What's Your Favorite Vintage TV Show?

[rexaircollector]

In addition to all

the classics everyone mentioned, which are all some of my favorites. I had another that was more contemporary in comparison but nevertheless, a classic in its' own right. Least us not forget the ever talented Christopher Hewett as Mr. Belvedere.

Robb

 

[washabear]

Charlie's Angels.

 

[cleanfresh]

washernut

Your right. Medical Center was one of my favorite shows! I forgot all about that one. In the 70's, my two favorite medical dramas were Medical Center and Marcus Welby M. D. I always thought Chad Everett was sooo cute. Another medical drama I forgot to list was Trapper John M. D. Remember that one? At the top of my list is Knots Landing, the Dallas spin-off. I'm surprised more people didn't list it. The show was extremely popular and had a huge following.

 

[63getelevision]

Love Mary Hartman, I have the Mary Kay Place album, Loretta Hagers(?)live at the Capri Lounge. Hated that she(Loretta) killed her career when she made the comment on the talk show about who controls Hollywood. I thoroughly loved Mr. Belvedere. And there was another show that had a white haired British butler-what was the show and who was he?

 

[cleanfresh]

Oh, and how could I forget

Family Affair with Brian Keith, Mr. French, Buffy, and Jody. Sadly, all three are no longer with us. Brian Keith committed suicide and Anissa Jones who played Buffy died of a drug overdose in 1976. I can't recall how Sebastian Cabot(Mr. French) died.

 

[maggie~hamilton]

Dark Shadows

I had a huge crush on David Selby!

 

[nurdlinger]

white haired British butler-what was the show and who was he

Was this Batman? I can't remember if Alfred the butler was British, but the white hair fits.

 

[cleanfresh]

nurdlinger

Bruce Wayne aka Batman's butler, Alfred, was British.

 

[goprog]

Brian Keith comitted suicide?

Didn't know that. Will have to search on that. I liked him.

(I wouldn't do any searches on Paris Hilton or George Bush
committing suicide, well, maybe GWB to find out if it was
a pretzel or Cheney...)

 

[frigilux]

Cleanfresh----Sebastian Cabot died from a stroke a couple of weeks after Elvis Presley's passing.

 

[~sudsshane]

goprog~

Brian Keith died of a self inflicted gunshot wound in June 1997, 2 months after his daughter Daisy committed suicide. He was also suffering from lung cancer at the time of his death.

source: Wikepedia.

 

[neptunebob]

Kind of like a vintage show...

There's a new show on AMC called "Mad Men". It takes place in an advertising agency in Manhattan New York in 1960. The clothes and sets are really sharp!

http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/about/

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

I Love Lucy is absolutely number one (is there ANYTHING else? I mean really!)

Andy Griffith is second

Brady bunch a close runner up, but almost too fake. Really just like the appliances.

Does Are You Being Served count as Vintage? What about Mamma's Family... I love both as well. What a fun topic!

 

[peteski50]

Favorite TV series!

Mine was Dark Shadows. I saw the very first one in 1966 and very seldom missed a show in the 5 years it was run. (I was definatly addicted)
Peter

 

[decodriveboy]

My favorite vintage TV show is THE BIONIC WOMAN. Lindsay Wagner is fantastic! I greatly admire her for the care she took in making Jaime Sommers a positive image. She made a profound impression on me.

Strange as it may sound, I am a few months shy of age 30, and still consider her a huge role model.

 

[maggie~hamilton]

Dark Shadows theme

The melody of the Dark Shadows theme was played on a theremin-like device. (It made the mysterious oooo-ee-oooo sound, but was not played "in the air" so it was not a real theremin.)

Quentin Collins' theme song "Shadows of the Night" was published in sheet music. So I, smitten with my grade-school crush on him, bought my own copy of the music and learned it. And played it day and night!

I learned Josette's music box theme by ear.

I have a copy of the LP record released in the late 60s featuring music from the show along with some narrated passages by Jonathan Frid who portrayed Barnabas Collins and was a seasoned Shakespearean actor. This soliloquy has always been my favorite:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

-- from THE TEMPEST by William Shakespeare

 

[63getelevision]

Maggie, that is really neat. I have an 8 track of that album, and was heartbroken when it went bad. But I found the CD of that with interviews of Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall, Roger Davis, Humbert Allen Astredo, Robert Rodan, Donald Briscoe,(radio,'68) and David Selby (radio '69). I'm waiting for more issues, as there were one or two more on vinyl. I have some early VHS of DS, and DVD box 10 during Adam's mates creations.

 

[63getelevision]

Here's a very obscure clue to the white-haired British butler(it wasn't Albert from Batman), this man starred in this show, he referred to one of his employer's friends as a "potato sucking Irish bean brain". It could have been a Britcom.

 

[fa_f3_20]

Things that were before my time, but I've enjoyed watching them on reruns: I Love Lucy of course, Make Room for Daddy, The Untouchables, Combat, Victory at Sea. Clips of the old variety shows are hard to find because most of them were broadcast live and not filmed, but I've seen clips of Sid Ceasar, Garry Moore, and Milton Berle that were a scream. And then there was Ernie Kovacs, who was too far ahead of his time.

'60s: I was a kid then so I watched mainly shows that were attractive to kids, like Flipper and Mr. Ed. Sci-fi and modern fantasy were big with me too: Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel. I watched Dick Van Dyke even though I didn't get most of the jokes as a child (I've really enjoyed watching them on reruns, knowing now the vaudeville backstory of the characters and the actors who played them). I didn't watch the Westerns as much. I did like the spy shows, Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Mission Impossible (and their flipside, Get Smart!). And there were the Jack Webb franchises: Dragnet, Adam-12, and Emergency. Carol Burnett was one of the all-time greats, and the supporting cast was killer. The Smothers Brothers. Laugh-In. Johnathan Winters -- that guy was absolutely gonzo.

'70s: I've found in watching them on reruns that a lot of the '70s dramas have not worn well. Looking back on them now, most of them are either unbearably preachy, too topical (in terms of issues that are pretty much forgotten now), or just tedious. On the other hand, many of the sitcoms are now classics. My faves were and still are the Susan Harris franchises (Mary Hartman, Soap, and does anyone recall Fernwood 2Nite?). Let's see: Mary Tyler Moore of course. Welcome Back Kotter -- I still get a kick out of hearing the theme song. (And it featured a very young John Travolta...) Barney Miller. Taxi -- I had a major crush on Marilou Henner. There was a show called The Corner Bar with Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller (who would later play Jerry Seinfeld's father) which didn't last very long but was a good show.

In the '80s, there were a couple of pioneering cable comedy shows. Showtime had Bizarre! with John Byner. Equal helpings of SNL and Benny Hill,and who could forget Super Dave Osborne? Fred Willard hosted Access America, going around looking for strange clips from cable-access shows -- it was sort of a prelude to America's Funniest Home Videos. Does anyone recall The Tracy Ullman Show? It was one of the Fox network's first shows. Among its recurring bits was an animated short featuring a character who would later become Bart Simpson.

 

[Washinsheen]

Oh, and I forgot to include this on my long list of favs....

Get Smart

 

[Maytagmom]

More

My Mother The Car
Car 54...Where Are You?
Dr. Kildaire (spell check)
The Wild Wild West (James West *swoon*

Eugene..."young moderns" ????
LMAO ;-)

Just sign me,
Old, crabby woman with a Maytag

 

[hoover1060]

so many memories...

All time favorite would have to be "I Love Lucy"
Still makes me laugh today as much as when I first watched it.

Others would be:
The Brady Bunch
I Dream of Jeannie
Knot's Landing
The Dick VanDyke Show

I hardly ever watch TV today...

 

[cleanfresh]

Just one more

The Outer Limits. Loved the intro. "You are NOT in control of your tv set!!" My favorite episode starred actor David McCallum. It was entitled "The Sixth Finger". This storyline dealt with the subject of evolution and how man might look physically at a certain point in time. David's character evolved into a man with an enormous egg-shaped head and grotesque pointed ears!! I remember being both horrified and intrigued at the same time. I love the way 60's television was determined to take us to the future with their futuristic themed shows. They succeeded, too!

 

[fa_f3_20]

The Outer Limits

"WE control the horizontal... WE control the vertical..." I wonder how many people these days know what that actually refers to?

 

[maggie~hamilton]

Horizontal Vertical

hahah, that really takes me back to days of yore. When I was a kid we had a cranky black and white TV that would start "horizontal rolling" on its own volition. Someone would be obliged to get up and give the set a good smack on top of the cabinet and it would stop. For a whike. Eventually my lazy older brother came up with a better idea - a long bamboo pole became a permanent fixture in the living room so that the recalcitrant TV could be given a good WHACK without anyone having to get up!

 

[cleanfresh]

maggie

Nowadays, if you gave a tv set a good whack the set might break!! LOL. Growing up, I remember doing funny things with the tv in an effort to get it to "act right", too. For example, moving the attennae in a certain direction. Sometimes it would even break off! Now that we've had cable for many years, I forgot how important the attennae used to be. Good-bye rabbit ears!!

 

[petek]

I'm with you Charles, David Selby was my big crush back on Dark Shadows as well. mmm

 

[rp2813]

Eugene, I think the Jack Cassidy character on "He and She" was kind of a Ted Baxter guy (not a newscaster, maybe some kind of lame action hero) with less ego and a little less air in his head. As I recall in one episode he had to be told that snuff was for sniffing, not chewing.

Rob, if I recall correctly that recipe Loretta Haggers did on the Dinah show was for sweet potato pie, but if you followed her instructions for sure it would end up with a black bottom. And I think all the male AW members can relate to the unthinkable tragedy that Loretta's husband Charlie visited upon himself.

I don't get why Mary Hartman never became more of a cult classic. How could anyone NOT watch a show with not only Louise Lasser but also Dodie Goodman, Martin Mull and so many other great comic actors? I believe Mary Hartman might have been the first TV show to include a lesbian story line also.

"Heath--errrrrr! Did you leave the Pam on top of the pilot light?"

A few key shows I liked:

Our Miss Brooks. This one started my love affair with Eve Arden.

The mini-series "Fresno." It was Dynasty with raisins instead of oil, and a hulking Chevy wagon with backward-facing 3rd row seat that was used to haul raisin baroness Carol Burnet around. Way better the first time out on CBS before they re-ran it again with a laugh-track. As if anyone would think it wasn't a spoof.

Most recently, I LOVED "Twin Peaks." Probably doesn't qualify as "vintage" but as has already been mentioned above, it's all relative.

I guess the more skewed, the better I like it. Everything else is such formula stuff anymore, it's gotta be weird and different to attract my attention. Which is why I end up watching premium channels more than networks.

Ralph

 

[alr2903]

Mr Selby also played Candice Bergens husband in RICH AND FAMOUS in the 1980's, kind of a love triangle movie with Jackie Bisset. I always liked the line when after a night of reading and Drinking, Candice Quipped, "She liked my book"

 

[maggie~hamilton]

And of course

David Selby appeared in Falcon Crest

http://www.ldrweb.com/davidselby/photogallery/falcon_crest.htm