Anyone else interested in the Patty Duke Show? (1 Viewer)

[Carlos Garcia]

Has there been any mention at all about possible season sets for the Patty Duke Show? For a show that had one of the most memorable theme songs ever (They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike) I can't believe no one has requested this show here on the HTF forum! This was one of my favorite shows when I was growing up. I had a huge crush on Cathy, and I used to side alot with Ross, Patty's conniving brother. If this show ever came out on DVD, I'd be the first in line to pick it up!

 

[Claude North]

This is one that I would definitely purchase. As a kid, I always watched the reruns on a local UHF station, and then when Nick at Nite showed it, I never missed it.

MGM released a "best of" laserdisc of the show, which I failed to purchase, unfortunately. I wonder if they still own the rights.

 

[Derek Estes]

Honestly, I have been dying for this to be released on DVD! If I remember, there was a rumor about a year ago that MGM holds the rights, and were considering releasing it. Maybe they are waiting for people to start requesting it. I'm glad we have started!

 

[Deb Walsh]

I watched this first-run, and I watched it in syndication. I thought there was a rumor that it was being considered - I would buy this series without even thinking twice. This was a true classic.

Of course, I'd also want The Farmer's Daughter and Nanny and the Professor, but I'd settle for this as a start ... :>

 

[MarkA]

This is the ONE show that I have been anxiously waiting for!

 

[Eric Paddon]

Yes, MGM has the rights because like "Outer Limits", Patty Duke was produced by United Artists television.

 

[Matthew Green]

All I can think of when I hear Patty Duke is the quote from the movie Mr. Saturday Night with Billy Crystal.

Buddy Young Jr. "The theme song! A hot dog makes her lose control. Now THAT'S the kind of date I want. Waiter, I'll have a Hebrew National for the lady and keep them coming..."

 

[Mark To]

And now MGM has been gobbled up by Sony. So where MGM was concerned this show would have been one of their top 5 most likely properties to get a release, now that it's in the hands of Sony it probably drops down about 100 notches considering all of the other shows they own. Mergers really suck. If all of the companies that produced and owned shows had stayed as they were 25 years ago we would have gotten many more shows released. But now you basically have 5 companies owning virtually everything: Paramount (gobbled up Viacom, Spelling, Worldvision and Republic), Warners (owns the MGM catalog by way of Turner), Sony (UA shows, which in turn owned the Ziv shows, Orion, all of the Norman Lear shows, all of the Spelling shows from the 70s), Fox (MTM, Four Star, Metromedia Producers Corp.) and Universal (didn't buy anyone else out but they produced more TV than anyone in the 60s and 70s). It's really a shame because there are many fine shows that will wind up being buried that might have come out. For instance, if MGM (the new one, not the old one) stayed independent we might have seen Patty Duke, My Mother the Car, Sea Hunt and a bunch of the shows they mentioned. Now that they are part of Sony, forget it. We can't even get something like Maude that ran a long time from Sony. Shame.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Just a small note, it was Viacom that gobbled up Paramount, not the other way around.

I think that Mark is right in that MGM being bought by Sony moves Patty Duke down the priority scale a bit given everything else Sony owns, at least in comparison to where it was when it was just fighting with other MGM properties.

However, I don't believe that it means that the show won't come out. I think we all should remember that relatively speaking, TV on DVD is still in its infancy. There were a few sets that started coming out in 2000, but for me 2001 was when things really started moving forward in this segment of DVD releases, and it was 2002 when things started to boom. So that's been anywhere from 3 to 5 years depending on how you look at things? I'm just saying that just because a studio hasn't gotten to something yet doesn't mean that it won't eventually, you can only release so much during a given year, and so that's why Sony hasn't gotten around to Maud yet, doesn't mean that they won't eventually. Afterall, in the first few years of movies on DVD, it wasn't like the studios pumped out every title in their back catalog.

 

[Charles Ellis]

I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Am I the only one who thinks that Jean Byron's Natalie Lane was possibly the sexiest TV mom aside from MTM as Laura Petrie?


"You will lose you mind- when cousins are two of a kind!"

 

[Joseph Miller]

I had a crush on Patty Lane, not her mother.

But I will say that Jean Byron was a very good actress and did much more with her role than her equivalent on shows like "Hazel," "Mr. Ed," "Dennis the Menace," etc. did.

Of course, MTM was the greatest in the 1960s "wife and mother" role.

 

[Ron Lee Green]

I would definately buy a dvd set. The only thing I have right now is a vhs recording of the reunion movie they did a few years ago where they showed clips from the old show.

 

[Mark To]

I'm sitting on my tapes of the show that I got from a run in Dallas. They're not complete, coming in between 23:30 and 24 but they are more complete than the butcher jobs that ran on Nick at Nite. I'll wait a while and see if anything gets announced before I do any transferring.

 

[Gary OS]

I think Mark is dead on with his comments about the mergers. They really do stink!!! And while I appreciate Casey's optimism concerning Patty Duke not being given up for dead, I think it's a huge long shot at this point, whereas before the merger it had a great shot of being released (probably by the end of this year, if not sooner). Yep, the mergers are killing our chances of seeing classics released any time soon.

Gary "my absolute biggest shock as far as non-announcements go up to this point is Paramounts lack of 'The Fugitive' on dvd. I would have bet the farm that show would have seen a release by now - how pathetic and sad" O.

 

[David Lambert]

The thing about Mark's remarks about the merger knocking any MGM release down 100 notches because of Sony titles in front of them....you see, whether or not that happens depends on whether or not Sony truly integrates the two companies, and how fast they do it. The merger won't be complete until Summer 2005, at minimum. Once that's done, the heavy concentration is on integrating upper management, then the big-screen film divisions. Home video will be at least 3rd on the list, so that integration - while it won't be ignored - won't reallly head into full swing until 2006 in all likelihood.

Any projects the MGM team has launched and made decent headway on before Sony mgt. puts a halt to separate projects from MGM and Sony teams, will likely continue through to completion just so that the investment isn't wasted.

Of course, Sony-MGM could be like NBC-Universal, where the separate projects were halted before the ink was dry, and customers suffered until the new management turned the spiggot back on. If that happens with Sony-MGM, then Mark's prediction will probably become true. :frowning:

 

[Michael Alden]

Now that Rat Patrol is coming out, Patty Duke becomes the most marketable of the rest of the MGM properties that Sony now controls. That's the good news. The bad news is that Sony has not shown any inclination to go anywhere near a black and white series with the exception of shows like Bewitched and Jeannie that started out that way and then headed to color. And even then they are so afraid of scaring people off that they put out colorized version as well. So, does Patty Duke now join other great b/w sitcoms owned by Sony (Burns and Allen, Father Knows Best, Donna Reed, Dennis the Menace, Farmer's Daughter) and take a seat on the sidelines?

 

[Brett*H]

I'd definitely pick up "The Patty Duke Show" in a heartbeat if it were ever released to dvd.

There are many classic tv shows from this era that need to be released. I would add "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" in addition to the other great series that have already been mentioned in this thread.

 

[FrancisP]

It may be NBC-Universal. MGM was supposedly working on a release of Witchfinder General, a Vincent Price film. It
had been remastered and a number of supplemental items had been worked on. From what I heard, work on this was stopped due to the merger and whether it will ever see the light of day is up in the air. MGM/Sony arrrrggghhhh!!!

 

[Deb Walsh]

Nice interview with Patty Duke in this week's TV Guide. She talks a little bit about the show, and the fact John Spencer of West Wing was a friend she met on the show (Cathy's boyfriend, I think). She also said she's always running into Boomers who sing the theme song to her. I got the impression she might be enthusiastic about doing commentary for the show ...

 

[Barbara.G]

I would love to have Patty Duke on DVD along with the Donna Reed show and Dennis the Menace.