outnaway Reviews

Biography (1961–1964)

Who the heck is the woman in the lower right?

[5/10 · 4 January 2023]

Please, someone help me. In the end credits, who is the mystery woman at the lower right? Greer Garson? Marie Curie? Sarah Bernhardt or Tallulah Bankhead?

This is puzzled me since 1978 when, stoned out of my mind, I used to watch this at 4:30 AM on Sunday mornings on WPIX right after reruns of Groucho. Let me go to my grave with an answer.

I know it's not Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary Todd Lincoln, Mary Baker Eddy, Madam Blavatsky, Eva Braun, Mrs. Chang Kai Sheik, Annie Oakley, Little Orphan Annie, Judy Garland, Waylon Flowers and Madam, Marjorie Main, Thelma Ritter, Thelma Todd or Margaret Hamilton.

Hawaii Five-O: ...And I Want Some Candy and a Gun That Shoots (1971) Season 4, Episode 6

I Could Solve This Situation In Ten Minutes

[7/10 · 29 October 2021]

Call in the Air Force. Episode over. No civilian casualties.

If only this guy had listened to Joe Friday all those times. Joe Friday knew these boomers.

The Andy Griffith Show: Aunt Bee, the Juror (1967) Season 8, Episode 7

Aunt Bee is a Very Realistic Character

[6/10 · 27 October 2021]

Anyone who has to deal with 50+ women will recognize character of Aunt Bee. She's afraid of actually doing anything. She throws a monkey wrench into everything that the more reasonable men try to do. She's vain about trivialities. She's smug about petty possessions. She seeks social status based on no real achievements. Mostly she shares the defining trait of women of her age - fear. She's afraid of driving. She's afraid to get the freezer fixed. She's afraid of the insurance company. She's afraid of being in business. Any poor man who has to work with women like her will have seen this. They shoot down any new idea. They will did their heels in and offer no logical reason why.

Though she's an increasingly annoying character, the writers have created a very realistic character.

Hawaii Five-O: The Devil and Mr. Frog (1969) Season 2, Episode 12

Is the Frog Head From "Lost In Space?"

[8/10 · 15 October 2021]

That frog head looks like it came from "Lost In Space," specifically from the episode "The Golden Man." Is it possible? Both were CBS shows. Props were expensive. I think it is the head of the frog alien who Penny Robinson befriended.

The Beverly Hillbillies: Jed Cuts the Family Tree (1963) Season 1, Episode 26

Street Scene

[8/10 · 16 March 2021]

When Jethro is driving Mrs. Drysdale to the bank, they pass by the Science of Mind Church at the corner of Wiltshire and LaBrea in the old Lindy Opera House

Under Capricorn (1949)

Bad Movie From a Good Story With One Great Performance

[6/10 · 5 October 2012]

I gave this movie four stars but feel I need to qualify it. Lets start with what's good about this.

Ingrid Bergman. When we first meet her, she's drunk and barefoot at a party. She plays drunk with a sad charm that still has a touch of the graceful woman she used to be. Coming down the stairs all dressed up But Ingrid combines a school girl's innocence with her more recent insecurity in a low key but beautiful way. Mainly her character is brought to life by remembering the past. We first see that twinge of remembrance when she realizes at the party that she knows Adare from long ago in Ireland. Her drunken whimsy is halted gently by her thinking about the past. Bergman shines when Adare makes an impromptu mirror to show her that she's still beautiful. When the servants play a cruel trick on her and she runs to her room, I felt truly sorry for her. Her final scene is wonderful. She's riveting, haunted by the past yet low key about it. She is the best thing about this movie.

The cinematography. Despite the bad quality of the print, we can see some of the unusual muted tones that mark the technicolor being made in Britain in the late 1940's.

The original story is great but the script, which I'll get to later, is not up to what's implied in the story. It's a story of class, and of role reversals. A high class woman like Henrietta (Bergman) becomes a prostitute and outcast in Australia. The well born gentleman Charles Adare (Wilding) finds himself to be useless in this new world. We even find out that the servant Winter was a gentleman back in Britain. Only the hardworking Flusky (Cotton) becomes successful. In an odd twist, his own working class servant Milly sees him not as the stable boy he was, but as the unreachable gentry that he's now becomes. Characters want to rise but can't while others fall socially yet become rich down under. This is all only spoken about. It's not done emotionally.

The script - first and foremost the problem is the script. Nothing happens. The action is all told in flashback. Now this sort of work had been done and done well - Jane Eyre, Dragonwick and Hitch's own Rebecca and Suspicion. The difference here is the script and the direction.

Low Budget - The costumes are great, and it looks like they spent some money on the set of the house, but that's about all we see in this. We see too much of the house. We see Bergman and Cotton in particular wearing the same clothing day after day.

The Long Takes - The long takes limit the impact of the film without adding much to it. It's an unneeded constraint that prevents the use of close ups and dramatic cuts.

Cotton and Wilding. Neither are any good. Wilding is stagey fop while Cotton doesn't even try other than to growl and simmer a bit. Neither even tries to seem Irish.

Overall a bad movie with one great performance, Bergman.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976–1977)

Why It Didn't Make It Into Reruns

[9 March 2009]

I was an original fan of the show, being about 16 or 17 in its first year. It was a cult hit for sure. My friends loved it. The jocks either hated it or hadn't heard of it. The cheerleaders I think were scared of it.

Since then I've seen several attempts to bring it back on TV as a rerun. But like others have said on here, the ratings for the reruns are low and they cancel it after a month or so. I think there are several reasons for this. One, is that the show really changed as it got past its second month. I remember an article of the time that said that they ran out of their first year's worth of material after the first month. Now I know that the first month or so have some classic stuff in them - the couch dying in the chicken soup, etc., but they hadn't really found the pace of the show in the early weeks. So, while they have some classic stuff and some inking as to what's coming, the first month or so isn't really that good. So, in reruns, the new audience gets bored and it gets canceled. So yes, in reruns we get the classic "chickens and goats", grandpa Shumway being a flasher, but we don't get Sgt. Foley's heart attack and Mary and him finally getting it on in the hospital, grandpa's affair with Roberta, her joining STET, the sex surrogate for Tom, Loretta's aborted trip to California, Garth Gimble, etc. What's great about this site it it's reminded me of how much I've forgot about.

Something else that I remember about the show is that, well, not all the episodes were that funny. I think at the time we accepted that they had to come up with two and a half hours of TV a week and that not all of it would be great. I remember many episodes where there was only one real laugh. It may have been a great laugh, but today's audience isn't as patient as we were. The other thing is think of what the competition was for Mary Hartman. It ran at 11:00 PM and was up against the local news in an era of three broadcast channels and twelve cable channels. In my house, the only serious competition were re-runs of the Honeymooners on WPIX from New York.

The other thing that makes this tough on reruns is that Mary Hartman was so much a part of the 70's. What's hard to explain to people who weren't there, is how weird the 70's were. The whole country was in this very odd mood, partly giddy, partly freaked out, partly numb. I don't know if I can explain how Mary Hartman fit in to that, but it did and maybe not enough time has passed where it won't seem dated. The other thing is that the show had a whole parallel life running at the same time in the live soap opera of Louise Lasser's sudden fame. Her personal trajectory towards a nervous breakdown tracked Mary Hartman's. Do I need to remind everyone of her bizarre interviews in Rolling Stone, her bust for cocaine, and her appearance as the host on SNL, in which she also had a nervous breakdown. Years later it came out that this was not faked, that she was ready to refuse to appear on the show minutes before curtain time, and only agreed to appear once Chevy Chase convinced her that if she didn't go on, he'd go on in her place wearing a wig.

This show in its first run had a drama to it that is hard to recreate in reruns. Not only did it track Louise Lasser's breakdown, it also traced America's breakdown too.

I miss the show. It meant a lot to me, and it's sad that it's only a memory.

BTW, does anyone remember what is one of my favorite moments, when Mary's rival for her husband Tom's affection, Mae has tried to kill herself with sleeping pills? And she turns to Mary for support, who plies her with coffee, and the towering Mae flops all over smaller Mary before they both slump on to the floor and Mary ends up drinking the coffee. It's been over thirty years and I still remember that after only one viewing.

Or when Loretta came over to bring Mary Jell-O with Cracker Jacks suspended in it?

Three Hats for Lisa (1965)

Huh?

[6 October 2008]

I saw this movie twenty years ago on TV at 3:00 AM stoned out of my mind with my other stoner friends. This is the strangest piece of 60's crap ever... the plot makes no sense, stoned or not. My only hope was that the old MST-3K show would have picked this one up. There's a lot of really bad gay choreography in it too... the whole thing was filmed outside so they didn't have to make any sets... only really memorable thing was the goofy 60's Carnanby Street clothing, all the pin stripes on the guys and little vinyl stewardess hats on the women... definitely a late night drunk-out-of-your-mind laugh fest.

I'm clean and sober now though...