BEFORE WE HAD T.V.

I love Laurel and Hardy the best, but Abbot and Costello and the Stooges had some good routines. I was laughhing the other day at Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man character, caught in the Who's on First skit. If you saw the film, you know why it's funny.

actually I would really enjoy seeing a bunch of Rocky & Bullwinkle as well as Roadrunner tunes.

The Little Rascals (Our Gang) had some episodes I liked a lot, too. I liked Weezer, Chubby, Brisbane, and Stymie better than Alphalpha and Spanky.

Yeh, The Wayback Machine and Fractured Fairy Tales.

i picked up some warner brother collections a few years ago, the full original cartoons, great stuff

been eyeing a rocky and bullwinkle collection, keep hoping if it goes unsold long enough the store will mark it down

Yes, I saw the Rain Man. I remember that part.

Nice you guys brought up Our Gang. Those episodes are fun, too. There's something quite charming about them that is hard to categorize. Nothing like it these days.

I also like the older H.G. Welles stuff, like The Time Machine and The Invisible Man.

i love cheesy old movies, i've bought these collections of crappy films, you get 13 movies for about $10, the collections are things like drive in movie classics, stuff like wasp women from space, real high brow entertainment

Know what you mean. Kinda like the old Doctor Who shows from the early 60s.

Anybody used to watch on TV "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"? I always thought he had quite a quirky side to him. I've seen most (maybe all?) his movies.

And then there was the Red Skelton Show. Funny guy.

Sgt. Bilko. Hilarious!

Edgar, just thought of another good western: "Wanted Dead Or Alive" with Steve McQueen. Watch it?

And "Zorro", too!

My brother gave me a video collection of Wanted - Dead or Alive episodes. It was better than I had remembered.

I watched the other shows you mentioned too. How about Topper?

I like certain of those movies, but not all. I like the cheapie Sci/Fi, such as It Came From Outer Space and Day of the Triffids.

I can remember watching a little of some of them, but I don't think I was a big fan.

Back with more tomorrow!

I got a collection of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies not long ago. They are interesting not only because they are old, and rather innocent in our eyes, but because Holmes was translated from late Victorian times to the era of motor cars, radios and motion pictures. The only thing i didn't like about the movies is that Dr. Watson (as played by Nigel Bruce) was portrayed as a bumbling fool, almost an idiot. That doesn't square with the Watson of Doyle's stories and novels.

I doubt that a man of Holmes's caliber would have suffered a fool. Hollywood seems to have believed in comic relief for those with short attention spans.

Yes, pandering to comic relief is exactly what i suspect in that case.

Personal friends of Nigel Bruce claim that he behaved the same way in real life. He was a completely simple and naive person.

That brings to mind that joke about looking at the stars... LOL

There were kid shows on TV when I got home from school. I didn't see over a few episodes of Howdy Doody, and that was before we owned a TV. Same with Buster Brown Show. What we did see were puppet shows and later, westerns. Fearless Fosdick characters were puppets on strings. The Beanie and Cecil show featured hand puppets. We didn't watch Kukla Fran and Ollie or Mr Rogers. These shows gave way to The Range Rider, Wild Bill Hickock and Annie Oakley. Don't recall where the Lone Ranger fit in. I didn't like the TV show. I guess I was fourteen or even fifteen by the time Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw and Yogi Bear came along.

Then he was well cast, n'est-ce pas?

Yup, that brings back memories.

Mainly, I can remember tuning into a show called "Fun-O'rama", which aired out of KVOS-TV from Washington state. It always consisted of 3 parts:
1- Serial shows like The Lone Ranger
2- Warner Brothers cartoons (loved those old ones!)
3- Usually Three Stooges

Every day like clockwork, but usually over at a friend's house.

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Here's a list of other TV shows from the 1950s and 60s that I enjoyed:
Abbott And Costello Show
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Dragnet
The Ed Sullivan Show
Gunsmoke
Have Gun Will Travel
The Honeymooners
I Love Lucy
The Invisible Man
I've Got A Secret
Rawhide
The Red Skelton Show
The Rifleman
The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin
The Roy Rogers Show
Sea Hunt
Sgt. Bilko
The Three Stooges
Tightrope
The Twilight Zone
Wanted Dead Or Alive
Zorro
The Avengers
The Beverly Hillbillies
Bewitched
Carol Burnett Show
Dick Van Dyke Show
Doctor Who
The Fugitive
Get Smart
Gilligan's Island
Hawaii Five-0
Hogan's Heroes
I Dream of Jeannie
The Invaders
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Mannix
Mission Impossible
The Munsters
Route 66
Rowan And Martin's Laugh-In
The Saint
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
Star Trek
The Wild Wild West

I used the below link to help my memory in making this list. You should check it out. It's laid out nicely by decades.

CrazyAboutTV.com