Okay, 1975-76 ABC Saturday morning line-up - do your thing:
8:00 am - Hong Kong Phooey - Former band leader and eventual character actor Scatman Crothers was the unlikely vocal star of this show. Crothers oscillated between three things in the nineteen seventies: roles in blaxploitation films, voice work for Hanna-Barbera and appearances in various sitcoms. He played the character Meadowlark in HB's Harlem Globetrotter cartoons, the narrator on CB Bears and a voice of one of the terrifying creatures on HB's latter-day live action kids show The Skatebirds. As far as black action films go, Crothers appeared in some of the best. Detroit 9000 (1973), Slaughter's Big Rip-Off (1973 - featuring Ed McMahon as a drug kinpin), Black Belt Jones (1974), Truck Turner (1974), Friday Foster (1975) and Ralph Bakshi's controversial animated feature Coonskin (1975). Black voice actors were not common during the 30s through 70s period of animation. Things have gotten slightly better in that regard since then, but not much.
8:30 - The New Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape Show - This hour long show featured three segments of Tom and Jerry and two featuring the fondly remembered Grape Ape. G.A. didn't last long, he made a brief come back to compete in the highly competitive world of Hanna-Barbera's Laff-A-Lympics and its consequent comic book. The ape, the cat and the mouse, were a very unlikely match.
The Grape Ape in spanish!9:30 - The Lost Saucer - More terrifying nonsense from Sid and Marty Kroft. So many of these shows just blend together in the memory. Jim Nabors and Ruth Buzzi star, and the show could have just as easily been titled The Lost Careers.
10:00 - The New Adventures of Gilligan - I couldn't find a clip of this show, so instead here is the similar and certainly just as awful Filmation show Gilligan's Planet - from 1982. It contains the worst Jim Backus impression I've ever heard.
What's that? It actually is Jim Backus doing the voice? Man, he did a horrible impression of himself.
10:30 - Uncle Croc's Bloc -This show featured the recently deceased Charles Nelson Reilly. Unfortunately, I could not find a clip anywhere on the internet. Reilly lampooned overly-perky children's telelvision hosts. It was an unusually satirical show for the Filmation crud factory. Strike Two!
11:30 - The Oddball Couple - Ever wonder what Jack Klugman's personality would be like if he were put in the incompetent hands of Filmation Studios? Neither have I. And I guess I'll never really know what that looks and feels like - because I can not find a clip. Strike Three! I'm out. But I cheat and keep on going. Why deprive any of us of the rest of this Saturday morning - it wouldn't make sense.
And just for the sake of it, outside the context of our Saturday morn.
My Mother the Car in French:
12:30 - American Bandstand '75 -It's the 1975 edition of the show but today it must be a rerun because this footage is from the late sixties!
Would a six year old me have flipped channels to CBS on this sunny September morning? Let us see.
8:00 am - Pebbles and Bamm Bamm - I think I've answered my question with this morning opener. Hell, yes. I can see myself filling my teenage Pebbles and Bamm Bamm thermos full of Pepsi, while my parents ignorantly sleep, in anticipation of this rocking show.
8:30 - Bugs Bunny and Road Runner Hour
10:00 - The Shazam/Isis Hour - We've talked about it all before.
11:00 - Far Out Space Nuts - So over on the other channel you could hear Bob Denver's voice on the Gilligan's Island cartoon. You could then flip the channel to see him live and in person on this show. For the late Bob Denver's thoughts about this show go here.
11:30 - The Ghost Busters - I think most people forget that before Filmation's terrible animated version of this series, always inferior to The Real (and popular) Ghostbusters program, it was a live-action series. I can't find a clip of the elusive live-action show - just this pain inducing clip for the animated series of the 1980s.
My dad once bought that "Jake" action figure for my brother when we were kids. I got the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. My brother, to say the least, was not pleased with this arrangement, as was obvious when his eleven year old mouth muttered, "Jake? Who the fuck is Jake?" We determined he was Egon's half brother.
UPDATE: YouTube doesn't have the greatest search engine in the world. Sometimes wat you're looking for is right under your nose and yet, unless you phrase your search the exact way, you'll never find it. Indeed, there was live-action Filmation Ghostbusters stuff all along.
Bob Burns' book Monster Kid Memories recounts his turn as Tracy the Gorilla in the series and what it was like to work alongside stars Forrest Tucker and nightclub comic Larry Storch.
12:30 - Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids - Don't even get me started. Go find it yourself.
Overall, I'd say this was a pretty equal match-up. An even distribution of absolute crud, joy, live-action drudgery, action, and dullness. A fun season for these two networks to be sure!
