVE IN MIND likely to be a 1970 short feature that shows a lot of love.
BILLY JACK (1971) like EASY RIDER a few years before, was one of those counterculture movies that came at the right time and hit big.
Sunday night Italian films look family friendly.
Saturday matinee films are both from 1959.
SUMMER OF 42 was a monster hit. A romance that seems forgotten now.
Note: All Cinemas in Canberra (and surrounding areas) Australia
The Planet of the Apes series continued to have success after the movies, cartoon series and live action series. In the mid 70s Marvel comics produced this series of original adventures with amazing cover art.
TRAVELLING NORTH, SHORT CHANGED and DEAD-END DRIVE-IN were Australian films. See that the cinema is having a dress up promotion for DEAD-END DRIVE IN, which has something of a cult ozploitation rep now.
Hard to see but that's a POLICE ACADEMY sequel screening with ONE CRAZY SUMMER.
It's all happy families for Bob Crane in this 1971 article. He married his beautiful co-star, and a baby is on the way. However, Crane lead a double life and after HOGAN'S HEROES ended, consistent roles eluded him and he had to be satisfied with TV guest spots and dinner show theatre performances. His 1975 sitcom was also short lived and Disney films did nothing for his career. Behind the scenes, he had sordid sex encounters involving hidden cameras. By 1978, he was divorced and dead. Murdered. The case remains unsolved.
MAKE WAY FOR HOGAN JUNIOR!
From PETER McDONALD in HOLLYWOOD
TV WEEK’S two special Logie Award guests, Robert Crane and his wife, have a secret to share with TV WEEK readers.
Bob, in accepting an invitation to attend the glamour Australian night, said that his wife Patti is pregnant.
Patti, who, as Sigrid Valdis, her stage name, plays Commandant Klink’s secretary in the series Hogan’s Heroes, is blissful in her pregnancy, and looking forward eagerly to visiting Australia.
And Bob said he had never been happier in his life.
“Suddenly, everything has come together. Patti, this home, and now the baby. It’s wonderful. For me it’s like the first baby all over again . . .”
The English Tudor house, Patti explained, was in the area where she had been born and raised and had always been her dream home. Magically, it was put on the market for the first time in 16 years just as they began house hunting.
“Bob was tied up with relatives and said he couldn’t get away,” she recalled. “I said, ‘You’ve got to ditch them for an hour.’ The moment he walked in, he said, ‘I don’t know how much, but we’ll buy it!’” Patti whistled. “They must have heard him.”
The couple, Australia-bound next week as special guests of honor at the Logie Awards, have paid a high price for their happiness in other ways, too.
The unfounded gossip that centred around their courtship, Bob estimates, lost him at least $40,000 in personal appearance bookings and much emotionally. “I was the woman who took him away from his wife of 20 years,” said Patti bitterly.
One nationally syndicated columnist specifically described Bob’s former wife Ann bursting through the door of an apartment where they were supposedly living together while co-starring in a stage play.
“Why she (the columnist) didn’t check with me I’ll never understand. Patti and I haven’t even done a play together,” said Bob. “We were always so careful to avoid situations that might start gossip like that,” added Patti.
One other story that particularly hurt and upset the couple was that Patti had been accepted into the Crane house almost as a daughter. “Not once had she been in our house,” said Bob angrily.
When Patti joined Hogan’s Heroes in its second year the two became very good friends. “Bob was the one I kept going to for advice and to unburden my problems on,” recalled Patti, who has a daughter by a previous marriage.
“I had separated from my husband and then he died and there was an unhappy romance. Believe me, the last thing I needed was an involvement with a man with a wife and three kids in the (suburban San Fernando) Valley.”
For Bob it was a period of marital limbo. He and his wife (“we started going together when she was 12 and I was 14 years”) had separated but decided to “try again” when he got his break in Hollywood.
“We were all raised Catholics which made it that much more complicated,” said Bob frankly. “You knew it wasn’t going to work, but you were reluctant to do anything about it . . . Patti wasn't the instigator (of the final rift).”
The change in their relationship was so gradual and subtle that neither recognised it immediately. “My life was in such chaos,” Patti recalled, “and we found we were talking to each other on the phone almost every day.
“Maybe I’d only be on the set an hour or so a day and if we didn’t talk it would feel all wrong.”
Today in marriage Bob marvels at the manner in which they balance each other out. They are, he grins, the odd couple in that Patti is the organiser and business woman while “I’m the show business”.
He is frankly impressed with her astute real estate investments, her shrewd and hard-nosed business sense which he is learning to “let it go” and her obvious talents as an interior decorator, an ambition sidetracked by acting.
“I don’t mind that Patti’s going to continue as Hilda — if there’s still a Hogan’s Heroes, of course — after the baby,” said Bob. “At least, in her case when she gets home she becomes very domestic. Patti hasn’t got that driving ambition, thank goodness, that makes her go off to New York to do a soap opera.
“She would be a good producer, she reads all the scripts submitted to me although I always boasted I would never let a wife of mine do it. I trust her judgment implicitly.”
Since their marriage, Bob confesses, he is a more rounded man, but in the literal sense. In the short time since Hogan’s Heroes began its annual hiatus he has added 10 pounds.
“It’s the wine, the imported cheeses and gourmet foods,” said Bob. “This has not always been my way of life, you know. I’ve always been Mr. Common when it came to food. Gourmet used to be a hamburger to me.”
Patti threw up her arms. “Eating is one of the great pleasures and this one used to chew twice and swallow.” Bob conceded sheepishly, “She says I’m more like a human garbage disposal unit.”
“She makes it easy,” he continued grimacing, “like the restaurant when I was confronted with the dessert trolley and this one says, ‘The gourmet will have the rainbow sherbert’ . . . Really, she’s a great cook . . .”
“But I can’t get him to eat snails,” she shrugged. “Patti, it’s not the snails,” he protested in injured tones. “I just can’t take the garlic. It, it repeats on me.”
There is one thing Patti has come to terms with but doubts if she will ever really get used to. This is the pace he lives at, and explains the home’s eight phones, which keep him constantly on the move.
“As a present, I had a basement room enlarged as a den for him with a sauna bath, projection booth, bar, bathroom and porch.
“I was so frightened that he was going to find out and one day, when he looked out at the porch that had materialised almost overnight, I thought the game was up.
“‘You know,’ he said to me, ‘I love our little porch!’ It’s very hard not to love him.”
----
Notes: The Logie Awards (Logies) are an annual TV and entertainment awards ceremony in Australia. International guests are usually invited to present awards and mingle with local wildlife.
The movie AUTO-FOCUS is about Bob Crane's double life.
romaincrisis
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
vaporwave
discoholicmusic
dededos
annaxmalina
kaledo-art
pixelskylines