October 29: Definitive Danno

By Sylvia Gurinsky

The sad news of James MacArthur's death at the relatively young age of 72 was surprising. MacArthur will eternally be the boyish Hawaii Five-O detective Danny Williams - forever "Danno" - in the original version of the series.

Here are a few definitive "Five-O" episodes centered around Danny. All are available on DVD:

*"And They Painted Daisies On His Coffin" (Season 1): Danny shoots a teenager who is apparently unarmed. But Danny insists the boy had a gun. Where is it?

*"Most Likely To Murder" (Season 2): Tom Skerrit ("Picket Fences") guest-stars as Lew Morgan, Danny's childhood friend and a police officer, whose wife is murdered.

*"Beautiful Screamer" (Season 3): Danny's girlfriend, played by Anne Archer ("Fatal Attraction") is murdered, and an emotional Danny tries to find out who did it and why.

*"Pig In a Blanket" (Season 5): Somewhat similar to "Daisies" in that Danny shoots an unarmed teen. Is it in revenge for the murder of a police officer who is Danny's friend?

*"Retire In Sunny Hawaii....Forever" (Season 8): MacArthur's real-life mother, Helen Hayes, guest-stars as Danny's Aunt Clara Williams and helps Five-O solve the murder of a friend of hers. Stage and screen star Charles Durning is also in this episode, as a baddie.

Aloha and Mahalo, Danno.

Week of 10/29: Bionic Release and Lamont Johnson's Best

By Sylvia Gurinsky

Considering that a not-long-lasting but much hyped new version of "The Bionic Woman" was put on the air by NBC several years ago, it seems strange that Season 1 of the original wasn't released on DVD until a few days ago.

Before that, the best way to catch Jaime Sommers was in the episodes of ABC's "The Six Million Dollar Man" where the character made her debut. Fans will recall that Jaime was the fiancee of Steve Austin (Lee Majors), the astronaut who was made bionic after a plane crash. Jaime is made bionic after a skydiving accident.

Various actresses were considered for the role; Lindsay Wagner, previously best known for appearing in a two-part episode of "The Rockford Files," was cast. The "Six Million Dollar Man" episodes in which she was featured struck ratings gold and compelled ABC to launch a spinoff.

By series standards, "The Bionic Woman," which spent two years on ABC and a season on NBC, didn't last very long. But Wagner won an Emmy for her role. Children across America were buying bionic character dolls and lunch boxes - now collectibles - during the mid-1970s.

The year on NBC also created some trivia, with Richard Anderson, who played Steve and Jaime's boss, Oscar Goldman, and Martin E. Brooks, who played bionic doctor Rudy Wells, becoming the first actors in television history to play the same character on two networks at once.

The 2007 series, which starred British actress Michelle Ryan (one of my pet peeves: Non-American actors and actresses playing Americans) had Jaime in humorless, high-tech situations, and took out the fun that had been in the original series. That show was ultimately a victim of the 2008 writers' strike, and it was just as well.

Here's the original introduction to "The Bionic Woman":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcba-ZgtsT4

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Lamont Johnson, who died this week, directed television productions for almost half a century. Besides his work on television series such as "Peter Gunn," "Dr. Kildare" and "The Twilight Zone," there were the miniseries and televison movies based on real life that were his crowning achievements - including 1974's "The Execution of Private Slovik" with Martin Sheen; 1981's "Crisis At Central High," with Joanne Woodward; 1985's "Wallenberg: A Hero's Story," with Richard Chamberlain and 1988's "Gore Vidal's Lincoln," with Sam Waterston and Mary Tyler Moore.

According to IMDB.com, he said, "Projects about human problems, about the testing of the human experience, about the pressures which exist upon human beings in a difficult world, are what really involve me. The traps people get into and have to battle out of are the elements of drama with which I like to deal."

Most of those projects are available on DVD.

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See you next week. Until then, Happy Viewing!

Week of October 22: So Long, Mr. C

By Sylvia Gurinsky

Tom Bosley, who died earlier this week, was still going strong earlier this year with appearances on television and in feature films - a career that started in the late 1950s.

He had a number of featured roles in television series, including "The Debbie Reynolds Show," "The Sandy Duncan Show" and his most famous recurring role as Cabot Cove Sheriff Amos Tupper in "Murder She Wrote."

He starred in three series - "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home," "Father Dowling Mysteries," which ran for two years......

And, oh yes, an American icon: "Happy Days," which ran on ABC from 1974-84.

It'll be for the decade of playing Howard Cunningham, of course, that Bosley is best remembered. While he guest-starred several times on the ABC hit show "Love, American Style," Bosley did not play the character in the segment that generated "Happy Days" (That was Harold Gould, who died just a few weeks ago.).

Howard was a hardware salesman, husband to Marion (Marion Ross), father to Richie (Ron Howard), Joanie (Erin Moran) and the disappeared Chuck (Gavan O'Herlihy, son of actor Dan and nephew of director Michael), as well as surrogate father to Fonzie (Henry Winkler). The affection with which his co-stars saluted Bosley this week is a testament to how important he was to the series.

Here's a look at the whole gang, including Donny Most as Ralph Malph and Anson Williams as Potsie Weber:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xflf41nvSyY

The first four seasons of "Happy Days," when the show was at its creative and ratings peak, are available on DVD. "Murder She Wrote" is available as well.

Here's to you, Mr. C.

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See you next week. Until then, Happy Viewing!

Week of October 15: Yabba Dabba Doo!

By Sylvia Gurinsky

Happy 50th, Flintstones!

The "Modern Stone-Age Family," produced by Hanna-Barbera, began airing on ABC Sept. 30, 1960. The original show was reportedly inspired by "The Honeymooners" and featured Fred and Wilma Flintstone and Barney and Betty Rubble living in stone houses with the modern (for 1960) conveniences of life, including animals as appliances and feet being used to get the stone car off to a running start. During the series, Fred and Wilma had baby Pebbles, while Barney and Betty adopted the very strong Bamm-Bamm.

Voice legend Mel Blanc (Barney), Alan Reed(Fred) , Jean Vander Pyl (Wilma) and Bea Benaderet (Betty until she went to CBS to play Kate Bradley in "Petticoat Junction") made the four principal characters their own. The original series ran until 1966. There have been various spinoffs, including one that featured Sally Struthers ("All In the Family's" Gloria Stivic) as a grown-up Pebbles.

Everybody sing along:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PPf3aaZmUw

See you next week. Until then, Happy Viewing!

Week of October 8: Farewell To the Man At the Typewriter

By Sylvia Gurinsky

He was an iconic figure at the end of most episodes of the shows he produced, typing and then taking the paper out of the typewriter and throwing it back into a graphic that revealed the production belonged to Stephen J. Cannell.

As a writer and producer, Cannell, who died late last week, was a constant presence from the early 1970s on. He had the occasional failure (His 1997 version of a new Hawaii Five-O television series was short on quality and memories of the original series, but at least it didn't have the LSD-trip-type editing the new show - which he was not responsible for - has.).

But Cannell had many more successes, including "The A-Team," "Hunter," "21 Jump Street," "Baretta," "The Greatest American Hero" and unquestionably his greatest series of all, "The Rockford Files." He lived up to that end credit, writing many episodes of his shows.

One little exaggeration in that end credit was the number of Emmy awards he had in his office. He won a single Emmy, for "The Rockford Files" as best drama in 1974. But he helped along the careers of others, such as David Chase and Johnny Depp.

Here's a typically great clip from "Rockford":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNjv35DfSo4&feature=related

That and the other Cannell hit shows can be found on DVD.

Rest in peace, Mr. Cannell....

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See you next week. Until then, Happy Viewing!