Classic TV show books (1 Viewer)

[Rick Thompson]

The funny thing about Route 66 -and I guess about many shows, including classic ones- is that there inevitable are sub par episodes, but its also interesting reading analysis about them. I read a Marin Milner interview once where he said that, on average, of every four Route 66 episodes, one was really bad and two were so-so, but then there also was a good or great one. Of course, a so-so Route 66 episode probably reached artistic depths that would be out of reach for most other series, then and now.
Sadly, the series finale two parter -an anomaly in that era, where series, besides The Fugitive, seldom had an ending- may still hold the record for worst series finale ever: an idiotic comedy-farse that never works.

There is a quote in one of the Fugitive books about the 30 hour-long episodes done each season that "There are 10 we're proud of, 10 that are good, and 10, well, we had to shoot something."

 

[jcroy]

(More generally).

A giant list of tv tie in books from an archived collection at corell university.

http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMM08001.html

From the names of the titles, some sound like episode novelizations or adaptations. Don't know how many are about behind the scenes type of stuff.

 

[Blimpoy06]

I need to find the books on Roy Huggins and Combat!. I have many, many books on TV shows put away in boxes where I can't reference them. Not enough shelf space to display them. They were more important to have at arms length before the internet. Sometimes I wish i had them nearby when I wanted to quote something for this forum.

Many of the people who made the classic TV shows are no longer with us. It's nice to have a record of their remembrances. I recently received the first volumes of Marc Cushman's Lost In Space and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. Reading Voyage now. It's not as detailed as the Star Trek volumes. He's still obsessed with ratings for each episode too. Really pads out the book with a lot of redundant information on the cultural events for each episode, when one segment for the entire season would suffice. The personal remembrances are fun still. That is the important part of these books.

I need to dig out the boxes and see what condition my books are in. I was thinking about Larry Manetti's book on the making of Magnum P.I. and looked for it on Amazon. It's going for triple digits used now! I hope my copy is still in good shape.

 

[jcroy]

These days I have to wonder if "behind the scenes" type of tv tie-in books are even still viable on today's book market. It would make sense such titles were probably viable before the internet became popular/ubiquitous, during or shortly after a popular tv show's run.

Today I have to wonder if such titles are only really viable as "print on demand" or eBook-only titles.

 

[Blimpoy06]

Today I have to wonder if such titles are only really viable as "print on demand" or eBook-only titles.

I think that's were the market is today for this material. It is nicer to look at photos in a book than on a display.

 

[jcroy]

My guess is if one is to write a behind the scenes book about a current/recent tv show, one would have to have direct access to a lot of insiders who worked directly on the shows (ie. producers, actors, writers, etc ...).

These days so much behind the scenes information is leaked online for just about every popular tv show, that without any insider information a "behind the scenes" book wouldn't be much more than a compilation of online gossip + articles about a particular show.

A mightly tall order to even get direct access to insiders, if such a book is even still viable today.

 

[jcroy]

Maybe not "classic" tv yet.

For a procedural show like Criminal Minds, I went back further for reading material which the original producers/writers were possibly reading.

I read through the books written by former FBI criminal profilers like John Douglas, Robert Ressler, etc ... (IIRC, the Jason Gideon and David Rossi characters in Criminal Minds were based partially on John Douglas).

 

[Dan McW]

There's a Perry Mason book out there that is to be avoided if you're using it as an episode guide. Each episode is listed with only a handful of cast members, including the defendant, the murder victim (I think), the judge, and one other person: the murderer! The murderer is not labeled as such, but including him/her is a gigantic spoiler and ruined that book for me as a guide.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Here's some more I own...

The Munsters: A Trip Down Mockingbird Lane
Come on Down: Behjnd The Big Doors at The Price is Right
Inside Star Trek, which is by former producers Herb Solow and Bob Justman
Nick at Nite's Classic TV Companion, which is a great episode guide for their early 1995 lineup
Wiped! Doctor Who's Missing Episodes
Star Trek Memories, by William Shatner

 

[bmasters9]

There's a Perry Mason book out there that is to be avoided if you're using it as an episode guide. Each episode is listed with only a handful of cast members, including the defendant, the murder victim (I think), the judge, and one other person: the murderer! The murderer is not labeled as such, but including him/her is a gigantic spoiler and ruined that book for me as a guide.

You're not perchance referring to The Case of the Alliterative Attorney, are you?

 

[jcroy]

My lifelong interest is in scifi type of stuff.

As I got older, I was more interested in examining whether particular scifi works can be traced further in lineage to a particular book, ideas/ideals/ideologies/etc, scientific discoveries, etc ... (ie. beyond merely behind-the-scenes or novelization/adaptation type of books).

For most scifi shows (or movies) on the surface, there wasn't really much deeper to look at in regard to the underlying premise (ie. including Star Trek, Star Wars, etc ...). Examining it with currently known science and extrapolations of it, usually falls apart most of the time.

In lieu of hard scientific foundations, I then look at whether a scifi show/movie can be traced in lineage to particular ideas from history, older literature, and/or philosophy. More often than not, this was usually more fruitful.

For example Apple tv is doing Asimov's Foundation. From what I could figure out of the Foundation triology, the closest analogy would be that of the rise and fall of empires (such as rome or britain).

In the case of "ancient aliens" and shows like Stargate SG1 + Atlantis, the closest analogy I could find was the dubious "Chariot of the Gods" by Erich von Daniken and "At The Mountains of Madness" by HP Lovecraft.

Reading some original works of this type, gives some insight that wouldn't be otherwise obvious on the surface.

 

[Dave B Ferris]

There is a quote in one of the Fugitive books about the 30 hour-long episodes done each season that "There are 10 we're proud of, 10 that are good, and 10, well, we had to shoot something."

From a book written by Todd Gitlin, with a lengthy chapter on Hill St. Blues:

Which truth to conclude with ...? Let the final word go to Michael Kozoll ... Halfway through the second season [of Hill St. Blues], Kozoll said he had finally found the metaphor for television he had long been seeking. Doing episodic television, he said, is like raising a retarded child. By which he meant that there are only so many things it will ever learn to do, no matter how much you love the child, no matter how much effort and care and intelligence you lavish upon it. It will never shine. One could add: Its little accomplishments are also miraculous.

 

[bmasters9]

I need to dig out the boxes and see what condition my books are in. I was thinking about Larry Manetti's book on the making of Magnum P.I. and looked for it on Amazon. It's going for triple digits used now! I hope my copy is still in good shape.

Why does that Magnum book have "Universal Pictures Television" on the cover? I've always known of it as Universal Television, without the "Pictures."

 

[Stephen Bowie]

The thing about 1/3 of a season's episodes being good, 1/3 average, and 1/3 being lousy is something I've heard often enough from people who worked in early TV that I suspect it was an informal rule of thumb. As in, if you were hitting that benchmark you could probably count on keeping your job, but if not you might find someone painting a new name on your parking space.

The other things old TV writers invariably quote are the (probably apocryphal) My Favorite Martian memo where an executive criticizes the dialogue by insisting that "a Martian wouldn't say that," and the joke about the starlet who was so dumb that she slept with the writer.

 

[Dan McW]

You're not perchance referring to The Case of the Alliterative Attorney, are you?

This is the one--I remember the cover:

https://www.amazon.com/Perry-Mason-...qid=1536175491&sr=1-1&keywords=perry+mason+tv

 

[MartinP.]

Hopefully, readers will find out why classic TV should be taken seriously as a source of cultural history. (And also why the shows were better!)

I was going to give your post a like until you wrote that last line.

That doesn't mean I think everything is better now, either. What it means is that there's always
a lot of good and bad at any given time. There's a whole lot of TV that I love airing right now.
It also depends on your age at any given time and what your interests are.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

I was going to give your post a like until you wrote that last line.

That doesn't mean I think everything is better now, either. What it means is that there's always
a lot of good and bad at any given time. There's a whole lot of TV that I love airing right now.
It also depends on your age at any given time and what your interests are.

Minus that very last line in parentheses, because taste is subjective, I agree that the public does need to take their classic TV a bit more seriously.

I mean, if someone panned and scanned Star Wars today, you'd never hear the end of it. If Ted Turner broke out his crayolas for Citizen Kane, we'd never hear the end of it. And time compression and editing? No way. But with old TV shows? F**k 'em, let's colorize 'em and zoom and crop 'em to make 'em fake widescreen, and timespeed 'em and release syndication edits only.

Classic TV doesn't even get the respect of a B-movie from the public, though TV has had a hell of a lot more influence on people.

 

[Blimpoy06]

Why does that Magnum book have "Universal Pictures Television" on the cover? I've always known of it as Universal Television, without the "Pictures."

It's a legal disclaimer. I assume the verbiage is specific enough to describe the entity that is beholding to all ownership rights to said television production in perpetuity without claiming any known passages in the book to be factual or falsehoods.

 

[bmasters9]

It's a legal disclaimer. I assume the verbiage is specific enough to describe the entity that is beholding to all ownership rights to said television production in perpetuity without claiming any known passages in the book to be factual or falsehoods.

That's what I thought it was! I have always and ever known of Columbia Pictures Television, Paramount Television, and Warner Bros. Television by those names (among others) in all my 37 years on this Earth, so, as such, until you explained it, that "Universal Pictures Television" was a new one on me.

 

[MartinP.]

The Time Tunnel: A History of the Television Series
by Martin Grams, Jr.

This 2012 book is the most recent book about a series I've read. It is literally jam packed with almost everything you could think of, and stuff you wouldn't, concerning this show. It's got extensive credits, locations where episodes were shot, music cues for each episode, deleted scene info, network concerns about episodes and snippets of what critics had to say about each episode reviewed. My favorite part was the chapter on first season plot proposals that were rejected and then second season episode plot proposals.

The author says in the introduction: "This was written for the purpose of documenting the entire history of 'The Time Tunnel', with detail level so comprehensive as to be definitive." I would say, if not 100% he's awfully close! It's over 500 pages.

So far, no one's recommended any books about variety series, but there's two I'd recommend.

Backstage at the Dean Martin Show
by Lee Hale

Lee Hale worked on the show and was a stand-in for Dean and he recounts his time working on the series year by year from his perspective.

From Beautiful Downtown Burbank
A Critical History of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, 1968-1973
by Hal Erickson

This book takes one through the pre-cursors and origins of the series and the creators behind it, how it got on the air, the reception and subsequent mania it fostered and how it changed television.

Did any of you know there were Laugh-In restaurants? I was looking for photographs of any of them, but nada so far! I can't imagine.