 This is the SF Productions podcast network Welcome to the tape shows. Let me see. There's a tape already in here. Let me hook this up here. Let me see what we got. Back with us to the 60s and 70s, the dwelling place of the lost generation. An era whose heroes, role models, and very lives were molded and formed by weekly installments of favorite television programs. Welcome to the place your parents didn't understand. Welcome to the vast wasteland. Welcome home. Another exciting episode of Vast Wasteland. I'm your host, Mark Schmidbar along with Wilbert Neal and usually Marty Wiley. We're here to talk about 60s and 70s television. Tonight, it's animal shows. But before we jump into that, I just want to tell you that we're on Tuesdays at 6, Wednesdays at 10, and Thursdays at 3 p.m. on ACTV, cable 21. And if you want to write to us, and boy are those letters just rolling in. You want to write to box 15, 15, 26, Columbus, Ohio, 43215. Well, before we jump into the big show, of course, like every other show, we have to have a correspondent in the Middle East. So Marty at this point is in the Middle East. Let's see if we can pick her up. Marty, Marty, you're there right now. Yes, sir. Well, we're kind of having some trouble with the audio link. Are you getting anything, Wilbert? I don't seem to be getting anything. Well, let's see if I can push the flipper here. No, we're not getting anything. As I understand it, we've decided to blow the entire concept and she's jumping on the Concorde at this very moment. So she'll be here in just a few moments. So let's just move on to the whole subject of animal shows, I suppose. Okay. Well, certainly animal shows have been one of the staples of the, well, first kitty shows. But also it was, you know, ever since that old Lassie movie, Lassie Come Home, it was like, oh, you've got to have the cute kids and the cute animals together. And so what did we start off with? I suppose, well, certainly Lassie. I guess we pretty much have to start off with it. Oh, Marty, Marty's back. How are you doing? How was the Middle East? War is Hell. War is Hell? Well, well. The Damobile Right Good Reports School. There you go. Anyways, I didn't want to interrupt you, Wilbert. Oh, my goodness. I see all the time. Well, Lassie thing, this isn't just going on. This is an institution here. Forever. And there's even a new Lassie series now. I know. I don't know, is that still on or did that get canceled? I've seen it on Saturday. Yeah, it's on, is it Family Channel or is that just syndicated? No, I've actually seen it on Real TV. Real TV. Regular TV. Like, Channel is something local here, but it's like that weird time between cartoons and sports. Ah. Find some Lassie. I've got to show something. No area. The nebulous zone. So that started with, well, first you had Jeff. I remember that. Yeah. That was the first kid. And Lassie had to really have problems because, you know, went through characters left and right. And this listing shows just dozens of kids and parents. And I was reading about that. It started with, Lassie, we started with Jeff. And Jeff obviously grew up and grew out of the park. He was no longer a cute little kid. But you know, the dog was magic. The dog didn't age. Yeah, but the dog didn't age, but the dog kind of changed his gender several times. Yeah. The Dorian Grand Dog. There's some picture of the dog growing older. Exactly. I'd say that. The dog had this picture in a meal bowl or something. Yeah. Or in the back of the dog house. Yeah. Somebody else could see it. Right, exactly. And as the dog just stayed its own age and characters went, they just dropped off like flies. Mm-hmm. That's incredible. Make me cry, though. Mm-hmm. Because I had a dog. Was it Collie? No. No. We just had a mutt. Oh. But it's like, Lassie would get into these dangerous scrapes and everything. Oh! What a little boy dog! And I would cry. Mm-hmm. Well, we had to see. This thing started here in September of 54, which is actually long before, but still. Right. It's just the institution thing. Cloris Leachman was a character on here at a time. Well, they had Jeff, and Jeff got too old for the part. And so they adopted this kid named Timmy, who doesn't even, in this listing, doesn't even have a last name. He's an orphan kid. Timmy. Never give it a last name. And so he stayed with the... They definitely didn't know if they were an orphan or not. Sure. It was a trial period thing. I don't want to give him his name. This is wild, dude. So they gave... What? People don't remember? So they gave Timmy... The character names. Go ahead. Yeah. So they gave Timmy... So Timmy's there, and then the first adoptive parents leave. But leave the kid with the dog at the same house. They sold the car. The kid and the dog came with them. Really? An innovative concept. Actually, the parents didn't adopt the kid. The house obviously did. So the kid stayed there, and new adoptive parents move in. And of course, this is during the big June lock-in years. They're going to give you the hassle of changing color. Yeah. Just leave them there, you know. So... It makes me just sense today. So what did you say about the... Well, just the character names. Look at this guy here. There's... And I was Graham's. Graham's Miller. Right. There's Sylvester... Sylvester Porky Brockway. Just these names are funny. Jeff Miller. Okay. Doc Weaver. That sounds like somebody that's... Charlie Weaver. Yeah, right. Ruth and Paul Martin. So you mean they used to be farmers before they were a doctor? Yeah. Before they moved to... Where's the Pine Valley? Pine Valley. Yeah. This is just Greek. Corey... Well, Corey Stewart. Boomer Bates. Boomer... Boomer and Lassie. Yeah. Here's Boomer. Remember that? Yeah. That's it. Animal Joe. Animal Joe. How long did the... Uncle... Uncle Petrie Martin. Uncle Martin. Uncle Martin. This is scary. But, Clarice Leachman... What did the Timmy Lassie show? Well, Timmy is 57 to 64. Until he got too old to be cute. Boom. You're good. But now he's actually on the news. Yeah. Uncle Tim. Act Uncle Tim. Yeah. But not the same characters. Wait a minute. Tim. Uncle Martin. Woo. This is scary stuff, boys and girls. My favorite version parallels. Ruth Martin from 57 to 58 was Clarice Leachman. Wow. And then later Ruth Martin from 58 to 64 was June Lockhart. And boy, what a... If you can't... You couldn't find two different types of people to play the same part. Clarice Leachman and June Lockhart. This is strange. So then you had the second adoptive parents deciding they were going to move to Australia, and they took Timmy, but they couldn't take the dog because of quarantine laws. And then... So then he went to some forest rangers. Yeah. What is Jim Jim? Corey. Was it Corey? Corey Stewart. Yeah. So then you had the forest ranger years. Yeah. And finally the forest ranger left for some reason. Oh, he was seriously wounded or something in some big fire incident or some forest incident. So... And then... Only Lassie could have started that forest fire. And so finally, by the end of the show, Lassie has so much become... I mean, he always was the star of the show. But now to the point of there is no owner for Lassie. Lassie just kind of wanders by, helps somebody and leaves. Kind of becomes a Route 66 kind of thing. He sounds like Combs. Like David Banner. Yeah. Wandering aimlessly throughout the... America, certainly. I think there's something like nothing at all to do with the... Lassie. Make her mad. If Nessie wanted to get Lassie mad. You wouldn't like her when she's mad. Then she turned into a cartoon. Right. Right. She got mad, turned into a cartoon maybe. Yeah. Then the... What was that? Lassie's Rescue Rangers. Yeah. And... Yeah. And so that one... So it just went on and on and on. And they finally said enough. And I think I remember like in the early 80s, they tried to bring it back as a movie. And it didn't do very well. They said they canned it again. And like last year, they brought it up again with yet another Lassie. With all the... How many... It must have been like... I heard there was like 11 different Lassies if you count all the way back to the... I'm sure there's more than that. To the Lassie from the original movie. But you know it has nothing to do. The show never had any tie with the dog in the... In the novel in the movie. Yeah. Lassie come home and make you cry. Make you cry and cry and cry. It's a sad book. It was always, you know, Lassie had these incredible abilities to operate equipment. And tell people exactly what was going on. It became... It became almost a meeting. Yeah. It really was. You know it's like... Oh, there's someone hurt on Lurtin 53? Oh, okay. Where is he? Oh, about 10 miles away from Pickford. Well, we better jump in the truck and get him. What kind of car was that? 67 Dart. Okay. Well... With the T-top? Yeah. Okay, Lassie. Well, I came after Lassie. Well, let's see. Well, Lassie just kind of... Because I remember the Lassie flipper General Benton time as all being like one era. Yeah. Well, this Lassie just went off forever. Oh, that darn Pamela Furtin was on that show. Robert had a crush on her. No. That darn Pamela Furtin. Well, General Benton went around until like 67. And flipper... Flipper was in 64, 64 to 68. Okay, so it... So there were some years in there. Because it seemed like there was a time when flipper and General Benton were like on in the same hour. Yeah, they could. Well, let's see. Probably. 64 to... Well, it could have been there in that 67. I was so jealous of those kids on flipper. I was so jealous of them. They got to live in a park. They never seem to go to school. They never went to school. They just swim in the ocean, take the boat out, get in trouble, golf and say, Exactly, does it, Dolphin Saviour. How classy does that, does that get felt? Yeah, Dolphin comes up and it's like, Whoa, what's wrong, flipper, oh no. No fishing to see. Oh no. I don't understand that at all. I don't understand the thing about waving, getting up on that tail. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Do a reunion show for Flipper and Flipper is a poor old geriatric thing. He'll see old dolphins, you know? Flipper the next generation. Yeah, son of Flipper. Yeah, son of Flipper. How would they know that it was Flipper's son? Because it wouldn't have to be trained. It would just come right up to the dock. That's right. Make the little guys and pull you in the robot. They had a dolphin. They said they didn't train those dolphins. Those dolphins just swam in, did the movie. And when they finished it, the dolphins went away. Yeah. They actually had a contract with them. Sure. Oh, she's all gone. They're leaving. They're a good agent. They just came in, you know. I was jealous of those guys. They got some of the net profits from that. They got a couple of points. And this gentle bin thing here. Basically, we got bin. Bin. 650 pound American black bear who, fortunately, was as friendly and lovable as he was large. Lucky political kid, Howard. That's real luck there by a guy like Glenn Howard who would have lost a few lives in that one. Ben. He's another kid that's been around just forever. Right. His body has never caught up with the size of his head, though. His brother's like really, really famous, so he still gets to work in the movie. Clint Howard, excuse me. Clint Howard. Romney's little brother. Yeah. You always said, Ben. Ben. I always just remember him. I can't look at him and not think of Blaylock. Blaylock. Blaylock. Petronia. Petronia. We'll go and save the people, Ben. But first, Petronia. The big thing I remember from that was the infamous, that hover boat deal he had. That was so cool. The Everglade. Everglade. I thought, what a Nido idea. Yeah, that was like cool. That was always in the credits, wasn't it? That was in the opening. Yeah. They were always gippin' around. And they got Ben in the front or in the back to add weight to the boat there, you know, and they could just do all sorts of things. They had to go get all the time. That skimmers in there. Time after time, hunters had come by and, oh, there's a bear. We can take it. It's bear season. Oh, no, but it's our pet, so you can't think it out. You can't shoot Ben. So who else do we have? We had... I'm gonna smack those bulls back at you, my guy. Well, a lot of shows just, I mean, they weren't necessarily animal shows, but they had animals on it. Well, hey, we're missing a big one here. I mean a chimp. It's really... Mr. Ed. Mr. Ed, yeah. We can't leave that out. That's right. The show was actually created by, it wasn't created by, it was produced by George Murr. Oh, I thought the horse just like showed up when they started talking, so they did the show. We said, no, don't show around this. You know, you got the Francis the Talking Mule thing, the movies and all. Oh, that's so funny. And they just come into the Mr. Ed idea here. It certainly became like a cult thing, because it was, I mean, the things about the back masking and the theme they talked about in the 80s, there was a big thing, I remember they said, if you play the Mr. Ed theme backwards, there's this demonic messages in it and all this. Hi, Wilbur. I'm gonna stop him. I have that record. I didn't bring it tonight. I forgot. Well, we wouldn't want to play it on the air. It has a good picture though. Oh, okay. He sang not only the Mr. Ed song, but the pretty little Philly with the ponytail. It says, big hit, only horse to have a hit record. Mr. Ed was a big shot. I think we still run that one to death at Nick and Night. Yeah, easily. Yeah, to the point now, we've pretty well seen all the Ed shows. And yet it's still on at 8 o'clock after all this time. But they push back stuff like Green Acres, which I'm not very happy about. I wish to back to what, 11 o'clock or 11.30? That's what you buy a VCR for. Me and the Chimp. When did that come out? Gosh, that was like in the mid-70s there. It had to be. Really? Yeah. 10 Bessel. It was 10 Bessel. Oh, I know what I'm thinking of, B.J. and the Bear. Oh, yeah. That's what I'm thinking of. Oh, yeah, that's what you're thinking of. The Bear was a chimpanzee. That made a lot of sense to me. Yeah. Okay, me and the Chimp is early 70s, January 13th to 72 to May 18th to 72. It has a long running show. 10 Bessel and neither Gillette. Yeah. What a fine concept that was that they, what was it, what's the say here? The kids, their kids found these two, from the two chimps in a local park, and they brought them Hoban's pets. I can't. Look at that. Oh my God. Oh my God. And what a supreme acting. What's wrong here is two children find one chimp. Oh, is it? Oh, I'm sorry. Me and the Chimp. Chimp. Chimp. Oh, it would be lonely all the time that I suppose. Yeah, like when you buy a hamster, it's like, oh, you got to buy another hamster because they can, No, you don't want two hamsters. Because then you'd never have two hamsters. It's never a very long period. So it must have been just a free moment for Ted Bessel of being basically, away from that girl to a boy. Well, that girl, what a great acting moment. But to the point where it's like, well, now I'm shopping and dying. You know, it's like playing second banana to a chimp. I mean, as it were. Nah, profit, second banana. Just roll it off the top here, folks. Boy, it's getting deep right here. Well, what else did we have? How about this show that couldn't be on if it weren't for animals? Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Where, what's his name? Marlon Perkins. He basically sat back and let the big, strong, good-looking guy wrestle with everything. What's his name? Jack. Jim. Jim. Jack. Joe. Probably more than one. Damn it, Jim. Here. It's like, you know, well, while I sit in the back, you know, drinking martinis in my tent, Jim's out wrestling alligators. Getting us specimens for us to take back to. What a lousy job Jim had, you know. Marlon just sat back and did commercials for, you know, in the wild, it's a really, it's a really... It's tough. It's tough. Yeah, that's a good word. It's tough. And it's tough kind of like in life. And that's why you need Mutual of Omaha. And then they zip into a commercial. When you're out in the wild, my galley animals can bite your hand off. But remember, don't bite the hand and feed you. It was nice. Bad pun to city. But he would like to send out the guy in the real safari clothes, you know. Right. He'd go out and... You never even saw Marlon. He was always like, you know, he was... Oh no, he'd be there with the noose maybe. Oh, oh, oh, get his head around here and I'll knock it out. You know, he was in the drawing room always. You know, it's like, here's a map of where we were, you know. Yeah, he knew where they went. Yeah, this is where they went. I hang around here, you know. What's he say about it? Well, Perkins... Marlon Perkins and Jim Fowler. Jim Fowler? Oh yeah, because he went on to the San Diego Zoo. And then Stan brought her... Jack Hamlin never did that show? If you show it a lesson longer, we would have been... It's Marlon Perkins and hi. I'm Jack Hamlin. Yeah, we're around. Ah! Because he'll get right out there. He doesn't care. Oh, sure. Let's get... Ooh! I'm gonna get back to the car. There was a big old lion out there. She was gonna bite me. Well, now he ran one way, the lion ran the other way. Ooh! Well, let's see. They had the... Well, we mentioned... What did we mention earlier? Yeah. The... Nothing. She'll be never good. We talked about... Mr. T. and Tina? T. and T. Cat? No, me and... P.J. and the bear. We never really got into that. I didn't like it. Not really an animal show. It was a show with an animal. With an animal. Exactly. Even though it wasn't the animal in the title, and the first one I turned it on thought, well, is P.J. The chimpanzee or the guy? I don't know. P.J. is the whole thing. We've been kinda hard in the cab to have a big bear, you know, I guess. So, of course, then they should have called it P.J. and the chimp, but everyone was worried people because the parallels do me and the chimpanzee. So they say, we better not do that. We better call P.J. and the bear. So, well, they could have just called it P.J., I suppose. Well, they could have just called it off at the same time. Not wasted our time with it. A show that actually... Certainly in the late 70s, the Silverman years, when even bad shows managed to spin off stuff, that Lobo show. Cheryl Lobo. I used to like Lobo. What about shows that had neat animals on them? Like Fred on Beretta. The cockatoo. Lada dogs. Please don't eat the daisies. Made everybody want to go out and buy one of those great big dogs, tell everybody I found out how big those great big dogs were. On My Three Sons. Trap. Trap. There you go. Tiger on the Brady Bunch. Tiger on the Brady Bunch. Lot of famous dogs. Oh, yeah. Let us know, put cats on TV. Well, the kids... Well, the cats won't sit still. They won't sit still for a camera angle. Cats will like, well, I'm not sitting here. I'm going to go over here. You know, the dogs will sit here. The lights are too hot. Cats are always licking themselves in the worst places. They don't want that on the air. Especially during the family hour. You can't have them friendly dogs go to their hide. You can tell a dog not to do that. Send them up so they just kind of sit in the corner and go... Down, down, back, back. No. No. No. You can train a dog. Of course, the... Also, it was the famous... Well, we mentioned Green Acres Arnold the Pig. Yeah. Oh. A star... And all of Ellie May's critters. Sure. That's right. Oh. Stars in their own right. But she always had some chimps on there. Where the heck is she going? These chimps. I don't know how many chimps Ellie had. And a go-reeler. A go-reeler. A go-reeler. A go-reeler. A go-reeler. She had every couple of days. We got something new for Ellie. You know, you want to come by. And in fact, you can buy them for you and your children. You should work for the zoo. It is. Yeah. Yeah. She had her own zoo. She had her own little zoo. Her own little zoo zoo. Ellie's zoo. Ellie's critters. Ellie's critters. Sounds like a cereal, doesn't it? Ha! Ha! Ha! Doctorie. Oh, yeah. Oh, Clarence, the Cross-eyed Lion. And it was for truth. Ha! Ha! Ha! Doctorie. Doctorie. time. It's neat though. It's like they had the the cross-eyed line on there that was for real. It was a for real cross-eyed line. And they had Judy of course had to screw everything up but they still love that little ape. Judy the chimp. Judy the chimp. Judy the chimp going to be on Lost in Space is that funny little fancy director that has a face monkey. I don't know if it was the same ape or not. Well if you're gonna mention Dr. you gotta mention Born Free. Yeah another Elsa and the Lions and the whole nine yards. The wind blows and the grass grows born free. Follow your heart. Next we're gonna do another show. Well yeah we were just mentioning a bunch of shows that had animals and they were a bunch of them. He had no point to leave up there. So whatever it was my train of thought derailed. You were me for a minute. I looked up at the monitor and you were me. Wow that's cool. Magic of television. The wonder of wonder, the joy of joys. Of course there were the monkeys. There were sprints in here a little bit. I didn't even have a monkey. They didn't. No they didn't. The banana splits was kind of a monkey. Well geez who else did we have? Really when you get into the 70s they kind of moved away from the yeah you got away from those animal shows. I think the ASPCA drugging them up you know. Stop doing that. Maybe it was those amazing animals. I think that came in the early 80s. That's around there. Jim Stafford. Jim Stafford, Priscilla Pressley and Burgess Meredith. Priscilla Pressley always looked afraid of her animals. What a fine hostess for a show like that. Here's the anteater or something you know. Get it away from me. Yeah that was the early 80s there. Yeah that was a good one though. That was amazing. There was one syndication that was good too. The undersea world of Jacques Cousteau. Amazing. Lots of animals. Couldn't have done the show if there weren't the fish in the ocean. He would have had no show. Basically he would have gone down and said here's the water. Here's another reef. If it's a coral reef he would have been there. That's an animal. See how cool. It's all one great big world boys and girls. Everything's relating. Captain Kangaroo always had animals on his show. That's true. He always had. The King of Jews. The King of Jews. Notice his prehensile tail. So who else did we have? Yikes. They were like animals that would always make guest spots on things. That's a guess. Well I mean like Johnny Carson or something. Yeah they made some guest spots there. I don't know if that's a term. Bill Burris who had the big animal... Well he had a TV show too. Oh. We didn't mention. Plants a lot of link secret chimps. Animals are... Yeah my god. What do you think? What a degrading thing for those animals boys. Not quickly. I was just mentioning Bill Burris. He was like an animal wrangler. He would always bring the animals and he would have animals. He doesn't need an animal for a shield. He would just have to make a guest appearance or something. He was the one that would bring them in there. He's the one that did it. He would do it. Anyways. Animals. We're being told it's about time to get out of here. Next time on Vast Wasteland. Joe I've been looking forward to a lot. It's Samantha versus Jeannie. Who would win in a fight? Now don't you think there's enough fighting going on in the world without having these people fight? We can just look at their different attributes in a different show. That's the hook though. Samantha versus Jeannie. Which one would take a pro-piece stand? Yeah. Right. So that's about it. So for all of us here at Vast Wasteland. We'll see you next time.