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!

Week of September 29: Let's Go To the Videotape

By Sylvia Gurinsky

A chance viewing of an episode of the British comedy "To the Manor Born" generates this column about, of all things, videotape.

The episode of this comedy, aired by the BBC from 1979-81, featured a lot of exterior shots. All of those, as was the tradition at the time, were shot on film, while the interior shots were on videotape. That was a tradition in Britain as late as 1992, when early exterior shots on the comedy "As Time Goes By" were on film.

The genesis of videotape on live television in the United States took place during the 1950s; the first major color videotape presentation was the NBC special "An Evening With Fred Astaire" in 1958.

Daytime television programs such as soap operas and game shows were starting to show up on color videotape during the late 1960s (Sadly, many were erased and are now lost.). But the first primetime television series to be shown on videotape was "All In the Family" in 1970.

Exterior shots on videotape on American television series were already common by the mid-1980s. One of the most famous examples was on a soap opera - Luke and Laura's wedding on "General Hospital" in 1981. It was watched by 30 million viewers.

These days, most American prime-time television shows are shot on film. While film provides a sense of "urgency," one misses the you-are-there, intimate atmosphere generated by videotape.

See you next week. Until then, Happy Viewing!

Week of 9/21: One-O (That's 10) Classic Five-O Episodes

By Sylvia Gurinsky

Viewers as a whole seemed to be underwhelmed by the debut of a new "Hawaii Five-O" on CBS last night - particularly viewers who loved the original series.

That's not surprising. Leonard Freeman's "Hawaii Five-O," which ran on CBS from 1968-80, set standards for location shooting and casting, as well as the quality of writing and directing; the show had some of the best of both in the business.

"Five-O" was a bridge between the "Dragnets" and "Hill Street Blues" - a bit personal with the lives of its police without getting too personal and socially conscious besides, with themes (terrorism, police conduct, rape, drug abuse, gun control) that still resonate today.

The most useful function of the new show might be to make viewers curious about the original. For those who haven't been exposed, here are 10 classic "Five-O" episodes to watch from the first five seasons (Everything through Season 9 has been released on DVD.):

*"And They Painted Daisies On His Coffin" (Season One; Air date: November 7, 1968): John D.F. Black, who wrote some of "Five-O's" best episodes, penned this one about the consequences when Danny Williams (James MacArthur) shoots a teenaged boy who is apparently unarmed. Directed by John Peyser, this episode includes a lot of hand-held camera work; the sequence in which Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) goes over the shooting scene with Honolulu Police Department internal affairs investigators is especially good, as is the scene with McGarrett's admonitions to Williams about the consequences of shooting someone.

*"Once Upon a Time" (Season One; February 19 and 26, 1969): Freeman, who would die after heart surgery in 1974, wrote this two-parter based on some of his experiences with medical quacks. McGarrett's sister, Mary Ann Whalen (played by Nancy Malone), is desperate to save her infant son, who is dying from leukemia. When she can't, McGarrett sets out to have the quack who took Mary Ann and hubby Tom's money prosecuted - for murder. Joanne Linville plays the evil doc. Lots of great moments in these episodes, shot mostly in Los Angeles, without a gunshot fired. Look for Beah Richards in Part 2. Look for McGarrett crying in Part 1.

*"The Singapore File" (Season Two; November 19, 1969): One of the most fun episodes of the show, in which McGarrett heads to Singapore (which was played by Honolulu after dark) to rescue witness Nicole Wylie (Marj Dusay) from a mobster intent on murder. Jack Lord has never been looser than in this episode, where McGarrett is trying to keep romance out of his relationship with Nicole.

*"Three Dead Cows at Makapuu" (Season Two; February 25 and March 4, 1970): In a season filled with fantastic shows, this two-parter about a biological terror threat was the capper, with Ed Flanders in a heartbreaking performance as scientist Alexander Kline, who is debating whether to set off the destructive force he created on Oahu. A pre-"M*A*S*H" Loretta Swit is excellent as the telephone operator who tries to help him. Joseph Sirola, the best actor to play the government bigwig Jonathan Kaye, is chilling in his defense of maintaining the biological hazard, triggering this McGarrett quote: "You people frighten me." Indeed.

*"Over Fifty? Steal!" (Season 3; November 25, 1970): Hume Cronyn is memorable as Lewis Avery Filer, the master of disguise who takes McGarrett and Five-O on a wild goose chase. There is an undertone of sadness to Filer's actions, and it's nicely counterbalanced by the humor in E. Arthur Kean's script. Watch Jack Lord play the straight man to Cronyn in a scene involving a safe.

*"To Kill Or Be Killed" (Season 3; January 13, 1971): Freeman and Anthony Lawrence's script was no doubt inspired by the reporting of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam; McGarrett and Williams - and the audience - are sad observers as a military family literally tears itself in two over the war and the actions of one of its members.

*"Rest In Peace, Somebody" (Season 4; November 16, 1971): Who's out to kill someone connected to McGarrett? And who is to be killed? Another John D.F. Black-written episode does a great job with the twists and turns of this mystery, from the shooter to the target. Suggestion: Don't watch the episode promo first; it gives away the target.

*"The Ninety-Second War, Part 1" (Season 4; January 11, 1972): One of the best of the McGarrett battles with Wo Fat (Keigh Deigh), his nemesis throughout the series, features the Five-O boss temporarily paralyzed and framed for embezzlement. His quest both to walk and to find answers is compelling. Part 2 is so-so; this is the one to watch.

*"The Clock Struck Twelve" (Season 5: December 5, 1972): Season 5 was another terrific year, capped by the Vashon trilogy, but this is a suspenseful episode about Williams' efforts to disarm two bombs placed inside the old Honolulu courthouse.

*"I'm a Family Crook - Don't Shoot!" (Season 5: December 12, 1972): The following week saw a switch from suspense to humor, as Andy Griffith played a small-time con family patriarch who messes with the mob. Carol Burnett was originally supposed to play his wife, but Joyce Van Patten does just fine in the role (including her classic quote, "You're not Errol Flynn!" when hubby considers leaping out the window).

Those episodes will give a taste of this excellent series, which proves just how good it is by what follows.

Next week, be here. Aloha.

And until then, Happy Viewing!