This holiday TV season, let’s go back…waaaaaaaay back, to a Thanksgiving in a more innocent time, a more gentle time, a kinder time.

By Paul Mavis

Thanksgiving, 1971. Thursday, November 25th, to be exact, when our dials that year were tuned to Matt Dillon and Lucy, and Reed and Malloy, to Mary Richards and Archie and Marcus Welby, M.D., and of course Fred G. Sanford (“That’s ‘S-A-N, F-O-R-D, period,”). And our petty worries were merely confined to rising inflation, increasing racial tensions, war between India and Pakistan, sh*tty cars from Detroit, impending nuclear holocaust with Red China and Russia, and that nagging Vietnam thingy, among a hundred other awful things.

Is it better now, 52 years later? That’s hard to say, isn’t it? I picked that particular Thanksgiving date to write about because it’s the first local holiday TV schedule that I have distinct memories of; solid recollections of planting myself in front of the tube all day with nothing else to do but sit there and be entertained (with full awareness, of course, of the possible contextual tricks memories do indeed play on you, especially after 50-some odd years). Could I do the exact same thing today? Sure, I suppose.

Putting aside the fact that I’m not six years old anymore, and that I actually have responsibilities and chores to do on any given holiday, I could just sack out on the couch in front of my TV and watch all this stuff again, with surprisingly little difficulty, while I try to forget about galloping crime rates, insane gas prices, the tech take-over of our bodies and souls, food hyper-inflation, stolen elections, America’s descent into Third World status, President Stumbles (jesus…it’s not better now).

Through the genuine miracles of streaming and DVD and VHS and YouTube and the internet, there are remarkably few titles in that Toledo Blade TV listing that can’t be brought up for viewing in 2023. I guess the only difference for me now is the quality of the TV viewing experience itself (it’s strange…but I kinda miss the battle of the “snow”), and a rather keen loss of innocence. Kids aren’t dumb; they pick up on everything, and I’m sure I was aware of at least a few of the problems mentioned in that first paragraph (it was hard to miss when we didn’t have enough money for bills or the occasional meal, or when my parents worried about my older brothers going off to some place called “‘Nam”). But kids can turn off all that background noise a lot easier than adults, particularly when they’re doing something they love…and I loved nothing more than watching TV back then.

If all I remember from “holidays” like Thursday, November 25th, 1971, is a set of TV specials and movies, and not the faces of my family as they looked that day (let me see…either sullen or screaming), or the sound of their laughter (think of a snide kind of jeering and you’ll be close), or even one loving moment with them around the Thanksgiving table (now that one made me laugh), there are valid reasons.

After that shared intimacy, since they don’t make Bromo-Seltzer anymore, Harold’s never-truer-spoken words will have to suffice: “Well, I for one, need an insulin injection.” So. Let’s get down to brass tacks, fellow masochists (you gotta be one after that 4-paragraph opener). I have to get writing because I don’t have much time left. You see, here in CCP YoubetchaitsOhiostan, all proletarian workers—unless you’re an abortionist—tend to our three main crops: marijuana, Chinese corn, and Bill Gates’ Creepy Crawley Steak Roll-Ups®. And you’re allotted damn little down time for foolishness like subversive writing, let me tell you (when I, cap in hand and eyes carefully focused on the dirt beneath my peasant feet, humbly asked my local communist cell leader if we’d have Thanksgiving off, he replied, “The answer to your question is, ‘don’t ask questions!” before he smashed me in the face with his burp gun). So…onward, comrades!

First off, and most important: how do you get to where you’re going? You look at a map, of course, and for proper TV viewing, that map was your newspaper’s TV listings (ask your Gam-Gam what a newspaper was). If you were like me, you looked at your messy, ink-smeary local newspaper TV listings as a blessing, not a déclassé relative of the exalted TV Guide. It was just cheap newsprint, after all, ready to line the bottom of your birdcage in a few hours. You could mark it up if you wanted to, and the old man wasn’t gonna say a thing.

And that was key, because trying to plan out your day’s TV watching necessitated strategies akin to Ike trying to figure out just where the hell he was gonna put all those soldiers on those goddamn beaches. To get the maximum amount and quality of viewing in, you couldn’t just go in blindly, switching around the dial like some headcase (my idiot brothers). You had to underline. You had to cross stuff out. You had to draw arrows and grids and connect up time tables and think about your viewing day in a spatial, organic manner, rather like that 3D chess game in Star Trek that made no sense whatsoever. It was engineering. It was science.

Now…if you were some rich swell who could afford TV Guide (first off: f*ck you), you wouldn’t dream of marking up “the Guide.” Oh no, heaven forbid, Mary. You “consulted” it. You pondered it from arm’s length as you interrogated your groomsman about the state of your polo pony’s hooves (“Portafoy…a glossy sheen is required, not a mere high buff. See to it,”). You wouldn’t dare even crease the glossy cover (once at my friend Billy Shambaugh’s house—they had dough—I accidentally sneezed on his old man’s Guide and “Big Bill” came at me like Mighty Joe Young). Being poor and relying on the newspaper TV listings was a godsend.

I’m convinced even the layout was superior. The newspaper guide gives you one entire overall view of the battlefield, if you will. You could lay it out on the floor, get up close to it, pore over it as a single entity. So much easier to visualize the entire day with a god’s eye view, rather than “the Guide“‘s poncy, confusing vertical columns approach, broken up and spread out over all those tiny pages (what if I missed something continued on the back of a page, for crissakes?).

Knowing myself back then (I was always an early riser), I was probably all set in front of the tube by 7:30am, with the first viewing conflict presented: check out our local kiddie show host, Mr. T on WTOL Channel 11, or head north of the border to Windsor, Canada’s CKLW’s Channel 9, for an early showing of The Friendly Giant. Mr. T was Jack Kelsing, a TV jack-of-all-trades who was winding up the Mr. T show in ’71 after seven successful years of presenting comedy skits, cartoons, and funny songs for the small fry imprisoned in the Toledo area (remember: the answer—at least in the Mavis household—to his most famous song, Where Did the Chickie Lay the Eggie?, was a straightforward, “Right on your stupid face,”).

The Friendly Giant needs no bio for the stray Canuck reading this (shouldn’t you be riding a moose somewhere?), but to the uninitiated, he was Bob Homme, who lived in a paper mâché castle with Rusty the Rooster and Jerome the Giraffe. I loved models as a kid, so the highlight of the show was the Friendly Giant rearranging the cozy doll house furniture for the miniature castle set, as well as his catchphrase, “Look up! Waaaaaay up!” in that deep voice, before Homme gave a truly gentle, kind, “Hello,” to the boys and girls in the audience. A lovely show (unlike that other famous Canadian kiddie show, Mr. Dressup, with that creepy androgynous “Finnigan” puppet I avoided like the plague). Easy choice: start with The Friendly Giant (as you can see, if you looked at your guide properly, it was only 15 minutes long), and switch over to the last half of Mr. T. Simple.

CBS’s iconic Captain Kangaroo would seem to be the obvious choice at 8am, but by this point I had already watched two live-action kiddie puppet shows. Mr. Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose could do no wrong, and I liked Mr. Green Jeans, but even as a kid there was something just a little bit…off about Bob Keeshan. I couldn’t abide that straw dustmop helmet on his head and ears, and sartorially, that wide piping on his sports coat was beyond frantic (he was like that too-friendly weirdo unmarried guy at every church potluck, who would sidle up to a kid all nice and easy and start talking to them quietly, before an alarmed parent would sharply call out, “Jimmy, please come here this instant!”). A switch-up was in order: WDHO Channel 24’s Marine Boy, the Japanese animated adventures of Marine Boy of Ocean Patrol, who had retractable flippers in his boots, a bulletproof wetsuit, and “oxy-gum” instead of scuba gear—sweet. I never missed it.

Back in 1971, there would have been zero information available to the average viewer about Marine Boy, in any capacity (which only made these shows seem more magical to their unaware, totally open viewers; they could have been coming from outer space, for all we knew). But most kids watching it or shows like Speed Racer and Kimba, could tell the animation design, as well as the pace of the editing and the sound effects usage, were quite different from the toons originating in America. Couple that with seeing some Japanese names in the credits that sorta/kinda looked like the names in those Godzilla movie credits, and any reasonable 6-year-old could figure out these Japanimations were exotic imports most welcome for changing up our toon expectations (stick your phony, pretentious, virtue signaling anime label bullsh*t).

Getting bored yet? Well buckle up, pilgrim—it’s only 8:30am on this Thanksgiving TV day! Okay, our first major stumbling block: do I watch Detroit’s WXYZ Channel 7’s movie presentation of Don Knotts’ The Incredible Mr. Limpet, or hang tight with Ch. 24 for an F Troop rerun until the parades gear up at 9. I don’t know about your household, but when you were a kid, didn’t it seem like your parents made a bigger deal about watching the parades than you ever did? Like it was “good” for you somehow? Wholesome?

You know, “Oh! The parade is on, honey!” they’d say as they helpfully guided you to the set like you needed to wear a helmet on your head all the time. “Come here and sit down and watch all the bands and majorettes, and wait for the big floating balloons! Honey, put down your G.I. Joe and look at all the uniforms! Look at the pretty costumes!” they’d insist in that tone you knew was cajoling and not genuine interest, and ten minutes into it, you’re already fed up with the plugs for the upcoming network shows, and Betty White, an insincere grin frozen on her face, laughing knowingly at that idiot Joe Garagiola for the 100th time (how did he ever become a thing?), and most of all that phony good cheer and the barely-suppressed frenzy to make you think you’re watching something otherworldly in its uniqueness. It was just a huge parade, for god’s sake (visually, it used to drive me crazy that they could only march one way—I always prayed some band or drum unit or float would snap and go rogue, charging back up the opposite way on Herald Square in a homicidal rage to pile drive into everyone).

The Incredible Mr. Limpet it is, then. Only a movie could get me to switch off a favorite TV show, and certainly I would have gone with this Don Knotts classic over the parades and the repeats that continued on Ch. 24, like Romper Room—she never said, “…and I see Paul, too!” Never. Or The Real McCoys or Ben Casey (oy vey with all the scowling. Enough). Sure, The Incredible Mr. Limpet could creep you out if it hit you wrong that day (the way his buggy cartoon eyes looked when he bobbed out of the live-action water tank? Cripes that gave me nightmares). Turning him into a cartoon pretty much negates Knotts’ central instrument for humor: his marvelously spastic physicality.

And frankly, it’s a little depressing, too (I mean…his wife is clearly glad he’s dead. Nice, huh?). But the old school Warner Bros. cell animation overseen by Robert McKimsom is nicely done, and who’s going to turn up their nose at voice talent god Paul Frees as the ornery, funny little hermit crab, Crusty (of course Disney watched this movie a hundred times before they made 1989’s The Little Mermaid).

So now it’s 10:30am, and I’ve had my breakfast (whatever cold cereal I could scrounge up) and I’m charged for the day. I could switch back to the parades (I would have been tempted to see Detroit’s funniest weatherman Sonny Eliot do his humorous shtick on WWJ Channel 4’s coverage of the Detroit Thanksgiving Day parade), but I probably either stayed with Ch. 7’s Green Acres repeat (in the Top Ten sitcoms of all time—a brilliant, surreal masterpiece of disjointed time and space) or skipped over to my favorite channel on the dial—WKBD Channel 50 —which featured O.G. TV exercise guru, Jack LaLanne, trying to convince overweight housewives they could lose weight by merely holding onto a kitchen chair and bending their dimpled knees (jeepers creepers that polyester jumpsuit and that swirled Burt Lancaster cotton candy hair).

It’s difficult to fathom now, but to this TV-obsessed kid, Detroit—as viewed through the lying eyes of its television stations—seemed like a rather glamorous, exciting place in the 1970s (yes…this is how bad things were for me as a child). Detroit TV felt different than Toledo TV. It had real stars, like Sonny Eliot, or drunken, brawling Bill Bonds (“Channel 7 burp…Action News!”), or Mr. Maurice Lezell. Who’s that, you say? That’s Mr. Belvedere, you philistine, the Bob Villa of low-priced home improvement. Everyone remembers his hilariously modest motto: “We do good work!” (not “great work.” Not “fantastic work.” Just “good,”).

And when he showed up on my boyhood hero Bill Kennedy‘s movie show to do a live plug, I was in heaven. Has-been B actor-turned local movie show host Bill Kennedy had been to Hollywood. He had been kicked out of Hollywood. He was an arrogant, snotty, hilarious, drunken, marvelously entertaining personality. What wasn’t to love? When he died, I got choked up, because what he represented was long, long gone from local television. And don’t even get me started about Lawson Demming, a.k.a. “Sir Graves Ghastly” (I’m going to have to do a piece on him and Ron Sweed’s “The Ghoul,” too).

At 11am, I would have had a momentary pause about catching Ch. 24’s The Galloping Gourmet. Graham Kerr, the master of double entendres, clarified butter and swilling wine, was a delight; a jammy swine of a sarcastic gourmand who always seemed ready to make fun of his audience of “oohing and ahhhing” housefraus, before he brought them back with genuine good humor and delight in what he was doing. I loved his show (…and I hate that he’s since renounced all that in some kind of reformer fever for vegan foods and psalm-singing piety. What a tiresome git). No, I would have stayed on Ch. 50 for Kimba, that wonderful Japanimation title with the theme song like crack (“Kimba! Kimba! Kimba! Kimba! Kimba the White Lion is his name!”). Never missed it (neither, apparently, did the people behind Disney’s The Lion King, who cribbed it wholesale from the superior Kimba. Disney after 1984, was and is, evil).

11:30am: stick with Ch. 50 and Yogi Bear (H-B’s deliberately coarse, crude timing and sound effects—like when Yogi would get hit over the head with a frying pan—are still magical for me), or try out a That Girl rerun on Ch. 24 (I loved Marlo Thomas’ scratchy voice and Ted Bessel was so underrated…but by 1971 the object of my I’m in Love With a Working Girl crush would have been primetime Mary Richards). I might have just hit the can and read a comic book at this point. Or got into a fight with one of my maladjusted, chemically-altered brothers. Or had the old man scream at me for something or other. Or have my mom tell me to go outside and play and get out from under her feet even though I was sitting quietly in the front room watching TV and none of the sh*t going on was my fault (low 40s, the paper says that day, so it’s conceivable I went out in the backyard and stared at our dead tree).

Noon. Just a quick word about sports, since they loom so large on most people’s Thanksgiving Day TV radar: we didn’t watch them. Almost never. See, the old man played high school football, and had his neck and back broken when he got spiked. Walked sorta bent over after that, and a little bit more and more as he got older. He was in a full body cast for a year (if my dad was crazy—and he was—I can understand it after that), so he didn’t particularly care if the NFL was playing or not on our TV. He didn’t forbid it; my brothers would watch occasionally, but it just wasn’t something that was done in our house.

So all the games you see listed for the day? I didn’t have to beg the old man to watch a movie, just to have him laugh and put the game on; chances are, he had his head buried in the paper, anyway. I did love those NFL Films documentaries, though, with the voice-of-God John Facenda making a simple pass completion sound like the parting of the Red Sea. That slowly spinning spiral…way more fun than the actual games. So don’t feel like I missed out on something, because I don’t.

Okay, back to noon, and surveying the battlefield, it looks like all the pieces are going to fit together to take me right up to anxiety-induced indigestion during dinner (for example, if you reached for something at our table with what was derisively termed, “boarding house manners,” you were very likely to get your hand stabbed at with a fork). The tough choice would have been between WJBK Channel 2’s “Holiday Showcase” running of Jerry Lewis’ masterpiece, The Nutty Professor (“I’ll.” “I’ll.” “I’ll pay.” “I’ll pay.” “I’ll pay attennnnntion.” “I’ll pay attennnnntion.”), or the animated adaptation of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I always watched Monsieur Jerr-ee, so I’m sure I went with the toon.

Although I wouldn’t have known it at the time, 1970’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court was part of the initial offerings for CBS’s Famous Classic Tales, that ran from 1970 all the way until 1984. Animated by Australian company, Air Programs International (until Hanna-Barbera moved in), these toons based on classic literature were always popping up on various CBS stations during Thanksgiving and Christmas (as well as later in syndication on independent stations). Directed by Zoran Janjic (who also helmed a terrific animated version of A Christmas Carol for the series), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, as expected, leaves a lot of Mark Twain out of this adaptation by Michael Robinson, such as most of the satire, the attack on slavery, and criticism of the Catholic Church.

But it does follow the book’s overall plot fairly closely, featuring a lovely, dark watercolor-looking design, some nicely-observed characterizations (Merlin is appropriately crazy and evil-looking and amusing), a busy plot to keep the kids watching, and some funny jokes along the way (when the main character, voiced by Orson Bean, stops Morgan le Fay from executing a jester who can’t sing, he observes, “I was wrong. I think you were well-advised to hang him,” when the two are treated to an unwelcome second performance).

The toon’s only serious drawback is Bean himself. A charming and amusing raconteur whenever he appeared on talk and game shows, his vocal delivery here is less than flat and uninvolved, as if he tarried too long in his orgone energy accumulator. When the animation is limited, and the going occasionally pokey, a spirited, energetic lead vocal performance can make a huge difference in how a cartoon goes over with an audience. That’s true here, unfortunately.

So that takes us to 1:30pm, and another tough choice. And no, Ch. 11’s local kids’ show, Patches and Pockets wasn’t in the equation. Here’s a good “rag doll rule” for the two creepy women who hosted this: how about powdering down that grotesque makeup? They always looked like they were melting. The high-pitched whining deliveries, the boring skits, the androgyny…you can keep all of it. And get that stupid shoe off your head, Pockets.

No, it would have been between Ch. 4’s Mr. Magoo in Sherwood Forest (part of the delightful The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo series) and WSPD’s Channel 13’s airing of the Hal Roach classic, March of the Wooden Soldiers, which was really 1934’s Babes in Toyland, starring Laurel and Hardy. As much as I loved the wonderfully oblivious Magoo (“Oh Magoo! You’ve done it again!”), I probably went with Stan and Ollie. Nobody missed March of the Wooden Soldiers when I was growing up.

Based loosely on the Victor Herbert operetta, this marvelously surreal, quite funny kids nightmare lost money when it first came out (I would suspect a combination of a heavier-than-normal budget for Roach, and the sometimes scary material), until Roach kept re-releasing it under different names to theaters and eventually TV, where it became a cult classic with boomers and Gen X viewers. I’ll bet if you asked 100 people on the street under the age of 30 who Laurel and Hardy were, I’m not sure you’d get even one correct answer. Maybe they’d recognize their images. Maybe. But when I was a kid, they were still known quantities from their movies and shorts being rerun.

I suppose brainwashed kids today would dismiss them for being “mean-spirited” or not “socially relevant,” the stupid bastards. Then again, these are the same kids who cry when reading Bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” so…give me someone getting conked on the head and falling on their ass any day. Which happens often in Babes in Toyland. Of course that’s not the only appeal of Laurel and Hardy; I don’t think anyone ever gave funnier reaction shots (directly to the audience) than Oliver Hardy, while Stan Laurel’s almost dreamlike, spacey timing is a thing of beauty (when he’s told he has to stay married to the evil villain Silas Barnaby, and he cries, “But I don’t love him!” it’s a paralyzing funny moment).

You can see a nice upscaled, colorized version of Babes in Toyland on YouTube, and I recommend you do so, because the computerized inking over the gray scale makes the Toyland mock-ups and sets look even more bizarre and otherworldly (hey, I grew up on black and white until I was in high school—colorization never killed any B&W movie). Charlotte Henry is pretty and feminine (it’s an archaic word—look it up) as Bo-Peep, while Felix Knight’s baritone is rich on classics like Castle in Spain and Go to Sleep (still, I would have preferred someone like Alan Jones here, rather than the shifty, weasel-eyed Knight).

It’s a toss-up to what will give you nightmares (at least as a kid): the gross 3 Little Pigs; that poor monkey stuffed into a Mickey Mouse suit (riding in the blimp, tossing the darts—hysterical); or the Bogeymen, carrying off screaming kids to eat them (seriously, that one kid actor looks genuinely freaked out—I love old Hollywood!). Everyone mentions the 2 seconds of stop-motion animation of the wooden soldiers, but I could never get enough of Laurel whacking those “peewees” and darts (which we tried and tried to duplicate when we played outside, to no avail—ask Gramps what ‘played outside’ means). How sick and violent, thank god. Just as much fun as The Wizard of Oz, Babes in Toyland is a classic that has sadly disappeared from the pop culture consciousness.

It’s 3pm now, and our logistical maneuvering has worked out perfectly—we segue right into Cricket on the Hearth. Probably the only remaining episode from star/producer Danny Thomas’ failed 1967 NBC anthology series, The Danny Thomas Hour (which was creamed in the ratings by his own creation, The Andy Griffith Show, and Family Affair, over on CBS), Cricket on the Hearth was produced by the Television Corporation of Japan for Rankin/Bass productions. You can immediately recognize their ultra-smooth, polished “house style”…but seriously, weren’t you always just a little bit disappointed, just at first, when you saw it was Rankin/Bass cell animation, and not Rankin/Bass stop-motion?

The live-action opening is worth the whole show, as Danny, outfitted in a svelte Sy Davore tux, assumes a rather suggestive hipster pose at the mantlepiece, before they cut to him assuming a more family-friend attitude. What the hell was that all about? Who knows…but it’s hilarious, all the same (believe me, growing up in his home town, that all we heard about, how funny he was, how hysterical he was. Never got it. Never. Never made me laugh. Not once). The story is considerably condensed and changed from Charles Dickens’ original, but seriously—what kid cared about that? It’s brisk, with plenty of movement, and it’s tough to get bored.

I know I for one, at least as a kid, would inwardly groan if the song count went over two on any show, and there are more than that here in Cricket on the Hearth. I don’t mind, though, when it’s Ed Ames, with his fully-controlled, beautifully modulated baritone, singing something like Don’t Give Your Love Away from composers Maury Laws and Jules Bass (god that guy had a remarkable voice). But when Danny Thomas gives a too-throaty, too-emote-y Would It Be Christmas? or Marlo Thomas (gee…how’d she get this job?) really murders That Was Yesterday, it’s tough going.

Even Roddy McDowall isn’t all that big a help as the Cricket (his Cockney accent is barely acceptable). Luckily Paul Frees is around to do a nice James Mason imitation (the bum who ditches Marlo), while Hans Conreid is amusing as the villain. My favorite gag is at the end, when Marlo and Paul appear to be married by Paul Paul VI—nice plug, Danny! This played for years and years on TV when I was growing up…but really, it’s minor Rankin/Bass.

Hey, watching TV all day isn’t for sissies. Sit up straight, and focus! Next up at 4pm is the clear choice, Mouse on the Mayflower, not because I probably watched it that particular Thanksgiving (I’m pretty sure I went with The Three Stooges and The Munsters on Ch. 50), but because we have a review already up for the animated Thanksgiving toon, so please kindly increase our hits by clicking here, while I join in a CCP re-education sing-a-long, before my afternoon thrashing.

And that’s 5 o’clock, and dinner was probably ready by that point (if the old man didn’t have a plate put in front of him by 5:30pm, hoo boy look out). I’ll bet the turkey was dry (it always was). You still only got one glass of milk, too, with your meal, even for a salty one like this. Dinner was over in 20 minutes, and people ran from the table when done.

And that left the evening. So what was I going to watch that night? Was it going to be Engelbert Humperdinck (were the teeth part of the appeal? Was it ironic?). How about the newly formed “World Symphony Orchestra” outta Walt Disney World, with Arthur Fiedler conducting, on PBS (to go along with the emerging One World Government? Keep your commie crap to yourself)? Game shows? Lucy? Flip and Geraldine? A western on Ch. 9? How about Rod Taylor watching his A-list status getting run over by Bearcats? Or Raymond Burr officially becoming the laziest actor in recorded TV history on Ironside (why didn’t he just have the producers call it Ironlung so he could lay down for the whole series)? Or how ’bout drunkie ol’ Dino, contemptuously grinning to himself about what a bunch of saps were out there in TVLand, lapping up his half-assed efforts? None of them?

Nope. On a welcome note of irony for a bloated review about bloated Thanksgiving Day TV watching, I distinctly remember not watching television that night…because the old man took me to the drive-in. Well, let me amend that: he went to the drive-in to get away from my mom and took me along because he knew I wouldn’t talk or complain during the movie, and because he could depend on me to wake him up if he fell asleep during the second show.

Now I guarantee he told my mom he was taking me to the “family” double feature at our own local Maumee Drive-In: Richard Harris’ excellent survival Western, Man in the Wilderness, and Joshua Logan’s 3-hour piece of sh*t, Paint Your Wagon. You see, I was the cover. The beard. He was going to do something nice for the kid? Riiiiiight. And I guarantee she saw right through that b.s.. Him sitting through Paint Your Wagon till midnight?? Uh huh. Sure.

He took me to the Jesse James Drive-In (new “high powered electric In-A-Car heaters!) to see a socko trash double feature of The Love Machine and Doctors’ Wives because he was a total horndog and he was bored out of his mind, no doubt, being at home, and he wanted a little excitement in his dreary, drudgery-filled, loveless life. I doubt either movie would get a “PG” today, poor bastard, but…that’s what he had to work with, I guess.

And while some of the above TV strategizing may be a bit fuzzy, I know for a fact we went to this double feature that night, because I almost tossed my Thanksgiving dinner when they showed the open heart surgery in Doctors’ Wives. I can still hear him frantically yelling, “Get your door open! Get your door open!” as I was trying to hold it in (he’d have killed me if I barfed in his sweet Pontiac Bonneville station wagon with the 455 engine).

And that’s what the pilgrims and the Indians fought and loved and died for, for that glorious TV day, 52 years ago. Wherever they are, I know they know, it was worth it.

PAUL MAVIS IS AN INTERNATIONALLY PUBLISHED MOVIE AND TELEVISION HISTORIAN, A MEMBER OF THE ONLINE FILM CRITICS SOCIETY, AND THE AUTHOR OF THE ESPIONAGE FILMOGRAPHY. Click to order.

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