#jeff mackay

[donnatroyprincessofthemyscira]

[retrorewind-kid]

DR. SHRINKER     (1976)

[pasttenselibrarian]

Set in 1936, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first collaboration between director Steven Spielberg and executive producer George Lucas, not to mention the first of four movies starring Harrison Ford as archaeologist Indiana Jones, was the biggest box-office smash of 1981, a $200 million-grossing blockbuster that ABC and CBS hoped to duplicate on the small screen. ABC’s Tales of the Gold Monkey starred Stephen Collins (top photo, right) as ’30s pilot Jake Cutter alongside Caitlin O’Heaney and Jeff MacKay, while CBS’s Bring ‘Em Back Alive was headlined by Bruce Boxleitner (middle photo*, right) as ’30s big-game trapper — yes, “trapper,” not “hunter” — Frank Buck, with Cindy Morgan as the series’s female lead. Both shows debuted in September of ’82 and were canceled by the end of the season. (Boxleitner and Morgan had previously costarred in the movie Tron, released three months prior to Bring ‘Em Back Alive’s series premiere.) Boxleitner had better luck the following season with Kate Jackson in Scarecrow and Mrs. King, which ran for four seasons on CBS, the network where Tales of the Gold Monkey creator Donald P. Bellisario already had a hit show: Magnum, P.I. (1980-’88) was entering its fourth season in the fall of ’83. Jeff MacKay played a recurring role on Magnum in its first two seasons, but his character was killed off right around the time Gold Monkey debuted. The star of Magnum, P.I., Tom Selleck, was Spielberg and Lucas’s first choice to play Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but he couldn’t take the part because he’d already signed a contract with CBS for Magnum. Selleck was later able to take on big-screen roles in movies such as High Road to China (1983), Runaway (1984), and the highly successful Three Men and a Baby (1987) in addition to TV movies like CBS’s The Shadow Riders (1982), costarring Sam Elliott (bottom photo, middle).

Selleck finally got to play Indy, kinda sorta, in a tongue-in-cheek final-season episode of Magnum titled “Legend of the Lost Art,” and Indy became a TV character himself when ABC premiered The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on March 4, 1992. (Harrison Ford made a cameo as a 50-year-old Indy in an episode that aired the following March.) And if you’ve seen the 1983 movie The Big Chill, you may remember that Tom Berenger played a mustachioed, Selleck-esque actor with a hit TV detective show called “J.T. Lancer”; The Big Chill was cowritten and directed by Raiders of the Lost Ark screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan.

* The text accompanying the press photo for Bring ‘Em Back Alive states, in small print, “This is recycled paper.” I appreciate your environmentally conscious forward thinking, 1982, or at the very least your sarcasm regarding Bring ‘Em Back Alive’s Raiders-inspired premise.

[revengesolveseverything]

[bearmythology]

Speaking of immortal twins across space and time, I just realized why I was instantly smitten by comedian, John McKeever. He resembles this actor, Jeff Mackay. The similar facial features are uncanny. And with the similar beard that Jeff Mackay sported in Tales of the Gold Monkey, John is a dead ringer. If there’s a remake for Tales of the Gold Monkey, John will be the perfect Corky. @d3str0n81 and I were just recently talking about vintage TV bears, and Jeff Mackay was truly one of the greats. [source: youtube | my wordpress blog]

[kwebtv]

Jeff MacKay, Jack, Stephen Collins and Caitlin O'Heaney in “Tales of the Gold Monkey”. 

[retropunch]

Tales of the Gold Monkey (1982) - intro

[miretrotv]

Intro: El simio de oro, 1982.

Protagonistas

Stephen Collins, Jeff MacKay, Marta DuBois, John Calvin

Jake Cutter vive en un Pacífico Sur envuelto en un clima de conflagración que anuncia la segunda guerra y no puede evitar terminar enfrentado a extravagantes peligros y exóticos conspiradores, desde un espía nazi que se hace pasar por religioso hasta la princesa japonesa-irlandesa Koji y su guardaespaldas, el samurai Todo. De su lado contará con un mecánico bastante cobarde y el otro Jake, un perrito con parche que no perdona a Cutter el haber perdido en una apuesta su ojo de cristal.