Today only, Amazon is selling the complete I Love Lucy on DVD — 194 episodes on 34 discs — for $70.49.This is a set that retails for $240 and which Amazon usually sells for $128. $70.49 is about as good a price as you're ever going to see. I think it works out to around two bucks per Babalu.
My pal Vince Waldron tipped me off about this so I could share it with you. So instead of putting up an Amazon link that will get me the commission if you click and buy it, I'll put up one that will give the commission to Vince. Here it is. While you're at it, you might want to purchase his fine book about The Dick Van Dyke Show. It's easily the best book anyone will ever write about what may be the best situation comedy anyone will ever produce.
Today on Stu's Show, your enthusiastic moderator Stu Shostak welcomes my buddy Vince Waldron, author of the best danged book there could ever be about the best danged sitcom ever, The Dick Van Dyke Show. Vince was on Stu's Show before but there was so much to talk about and they only got through about half past "It May Look Like a Walnut." Today, they resume their conversation.
Stu's Show is webcast live at 4 PM Wednesday afternoon. That's Pacific Time so if you're in the east, it's 7 PM and if you're in Kazakhstan, as so many fans of Stu's Show are, it's 6 AM the following morning. The show is supposed to run two hours but sometimes runs longer. You can listen in by going to the Stu's Show website at the proper time.
That's free. Shortly after the live webcast, each episode becomes available for downloading at the same place where the price is a measly 99 cents. While you're there, you might also want to buy Stu's previous episodes about my favorite situation comedy, including the one with Rose Marie and Larry Matthews, as well as Vince's earlier appearance.
Hey, what do you say we watch an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show? Yeah, I know you bought the DVD set but sometimes I embed just because I can. This is a complete one — complete with current commercials you'll have to sit through, though you can always do what I do, which is to minimize the window and try and solve an entire Sudoku puzzle while the ad plays.
I've selected "Obnoxious, Offensive, Egomaniac, Etc.," which is the one where the writers loaded a script with insults about their boss, Alan Brady, then accidentally sent it over to him without deleting the offending adjectives. The plot was reportedly based on a real-life incident where the writers on The Joey Bishop Show did a draft wherein they inserted their true feelings about Mr. Bishop and then had to scramble to get back a copy which wasn't supposed to have been sent to him. Here's what Carl Reiner and his merry band did with that premise…
Last night, a great many lovers of The Dick Van Dyke Show converged on the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood for a 50th anniversary celebration under the auspices of the American Cinematheque. The evening took its cue from the fine new book about that show by my buddy Vince Waldron and Vince was present to sign copies of said book and to emcee most of the proceedings. A lot of that amounted to introducing about a third of the audience because the place was packed with folks who'd worked on that great sitcom or were related to people who had.
They ran three episodes and a smidgen from a fourth. Carl Reiner selected them and the choices were interesting. I'd guess that if you asked most fans of the show to pick three episodes they'd have picked "It May Look Like a Walnut" (the one were Rob woke up in a horror movie with walnuts everywhere but no thumbs), "That's My Boy" (the one where Rob became convinced he and Laura had brought the wrong baby home from the hospital) and "Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth" (the one where Laura went on a TV game show and blurted out that Alan Brady was bald).
Well, they ran "Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth" but the other two were "The Lives and Loves of Joe Coogan" (the one where Laura discovered her old boy friend had become a priest) and "Very New Shoes, Very Old Rice" (the one where Rob and Laura had to go get married again). Interesting picks…but not unwelcome because they reminded you how funny the show could be no matter what the plot was that week. They also ran a brief excerpt from "October Eve" (the one where a nude painting of Laura turned up in a local art gallery). The audience laughed heartily throughout all the episodes and cheered the appearance of anyone they knew was in the room.
Among those present: Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke were up on stage after and Carl gave a nice talk before. In the audience were regulars Rose Marie and Larry Matthews, as well as several guest actors including Sue Ane Langdon, Doris Singleton, Jack Larson (not the one who played Jimmy Olsen; the other Jack Larson), Michael Forest and Dick Curtis. Forest was the gent who played Joe Coogan and Curtis was the game show host who tricked Laura into disclosing the dark, hairless secret of Alan Brady's toupée.
Also present was Garry Marshall, a prolific writer for the show (and occasional actor) who went on to become one of TV's most successful producers and top film director. He hosted a disorganized Q-and-A after the screenings. It actually started well with Dick and his vocal group, The Vantastix, performing the show's theme song. Then the Q-and-A went…well, this is hard to criticize because it was very funny and I suspect most of the audience had a very good time. But you know, sometimes it's also fun to watch things go wrong.
As I've said here before, I don't usually like it at a public event when they throw the floor open to questions from the audience. Too often, it means that control of the discussion passes from a skilled interview to random strangers in the audience who rarely ask good questions and often ask the self-serving kind. Last night, we didn't have that jarring changeover because Garry Marshall's many skills do not include being a skilled interviewer. I'm sure he'd be the first one to admit it. He didn't even have any questions for Dick or Carl and he wasn't able to extract too many good ones from the house. I don't recall a single thing worth quoting here.
The Egyptian Theater is a beautiful structure with comfy seats. Great place to see a movie. Lousy place to see a panel. The front rows have a negative rake, meaning that each row is a bit lower than the row in front of it. When you're looking up at the movie screen, it's fine. When you're looking at a bunch of old guys sitting on chairs in front of that screen with a video crew between them and you, you can't see them. Carolyn and I were in Row 7, which had been taped off for V.I.P. seating. I'm 6'3" and unless I sat up ultra-straight on the edge of my seat, I couldn't see more than the top of Carl Reiner's head. What was worse was that they couldn't see us. I spoke briefly to Garry Marshall after and he said that he couldn't see half the audience because they were in pitch-black and couldn't see the other half because the video crew's lights were in his face when he turned that way. There were no microphones for the audience so it was hard to hear them, too.
I don't think Garry Marshall should have been hosting it anyway; not with the world's foremost authority on the show (and a darned good interviewer) Vince Waldron right there. But Marshall didn't even have a chance because he couldn't see the audience to select questioners, Dick and Carl couldn't hear what was asked…and what was asked was generally not that interesting. It was funny because those three men are funny…but come on, American Cinematheque. This is how every one of your programs at the Egyptian seems to go and it's unworthy of an organization that is celebrating creative people and their work. You need some sort of a platform up there to elevate the guests, and someone has to figure out how to light them and the house. Microphones that work all the time would be a nice addition, too.
I feel Grinchlike to be complaining when so many people went home, I'm sure, raving about the wonderful time they had. But when you have Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke appearing in front of an auditorium full of lovers of The Dick Van Dyke Show, you can screw up a lot and the audience will still be happy. That doesn't mean you should screw up a lot.
That said, I enjoyed myself tremendously. So take the above for whatever it's worth.
This review is way late but quite a few folks asked what I thought of The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited and I finally got around to watching it. I guess the answer would be that I had mixed reactions. I love those old shows and it was good to see those folks again and to have the show be remembered like that. Still, I'm not sure I like knowing what "happened" to each of them. There's something very nice about leaving Rob and Laura and Sally and Alan and all the rest in their own little time period in their own little world where Buddy, Mel and Jerry are still alive, and it sure seemed hard to buy (for instance) that Stacy Petrie had hooked up with Millie Helper or that Ritchie had moved back to New Rochelle, bought back his parents' old home and (apparently) decorated it to look just like it did in 1964.
On the other hand, I like that show and its cast so much that I am unable to generate any real negative feelings about the special. It's like criticizing your mother's cooking. If Carl Reiner says that's what happened to those folks, fine. That's what happened to them.
Well, I will carp about two things. Two deceased cast members — Morey Amsterdam and Jerry Paris — were billboarded at the top but a third, Richard Deacon, wasn't. I always thought Richard Deacon was one of the best things about the show and though his character, Mel Cooley, was mentioned in the show, it felt like he wasn't sufficiently recognized. Also, I can't recall ever seeing a show of any sort that integrated old clips into a storyline where the clips weren't (a) awkwardly set up and (b) mangled in the editing…and I still haven't. Watching Rob and Laura and the others "reminisce" and segue to excerpts, I cringed at how some wonderful scenes in wonderful episodes were chopped down…but then I thought: Anyone watching this probably knows these episodes by heart, maybe even owns the new DVD set that features each one in full. So maybe it isn't that big a deal. At least, it wasn't enough of a drawback to ruin how nice it was to spend a little more quality time with Rob and Laura Petrie. And if someone doesn't know those shows backwards and forwards, maybe this will get them to watch 'em on TV Land or purchase the DVDs.