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Indeed, Wayne, your remarks captured the spirit of Silliphant and numbered among the reasons I still drop in here occasionally. Well done.

"Joel Carpenter" was, in fact, the great Arnpld Manoff, perhaps having an off day. The use of Tammy Grimes in two episodes so close together makes me wonder if, in the second, she was a last-minute replacement for someone who dropped out at the last minute. If I'm right, it'd be interesting to...

"I Wouldn't Start From Here" is by Ernest Kinoy, better known for his edgy, issues-oriented writing on shows like The Defenders (he wrote the Emmy-winning "Blacklist"). Kinoy was an adoptive New Englander himself (he lives in Vermont) and I think this atypically gentle, low-key script really...

Pierson was also the "showrunner" (to use a term that didn't exist then) during the early 60s on two seasons of Have Gun Will Travel and Empire, both of which are quite good. He also wrote the pilot for Nichols, which was superior to the subsequent series, and wrote and directed the very...

I like that episode, and I find it very moving that Frank Pierson, who wrote an episode of Mad Men this season, is still working at the top of episodic television fifty years later. There's nobody else about whom that claim can be made.

Agreed that "Peace, Pity, Pardon" is a clunker, but I feel strongly that "Fifty Miles From Home" and "Shining Lieutenant" are two of the best episodes of the series, a powerful, early anti-Vietnam diptych unlike anything else on American TV at that time. Just those two episodes are enough to...

Yeah, that's one of my favorite episodes, too. Some amazing location footage on Hollywood Boulevard.

Interesting story about Wincelberg, Wayne. He died just before, or maybe even after, I'd contacted him to request an interview. Lars Passgard was one of the stars of Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly, so he would've been snatched up by Route 66 just at the moment that film arrived in the US...

But, Wayne, didn't you think the ending was a total, er, buzz-kill?

Well, just wait. What Silliphant chose to do in that script is, to put it mildly, a real head-scratcher....

No, that's a great observation about that speech being an obvious bit of writer's autobiography. And I honestly have no idea which one wrote it, Silliphant or Ginnes.

"From an Enchantress Fleeing" originated with Abe Ginnes, a terrific writer and a friend, late in his life. Also blacklisted, like Will Lorin. Silliphant kept rewriting him on ROUTE 66 -- his one subsequent episode bears a pseudonym (I'll let you guess which one it is). But rent Ginnes's...

I wouldn't be too quick to pounce on Leonard Freeman (who wrote "Blues for the Left Foot"). He was a writer originally and did some fine scripts for Four Star Playhouse and the Alcoa/Goodyear Theatre. Often when a producer of that era wrote for his own show he was doing it to fill a gap in...

Not McCarthy specifically, but Lorin was blacklisted during the fifties, so good guess. Lorin also wrote "Goodnight, Sweet Blues," one of the great ROUTE 66 episodes.

I just hope this flailing about with release dates and best-of compilations isn't a sign of poor sales and impending doom. The pattern here certainly resembles the death throes of "Ironside" with Shout Factory. Regarding the Corvette, episode-to-episode chronology just wasn't something...

Lois Smith must have been some kind of muse for Stirling Silliphant: he wrote a ROUTE 66 for her each and every year (in the days when an actor could guest star on a TV series multiple times in different roles), and a NAKED CITY. She's mesmerizing -- a great character actress later on, but...

Keep in mind that there are a number of solo Milner episodes before Maharis' departure was finalized and Glenn Corbett was introduced. I don't have a reliable source on which episode was Maharis' last at hand, but I think it might fall within the first half of the third season. Not that I...

That is a good interview with Maharis, but I really feel like Rahner brought up the "off-screen lifestyle" thing just to show off that he knew Maharis is gay, and to see if he'd take the bait and out himself (actually, I'm not sure I wouldn't have tried that myself). I've heard a lot of...

Gary OS, the parts of my previous post that you correctly found sort of lame were worded carefully to respect the HTF’s policy of avoiding discussion of gray-market sources. Take that as you will. (But for the record, before people contact me, I don’t actually have a set of the Nick-at-Nite...

This is the first post I've made here since 2004. Because some comments (not my own) were deleted from the very first HTF thread in which I posted, I reluctantly opted not to continue participating in a forum where I felt censorship and overmoderation were being practiced. I still feel that...