I had forgotten that Happy Days actually gave Fonzie his own dance.
This is from the 1979 episode “Stolen Melodies,” and the setup is pure Happy Days. Leather Tuscadero, played by real-life rocker Suzi Quatro, has written a song called “Moonlight Love.” After auditioning for the television show National Sok Hop, the song suddenly turns up credited to another group.
Naturally, Fonzie isn’t going to let that slide.
He shows up at the TV studio, confronts the people involved and eventually takes over the microphone himself. Instead of letting the other band introduce its new dance, Fonzie brings out Leather and announces a brand-new one:
“Do the Fonzie.”
And then the Fonz actually has to dance.
The song was written especially for the show by Jim Dunne and performed by Suzi Quatro. The dancing was choreographed by Shirley Kirkes, so somebody really did have the job of figuring out exactly how Fonzie should dance without making the coolest guy on television look completely ridiculous.
Quatro was already a successful rock singer and bass player when she joined Happy Days as Leather Tuscadero. She later recalled that she was touring Japan when the show called her back to audition for the role.
By this point Fonzie had become such a pop-culture phenomenon that Happy Days could invent an entire dance around him and it somehow made perfect sense.
And just about a year later, one of Henry Winkler’s famous Fonzie leather jackets went into the Smithsonian.
Do you remember “Do the Fonzie” — and would you have tried this dance at a sock hop?
Tag: vintage television
Gomer Pyle Sings — The Voice Nobody Expected
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. was mandatory viewing in our house. My dad was a Marine sergeant, so there was no missing it.
Like everyone else, I knew Gomer for the “Shazam!”, the “Goooolly!”, and the way he could drive Sergeant Carter absolutely crazy. That was the Gomer we expected every week.
What I didn’t expect was that voice.
The first time I remember hearing Jim Nabors really sing, everybody in our house stopped and paid attention. That huge baritone just didn’t seem possible coming from the same guy we knew as Gomer Pyle.
What I learned later is that television audiences had actually heard Nabors sing before Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. even premiered. He showed off that voice on The Andy Griffith Show in 1964, and by 1965 Columbia Records had released his first album, Shazam!
By 1967, the show was fully embracing Jim Nabors the singer, including his powerful performance of “The Impossible Dream.”
That contrast is what made him so memorable to me. One minute he was making us laugh, and the next he could stop the room with that voice.
I still remember everyone in our house listening — including my Marine-sergeant dad.
Do you remember the first time you heard Gomer Pyle sing?
“WHAT IS THIS, SOME SORT OF PEYTON PLACE?”
This was a little before my time, but I certainly remember my parents and other adults saying, “What is this, some sort of Peyton Place?”
For years I understood what they meant even if I didn’t really know why they were saying it.
Take a look at this 1964-65 opening to Peyton Place. A church steeple. Bells ringing. A peaceful little New England town. Then that wonderfully serious voice announces, “This is the continuing story of Peyton Place.”
Everything looks so respectable.
And that was the joke.
Behind those neat houses and small-town manners were affairs, family secrets, violence, alcoholism, mental breakdowns and murder. Peyton Place became so culturally famous that the name itself turned into shorthand for a seemingly respectable place where everybody had something going on behind closed doors. New Hampshire Magazine notes that “Peyton Place” had already become a synonym for scandal after Grace Metalious’ hugely successful 1956 novel.
The television version arrived on ABC on September 15, 1964, starring Dorothy Malone, Mia Farrow, Ryan O’Neal, Barbara Parkins and Ed Nelson. It was revolutionary television — a continuing prime-time story airing not once but twice each week. It became so popular that ABC eventually bumped it up to three nights a week.
And here’s something I never knew about this opening. The announcer is Dick Tufeld. One year later, television audiences would know that same voice as the Robot on Lost in Space — yes, the man behind “Danger, Will Robinson!”
Even the music has history. The theme was composed by Franz Waxman, who had also scored the 1957 Peyton Place movie.
The series lasted until June 2, 1969, producing an incredible 514 episodes.
But I think its greatest legacy may be that the show’s name escaped television entirely.
For a whole generation, you didn’t need to explain the gossip, secrets or drama.
You just called the place “Peyton Place.”
Do you remember your parents saying that — and did you know what they meant even if you’d never watched the show?
Branded
I remember Branded, but what sticks with me most isn’t the stories—it’s that theme song.
And I also remember that we had all kinds of our own reworded versions of it as kids. I can’t remember exactly what ours were anymore, but I know we weren’t singing the real words!
Branded premiered on NBC on January 24, 1965, starring Chuck Connors as former U.S. Army Captain Jason McCord. The entire premise was explained before the episode even started:
McCord was the only survivor of the Battle of Bitter Creek. Because everyone else had died, the Army concluded that he had abandoned his men and fled. He was court-martialed, stripped of his rank and publicly drummed out of the cavalry as a coward.
But McCord wasn’t a coward.
The tragedy had actually resulted from decisions made by his commanding officer, and McCord refused to disgrace the dead by publicly revealing everything he knew. So wherever he went, people knew him as the man who supposedly ran away, and each episode gave him another chance to prove what kind of man he really was.
And that opening was hard to forget — his insignia ripped off, his buttons removed, his sword broken in half and the fort gates slammed behind him.
The theme was written by composer Dominic Frontiere with lyrics by Alan Alch. Frontiere also supplied music for the series. The song was unusual because instead of simply introducing the show, it told you the whole setup in less than a minute.
Branded lasted only two seasons and 48 episodes, ending April 24, 1966. And here’s something I never realized: the television series never gave Jason McCord the big final exoneration the whole story seemed to be building toward. The show simply ended.
Interestingly, a feature-film reworking of the three-part episode The Mission, released as Broken Sabre, reportedly gave McCord a happier resolution in that version — but viewers of the weekly television series never got that ending.
For me, though, it still comes back to that song.
I know we weren’t the only kids who changed the words to the Branded theme. What version do YOU remember singing?
CBS NFL Today 1977 — When Sunday Football Started With Brent, Phyllis and Irv
There are certain sounds that can immediately take you back, and this old CBS NFL opening from 1977 does it for me.
Before RedZone, fantasy-football apps and having practically every game available somewhere, Sunday afternoon football meant turning on one of the three networks. If you were watching the NFC, chances are you were watching CBS.
And The NFL Today had become part of the ritual.
There was Brent Musburger, Irv Cross and Phyllis George, with Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder contributing his predictions. What I never really appreciated at the time was how groundbreaking that desk was. Cross became the first Black man working full-time as a national television sports analyst, while George — the former Miss America — helped open a door for women in network sports broadcasting that had barely existed before.
And then there’s that music. The theme was called “Horizontal Hold,” written by Jan Stoeckart under the name Jack Trombey. Hear a few seconds of it and suddenly it feels like Sunday afternoon again.
The football itself was different too. 1977 was the last 14-game NFL season. The league had already voted that spring to expand to 16 games beginning in 1978, along with an expanded playoff format.
CBS had the NFC, NBC had the AFC, and ABC had Monday Night Football. Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier were CBS’s top game announcers, and there were no streaming packages or instant access to every matchup.
The NFL Today became so successful that its studio format helped establish the blueprint for the pregame shows we still watch today. CBS eventually lost NFL football when Fox took the NFC package beginning in 1994, but The NFL Today returned in 1998 when CBS came back with the AFC.
Does hearing this opening bring back Sunday afternoons in your house — and who do you remember most: Brent, Phyllis, Irv or Jimmy the Greek?
ABC “Meet Us in September” — 1969
I remember this song like it was yesterday, played dozens of times a day on ABC to promote the new season. I was hoping to find the writer or performer of the song, but no luck this time.
“Meet Us in September” was ABC’s big promotional campaign for the fall of 1969, and looking back at what ABC was introducing that season, they had plenty to promote. The Brady Bunch, Marcus Welby, M.D., Room 222, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Love, American Style and ABC’s Movie of the Week were all part of that new season.
The graphics in this clip were created by Harry Marks, one of the pioneers of television motion graphics. That same year Marks worked with Douglas Trumbull, who had done groundbreaking visual-effects work on 2001: A Space Odyssey, to create the memorable opening for ABC’s Movie of the Week.
I really thought finding out who wrote and sang the catchy “Meet Us in September” jingle would be the easy part. Surprisingly, the surviving archival material credits Marks for the visuals but doesn’t identify a songwriter or the studio singers. Rather than guess and attach somebody’s name to it, we’ll have to leave that one a mystery for now.
ABC was still battling CBS and NBC for viewers, but this season brought some major successes. Marcus Welby finished #8 during its first season and, the following year, became the first ABC series ever to finish #1 in the ratings.
It’s funny how a little network promo like this can stick in your head for more than half a century. Does anyone else remember ABC playing “Meet Us in September” over and over as the new fall season approached?
Room 222
Watching this old Room 222 preview made me wonder — was high school really like this in 1969, or was this Hollywood’s version of what they thought it should be?
The show premiered on ABC on September 17, 1969, and from what I found, the answer is a little of both.
The producers actually tried hard to make the school feel real. Writers were required to spend time in classrooms at Los Angeles High School and other area schools so they could pick up the clothing, slang, attitudes and atmosphere of a real big-city high school. Much of the series was filmed at Los Angeles High as well.
So the mini-skirts, Afros, racial mix, students questioning authority and discussions about Vietnam, race and changing social values weren’t simply dreamed up for television. Those things were happening.
But I also don’t think everybody watching at home saw their own high school reflected here. A suburban or small-town school could have looked very different, and Pete Dixon, played by Lloyd Haynes, was probably a little more patient and understanding than some of the teachers we remember!
The cast had some interesting backgrounds too. Denise Nicholas, who played Liz McIntyre, had actually worked in the Civil Rights Movement. Michael Constantine won an Emmy as Principal Kaufman and decades later became the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Karen Valentine also won an Emmy for the first season.
And here’s one I had completely forgotten — that wonderfully laid-back theme was written by Jerry Goldsmith. He used an unusual seven-beat rhythm for it, years before scoring movies such as The Omen, Patton and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
So maybe Room 222 wasn’t exactly everyone’s high-school experience, but it seems it was trying much harder to reflect real students and real issues than I ever realized.
For those of you who were actually in high school around 1969 — did your school look and feel anything like Room 222?
Remember Holmes & Yo-Yo? ABC’s Short-Lived Robot Cop Sitcom
Here’s one of those shows where you mention the title and somebody immediately says, “I remember that!” — even though Holmes & Yo-Yo barely lasted three months during its original run.
It premiered on ABC in September 1976, with Richard B. Shull playing accident-prone detective Alexander Holmes and John Schuck as his new partner, Gregory “Yo-Yo” Yoyonovich. The catch was that Yo-Yo wasn’t really a cop at all — he was an experimental android programmed for police work. ABC put it on Saturday nights at 8:00, opposite The Jeffersons and Emergency!, which certainly wasn’t an easy place for a new comedy to survive.
Only 11 episodes aired before ABC pulled it in December 1976. Two more were sitting on the shelf and finally turned up the following August, bringing the complete series to just 13 episodes.
There was actually a surprising amount of talent behind this little show. Executive producer Leonard Stern had worked on Get Smart and McMillan & Wife — and was also one of the guys who invented Mad Libs. The theme came from Dick Halligan of Blood, Sweat & Tears, John Astin directed two episodes, and a young John Landis even received a story credit before Animal House made him famous.
TV Guide later put Holmes & Yo-Yo at #33 on its list of the 50 worst television shows, but I’m not sure that tells the entire story. Half a century later, people are still asking, “Does anybody else remember that show with the robot cop?”
Do you remember actually watching Holmes & Yo-Yo, or is this one of those shows where you mainly remember the opening and the idea behind it?
My Favorite Martian
When I think of My Favorite Martian, I really don’t remember watching it as a first-run show — I remember the repeats. After looking into it, I have a feeling I’m far from alone.
The show originally aired Sunday nights at 7:30 on CBS from 1963 through 1966, right after Lassie and immediately before The Ed Sullivan Show. And here’s something I never really thought about: at the same time over on NBC, it was going head-to-head with Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. That’s quite a Sunday night television lineup!
The opening I’m showing here is from 1965, when My Favorite Martian finally made the jump to color for its third and final season. The first 75 episodes were black-and-white, while only the last 32 were produced in color. Production also moved from Desilu to MGM that final year.
But here’s why so many of us may remember the show from later. Almost immediately after the CBS run ended, My Favorite Martian went into syndication. I found a 1967 television-industry advertisement promoting all 107 episodes to stations as “The Martian Strip,” with the show already running or being sold in major markets around the country.
So while Uncle Martin originally belonged to Sunday nights, reruns probably created a whole second generation of viewers who never really thought about when the show originally aired. I think I’m one of them.
And once that George Greeley theme starts, I’m right back there again!
Do you remember watching My Favorite Martian on Sunday nights, or like me, do you mostly remember it from the reruns?
Liberace Feelin’ Groovy
This may be one of the strangest—and most wonderfully 1968—things I’ve come across in a while. That’s Liberace getting “groovy” with The Youngfolk on The Red Skelton Hour on March 5, 1968.
And The Youngfolk weren’t just a bunch of dancers thrown together for the show. They were an actual seven-member Los Angeles folk group who recorded for United Artists and had already made several appearances with Red Skelton.
The song, of course, was Paul Simon’s “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy).” Simon & Garfunkel recorded it on August 16, 1966—which, amazingly, was 60 years ago this week. Their version wasn’t originally the big single, though. Harpers Bizarre turned it into a #13 hit in 1967 with an arrangement by Leon Russell.
What I love about this clip is watching television try to interpret the whole flower-power generation for a mainstream audience. Giant flowers, bright colors, “groovy” slang—and right in the middle of it all is Liberace, completely committing to the bit.
Even better, Paul Simon eventually admitted he really didn’t care for this song and once jokingly used it as his own punishment after making a mistake onstage!
Do you remember seeing variety shows trying to get “hip” like this back in the late ’60s?