Hazel: The Early Years: Special Thaksgiving Edition!

This installment of Hazel: The Early Years is light on text because I just wrote about this episode at ClassicFlix. Please check that out! Today, though, who needs all those pesky words? Maybe you ate too much, maybe you're wiped out, maybe you just feel like looking at some screencaps today. You've come to the right place, my friends. Let's go to the Baxter household for a special Thanksgiving as we skip ahead for episode #9: "Everybody's Thankful But Us Turkeys."

Just a reminder that George Baxter is not just a player in the corporate law realm, but a player, period

Uh...should Harold be in the room while Hazel is doing that to the turkey?

The kid's a fast learner, I'll give him that

Hazel Burke: Cult of Personality

George is a workaholic, but he also makes time for his paper

This strikes me as careless technique when wielding a sharp blade, but who am I to question Hazel?

The poor Johnsons! Hazel is always willing to help the 1-percenters, though

"Just DON'T do any damnable card tricks!"

Mother Baxter--A classy woman, no doubt

Standing by to meddle in 5, 4, 3, 2...

Hazel puts everyone at ease

"You'll never believe what this turkey said I did to it earlier!"

"And we're thankful that Sony put the whole series out, even the fifth season, before it gave up on DVD"

Inappropriate to rekindle your romance during the grace, folks

Clearly Hazel is--there is no other word that does it--TICKLED to be invited to join the family at dinner

TV Time Bonus: Thanksgiving with the Douglas family and Johnny Squanto

If you enjoyed my ClassicFlix piece on Thanksgiving episodes, you might enjoy a closer look at a few of the episodes I discussed. Today let's spend some more time with the Douglas family on My Three Sons in season 1's "Chip's Harvest."

Here's a glamour shot for all you turkey lovers out there

Robbie is already salivating over Bub's planned feast

 

Steve's thoughtful expression as the boys debate the invitation Chip gave Johnny Squanto. Either that or Freddie Mac is pondering his tee time for the next morning.

 

 

 

 

There's almost a nourish feel to the sequence when Steve visits Johnny Squanto at his old shack. Almost.

 

Even Bub can't cook a turkey without a working stove

Let's just not comment on this one

Here's that foxy young teacher Robbie invited to the family dinner



"What are YOU looking at, buddy?"

Seriously, how old is that teacher supposed to be?

Squanto in full gear after saving Thanksgiving



STILL a lot safer than those deep fryers



A good old-fashioned feast after all. Only thing missing is the toast and the popcorn

 



TV Time Bonus: More on The Joey Bishop Show

The other day, I talked about the last several episodes of season 2 of The Joey Bishop Show, which we can see on DVD thanks to the (now defunct?) Questar outfit. Season 2 is the only bit of Bishop available on legal DVD right now, but the extras give us an intriguing glimpse of how radically different the sitcom's first season is.

The series pilot is a fascinating bonus on the final disc of the season 2 collection. Things look different right away because season 2 transitioned to color , while the debut campaign is in good ol' black and white. More importantly, Joey Bishop's character is not at all  the in-command, smartest guy in the room kind of dude we see in the second season. He's a bit of a klutz and, especially compared to this episodes co-stars Danny Thomas and Joe Flynn, far from the savvy showbiz insider he would play after the format change.

Can you  blame Joey Bishop? In the pilot, he is, as Wikipedia puts it, "an incompetent Hollywood public relations man" who screws up a visit from Danny Williams (Thomas playing his Make Room for Daddy character) and apparently screws up a lot of things.  Ratings were not great when the show went to series, and I'm sure one of the first things Bishop suggested was changing his character from a nice enough guy who means well but always gets into mishaps to a guy clearly in charge of his own show and own life.

An odd element of the pilot is the strong presence of Joey's family, which causes all kinds of havoc when he has to offer the star lodging at his own pad. His parents (Billy Gilbert and Madge Blake) have good intentions but are meddlers, and stranger still, his unmarried sister is attracted to Danny, and the family wants to encourage a relationship. Well, guess who plays this sister? Yep, Marlo Thomas--Danny's real-life daughter!

The psychosexual tangles of that situation aside, this pilot is an amusing glimpse into the early days of the series, and it proves just how different Bishop becomes in season 2, when he becomes a talk show host with an all-new supporting cast, including Joe Besser (and you know Besser, for better or worse, is going to make anything different). Is it better or worse? I don't know because this is the only season 1 episode I've seen. Season 2 isn't exactly a masterpiece, but I wish more of The Joey Bishop Show could be seen on DVD because, well, why not?

Below are some glimpses of early Joey Bishop Show:

"Nothing weird about you and Danny. No, nothing at all..."

 

In the office, Joey is always spilling something or knocking something over

 

Joey does NOT get to be this kind of cool  in the series pilot

 

"I got out of Frank's shadow to play stooge to these guys?"

TV Time Bonus: The Joey Bishop Show

Hey, remember that ClassicFlix piece I wrote a few months ago about expectant dads?

Well, I had to delete The Joey Bishop Show for space reasons, but let me share a few screencaps with you today. I watched several episodes from season 2, the one season available on official DVD. It's weird because costar Guy Marks had already been 86'ed (for stealing too many scenes from Bishop, from what I heard) and been replaced by Corbett Monica. Monica's character was the head writer on the TV show in which Bishop's "Joey Barnes starred. So the show underwent a radical format change  after season 1 (more on that in a future post), then halfway through the next season, it dumps one of the main supporting characters.

Well, what is another radical way to goose a show? Yep, bring on a baby! So at the end of season 2, a multi-episode arc features the pregnancy of Joey's on-screen wife Ellie (Abby Dalton). Season finale "The Baby Cometh" is one of the more entertaining episodes I have seen. It is not exactly an atypical installment, though; from what I can tell, season 2 features Bishop as a TV personality who bosses everyone around while indulging the morons around him. It's not like, say, Bob Newhart, who is the calm center but often the butt of the joke. Bishop seems more like he's telling the audience, "You see what I have to put up with?"

Still, this is a fun episode, with my favorite bit being one in which Joey organizes all the expectant dads like a military command  (see what I mean about him always being in control)? Of course, all soon-to-be TV fathers pace in a delivery room  because that's just what they do...except for the jaded ones who have already had umpteen kids, and, brother, you better believe this episode gives us one of those, too.

You can do worse than this arc if you want to sample The Joey Bishop Show, but I found an extra feature on the disc much more compelling. I'll touch on that later this week, but for now, here are some shots of Joey in action:

Joey doing one of his favorite things:  yelling

This organizing the fathers thing really is much funnier than I make it sound

I just like breaking the fourth wall...

...especially in close-ups



TV Time Bonus: More from Dragnet: the movie (1954)

I know, I know: I'm getting so much mileage out of that ClassicFlix article about movie adaptations of classic TV shows, I should take the blog in for an oil change. I can't let it go, though, without sharing some of my favorite moments from Dragnet, a fun flick that expands on the concept of the classic radio/TV drama and makes a credible feature-length extension of the world Jack Webb created.



Don't see a lot of shots like this one on the TV show!



This is the beginning of the movie, folks! Hard-hitting!




Webb's interrogation of Stacy Harris' character is one of the highlights of the film.
 

I kind of want to hang out at the Red Spot.

 

Time for a good old-fashioned brawl! This fight scene is one of the best action sequences Dragnet ever delivered.





Took its toll on the boys, though.

 

That crumpled up paper? That's what Friday thinks of namby-pamby concepts like the Fifth Amendment (some suspects used the papers to declare their intention to invoke it).

TV Time Bonus: The Munsters...IN COLOR!

I fell way behind on sharing some screencaps from my recent (is it still considered recent? It was this year, anyway) TV Time look at movie adaptations of classic TV shows. Today let's take a look at the Munsters in glorious Technicolor.

Not a bad movie, all in all

Herman suave as ever on the Munsters' boat trip to England

Grandpa and Lily looking good as well

These next pics just show the colors in the movie. Plus Herman's spectacular pajamas.

Poor Pat Priest was replaced by Debbie Watson because they wanted someone younger. Priest was pushing 30 at the time.

 

Now the moment we've all been waiting for: The romantic lead of the picture, the dashing, the elegant, the debonair...Mister Robert Pine!

 

Did I mention he affects an accent, too?

 

One of the highlights of the film is the big road race:

 

 

Herman Munster = One baaaaaad dude

 

Time for the young lovers to exchange farewells...for now.

"Ah, Marilyn, I'm so glad you aren't 30 and blonde like I was afraid you'd be."

"What the..."

Watching the young lovers is the proud uncle or...other kind of uncle?

"If Ponch is behind this, I'm gonna kill him!"

Let's go with proud uncle, but this kind of disturbs me.