Alias Smith and Jones (1 Viewer)

We are finally getting this Febuary 20th. This is another great show I am looking forward to.

Wow, is it Christmas already?!?! What great news!

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=6714

P.S. Gord -- fix the spelling! It's "Heyes" and Curry!

Good to see that they are including the 90-minute pilot movie in this set. Let's hope that this doesn't wind up being another one on Universal's ever-growing list of "one and done".

Barbara, you beat me to the "post" This is another one on my list. Ironic, but recently my nephew and I had a conversation about TV/DVD. He's mainly a movie DVD guy, but we were talking about the recent slow-down during the 2nd half of '06 in 60's-80's TV/DVD's and I said "Maybe the market has peaked". He said "Nope, I wouldn't be surprised if in time most TV series will see a release." Normally I'd have said "What do 'Millinium Kids' know?" Now, with several series' announcements posted on TSoD for Q1 '07, it's looking for next year. That signature's getting smaller

So much for the thread about the demise of classic TV on DVD. I can't even keep up with the deluge of product.

No kidding. My shelves (note plural!) of stuff waiting to be watched are entirely full now and I'm sure I'll be adding more to it in the next couple of months, including, very happily, this release. Except that they won't take up long-term residence on the waiting-to-be-watched shelves, 'cause that puppy's going straight into the player the moment I have it in my hot little hands!

Doug, I was thinking the exact same thing. We tend to "give up the ghost" too soon when it comes to the older series getting released.

As one who was leading the chorus of "Classic TVonDVD has been abandoned" I have to come clean and say I was at least partially wrong. The studios, especially Paramount, have shown that this isn't the case. The only thing I'm concerned about at this point is continuations of classics. And again, most of the studios are doing a decent job on this. At present, the only series I'm really interested in that seem to have hit a snag are LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, and THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY. Each of these seem to be in limbo and that does concern me somewhat. I'd hate to see all these newly announced classic titles fall victim to the done-in-one syndrome (even though all four have had more than one season released, I trust you know what I mean).

If any one of the four series I mentioned above are announced by year's end, then I'll completely and unabashedly say I was 100% wrong about the trend. But until I see at least one of these shows continue, I'll still be slightly reserved about the future of Classic TVonDVD.

Gary "just my two cents" O.

My own dvd-rs of this series is crap so what a great surprise. I honestly didn't think I'd ever see this any time soon.

Great news!

I waited for this a very long time (only have the pilot and first episode on VHS). Yes, I do hope they bring out the complete series (even with the change in the Hayes-actor).

(Next wish is the original The Virginian.)




Cees

Ditto, Cees

Your post brings up a good question for "Alias Smith & Jones" fans. Which did the other posters prefer in the role, Pete Duel or Roger Davis? My vote is for Pete Duel.

My vote is Pete Dual too. He is Hannibal Hayes (silver tongue and all ).

I'm not sure of this, but I always believed that Roger Davis (didn't know his name, BTW) was a guest star in one of the previous episodes.
In my memory, he was the one gun-slinger who was almost as fast as "Kid" Curry and was the one person who had to shoot it out with him. The gunner-with-the-smile, or so. Or the smiler-with-the-gun.

(They used the famous visual "click-trick", as I called it, for him too.
You know, if it's Curry: Curry is seen facing a villain and has his hands in an almost impossible position to draw - e.g. holding his reigns in two hands, often advising the other guy not to draw his gun - and then we see the villain starting a quick draw, close-up of villain, but while he's only half-way we hear "click": a gun getting cocked, next image shows Curry with his cocked gun pointing straight at the surprised villain who only has his own pistol half-way out of the holster. Very funny effect.)

N.B.: "Villain" = not Hayes or Curry, but anyone opposing our heros.)


Cees

Cees,

You're correct. That was Roger Davis in the guest role. You're an "Alias Smith/Jones" official expert

Cool. This show was a favorite of mine.

But, I've got to come clean and say I was only 12 when Pete Duel died. This show (and that event) had quite an impact on me...but, I am afraid to say, both have faded from my memory. This is a set that will be mine as I look forward to becoming reacquainted with some old friends.

I DO remember having a clear memory that that although I missed Duel's charisma in the role, that the fella who took his place (Roger Davis) WAS quite good.



Ben Murphy with Pete Duel



Ben Murphy with Roger Davis

I'll be picking up S1 for sure and probably S2 as Pete Duel appeared in the first 19 of a 23 episode season before Roger Davis assumed the role. S3 is problematic for me as the series IMO as the chemistry between Heyes and Curry was lost following Duel's tragic suicide. I still recall us kids in the 7th grade lamenting the passing of Peter Duel. Ironically, Davis supplied the voiceover in the show's opening credits.

In S1 alone, there were some great guest stars, including some of my favorite (and lovely) small screen sirens (Susan Saint James, Juliet Mills, Diana Muldaur, Susan Oliver and Barbara Rhoades). Other notables in S1 include:

James Drury
Earl Holliman
Cesar Romero
Burl Ives
Mark Lenard
Slim Pickens
William Windom
Royal Dano
Alan Hale
John Larch
Peter Breck
John McGiver
Steve Ihnat
Keenan Wynn
Joseph Campanella
Richard Anderson


Borrowing from Gary again, Michael "your resident character actor fan" KS

Yes, and James Drury was of course the Virginian in the series with that name.

There's even an episode of ASaJ that played as a copy of an episode from The Virginian (again: if memory serves me well). One where an old couple have to be suspected of stealing the content of a briefcase with a lot of money, and are forced to open a room they keep closed all the time.

As it appears, the money was ... well, somewhere else. Nice and moving episode(s).


Cees


PS:
Another lead character in The Virginian, Judge Garth was played by Lee J. Cobb (of Twelve Angry Men and much more fame), who's stage name I always found to be one of the cleverest I knew. The name ends with a double-b, pronounce this therefore as "b's" and you get his real name: Le(o) Jacobs.
However: from a certain moment on, the IMDB started to give his birthname as Leo Jacoby (not Jacobs), so I may have had this wrong for a long time.
C.

I remember as a kid hearing Roger Davis doing the original intro voiceover (knew him from Dark Shadows viewing), and then being surprised to find him as Duel's replacement. And wasn't it Pete Duel (posthumously) doing the intro voiceover when Davis took over the Heyes character? Might've been my 12-year old imagination at the time. . . .

I still remember seeing and enjoying the pilot on the ABC Movie of The Week, and probably all of the subsequent episodes. I haven't seen the series since then. What a treat.

"The Girl in Boxcar #3," written by Gene Roddenberry.

Who knew the 2000's were going to be such a great decade for this series? There's a terrific book that came out a year or so ago with tons of detail and background on the series ("Alias Smith & Jones: The Story of Two Pretty Good Bad Men" by Sandra Sagala and JoAnne Bagwell), the series has been running on Encore/Starz Westerns for the past two years, I just heard there's an authorized biography of Pete Duel in the works that should be released sometime in 2007, and now what's hopefully the first of three DVD sets. Can't wait till February!

Mary

Agreed again! Double so. Triple.


Cees

Enjoy! Its episode synopses may be a bit too detailed for those who are already very familiar with the series, but that's in addition to background info on the episodes and series, not in place of. Lots of commentary on historical accuracy (or sometimes lack thereof!), detailed information from Huggins' notes to writers, lots of info culled from interviews with many involved in the production, even some input from those in Universal's "Black Tower" -- the executive offices.

BTW, you mentioned that there's an episode that's essentially a reworked "Virginian" episode; there's also one in the second season that's a reworked "Maverick" episode. "Dreadful Sorry Clementine" with Sally Field owes a lot to "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres." (But as they were both Huggins productions, I suppose he's allowed to steal from himself!) I think there's a lot of the spirit of "Maverick" to be found throughout AS&J, though thankfully Heyes and Curry weren't split off into solo episodes nearly as often as Brett and Bart were.

Mary