Year:  1962
Genre:  TV series, Western
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker
Creator:  David Dortort
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Bonanza was trending on Twitter for a second yesterday.  For a minute, I actually thought that it had something to do with the release of Season Three on DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment today. Well, for a second I thought that.  Then I realized that this was unlikely, and I figured out that Bonanza is now some online shopping site like eBay. Colour ME disappointed.

     The Bonanza I know is a TV show from the 50s 60s and 70s. That’s because I’m seventy-eight years old. And so it was with great familiar pleasure I sat down to watch the stories of Hoss and Little Joe and Ben and Adam Cartwright as they work on the Ponderosa and get into adventures. In this case Hoss kills a drunk and has to deal with his creepy brother, then the whole gang gets stuck in the middle of a shootout between a corrupt military officer and a band of Indians led by the famous Cochise.

     In short, it’s Bonanza. It’s season three of the Cartwrights and the Ponderosa and gunfights and somber moralizing. You either like it or you don’t, and I like it. I certainly like it more than I like shopping online.

Year: 1961, 1962
Genre:  Western, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Clint Eastwood, Eric Fleming, Sheb Wooley, John Ireland, Paul Brinegar
Producer:  Ben Brady
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

Volume Two of the Fourth season of Rawhide comes to DVD November 8th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  It still stars Clint Eastwood, which means it’s still worth watching.  It’s got guest stars like James Coburn, Cesar Romero and Mercedes McCambridge.  And it’s still all about this never-ending cattle drive led by Gil Favor and Rowdy Yates.

You’d think, after four seasons, the cows would have reached their destination.  But then, a lot of crazy stuff could happen on these old cattle drives.  (I know because I saw John Wayne in one of the greatest westerns of all time, Red River.)  In that movie, it took about an hour and a half of screen time to get the beef (or “beeves”, as they call them) from one state to another.  Rawhide could maybe learn something from that kind of progress.  Then again, there is always something that comes up to delay the march.

In Season Four Volume Two, the delays are as varied as ever.  A bunch of hot women destined to be mail-order brides to (presumably) upstanding ranchers are kidnapped by some unscrupulous outlaws who intend to make the women into brides for a bunch of unscrupulous outlaws.  The women are hot, and so need rescuing by Clint Eastwood.  Then some rancher tries to take away (adopt) the trail boss’s children.  Gil Favor (and his two girls) are gonna have none of that.  That one’s creepy, because it initially seems like the rancher is interested in Gil’s super-hot sister-in-law.  But it turns out he’s really after the children.  Then the drive has to pause so they can avert bloodshed between a fort full of soldiers and a Pawnee tribe desperate for freedom.  Not only is Clint Eastwood not around at all for that one, but they also lose one of their key trail hands to military service when it’s all over.  No wonder the cattle drive never gets anywhere on time!

I still like Rawhide, one of the classic TV series that I can put on any time and enjoy.  But the reason to pick up Season Four Volume Two remains Clint Eastwood, who was just starting his film career at this time, with the spaghetti westerns that made him a superstar.  Instead of just another cast member of a better-than-average western TV show in the 60s.  One with the best theme song of all time.  Oh yeah – there’s another reason to pick this up – keep them doggies rollin’….

Year:  1962
Genre:  TV series, Lawyer, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     In most cop shows, the cops use some varied techniques to catch the bad guys.  In Blue Bloods, Donnie Wahlberg just beats everyone up until someone finally turns out to be the killer.  In CSI and NCIS, they examine forensic evidence until the killer is behind bars.  In Criminal Minds they investigate his brain until they find him.  And in Hawaii Five-O, they just drive around in fancy cars, banter a bit and flex a little, and eventually the bad guy just seems to show up for some reason.

     But it wasn’t always this way.  No, sometimes there were shows where the cops didn’t catch the bad guys.  In fact, there were shows where the cops were so incompetent that they always arrested the wrong people.  One of those shows was Perry Mason back in the 50s and 60s.  Season Six, volume one comes to DVD October 4th from Paramount Home Entertainment. 

     The DVD set features fourteen episodes where Perry Mason masterfully  defends all kinds of wrongfully accused folks.  It’s convenient for him, and for the show, that his clients are always innocent of the murders they are accused of committing.  Not so convenient, however, for the cops.  They try to catch the killer of an old book dealer.  They arrest the wrong woman.  They go after the killer of a super rich heir.  They arrest the wrong woman.  They investigate the shooting of a nefarious boxing promoter, and arrest the wrong man.

     At what point does the police department start getting embarassed?  It’s always the same cops arresting the wrong people.  It’s always the police department who end up with egg on their face.  In fact, to add insult to injury, Perry Mason himself actually solves the crimes and finds the real killers!  The cops here have like a nine percent conviction rate. 

     If I was a baker, and I made tasty cakes NINE percent of the time, I would lose my job.  But these cops somehow keep their jobs, and leave Perry Mason to clean up after them.  I’m cool with it though.  After all, competent cops would make for a less interesting show, and I’m all about some Perry Mason.

Year:  1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1986
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Andy Griffith, Don Knotts, Ron Howard, Frances Bavier, Jim Nabors, Danny Thomas
Creator:  Sheldon Leonard
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I have never before seen the Andy Griffith Show.  Of course, it’s one of those iconic shows that is so famous that I knew all about it.  I know that classic whistling theme music.  I know Andy and Opie and Barney Fife and Gomer Pyle and Aunt Bee.  (To be fair, I know Aunt Bee only because of her appearance on Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C.  Yes, I saw Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. before I saw The Andy Griffith Show.)  At any rate, with the release of the 50th Anniversary collection Best of Mayberry, on DVD December 21st from Paramount Home Entertainment, I was excited to finally sit down and see what this show was all about.

     The Andy Griffith Show was off the air ten years before I was born.  It depicts a community, an ethos and warm-apple-pie values that I am not convinced ever actually existed.  That being said, this is one of those shows that makes me feel nostalgic for something that may never have actually taken place, for a place that was never on any map, for a lazy friendly community that was probably impossible no matter what era.  There’s something terrifically familiar about The Andy Griffith Show, even for someone like me who has never seen it before, and who has never experienced this idyllic portrayal of life in the 60s.

     I assume it’s shows like this one that create that sense among older people today that things were just better back in the 50s and 60s.  Remember how back then, women always made apple pie and cooled it on the window sill, boys would be boys, girls would wear pretty dresses and play with dolls, and every father in America would come home after a hard day’s work, kiss his wife, eat his dinner, and dish out wise advice to his children with appropriate gravitas.  I keep hearing people saying that “family values” were better in this era, that people worked harder and were happier and loved their spouse more and blah blah blah.  Watch Andy Griffith for ten minutes, and I can see that people might think that.

     Then again, watch Andy Griffith for thirty minutes, and you might remember that things really were not as idyllic and lovely as they seem through the revisionist lens of a television camera that shows a non-existent world.  At the end of every episode on this DVD, the characters in the show do a quick endorsement for a product of some kind.  Often it’s coffee and breakfast cereal, sometimes other food.  I love seeing this stuff – I think the scripted endorsements actually make me feel more nostalgic for this time than the show itself. 

     And they are more telling than is the show – especially the one for Jell-O cake mixes, which tells me that the little woman is working herself to distraction in the house, what with the laundry and the cleaning and having to cook dinner – how can we make dessert easier on her?  Well, with the easy-bake Jell-O cake mix, of course!  She will be so much happier if we take nine minutes off her prep time for cakes – and then imagine how the counters will sparkle!  She’ll have nine more minutes to clean!

     So these are my first impressions of The Andy Griffith Show.  My second impression is one of Andy Griffith himself.  I’m very familiar with Griffith from Matlock, because I’ve watched that show for year.  I love me my Matlock.  Now, I’ve never seen Andy Griffith interviewed.  But I suspect that maybe, more than any other actor in the world, he is just like the characters he plays.  I really get the sense that if I were to run into this man today, he would invite me into his house just because, and he would stop by a hot dog cart on the way, and he would have a rocking chair and slippers and extra guitars so he can jam with random guests who stop by.  This is what I picture.

     At any rate, this is a DVD set that I just love.  I think this show was one of the best ever, and it still makes me laugh today.  When Don Knotts gets all smarmy and pompous, I giggle.  He wants to be in the town choir even though his singing makes everyone cringe.  Maybe my favourite episode is the one where he gets into a war with Gomer Pyle over traffic tickets and arrests himself.  And the one with his motorcycle and sidecar is hilarious.

     There isn’t a ton of Gomer Pyle on this DVD set, I guess because he didn’t show up until later.  There’s a lot of Opie and a couple of episodes with the Darlings, a backwoods bunch of Bluegrass-playing hicks with a slutty daughter.  The special features are great too – the first episode on the first disc is the episode of the Danny Thomas Show which introduced sheriff Andy Taylor and his family to the world, and the final disc has the TV movie Return To Mayberry, where Andy Griffith, Ron Howard, Don Knotts, Jim Nabors and twelve other cast members reunited to drum up some nostalgia.  And there’s a monster in a lake, a plot straight out of Scooby-Doo.  Well…not everything in the Andy Griffith Show can be a winner, I guess.

Year:  1962
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Fred MacMurray, William Frawley
Producer:  Don Fedderson
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I have complained in the past about the trite sitcom scenarios in My Three Sons.  In the years since this show was on the air, sitcoms have come and gone, and nothing about My Three Sons feels new any more.  And that takes away a lot of the funny, although the cast remains excellent.  In watching Season Two, Volume Two, out June 15th from Paramount Home Entertainment, I did realize that there are little things in the show that make it worth checking out again.

     Mostly, it’s the fact that this show is terrifically dated.  In a sort of neat, time-capsule sort of way.  The first episode of Season Two Volume Two sees Bub getting a job.  See, he finds an ad in the paper advertising “Housewives Rebel!”  It was a long time ago, of course.  Housewives still needed to rebel – by getting a part-time job to relieve the tedium of housework, you see.  And Bub (as was hilarious at the time) is essentially a housewife.  So away he goes.  And although the little things are intriguing – the prim and proper ladies at the employment office, the vaguely misogynist feel of all job opportunities – the rest of the show plays out like a standard sitcom.  A funny, but terribly dated sitcom.

“Oh…Lucy!”

Year:  1962-1963
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Lucille Ball, Vivian Vance
Director:  Maury Thompson, Jack Donohue
Run time:  12 hours, 53 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Lucille Ball followed up I Love Lucy with The Lucy Show, a distinctly different sit-com that saw her co-starring with Vivian Vance as room-mates living with two small children. The show is different from I Love Lucy mainly in that it isn’t as good.  The Lucy Show, for some reason, has about 20 or 30 episodes floating out there in the public domain, which means they are available on extremely cheap, extremely half-assed DVDs if you know where to look.  I purchased about six episodes thrown together on a bargain-basement DVD packaged with cardboard and scotch tape at Wal-Mart about three years ago for 46 cents or so.  It sucked and the sound was terrible.

     I still like The Lucy Show. And Lucille Ball is still as charming and funny as ever. But The Lucy Show relies less on her crazy ideas and silliness than it does on having her get into awkward situations and then make them worse. For example, in one episode, Lucy decides to referee the kids’ football game. Of course she screws it up, and the teams have to forfeit the game, so they can’t go to the NFL game that week. Lucy decides she can fix the mess, but a freak snowstorm makes things worse, and worse, and worse, until everyone is extremely uncomfortable.

     Or, she gets a job as a volunteer firefighter and – surprise surprise oh the irony – sets the station on…fire!  Or, she somehow manages to get six different men to show up at her house all at once to take her and Vivian out on dates.  Come to think of it…isn’t it odd when the two stars of a show go by the same first names as the actors who play those characters?  I get it with Lucy, but…anyway.  Then there is the episode where she and Vivian attempt to install a television antenna themselves, which amazingly results in disaster…well, you get the point.

     It’s a formula that would be followed by Ellen DeGeneres and a ton of others, but Lucille Ball was always the best of them.  Now The Lucy Show comes to DVD officially for the first time with the release of Season One on July 21st by Paramount Home Entertainment. It’s good, but it’s no I Love Lucy.  Thankfully, with this real, official release, the sound and picture quality are good, there is a high standard of production that is maintained, and you are far better picking this up than you are going piecemeal style through the Wal-Mart rejects bin.  If that sounds like faint praise, it…probably is.

“I said you, Valance.  You pick it up.”

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      That quote is from one of the most badass scenes in the history of western movies.  John Ford, the director of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, understands that what make westerns badass and thrilling is not the gunfight itself.  It’s the tension and the dialogue that lead up to the gunfight.  In this particular scene, Lee Marvin, as Liberty Valance, and John Wayne, as Tom Doniphon, have one of the all-time great staredowns in movie history.  In the end, neither man wins, as Liberty Valance does not pick up the steak, but Doniphon does drive him out of the restaurant.  There is no killing, but it’s a far more tense situation than many of the gunfights that DO result in killing in western movies.

   “Liberty Valance is the toughest man south of the picket wire – next to me.”

     John Ford understands a lot more than just western tough-guy dialogue and the classic staredowns.  He understands how to make film as literature.  A famously cantankerous man, he would never really discuss his filmmaking techniques (as you can plainly see in several of the special features on the second disc in this edition).  But Liberty Valance, like The Searchers before it, plays as though it is a book opened up onto a screen.  In this case, the story is the mythology of the old west, and the transition from the tough-guy gunslingers like Tom Doniphon to the law-and-order politicians like Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart).

   “Take ‘er easy there, Pilgrim.”

     Whenever you hear someone imitating John Wayne and saying “Pilgrim”, it comes from this movie.  This is how he refers to Stewart, who has come out west to seek his fame and fortune as a lawyer.  Tom Doniphon is no fan of lawyers.  He thinks it’s pretty foolish of Stoddard to be setting up shop in tiny Shinbone, because a gun is the law of the land out there.  There will be no arresting the notorious outlaw Liberty Valance.  The only way a man like that will see justice is at the end of a gun barrel.  And of course, that IS how he receives justice, in the end.

     In the meantime, Stoddard and Doniphon are both in love with the same woman (Vera Miles), and there is tension between the two.  When Stoddard begins to inspire the townspeople to be involved in politics and government, the tension between him and the lawless Valance incresases as well.  It all comes to a boil in one of the most memorable scenes ever, where the old west style of gun-barrel justice meets the new west style of law, order, government and rules.  But the end is just one of the incredibly powerful scenes in this masterful movie.

     This is not one of Ford’s sweeping, epic westerns.  There are no vast desert landscapes and mountain settings, like in The Searchers or Stagecoach.  This is a closed-in, little set with a closed-in, little story.  But it’s one of the great ones, and it IS my favourite western of all time.  There are maybe seven westerns that I think can be in the discussion about the best ever.  The Searchers, High Noon, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Unforgiven, The Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

     Note – two of those star John Wayne.  Two star Clint Eastwood.  But three star Lee Van Cleef.  (He had very minor bit roles in High Noon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and of course he was The Bad in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.)  But for me, Liberty Valance remains the best, because it’s the one to which I always return.  John Wayne has never been more badass, and he has never been a better actor (maybe in The Searchers).  Jimmy Stewart has only been better once – Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, in a movie where he plays a very similar character.  And John Ford never again made a movie even close to Liberty Valance.  This was his last truly great film.

     And it is truly great.  And so is the Centennial Collection edition, out May 19th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  There is a full second disc of special features, including interviews and selected commentary from Lee Marvin and Jimmy Stewart and John Ford (of course, they are all taped interviews from many years ago).  Stewart talks about acting a lot, and that’s fascinating.  And John Ford is cantankerous, which is fun.  There is also a 7-part, in-depth featurette called The Size of Legends, The Soul of Myth, which features many of the same recorded interviews and conversations.  Pick this one up.  Now.  It’s one of the greatest of all time.

   “This is the west, sir.  When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”