Brainatra
02-02-2004, 11:13 AM
1974 review
1974: As the "Watergate" scandal reaches critical mass (and as Nixon subsequently flees the White House, leaving Gerald Ford in charge), the 70's continue unabated. The Hues Corporation's "Rock the Boat," considered by some music buffs as the "first" disco song, is released this year, eventually leading to the full-fledged explosion of disco music that the 70's is so famous for. The first home video game, Pong, also is released this year. Elliot Gould, the feminist movement, all-polyester wardrobes, "streaking" (racing through public places in the nude), and Barry White's "Can't Get Enough of Your Love" also prove popular this year (at least, according to the Simpsons episode "The Way We Was"). In comics, the annual JLA-JSA shindig that year involved dealing with the Sandman's former sidekick, Sandy, having been turned into a silicon monster (yep, the same guy who's appearing in the current DC "JSA" comic, kiddies...), and in Saturday morning, the Big Three networks continued unabated with the "same old, same old"...
Re: Saturday mornings:
1974 was apparently a lot like 1973---save for the unexpected breakout hits of two new shows, "Shazam!" and "Land of the Lost"...which led to the next big trend: live-action Saturday morning shows.
Notable debut shows include:
- "Devlin": see below.
- "Shazam!": A live-action show based on the old Fawcett Comics superhero Capt. Marvel. For those unfamiliar (or too busy thinking of Marvel's version), here's the gist: when orphan boy Billy Batson utters the name of the wizard "Shazam" (an acronym for various Greek/Roman gods: Solomon, Hercules, Achilles(?), Zeus, Atlas, and Mercury), Billy became Capt. Marvel, the "world's mightiest mortal" (a superhero with physical-based superpowers on an even match with Superman's). So even a match that in the 40's, Cap's books sold as well as (and sometimes even more than) the Man of Steel's, prompting lawsuits by DC that Cap was a ripoff of Supes, which went on for years until Cap's company, Fawcett Comics, folded in the early 50's decline in superhero popularity. Over the next 20 years, Marvel (seeing the name "Capt. Marvel" had fallen in disuse) swiped the name, and trademarked it on their own book called "Capt. Marvel" (with a totally unrelated character)--hence, when DC bought the rights to Cap & his crew in the early 70's, they were forced to call their revived Capt. Marvel comic "Shazam!"---and hence, this spinoff TV show as well.
Of course, having the Capt. Marvel family of characters in the same universe (or back then, multiverse---when re-introduced by DC, they were described as living in the parallel universe dubbed "Earth-S", for "Shazam", natch; for the record, the JLAers lived on Earth-1, and the JSAers lived on Earth-2. Got it?) meant the comic-book inevitable: a crossover involving the characters... which came a few years after '74 (another JLA-JSA-involvin' hullabaloo)...
In this TV series, there wasn't anything in the way of fisticuffs, violence now being taboo---more "social messages" and whatnot. Had a decent run in the 70's. Today, the teen that played Billy, now middle-aged, runs a floral shop with his wife in the Los Angeles area.
- "Land of the Lost": see below.
- "Hong Kong Phooey": see below.
- "The U.S. of Archie": Another Archie spinoff, this one taking advantage of then-bubbling "bicentennial fever" (the U.S. bicentennial, in 1976) judging from the sound of it---Archie & co. visit historical American figures...
Not a debut show, but popular on either PBS or syndication (according to conflicting resources I found, though I'm more inclined to believe the interview the son of the guy who worked on the show printed in the Chicago Tribune last week) was a show called "The Big, Blue Marble" (worked on by the creator of 60's toon "Roger Ramjet"), an educational series that aired on ABC on Sunday mornings in '74 (and ran on TV overall from 1971-76), winning at least one Emmy for its staff. ABC according to TV Party also has a "strong sports programming roster" on the weekends, as well (probably thanks to the long-running "Wide World of Sports")...
The two shows listed first below were going to be watched by me on Saturday, but the VCR didn't record (thanks to forgetting to turn it off and/or family meddling); Sunday's shows are completely different than Saturday's (assuming the schedule on CN's website wasn't changed at the last minute). Hence, I'll just comment on all four of 'em (w/emphasis on the Sunday shows):
Scheduled (but not sure if they did air) on Saturday:
"Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch"
"Hong Kong Phooey"
Sunday's shows:
"Devlin"
"Valley of the Dinosaurs"
"Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch" (NBC)
Show description:
Wheelie, a spirited-though-mute speedy red Volkswagen Beetle, is in love with female convertible Rota, but has to keep fending off or outrace the obnoxious motorcycle gang the Chopper Bunch (led by head motorcycle Chopper), all in a world where cars are the dominant/sole forms of sentient life.
Comments:
More H-B filler---chase shows were pretty popular in the 70's, especially with the concerns over violence (and besides, the Roadrunner was getting decent ratings, and all...). As a kid, I thought it was an entertaining enough (if weird) cartoon, but then, I liked car chases (and the "Dukes of Hazzard") as a kid...
Makes me wonder what happened to all the humans in this world the cars presumably belonged to; maybe it's some future, human-eradicated timeline in the world of Stephen King's "Maximum Overdrive"... ;-)
Main influences for this show were probably the Roadrunner (chasing, natch) and the Disney "Herbie the Love Bug" movies (Wheelie's a Beetle like Herbie, and also communicates via beeping like Herbie...).
"Wheelie"'s competition on Saturdays at 8:30 AM EST in '74:
CBS: "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?". Reruns of the original series; he returns with new episodes a few seasons from now, though...
ABC: "Bugs Bunny." Runs for a half-hour this season. Returns to CBS next season for its long, famed Saturday morning run paired up with the Roadrunner.
Despite "Wheelie"'s charms/stupid "car" puns, it was probably roadkill in the ratings via the combined might of Scooby and Bugsy...
"Hong Kong Phooey" (ABC)
Show description:
Mild-mannered police janitor/dog Penry secretly fights crime as "Hong Kong Phooey", the great (though bumbling) martial arts superhero, accompanied by his sidekick/police station pet cat, Spot.
Comments:
One of H-B's better 70's efforts; the theme song alone is an H-B classic.
Phooey's voiced by Black actor Scatman Crothers, who later goes on to star in "The Shining" (see bio here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001079/)
The show's no doubt inspired by the "kung fu" craze that was big in the 70's, thanks to Bruce Lee's movies and TV shows like "Kung Fu." A popular one-hit-wonder song of the day was "Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting"...
The "sidekick/minor character secretly helps out the hero" joke gets played up big-time later on in the popular 80's series "Inspector Gadget"...
"Phooey"'s competition at 9 AM EST on Saturdays in '74:
CBS: "Jeannie". To quote from "TV Party" (which summarizes it better than I could): "Second (and last) year of the teenaged Jeannie and her surfer-dude master. Based on 'I Dream of Jeannie', an NBC primetime show that ran five years. Jeannie's bumbling companion, named Babu ([whose catchphrase/magic words were] 'Yabble, Dabble!'), was played by former Three Stooge Joe Besser. It was Jeannie's pigtail that created the magic in this cartoon version."
Jeannie and Babu also showed up on an episode of the "Scooby Doo Movies" (making them the first supernatural beings the Scooby gang met, unless one wishes to get anal and count the chronologically-earlier ghost that showed up on "A Pup Named Scooby Doo" once...).
NBC: "Emergency Plus Four". An animated spinoff of the then-popular primetime show "Emergency" (IIRC, it was about emergency-response/ambulance workers, and airs in reruns on TV Land). Purportedly educational. Second of three seasons.
"Hong Kong Phooey" returned the next season (albeit in reruns), and Phooey himself showed up on "Laff-a-Lympics" later on in the decade...
"Devlin" (ABC)
Show description:
A trio of siblings, one of whom is a motorcycle stunt daredevil, have adventures as part of a travelling circus.
Sunday's episode:
A runaway Mexican teen tries to join the circus when it stops at a town along the US-Mexico border.
Comments:
More H-B 70's filler. I liked it as a kid, though (saw it on USA in the 80's).
Devlin's stunts might've been more impressive with today's animation levels vs. 70's H-B's bargain basement levels. ;-)
Obviously the show's inspired by the stunts of popular 70's motorcycle daredevil Evil Knievel.
Apparently illegal immigration was an issue back in the 70's as well---and Mexican immigrants and the issue of work's come up again very recently in the news (re: employment rights, etc.).
"Devlin" returned in '75 on Sunday mornings in reruns. For "Devlin"'s competition, see notes below under our final entry...
"Valley of the Dinosaurs (CBS)
Show description:
A family of explorers wind up stranded in a "lost world" where cavemen and dinosaurs co-exist, and have various adventures.
Sunday's episode:
The cavemen and family are forced to fend off an invading group of half-ape, half-human beings.
Comments:
According to TV Party, there were *three* shows on Saturday mornings this season featuring a prehistoric/"lost world" type of theme (the other two were "Korg 70,000 BC", a live-action show about Neanderthals, and "Land of the Lost"); in case you're wondering, the Flintstones took a breather from Saturday mornings this year. :-)
Wonder if the use of fire/flaming arrows made the parents'/anti-violence groups ticked off at all (or improbably inspired Beavis and Butt-Head's then-teenage fathers to violence ;-) ).
Of course, as everyone knows, dinosaurs and cavemen didn't *really* coexist (the oldest evidence of humans date back to probably around several million years ago, while the age of the dinosaurs ended about 65 million years ago)...
An archaeopteryx (sp?) was supposedly a flightless bird believed to be one "missing link" between dinosaurs and birds... IIRC (see website here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx.html)
"Valley" returned in '75 as reruns. Finally, the competition for this show (at 10 AM EST), was, ironically enough, not only "Devlin", but also one of the hits of this season: NBC's "Land of the Lost", which debuted this year. Another Krofft production, it like "Valley" focused on modern-types stuck in a "lost world", but this one proved to be much more successful than "Korg" or "Valley", lasting a good number of years on Saturday mornings (off and on). Its success also sparked a brief trend toward making live-action shows on Saturday mornings, starting the following season.
[Pointless aside: in an issue of "TV Guide" put out when "Pinky and the Brain"'s show debuted (in primetime), an "interview" with the Brain had Brain professing to one of the first shows he saw as a "child" to be a Krofft production...which he claimed made him "toss the remote through the TV screen", IIRC. :-) ]
---
Next week: it's 1975, and hopefully with a more functional VCR (and an accurate TV schedule). See you then...
-B.
1974: As the "Watergate" scandal reaches critical mass (and as Nixon subsequently flees the White House, leaving Gerald Ford in charge), the 70's continue unabated. The Hues Corporation's "Rock the Boat," considered by some music buffs as the "first" disco song, is released this year, eventually leading to the full-fledged explosion of disco music that the 70's is so famous for. The first home video game, Pong, also is released this year. Elliot Gould, the feminist movement, all-polyester wardrobes, "streaking" (racing through public places in the nude), and Barry White's "Can't Get Enough of Your Love" also prove popular this year (at least, according to the Simpsons episode "The Way We Was"). In comics, the annual JLA-JSA shindig that year involved dealing with the Sandman's former sidekick, Sandy, having been turned into a silicon monster (yep, the same guy who's appearing in the current DC "JSA" comic, kiddies...), and in Saturday morning, the Big Three networks continued unabated with the "same old, same old"...
Re: Saturday mornings:
1974 was apparently a lot like 1973---save for the unexpected breakout hits of two new shows, "Shazam!" and "Land of the Lost"...which led to the next big trend: live-action Saturday morning shows.
Notable debut shows include:
- "Devlin": see below.
- "Shazam!": A live-action show based on the old Fawcett Comics superhero Capt. Marvel. For those unfamiliar (or too busy thinking of Marvel's version), here's the gist: when orphan boy Billy Batson utters the name of the wizard "Shazam" (an acronym for various Greek/Roman gods: Solomon, Hercules, Achilles(?), Zeus, Atlas, and Mercury), Billy became Capt. Marvel, the "world's mightiest mortal" (a superhero with physical-based superpowers on an even match with Superman's). So even a match that in the 40's, Cap's books sold as well as (and sometimes even more than) the Man of Steel's, prompting lawsuits by DC that Cap was a ripoff of Supes, which went on for years until Cap's company, Fawcett Comics, folded in the early 50's decline in superhero popularity. Over the next 20 years, Marvel (seeing the name "Capt. Marvel" had fallen in disuse) swiped the name, and trademarked it on their own book called "Capt. Marvel" (with a totally unrelated character)--hence, when DC bought the rights to Cap & his crew in the early 70's, they were forced to call their revived Capt. Marvel comic "Shazam!"---and hence, this spinoff TV show as well.
Of course, having the Capt. Marvel family of characters in the same universe (or back then, multiverse---when re-introduced by DC, they were described as living in the parallel universe dubbed "Earth-S", for "Shazam", natch; for the record, the JLAers lived on Earth-1, and the JSAers lived on Earth-2. Got it?) meant the comic-book inevitable: a crossover involving the characters... which came a few years after '74 (another JLA-JSA-involvin' hullabaloo)...
In this TV series, there wasn't anything in the way of fisticuffs, violence now being taboo---more "social messages" and whatnot. Had a decent run in the 70's. Today, the teen that played Billy, now middle-aged, runs a floral shop with his wife in the Los Angeles area.
- "Land of the Lost": see below.
- "Hong Kong Phooey": see below.
- "The U.S. of Archie": Another Archie spinoff, this one taking advantage of then-bubbling "bicentennial fever" (the U.S. bicentennial, in 1976) judging from the sound of it---Archie & co. visit historical American figures...
Not a debut show, but popular on either PBS or syndication (according to conflicting resources I found, though I'm more inclined to believe the interview the son of the guy who worked on the show printed in the Chicago Tribune last week) was a show called "The Big, Blue Marble" (worked on by the creator of 60's toon "Roger Ramjet"), an educational series that aired on ABC on Sunday mornings in '74 (and ran on TV overall from 1971-76), winning at least one Emmy for its staff. ABC according to TV Party also has a "strong sports programming roster" on the weekends, as well (probably thanks to the long-running "Wide World of Sports")...
The two shows listed first below were going to be watched by me on Saturday, but the VCR didn't record (thanks to forgetting to turn it off and/or family meddling); Sunday's shows are completely different than Saturday's (assuming the schedule on CN's website wasn't changed at the last minute). Hence, I'll just comment on all four of 'em (w/emphasis on the Sunday shows):
Scheduled (but not sure if they did air) on Saturday:
"Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch"
"Hong Kong Phooey"
Sunday's shows:
"Devlin"
"Valley of the Dinosaurs"
"Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch" (NBC)
Show description:
Wheelie, a spirited-though-mute speedy red Volkswagen Beetle, is in love with female convertible Rota, but has to keep fending off or outrace the obnoxious motorcycle gang the Chopper Bunch (led by head motorcycle Chopper), all in a world where cars are the dominant/sole forms of sentient life.
Comments:
More H-B filler---chase shows were pretty popular in the 70's, especially with the concerns over violence (and besides, the Roadrunner was getting decent ratings, and all...). As a kid, I thought it was an entertaining enough (if weird) cartoon, but then, I liked car chases (and the "Dukes of Hazzard") as a kid...
Makes me wonder what happened to all the humans in this world the cars presumably belonged to; maybe it's some future, human-eradicated timeline in the world of Stephen King's "Maximum Overdrive"... ;-)
Main influences for this show were probably the Roadrunner (chasing, natch) and the Disney "Herbie the Love Bug" movies (Wheelie's a Beetle like Herbie, and also communicates via beeping like Herbie...).
"Wheelie"'s competition on Saturdays at 8:30 AM EST in '74:
CBS: "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?". Reruns of the original series; he returns with new episodes a few seasons from now, though...
ABC: "Bugs Bunny." Runs for a half-hour this season. Returns to CBS next season for its long, famed Saturday morning run paired up with the Roadrunner.
Despite "Wheelie"'s charms/stupid "car" puns, it was probably roadkill in the ratings via the combined might of Scooby and Bugsy...
"Hong Kong Phooey" (ABC)
Show description:
Mild-mannered police janitor/dog Penry secretly fights crime as "Hong Kong Phooey", the great (though bumbling) martial arts superhero, accompanied by his sidekick/police station pet cat, Spot.
Comments:
One of H-B's better 70's efforts; the theme song alone is an H-B classic.
Phooey's voiced by Black actor Scatman Crothers, who later goes on to star in "The Shining" (see bio here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001079/)
The show's no doubt inspired by the "kung fu" craze that was big in the 70's, thanks to Bruce Lee's movies and TV shows like "Kung Fu." A popular one-hit-wonder song of the day was "Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting"...
The "sidekick/minor character secretly helps out the hero" joke gets played up big-time later on in the popular 80's series "Inspector Gadget"...
"Phooey"'s competition at 9 AM EST on Saturdays in '74:
CBS: "Jeannie". To quote from "TV Party" (which summarizes it better than I could): "Second (and last) year of the teenaged Jeannie and her surfer-dude master. Based on 'I Dream of Jeannie', an NBC primetime show that ran five years. Jeannie's bumbling companion, named Babu ([whose catchphrase/magic words were] 'Yabble, Dabble!'), was played by former Three Stooge Joe Besser. It was Jeannie's pigtail that created the magic in this cartoon version."
Jeannie and Babu also showed up on an episode of the "Scooby Doo Movies" (making them the first supernatural beings the Scooby gang met, unless one wishes to get anal and count the chronologically-earlier ghost that showed up on "A Pup Named Scooby Doo" once...).
NBC: "Emergency Plus Four". An animated spinoff of the then-popular primetime show "Emergency" (IIRC, it was about emergency-response/ambulance workers, and airs in reruns on TV Land). Purportedly educational. Second of three seasons.
"Hong Kong Phooey" returned the next season (albeit in reruns), and Phooey himself showed up on "Laff-a-Lympics" later on in the decade...
"Devlin" (ABC)
Show description:
A trio of siblings, one of whom is a motorcycle stunt daredevil, have adventures as part of a travelling circus.
Sunday's episode:
A runaway Mexican teen tries to join the circus when it stops at a town along the US-Mexico border.
Comments:
More H-B 70's filler. I liked it as a kid, though (saw it on USA in the 80's).
Devlin's stunts might've been more impressive with today's animation levels vs. 70's H-B's bargain basement levels. ;-)
Obviously the show's inspired by the stunts of popular 70's motorcycle daredevil Evil Knievel.
Apparently illegal immigration was an issue back in the 70's as well---and Mexican immigrants and the issue of work's come up again very recently in the news (re: employment rights, etc.).
"Devlin" returned in '75 on Sunday mornings in reruns. For "Devlin"'s competition, see notes below under our final entry...
"Valley of the Dinosaurs (CBS)
Show description:
A family of explorers wind up stranded in a "lost world" where cavemen and dinosaurs co-exist, and have various adventures.
Sunday's episode:
The cavemen and family are forced to fend off an invading group of half-ape, half-human beings.
Comments:
According to TV Party, there were *three* shows on Saturday mornings this season featuring a prehistoric/"lost world" type of theme (the other two were "Korg 70,000 BC", a live-action show about Neanderthals, and "Land of the Lost"); in case you're wondering, the Flintstones took a breather from Saturday mornings this year. :-)
Wonder if the use of fire/flaming arrows made the parents'/anti-violence groups ticked off at all (or improbably inspired Beavis and Butt-Head's then-teenage fathers to violence ;-) ).
Of course, as everyone knows, dinosaurs and cavemen didn't *really* coexist (the oldest evidence of humans date back to probably around several million years ago, while the age of the dinosaurs ended about 65 million years ago)...
An archaeopteryx (sp?) was supposedly a flightless bird believed to be one "missing link" between dinosaurs and birds... IIRC (see website here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx.html)
"Valley" returned in '75 as reruns. Finally, the competition for this show (at 10 AM EST), was, ironically enough, not only "Devlin", but also one of the hits of this season: NBC's "Land of the Lost", which debuted this year. Another Krofft production, it like "Valley" focused on modern-types stuck in a "lost world", but this one proved to be much more successful than "Korg" or "Valley", lasting a good number of years on Saturday mornings (off and on). Its success also sparked a brief trend toward making live-action shows on Saturday mornings, starting the following season.
[Pointless aside: in an issue of "TV Guide" put out when "Pinky and the Brain"'s show debuted (in primetime), an "interview" with the Brain had Brain professing to one of the first shows he saw as a "child" to be a Krofft production...which he claimed made him "toss the remote through the TV screen", IIRC. :-) ]
---
Next week: it's 1975, and hopefully with a more functional VCR (and an accurate TV schedule). See you then...
-B.