Network on Which it Aired...
Does anyone know what network (CBS, NBC, ABC, DuMont) would have originally aired the show? I think it may have been CBS... Thank you!
shareThe show originally aired on CBS. It debuted Friday December 5, 1952 @ 10:30 PM. Source is Chris Costello's ( Lou's daughter ) book " Lou's On First ".
shareWow 10:30 at night, thats an amazingly late time. I bet a lot of people with their new TV's stayed up for that! They were kind of a forerunner to todays Letterman/Leno comedy late night fix!
shareIIRC, this was one of the earliest syndicated and independently produced shows. Lou owned it which was nearly unheard of at the time.
shareRight, I'd think it probably aired sometime in the afternoon in various "markets" around the US. I know in NY it was on WPIX in the late afternoon. Good for when the kids got home from school.
shareYes, you're absolutely right. The Friday/10:30pm slot that it had on WCBS in its first year was not network time, it was filled locally and in NYC, this was the show chosen.
The 1952 network grid can be seen here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952%E2%80%9353_United_States_network_tel evision_schedule
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
Thanks for posting that wiki link. It mentions Dumont's loss of Jackie Gleason...as I recall it, Dumont (or at least their NYC facilities) later became WNEW. Wonderama and countless other WNEW shows were produced there.
shareI remember when Dumont became WNEW. The station was formerly WABD. I grew up on Sandy Becker and my mother still tells the story of what happened when a Kindergarten teacher asked me to count as high as I could.
My response was:
One
Channel Two
Three
Channel Four
Channel Five
Six
Channel Seven...
And so on, accounting for all of the seven VHF channels in NYC. As I recall, the teacher stopped me somewhere in the 20s. When I was little, I thought it weird that WABD came before WABC on the dial but then again, I've always been a bit too "logical" for my own good.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
Sandy Becker?!? Hambone is my flavorite character of his. I suspect he may have been stoned while doing him as he's so free form in that characterization. Have you ever seen the outtakes? http://www.christophergross.com/becker/video/hb.rm
Then there's Chuck McCann and of course Officer Joe Bolton. Guess we're just a bunch of old pharts.
That was good stuff, thanks. Let me return the favor and tip you off to this look back with Sandy, Fred Scott and Soupy Sales in a show taped in the late 80s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsePqRLla3U
A treasured childhood memory is Sandy Becker and his puppets doing "A Christmas Carol" with Geeba-Geeba as Scrooge. It was my introduction to the story and I can't watch any other version without flashing back to that one.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
Oh yeah, I've seen that before, thanks. Somewhere in my pile of old VHS tapes I have an extremely rare compilation of quite naughty outtakes featuring Sandy and Chuck. As you're probably well aware, most of these shows were live, and the ones that were videotaped ended up being erased.
The outtakes I speak of were bits that were saved by some unknown WNEW engineers and have been circulated surreptitiously for many years.
Back to Lou and Bud, have you ever seen their outtakes? One live performance (probably on a bond drive) of Who's on First has Lou saying "I don't give a DAMMN" instead of "darn"....Bud's spit take is priceless as he clearly wasn't expecting that. Taken in the context of the times this was pretty risque to say in front of an audience.
Years ago I saw some Chuck McCann outtakes but I don't recall if there were any with Sandy Becker. I have seen some Bud and Lou ones, I'm not sure if the bond drive thing was there. I do recall something with him saying "Goddamn" but I think it was from a movie, either the Mummy one or Africa Screams.
Years ago I had a friend who sold some 16mm films to Chuck McCann, but everyone started laying low after an FBI bust had resulted in someone spilling names to the FBI. I saw McCann in 1987 and reminded him of the days of collecting films and he said that collecting video tapes was a lot less stressful.
This same friend of mine has a tremendous amount of outtakes on 16mm, he keeps swearing to convert it to some other format as we can't watch now now that he no longer has the projectors.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
If memory swerves, it was Roddy McDowell who suffered the wrath of the FBI as he had a huge private library of classic movies. They raided his home and seized them. He was able to avoid prosecution by giving up his sources and threw a couple of other celebrity collectors under the bus.
That's surely the cause of concern for Chuck (and others). And please don't call me Shirley...call me a cab instead.
One of those caught in that trap was Rock Hudson, Roddy gave him up. There's FBI documents on the web about Roddy singing and trying to cop a plea.
The sting that I'm talking about happened here on the east coast in 1972. A man was caught selling a hot print of The Godfather and he gave names and my friend and I had dealt with him. Nothing happened to us (maybe we flew low enough) and the guy who was caught is now one of the biggest names in the film restoration field. You've seen his name many times.
Once I was dropping my friend off to sell a print to a Times Square theater manager who collected as a hobby. I was in the car waiting and my friend went inside and made his transaction. He came back out and as he got into my car, a cop jumped into the back seat. I was scared for a second or two, but it turned out that he wanted me to chase after a mugger. He even had me drive down Eighth Avenue against the traffic and through red lights!
He caught the guy by Port Authority Bus Terminal.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
Great story! Reminds me of a certain person who is very near and dear to me who in the late 70's "imported" XXX materials to Canada. Bought them from a store on that stretch of 42nd between 7th and 8th. Ahhh, those were the days. Now that the area has been Disneyized I guess all the preverts have gone online.
During all the time I drove hack in Manhattan, I never got the chance to go against the flow of traffic...although I did morph the time/space continuum several times during each shift by creating my own lane(s) LOL
I'll give you half a guess whose photo I had next to my license (on the dash);-) It was neither Bud nor Lou's (trying to keep this thread somewhere near on topic)
Photo on the dash? I'll take a guess and say Frank Faylen, the cab driver from Bedford Falls. Or maybe that other hack driver, Tom D'Andrea from Dark Passage.
I drove a hack for a couple of years, 1973-4. The fleet was Scull's Angels, it was the first yellows with two-way radios. I got out of it after having a gun put to my head. It was never the same after, I was too suspicious of everyone.
My hack photo had me looking like Charles Manson.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
I certainly recall Scull's Angels and the bit about being radio dispatched always stuck in my head. I see you spelled it correctly!
This is the fine lad in the photo I spoke of:
http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l8xhgvZZD51qzqndjo1_500.jpg
I always watched the fare when they entered and as I'm sure you noticed, they would more often than not glance at your license. When they saw his pic they'd either get an alarmed look on their face or a sly smile...those who didn't react were dead fish when it came to a tip.
I was taking a family into the city, they were from somewhere down South. The hotel was in the Times Square area (obviously tourists) and there was one of those almost-a-block-long posters of Pacino as Serpico. The little boy of the family saw that and said "that man looks like our driver."
I guess because Taxi Driver came out after my spell as a driver, I never think of that film when I think of cabbles. But I did have see some things on the night shift that could have done a Travis Bickle on me.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
and don't forget Al Hodge as Captain Video...Ed Norton always loved that..Our innocent days..who knew???
shareThen there's Chuck McCann and of course Officer Joe Bolton.
heheh and can you imagine having a cop hosting a show nowadays swinging his nightstick???? And there were others like Sandy B, officer Joe etc in some local markets on WPIX or WNEW, there was Zacherle where he speaks to his 'wife" in the laundry hamper and has that "thing" which sometimes goes flying through the studio while he's on air! He did Chiller Theater I think. Another guy was thump thump Eddie Lawrence.
And one thing, did Bud and Lou pay themselves equally in the partnership?
And regarding risque stuff, I get a kick out of one episode where Costello is asked what's the definition of a husband. He says, that's what's left after the nerve's been cut! That one must go back to their burlesque days!...;-)...