Alright! Confession Time! What's YOUR "Guilty Pleasure?"

[LizzieMaine]

No doubt this will be a mark against my pinko cred, but I really enjoy "Dragnet." Not the modern reboots or ironic satires, but the real Jack Webb deal. Webb was a unique figure in 1940s-70s media, a pretty hep character who created for himself the squarest image that could possibly be conceived, and he made it absolutely believable, even the later episodes where he seemed to be positioning himself against the "camp" sensibility while, simultaneously, exploiting that sensibility for all it was worth. "Now you listen here, flower-boy, and you listen good..."

Webb's finest work is the original radio "Dragnet." It's hard to explain how utterly revolutionary this show was without the full context of overheated, formulaic late-forties radio crime drama to stack it up against. In the way the program was written, and especially in the way it was acted, the radio "Dragnet" flew in the face of every accepted convention of radio drama, and it paved the way for all the other "adult dramas" that popped up during the early 1950s as radio gasped its last breaths. That the TV "Dragnet" managed to preserve the essence of what made the radio show so good is testimony to Webb's integrity as a producer and a performer. He's one of the few people to come out of 1940s-50s broadcast entertainment who never, ever sold out.

 

[BlueTrain]

I rather enjoyed Dragnet, too, and I've heard a few of the radio episodes as well. One of the interesting things about seeing TV shows like that and others that had a long run, like Perry Mason, long after they went off the air is seeing some actor before they became famous for other productions. Lee Marvin appeared in a Dragnet episode and Leonard Nimoy was in an episode of Perry Mason. Dragnet also usually opened the episode with something humorous, typically something to do with his partner.

 

[2jakes]

"Tarzan & His Mate" 1934
Great underwater photography.
(Maureen O’Sullivan)

 

[Fading Fast]

"Tarzan & His Mate" 1934
Great underwater photography.
(Maureen O’Sullivan)

I believe it was a body double in that scene - which was not needed at all though.

Also, love how strong a character Jane is in this one. At the end, she's fighting by herself to survive - shooting the rifle, using it as a club when she's out of bullets, playing dead to "fool" the lion even starting a fire as a last ditch effort to survive. She's no "save me I'm just a delicate girl" Jane - this one can hold her own and more with the men. Pre-code movies rock!

 

[LizzieMaine]

I rather enjoyed Dragnet, too, and I've heard a few of the radio episodes as well. One of the interesting things about seeing TV shows like that and others that had a long run, like Perry Mason, long after they went off the air is seeing some actor before they became famous for other productions. Lee Marvin appeared in a Dragnet episode and Leonard Nimoy was in an episode of Perry Mason. Dragnet also usually opened the episode with something humorous, typically something to do with his partner.

One of the things I like about Webb is that he had a small stock company of actors to whom he was very, very loyal. They turned up over and over and over again in different roles -- if you hear a woman's voice in the radio show, dollars to doughnuts it's Peggy Webber -- and in some shows this might have gotten tedious. But Webb had a reason for this -- he knew that these actors understood his technique requiring them to underplay. Most radio actors, following the Orson Welles school of dramatic thought, did just the opposite, but Webb insisted that nearly every line end on a downbeat. This was, in its way, as much a stylization as Wellesish thespianism, but it was so different from what listeners were used to hearing that it came thru as ultra-realistic. If you ever listen to the radio "Gunsmoke," you'll note that Norman Macdonnell helped himself to this technique for his actors there, which makes a huge difference in the mood and tone of the show.

 

[BlueTrain]

Are there still "stock company of actors?" That is, actors who frequently show up in the same movies with certain other actors? I don't go to the movies so much these days, so I can't say for myself. One such actor was Bruce Cabot, who appeared in a few John Wayne movies, although I don't know if it was often enough to be a member of a stock company of actors.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ It seems alive in TV land as Ashton Kutcher's show "The Ranch" has several actors from both his "That 70's Show" and "Two and a Half Men" shows as regulars or in guest roles. The common link seems to be Kutcher and, considering his TV power, my guess is he pulled his "team" with him.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The best "stock companies" in the Era were the second-line Warner Brothers actors who seemed to show up everywhere -- Frank McHugh, Joan Blondell, Guy Kibbee, Glenda Farrell, Hugh Herbert, etc. -- and the Preston Sturges company, including the likes of Jimmy Conlin, Edgar Kennedy, Rudy Vallee, William Demarest, Chester Conklin, Georgia Caine, Arthur Hoyt, and Al Bridge. Every good Warner movie of the thirties, and every Sturges feature included some combination of these specific actors, always playing the same type of part, and gave the pictures a certain sense of "the gang's all here" camaraderie that made them even more enjoyable.

 

[BlueTrain]

Two actors I think of as showing up everywhere were Ward Bond and Thomas Mitchell. Of course there were a hundred actors who somehow managed to appear in a remarkable number of movies, sometimes more than two hundred. So I guess there were really a lot who "showed up everywhere," even though they may have not received screen credit and you may have not noticed them except when the bad guys showed up and you recognized every face, if none of the names.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Not sure that any actor in the era could ever evoke a similar reaction in anyone, but there was a kid actor in the 60's/ 70's that seemed to be on every canned laughter family TV sitcom at one time. It got to the point where anytime I'd see her on the screen I'd be looking for a shoe to hurl at the picture tube. It was overkill taken to the extreme: she was ALWAYS on the damn TV.

Turns out that her name is Pamelyn Ferdin and she did well in life as an adult: became a registered nurse and an animal rights activist. Good for her, say I.

 

[MisterCairo]

"Stinky Weaselteets"
"Log" as a toy for children...
"Stinky the Fart" as a pet....

The list goes on and on. The court finds "Ren and Stimpy" to be far worse than a mere "guilty pleasure" the court declares this program to be a bonefide "Public Menace" and shall be treated as such.

How could you possibly forget the fun family game "Hey! Don't Wizz on the Electric Fence"? Or Stimpy's under bench collection of nose goblins?

OR Horse: "Hey, do you happen to have any rubber walrus protectors"? Walrus: "Call the polissssssssssssse…"

 

[Héctor Fernández]

Or Powder Toast Man!

 

[belfastboy]

Hawkins 'Cheezies'....made with real cheddar cheese!

 

[Worf]

Holy Thread Revival Batman! As the original OP I forgot just how fun this thread was. Thanks for reviving it... I must admit there're some sick puppies in this forum... I like it!

Worf

 

[GHT]

I must admit there're some sick puppies in this forum.

Do you want the dogtor's number?

 

[Edward Reed]

my Saturday night guilty pleasure consists of watching old shows on Me-TV. Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman is still awesome in its horrid simpleton way but oooh what a doll!

Then I watch Svengoolie! I love the old 30's, 40's, 50's monster movies and Svengoolie's bad jokes and rubber chickens takes me back to when I was a kid watching horror hosts on tv. All we need now is the Love Boat and Fantasy Island in their lineup! lol!

 

[Frunobulax]

my Saturday night guilty pleasure consists of watching old shows on Me-TV. Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman is still awesome in its horrid simpleton way but oooh what a doll!
View attachment 216163
Then I watch Svengoolie! I love the old 30's, 40's, 50's monster movies and Svengoolie's bad jokes and rubber chickens takes me back to when I was a kid watching horror hosts on tv. All we need now is the Love Boat and Fantasy Island in their lineup! lol!
View attachment 216162

Svengoolie annoyed me at first, but he's really grown on me. Plus, yeah, classic and cheap monster movies? Heck, yeah!

We have another station called Charge. They've been showing all those American International and Hammer films from the 50s and 60s. Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Peter Lorre. I love those things.

 

[Formeruser012523]

SVEN! I've been watching him every Saturday, give or take, since I discovered him over the summer. So corny & lame, but I love it.

There's another station called MOVIES! that will sometimes show the old Hammer films too. Gotta love Cushing & Lee.

 

[MisterCairo]

SVEN! I've been watching him every Saturday, give or take, since I discovered him over the summer. So corny & lame, but I love it.

There's another station called MOVIES! that will sometimes show the old Hammer films too. Gotta love Cushing & Lee.

Sven guy looks fun, could one get him in Canada?

 

[AbbaDatDeHat]

my Saturday night guilty pleasure consists of watching old shows on Me-TV. Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman is still awesome in its horrid simpleton way but oooh what a doll!
View attachment 216163
Then I watch Svengoolie! I love the old 30's, 40's, 50's monster movies and Svengoolie's bad jokes and rubber chickens takes me back to when I was a kid watching horror hosts on tv. All we need now is the Love Boat and Fantasy Island in their lineup! lol!
View attachment 216162

Don’t know about Sven’s show but this would make one hell of a hatguy tattoo!!

And Lynda....oh yeah, she had some seriously perfect.....eyes!!
B