Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

Items of note

The Los Angeles Daily News has a blurb about the popularity of “dollar DVDs” in discount stores like Target (pronounced TAR-ZHAY), Sav-On and Dollar Tree, just to name a few.  It kind of hit home for me because—as I have previously confessed—I’m a sucker when it comes to browsing through these discs.

Since Stephen Cooke—loyal sidekick to Tom Sutpen and If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats—is the only person I know on this side of the pond who remembers the British comedy series The Goodies (well, Stephen and a friend of mine in Baltimore), I passed this news along to him and I figured some of you might be interested as well.  Goldhil Home Video will be releasing two television series compilations to DVD July 26th that will be of major interest to Goodies fans—and Python aficionados as well.

Before John Cleese and Graham Chapman achieved superstardom as part of the troupe known as Monty Python, they honed their comedic talents on a 1967 British sketch comedy series entitled At Last the 1948 Show (so named because Cleese wryly remarked that’s how long it took the network to green-light the series).  Joining Cleese and Chapman were Tim Brooke-Taylor (one of the comics that made up the threesome collectively known as the Goodies; Taylor had worked and written with Cleese on radio’s I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again) and Marty Feldman, who became a fixture in Mel Brooks’ feature films like Young Frankenstein (1974) and Silent Movie (1976).  The fifth member of the 1948 Show was a bubble-headed blonde named Aimi Macdonald who, as part of a running gag, had convinced herself that she was the program’s star and main attraction.  At Last the 1948 Show ran for two series (13 episodes) in 1967, and later editions featured Bill Oddie (also in The Goodies and an ISIRTC alum) and future Python Eric Idle.

The other Goldhil offering is Do Not Adjust Your Set (subtitled “The Fairly Pointless Show”), a children’s program which premiered in the same year and featured four future members of Python: Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam (who provided drawings for the show, much in the same way he contributed Python’s animated segments).  Joining them were David Jason (later to become immortalized on the Britcom Only Fools and Horses and the star of A Touch of Frost) and Denise Coffey.  (The cult rock music group Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band were also regulars on the show.)  Like At Last the 1948 Show, Set gave viewers an embryonic peek at what was later to be featured on Monty Python’s Flying Circus: material that was surreal, satirical and absurdist, which quickly gained the program a cult following.  Set also managed to eke out only two series (though its output was considerable higher, around twenty-seven episodes with two specials), but again, it provided the blueprint for the great comedy of the Pythons—Flying Circus premiered five months after the last telecast of Do Not Adjust Your Set.

The news that these two comedy shows are going to be released on DVD is pretty exciting to a Python fan like myself; I had thought that none of the material from the two programs existed (I suspect it will be a release similar to the Peter Cook-Dudley Moore collection, The Best of…What’s Left of…Not Only But Also), having been “wiped” by ITV to shore up shelf space.  As of this writing, both collections are available from DeepDiscountDVD.com for $17.99 apiece, truly a steal and the best news I’ve heard all week.  (The only thing to top this would be if someone would stumble across Taylor-Oddie-Graeme Garden’s pre-Goodies series, Broaden Your Mind.)

- Posted by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. - 10:09:46 AM - comment []

“With a name like Smuckers, it’s got to be good.”

The man who emoted that memorable commercial tagline, Mason Adams, passed away this past Tuesday at the age of 86.  I cannot even begin to describe how much this saddens me.

One of my very favorite television shows—in fact, one of the medium’s best spin-offs, hands down—was Lou Grant, a hour-long dramatic series that found Mary Richards’ old boss fired from WJM in Minneapolis and relocated to L.A., where he became the city editor of the Los Angeles Tribune.  Adams played Charlie Hume, the managing editor, on that program and though the series was never a fixture in the top ten it ran for five seasons between 1977 and 1982, winning several Emmys and a Peabody award.  (Because I was considering a career in journalism at one time—working feverishly on the high school newspaper—my parents used to call me “Joe Rossi,” after the dedicated but often troublemaking reporter played by Robert Walden on that show.)  Other television jobs include guest appearances on a variety of series: Family Ties, Matlock, Murder One and The West Wing, to name but a few.

But Mason Adams’ acting legacy truly belongs to old-time radio; he was part of an elite grouping of actors stationed in New York that embraced radio acting and he certainly made his mark in that medium.  A partial list of his credits includes Best Plays, Big Town (as cab driver Harry the Hack—also played by Robert Dryden and Ross Martin), Gasoline Alley, Lights Out, Road to Life and X-Minus One.  He’ll be remembered for two specific roles: that of the Kryptonite-created Atom Man in one of the most memorable storylines of The Adventures of Superman, and the titular character of the radio soap Pepper Young’s Family, which he played from 1945 to 1959, the year the show left the airwaves.  He was also an active participant in what we OTR enthusiasts term NTR (new-time radio), appearing regularly on The CBS Radio Mystery Theater and Adventure Theatre in the 1970s and 1980s.

Though I’ve always been a skeptic when it comes to religion, I like to believe that if there is a life after this one Mason Adams has been reunited with so many of his fellow radio performers and colleagues in what truly must be a grand listening experience.  R.I.P., Mr. Adams—you will be missed.

- Posted by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. - 8:43:15 AM - comment []