BIRD OF THE IRON FEATHER (1970) – This African American drama was produced for Chicago’s educational station WTTW. The storied black radio and television pioneer Richard Durham created and wrote this soap opera/ soul drama that originally was to air every weekday like network soap operas did.
Durham was hoping to replicate the success of Los Angeles educational station KCET with their five day a week soap opera Cancion de la Raza, about a Mexican-American family. That program aired for 70 episodes from October 1968 to January 1969.
WTTW was approved for a $600,000 grant to produce one hundred 30-minute episodes of a series dramatizing the contemporary experiences of black Chicagoans. The title Bird of the Iron Feather was a reference to the 1847 Frederick Douglass speech in which he described African Americans as “birds of iron feathers unable to fly to freedom.”
Richard Durham decided to center the series around black Chicago police detective Jonah Rhodes (Bernard Ward), his wife Jean (Yolande Bryant) and his uncle “Funky” Frank Rhodes (Ira William Rogers), who owned Funky Frank’s Bar, an establishment where several characters would hang out. Continue reading
BARBARY COAST (1975-1976) – William Shatner was the main draw for this series set in 1800s San Francisco and its Barbary Coast section famed for gambling, crime, gunfights, brawls, partying and dance hall girls. Shatner starred as Jeff Cable, hero of the Union Army during the Civil War, now serving as a special government agent like Robert Conrad’s character in The Wild, Wild West. 
BARBARY COAST (May 4th, 1975) – This 2-hour telefilm was directed by the one and only Bill Bixby, who also made a cameo appearance. Jeff Cable (Shatner), West Point Graduate and Civil War hero fresh off fighting the Democrat Party’s hate group the Ku Klux Klan for President Ulysses S. Grant, arrives in San Francisco. Cable’s new mission is to shut down the Crusaders, an organization of Klan members who moved west and started their plot to become California’s version of the KKK. 
ESPIONAGE (1963-1964) – This British spycraft anthology series was produced for ITV in Great Britain. Assorted time periods were used for the stories, but most center around the Cold War and World War Two. The series ran for 24 one-hour episodes.
PARTNERS IN CRIME (1984) – To note the passing of Loni Anderson here’s a Forgotten Television look at the detective series in which she co-starred with Lynda Carter. Both ladies had been married at one time to a private detective named Raymond Dashiell Caulfield. 
Loni played Sydney Kovack, a streetwise woman who grew up in San Francisco pulling minor hustles here and there with her con-man father. Ultimately, she went straight and became a professional cellist and bass player. 
STAGECOACH WEST (1960-1961) – This Friday, August 1st will mark the Frontierado Holiday this year, so let me slip in a few more seasonal blog posts along with my usual items. Stagecoach West starred Wayne Rogers as Luke Perry and Shannen Doherty as Brenda Walsh! 
HIGH LONESOME – Stagecoach driver Luke Perry meets his latest load of passengers, among them Simon Kane, a man searching for his runaway wife. His son Davey travels with him and Sime told the boy his mother died to keep the more painful truth from him. 
CIMARRON STRIP (1967-1968) – Here’s another seasonal post for Frontierado, which is observed this year on Friday, August 1st. Cimarron Strip was the stretch of land also called the Oklahoma Panhandle. Stuart Whitman starred as U.S. Marshal Jim Crown, assigned to tame the nearly lawless region in the late 1880s. 
THE BATTLE GROUND – A range war breaks out in the Cimarron Strip after the government cancels leases on land owned by cattlemen. Those ranchers clash violently with farmers and settlers with Marshal Jim Crown caught in the middle as he tries to end the war before a massacre occurs. Telly Savalas himself guest stars, along with Warren Oates, L.Q. Jones, Richard Farnsworth and R.G. Armstrong. 
DECISION (1958) – This was a half-hour anthology series that aired as a summer replacement for The Loretta Young Show. It ran 13 episodes, with several episodes serving as pilots for potential new series.
CASEY JONES (1957-1958) – Alan Hale, in his pre-Gilligan’s Island years, starred as the legendary train engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones in this series that’s not only appropriate for Frontierado season but makes for a nice watch with the whole family all year ’round. (It never depicted the incident in which the real Casey Jones died.) 
The show lasted 32 half-hour episodes and was set in Tennessee as Casey worked his steam engine the Cannonball Express (just Cannonball in real life) westward and back during the 1890s. Child actor Bobby Clark played our hero’s son Casey, Jr. while Mary Lawrence was Casey’s wife Alice. Eddy Waller portrayed Conductor “Red Rock” Smith.
BLUE LIGHT (1966) – Goulet … Robert Goulet. Had to be said. The forgotten television series Blue Light ran 17 half-hour episodes from January to May of 1966 and starred singer Robert Goulet of all people. Despite the odd casting, this series was actually a more sophisticated and grittier spy program than television had yet seen. 
The story is set during World War Two. Robert Goulet plays American reporter David March, one of eighteen U.S. spies who have infiltrated Nazi Germany by posing as Americans so taken with Nazi philosophy that before American involvement in the war they renounced their U.S. citizenship to become citizens of the Reich. 
THE YOUNG REBELS (1970-1971) – With the 4th of July approaching, here’s another seasonal post. Harve Bennett himself was involved with this series that ran for 15 hour-long episodes. A group of young men and one young woman help fight for American Independence in 1777 Pennsylvania. 
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