Hi everyone,

First, thanks so much, Jimmy - love listening to your audio postings!!





What a wonderful "inside view" of the production end of I SPY you are providing us with - so few have ever been able to witness this or be a part of it, except for the people actually making the magic for us!! ... And thank you for sharing all these great Culp Classic albums!! They are just wonderful!!


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O.K. On my recent assignment in "The Big Apple" (to check out those fireworks), I headed over to The Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television and Radio) .... I had been there for a very short visit awhile ago, and this time I promised myself several hours of viewing time. I'll try to describe and share what I saw there.







The Paley Center is a wonderful place to visit - and there is a sister facility in L.A. They provide on-going screenings in several theaters throughout the building. The day I was there, they were having screenings on Michael Jackson, Funny Women of Television, The Curse of Mr. Bean, the Frost-Nixon interviews, All in the Family: Sammy's Visit, The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, All Shook Up: Elvis Presley on TV, Super Bowl Commercials, Sid Caesar Highlights, and more ... you get the idea - something wonderful for every one and every taste.

And that was just the public screenings!! I headed straight to their Library, because in the Viewing Library you can request to view individual shows from their huge Collection. Since the last time I was there, there were more individual monitors available for searching and the staff was extremely helpful. Of course, I had to find out what "Robert Culp" videos they had. (What did you expect, this is Tatia here??) They are currently in the process of converting their videos over to digital viewing to streamline and speed their system.


I also learned that you can now search their collection directly on-line - but viewing of their videos must be done there.

http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/?advanced=1

Here is their "Robert Culp" link

http://www.paleycenter.org/collection?advanced=1&q=Robert+Culp&c=all&f=all&x=0&y=0

and for The Paley Center main page

http://www.paleycenter.org/


They really don't have a myriad of Culp videos, especially the ones that are fairly readily available. (There were no Trackdowns, nor the Get Smart cameo episode, there were 2 Columbos, 1 Outer Limits, a few I SPYs.) ... BUT what they DO have are wonderful rare old shows like You Are There and the great drama anthology series from the 50s and 60s.

Our Mr. Culp appeared in You Are There (1953) three times. (IMDB only lists one, but he mentioned being in others in his Archive Interview). These are the great shows where Walter Cronkite presented historical events as if they were current day news stories, with interviews, and background information. What a great concept! As I was putting this together, I heard the news about Walter Cronkite passing away at 92. I always thought of him as "Mr. Integrity." What a sad loss.

Robert was in "The Death of Socrates," "The Assassination of Julius Caesar," and "The Salem Witch Trial." He was 23 years old, dramatically intense, extremely serious, and in deadly earnest, and he had about a total of 2 lines in each one - (OK, and he was a very cute, intense, 23 year old!!)


YOU ARE THERE - The Death of Socrates
that's a very young John Cassavetes with Bob, along with Philip Bourneuf (evil Mr. Saunders from "Conquest of Maude Murdoch.")
Yes, yes, he really HAS worked with everyone out there twice!!





"The Assassination of Julius Caesar" starred a very young Paul Newman as Brutus. He was very good. The great cast included Milton Selzer as Caesar and the wonderful character actor Joseph Wiseman as a plotting Senator. Sidney Lumet directed these!! Definitely the Golden Age of Television.


They also had several shows from those wonderful early anthology drama series like US Steel Hour, Studio One, Bob Hope's Chrysler Theater, and Playhouse 90s. Great dramatic theater - why don't they have anything like that on TV today??


I watched Rod Serling's Slow Fade to Black (a.k.a. The Movie Maker) (1964) starring Rod Steiger as a powerful and ruthless movie mogul who created his studio from nothing. He is being ousted by the changing times and the money men who have invested in his studio. Culp plays his younger, once-trusted assistant, who is given his job. Sally Kellerman plays the mogul's wayward daughter who hates, resents, and loves her father alternately. A rather typical Hollywood Studio story - very much like the TV movie "The Dream Merchants" Culp was in also. But in Serling's and Steiger's hands, this one was great drama - very, very well done.






The Paley Center also had the historical series - From Sea to Shining Sea (1974) - where Culp plays an itinerant peddler during Revolutionary War times. He is the only continuing character throughout the series - where he encounters famous people from that period of history. In the one I saw, he meets John Adams and Andrew Jackson. It's interesting no one else seems to have any copies of these. The series must have been shown on PBS or some educational channel. Richard Kiley and Sheila Sullivan are in one, also, but I only saw the episode with Burgess Meredith and Jeff Corey, and a very young Jeff Conaway. Leo Penn directed the one I saw.








Another one I viewed was a live drama for The US Steel Hour called Flint and Fire (1958). Bob co-starred with Gloria Vanderbilt. She could have been a twin sister for a young Kim Hunter. It was about a poor young couple trying to get together in rural Vermont in the 50s and their family complications ... The best part about this one was that it also starred Una Merkel (Aunty Alta)! That was a surprise - guess our Bob really has worked with everyone out there twice (have I mentioned that before?? ) Ms. Merkel was just as charming and sweet in this production as she was in "Home to Judgment" - just a good deal younger.





I also caught a bit of Ingmar Bergman's The Lie: A Tragi-comedy of Banality (1973) - a Playhouse 90 production. Very slow, earnest, deep - but also a bit racy for those days. Wealthy, urbane Shirley Knight appears happily married to successful George Segal. Things, of course, are not what they seem on the surface. She is having a long-standing affair with our Bob - both married to others in their same upper-class social circle. Business is failing for Segal and all sorts of intense inner struggles ensue ala Bergman. During Bob and Shirley's rendezvous, she takes off her clothes and they are in bed together - you only see her back, but again pretty racy for TV of that day. At the commercial breaks, they kept putting up a notices about the "mature nature" of this production. I had read that this production was supposed to be a comeback for the Playhouse 90s series, but it didn't have the desired impact and the show faded from the airways soon afterwards. The cast, though, was stellar. Besides Culp and Shirley Knight, there were George Segal, Victor Buono, William Daniels, Dean Jagger, Louise Lasser - ("Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" - seeing her do Bergman was worth the price of admission), Mary Ann Mobley, John Ritter, Jonathan Winters, etc., etc.


And a surprise one in their Collection was a 1967 hour-long tour of the "National Galley of Art" in Washington, D.C. narrated by our Mr. Culp. I was just able to glance through that one quickly.


There was one production that they had listed that I had never heard of, but unfortunately didn't have any time to watch. It was titled Stirmugs, a STUDIO ONE production (1954). Here's their synopsis - "One in this live dramatic anthology series. This drama takes place on V-J Day on a Pacific island where an American platoon made up of ex-cons and parolees is reluctant to return to the U.S. Repelled by the idea of living under police rule, all but three of the platoon go AWOL. The army, however, has a better solution to their dilemma." Included in the cast, besides Robert were - Joanne Woodward, Paul Stevens, and Werner Klemperer, and I SPY alumni - Warren Stevens, Michael Strong, and David Sheiner.


And one other one I definitely want to view next time - the The Museum Of Broadcasting's 7TH Annual Television Festival In Los Angeles, DANNY THOMAS and SHELDON LEONARD: The Cahuenga Studios Legacy (1990). Their synopsis says, "This seminar honors Danny Thomas, Sheldon Leonard, and the legacy of (Desilu) Cahuenga Studios, at which many classic television programs were filmed." Sounds wonderful - an hour and a half of fascinating discussions by fascinating creative people ... The full description of this is on the Paley Center website.


I definitely plan to spend more time here the next time I'm "on assignment" in NYC. Has anyone else been to The Paley Center in either NY or L.A.? I'd love to hear your impressions - and what things you viewed.





As always,

Tatia



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Hello, Tatia,

I thoroughly enjoyed your description of what you viewed at the Paley Center and I want to watch all those scrumptious shows myself! Do you know if the LA center has the exact same shows as the NYC center? Living in the Phoenix area with my mom in LA, it would be much easier to visit the LA Paley Center, but if I need to fly to the Big Apple one day, I will.

I wonder how they accumulated those so hard to find shows? Do you just ask for a copy and then watch it, and then ask for another? You must have spent numerous hours in the Center to watch all you did--how many hours should someone plan to watch the shows you highlighted above (only the Culp ones)?

Please do not forget to mention next time that while the 23 year old Culp is "dramatically intense, extremely serious, and in deadly earnest" in "The Death of Socrates", he also looks DAMN fine in a toga! ) Do put your writing priorities in order, Tatia! )

I will be off list for 1-6 weeks, now. Having some brain surgery in 10 hours, and am not sure how speedy my recovery will be, but I hope it's rapid! I love this list, all you folks are wonderful, and hope to come back soon!

Mona

Hi Mona,

ALL our best wishes on your surgery!! I know everyone here is sending you good thoughts and warm wishes! We hope you have a speedy recovery and will be back on the FORUM as soon as you can. You are a great addition here, and I know we all look forward to many more of your "Bob appreciation" postings.

As to the Paley Center and where its Collection comes from ... according to their site, it is "An organization founded by William S. Paley to collect, preserve, and interpret television and radio programming and to make these programs available to the public." Mr. Paley, who was a pioneer in the field and president of CBS, served as its first chairman. The Center was originally named "The Museum of Broadcasting," later changed to "The Museum of Television and Radio," and now "The Paley Center for Media."







I believe their two facilities in NYC and LA offer identical access to their "viewing collection." As I mentioned, they are in the process of converting over many of their videos to digital programming, so they will be directly accessible on computers at their two centers.



Mona wrote:
Do you just ask for a copy and then watch it, and then ask for another?

Yes, exactly ... you can request 2 videos at a time. You fill out your preferences on a computer form after looking through the video catalog of their Collection. (I'll include the links again below, you can view their Collection directly yourself.) Then you go to the librarian's desk, where they give you a number and send you to a room with your own video console booth. You type in the number, and your videos appear. This is all being updated for viewing directly on computer monitors. Everyone there is extremely helpful and will assist you in every way.



Mona wrote:
You must have spent numerous hours in the Center to watch all you did--how many hours should someone plan to watch the shows you highlighted above (only the Culp ones)?

The shows run in their actual time - 1/2 hour shows like "You Are There" - 1 hour shows for the drama anthologies like the "US Steel Hour" - and some run 1 and 1/2 hours, like "Playhouse 90." Some programming is shown with their original commercials, some not. (You can stay all day Mona, but I think they frown upon bringing a sleeping bag and camping out in front of your video monitor. )



Here is the link again for viewing their Collection directly on-line - (actual viewing of the videos must be done at their 2 sites).

http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/?advanced=1


And their "Robert Culp" link

http://www.paleycenter.org/collection?advanced=1&q=Robert+Culp&c=all&f=all&x=0&y=0


and for The Paley Center main page

http://www.paleycenter.org/



Mona wrote:
Please do not forget to mention next time that while the 23 year old Culp is "dramatically intense, extremely serious, and in deadly earnest" in "The Death of Socrates", he also looks DAMN fine in a toga! ) Do put your writing priorities in order, Tatia! )


Sorry, Mona!! What was I thinking???? Yes, cute Culp knees always come first ... just ask Melanie!







All our very best, Mona .... we'll be thinking of you!!


Tatia




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Mona,

I'm sending happy, healthy thoughts your way and hope to hear from you soon. When I went into my surgery last year, I tucked a couple of pictures under the blanket to make me feel better. One was of my kitty Abbey (above) and the other was a picture of Kelly and Scotty from "Blackout." Don't know if it will work for you, but since you and I are of like minds on the wonderfulness of Kelly without his shirt and other articles of clothing, I was thinking maybe you could bring a snapshot that will make you smile - maybe the one of him in the short robe or his pajama bottoms or... you get the idea.

Take care of yourself and please let us know how you're doing.

Maya

Hi everyone,

Mona added my name to a list of updates her sister is sending out, so I can pass the good news on to the FORUM.

She wrote that "the surgery went well, and she is out of recovery and in the ICU. She is very groggy and a bit out of it, but she isn't in pain. All in all things are as well, or better, than expected ... Way to go Mona! Thanks for all the prayers and good wishes!"

Way to go, Mona - our thoughts are wish you!!

(And hopefully the doctors steered clear of the large "Robert Culp section" of Mona's brain!)

I'll pass on any further updates as they come in.


As always,

Tatia


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Regards--

I received another Update Note from Mona's sister. She's out of the ICU and heading home, to begin her recuperation there.






We wish you a speedy and smooth recovery!!

Rest up, relax, and watch I SPY and TGAH re-runs to your heart's content.

We are all looking forward to hearing from you whenever you are up to it ....


All our very best Mona!!


Tatia and the I SPY gang


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