THE SCARECROW (1972) – Gene Wilder, Blythe Danner, Nina Foch, Pete Duel and Will Geer starred in this Hollywood Television Theatre production that first aired January 10th, 1972. Long time readers of Balladeer’s Blog may recall my remarks on previous Halloweens about how underused I feel scarecrows still are in Halloween movies.
The Scarecrow, from the 1908 play by Percy MacKaye, was based on Feathertop aka Lord Feathertop, the 1852 short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The tale deals with a witch who brings a scarecrow to life to do her bidding. In the past I’ve reviewed silent film versions of Feathertop and pointed to it as an overlooked scarecrow tale.
Percy MacKaye stretched the story out and altered some of the themes, so The Scarecrow is an adaptation of Feathertop, not a faithful dramatization of it. Gene Wilder portrays the scarecrow.
Nina Foch plays the witch Goody Rickby (Mother Rigby in the short story). She despises Will Geer’s character, the supposedly “respectable” Justice Gilead Merton (Hawthorne’s Judge Gookin).
Twenty years earlier, Goody Rickby had a fling with Justice Merton and even bore his son, who died as an infant. (In Feathertop the affair and child outside of marriage are hinted at rather than stated outright.) Continue reading
Halloween Month rolls along with this look at a very old British series of telefilms that presented some classic horror tales during Christmas Season. The tales themselves were NOT set around Christmas, so they make for nice Halloween Season viewing, too. 
THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER (Dec 24th, 1971) – Dr. Black (Clive Swift), a scholar cataloguing the book collection at Barchester Cathedral, comes across the diary of a former Archdeacon who murdered his predecessor so he could rise to the position. The killer was then haunted by ghostly figures in the form of the carvings on the cathedral’s choir stalls. Also starring Robert Hardy, Thelma Barlow and Will Leighton. 
THE GIRL FROM U.N.C.L.E. (1966-1967) – This spinoff series from (What else?) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. starred Stefanie Powers as superspy April Dancer. Like Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, April worked for the United Network Command for Law & Enforcement. Her series lasted just one season of 29 hour-long episodes. 
THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. – THE MOONGLOW AFFAIR: Airing on February 25th, 1966, this backdoor pilot for The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. had Mary Ann Mobley as new agent April Dancer. She replaced the incapacitated Solo and Kuryakin to stop the establishment of a lunar presence by the evil organization T.H.R.U.S.H. (Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity). 
A YEAR AT THE TOP (1977) – What a cast! PAUL SHAFFER, GREG EVIGAN, Gabriel Dell (from the Dead End Kids/ Bowery Boys/ East Side Kids/ Little Tough Guys), Priscilla Morrill (Lou Grant’s wife Edie), Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas, Julie Cobb (Lee J. Cobb’s daughter) and Nedra Volz in her usual “sassy old lady” role. 
Even worse, Greg Evigan turned down a role on Welcome Back, Kotter to star in this TV Turkey. But at least B.J. and the Bear lurked in his 1970s future. I’ll let you readers decide if that’s good or bad. 
SALTY (1974-1975) – From some of the team behind Flipper came this short-lived series about a trained seal named Salty. The program was based on the 1973 film Salty, which featured Clint Howard in the role now played by Johnny Doran. 
THE BARON (1966-1967) – This ITC/ABC venture starred rugged he-man Steve Forrest as wealthy Texan John Mannering, who works for British Intelligence under the codename the Baron. Mannering’s assistant was Cordelia Winfield, played by the British actress Sue Lloyd. 
Mannering’s cover in London was an antique dealer and jet-set playboy. He drove around in a Jensen C-V8 that had the personalized license plate BAR 1. The Baron was originally a character from novels but John Mannering bore little resemblance to his printed page counterpart.
CITY OF ANGELS (1976) – Wayne Rogers starred as 1930s private investigator Jake Axminster, a hardboiled detective plying his trade in corruption-filled Los Angeles, hence the ironic title. Sadly, this series was no more successful than the decade’s earlier attempts at launching a 1930s crime show – Banyon and Manhunter. 
Jake and Marsha shared all 13 episodes with crooked L.A. police detective Lt. Murray Quint (Clifton James), while Axminster’s lawyer, Michael Brimm (Philip Sterling) appeared in 10 episodes. Mystery novelist Max Allan Collins (The Road to Perdition) called City of Angels “the best private eye series ever.”
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. 
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.”
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.
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