77 Sunset Strip / Hawaiian Eye, etc. (1 Viewer)

[criblecoblis]

Thanks. That's so kind of you.
Does anyone know why Richard Diamond and for that matter the Robert Culp 4 star Western series aren't on DVD? The other series from 4 Star are available.
Don

That's a great question, Don! I'd love to see Richard Diamond, because I'm a big fan of the radio show. Regarding Trackdown, Me-TV has been running pristine prints, so at least the show is available to view.

 

[Flashgear]

A few minutes of wonderful color film taken of the Strip in the early 1950s...including some scenes shot quite close to the 8500 block...

 

[Lutz Koch]

Hey there, Rob! Thanks for inquiring...I live in Osaka, Japan, so no ME-TV or equivalent here, unfortunately. That's why I buy so many classic TV series on DVD, otherwise I'd never get to see them!

Jeff, you can watch Alimony League here:
That's where I got my copy. Better than nothing, and at least it's uncut.
Still hoping for WB to see the light some day while we're still alive...

 

[Gary16]

A few minutes of wonderful color film taken of the Strip in the early 1950s...including some scenes shot quite close to the 8500 block...

Video unavailable.

 

[Flashgear]

Well darn...dadgum Facebook,,,Here is the 3 minute color film of Sunset in the early '50s...direct from Youtube this time...You guys may well have already seen this elsewhere, but here goes nothing...

 

[Rustifer]

Well darn...dadgum Facebook,,,Here is the 3 minute color film of Sunset in the early '50s...direct from Youtube this time...You guys may well have already seen this elsewhere, but here goes nothing...

Fascinating! The cars alone make it worthwhile.

 

[Flashgear]

I quite enjoyed this late season 5 episode, Lady in the Sun (May 17, 1963)...featuring Karen Sharpe as a calculating Vamp on the make in Palm Springs...she's on the run from Fred Beir, having stolen the company books and now holding them for ransom...Stu is hired to track her down at the "Palmetto Springs" resort, where a combo of cool kids (Yvonne Craig, Richard Davalos, Fred Vincent, Irwin Charone) are also on the make with smaller stakes in mind...


Karen Sharpe... Fred Beir...




Yvonne Craig sings 3 times in this episode...me likee...



Gordon Wescourt with Karen Sharpe scanning the room for her next "Mark".../ a very young Bernie Kopell with more hair than we're used to seeing...a few years before his big break as "Siegfried" of KAOS on Get Smart...


Karen Sharpe looking to buy time with Stu grilling her...smoking hot... / Stu ignoring her charms and giving her the stink eye...


Someone has parked their T-Bird in the pool... Richard Davalos with Efrem...Davalos was given an auspicious
and high profile role by WB in 1955's East of Eden, w/ James Dean...


Stu in a high speed chase on a twisty mountain road...in an Ford Econoline Van / Dean Riesner wrote 3 episodes of the series...he was a former child actor who worked with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton...he was also a long time scriptwriter at Warners, and a favorite of Clint Eastwood and director Don Siegel, having written many big Eastwood films...Coogan's Bluff, Play Misty for Me, Dirty Harry, High Plains Drifter, The Enforcer and Walter Mathau's Charley Varrick...

 

[MartinP.]

Karen Sharpe looking to buy time with Stu grilling her...
View attachment 58194

Karen Sharpe was director Stanley Kramer's wife. Karen also appeared in a few early episodes of I Dream of Jeannie, including the pilot. (She is still with us at age 84.)

Any time one of her husband's films has been screened in an AMPAS series she has appeared for Q&A's to discuss her husband and his work. I've seen her there on several occasions. She was almost always referred to as Mrs. Kramer, so it took me awhile to put it together that she was the lead in a small film noir movie I like from 1956 titled "The Man in the Vault."

It's a film from John Wayne's Batjac company and one reason I like it is that it has quite a bit of location footage. Sunset Blvd. nightclubs, the Chateau Marmont from a house in the hills, all four corners of Hollywood Blvd. and Highland Ave. which show the Hollywood Hotel in it's last days. There's footage of a key shop on Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood and a couple of Beverly Hills residential streets (where Karen's character lives). There's also extensive footage of Art Linkletter's La Cienega Lanes, a bowling alley on the corner of La Cienega and Santa Monica Blvd. that was built in 1945 that Art Linkletter subsequently bought at some point. There is day and night interiors and exteriors filmed around this place. It remained a bowling alley until the mid-70's. For a couple years around 1980 it had a brief explosion as Flipper's Roller RInk where some films and TV shows (CHiP's) were shot and it held a famous birthday party for Cher. For around twenty years it's been a CVS pharmacy.

And like 77 Sunset Strip, there's a party scene where they take a couple minutes to have a song sung by a young ingenue. In this instance it's a catchy little tune called "Let the Chips Fall Where They May," which you may never hear anywhere else.

Besides Karen, there's a couple recognizable names in the film like Mike Mazurki and Anita Ekberg. The male lead is WIlliam Campbell, who may not be a household name, but he has a lengthy credit list on IMDB of movies and TV series.

 

[Gary16]

I quite enjoyed this late season 5 episode, Lady in the Sun (May 17, 1963)...featuring Karen Sharpe as a calculating Vamp on the make in Palm Springs...she's on the run from Fred Beir, having stolen the company books and now holding them for ransom...Stu is hired to track her down at the "Palmetto Springs" resort, where a combo of cool kids (Yvonne Craig, Richard Davalos, Fred Vincent, Irwin Charone) are also on the make with smaller stakes in mind...
View attachment 58178 View attachment 58179

Karen Sharpe... Fred Beir...
View attachment 58180 View attachment 58181

View attachment 58183 View attachment 58185

Yvonne Craig sings 3 times in this episode...me likee...
View attachment 58186 View attachment 58187
View attachment 58189 View attachment 58191

Gordon Wescourt with Karen Sharpe scanning the room for her next "Mark".../ a very young Bernie Kopell with more hair than we're used to seeing...a few years before his big break as "Siegfried" of KAOS on Get Smart...
View attachment 58192 View attachment 58193

Karen Sharpe looking to buy time with Stu grilling her...smoking hot... / Stu ignoring her charms and giving her the stink eye...
View attachment 58194 View attachment 58195

Someone has parked their T-Bird in the pool... Richard Davalos with Efrem...Davalos was given an auspicious
and high profile role by WB in 1955's East of Eden, w/ James Dean...
View attachment 58196 View attachment 58197

Stu in a high speed chase on a twisty mountain road...in an Ford Econoline Van / Dean Riesner wrote 3 episodes of the series...he was a former child actor who worked with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton...he was also a long time scriptwriter at Warners, and a favorite of Clint Eastwood and director Don Siegel, having written many big Eastwood films...Coogan's Bluff, Play Misty for Me, Dirty Harry, High Plains Drifter, The Enforcer and Walter Mathau's Charley Varrick...
View attachment 58198 View attachment 58199
View attachment 58200 View attachment 58201

Yes. I liked this episode too. But then I guess I like most of them. Nice screenshots.

 

[Jeff Flugel]

Jeff, you can watch Alimony League here:
That's where I got my copy. Better than nothing, and at least it's uncut.
Still hoping for WB to see the light some day while we're still alive...

Cheers for that, Lutz!

 

[criblecoblis]

Jeff, you can watch Alimony League here:
That's where I got my copy. Better than nothing, and at least it's uncut.
Still hoping for WB to see the light some day while we're still alive...

Yes, Dailymotion is an excellent resource for 77SS fans. They seem to have every episode, and they are downloadable, though in less than full NTSC resolution.

 

[criblecoblis]

I quite enjoyed this late season 5 episode, Lady in the Sun (May 17, 1963)...featuring Karen Sharpe as a calculating Vamp on the make in Palm Springs...

Nice writeup, Randall! I like this episode too. It has all the earmarks of a backdoor pilot for Yvonne & Co.

 

[Lutz Koch]

Yes, Dailymotion is an excellent resource for 77SS fans. They seem to have every episode (...)

Unfortunately, not every episode. S5 in particular is a tough case for anyone without access to MeTV, some of those eps are simply not there, not anywhere on the net. With the generous help of a good friend I finally managed to collect all but one, and that one is 5-30 The Heartbeat Caper. Don't you just hate it when you finish a puzzle and you realize that one piece is missing...
But I guess I'll get over it, somehow. A frozen Margarita might help.

 

[Rustifer]

Episode Commentary
"Dead As In Dude" (S6E19)

Opening Scene: The Lazy Y Ranch is self-described as "the playground for the rich"--which would probably be vigorously disputed by the commerce chambers of Vegas and Monte Carlo. Maybe even Dubuque, Iowa. Cowhand McHenry (Robert Colbert)--hired straight from Central Casting to lend "authenticity" to the ranch--is escorting sexy guest Ventura (Jo Morrow) around the grounds. She leads him into the dark barn for a hoe-down, so to speak, and spots millionaire Joel Townsend swinging from the rafters by his neck. One dead dude.

At Bailey Investigations Office: It's daylight for once. But this doesn't deter Stu from his thankless pursuit of getting Hannah out to dinner. He offers to cook her some lamb shanks. It's a known fact that the way to a girl's heart is a nice heap 'o fatty shanks. There's nothing as special as a dinner that requires a minimum of 12 napkins and a shower afterwards. Hannah roles her eyes.

Joel Townsend's death is ruled as a suicide. His widow, Gloria (Diane Brewster), hires Stu in hopes of him proving that it was murder instead. Her access to his $250,000 life insurance depends on it. To complicate Stu's investigation is the number of ranch guests who all have some sort of connection financially to Townsend. The ranch's proprietor Maudlin (Reginald Gardiner) is a Higgins-like character who is vehemently opposed to Stu being on the premises. The other guests aren't too happy either. Construction magnate Grover Bridges (William Bramley) with the personal charm of an anaconda, grunts "I don't like private detectives!" "Do they like you?" shoots back Stu. Another guest, Harriet (Sarah Marshall) quips "I thought detectives were supposed to be short, fat and greasy with derbies and cigars". Stu refrains voicing his thoughts about women from Pasadena.

Diane Brewster, Robert Colbert, Jo Morrow, Reginald Gardiner

Bailey begins digging into Townsend's financial empire only to find that it's flat broke. This affects all the ranch guests who are either investors or loaners in the enterprise. All have good reason to kill the guy, each with their own murky motive. Apparently the only way to sort out the mystery is to have everyone mount up on horses (in their best dude ranch outfits), ride into a deserted ghost town and poke around. Stu is able to eventually flush out the murderer through wiles generally only found in short fat greasy detectives.

Notes:
I was really hoping that the ranch setting would have created more of a rustic atmosphere to enhance the script, but it played very little into the story. Subtract some points for that. On the plus side, the cast of veteran actors do their very best the flesh out their characters and succeed for the most part--Reginald Gardiner being particularly adept at chewing up the scenery.

I may have the appetite to do a couple more Season 6 commentaries, but I can say at this point I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I've enjoyed these episodes beyond my initial distaste. "Queen of the Cats" and "Alimony League" were real standouts--ones I will certainly watch again.

 

[criblecoblis]

Unfortunately, not every episode. S5 in particular is a tough case for anyone without access to MeTV, some of those eps are simply not there, not anywhere on the net.

Ah. That's good to know. Well, At least there is a majority of the episodes available there. That's been a great resource to turn far-flung friends of mine on to the show.

 

[criblecoblis]

I may have the appetite to do a couple more Season 6 commentaries, but I can say at this point I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I've enjoyed these episodes beyond my initial distaste. "Queen of the Cats" and "Alimony League" were real standouts--ones I will certainly watch again.

Russ,

This makes me very happy.

 

[Gary16]

Russ,

This makes me very happy.

I agree!!

 

[Rustifer]

I agree!!

Well then, I'm happy that you guys are happy.
You and Rob steered me back to Season 6 with sound reasoning and I'm a better 77 SS fan for it.

 

[Gary16]

TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT!

 

[Rustifer]

TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT!
View attachment 58292

I haven't seen the film in years and will be itching to do a commentary on it!