Saturday, July 3, 2004

Flipped!

I'm working here today with the TV tuned to TV Land's marathon of The Flip Wilson Show. They're rather pleasant with a nice "small" feel — no big sets, no line of dancers, etc. Whatever money they spent, they spent on guest stars...and having worked on a number of shows where the guests had no real affection or respect for the host, I can spot that on this one, they generally do. It's also nice to hear all (or most of) the singers singing live and to see sketches performed with few obvious edits.

These are half-hour versions of what were once hour shows. I'm not sure if they chopped some of the hours in half to create two half-hour reruns or if they just cut each one down. Looks more like the latter since there are few pure musical numbers.

Just noticed George Carlin listed among the writers of an episode in which he did not appear. I seem to vaguely recall that he briefly had a deal to be a frequent guest star and to contribute to the scripts of other installments.

Anyway, I'm going to keep it on while working this weekend. These shows hold up pretty well.

• Posted at 2:43 PM · LINK

John Cullen Murphy, R.I.P.

Illustrator John Cullen Murphy passed away yesterday morning at the age of 85. Murphy, as we reported here, recently drew his last Prince Valiant Sunday page after 34 years on the job and before that, he did a long stint drawing Big Ben Bolt. He was a widely respected artist, both for his comic strip work and his magazine illustration. You had to be good to follow Hal Foster on Prince Valiant, and most folks thought he was a worthy successor. Here's the newspaper obit, here's an interview with Murphy, here's another interview with him, here's a 2001 online chat with him and here's an interview with his son. Earlier this year, Murphy's passing was reported erroneously in a comic news magazine. Sad to hear the story wasn't so much erroneous as a few months premature.

• Posted at 2:07 AM · LINK