Bailey's Of Balboa (1 Viewer)

[Frank Soyke]

I would really love to have this show but I'm guessing it's a snowball's chance on this one. Great cast. Paul Ford (Bilko), Judy Carne (Laugh In), Sterling Holloway (Pooh), Clint Howard (Gentle Ben), John Dehner (Prolific Character Actor). With that cast, I'm surprised this show didn't make it. I have two eps on VHS I got from another collector in the early 90's, but the quality is terrible.

 

[Richard V]

From what I remember, it had the same premiss as The Pruitts of Southampton.

 

[Neil Brock]

I loved the show too but then I was 7 at the time it aired. Much like a lot of shows (Gilligan's Island, Camp Runamuck, Its About Time, etc.), 7 is about the right age to see it. As an adult, unless someone still has the mentality of a 7-year old, it won't be so good. When I got about half the run years ago, I couldn't believe how bad it was. Some shows are better off as memories.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

I loved the show too but then I was 7 at the time it aired. Much like a lot of shows (Gilligan's Island, Camp Runamuck, Its About Time, etc.), 7 is about the right age to see it. As an adult, unless someone still has the mentality of a 7-year old, it won't be so good. When I got about half the run years ago, I couldn't believe how bad it was. Some shows are better off as memories.

Boy, are you right about that. As a kid, I loved "The Flintstones" and actually thought it was clever. If I happen to see it now, it's terrible!

Actually, most of the shows I liked as a kid strike me as pretty terrible now. Most of television always has been terrible. Considering how many hours a week they had to grind out, how could it be otherwise?

 

[Neil Brock]

Boy, are you right about that. As a kid, I loved "The Flintstones" and actually thought it was clever. If I happen to see it now, it's terrible!

Actually, most of the shows I liked as a kid strike me as pretty terrible now. Most of television always has been terrible. Considering how many hours a week they had to grind out, how could it be otherwise?

It also has to do with the fact of what appeals to you in elementary school isn't going to be the same to a middle aged adult and vice versa. I'm sure that as a kid, I wouldn't have "gotten" East Side West Side, Naked City, The Defenders or Route 66 but they are all among my favorites now. Its a rare show (Rocky and Bullwinkle for instance) which can be written on two levels, one for children and one for adults.

By the way, I saw some posting in another thread about "7-year old" comments so I'm assuming they were directed at my post in this thread. Sorry that some folks are that thin-skinned. The OP hasn't really seen the show and I have over the half the run. I was just trying to give an informed opinion, based on adult eyes, for a show that few have had the chance to see in almost 50 years.

 

[Ed Lachmann]

Bailey's of Balboa is coming soon...from Germany. Just noticed over at Amazon Germany that a 13 episode "official" set will be released on August 30th (https://www.amazon.de/Seebären-Landratten-synchronisierten-Kultserie-Serien-Klassiker/dp/B07SJY2PFF/ref=sr_1_127?fst=asff&qid=1566411533&refinements=p_n_feature_three_browse-bin:502602011&rnid=502597011&s=dvd&sr=1-127). Not sure what the quality will be, but I'll be buying it and will report back. Sure wish that it would be a full season set.

 

[Bob Gu]

The product description only mentions a German sound track.

 

[Neil Brock]

The product description only mentions a German sound track.

May be similar to other shows that were released with German only audio, like The Detectives, Run Buddy Run, etc. where they only had a portion of the series dubbed in German.

 

[Ron1973]

I loved the show too but then I was 7 at the time it aired. Much like a lot of shows (Gilligan's Island, Camp Runamuck, Its About Time, etc.), 7 is about the right age to see it. As an adult, unless someone still has the mentality of a 7-year old, it won't be so good. When I got about half the run years ago, I couldn't believe how bad it was. Some shows are better off as memories.

I guess I'm a mental midget of 7 years old then. I still enjoy Gilligan's Island and many of the shows I did when I was 7. Just because you're an old dried up Scrooge prune doesn't mean the rest of us are!

 

[Ed Lachmann]

The product description only mentions a German sound track.

That is a concern. Hope it's like early Peter Gunns I bought years ago from Germany. They'd be nuts not to have the original English, but then I'll be finding that out.

 

[Harry-N]

According to this article:

https://www.history101.com/gilligans-island-a-fateful-trip-behind-the-scenes/4/

THE BAILEYS OF BALBOA was a sort-of spin-off of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND.

Jim Aubrey, former president of CBS, personally hated Gilligan’s Island and had very little faith in the success of the show. Because of this, he decided to create a spin-off of the show called The Baileys of Balboa, which premiered the same season.
The goal of this show was to prove that Gilligan’s Island would have been better had they gone with his original idea. The Baileys of Balboa followed the Bailey family, who lived at a beach resort, and they would often find themselves in conflict with their wealthier neighbors.

The show was canceled after a single season, and afterward, Aubrey was fired from the network.

I remember watching both shows at the time, and in my youthful frame-of-mind, they were enjoyable. Probably not so much today.

 

[MartinP.]

Jim Aubrey, former president of CBS, personally hated Gilligan’s Island and had very little faith in the success of the show. Because of this, he decided to create a spin-off of the show called The Baileys of Balboa, which premiered the same season.

I just came on here to write a bit about what you did! Info below is from Sherwood Schwartz' book Inside Gilligan's Island: From Creation to Syndication.

From Sherwood's book, I don't know if I'd characterize Aubrey as hating the show, he just thought Sherwood's concept would not work. He was intrigued enough to keep talking about it with him. He liked the idea of the charter boat and the characters of Gilligan and the Skipper. What he didn't like and maybe couldn't conceive, is that Aubrey thought each episode would require way too much exposition in the beginning of each episode and he didn't buy Sherwood's assurance that a theme song would take care of that problem. (Sherwood writes that "In 1963, however, few TV themes had ever been used for this purpose.") It was apparently something Aubrey did not buy and they had many talks about it.

After Sherwood's idea of the shipwreck in the pilot, Aubrey then wanted Sherwood to think about them having the Minnow repaired and then they would have a different group of passengers each week. He wanted the show to be called Gilligan's Travels.

Let's just say Sherwood Schwartz was adamant about what he wanted the pilot to be and he practically willed it into existence after three other pilots that he disavowed had been seen by the executives. He wasn't going to take no for an answer unless it was a "no" to what he actually wanted it to be. Aubrey even wanted a tag scene at the end of the pilot that would advertise it as new characters chartering the repaired boat for the following episode. Since the scene wasn't part of the pilot, Schwartz appeased Audrey and wrote it. "It involved two gangsters, pretending to leave on a charter trip. As soon as they climbed aboard, they pulled out guns and commandeered the boat, holding Gilligan and the Skipper as hostages. This tag sequence ran about a minute."

Sherwood writes that Aubrey was so convinced he was wrong that he did indeed commission The Bailey's of Balboa pilot to prove it. I've only seen some clips of Bailey's so I can't judge the show. Would that show have fared better in Gilligan's time slot? Bailey's was on Thursdays at 9:30 pm opposite Peyton Place and Hazel. Gilligan was on Saturday nights at 8:30 opposite Lawrence Welk and Kentucky Jones.

I'd be interested in seeing it, but not in German, heh, so hopefully an English track is also provided.

I noticed that two of the stars of this series appeared in Gilligan's Island episodes, Sterling Holloway and Les Brown, Jr.!

 

[MatthewA]

I thought it was The Judy Garland Show he hated outright, seeing how much he meddled with it before the network finally just pulled the plug. After he got fired, Jerry Van Dyke turned down Gilligan's Island* … to hold out for My Mother the Car!

At least now I know how Clint Howard got the part of the voice of Roo in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree shortly after this show's inauspicious end.

*So did Carroll O'Connor.

 

[Neil Brock]

Judy Carne was in the original cast as a love interest but disappeared early in the run. I have around half the episodes and I think she's only in one of them and by the midway point she was dropped from the opening credits. Probably the most noteworthy episode featured Raquel Welch as a guest star.

 

[MartinP.]

^^^

A scene from that episode:

 

[Ed Lachmann]

After digging into AL!VE/PIDAX a bit further I'm now sure that this is, sadly, a German language only set. I wonder if the picture quality is better than anything that remains of original materials in the USA. Holding off for now, but I do love this show and would dearly like to buy a copy for myself and the Balboa Island Historical Society Museum. Maybe if they played it with the volume OFF?