As long as there's been television in the U.S., Christmas TV programming has existed, too. Whether it's specials, or episodes of our favorite shows, if it's been on, the chances are good there's some kind of holiday-themed episode, too. In 2005, TVShowsonDVD's Barb Chabai wrote:
"Mix a few beloved characters, stir in chaotic forces of nature and add a story arc that ends with the cynic discovering the true meaning of Christmas - and you have all the trappings of a very special, eggnog-flavored holiday episode ... we could always count on our favorite shows to remind us that the spirit of the season was found not in the malls, not under the tree, but on cable."
No doubt, some networks including Antenna TV, RTV Retro Television and Me-TV and maybe even TV Land will be running some classic holiday-themed episodes, but many people will be busy celebrating the holidays with family, opening gifts, etc. so they could miss them. So I thought this post was much better now than a few weeks from today. DVD is a good option since you can watch before the holidays, but where does one start?
There are a few books, including "Christmas on Television (The Praeger Television Collection)" by Diane Werts, and there's also another book titled "Tis the Season TV: The Encyclopedia of Christmas-Themed Episodes, Specials and Made-for-TV Movies" by Joanna Wilson. Neither is quite the definitive encyclopedia on the subject, but they're good places to start. As best I can tell, both are available in Kindle editions, too, so instant gratification can be combined with streaming video for almost instant gratification provided you're willing to pay for it.
But there have also been a few collections of holiday TV on DVD, including Paramount's "Holiday Treats" which had holiday episodes for "I Love Lucy". "The Honeymooners", "The Andy Griffith Show", "The Brady Bunch", "Taxi" and "Family Ties". There’s a companion set called "Christmas Treats” which includes episodes from "Happy Days", "Laverne & Shirley", and "Mork and Mindy" just to name a few. Finally, they sell a 2-disc collection containing all of these and a few more episodes I haven’t named.
Shout Factory's "Merry Sitcom" is another collection which has holiday episodes for "Bewitched" and "That Girl" and "The Flying Nun" as well as some older ones including "McHale's Navy", "The Donna Reed Show" and "Father Knows Best".
However, what I believe is the best of the bunch is Warner Archive's "Classic TV Christmas", which is a nice, 4-disc collection which features "Alice", "Eight is Enough" (a 2-part episode, no less), "Welcome Back Kotter:, "CHiPs", "Mama's Family" and some newer sitcoms including "Suddenly Susan" and "Veronica's Closet" as well as a few others.
Collectively, these compilations are good ones to have, although some people prefer having their whole favorite series' for their favorite shows. Personally, I have a rather extensive TV on DVD collection, but finding those holiday-themed episodes among boxes of discs is sometimes challenging.
TVShowsonDVD has a good resource online with all the Christmas-themed episodes listed by show, which now number 354 episodes as I write this (December 2012).
It isn't quite as comprehensive as it could be -- for example, they list the series and season, but not the discs those episodes are found on, nor the name of the holiday-themed episodes, but it's a good place to start.
Absolutely Fabulous, Series #5
All in the Family, The Complete 2nd Season
All in the Family, The Complete 4th Season
Bewitched, The Complete 1st Season: Original Black & White Edition
The Brady Bunch, The Complete 1st Season
Diff'rent Strokes, The Complete 1st Season
The Golden Girls, Season 2
The Golden Girls, Season 5
Green Acres, Season 2
Growing Pains, The Complete 1st Season
The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Complete 1st Season
MadTV, The Complete 1st Season
Moonlighting, Seasons 1 and 2
Nip/Tuck, The Complete 3rd Season (Operating Room Packaging)
Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special
Smallville, The Complete 5th Season
Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, The Christmas Collection
That Girl, Season 1
That Girl, Season 2
Three's Company, Season 2
Who's the Boss?, The Complete 1st Season
Night Court, Complete 1st Season
So there you have my selections. I'm sharing them now so you can dig them up, order them or assemble your own collection. Someday, I'll upload my collection someplace on the cloud and be able to create playlists of TV show episodes, but until then, you can simply get your discs out and watch the relevant episodes.
Until now, most of the cast reunions I've shared on "Harvest Gold Memories" have come from U.S. television networks, notably NBC and ABC (for some reason, CBS has not done many that I'm aware of). But let's face it, the world is a big place that has really been shrinking since the advent of the internet, global media conglomerates, etc. That's why some of today's post comes from Australia's Seven Network (which appears on Channel 7). Evidently, for a while, a morning show there (much like NBC's Today Show or ABC's Good Morning America here in the U.S.) had a feature they called "Where Are They Now" which ran in 2007.
For a period in the mid-to-late 1970s, ABC television scored a major ratings winner with a television show that began as a Movie of the Week based on a science fiction novel called "Cyborg" by Martin Caidin. The novel itself wasn't quite a bestseller until television came knocking, at which point, the book flew off the shelves. However, the movie and TV show were based loosely on the book, so the similarities are fairly limited.
6MDM: The Six Million Dollar Man
People cover 7/4/1977
I certainly didn't think of it back in 1977, but some American television shows were exported to Canada, Australia and elsewhere and became as popular there as they were here. One of those was the sci-fi show "The Six Million Dollar Man" which was a ratings winner for the ABC network here in the U.S. The lead actor who played Col. Steve Austin, was Lee Majors, someone best known for his prior work on the Western TV show "Gunsmoke". Lee Majors was seen by kids of that era as THE coolest man on earth not only because he starred in this show, but also because in real-life, he was married to the hottest woman at that time, none other than Farrah Fawcett (whose bathing suit poster lined countless boys' rooms back in the day). Alas, their marriage didn't last, and neither did the ratings of "The Six Million Dollar Man". But Lee Majors' went on to star on another hit show known as "The Fall Guy" a few years later.
The 6MDM (Six Million Dollar Man) also spawned it's own spinoff, "The Bionic Woman" which was almost as popular, in part, because Gen Xer girls, like their mothers who were asserting their newfound independence with divorce in mass numbers (only to discover that being single-parent households was much tougher than they'd anticipated) liked that show.
The most popular school lunchbox in 1977
While "The Six Million Dollar Man" lacks a fansite as extensive as "The Bionic Woman" does (be sure to check out The Bionic Woman Files (www.bionicwomanfiles.com/) to see what an awesome job someone did for that show), and the most poplular school lunchbox among boys in 1977 is now a collectors item, all is not relegated to vague memories.
After spending a decade near the top of TVShowsonDVD.com's "Most Wanted" Unreleased DVD list, in late 2010, after years of bickering between the shows' producers and Universal Studios over content rights, both bionic shows were finally digitized and are now available on DVD. "The Six Million Dollar Man" had more seasons on the air, so it's release was much a bigger deal, and the entire series was released last year with some fanfare, while the 3 seasons for "The Bionic Woman" were released very quickly to retail stores with considerably less fanfare. However, after the initial full-season release, each season of "The Six Million Dollar Man" will eventually come to your local Best Buy, Target, or to Amazon.com. Season 1 of 6MDM is already out, and Season 2 is due out in time for the 2012 holidays on November 6, 2012.
Needless to say, this show was a big hit, especially among grade school kids. Sure, the show was campy with sound effects that one could hear kids trying to imitate all over school playgrounds, and equally campy slo-mo special effects, but that didn't stop kids from tuning in week after week. Anyway, I can't really call this post a "cast reunion" since it consists mainly of one man.
Still, as I noted at the beginning of this post, we can thank Australian TV for this "Where Are They Now?" video, which can be seen below, or at http://youtu.be/yxh5HEPbenQ:
Now that your memory has been refreshed, check out my very first posting on this blog, and be sure to view the commercial for the Mazda CX-5 there. I'll just close with some of the awesomely cheesy sound-effects used in 6MDM. Check them out!
Back in the 1970's, those who weren't tearing up the disco floors in their leisure suits and platform shoes to the soundtrack of "Saturday Night Fever" on Saturday evenings were probably at home, watching one of the three broadcast TV networks available at the time. A staple for much of the decade were two Aaron Spelling creations perhaps best known for being a place that out-of-work actors and actresses could find work, albeit only temporarily: "The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island", which aired on ABC back-to-back on Saturday evenings. (Another blogger did a very interesting analysis of which TV shows' actors are best represented on these shows, see HERE for details!)
I'll save the discussion of "The Love Boat" for another day, but "Fantasy Island" really hasn't been on television for a few years (it seems that TV Land doesn't routinely recycle old network shows as it once did, and even newcomers like Retro Television/RTV, Antenna TV, and Me-TV which have pretty much taken over as far as showing old re-runs, but each has limited their content to a few programs each. Right now, neither "The Love Boat" nor "Fantasy Island" appear on any of their current line-ups, although that could change down the road.
The original idea for "Fantasy Island" was not creative genius, but a willingness to do whatever it took to make a few (million) bucks. Aaron Spelling was in a pitch meeting with the network and his big ideas were not going well. That lead to an exasperated joke from the producer. "Aaron was in his office, trying to sell a show to ABC," his wife Candy recalled in an oral history for The Hollywood Reporter, "and I heard him say, 'What would you like me to do? Put some guy on an island and have him grant wishes to people?' He was being sarcastic." He was kidding. But, of course, the network loved the idea, hence "Fantasy Island" was born.
Given the lack of creative inspiration for the successful series, we would later learn that the lead actor himself was largely responsible for his portrayal of Mr. Roarke. Actor Ricardo Montalbán, who ultimately played Mr. Roarke on "Fantasy Island", decided on his own what the backstory of what Fantasy Island really was. In his mind, he said he guided his performance with the idea that Mr. Roarke was not God, or necessarily some kind of angel, but was he was also not the devil, rather he was kind of the man who ran purgatory.
"He's not the devil ... what is he? What is he?" Montalbán mused about his character in an interview late in his life. "Even though the audience didn't realize what I was thinking... I decided this man was an angel who still had a little sin of pride in him... so he is in charge of purgatory, and he has his little cherub to help him." (see the Archive or American Television coverage HERE).
Curiously, Mr. Montalbán was not the actor the network wanted as the lead actor for "Fantasy Island". ABC pushed hard to have the venerable, but faded star Orson Welles as the show's headliner. Despite the network's desire for Orson Welles, Mr. Spelling wanted the Montalbán and won, obviously. In hindsight, it seems Mr. Spelling's selection helped to make the series work.
DVD Release Caught in Purgatory Until Shout! Factory Steps In
On the DVD front, "The Love Boat", after years of promises, finally made it to DVD and sales for Viacom's CBS Home Video were decent enough (in spite of the studio's greedy decision to issue each season as two separate volumes, effectively doubling the cost for would-be buyers) to produce the first three seasons. As for "Fantasy Island", Sony Home Entertainment released the first season to reportedly "tepid" sales in 2005, hence there was really little financial motivation to go much further. The outlook for more "Fantasy Island" content to be digitized didn't look very promising. Until ... Shout! Factory to the Rescue
Apparently, the team from Shout! Factory, which began as a company when some guys from the former retro record label known as Rhino Records (after Rhino was sold to Warner Brothers) decided to continue what they were doing ... on their own. But beyond just music, the company also saw opportunity in home video as well. Since then, Shout! Factory has released a bunch of retro TV programming to DVD, including at least one that few entertainment executives expected to sell well: the PBS educational series "The Electric Company". In fact, that particular show sold so well, that the company released both Season 1 and Season 2. But that's irrelevant to today's post, except that it demonstrates that Shout! Factory can see opportunity to make money on the major media companies' discards.
The company has picked up the rights to a few other '70s-'80s shows whose early seasons were released, but stopped, including the "Diff'rent Strokes" spinoff known as "The Facts of Life" and "Night Court", and both have apparently sold well enough among collectors of retro TV. Shout! Factory evidently saw how well CBS Home Video's (Viacom's) "The Love Boat" sold, and concluded two things: first, that there was a market for Season 2 of "Fantasy Island" and second, they didn't want to get too greedy like CBS did by splitting a full season of old TV programming into separate volumes. I suspect that Shout! Factory also has a good grip of how much volume they need to sell to make a profit, so they usually don't overpay for content rights to shows like "Fantasy Island" and they may even be doing small volume productions so they don't get stuck with excess unsold inventory like the major providers (Sony, etc.) do.
The good news: "Fantasy Island" Season 2 was released on DVD on May 8, 2012.
I had Season 1 from Sony already, and while I was generally pleased with it, the show really didn't become the magnet for actors and actresses looking for work until subsequent seasons, so the guest roster in Season 1 was OK, but Season 2 is definitely better.
Sure, I knew who Mabel King was (in addition to being an accomplished stage actress, she also played the role of the mother on "What's Happening" back in the '70s), and there are a few other big names like Maureen McCormick (Marcia Brady), Bernie Kopell (best known as Doctor Adam Bricker on "The Love Boat", but also known for his earlier role as Siegfried on "Get Smart"), Don Knotts (from "The Andy Griffith Show", and later "Three's Company"), Leslie Nielsen, Lucie Arnaz (not that she ever really acted, her brother was on "I Love Lucy", not her), and Jim Backus and Alan Hale (both from "Gilligan's Island").
But Season 2 is full of many more stars, and probably the ones Generation X are more likely to recognize. A few more from "The Brady Bunch" show up in Season 2 including Florence Henderson, Robert Reed, as well as a surprisingly young Regis Philbin, celebrity psychic and fortune-teller Jean Dixon, Eva Gabor and plenty of others.
In all, I think Shout! Factory has done a great job with Season 2. The original production content was reportedly not in the best shape so given what they had to work with, the content looks decent and now, you can watch it commercial free. There's more good news! Season 3 is coming to DVD on October 23, 2012. Amazon is taking pre-orders HERE. A Bit of Background on Fantasy Island
Fantasy Island originally began as two made-for-TV specials which aired in 1977. Viewer response was positive, which persuaded ABC to green-light a weekly series. For those of you not familiar with it, the basic premise of the show is as follows: a mysterious island exists and people can pay to have their fantasies fulfilled while visiting this island (hence the name "Fantasy Island"). Inevitably, the desires of the island's guests aren't all they're cracked up to be, adding to the mystery and providing a lesson to be learned for each visitor who can pay the price to have their fantasies fulfulled. The regular cast consisted pretty much of two people: Ricardo Montalbán who plays Mr. Rourke, the island's host, and his personal island assistant known as Tattoo, played by the French little-person Hervé Villechaize who also starred as an enemy on the 1974 James Bond flick "The Man with the Golden Gun". Retroland did a review of "Fantasy Island" HERE.
Incidentally, for those curious about the footage in the show's opening and where on earth that can be found, that island is the island of Kauai, which is part of the archipelago that makes up the U.S. State of Hawaii. At least, that's where you can find the gorgeous waterfalls seen in the opening credits, Wailua Falls.
Video Previews of Fantasy Island DVD Release for Seasons 2
For the past week, I've been having "Alice" flashbacks.
Alice was a sitcom which aired from 1976 to 1985 on CBS television. But my reasons for the flashbacks are actually more concrete.
This evening, Turner Classic Movies actually ran the 1974 movie "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" which was a very early Martin Scorsese flick, upon which the sitcom was actually based (it seems scary to me that movies from the 1970s can be considered "classics" because I'm used to classics being exclusively in black and white, but at some point, this was bound to happen). Although the star of the television show, Linda Lavin, was not featured in the film, the guy who played the Phoenix diner-owner Mel Sharples (played by the now-deceased actor Vic Tayback, who starred in the movie, and later reprised his role in the film for the TV series) where Alice was employed was the same guy. Basically, it was about a widow named Alice Hyatt (and her son Tommy, played by Philip McKeon on the TV show, whose older sister Nancy played "Jo" on another '70s show called "The Facts of Life") who leaves New Jersey to go to LA so she can pursue a singing career (catch this 1978 issue of People magazine for Linda Lavin's cover story) But her car breaks down unexpectedly near Phoenix, and since she's out of money, she ends up taking a job as a waitress at dump diner known as Mel’s Diner in the Phoenix outskirts.
Actress Linda Lavin, who in recent years has been largely absent from TV reportedly lives in North Carolina these days, but she continues to act, albeit only periodically, and mostly in stage productions (including one running on Broadway as I write this).
Last week, my Netflix queue delivered the recent Jennifer Lopez flick "The Back Up Plan", and I was kind of surprised to see Linda Lavin starring in that particular movie as the lead character's mother. I envisioned her in an ugly polyester diner uniform (the kind common back in the '70s), only these days, Ms. Lavin's hair is white in color. But aside from the hair color, she looked ... and sounded ... exactly the same.
Sitcoms Online Suggests Season 1 for "Alice" is Coming Soon
Anyway, the website "Sitcoms Online" is reporting (see HERE) that the '70s-'80s TV show "Alice" (at least the first season) is likely to be coming to DVD! While it doesn't explicitly say so, there was news that the first season will be available to purchase to view streaming on your computer (or Roku device) from Amazon Instant Video. They also discuss the wording from the studio, which I'll get to shortly.
Warner DVD on Demand
I should take a step back to note that Warner Brothers has a somewhat unique capability known as "DVD on Demand" (also known as manufacturing on demand) which enables people to buy DVDs from the Warner movie archives (which have been digitized) without the company having to manufacture a lot of the products (you can visit Warner on Demand by clicking HERE) in advance. They also produce DVDs on-demand for rival Sony, and importantly, they do it for Amazon.com. To date, it's mostly been used for classic movies, although more recently, they've introduced some classic television (for example, some later seasons of the '80s TV show Night Court can be bought there). While the service isn't cheap, the prices are comparable to what a full season from a TV show would cost, and they occasionally do sales.
Sitcoms Online added "late last week, a fan asked about this series [Alice] on the Facebook page, which elicited this response from Warner Archive:
'Things are looking good for ALICE. Stay tuned!'"
Apparently, the wording on the news was written in such a way to suggest that manufacturing on demand for season 1 of Alice might be in the cards, although its still no guarantee at this point. Technically, Warner Brothers did already release a single DVD of what they called "Fan Favorites" for Alice which featured 6 episodes (that disc is apparently out-of-print, but is still widely available from places like eBay and even some retail stores), but for a show that aired on TV for a decade, that was hardly enough.
Just when will Alice Hyatt and company (including co-stars Polly Holiday as Flo and Beth Howland as Vera) will be available? Well, the details have yet to come out, but the best place to keep abreast of it is at TVShowsonDVD.com (which is owned by TV Guide, incidentally) which has a TVShowsonDVD release calendar, and they also have an RSS feed for regular news updates on the subject of television shows on DVD, or you can query on the status for a particular show.
In the interim, here's a sample of Linda Lavin singing the theme song for "Alice" (or visit HERE):
Author P.S. (June 12, 2012): Indeed, my sources were correct! As of today, Warner Archive's Manufacture-on-Demand began selling "Alice" Season 1. Visit HERE for details. The Warner Archive Collection Podcast dated June 12, 2012 is entitled "New Releases: There's a New Clown in Town" and can be found on iTunes HERE, or you may just listen to the MP3 HERE.
Author P.S. (October 23, 2012): Warner Archive is releasing "Alice" Season 2 starting today for $29.95 + shipping and handling. It will be available as a manufacture-on-demand product, much the same way as Season 1 was offered. To order, visit http://www.wbshop.com/ and click on "Warner Archive".
Writer, speaker, brother, son, friend, spouse, advocate for people with autoimmune (type 1) diabetes, thinker, dreamer. Reading and writing is becoming a lost art, but we can learn a lot from reading the medical and scientific literature before drawing conclusions. The press publishes abbreviated facts to fit into limited space, I don't mince words or omit facts.
