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

[Mike Frezon]

And I'll even add to DaveF's comments above with a "lecture."

You guys posting in this thread should all know better. You've been around here long enough to know the house rules.

 

[ponset]

I thought "The Disappearance" was good episode.
Former President General Dwight Eisenhower is kidnapped.
Although Eisenhower is never mention by named, one can easily deduced that it is him.
Interesting bit to me was that the actor's face playing Eisenhower is never shown.
Although I recognize his voice right off, John Litel.
John Dehner, Victor Buono, and John Dennis(I think) are the Kidnappers.

Also like "The Gemmologist Caper" as the entire agency is involved in the story.
Stu gets the lead.
Joanna Moore is the female guest star.
Richard X Slattery is back as a police Lt. filling in for Byron Keith.

 

[Flashgear]

I haven't seen 'The Disappearance' (S4, Ep. 32, April 27, 1962) lately...unfortunately, it isn't in my partial 77 Sunset Strip collection, which is mostly from 16 mm film and representative of seasons 1 to 4, but I lack a lot of late 4th season episodes and most of the rest after that airdate...thanks, Scott/ Ponset for describing it...I wish I had access to 'The Disappearance', nice cast with Victor Buono and John Dehner...and I love the premise...incidentally, from everything I've read, President Eisenhower was a big TV fan, with Westerns being his favorite by far...I've read more than one book with an anecdote referring to Ike sitting for hours, whether at the White House, Camp David or Walter Reed Hospital, in front of a TV, eating his meals from a TV table and driving Mamie crazy with his incessant 'clicking' of his remote control...Mamie crying out "oh, Ike, pick something won't you?!"...it would have been a nice notion to think about, if he had seen 'The Disappearance', what he would have thought about being depicted as 'The Distinguished Visitor', ha, ha...I don't know if he watched the detective shows...he would never watch any War programs, as he had an aversion to phony heroics too often seen on those programs and had seen the real deal himself ( he wanted to walk out of a premiere screening of The Longest Day, but was begged by Mamie into seeing it through for fear of embarrassing Daryl Zanuck)...according to the fine book 'Ike's Bluff' by Evan Thomas, Eisenhower loved Westerns so much that he viewed William Wyler's The Big Country three times at Camp David in March 1959...subjecting British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan to sitting through 3 plus hours of viewing (for a film that MacMillan wrote in his private diary was "inconceivably banal", the Brit not sharing our love of Westerns, ha, ha)...I live in Canada and don't have easy access to MeTV...so I envy you guys for watching 77 Sunset Strip on there!

 

[Tom.W]

I noticed that one of the 'missing' episodes from the 5th season of 77 Sunset Strip (The Floating Man) is scheduled for August 3rd. There's a decent chance the entire run will air on Me-Tv. Don't know if that increases the chances for a dvd release. Coupled with the interesting though short-lived streaming of most of the episodes of Hawaiian Eye on Warner Instant Archive, at least there's some cause for optimism.

 

[Jack P]

( he wanted to walk out of a premiere screening of The Longest Day, but was begged by Mamie into seeing it through for fear of embarrassing Daryl Zanuck)..

Interestingly Zanuck at first wanted Eisenhower to play himself in "Longest Day" for the one scene Eisenhower is in the script but they determined that it just wasn't possible to make him look credible as a 20 years younger version of himself so they instead cast a lookalike in the part, Henry Grace whose name TV buffs should know as a set designer at MGM (you can see his name in every MGM produced show of the era plus Twilight Zone since that was made chiefly at MGM studios).

 

[Bob Gu]

This morning's episode, "Upbeat" is a sequel to "Downbeat", from Season 1, with Dorothy Provine and John Van Dreelen playing the same characters again. The episode uses flashbacks from "Downbeat".

"Upbeat" is set in New Orleans and we see Andrew Duggan appear as his BOURBON STREET BEAT, character, Cal Calhoun. Odd cameo, since BEAT was cancelled two seasons ago.

Eddie Fontaine from the 1962-63 season's THE GALLANT MEN is in "Upbeat", too. Other Gallant Men cast members were in 77 SS Season 4 episodes, also: Roland La Starza, Robert Gothie, and Richard X. Slattery. (Robert McQueeney was in previous 77 seasons.)

Dorothy Provine's cast mates from THE ROARING TWENTIES-1960-62, appeared in various Season 4 77 SS episodes: Rex Reason,John Dehner, Mike Road, and Gary Vinson. (Donald May was in two 77 SS episodes in Season 2.)

 

[RBailey]

This morning's episode, "Upbeat" is a sequel to "Downbeat", from Season 1, with Dorothy Provine and John Van Dreelen playing the same characters again. The episode uses flashbacks from "Downbeat".

"Upbeat" is set in New Orleans and we see Andrew Duggan appear as his BOURBON STREET BEAT, character, Cal Calhoun. Odd cameo, since BEAT was cancelled two seasons ago.

And...Andrew Duggan even mentioned to Stu that you took on my partner when I closed my agency. A reference to Richard Long's character, Rex Randolph from Season 3.

 

[Richard V]

I hope that not only Season 5 is shown in its' entirety, but that they have Season 6 as well, so I can upgrade the collection I have. Some of them are pretty bad, others are in German without subtitles and severely edited (even worse than current eps on MeTV) running around 41-42 minutes compared to the MeTV 46 min.

 

[DeWilson]

Well, advance on-line DVR listings for Comcast is showing episodes through August 19th - which would be:

"Crash Out!"
Show 167 (5-17)
(Production Code 27659)
Original Air Date - 1 Feb 63

So it's a safe bet we are getting all of season 5.

 

[Gary16]

Does anyone know the name of the announcer who did the open for the first five seasons of 77 Sunset Strip? He also did Cheyenne. I've been trying to find this out since the 60s! I know Dick Tufeld did some of the other Warner shows but this one's a mystery.

 

[Bob Gu]

Ed Reimers? Reimers, the voice of Allstate Insurance, is identified, online, in some bios as being the voice that says, "From the entertainment capital of the world, produced by Warner Brothers.", but oddly only for Maverick. It sounds like the same voice to me for all the WB shows, except when it is Dick Tufeld .

 

[ponset]

Both Sammy Davis, Jr and his father Sammy Davis Sr. appear in "The Gang's All Here".
Kookie goes undercover at a pool hall to join Jr.'s gang. Peter Brown is the 3rd member.
Davis Sr. runs the pool hall.
Decent episode although I thought the ending was a bit pat/forced.

 

[Bob Gu]

I really enjoyed the use of Suzanne and Roscoe in Season Four. Roscoe and even J.R. packing heaters. Kookie's been used well, too.

Noticed the different arrangement on the end theme on first Season Five show shown this morning.

 

[Gary16]

Ed Reimers? Reimers, the voice of Allstate Insurance, is identified, online, in some bios as being the voice that says, "From the entertainment capital of the world, produced by Warner Brothers.", but oddly only for Maverick. It sounds like the same voice to me for all the WB shows, except when it is Dick Tufeld .

I agree that Ed could be the voice on the WB intro but it's still a different voice on the 77 and Cheyenne opens. The mystery continues.

 

[Gary16]

I really enjoyed the use of Suzanne and Roscoe in Season Four. Roscoe and even J.R. packing heaters. Kookie's been used well, too.

Noticed the different arrangement on the end theme on first Season Five show shown this morning.

Yes the arrangement changed every season. Also in season5 they dropped the vocal on the close other than singing "77 Sunset Strip".

 

[Richard V]

I like the "77" graphic on chapter breaks. Seems to have started in Season 5

 

[Gary16]

I like the "77" graphic on chapter breaks. Seems to have started in Season 5

Yes. I liked it too. They also changed the graphic for the breaks of "Hawaiian Eye" that season to big palm leaves covering the screen.

 

[MartinP.]

I was visiting a friend who has Warner Archive streaming and for the first time I watched a pair of episodes of Surfside 6.

There are ten (I recall) available to watch. The ones I did were:

Season 1 Episode 24: The Impractical Joker
Season 2 Episode 9: Jonathan Wembley is Missing

I enjoyed both of them. The guest casts included many recognizable names: Ted Knight, Robert Colbert (The Time Tunnel), Harold Stone, Mala Powers and Donna Douglas, dressed to the nines and oh-so-sophisticated! I even recognized an actor in one who played "Ted" in Mildred Pierce. He was the boy that Veda had married so she could get it annulled and blackmail the family. That actor's name is John Compton.

In one of the episodes, Lee Patterson gets dressed up and asks how he looks. The reply, "You're no Efrem Zimbalist." LOL!

In one episode Troy Donohue is charming a lady who says to him, and when she says it first you don't really understand what she's saying; she says, "ripe wheat." "What?" says Troy and the audience, too. She says, "Your hair looks like ripe wheat." Later on she repeats that in referring to him. LOL!

I looked up that actor John Compton. Mildred Pierce was his second role ever. After that he had a lot of roles in movies and then TV series. It turns out that the Surfside 6 episode I recognized him in was the next to last role he ever did. After that he went into real estate, successfully.

 

[MartinP.]

^^^

Someone told me that the houseboat seen in the opening credits of this series (and at other moments) is the same one that Versace's murderer ended up on when they caught him twenty years ago. Anyone else heard that?

 

[Bob Gu]

Searching the internet, the original Surfside 6 houseboat ended up in Savannah, GA and sank in 1993. The designer/ builder of the houseboat had permission from WB to use the name "Surfside 6" to promote the other houseboats he built, and he is quoted in a newspaper account that he thought the Versace case, 1997, houseboat was one of his. That houseboat is said to have, also, sank shortly after.


Speaking of Miami, Lee Bowman guest starred in the 77 Sunset Strip episode, "The Raiders". Bowman starred in a show called MIAMI UNDERCOVER , 1961. Some of those are up on youtube along with some of Bowman's ELLERY QUEEN episodes, from the '50s.