These days if you’ve got even basic cable you can pretty much watch Christmas programs 24 hours a day from Thanksgiving onwards. So I thought it might be interesting to look at a week of December television programming from Seattle’s six-channel days (4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13) with an eye toward Christmas.
Saturday, December 15
8:00 AM, Channel 5:
Telaventure Tales
The Book Explorers from the Magnolia Library discuss “Best Christmas” by Kingman.
9:00 AM, Channel 7:
Captain Kangaroo
Jean Jacques Perrey, today’s guest, performs on a musical instrument he invented—the ondioline. Musical numbers: “Santa’s Toy Shop” and “March of the Christmas Toys.” (60 min.)
12:00 PM, Channel 7:
Highways—Discussion
12:30 PM, Channel 7:
All America Wants to Know
12:45 PM, Channel 5:
Industry on Parade
1:00 PM, Channel 7:
Youth Speaks Out
1:30 PM, Channel 4:
Dentistry Today
3:00 PM, Channel 11:
Box 11, R.F.D.—Farm News
3:30 PM, Channel 4:
University Research
Prof. Peter Misch, geologist, guests.
3:30 PM, Channel 11:
These Are Yours—Education
[Just a sample of the excitement of Saturday afternoon programming.]
7:30 PM, Channel 7:
Jackie Gleason—Variety
Joe the Bartender and Crazy (Frank Fontaine) discuss the evils of Christmas shopping. In another segment, Jackie and Frank pantomime men who come into a house to lay new linoleum. June Taylor dancers, Sammy Spear. (60 min.)
[Linoleum pantomime! All right! Maybe next week there'll be a puppet show about plumbers or a monologue about furnace installation!]
9:00 PM, Channel 4:
Lawrence Welk--Music
Christmas music is featured tonight. Highlights include “Silver Bells,” “Susie Snowflake,” “Winter Wonderland,” “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” and “Raggedy Ann Doll Dance.” Lennon Sisters, Jim Roberts, Norma Zimmer, Dick Dale, Bob Burgess, Barbara Boylan, Jo Ann Castle, Larry Hooper, Aladdin and the Lawrence Welk orchestra. (60 min.)
Sunday, December 16
8:30 AM, Channel 7:
Look Up and Live—Religion
“How Jesus Came,” Part 3 of “Children and Christmas,” is rerun.
Monday, December 17
11:00 AM, Channel 4:
Jane Wyman—Drama
“The Night After Christmas.” Marley: John Dehner. Secretary: Bartlett Robinson.
3:00 PM, Channel 5:
Christmas Tree Ceremony
SPECIAL President Kennedy lights the White House Christmas tree and offers a brief Yuletide message. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall introduces the President. Providing Christmas music is the U.S. Marine Band.
8:00 PM, Channel 9:
Shepherds and the Magi
SPECIAL Students from St. Martin’s College in Olympia present a 13th-century liturgical Christmas drama.
Tuesday, December 18
7:15 PM, Channel 9:
Triptych For Christmas
1.An angel tells the story of the shepherds through the paintings of Peiro della Francesca. 2. The Nativity is illustrated. 3. Van der Goes’ view of the Wise Men.
7:30 PM, Channel 5:
Magoo’s Christmas Carol
SPECIAL COLOR “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol,” an animated version of the Dickens classic. For details see the Close-up below. (60 min.)
“Laramie” will not be seen tonight.
[This was the first showing of what is undeniably the greatest of all Christmas television specials, featuring the saddest song ever written, “All Alone in the World.” (A hand for each hand was planned for the world/Why don’t my fingers reach/Millions of grains of sand in the world/Why such a lonely beach/Where is the voice to answer mine back/Where are two shoes to click to my clack/I’m all alone in the world…)]
8:00 PM, Channel 7:
Lloyd Bridges—Drama Lloyd Bridges’ eight-year-old daughter Cindy makes her acting debut in tonight’s drama. As Christmas draws near, little Cathy O’Connell hears “The Sound of Angels” and she delights everyone with her story of their heavenly music. Adam and Fred: Lloyd Bridges.
Guest Cast
Cathy…………..Cindy Bridges
Julie……………...Nancy Gates
[Lloyd played Adam AND Fred? Or one character named “Adam and Fred”?]
Wednesday, December 19
3:00 PM, Channel 5:
Wunda Wunda—Children
“Why Santa Chose Reindeer.”
8:00 PM, Channel 9:
Christmas Paintings
The struggles of an artist who is commissioned to paint Christmas.
8:30 PM, Channel 7:
Dobie Gillis—Comedy
“Will the Real Santa Claus Please Come Down the Chimney.” Maynard still believes in Santa Claus, and Dobie and his folks decide to cure him of his childish outlook. Dobie: Dwayne Hickman. Herbert: Frank Faylen. Maynard: Bob Denver.
9:00 PM, Channel 5:
Perry Como—Variety
COLOR Joining Perry for a Christmas songfest are Burr Tillstrom, Fran Allison and puppets Kukla, Ollie and Beulah Witch. Also on hand are the wives and children of Perry and the whole staff. (60 min.)
Thursday, December 20
7:00 PM, Channel 11:
Cimarron City—Western
“Cimarron Holiday.” The townspeople of Cimarron City get together to produce a Western version of Charles Dickens’ “Christmas Carol.” Matt: George Montgomery. Avery: Tim Hovey. (60 min.)
Friday, December 21
9:30 PM, Channel 7:
Fair Exchange—Comedy
“’Twas the Fortnight Before Christmas.” Tommy and Eddie decide—simultaneously—to surprise each other with a transatlantic trip. Eddie: Eddie Foy jr. Dorothy: Audrey Christie. Patty: Lynn Loring. Larry: Flip Mark. Tommy: Victor Maddern. Sybil: Diana Chesney. Heather: Judy Carne. Neville: Dennis Waterman. (60 min.)
10:00 PM, Channel 5:
Jack Paar—Variety
COLOR Jack’s guests include singer Sally Ann Howes and comedians Buddy Hackett and Vaughn Meader. Jack narrates films showing celebrations of Christmas Eve around the world. (60 min.)
[So, no made-for-TV Christmas romantic comedies, only one animated special, a few Christmas episodes of regular series, and some oddball public television (Channel 9).]
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Looking at the KJR Fabulous 50, August 4, 1967
On August 3, 1967, my eighth birthday, I got a transistor radio. As I remember it, my dad said, “Here, I’ll turn it to a station you’ll like” and tuned it to 1300 KOL—in retrospect I’m not sure why he chose them over KJR, the giant of Seattle radio. (But I don’t have the KOL survey for that week.) Also as I remember it, I didn’t touch that dial for about two years, until I became obsessed with Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue,” started searching the dial because KOL wasn’t playing it often enough for me, and ended up on KAYO, beginning my country phase. Anyway, here's KJR's Fab 50 for the week of August 4:
1.Come Back When You Grow Up—Bobby Vee
Bobby Vee descended into teen idol irrelevance in 1964 and this was his big comeback. Things changed so quickly in the 60s that ’64 and ’67 were about a decade apart (and ’63 and ’67 were about two decades apart). Is the music, or pop culture in general, of 2008 noticeably different from that of 2005? Doesn’t seem like it to me, but then I’m a bit out of the loop.
2.Ode to Billie Joe—Bobbie Gentry
I remember counting the number of times I heard this song (on KOL) in one day, and it seems like it was ten.
3.All You Need is Love/Baby You’re a Rich Man—The Beatles
I’m very glad, to the point of smugness I suppose, to have been born when I was and to have gotten into music/TV/etc at an early age. I particularly enjoy the fact that I can remember hearing new music by the Beatles on the radio.
4.Pleasant Valley Sunday—The Monkees
Another one of my birthday presents that year was the Monkees' Headquarters album, which is still one of my all-time favorites. It didn't contain any singles, though, and this song appeared on their next album.
5.Light My Fire—The Doors
This, #2 and #40 are the songs I associate most with listening to the radio during this period.
6.Carrie-Anne—The Hollies
The most trebly kinds of music I can think of are bluegrass and the Hollies.
7.Silence is Golden—The Tremeloes
The Four Seasons released this as a b-side in 1964, and that’s the more familiar version for me, thanks to it appearing on the LP The Four Seasons Story, which I bought in high school.
8.Brown-Eyed Girl—Van Morrison
If I keep trying to think of something to write about every song I'll never finish this.
9.Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie—Jay & the Techniques
10.Little Bit o’ Soul—The Music Explosion
11.I Was Made to Love Her—Stevie Wonder
12.Happy and Me—Don & the Goodtimes
I think of this as “The Little Dog Death Song,” due to its opening lyrics, “Remember when your little dog died/And upon my shoulder you cried.” Nationally, this record peaked at #98 (in Billboard magazine), but at #11 at KJR. The group was from Portland, Oregon.
13.Fakin’ It—Simon & Garfunkel
14.Try, Try, Try—Jim Valley
This one didn’t make the Billboard Hot 100 at all, coming up just short at #106 on the Bubbling Under the Hot 100 chart. Jim “Harpo” Valley was a Seattle boy, a member of local group the Viceroys, then joining Don & the Goodtimes and then, briefly, Paul Revere & the Raiders. This was around the time he left the Raiders.
15.A Girl Like You—The Young Rascals
16.Lovely Rita—The Beatles (LP)
Usually Top 40 stations only played songs released as singles, but sometimes exceptions were made, especially for Beatles or Monkees songs.
17.White Rabbit—Jefferson Airplane
My mom hates this song.
18.I Thank the Lord For the Night Time—Neil Diamond
19.Let the Good Times Roll—Bunny Sigler
20.Soul Finger—Bar-Kays
I’m not sure which finger is the soul finger. The song is an instrumental, other than a bunch of kids yelling “soul finger!,” so it doesn’t really help.
21.Lovin’ Sound—Ian & Sylvia
#101 in Billboard, #17 at KJR (facts like that fascinate me). They were Canadian.
22.The World We Knew (Over and Over)—Frank Sinatra
23.To Love Somebody—Bee Gees
24.Omaha—Moby Grape
The word “Omaha” does not actually appear in the song, which a lot of people probably thought was called “Listen My Friends.”
25.Reflections—Diana Ross & the Supremes
This was the record where they changed from “The Supremes” to “Diana Ross & the Supremes.”
26.San Francisco—Scott McKenzie
You know, the flowers in your hair and the gentle people there.
27.Baby I Love You—Aretha Franklin
28.Can’t Take My Eyes Off You—Frankie Valli
Frankie had kind of a double career going on at this time—while the Four Seasons were trying to keep up with what was going on in rock music, he was also going in the opposite direction with more easy-listening-leaning solo records. Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere & the Raiders did something similar a couple years later.
29.Mercy, Mercy, Mercy—The Buckinghams
I love the Buckinghams.
30.Windy—The Association
31.You’re a Very Lovely Woman—The Merry-Go-Round
#94 Billboard, #17 KJR. I don’t think things like that happen anymore; that is, it seems like the hits in one city are the same as in another, unless one city has a sports team that makes a rap record or something.
32.San Franciscan Nights—Eric Burdon & the Animals
This is the one where the cop’s face is filled with hate, but it’s an American dream that includes Indians too.
33.Society’s Child—Janis Ian
When Janis Ian was 24 years old, she had her second big hit record, “At Seventeen,” which was about having been an unpopular, ugly loser as a teen. But when she was seventeen she had already had her first big hit record, this one. I always thought that was kind of weird.
34.Anything Goes—Harper’s Bizarre
#43 Billboard, #9 KJR.
35.There is a Mountain—Donovan
First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. The lock upon my garden gate’s a snail, that’s what it is. Caterpillar sheds his skin to find the butterfly within. Oh Juanita, I call your name. The snow will be a blinding sight to see as it lies on yonder hillside.
36.Cold Sweat—James Brown
On the other hand, this was #7 Billboard, #35 KJR.
37.You Know What I Mean—The Turtles
38.Don’t Sleep in the Subway—Petula Clark
39.I Dig Rock & Roll Music—Peter, Paul & Mary
It never occurred to me at the time, but this is obviously an anti-rock & roll song. Just listen closely! They even come right out and tell us they’re being sarcastic—“But if I really say it/The radio won’t play it/Unless I lay it between the lines.” But radio either didn’t get it or didn’t care, and neither did the fans. But listen!
40.The Letter—The Box Tops
How many other songs have contained the word "aeroplane"?
41.It’s the Little Things—Sonny & Cher
42.Run, Run, Run—The Third Rail
Vocal by Joey Levine, who also sang the Ohio Express hits (“Yummy Yummy Yummy,” “Chewy Chewy,” etc.), “Life is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)” by Reunion, and two early 80s commercial jingles I remember well:
Wanna have some fun, here’s an aisle of candy bars
So many flavors good to eat
Wanna have some fun, here’s a fountain of Slurpees
Flowing icy cold and sweet
Wanna have some fun, something something
Something something something
Wanna have some fun, wanna have some fun
At Seven-Eleven fun is waiting for you!
And
Orange you smart
For drinking orange juice
Pure refreshment every taste [or something like that]
Hey orange you smart
For drinking to your body’s content
A taste that only nature could invent
Hey! Orange you smart!
43.You Were on My Mind—Crispian St. Peters
44.Things I Should Have Said—The Grass Roots
45.Cry Softly Lonely One—Roy Orbison
It may seem kind of funny to see Roy Orbison on the charts in the summer of ’67, but he had been hanging on with a string of (generally pretty cool) minor hits ever since his last big one, “Oh, Pretty Woman” in 1964. This one hit #52 in Billboard and #42 at KJR, and was his last appearance in the Hot 100 until his 80s comeback.
46.Heroes and Villains—The Beach Boys
I’ve been in this town so long that back in the city I’ve been taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long long time.
47.Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead—The Fifth Estate
48.More Love—Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
49.In the Chapel in the Moonlight—Dean Martin
50.Out & About—Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart
Monday, April 28, 2008
Looking at Lois Lane #38, January 1963, Part Three
“The Girl Who Refused to Marry Superman!”
Art: Kurt Schaffenberger
It’s February 14 and Superman is visiting the Daily Planet offices. As Lois and Jimmy look on, Perry shows him a mound of thousands of St. Valentine’s Day cards that were sent to him in care of the Planet. “Gosh, Perry! This is embarrassing!” he objects, but Lois isn’t having it: “Tush! MY card is in there, and I’m sure Lana Lang didn’t forget you, either! So, suppose you start reading them! It’s the least you owe the people who sent them!” “Well…er…okay, Lois!” he stammers, his tail between his legs. Suddenly there’s someone else in the room, a guy with a receding hairline, horn-rimmed glasses and a bow tie, who looks a little like Bill Cullen or maybe Bennett Cerf, looking straight at the reader, pointing at Superman with his thumb, and exclaiming, “Holy cats! He’s reading 1,000 CARDS a second!” Bill/Bennett vanishes as quickly and mysteriously as he appeared, with seemingly no one else in the story having noticed him. “Here’s the card YOU sent, Lois! Also Lana Lang’s!” says Superman. “But I wonder if you both are any different from these female admirers who know me only as SUPERMAN, the great, glamorous hero!” “What do you mean, SUPERMAN?” frowns Lois. “Just this! These girls don’t know the real ‘me,’ the person I am when I’m not wearing my colorful costume! [And Lois and Lana do?] Would they be attracted to me if they knew me only as an ordinary American? I’ve often wondered whether you or Lana would care for me if I were not SUPERMAN…”
But SUPERMAN cuts himself off in mid-sentence, thinking, “Gasp! I-I feel a tingling sensation, which means the onset of a RED KRYPTONITE reaction! One of the RED HEARTS on these cards must contain some grains of RED KRYPTONITE which must have accidentally mixed with the red ink!” [Not again!] He quickly makes an excuse (“important matters to attend to”) and flies out the window. “Seriously, Lois, SUPERMAN raised a good question!” points out Perry. “You and Lana have been mad about SUPERMAN for years! But would either of you still love him if he weren’t the greatest super-hero of all time?” [What if he were, say, Aquaman?] “Of course I would, Perry!” objects Lois, while thinking, “But…honestly…WOULD I? I wonder…”
Superman, meanwhile, has decided that the red kryptonite tingling was only a false alarm. He spots two crooks fleeing a bank robbery, and one of them, who looks like he should be named “Rocky,” pulls a hand grenade out of his pocket and flings it at him. The other one, who looks like a “Muggsy” or maybe a “Lefty,” sneers, “You fool! What good is a grenade against SUPERMAN? His body is INDESTRUCTIBLE!” But, after a “KABOOOM!” and a “YEOOWWW!”, Superman falls to the sidewalk with an “OHHHHH!” and a “KRUMMPPP!”
Next we see Superman on a stretcher in Metropolis Hospital, with bandages on his head, face, chest and arm. “W-Wait! That hand-grenade…my face…I-I remember falling! Where am I?” “In a hospital, my good man, getting a blood transfusion!” answers the doctor. “What’s the big idea of masquerading as SUPERMAN?” “Masquerading? Are you mad? I AM SUPERMAN! I…groan…Ohh, my legs! My arms! They hurt so…” “Take it easy, mister, and lie still! You’ve got broken bones and we’ve taken a dozen grenade splinters out of your body…which proves you’re NOT SUPERMAN! If you were SUPERMAN, your skin would be penetrable [I think he means impenetrable…] and we couldn’t give you a blood transfusion! Now come clean! Who are you? Why were you wearing a SUPERMAN costume?” “Great Kryptonite!” Superman thinks as he lifts his broken arm to his bandaged temple in a typical “Great Kryptonite!” gesture. “I know what’s wrong! The RED KRYPTONITE reaction! It robbed me of my super-powers just as I was about to stop those crooks! I became instantly transformed into a normal human being…” Give the doctor credit for open-mindedness, though, because despite the obvious non-invulnerability of his patient, he sends for Perry White to come and question the man: “He’ll know whether he’s a faker or not!”
That evening, Perry arrives at the hospital room and promptly lights his cigar. Lois and Jimmy, of course, have come with him. “If you really are SUPERMAN, tell me what you gave me for my birthday last month!” he challenges. “That’s easy…I gave you that cigar lighter you’re using. It contains a fuel from another world, so that you don’t have to refill it for TEN YEARS!” [Since it’s from another world, it follows that you wouldn’t have to refill it for ten years.] “There’s no doubt of his being SUPERMAN! Only SUPERMAN and I know about this unique lighter!” Perry tells the doctor. “Then SUPERMAN has actually LOST his powers! What a blow!” observes the doctor, who actually looks pretty blasé about the whole thing. “Now the whole universe will be at the mercy of the menaces SUPERMAN alone used to handle.” Lois sits on the edge of the bed and tries to console him. “This is terrible! SUPERMAN is now an ordinary person!” she says, coming up a bit short in the good cheer department. “Here’s the signal-watch you gave me, SUPERMAN! I-I guess I won’t be needing it any more!” is Jimmy’s contribution, which seems like adding insult to injury. “No, Jimmy! It looks like I…uh…won’t be much use to you now!” responds Superman, who then muses on the fact that the others don’t realize that this can’t last more than 48 hours. “Two days from now all my wounds will automatically heal and I’ll be my old self again! But what an opportunity this situation gives me to learn something that’s puzzled me for years! Whether Lois and Lana are in love with my GLAMOR or ME!”
The next day Lois and Lana enter the hospital room simultaneously; Lois with candy, fruit and books, and Lana with a transistor radio, a phonograph and a stack of records. “Now what shall I read to you…Shakespeare or a mystery?” asks Lois. “And after I fluff up your pillows, I’ll play your favorite records!” counters Lana. “What’ll it be…Beethoven or bop?” Superman asks them not to make a fuss, and reminds them that he’s nobody special now, just an ordinary man, but they each kiss him and swear that it doesn’t make any difference.
The next scene occurs “days later,” according to the caption, but 48 hours after the injuries, according to Lois. The doctor removes Superman’s head bandages and asks him what he sees—even though the bandages were never over his eyes in the first place. It must not yet be 48 hours after the grenade explosion, as Superman finds that he can’t even tell the difference between Lois and Lana, standing right in front of him. “It’s shocking, Lana!” confides Lois. “He can’t see—but only 48 hours ago he had microscopic vision, telescopic, and x-ray vision!” “Shh, Lois…SUPERMAN may hear you!” “You forget SUPERMAN no longer has super-hearing! The glamorous super-hero we once knew is no more! Now he’s just an invalid!” Perry, also in the room [though Jimmy vanished from the story as soon as Lana appeared—coincidence?], gives Superman a tape recorder so that he can dictate his memoirs for the Planet and earn a living like everybody else. Perry plugs it in and suggests, “Why don’t you begin by relating how you always kept an eye on your best friends? Like the many times you rescued Jimmy Olsen, Lois, Lana, and me?” Superman starts by remembering saving Lana from a dinosaur when she got “trapped in the prehistoric past” and Lois from savage aliens when Luthor had abandoned her in outer space. Soon he tells Perry that he’s too weak to continue. “Isn’t it awful, Lana?” asks Lois. “SUPERMAN can never come to our rescue again!” “You’re right! Our whole lives will change now that SUPERMAN is no longer “super’!” [What an inconvenience for the two of them.]
The next day, Lois and Lana are pushing Superman in a wheelchair in what looks like a park. “The doctors said it may take a year before you’ll be all right, SUPERMAN!” says Lana. “But you can count on Lois or me to be around!” “You mean…both of you STILL care for an invalid like me?” he whines pathetically. “Invalid…bosh!” replies Lois as she and Lana exchange worried looks behind his back. “Nothing…uh…could change our feelings toward you!” Unbeknownst to them, Superman is smirking and thinking, “Hmm…it won’t be long now before the RED KRYPTONITE wears off! [This is getting to be a very long 48 hours!] So tonight won’t be too soon to learn how these girls really feel about me! But I must lay my plans carefully!”
That night, Lois and Lana, both in dripping wet raincoats from a thunderstorm, are talking in Superman’s room, as he seems to be asleep. “But I’ve been wondering something, Lana!” says Lois. “Mind if I speak frankly to you…about SUPERMAN?” But he’s not asleep, he’s thinking: “That’s it, girls! Start talking! I can’t make out your voices or see you clearly, but the tape recorder volume is turned up to catch your every word!” Unfortunately, the reader can’t see which is which, as the following exchange occurs:
LL#1: Well, as you know, SUPERMAN isn’t super any more! He’s just ordinary now! This changes everything for me…”
LL#2: I can understand YOUR change of heart and why YOU’D never marry SUPERMAN now. But I’D marry him even if he were deaf, dumb and blind!”
LL#1: Then I wish you luck, because I’M dropping out of the picture! I guess I was always in love with the super-hero, not the man beneath the costume!”
But when they leave and Superman plays back the tape, he hears: “SQUAAWW! I won’t marry SUPERMAN now that he isn’t super any more! SQUAAWW! KRAA!” He doesn’t conclude that they were being attacked by crows, but instead thinks, “Gasp! I can’t make out who’s talking! The storm must have affected the mechanism and ruined the sound! One says she’ll marry me! One says she WON’T! But I can’t tell whether it’s Lois or Lana!”
Suddenly, Superman finds himself outside, in mid-air, grabbing Rocky and Muggsy by the collars. “See? Didn’t I tell you that grenade wouldn’t stop him? Now he’s got us!” nags Muggsy. “G-GOT them? But that grenade injured me! I-I lost my super-powers! I was hospitalized and I was testing Lois and Lana to see which one truly loved me!” thinks Superman. “GREAT KRYPTON! Now I know what happened! The RED KRYPTONITE didn’t affect my powers at all! But for one split second, it gave me a hallucination about Lois and Lana’s feelings about me! Between the time of the grenade burst and now I only experienced a SUPER-SPEED DREAM!”
The story ends with Superman still deep in thought, as now the press, the mobile TV camera unit, and Lois and Lana have arrived at the scene. “What’s the matter, SUPERMAN?” asks Lois. “You’re staring at me so strangely!” “And at me, too! What’s wrong?” asks Lana. “Why…er…nothing!” is all he can say, as he thinks, “Hmm…Even in a momentary hallucination I couldn’t learn which one would marry me for myself! I wonder…which of the two girls said ‘NO’…which one said ‘YES’??” And a final caption asks: “Readers—can you guess? Give us your reasons and we’ll print the best letters!”
The issue then ends with a 2/3 page Henry Boltinoff “Jerry the Jitterbug” gag—how out-of-date was that in 1963? Henry could at least have re-named him “Twistin’ Tim”…
Art: Kurt Schaffenberger
It’s February 14 and Superman is visiting the Daily Planet offices. As Lois and Jimmy look on, Perry shows him a mound of thousands of St. Valentine’s Day cards that were sent to him in care of the Planet. “Gosh, Perry! This is embarrassing!” he objects, but Lois isn’t having it: “Tush! MY card is in there, and I’m sure Lana Lang didn’t forget you, either! So, suppose you start reading them! It’s the least you owe the people who sent them!” “Well…er…okay, Lois!” he stammers, his tail between his legs. Suddenly there’s someone else in the room, a guy with a receding hairline, horn-rimmed glasses and a bow tie, who looks a little like Bill Cullen or maybe Bennett Cerf, looking straight at the reader, pointing at Superman with his thumb, and exclaiming, “Holy cats! He’s reading 1,000 CARDS a second!” Bill/Bennett vanishes as quickly and mysteriously as he appeared, with seemingly no one else in the story having noticed him. “Here’s the card YOU sent, Lois! Also Lana Lang’s!” says Superman. “But I wonder if you both are any different from these female admirers who know me only as SUPERMAN, the great, glamorous hero!” “What do you mean, SUPERMAN?” frowns Lois. “Just this! These girls don’t know the real ‘me,’ the person I am when I’m not wearing my colorful costume! [And Lois and Lana do?] Would they be attracted to me if they knew me only as an ordinary American? I’ve often wondered whether you or Lana would care for me if I were not SUPERMAN…”
But SUPERMAN cuts himself off in mid-sentence, thinking, “Gasp! I-I feel a tingling sensation, which means the onset of a RED KRYPTONITE reaction! One of the RED HEARTS on these cards must contain some grains of RED KRYPTONITE which must have accidentally mixed with the red ink!” [Not again!] He quickly makes an excuse (“important matters to attend to”) and flies out the window. “Seriously, Lois, SUPERMAN raised a good question!” points out Perry. “You and Lana have been mad about SUPERMAN for years! But would either of you still love him if he weren’t the greatest super-hero of all time?” [What if he were, say, Aquaman?] “Of course I would, Perry!” objects Lois, while thinking, “But…honestly…WOULD I? I wonder…”
Superman, meanwhile, has decided that the red kryptonite tingling was only a false alarm. He spots two crooks fleeing a bank robbery, and one of them, who looks like he should be named “Rocky,” pulls a hand grenade out of his pocket and flings it at him. The other one, who looks like a “Muggsy” or maybe a “Lefty,” sneers, “You fool! What good is a grenade against SUPERMAN? His body is INDESTRUCTIBLE!” But, after a “KABOOOM!” and a “YEOOWWW!”, Superman falls to the sidewalk with an “OHHHHH!” and a “KRUMMPPP!”
Next we see Superman on a stretcher in Metropolis Hospital, with bandages on his head, face, chest and arm. “W-Wait! That hand-grenade…my face…I-I remember falling! Where am I?” “In a hospital, my good man, getting a blood transfusion!” answers the doctor. “What’s the big idea of masquerading as SUPERMAN?” “Masquerading? Are you mad? I AM SUPERMAN! I…groan…Ohh, my legs! My arms! They hurt so…” “Take it easy, mister, and lie still! You’ve got broken bones and we’ve taken a dozen grenade splinters out of your body…which proves you’re NOT SUPERMAN! If you were SUPERMAN, your skin would be penetrable [I think he means impenetrable…] and we couldn’t give you a blood transfusion! Now come clean! Who are you? Why were you wearing a SUPERMAN costume?” “Great Kryptonite!” Superman thinks as he lifts his broken arm to his bandaged temple in a typical “Great Kryptonite!” gesture. “I know what’s wrong! The RED KRYPTONITE reaction! It robbed me of my super-powers just as I was about to stop those crooks! I became instantly transformed into a normal human being…” Give the doctor credit for open-mindedness, though, because despite the obvious non-invulnerability of his patient, he sends for Perry White to come and question the man: “He’ll know whether he’s a faker or not!”
That evening, Perry arrives at the hospital room and promptly lights his cigar. Lois and Jimmy, of course, have come with him. “If you really are SUPERMAN, tell me what you gave me for my birthday last month!” he challenges. “That’s easy…I gave you that cigar lighter you’re using. It contains a fuel from another world, so that you don’t have to refill it for TEN YEARS!” [Since it’s from another world, it follows that you wouldn’t have to refill it for ten years.] “There’s no doubt of his being SUPERMAN! Only SUPERMAN and I know about this unique lighter!” Perry tells the doctor. “Then SUPERMAN has actually LOST his powers! What a blow!” observes the doctor, who actually looks pretty blasé about the whole thing. “Now the whole universe will be at the mercy of the menaces SUPERMAN alone used to handle.” Lois sits on the edge of the bed and tries to console him. “This is terrible! SUPERMAN is now an ordinary person!” she says, coming up a bit short in the good cheer department. “Here’s the signal-watch you gave me, SUPERMAN! I-I guess I won’t be needing it any more!” is Jimmy’s contribution, which seems like adding insult to injury. “No, Jimmy! It looks like I…uh…won’t be much use to you now!” responds Superman, who then muses on the fact that the others don’t realize that this can’t last more than 48 hours. “Two days from now all my wounds will automatically heal and I’ll be my old self again! But what an opportunity this situation gives me to learn something that’s puzzled me for years! Whether Lois and Lana are in love with my GLAMOR or ME!”
The next day Lois and Lana enter the hospital room simultaneously; Lois with candy, fruit and books, and Lana with a transistor radio, a phonograph and a stack of records. “Now what shall I read to you…Shakespeare or a mystery?” asks Lois. “And after I fluff up your pillows, I’ll play your favorite records!” counters Lana. “What’ll it be…Beethoven or bop?” Superman asks them not to make a fuss, and reminds them that he’s nobody special now, just an ordinary man, but they each kiss him and swear that it doesn’t make any difference.
The next scene occurs “days later,” according to the caption, but 48 hours after the injuries, according to Lois. The doctor removes Superman’s head bandages and asks him what he sees—even though the bandages were never over his eyes in the first place. It must not yet be 48 hours after the grenade explosion, as Superman finds that he can’t even tell the difference between Lois and Lana, standing right in front of him. “It’s shocking, Lana!” confides Lois. “He can’t see—but only 48 hours ago he had microscopic vision, telescopic, and x-ray vision!” “Shh, Lois…SUPERMAN may hear you!” “You forget SUPERMAN no longer has super-hearing! The glamorous super-hero we once knew is no more! Now he’s just an invalid!” Perry, also in the room [though Jimmy vanished from the story as soon as Lana appeared—coincidence?], gives Superman a tape recorder so that he can dictate his memoirs for the Planet and earn a living like everybody else. Perry plugs it in and suggests, “Why don’t you begin by relating how you always kept an eye on your best friends? Like the many times you rescued Jimmy Olsen, Lois, Lana, and me?” Superman starts by remembering saving Lana from a dinosaur when she got “trapped in the prehistoric past” and Lois from savage aliens when Luthor had abandoned her in outer space. Soon he tells Perry that he’s too weak to continue. “Isn’t it awful, Lana?” asks Lois. “SUPERMAN can never come to our rescue again!” “You’re right! Our whole lives will change now that SUPERMAN is no longer “super’!” [What an inconvenience for the two of them.]
The next day, Lois and Lana are pushing Superman in a wheelchair in what looks like a park. “The doctors said it may take a year before you’ll be all right, SUPERMAN!” says Lana. “But you can count on Lois or me to be around!” “You mean…both of you STILL care for an invalid like me?” he whines pathetically. “Invalid…bosh!” replies Lois as she and Lana exchange worried looks behind his back. “Nothing…uh…could change our feelings toward you!” Unbeknownst to them, Superman is smirking and thinking, “Hmm…it won’t be long now before the RED KRYPTONITE wears off! [This is getting to be a very long 48 hours!] So tonight won’t be too soon to learn how these girls really feel about me! But I must lay my plans carefully!”
That night, Lois and Lana, both in dripping wet raincoats from a thunderstorm, are talking in Superman’s room, as he seems to be asleep. “But I’ve been wondering something, Lana!” says Lois. “Mind if I speak frankly to you…about SUPERMAN?” But he’s not asleep, he’s thinking: “That’s it, girls! Start talking! I can’t make out your voices or see you clearly, but the tape recorder volume is turned up to catch your every word!” Unfortunately, the reader can’t see which is which, as the following exchange occurs:
LL#1: Well, as you know, SUPERMAN isn’t super any more! He’s just ordinary now! This changes everything for me…”
LL#2: I can understand YOUR change of heart and why YOU’D never marry SUPERMAN now. But I’D marry him even if he were deaf, dumb and blind!”
LL#1: Then I wish you luck, because I’M dropping out of the picture! I guess I was always in love with the super-hero, not the man beneath the costume!”
But when they leave and Superman plays back the tape, he hears: “SQUAAWW! I won’t marry SUPERMAN now that he isn’t super any more! SQUAAWW! KRAA!” He doesn’t conclude that they were being attacked by crows, but instead thinks, “Gasp! I can’t make out who’s talking! The storm must have affected the mechanism and ruined the sound! One says she’ll marry me! One says she WON’T! But I can’t tell whether it’s Lois or Lana!”
Suddenly, Superman finds himself outside, in mid-air, grabbing Rocky and Muggsy by the collars. “See? Didn’t I tell you that grenade wouldn’t stop him? Now he’s got us!” nags Muggsy. “G-GOT them? But that grenade injured me! I-I lost my super-powers! I was hospitalized and I was testing Lois and Lana to see which one truly loved me!” thinks Superman. “GREAT KRYPTON! Now I know what happened! The RED KRYPTONITE didn’t affect my powers at all! But for one split second, it gave me a hallucination about Lois and Lana’s feelings about me! Between the time of the grenade burst and now I only experienced a SUPER-SPEED DREAM!”
The story ends with Superman still deep in thought, as now the press, the mobile TV camera unit, and Lois and Lana have arrived at the scene. “What’s the matter, SUPERMAN?” asks Lois. “You’re staring at me so strangely!” “And at me, too! What’s wrong?” asks Lana. “Why…er…nothing!” is all he can say, as he thinks, “Hmm…Even in a momentary hallucination I couldn’t learn which one would marry me for myself! I wonder…which of the two girls said ‘NO’…which one said ‘YES’??” And a final caption asks: “Readers—can you guess? Give us your reasons and we’ll print the best letters!”
The issue then ends with a 2/3 page Henry Boltinoff “Jerry the Jitterbug” gag—how out-of-date was that in 1963? Henry could at least have re-named him “Twistin’ Tim”…
Friday, April 25, 2008
Looking at Lois Lane #38, January 1963, Part Two
“Lois Lane’s Signal Watch!”
Art: Kurt Schaffenberger
“One day, at a criminal hideout in METROPOLIS…” a man who looks like a shady barber is removing bandages from another man’s face. “For Pete’s sake, Boss, that plastic surgery operation,” says the subject patient as he eyes a looking-glass mirror, “made me look like SUPERMAN! What’s the big idea?” “Relax, ‘Muscles’! That’s just who you’re supposed to look like!” replies the boss, the nattily-dressed, double-chinned Kimbo. Kimbo pays the “doctor” the first installment of his fee, then begins tutoring Muscles: “Right now I want you to study these pictures of SUPERMAN’S friends and learn to recognize them on sight! I also want you to practice imitating his voice from some records I have!” [Kimbo’s collection includes all of Superman’s biggest hits.]
“Days later, in the office of the Daily Planet,” Lois suddenly realizes that it’s been five years since racket king Bugs Gorcey vanished, which means it’s time they opened the sealed letter he left for her. Perry, instantly pulling out the letter, points out that the five years will actually be up at 3 o’clock the day after tomorrow—apparently it’s been on his mind. “I once rushed Bugs to a hospital when a rival gang shot him! He said he’d repay me some day! I wonder…” wonders Lois. Perry, who looks younger, slimmer and more handsome when drawn by Schaffenberger than in the Swan story, continues the exposition: “Rumors say that Gorcey had a million-dollar smuggling deal cooking when he vanished! Maybe that letter tells you where to locate the mysterious loot! Gorcey meant to repay you with a scoop! But your life may be in danger if you learn the location of that loot! Why not notify SUPERMAN?” Lois, as could be expected, replies that Superman is on a mission in Kandor and that she wants to handle this scoop of a lifetime on her own. They agree to open the envelope at 3PM on the appointed day, right after Lois covers a ship arrival that morning. However, a hidden microphone and radio inside a picture frame are broadcasting this conversation to Kimbo, Muscles and the “Doctor,” who is enthusiastically twiddling knobs on a huge radio receiver. “I always suspected Gorcey gave Lois Lane the location of his loot before he disappeared! That’s why I had the PLANET office wired!” explains Kimbo. “All right, Muscles, try this costume on for size! In two days you’re going on your first mission—as SUPERMAN!”
“Two days later, on the METROPOLIS waterfront,” Muscles-as-Superman approaches Lois, explains that he just got back from Kandor, and presents her with a signal watch like Jimmy’s. “Ohhh, SUPERMAN! What a thrilling gift!” gushes Lois, touched to finally be on a par with Jimmy in Superman’s heart. “Lois, my super-hearing detected your conversation with Perry about Gorcey’s hidden loot! Promise me you’ll signal me if you get in a jam!” explains Muscles. Lois agrees, thinking “CHOKE! I never realized how much he worries about me!” Muscles dives off the pier into the water, saying that he needs to help test the escape hatch on a new atomic submarine and telling Lois not to mention the watch to anyone. “Goodbye, SUPERMAN, dear!” Lois coos, thinking, “That watch shows how much he cares for me! Oh, joy! Perhaps some day soon he’ll be giving me a RING!” [Sorry, Lois, but it hasn’t worked out that way for Jimmy—who, unlike you, doesn’t have to keep his watch a secret.] Under another pier, Kimbo helps Muscles into a rowboat while the “Doctor,” now wearing a suit and tie instead of his barber smock, sits holding the oars. “It worked like a charm, Boss!” says Muscles. “The Lane dame will be wearing that signal watch 24 hours a day!” “Good work, ‘Muscles’!” replies Kimbo. “With that watch, which signals only US, Lois Lane will lead us right to Gorcey’s million-dollar loot!”
Back at the Planet, Lois runs into Jimmy, who has a bandaged head and his right arm in a sling--an arm that appears to be missing its hand. “That’s right, Lois…I stopped a runaway horse in the park! I tried to signal SUPERMAN, but I forgot he was in KANDOR!” says Jimmy, gesturing with the hand he has left. “But, Jimmy, I spoke to him and he even gave…er…maybe you’re right! I was mistaken!”says Lois, thinking “I mustn’t mention my watch! SUPERMAN asked me NOT to…ULP…that is, if it WAS SUPERMAN!” Kimbo and the boys, listening in, begin to worry that Lois is getting wise. Lois and Perry open Gorcey’s envelope. “Geronimo! You were right, Perry! This letter tells exactly where to find the loot that Gorcey hid!” blurts Lois with a greed-crazed look on her face. “Hmm! But that hiding place is a dilly! You’ll need special equipment to reach it! I’ll order it for you at once!” responds Perry, looking over her shoulder.
Perry makes the arrangements and gives Lois the address where she can pick up the equipment. Listening in, Kimbo hears Lois say that she’ll take a taxi and gets an idea: “So she’s going to take a TAXI, eh? Boys, I think I know how to prove to Lois Lane that she really saw SUPERMAN today! Doc—put on these dark glasses—you’re about to become a taxi driver!” An hour later, Lois steps out of the Planet building and Doc, in cab driver disguise with dark glasses and a cap with his suit and tie, immediately pulls up. “Soon, as the taxi races down a steep incline,” Doc cries out: “EEEYOW! My brakes just failed! The taxi’s out of control!” “ULP! What a spot! I’d better call SUPERMAN! GULP! That is, if this signal-watch works!” thinks Lois. As soon as the “ZEEE! ZEEE!” comes out of the watch, Doc starts using the brakes and the cab slows. “Hey, Miss, look! It was SUPERMAN who stopped us!” yells Doc, thinking, “CHUCKLE! It’s really ‘Muscles’ in disguise! He was waiting here at this pre-arranged spot!” As a relieved Lois relaxes in the back seat, Doc thinks, “Now it’s up to ‘Muscles’ to fake SUPERMAN’s ‘flight’ away from this phoney rescue!” Muscles is behind a tree, thinking “Ha! Ha! As soon as this compressed helium inflates this rubber balloon of SUPERMAN, it’ll rise in the air, and that Lane dame will think it’s her dream boy flying away!” Unlikely as this sounds, it works, with Lois saying, “He didn’t even wait for our thanks! Isn’t he just wonderful?”
Lois prudently has the cab drop her off blocks from her destination, the Acme Industrial & Safety Equipment Co. at the edge of Metropolis, where a long green Daily Planet station wagon is parked, loaded with the things Perry had obtained for her. She drives to “Old Bat Grotto,” where she changes into a miner’s outfit—apparently the “special equipment” consists of coveralls, a helmet, and a rope. Once inside the cave, she tilts a stalagmite as instructed by Gorcey’s letter. This opens a hidden door in the rock formation, revealing a hidden chest. “Good grief! It’s loaded with diamonds!” thinks Lois. “Now I remember! There was a big robbery of industrial diamonds in Europe about six years ago! Gorcey must have smuggled the stolen goods into this country! I’ll have to call SUPERMAN to help me with that chest!” “ZEEE-ZEEE,” goes the signal watch, and the signal is received by a helicopter hovering nearby. “There’s your supersonic signal, Kimbo! It seems to be coming from that cave!” “HA! Lois thinks she’s signaling SUPERMAN! Is she due for a surprise when she learns her watch is so fixed that its signal reaches only OUR SPECIAL RADIO!”
The three crooks enter Old Bat Grotto and Kimbo starts shooting. “Stand where you are, Miss Lane, “ he orders, “or my next bullets will be aimed right at you!” Lois ducks for cover, but Kimbo’s shots cause several stalactites to land on her. She is trapped, though “miraculously uninjured,” thinking, “I’m pinned down here! But why doesn’t Superman answer my signal? Hmm…the watch was damaged by the falling stalactites, but I’ll try it again!” Muscles appears in his Superman costume and sneers, “Forget the watch, girlie! It’s a PHONEY! I gave it to you myself while pretending to be SUPERMAN!” “Oh, no!” gasps Lois. Suddenly, into Old Bat Grotto flies Supergirl, whose “amazing heat vision melts the stalactites and stalagmites into a barrier,” which the crooks run smack into. “OUCH…my nose!” yells Muscles. Supergirl seals them in a cage made of more stalactites and stalagmites, as Muscles pouts, “CHEE! You broke my nose, SUPERGIRL!” “Gosh, I’m sorry, ‘Superman’! -CHUCKLE!- But I thought you were as invulnerable as I am!” laughs Supergirl.
Back in Perry’s office, Lois asks, “But if the signal watch was a phoney, how did you manage to find me, SUPERGIRL?” As Jimmy, still bandaged, eyes her warily, Supergirl explains, “When the falling stalactites struck the watch, they CHANGED the frequency of the signal! By a freak twist, the NEW frequency was tuned to MY super-hearing, just as the frequency of Jimmy’s watch is tuned only to SUPERMAN’s hearing! Then, with my telescopic vision, I traced the course of the supersonic alarm, and…” In a flashback panel, Supergirl thinks, “It’s Lois Lane! Those crooks have her trapped in Old Bat Grotto! I’d better hurry!” Later, when they’re alone, Supergirl says to Lois, “I’m sorry that signal-watch was a fake! But between us girls, perhaps some day soon you may get a GENUINE signal-watch!” Lois, nearly overcome with emotion, replies, “Oh, SUPERGIRL, do you think it will really happen some day?” A final caption asks, “How about it, readers? Do you think Lois ought to have her own signal-watch? Write and tell us your view!”
The story is followed by the letters page, Letters to Lois, which contains eight letters, including this one from Joe Pedecino of Marietta, Georgia:
Dear Editor: I think Lana Lang would make a much better wife for SUPERMAN than Lois Lane for the following reasons: She is prettier than Lois…She is not as inquisitive as Lois…She is not as jealous as Lois…She does not get into as much trouble as Lois…She knows SUPERMAN longer than Lois, ever since he was SUPERBOY back in Smallville.
(We think you are overlooking several of Lois’ qualifications. She is a better reporter than Lana…she has offered to sacrifice her life to save SUPERMAN on many occasions…she has proved to be more generous than Lana, and often does good deeds anonymously, without wanting credit. However, to sum it up, both girls have virtues which far outweigh their faults—so, let the best girl win!—Ed.)
Art: Kurt Schaffenberger
“One day, at a criminal hideout in METROPOLIS…” a man who looks like a shady barber is removing bandages from another man’s face. “For Pete’s sake, Boss, that plastic surgery operation,” says the subject patient as he eyes a looking-glass mirror, “made me look like SUPERMAN! What’s the big idea?” “Relax, ‘Muscles’! That’s just who you’re supposed to look like!” replies the boss, the nattily-dressed, double-chinned Kimbo. Kimbo pays the “doctor” the first installment of his fee, then begins tutoring Muscles: “Right now I want you to study these pictures of SUPERMAN’S friends and learn to recognize them on sight! I also want you to practice imitating his voice from some records I have!” [Kimbo’s collection includes all of Superman’s biggest hits.]
“Days later, in the office of the Daily Planet,” Lois suddenly realizes that it’s been five years since racket king Bugs Gorcey vanished, which means it’s time they opened the sealed letter he left for her. Perry, instantly pulling out the letter, points out that the five years will actually be up at 3 o’clock the day after tomorrow—apparently it’s been on his mind. “I once rushed Bugs to a hospital when a rival gang shot him! He said he’d repay me some day! I wonder…” wonders Lois. Perry, who looks younger, slimmer and more handsome when drawn by Schaffenberger than in the Swan story, continues the exposition: “Rumors say that Gorcey had a million-dollar smuggling deal cooking when he vanished! Maybe that letter tells you where to locate the mysterious loot! Gorcey meant to repay you with a scoop! But your life may be in danger if you learn the location of that loot! Why not notify SUPERMAN?” Lois, as could be expected, replies that Superman is on a mission in Kandor and that she wants to handle this scoop of a lifetime on her own. They agree to open the envelope at 3PM on the appointed day, right after Lois covers a ship arrival that morning. However, a hidden microphone and radio inside a picture frame are broadcasting this conversation to Kimbo, Muscles and the “Doctor,” who is enthusiastically twiddling knobs on a huge radio receiver. “I always suspected Gorcey gave Lois Lane the location of his loot before he disappeared! That’s why I had the PLANET office wired!” explains Kimbo. “All right, Muscles, try this costume on for size! In two days you’re going on your first mission—as SUPERMAN!”
“Two days later, on the METROPOLIS waterfront,” Muscles-as-Superman approaches Lois, explains that he just got back from Kandor, and presents her with a signal watch like Jimmy’s. “Ohhh, SUPERMAN! What a thrilling gift!” gushes Lois, touched to finally be on a par with Jimmy in Superman’s heart. “Lois, my super-hearing detected your conversation with Perry about Gorcey’s hidden loot! Promise me you’ll signal me if you get in a jam!” explains Muscles. Lois agrees, thinking “CHOKE! I never realized how much he worries about me!” Muscles dives off the pier into the water, saying that he needs to help test the escape hatch on a new atomic submarine and telling Lois not to mention the watch to anyone. “Goodbye, SUPERMAN, dear!” Lois coos, thinking, “That watch shows how much he cares for me! Oh, joy! Perhaps some day soon he’ll be giving me a RING!” [Sorry, Lois, but it hasn’t worked out that way for Jimmy—who, unlike you, doesn’t have to keep his watch a secret.] Under another pier, Kimbo helps Muscles into a rowboat while the “Doctor,” now wearing a suit and tie instead of his barber smock, sits holding the oars. “It worked like a charm, Boss!” says Muscles. “The Lane dame will be wearing that signal watch 24 hours a day!” “Good work, ‘Muscles’!” replies Kimbo. “With that watch, which signals only US, Lois Lane will lead us right to Gorcey’s million-dollar loot!”
Back at the Planet, Lois runs into Jimmy, who has a bandaged head and his right arm in a sling--an arm that appears to be missing its hand. “That’s right, Lois…I stopped a runaway horse in the park! I tried to signal SUPERMAN, but I forgot he was in KANDOR!” says Jimmy, gesturing with the hand he has left. “But, Jimmy, I spoke to him and he even gave…er…maybe you’re right! I was mistaken!”says Lois, thinking “I mustn’t mention my watch! SUPERMAN asked me NOT to…ULP…that is, if it WAS SUPERMAN!” Kimbo and the boys, listening in, begin to worry that Lois is getting wise. Lois and Perry open Gorcey’s envelope. “Geronimo! You were right, Perry! This letter tells exactly where to find the loot that Gorcey hid!” blurts Lois with a greed-crazed look on her face. “Hmm! But that hiding place is a dilly! You’ll need special equipment to reach it! I’ll order it for you at once!” responds Perry, looking over her shoulder.
Perry makes the arrangements and gives Lois the address where she can pick up the equipment. Listening in, Kimbo hears Lois say that she’ll take a taxi and gets an idea: “So she’s going to take a TAXI, eh? Boys, I think I know how to prove to Lois Lane that she really saw SUPERMAN today! Doc—put on these dark glasses—you’re about to become a taxi driver!” An hour later, Lois steps out of the Planet building and Doc, in cab driver disguise with dark glasses and a cap with his suit and tie, immediately pulls up. “Soon, as the taxi races down a steep incline,” Doc cries out: “EEEYOW! My brakes just failed! The taxi’s out of control!” “ULP! What a spot! I’d better call SUPERMAN! GULP! That is, if this signal-watch works!” thinks Lois. As soon as the “ZEEE! ZEEE!” comes out of the watch, Doc starts using the brakes and the cab slows. “Hey, Miss, look! It was SUPERMAN who stopped us!” yells Doc, thinking, “CHUCKLE! It’s really ‘Muscles’ in disguise! He was waiting here at this pre-arranged spot!” As a relieved Lois relaxes in the back seat, Doc thinks, “Now it’s up to ‘Muscles’ to fake SUPERMAN’s ‘flight’ away from this phoney rescue!” Muscles is behind a tree, thinking “Ha! Ha! As soon as this compressed helium inflates this rubber balloon of SUPERMAN, it’ll rise in the air, and that Lane dame will think it’s her dream boy flying away!” Unlikely as this sounds, it works, with Lois saying, “He didn’t even wait for our thanks! Isn’t he just wonderful?”
Lois prudently has the cab drop her off blocks from her destination, the Acme Industrial & Safety Equipment Co. at the edge of Metropolis, where a long green Daily Planet station wagon is parked, loaded with the things Perry had obtained for her. She drives to “Old Bat Grotto,” where she changes into a miner’s outfit—apparently the “special equipment” consists of coveralls, a helmet, and a rope. Once inside the cave, she tilts a stalagmite as instructed by Gorcey’s letter. This opens a hidden door in the rock formation, revealing a hidden chest. “Good grief! It’s loaded with diamonds!” thinks Lois. “Now I remember! There was a big robbery of industrial diamonds in Europe about six years ago! Gorcey must have smuggled the stolen goods into this country! I’ll have to call SUPERMAN to help me with that chest!” “ZEEE-ZEEE,” goes the signal watch, and the signal is received by a helicopter hovering nearby. “There’s your supersonic signal, Kimbo! It seems to be coming from that cave!” “HA! Lois thinks she’s signaling SUPERMAN! Is she due for a surprise when she learns her watch is so fixed that its signal reaches only OUR SPECIAL RADIO!”
The three crooks enter Old Bat Grotto and Kimbo starts shooting. “Stand where you are, Miss Lane, “ he orders, “or my next bullets will be aimed right at you!” Lois ducks for cover, but Kimbo’s shots cause several stalactites to land on her. She is trapped, though “miraculously uninjured,” thinking, “I’m pinned down here! But why doesn’t Superman answer my signal? Hmm…the watch was damaged by the falling stalactites, but I’ll try it again!” Muscles appears in his Superman costume and sneers, “Forget the watch, girlie! It’s a PHONEY! I gave it to you myself while pretending to be SUPERMAN!” “Oh, no!” gasps Lois. Suddenly, into Old Bat Grotto flies Supergirl, whose “amazing heat vision melts the stalactites and stalagmites into a barrier,” which the crooks run smack into. “OUCH…my nose!” yells Muscles. Supergirl seals them in a cage made of more stalactites and stalagmites, as Muscles pouts, “CHEE! You broke my nose, SUPERGIRL!” “Gosh, I’m sorry, ‘Superman’! -CHUCKLE!- But I thought you were as invulnerable as I am!” laughs Supergirl.
Back in Perry’s office, Lois asks, “But if the signal watch was a phoney, how did you manage to find me, SUPERGIRL?” As Jimmy, still bandaged, eyes her warily, Supergirl explains, “When the falling stalactites struck the watch, they CHANGED the frequency of the signal! By a freak twist, the NEW frequency was tuned to MY super-hearing, just as the frequency of Jimmy’s watch is tuned only to SUPERMAN’s hearing! Then, with my telescopic vision, I traced the course of the supersonic alarm, and…” In a flashback panel, Supergirl thinks, “It’s Lois Lane! Those crooks have her trapped in Old Bat Grotto! I’d better hurry!” Later, when they’re alone, Supergirl says to Lois, “I’m sorry that signal-watch was a fake! But between us girls, perhaps some day soon you may get a GENUINE signal-watch!” Lois, nearly overcome with emotion, replies, “Oh, SUPERGIRL, do you think it will really happen some day?” A final caption asks, “How about it, readers? Do you think Lois ought to have her own signal-watch? Write and tell us your view!”
The story is followed by the letters page, Letters to Lois, which contains eight letters, including this one from Joe Pedecino of Marietta, Georgia:
Dear Editor: I think Lana Lang would make a much better wife for SUPERMAN than Lois Lane for the following reasons: She is prettier than Lois…She is not as inquisitive as Lois…She is not as jealous as Lois…She does not get into as much trouble as Lois…She knows SUPERMAN longer than Lois, ever since he was SUPERBOY back in Smallville.
(We think you are overlooking several of Lois’ qualifications. She is a better reporter than Lana…she has offered to sacrifice her life to save SUPERMAN on many occasions…she has proved to be more generous than Lana, and often does good deeds anonymously, without wanting credit. However, to sum it up, both girls have virtues which far outweigh their faults—so, let the best girl win!—Ed.)
Monday, April 21, 2008
Looking at Lois Lane #38, January 1963 (Part 1)
Cover by Kurt Schaffenberger, illustrating the issue’s third story, “The Girl Who Refused to Marry Superman!”—-Superman sits in a wheelchair in his hospital room, with a broken leg, broken arm and bandaged head, saying, “Lois and Lana…a freak accident has taken away my super-powers and made me an invalid! Now that I’ll be an ordinary man for life, I’m sure neither of you will want to marry me!” The two women have their faces covered by black squares, and one is saying, “You’ll never be ordinary to ME! You’ll always be YOU, the man I love! I’LL marry you!” while the other says, “I’ll be honest with you, SUPERMAN! Without your super-powers, I wouldn’t dream of marrying you!” The caption: “Featuring a modern “Lady or the Tiger” puzzle! Can you guess who is…”The Girl Who Refused to Marry Superman!”
First story: “The Invisible Lois Lane”
Pencils: Curt Swan, inks: George Klein
In the splash panel, Clark Kent changes to Superman in the shadows alongside a building, while an invisible Lois thinks, “WOW! At last I’ve got PROOF that SUPERMAN and Clark Kent are one and the same person! After this temporary invisibility wears off, I’m going to have some fun! For a long, long time SUPERMAN’s been laughing at me secretly, but…ha, ha, ha…now I’M going to have the LAST LAUGH!”
As the story begins, eccentric Professor Potter is showing Lois his latest batch of discoveries. When he points out a short-term invisibility serum, Lois has an Olsenesque flash of inspiration and guzzles it down. “Oh, no!” cries the professor, “You swallowed the serum! You’re…fading from view!!—-Foolish girl! I started to tell you that any human drinking it will suffer unpleasant side effects...such as strange hallucinations!” “It’ll be WORTH it!!” thinks Lois.
After nearly being hit by a van, Lois spots Clark Kent leaving the Daily Planet building for lunch and follows him, hoping to catch him turning into Superman. In a stroke of luck, a machine-gun-wielding man is running out of a jewelry store with a satchel. “Moments later, in the alley…” the scene foreshadowed by the splash panel takes place, with Clark peeling back his shirt as see-through Lois thinks, “Great Scott! Clark took off his glasses and now he’s removing his outer garments, revealing a SUPERMAN costume underneath! My hunch was right. Meek, mild, shy Clark is secretly dynamic SUPERMAN!!”
Lois watches Superman make short work of the robber (“Gaaa! M-my machine-gun bullets bounce right off your jaw!” yells the hood, obviously new in town) and change back into Clark clothes. “Shall I tell him I’m wise to his jealously-guarded secret?—-No! Wait!” she muses, as she becomes visible again. “SUPERMAN must have had loads of laughs pulling the wool over my eyes all these years [well, yes…]…But here’s where the worm turns! Now I’M going to have some secret laughs at HIS expense!” She walks around a corner to run into Clark, and they go to lunch together, a safe almost landing on Clark as they walk down the sidewalk. When they get back to work, Perry White asks Clark to count the bags of coins sent in by readers as contributions to the Metropolis Orphans’ Fund. Lois sabotages the coin-counting machine and hangs around to help Clark count the coins by hand, thereby preventing him from counting at super-speed. “Getting impatient, SUPERMAN? Ha, ha! You must be sizzling!” she thinks, as Clark says, “$487.56…$487.57…$487.67…” [It might be easier, Clark, if you separated the coins by denomination first…]
The next evening Lois is waiting for Clark at an amusement park. She watches the operator of the ol’ hammer & bell strength-tester game and thinks, “I get it! The owner is pressing a button, so a hidden, powerful spring makes the ball shoot up so that his accomplice wins a prize…thus attracting more business!—-hm-mm…” When Clark arrives, she wheedles him into trying it, and presses the button so that he rings the bell despite trying to swing the hammer lightly—-winning him the rating of “superman” and a transistor radio, and flustering him further.
The day after that, “Lois and Clark visit a warehouse owned by a friend who was robbed of furs.” The friend says, “I’m closing, now. Take these keys and lock up when you leave! I hope you find a clue to the identity of the crooks who stole three mink coats from our fur vault!” Of course, when Clark walks into the fur storage freezer Lois locks him in. “Awp!” he thinks, nearly losing his composure. “An ordinary man would soon freeze to death in here! I could force open the thick steel door easily…but doing so would reveal the fact that I’m SUPERMAN! Wh-what’ll I do??” Lois lets him stew for a while, thinking, “If Clark bursts out, he’ll expose himself as SUPERMAN. And if he remains inside, with no ill effects from the zero temperature, that’ll unmask him, too! Ha, ha! He can’t escape THIS little trap!” When she finally opens the door, pretending that she’s been looking for him, he has wrapped himself in mink coats to justify not being dead.
The next day, Lois has come up with yet another sadistic little ruse [does she ever actually write an article? For that matter, does Clark? Presumably the Daily Planet comes out daily—-is there any news in it?]—-she tells Clark that she’s discovered that Perry White is Superman, and leads him into Perry’s office. While Perry dozes at his desk, Lois opens his closet door and shows Clark a Superman costume, Superman masks, and padding for making one appear fat. When Clark says he doesn’t believe it, Lois picks up a handgun from Perry’s desk (“Ha! This toy weapon is filled with BLANKS! It was used by the “Toy Gun Bandit” in a holdup! I painted the gun with lead paint so Clark’s x-ray vision won’t be able to look inside and discover the ‘bullets’ are harmless!”) and points it at Perry. But before Clark can confess to keep her from shooting, Perry wakes up. “Hey! Put down that toy gun!” he says, grabbing it with one hand while the other holds something up to one eye. As it turns out, Perry has a black eye from bumping into a door; “I took some pills to ease the pain, and I guess they made me fall asleep!” he explains. Lois is forced to admit that black-eye-sporting, pain-pill-popping Perry can’t be Superman, and she and Clark leave the room in stony silence, Clark thinking, “I awakened Perry by giving him a ‘hot foot’ with my HEAT VISION! I knew he had a black eye and I figured that when Lois saw it, she would have to admit he couldn’t possibly be invulnerable!”
Later, Lois sees a story on the news wire and the following exchange takes place:
L: This news bulletin says a ship’s sinking at sea! Hundreds of lives may be lost! Go save it, at once!
C: Me save the ship? What can I possibly do, Lois?
L: You know very well how you can save it! YOU’RE SUPERMAN, THE MAN OF STEEL! Now stop pretending and take off!
C: Lois—-what’s got into you? I’m no more SUPERMAN than you are—-JACQUELINE KENNEDY!
Lois then grabs a pair of scissors and is shocked to find that Clark’s hair cuts easily; then she rips open his shirt and finds there is no costume underneath. “Whatever gave you the wild idea that I, of all people, am SUPERMAN?” asks Clark, as if this has never come up before. Lois sputters and Clark leaves, “to take care of some personal business.” Lois calls Professor Potter, who assures her that when she saw Clark change into Superman it was just a hallucination caused by the serum. Superman, observing from above the clouds, reflects on the real explanation—-it seems that when Lois started acting strangely (or more so than usual) he deduced that she had discovered his identity and was toying with him. So, naturally he went looking for amnesia victims of his own size and build, and found one at Metropolis Hospital, a test-pilot named Roy Wilkins who lost his memory in a crash. Superman coerced him to agree to put on a mask and play Clark Kent by promising to restore his memory afterwards, and meanwhile Superman saved the sinking ship. Flashback over, he meets amnesiac Roy behind the Daily Planet building and kills him so he can’t talk. No, not really—-he picks him up and flies loops with him, causing Roy to remember everything up until his accident (“After their memories return, “ Superman thinks as he flies away, “former amnesia victims can’t recall what happened DURING their period of amnesia!”). The story ends at a celebrity style show where Lois is modeling, as she says to Clark, “To think I almost froze you to death in that fur vault…! I promise never again to try and prove you’re SUPERMAN!”
The story is followed by a one-page “Varsity Vic” by the ubiquitous Henry Boltinoff.
First story: “The Invisible Lois Lane”
Pencils: Curt Swan, inks: George Klein
In the splash panel, Clark Kent changes to Superman in the shadows alongside a building, while an invisible Lois thinks, “WOW! At last I’ve got PROOF that SUPERMAN and Clark Kent are one and the same person! After this temporary invisibility wears off, I’m going to have some fun! For a long, long time SUPERMAN’s been laughing at me secretly, but…ha, ha, ha…now I’M going to have the LAST LAUGH!”
As the story begins, eccentric Professor Potter is showing Lois his latest batch of discoveries. When he points out a short-term invisibility serum, Lois has an Olsenesque flash of inspiration and guzzles it down. “Oh, no!” cries the professor, “You swallowed the serum! You’re…fading from view!!—-Foolish girl! I started to tell you that any human drinking it will suffer unpleasant side effects...such as strange hallucinations!” “It’ll be WORTH it!!” thinks Lois.
After nearly being hit by a van, Lois spots Clark Kent leaving the Daily Planet building for lunch and follows him, hoping to catch him turning into Superman. In a stroke of luck, a machine-gun-wielding man is running out of a jewelry store with a satchel. “Moments later, in the alley…” the scene foreshadowed by the splash panel takes place, with Clark peeling back his shirt as see-through Lois thinks, “Great Scott! Clark took off his glasses and now he’s removing his outer garments, revealing a SUPERMAN costume underneath! My hunch was right. Meek, mild, shy Clark is secretly dynamic SUPERMAN!!”
Lois watches Superman make short work of the robber (“Gaaa! M-my machine-gun bullets bounce right off your jaw!” yells the hood, obviously new in town) and change back into Clark clothes. “Shall I tell him I’m wise to his jealously-guarded secret?—-No! Wait!” she muses, as she becomes visible again. “SUPERMAN must have had loads of laughs pulling the wool over my eyes all these years [well, yes…]…But here’s where the worm turns! Now I’M going to have some secret laughs at HIS expense!” She walks around a corner to run into Clark, and they go to lunch together, a safe almost landing on Clark as they walk down the sidewalk. When they get back to work, Perry White asks Clark to count the bags of coins sent in by readers as contributions to the Metropolis Orphans’ Fund. Lois sabotages the coin-counting machine and hangs around to help Clark count the coins by hand, thereby preventing him from counting at super-speed. “Getting impatient, SUPERMAN? Ha, ha! You must be sizzling!” she thinks, as Clark says, “$487.56…$487.57…$487.67…” [It might be easier, Clark, if you separated the coins by denomination first…]
The next evening Lois is waiting for Clark at an amusement park. She watches the operator of the ol’ hammer & bell strength-tester game and thinks, “I get it! The owner is pressing a button, so a hidden, powerful spring makes the ball shoot up so that his accomplice wins a prize…thus attracting more business!—-hm-mm…” When Clark arrives, she wheedles him into trying it, and presses the button so that he rings the bell despite trying to swing the hammer lightly—-winning him the rating of “superman” and a transistor radio, and flustering him further.
The day after that, “Lois and Clark visit a warehouse owned by a friend who was robbed of furs.” The friend says, “I’m closing, now. Take these keys and lock up when you leave! I hope you find a clue to the identity of the crooks who stole three mink coats from our fur vault!” Of course, when Clark walks into the fur storage freezer Lois locks him in. “Awp!” he thinks, nearly losing his composure. “An ordinary man would soon freeze to death in here! I could force open the thick steel door easily…but doing so would reveal the fact that I’m SUPERMAN! Wh-what’ll I do??” Lois lets him stew for a while, thinking, “If Clark bursts out, he’ll expose himself as SUPERMAN. And if he remains inside, with no ill effects from the zero temperature, that’ll unmask him, too! Ha, ha! He can’t escape THIS little trap!” When she finally opens the door, pretending that she’s been looking for him, he has wrapped himself in mink coats to justify not being dead.
The next day, Lois has come up with yet another sadistic little ruse [does she ever actually write an article? For that matter, does Clark? Presumably the Daily Planet comes out daily—-is there any news in it?]—-she tells Clark that she’s discovered that Perry White is Superman, and leads him into Perry’s office. While Perry dozes at his desk, Lois opens his closet door and shows Clark a Superman costume, Superman masks, and padding for making one appear fat. When Clark says he doesn’t believe it, Lois picks up a handgun from Perry’s desk (“Ha! This toy weapon is filled with BLANKS! It was used by the “Toy Gun Bandit” in a holdup! I painted the gun with lead paint so Clark’s x-ray vision won’t be able to look inside and discover the ‘bullets’ are harmless!”) and points it at Perry. But before Clark can confess to keep her from shooting, Perry wakes up. “Hey! Put down that toy gun!” he says, grabbing it with one hand while the other holds something up to one eye. As it turns out, Perry has a black eye from bumping into a door; “I took some pills to ease the pain, and I guess they made me fall asleep!” he explains. Lois is forced to admit that black-eye-sporting, pain-pill-popping Perry can’t be Superman, and she and Clark leave the room in stony silence, Clark thinking, “I awakened Perry by giving him a ‘hot foot’ with my HEAT VISION! I knew he had a black eye and I figured that when Lois saw it, she would have to admit he couldn’t possibly be invulnerable!”
Later, Lois sees a story on the news wire and the following exchange takes place:
L: This news bulletin says a ship’s sinking at sea! Hundreds of lives may be lost! Go save it, at once!
C: Me save the ship? What can I possibly do, Lois?
L: You know very well how you can save it! YOU’RE SUPERMAN, THE MAN OF STEEL! Now stop pretending and take off!
C: Lois—-what’s got into you? I’m no more SUPERMAN than you are—-JACQUELINE KENNEDY!
Lois then grabs a pair of scissors and is shocked to find that Clark’s hair cuts easily; then she rips open his shirt and finds there is no costume underneath. “Whatever gave you the wild idea that I, of all people, am SUPERMAN?” asks Clark, as if this has never come up before. Lois sputters and Clark leaves, “to take care of some personal business.” Lois calls Professor Potter, who assures her that when she saw Clark change into Superman it was just a hallucination caused by the serum. Superman, observing from above the clouds, reflects on the real explanation—-it seems that when Lois started acting strangely (or more so than usual) he deduced that she had discovered his identity and was toying with him. So, naturally he went looking for amnesia victims of his own size and build, and found one at Metropolis Hospital, a test-pilot named Roy Wilkins who lost his memory in a crash. Superman coerced him to agree to put on a mask and play Clark Kent by promising to restore his memory afterwards, and meanwhile Superman saved the sinking ship. Flashback over, he meets amnesiac Roy behind the Daily Planet building and kills him so he can’t talk. No, not really—-he picks him up and flies loops with him, causing Roy to remember everything up until his accident (“After their memories return, “ Superman thinks as he flies away, “former amnesia victims can’t recall what happened DURING their period of amnesia!”). The story ends at a celebrity style show where Lois is modeling, as she says to Clark, “To think I almost froze you to death in that fur vault…! I promise never again to try and prove you’re SUPERMAN!”
The story is followed by a one-page “Varsity Vic” by the ubiquitous Henry Boltinoff.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Looking at the October 7 1961 Seattle TV Guide
I was only two years old in 1961 and I don't know how much TV I was watching, and I'm sure I was a few years away from becoming the avid TV Guide reader that I became, but let's take a look at what we could have been watching on Saturday morning, October 7, 1961:
7:45 Channel 5 is the first to sign on the air, with Davey and Goliath (in COLOR--only Channels 4 and 5 have any color programming at this point). "Davey puts on his 'New Skates' and slides out onto thin ice."
8:00 Channel 5 continues with Telaventure Tales, which I don't remember ever watching but do remember seeing it in TV Guide. Apparently it consisted of Ruth "Wunda Wunda" Prins reading books. For the first ten minutes of the show it was still the only show in town, but then at 8:10 Channel 4 signed on with Farm Report (15 minutes) followed by News, Weather (5 minutes), while Channel 7 came on at 8:15 with Light Time, whatever the hell that was.
8:30 A tough choice, between Channel 4's Agriculture Unlimited (today's episode: "Animal Disease Laboratory"), Pip the Piper on Channel 5 (today's episode: "Lost Horse Day"), and Channel 7's Christie Comedies (listed as cartoons, but actually, I assume, silent shorts). Stations often had farm programming in the mornings, but it seems like all the farmers should have been out working before 8:30.
8:45 Channel 11 signs on with News, Sports, Weather--topping Channel 4's News, Weather. At this point in time Channels 11 and 7 were both CBS affiliates, as if people in Tacoma couldn't pick up Channel 7.
9:00 Channel 5 has Shari Lewis in COLOR, and 7 and 11 have Captain Kangaroo, but I think I'd choose Channel 4's Adventure Today. TV Guide categorized it as "Children," and that's the only scrap of information I have about this show, and probably ever will--it's not like I can find it on Youtube or anything. Apparently it was an hour long.
9:30 Adventure Today and Captain Kangaroo continue, while Channel 5 has 15 minutes of To Be Announced before Game 3 of the World Series at 9:45. Was it actually a pre-game show? The listings then show Video Village starting at 9:45 on 7 and 11, but I think it's a typo and it actually started at 10:00, making Captain Kangaroo an hour and VV half an hour, rather than 45 minutes each. Video Village was a kids' game show hosted by Monty Hall and based on an adult version which starred Jack Narz.
10:00 Opposite the World Series and Video Village, Channel 4 has Western Theater. This week's movie is Bob Steele in "Oklahoma Cyclone" from 1930.
One thing I like is how every movie slot had its own name. Some of us remember "Nightmare Theater" or "Owl Theater" or "Nightcap Theater," but in 1961 everything had a name:
Saturday
10 AM, Channel 4: Western Theater
11 AM, 11: Adventure Theater
2 PM, 5: Midday Matinee
2:30 PM, 7: Alan Ladd Theater
4 PM, 13: Western Theater
5:30 PM, 13: Feature Film Fair
8 PM, 13: Movie 13
10 PM, 11: Who-Done-It?
11 PM, 4: Major Studio Preview
11 PM, 7: Big 7 Movie
11 PM, 11: Nightmare
Sunday
10:30 AM, 11: Sunday Showcase
11:30 AM, 7: Sunday Show
2 PM, 5: Armchair Theater
3 PM, 4: Sunday Matinee
4:30 PM, 13: Sunday Cinema
6 PM, 13: Feature Film Fair
Monday-Friday
9:30 AM, 4: Movietime on 4
11 AM, 13: Jerry's Club Matinee (10 AM on Friday)
7:30 PM, 13: Early Show (except Thursday)
11:30 PM, 4: Fourmost Movie (11:35 PM Tuesday & Thursday)
11:30 PM, 11: All Star Movie (listed as All Star Theater Monday)
Monday
8 PM, 11: Early Show
9:30 PM, 11: Gold Star Theater
Tuesday
11:30 PM, 7: Masterpiece Theater
Wednesday
9:30 PM, 11: Showroom
11:30 PM, 7: Masterpiece Theater
Friday
11:30 PM, 7: Masterpiece Theater
But back to Saturday morning:
10:30 The World Series and Western Theater continue, while Channel 7 has Mighty Mouse Playhouse. "A special feature today is a short film about the work of UNICEF, the United Nations relief organization, does around the world called 'Mighty Mouse Tells Where Your Pennies Go.'" Channel 11 is not listed.
11:00 The World Series continues. Channel 4 has On Your Mark, a children's quiz show, while Channel 7 has The Magic Land of Allakazam, one of my earliest TV memories. "Mark Wilson and Nani Darnell find an old pirate chest with a map and will left by Dreadful Darnell, Nani's swashbuckling ancestor." Mark and Nani were a husband-and-wife magician-and-assistant team. Channel 11 diverges from the CBS schedule with Adventure Theater; this week's film is "Pacific Adventure," from 1947, starring the immortal Ron Randell, Muriel Steinbeck and Margaret Tremmel.
11:30 The World Series and Adventure Theater continue. Channel 4 has Magic Ranch, which seems to have been ABC's answer to Allakazam. Today, "Peter Borger, 13, shows how to make hamsters invisible." Channel 7 has Roy Rogers.
12:00 Now it's time to go outside and play.
And where were Channels 9 and 13 all morning? Channel 9 didn't broadcast on the weekends, and Channel 13 didn't sign on until 4 PM on Saturday.
7:45 Channel 5 is the first to sign on the air, with Davey and Goliath (in COLOR--only Channels 4 and 5 have any color programming at this point). "Davey puts on his 'New Skates' and slides out onto thin ice."
8:00 Channel 5 continues with Telaventure Tales, which I don't remember ever watching but do remember seeing it in TV Guide. Apparently it consisted of Ruth "Wunda Wunda" Prins reading books. For the first ten minutes of the show it was still the only show in town, but then at 8:10 Channel 4 signed on with Farm Report (15 minutes) followed by News, Weather (5 minutes), while Channel 7 came on at 8:15 with Light Time, whatever the hell that was.
8:30 A tough choice, between Channel 4's Agriculture Unlimited (today's episode: "Animal Disease Laboratory"), Pip the Piper on Channel 5 (today's episode: "Lost Horse Day"), and Channel 7's Christie Comedies (listed as cartoons, but actually, I assume, silent shorts). Stations often had farm programming in the mornings, but it seems like all the farmers should have been out working before 8:30.
8:45 Channel 11 signs on with News, Sports, Weather--topping Channel 4's News, Weather. At this point in time Channels 11 and 7 were both CBS affiliates, as if people in Tacoma couldn't pick up Channel 7.
9:00 Channel 5 has Shari Lewis in COLOR, and 7 and 11 have Captain Kangaroo, but I think I'd choose Channel 4's Adventure Today. TV Guide categorized it as "Children," and that's the only scrap of information I have about this show, and probably ever will--it's not like I can find it on Youtube or anything. Apparently it was an hour long.
9:30 Adventure Today and Captain Kangaroo continue, while Channel 5 has 15 minutes of To Be Announced before Game 3 of the World Series at 9:45. Was it actually a pre-game show? The listings then show Video Village starting at 9:45 on 7 and 11, but I think it's a typo and it actually started at 10:00, making Captain Kangaroo an hour and VV half an hour, rather than 45 minutes each. Video Village was a kids' game show hosted by Monty Hall and based on an adult version which starred Jack Narz.
10:00 Opposite the World Series and Video Village, Channel 4 has Western Theater. This week's movie is Bob Steele in "Oklahoma Cyclone" from 1930.
One thing I like is how every movie slot had its own name. Some of us remember "Nightmare Theater" or "Owl Theater" or "Nightcap Theater," but in 1961 everything had a name:
Saturday
10 AM, Channel 4: Western Theater
11 AM, 11: Adventure Theater
2 PM, 5: Midday Matinee
2:30 PM, 7: Alan Ladd Theater
4 PM, 13: Western Theater
5:30 PM, 13: Feature Film Fair
8 PM, 13: Movie 13
10 PM, 11: Who-Done-It?
11 PM, 4: Major Studio Preview
11 PM, 7: Big 7 Movie
11 PM, 11: Nightmare
Sunday
10:30 AM, 11: Sunday Showcase
11:30 AM, 7: Sunday Show
2 PM, 5: Armchair Theater
3 PM, 4: Sunday Matinee
4:30 PM, 13: Sunday Cinema
6 PM, 13: Feature Film Fair
Monday-Friday
9:30 AM, 4: Movietime on 4
11 AM, 13: Jerry's Club Matinee (10 AM on Friday)
7:30 PM, 13: Early Show (except Thursday)
11:30 PM, 4: Fourmost Movie (11:35 PM Tuesday & Thursday)
11:30 PM, 11: All Star Movie (listed as All Star Theater Monday)
Monday
8 PM, 11: Early Show
9:30 PM, 11: Gold Star Theater
Tuesday
11:30 PM, 7: Masterpiece Theater
Wednesday
9:30 PM, 11: Showroom
11:30 PM, 7: Masterpiece Theater
Friday
11:30 PM, 7: Masterpiece Theater
But back to Saturday morning:
10:30 The World Series and Western Theater continue, while Channel 7 has Mighty Mouse Playhouse. "A special feature today is a short film about the work of UNICEF, the United Nations relief organization, does around the world called 'Mighty Mouse Tells Where Your Pennies Go.'" Channel 11 is not listed.
11:00 The World Series continues. Channel 4 has On Your Mark, a children's quiz show, while Channel 7 has The Magic Land of Allakazam, one of my earliest TV memories. "Mark Wilson and Nani Darnell find an old pirate chest with a map and will left by Dreadful Darnell, Nani's swashbuckling ancestor." Mark and Nani were a husband-and-wife magician-and-assistant team. Channel 11 diverges from the CBS schedule with Adventure Theater; this week's film is "Pacific Adventure," from 1947, starring the immortal Ron Randell, Muriel Steinbeck and Margaret Tremmel.
11:30 The World Series and Adventure Theater continue. Channel 4 has Magic Ranch, which seems to have been ABC's answer to Allakazam. Today, "Peter Borger, 13, shows how to make hamsters invisible." Channel 7 has Roy Rogers.
12:00 Now it's time to go outside and play.
And where were Channels 9 and 13 all morning? Channel 9 didn't broadcast on the weekends, and Channel 13 didn't sign on until 4 PM on Saturday.
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