Rarely Seen Pilot to “The Orson Welles Show”

Posted on by

The video embedded below is to the rarely seen pilot to The Orson Welles Show.

The Orson Welles Show  had it been picked up would have been a weekly anthology series hosted by, you guessed it, Orson Welles.

Sadly that was not to be.  Otherwise Welles  could have been mentioned right there with Serling and Hitchcock when folks spoke about the great anthology series that used to be on tv.

Source: io9.

Remembering Kotter and His Sweathogs

Posted on by

Welcome Back, Kotter  burst onto the scene in September 1975 and was an instant hit.  The initial idea was to focus on a young newly married teacher [Gabe Kaplan] returning to teach remedial students [called Sweathogs] at his former high school where he had been a remedial student.  The show’s breakout stars turned out to be the Sweathogs.

So the focus changed.

Soon the spotlight was on the students with their teacher in a co-star or even supporting role.  The teacher’s wife usually had a scene in the shows opening and again in the closing where she got to laugh at an old joke told by teacher.  There were stories of an unhappy set.

Things became more complicated when Kaplan butted heads with the show’s producer and John Travolta [one of the remedial students] made it big in the movies.  Both Kaplan and Travolta didn’t even appear in many of the last season episodes.

The show ran four seasons and for the first two and maybe the third it was “must-see” tv.  Sadly during the the fourth and final season the audience graduated even if the Sweathogs didn’t.

The AV Club posted a piece by Noel Murray titled 10 Episodes That Show How Welcome Back, Kotter Was Like a Class in Comedy History.  While that may be a bit of an overstatement, the article did bring back some fun memories of Kotter and his Sweathogs.

39 Things We Learned from the Banned “Dr. No” Commentary

Posted on by

Film School Rejects presents 39 Things We Learned from the Banned “Dr. No” Commentary  by Kevin Carr.  Here are five of my favorites…

1. The iconic James Bond theme was not in the original picture. The score had “Underneath the Mango Tree” as Bond’s theme, and Young thought “that’s a really stupid idea” because eventually they would make a James Bond movie without mango trees. John Barry was referred to him, and he wrote the recognizable theme without even seeing the film.

7. It took ten takes of Bond tossing his hat onto the coat tree to get the shot. In later films, Connery became good enough to hit the mark on the first try.

23. When the Three Blind Mice try to assassinate Bond in the parking lot, Hunt did not have a shot of the passing car’s headlight that distract them from following through because Young never shot it. In order ot make the shot work, Hunt flared the film on the actors in post production to show the flash of light.

31. Young discovered Ursula Andress in a pile of photographs on the desk of a producer. He asked if he could keep the photo and took it to Cubby Broccoli to find her for the role of Honey Ryder. They cast her primarily because of her looks and never had a formal audition or test of her acting ability.

34. Ursula Andress was overdubbed by actress Nikki Van der Zyl because her accent was too thick and the filmmakers could not understand all of her lines.

Johnny Rockets Plans 200 Brand New Drive-In Theaters

Posted on by

I love drive-in movies.  What could be better than going to a double or triple feature on a nice evening and watching movies under the stars?

Sadly drive-in theaters went the way of VHS machines once VHS machines were cheap enough to be in nearly every home in America.  VHS led to Laser Disc to DVD and now Digital Download.  With each upgrade for home viewing the number of drive-in movie theaters diminished.

It looks like all that is about to change.

Johnny Rockets [a retro hamburger chain] has entered into a partnership with USA Drive-Ins to open up 200 brand new drive-in theaters by 2018.  That is beautiful music to my ears.

Let’s just hope that one of the 200 will be in my county!

Mike Torrance Goes Out on a Cliff

Posted on by

Mike Torrance aka The Krayola Kidd is back and he’s brought Gabe Walker with him!

Over the coming weeks/months I’ll be posting more of Mike’s sketch card commissions.  My goal is to eventually get a card for every character Sly has played.  We’re well on our way!

You can see more of Mike’s art at his Deviant Art site. Mike is available for commissions and his prices are very reasonable.

 

The Strange Life of the Man Who Created “The Addams Family”

Posted on by

Charles Addams, the creator of The Addams Family,  was a strange bird.  Although Addams had a normal childhood, his cartoons hinted at a darker side…

 …Instead of a standard coffee table, Addams used a Civil War-era embalming table. He also kept a collection of antique crossbows above his sofa, and he used a young girl’s tombstone (“Little Sarah, Aged Three”) as a perch for his cocktails…

Addams married two different women who looked like the character Morticia from his cartoons (and his second wife even had her nose fixed to look more like the character).  Addams married his third wife in a pet cemetery.

Over the course of his career…

“Addams illustrated 68 covers for The New Yorker and contributed more than 1,300 cartoons to the magazine” — His most popular creation the comic strip The Addams Family “spawned two live-action television series, two animated cartoons, and two blockbuster feature films.”

Surprisingly The Addams Family  tv show got his cartoons banned from The New Yorker and after his divorce his second wife controlled the rights to the tv series.

You get the full details of Addams interesting life if you click over to the very interesting piece Light Heart; Dark Humor: The Man Behind The Addams Family  by Bill DeMain at Neatorama.