The Things I Watch: Classic Television-Hank (1965-1966)

Hank

Season 1 Episode 1
Who’s Waldo Smith?

Hank was a one season wonder that ran for 26 episodes.  But don’t take that as a failure.  If Hank was around today, 26 episodes could be 2 or 3 seasons on Netflix or some other streaming service.  It’s all how you look at things.

I’m sometimes amazed at what classic TV series gets released on DVD or Bluray.  There’s a lot of good stuff out there that hasn’t seen the light of day and probably never will.  Even Disney is keeping most of the episodes of its prime time show, World of Color/World of Disney/Disneyland/Walt Disney Presents, the title depending on what decade you were watchingd, locked in their precious vault.

Warner Archives decided to release Hank for whatever reason.  Maybe because somebody actually took care of the original prints, you know, just in case.  I don’t know how many Hank DVD Sets they sold but probably not many.  Collectors like me though would rather have one season of Hank instead of three or four different releases of Friends.

I do know that when it originally aired, I did watch the show.  I had to.  I was related long distance to actress Katie Sweet who stars as Hank Dearborn’s nine year old sister Tina.  How am I related?  Not sure really.  One of my never-ending list of cousins would be more inclined to explain that one to you. 

I just know that when Katie had guest roles on everything from Ozzie and Harriet to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds to Bonanza and ending with an episode of The Second Hundred Years (Another one of those single season series I’d like to get my hands on but probably never will), the land lines (because that’s all we had) would heat up and relatives one and all would gather around the TV for a huge dose of Sweetness and Cute. 

Hey, don’t knock it.  It was a cool thing to be related to a real Hollywood actress in those days. Personally, I never got to meet her. But most of the rest of the family hobnobbed with her at a family reunion where my dad took home movies.  Unfortunately, that particular episode in our lives no longer exists as my dad was married to a batshit alcoholic banshee woman who had a major destructive streak.

The premise of Hank was pretty simple.  Hank Dearborn (played by Dick Kallman) is left to raise his much younger sister Tina, which required him to drop out of school at the age of fifteen so he could support her.  These tragic things happen when your parents have no life insurance I guess. 

Not wanting to go through life as a janitor (although certainly an honorable profession because I’ve been there myself) or a fast food worker (McDonald’s was still in its infancy I think) Hank decides to get an education by dropping in to college classes at Western State University.  To help finance this endeavor, he drives a sandwich truck around campus that seems to sell everything and anything besides just sandwiches.  I don’t think I saw one student buy a sandwich in the whole half hour episode although they did buy a hat and some bobby-pins.

Hank drops into classes by impersonating other students.  And that can get him into trouble but only because Dean Lewis Royal, head of the university, is fixated on catching and punishing drop-in students.  It seems to be his one important mission in life unless you count that he probably goes from one school university restroom to another to make sure the toilets flush.  I know, I know just go with it.  You have to if this is going to work.

Another major complication is that Hank is in love with and dating the Dean’s daughter, Doris.  We know there are going to be a lot of silly close calls in this show and there are several in this episode including a bit where Hank plays tennis with himself to hide his identity from the Dean. 

But the main gist of this episode revolves around Coach Ossie Weiss’s attempt to get Hank (or whomever Hank’s impersonation is) on his track team after he spots him running around campus hurdling shrubbery.  Hank is a man of many talents.

The whole premise is really full of holes if you stop to think about it.  But in the 60’s, where we had a talking horse, a talking car, and a witch married to a mortal, you weren’t supposed to let such things as logic interfere with your enjoyment. Or is that judgment? My biggest concern was that after Hank drops into all these different courses, most not related to the others in any way, he was still not going to have a college degree in anything.  But I guess more knowledge even without a degree is better than no knowledge at all.

On a down note, when doing my usual background checks for this story, I was sad to discover that Dick Kallman who played Hank was murdered.  On February 22, 1980, Kallman and business associate Steven Szladek of Brooklyn were found shot to death in Kallman's posh Manhattan apartment. 27-year-old Charles Lonnie Grosso of Queens was convicted of the killings, which took place during a robbery, and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. None of the paintings, jewelry, and antiques stolen from the apartment were ever recovered.  He seemed like a nice guy on the series from what I've read.  As for Grosso, I hope he’s still rotting in prison.

I guess it’s best to get the downbeat dreary stuff out of the way in case I want to revisit this show.  I’d say the chances of that are around 80 per cent.  And when that time comes you'll discover that except for this pilot episode, the rest were brought to you in living peacock color.

Until next time.

The Things I Watch: Classic Television-Ben Casey

Ben Casey

Season 1 Episode 2
But Linda Only Smiled

Unlike the Doctor shows of present day where you get an overabundance of shenanigans from a cast of what seems like hundreds, back in the olden days you had one major character and two to four supporting cast members to move things along.

Just because it’s called Grey’s Anatomy, does not mean we’re going to get 42 minutes of the trial and tribulations of one Dr. Meredith Grey.  They’ve had so many doctors flying in and out of Seattle Grace that when Shonda Rhimes killed off Lexi Grey and Mark Sloan, she also murdered whatever interest I had in the show. 

You don’t want to cross the path of Miss Shonda-land. Your character will end up as dead as dead as a doornail.  Bye bye George O’Malley.  You deserved better than exiting with a face like a crushed tomato.  Adios Lexi Grey.  Next time fly the friendly skies of United.  Ta Ta For Now Mark Sloan.  And who would have thought that everybody’s Dr. McDreamy would have ended up as so much road kill? 

Back in the good old days, you didn’t have to worry about one of your favorite characters being wheeled out of the hospital laying on a gurney and covered with nothing but a sheet.  Headlining doctors were in short supply.  On Dr. Kildare you had Richard Chamberlain as Kildare and Raymond Massey as Dr. Gillespie, his boss.  Over on the other network, you had Vince Edwards as Dr. Ben Casey and fuzzy headed Sam Jaffe barking out orders and doing his best to keep Casey from getting into trouble.

Also hanging around was Harry Landers as Dr. Ted Hoffman and Jeanne Bates as Nurse Willis.  And last but not least, there was Bettye Ackerman as Dr. Maggie Graham, an anesthesiologist who secretly pined away for Dr. Casey on the show, and not so secretly had the hots for Sam Jaffe in the real world.  The romance angle between Maggie and Ben took a steep dive once she hooked up with his boss in real life.

Oh and let’s not forget Nick Dennis as Nick Canaveras, the orderly.  He’s here to wheel patients in, out and around the hospital on a joy ride to x-ray or push their remains to the great beyond, bring them their bed pan, empty it when they’re done, and carry the flowers out to the trash when the patients croak.  And since Casey is a Neurosurgeon in the early sixties, there’s a lot of croaking going on.  But my point is that although County General seemed crowded, most of the cast was just window dressing while Casey did his thing which was cutting on people’s brains and sometimes killing them in the process.  But if you die on this show, chances are your character had a good story line and a chance for an Emmy.

A crazed (or in this case it may be crazy) woman, Mrs. No-First-Name Reed, rushes her injured daughter, Cathy, into County General.  Seems she’s had a bit of an accident.  Cathy unlocked the car door and decided to take a dive onto the pavement while said vehicle was doing the locomotion. 

No, she wasn’t wearing a seat belt.  Seat belts weren’t even an accessory back in 1961.  If the driver slammed on the brakes in those days, you can pretty much guarantee yourself that you’d be flying through the windshield like one of our patented nuclear missiles.  The question is, why wasn’t she brought in via your friendly neighborhood ambulance service?



And did I tell you that Mrs. Reed was batshit crazy?  Pity the poor intern, in this case Dr. Cain (Barton Heyman), who has to do the initial examination.  Realizing he’s out of his league and wanting to escape the clutches of Cathy’s deranged mother, he sends the nurse to get Dr. Casey to come down to the examining room. 

As Casey casually strolls down the hospital corridors, he has a meet-cute right next to a conveniently placed candy machine with Linda Miller, who has arrived at the hospital for some tests and observation.  Yes, they actually did put you in the hospital in those days to find out what was ailing you instead of telling you to take a couple of aspirins and go to the emergency room if it gets worse.

Finally, and probably regretfully finding his way down to the emergency room, Casey arrives just in time to find Mrs. Reed wailing about wanting a real doctor, and her daughter Cathy still pretending to be unconscious so as not to be embarrassed by her psychotic mother who needs a strait-jacket.

And when Casey says he wants to do a transfusion because the girl obviously has internal bleeding (not so obvious to you or I), then the shit really hits the fan.  Turns out, Mrs. Reed is not only an over-bearing parent, she’s also the equivalent of today’s anti-vaxxer numbskulls. She says there will be no transfusion for her daughter because it’s dirty and unclean.  And I brought along a clip just for this occasion.

Mrs. Reed decides she’s going to take her half dead daughter on a 70 mile ride in an ambulance to their home.  To which Casey tells her she’d better find a mortuary along the way because Young Cathy will never make it.  He also tells the wicked witch of the ER that she can take her daughter but that she’ll have to sign a release absolving the hospital of responsibility.  Quickly reversing direction because she doesn’t know which end is up she agrees to let Cathy stay, but still no blood transfusion.

You don’t think a little old problem like a 1961 anti-vaxxer is going to let the future star of Picture Mommy Dead croak on him?  Of course not.  He and Dr. Ted sneak some blood in to save young Cathy’s life but of course, momma finds out, goes ape shit bananas and tells him she’s going to sue sue sue!  Even if her daughter lives which is understandable because a few scenes before this Mrs. Reed had told Casey that she’d rather her daughter die than have that dirty tainted blood in her.  See, just like the anti-vaxxers!  In almost 60 years nothing has changed.

Meanwhile, Dr. Maggie prepares to administer anesthesia to Linda, all the while comparing notes with her on Dr. Casey.  Miss Miller would like to get in Casey’s pants but we suspect Dr. Maggie may have already scored that winning touchdown.

Unfortunately, even in the TV world of the sixties, things don’t always turn out to be fair.  Turns out that after the biopsy, Ben discovers that Linda has Hodgkin’s Disease which in 1961 it’s kiss your ass goodbye time.  Now the odds for you surviving have gone from zero in 1961 to 92 per cent in 2020.  Sorry Linda, you were born in the wrong century.

As for the Wailing Banshee known as Mrs. Reed, she wasn’t unique.  I think it’s a prerequisite that every doctor show has to have one episode where the parent won’t allow their kid to be treated.  I know for sure Kildare had one, and I remember Marcus Welby getting sued in the 70’s.  I can’t tell you for sure if there are any others but the odds are forever in their favor that they have.

And yeah, I kid around.  But these crazy people are still with us today.  Only with anti-vaxxers, they’re not just causing doctors a headache.  They’re causing the whole population to suffer for their ignorance.  But just about everything in this country is moving backwards these days and there’s not much that can be done about it.  Stupidity is the order of the day.

The Things I Watch: Classic Television–Perry Mason

Perry Mason
Season 1 Episode 2
The Case of the Sleepwalker’s Niece
Cast:
Raymond Burr as Perry Mason
Barbara Hale as Della Street
William Hopper as Paul Drake
William Talman as Hamilton Burger
Ray Collins as Lt. Tragg
John McNamara as Peter Cole
Hillary Brooke as Doris Cole
John Archer as Frank Maddox
Nancy Hadley as Edna Hammer
Darryl Hickman as Steve Harris
Harry Hickox as Phillip Kendall

I can’t say I was ever a big fan of Perry Mason.  When it originally began airing in 1957 I was all of five years old.  When it went off the air in 1966, I was fourteen and had other things on my mind besides watching a stodgy old overweight lawyer trick some numbskull into confessing to murder.  But somehow the complete series has ended up in my library including a set of the Perry Mason movies that remain on the shelf unopened.  Collecting Classic TV can begat some bad habits.

That’s not to say that over the years I haven’t watched any episodes.  I have. And they’re usually entertaining enough and no worse than sitting through an hour or two of Dateline: NBC to find out who the killer is.  In fact, compared to Dateline, Perry Mason is swift, breezy, and quick.  And if you don’t want to wade through the whole episode, you can always fast forward to the end but then you’ve blown over a hundred dollars just to have that pleasure. Current Amazon Price is $107.78.  But no worries.  Those who chose to buy Volume by Volume as they were originally released paid about 10 times as much.  I didn’t get suckered into that deal but we’ll overlook a few others I overpaid for in the same manner. (Mannix, Hawaii Five-O, Mission: Impossible).  Live and learn.  You can also stream this episode and others on CBS All Access but there are seasons and episodes missing so you don’t get the whole shlemiel. 

The first episode I watched was from Season 1.  It was Episode number 2 and called The Case of the Sleepwalker's Niece.  Every Perry Mason episode was The Case of something or other unlike the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew which liked to change their titles up with words like The Clue of, The Mystery of, The Secret of, or in one strange instance, “Nancy’s Mysterious Letter.”  You always know where you stand with Perry Mason played by Raymond Burr in the original series and then rehashed again in The Perry Mason Movies once he recovered from his bullet wound in Ironside. 

And thank you to the anonymous person on the I.M.D.B., who typed out this synopsis so I don’t have to.

Unhappily-married Doris Cole finds her husband Peter sleepwalking near her bed with a knife in his hand; Doris accuses him of trying to kill her and decides to divorce him.

A year later, one day before the divorce is to be finalized, Peter's business partner Frank Maddox visits Doris and offers her $100,000 to hold off on the divorce. Then Maddox and his attorney Ralph Duncan visit Peter and his stepbrother Phillip Kendall. Maddox wants $500,000 for his share of their company, which is about the worth of the whole company, or Doris will not grant the divorce.

Peter's niece and secretary Edna Hammar calls Perry Mason to help her uncle, who is engaged to remarry. Perry intervenes, suggesting Maddox and Duncan stay at Phillip's home that night. Phillip is found stabbed to death the next morning after he and Maddox had traded rooms. Peter is arrested for the murder with the belief he stabbed Philip expecting Maddox to be in the bed.

Edna's boyfriend Steve helps Perry by delivering papers and watching Doris.

Believe me when I tell you it's not as complicated as it sounds. I nailed the culprit less than halfway through the episode and I’m sure you will as well.  Unless you’re a Trumpanzee.  They couldn’t find their way to a firetruck if they were standing at the bottom of the fireman’s sliding pole.




The clues are all there for you although more often than not that isn’t the case.  You usually don’t get to see the aces Mason holds up his sleeve until the very end. In those cases you have to do what Mr. Spock did and make your best guess possible under the circumstances.  But eventually his main sidekick Paul Drake will wonder in off the street with the evidence that will crack this nut wide open while Della continues to take notes.  Or doodles.  Or makes coffee. It might even be good to the last drop.

But still, you’ll stick around to find out if you’re right while (sarcasm alert!) being treated to some truly realistic courtroom scenes and find out who the loser of the week is and will be joining the likes of Scott Petersen in San Diego’s death row at San Quentin for a very long wait.

What’s always amusing to me is how full of bluster and smugness Police Lt. Tragg and D.A. Hamilton Burger are when these murders occur.  We on the other hand grin knowing they are putty in Perry’s Hands, as he makes Tragg the most inept cop on any police force and Burger the biggest D.A. Loser in history.  On the plus side, I never knew Tragg to shoot an unarmed black man in the back either.  Maybe that happened off camera.

But all you need is one clue and it comes quick if you aren’t paying attention.  I’ll even give it to you so you won’t have to stay awake nights wondering.  Listen for someone to mention briefly how they’re poor.  That’ll do.

The Things I Watch: Men in Black (1997-2019)

What I’ve actually watched were Men in Black, Men in Black II, and Men in Black 3 along with the recent Men in Black: International. 

I don’t think I had viewed the original since the year it came out so I remembered little of the details.  That happens when you get to be my age.  You remember the basics but the minutiae seems lost forever in a fog of 67 years of cramming trivia into your brain.  Eventually, you go on overload.

It was the same with Men in Black II, although having watched it again just the other day I couldn’t swear that I’d seen it at all.  But I know for a fact that I had never seen the third one and although I considered going to the theater to see International, I never made it there. 

Instead I bought International on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray as a blind buy.  I did this for two reasons.  The first was to complete my set.  The second reason is that I’ve been on a 4K buying spree lately.  I guess that happens when you get new equipment such as a new 4k TV and 4K Blu-ray player. 


It probably wasn’t really necessary for me to revisit all of the films but I did anyway.  I didn’t think the first one was as good as I remembered it.  The second one, which I didn’t remember at all was really lame and irritating. Halfway through I wanted it to be over with. 

But number 3 was the cream of the crop with not only a good story line but it actually made you care about the participants for a change with it’s time travel story and a surprise ending.  Not to mention that Will Smith toned the slapstick down quite a bit.  Tommy Lee Jones was absent through most of the film although his character Agent K wasn’t.  But that’s not bad.  It only took three films for them to finally get it right.


As for Men in Black International, I liked it.  It was better than the first two I thought.  And most of that you can attribute to Tessa Thompson who was really good in this as newby Agent M.  As for Chris Hemsworth, aka Agent H, he saw his role as more of a party version of Thor.  Sort of like what he became in Avengers: Endgame except without the slovenly appearance or the gut.  And I guess he wasn’t an alcoholic either.  I found his character to be lacking in charm although Agent H did manage to pull it together in the end.  Heroes who fall or fail always find a way to redeem themselves.  Most of the time.

It International was entertaining enough, but you’ll have no trouble figuring out who the villain is because it’s never the most obvious character that they want you to think it is.  It’s the obvious character you think it should be.  As for the 4K, it looked great as most 4K’s do but note that the screen captures I have are not from the 4K Disc.  I don’t have that capability as of yet.

I thought the 22% rating on Rotten Tomatoes was totally unfair, and the audience score was much closer to reality at 66%.  And that’s probably what I would rate it.  Somewhere in the B- category.  Maybe C+.  I’ll figure that out for sure when I write a complete review in Clyde’s Movie Palace when I get to it on the twelfth of never.

25 New Films Inducted into the National Film Registry for 2017

Every year 25  films are inducted into the National Film Registry.  These films are considered important for various reasons. 

From CNN:

"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" at the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress?

That classic film is one of 25 added to the library's registry of films this year.

Chosen for "cultural, historic and/or aesthetic importance," this year's selections range from the 1905 film "Interior New York Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street," which documented the early days of the New York subway system, to James Cameron's "Titanic" and the 1987 biopic "La Bamba."

"The selection of a film to the National Film Registry recognizes its importance to American cinema and the nation's cultural and historical heritage," Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement. "Our love affair with motion pictures is a testament to their enduring power to enlighten, inspire and inform us as individuals and a nation as a whole. Being tasked with selecting only 25 each year is daunting because there are so many great films deserving of this honor."

Director Richard Donner had two of his films selected, "Superman" and "The Goonies."

"I thank the National Film Registry for choosing 'Superman: The Movie' and 'The Goonies' as films to be treasured," Donner said in a statement.

"They are both special films in my life, as was the cast and crew for both. It's wonderful to see them listed among so many great films."

Here is the complete list inducted this year, and below that are screenshots taken from those films on the list that I have in my own library.  I have ten of them, but I’m sure I’ll add some more.

Ace in the Hole (aka Big Carnival) 1951
Boulevard Nights 1979
Die Hard 1988
Dumbo 1941
Field of Dreams 1989
4 Little Girls 1997
Fuentes Family Home Movies Collection 1920s and 1930s
Gentleman’s Agreement 1947
The Goonies 1985
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner 1967
He Who Gets Slapped 1924
Interior New York Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street 1905
La Bamba 1987
Lives of Performers 1972
Memento 2000
Only Angels Have Wings 1939
The Sinking of the Lusitania 1918
Spartacus 1960
Superman 1978
Thelonius Monk: Straight, No Chaser 1988
Time and Dreams 1976
Titanic 1997
To Sleep with Anger 1990
Wanda 1971
With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain 1937-38

Jerry Lewis: 1926-2017

I grew up with Jerry Lewis.   Not only did I see many of his movies from the sixties in the neighborhood theaters, but if one was showing on TV we always watched.  We watched because Jerry Lewis was a funny guy, and his comedy was such that it could be appreciated by young kids such as myself, or adults.

There was also the many times he guest hosted The Tonight Show many times throughout the sixties and into the seventies.  He always seemed to be in your living room one way or another.  Whereas sometimes the more mature current event commentary of Johnny Carson would fly right over my head at the age of ten or so (or even younger), the spontaneous physical outrageous antics of Jerry would always leave us in stitches.  I wish there were some of those episodes still available.  But I imagine they are long gone, lost in the purge of saving money by reusing video tapes.

I did manage to snag a DVD release of The Jerry Lewis Show which ran from 1967 – 1969.  But it is incomplete with many musical numbers axed and some episodes missing.  That collection is only available from 3rd party sellers at an exorbitant price.  But there is a “Fan Favorites” DVD with even less content then the one I acquired some years ago.  But at $9.95, it’s cheap enough.

Lewis was loved in France but often derided by U.S. Critics.  And while even I’ll admit some of his late sixties early seventies stuff is tough to sit through, there’s no denying the man’s comedic genius.  My favorite Lewis films are some of the Martin/Lewis films like Living It Up, Artists and Models, and You’re Never too Young.

Of his solo films, I’d rank Rock-a-bye Baby, The Nutty Professor, Don’t Give Up the Ship, The Delicate Delinquent, Cinderfella, and Boeing, Boeing (despite it’s low regard for women) as my favorites.

Then there’s the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon held every Labor day that raised millions for the charity.  If you were lucky enough to view the show in it’s early years, before it went coast to coast, becoming (necessarily so) bigger but more bloated with corporate sponsors, you got 24 hours of Lewis being Lewis non stop where he would often go out and mingle with the audience, grabbing money, and just having fun.

I’m not going to get into why the MDA thought it necessary to do away with the yearly event.   But their unceremonious firing of Lewis who raised over 2 billion dollars was and remains a disgrace to this day.  There is a right way to do things, and a wrong way to do things.  After sixty-one years of hard work in which Lewis earned not one penny, instead of rewarding him they kicked him in the ass.  And I do know this: Since Lewis last hosted the telethon, Labor Day has never been the same.

Following is a selection of screenshots from my Jerry Lewis Library.  I don’t have every film, but what I do have is extensive.  Visit to a Small Planet is not here, but I’ll add it when the Blu-ray version arrives next week.  Eventually I hope to have them all although some, such as The Sad Sack, have never had a U.S. DVD release for whatever unknown reason.  I had a digital copy but it had a Spanish audio track.  I also have a copy of The Ladies Man around here somewhere, and will add that as well. 

But one thing is certain, Lewis, despite any faults he may have had, was a comedy giant who made the world a better place.  We will miss him.

And finally, no Jerry Lewis memorial would be complete without this signature song with which he signed off each and every telethon.