Thrilling Days of Convalescence (Part 3 in a series)

I got a call from the surgeon’s office this morning and they have scheduled my parathyroid gland surgery for April 28th. I still haven’t decided whether this is good or bad news, so I guess I’ll just classify it as news. The only relief I’m getting so far is that we’ve finally set a date. I also…

Sitcom paradise

Confession time: I’ve been spending most of my copious free time sitting around watching television reruns than tackling the massive backlog of movies currently present in the dusty Thrilling Days of Yesteryear archives. This morning—I’m kind of ashamed to admit this—I sat through a TVLand mini-marathon of Beverly Hillbillies episodes from 1970, a time when the sitcom warhorse was running…

R.I.P. June Havoc

June Havoc, the actress and child star who enjoyed a successful stage and film career despite occasionally being overshadowed by her sister—stripper Gypsy Rose Lee—has left us at the age of 97, due to natural causes. Both Havoc sisters’ lives were dramatized in the hit musical Gypsy, which opened on Broadway in 1959…and became a feature film three years later.…

Movies and stuff I’ve stared at recently during my convalescence

"I'm hoping he is using his "lay low" time to rest up and on, what we all know must be, piles and piles and piles of movies." -- Pam R I’d like to be able to report that I’ve been diving into the aforementioned piles and piles and piles of movies…but that would be a…

R.I.P. Robert Culp

I don’t know why the Grim Reaper is heckbent on dispatching my television heroes to the Great Beyond of late, but we lost another television icon yesterday in Robert Culp, who died from a head injury sustained by a fall outside his Hollywood Hills home at the age of 79. I saw the news about…

“Perzactly.”

My father mentioned to me the passing of Fess Parker last night after we saw an obit on The Brian Williams Show for pilot Robert M. White, who made history in 1962 with a test flight into space. Parker, the popular TV actor who played both the heroic Davy Crockett (on a three-part “mini-series” on ABC’s Disneyland) and Daniel Boone on NBC…

Thrilling Days of Convalescence (Part 2 in a series)

I know—two posts in two days…who’d-a thunk? (I must have more energy than I thought.) So I’m in my room at the hospital and the attending nurse is assigning me a bunch of meds that consist of potassium pills that are so gi-normous I halfway expect to leap out of bed and do 1:15 around…

Checking in, or Thrilling Days of Convalescence: Part 1

Hi, all…I just thought I’d take a bit of time to log in and change a few things, cosmetic-wise, that I thought Pam might not get to right away. (Speaking of which, I think you’re going to approve of her administration of TDOY while I’m on my sabbatical—she’s particularly strong in the area of celebrity passings, often sending…

A Bit of News

Greetings Thrilling Days of Yesteryear fans. I'm sure you are all wondering about the lack of posts. Our always witty and brilliant host, Ivan Shreve, Jr, called me on Saturday and asked that I let you all know that he has not been able to post recently. Unfortunately, Ivan has been ill. He is in Phase I…

Backasswards Father

I caught an interesting rerun of Bachelor Father on RTN this morning. And when I say interesting, I don’t mean like in content—the 1957-62 sitcom was anything but; mostly a bland, innocuous vehicle for John Forsythe that became popular only because it alternated weekly with The Jack Benny Program for two seasons before getting a weekly time slot of its…