Saturday, June 20, 2015
What's On TV (In Canada) Tonight (1969)?
"WHERE IT'S AT's final show was broadcast on June 20th 1969. It was hosted by Fred Latremouille who had hosted the very first show then titled LET'S GO (under the umbrella title of MUSIC HOP) on July 16th 1964. Teen favourites The Wiggy Symphony provided the music. It was the end of an era, the last 'youth' show planned by the CBC. Its basic principle was to entertain young Canadians, develop new Canadian talent and present the pop music scene as it was. ..."
"Glen Campbell was the last guest interview by Terry David Mulligan on the final show on June 20th, 1969 in the CBC TV teen series WHERE IT'S AT, hosted by Fred Latremouille with performers The Wiggy Symphony. The group was comprised of brothers Ray (lead singer & rhythm guitar) and Don Thompson (lead guitar), Bob Blow (piano & organ), Gerry Matte (drums) and Buzz Carate (bass). .It was the end of an era. Since January 1967, almost 100 new Vancouver names and groups were introduced to Canadian national television audiences, a training ground for youngsters. Ask your parents and grandparents."
I love Nashville Skyline, and I'm going to have to check out more work by The Wiggy Symphony.
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Meanwhile, down here in the United States, everybody's gone country. In recent weeks of 1969, we've had debuts of The Johnny Cash Show (first guests were, per the AP's "Televiewer" blurb, "Bob Dylan, poet, composer and singer; comedienne Fannie Flagg; singer, writer and fiddler Doug Kershaw, and Canadian folk singer-composer Joni Mitchell"); The Jimmie Rodgers Show ("the sets were simple, clean lined and in bold, fresh colors," wrote the AP's Synthia Lowry, "the total effect was easy on eye and ear"), and Hee Haw (premiere guests included Van Lear's Loretta Lynn).
ReplyDeleteCynthia Lowry liked the Johnny Cash offering, too, which she wrote, “puts its emphasis on music—on Cash, in fact. He is a striking figure wearing a sort of preacher’s coat and plays a mean guitar. He has a big, creamy voice and is addicted to sad, sad ballads about lost love and train wrecks. … When Cash is singing the show works well.”
ReplyDeleteBut Hee Haw ...?
ReplyDeleteCynthia Lowry:
“Hee Haw,” which had its premiere Sunday night, probably has the worst title of any show to come along this season and is really a hayseed version of “Laugh-In.” There is also a bit of country-style music thrown in. Most of the jokes—alas—were older than the songs and infinitely more familiar, even to the city slickers in the home audience.
Example:
Straight man: What would you get if you cross a parrot and a tiger?
Comic: I don’t know but when it talked you’d listen.
Roy Clark and Buck Owens headline the busy show and all the other cast members did their enthusiastic darndest to amuse. Hower, there are a lot of people around the country who have been watching television too long to become convulsed at old, old jokes.
The Kentucky New Era's local reviewer, Ray Glenn, also clobbered the show in a thing curtly headlined, "'Hee Haw' Not Funny."
DeleteI would be hard-put to select a program with less taste than "Laugh-In," but a new summer offering by CBS probably would win, hands down.
"Hee Haw" has been billed as a country laugh in." If it is, I'm ashamed to admit I live in the country.
The Nashville-originated program is, without a doubt, the most tasteless attempt at low comedy that has been attempted since television first began making itself an institution in the American home.
Also, the Emmys were a few 1969 weeks ago. The big story (and it really was pretty big in the Kentucky New Era; the Hoptown paper put an Emmys preview on A1 one day and an Emmys review on A1 the next) was that several canceled programs won big.
ReplyDeleteGet Smart won its second-straight award for best comedy, but NBC has canceled it , anyway. (CBS picked it up for next season, though.) And Hope Lange got an Emmy for comedy-series star, even though NBC dropped her show, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, as well. (It's moving to ABC.)
ReplyDeleteThe Emmy for best dramatic star went to Carl Betz on Judd for the Defense, which was on ABC. That show's done-done.
ReplyDeleteDick Cavett got an Emmy for outstanding daytime programming. ABC dumped that one. He does now have a late-night show for the summer.
ReplyDeleteAnd then The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour won for its writing. CBS, of course, famously dumped that show.
ReplyDeleteThere were several winners I've never seen. I'm going to be looking around for The Name of the Game, for which Susan Saint James won west supporting actress in a series, and The People Next Door, which won for both drama writing and direction.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the Emmy for best sports programming went to ABC for its coverage of the 19th Summer Olympic Games. Hooray for the Olympics!
William F. Buckley, Marlon Perkins, Arte Johnson and Harvey Korman also received special-achievement Emmys--as did the Apollo astronauts, "for sharing with the American public and the rest of the world the incredible experience of the unfolding of the mysteries of outer space and the surface of the moon via live television."