I watched two holiday movies this Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street and Meet Me in St. Louis. I love Natalie Wood, I love Judy Garland. Here’s something interesting about these old chestnuts, it was my first time seeing both.
In a nutshell, they surprised me:
- 34th Street was not the charmer I expected—but I enjoyed the ‘retail wars’ and even at this age, Natalie Wood’s talent was remarkable.
- I’ve seen clips of Judy Garland singing “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” so many times over the years, I figured the rest of the movie was unnecessary. I was wrong of course, and Margaret O’Brien as Judy’s death-obsessed sister Tootie was a real treat.
Now that the holiday viewing is over, here are 9 boring random facts about myself and television I thought I’d share.
1. The movie “M*A*S*H” from 1970 with Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould? Never saw it, plan to someday. I’ve never watched the 1970s tv show MASH with Alan Alda either. I don’t plan to.
2. Remember when everyone was wondering “Who shot JR” on Dallas in 1980? I wasn’t, I’ve never seen the show. Here’s some other shows from the 1980s I’ve never seen: Cagney & Lacey, The A Team, Dukes of Hazard, Remington Steele, Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues, Magnum PI, Knots Landing, MacGyver, Married with Children.
3. Murder She Wrote (1984-1996) & Baywatch (1989-2001) both ran for 12 years and I only saw one episode of each.
4. The Mary Tyler Moore Show is my second all-time favorite show—when I was a kid, my Uncle Shane told me that Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show was Mary Tyler Moore’s kid sister and I believed this until MY MID TWENTIES.
5. When Happy Days premiered on January 15 1974, I was more excited to see it than anyone. But earlier that night I’d been terrorizing my little sister with stories about spooks in our basement, so I got sent to my room and missed that first episode.
When ABC repeated it that summer, I asked if I could spend the night at my friend Dan’s house to ensure I wouldn’t do something stupid and miss it again. That night at Dan’s, 10 minutes before the show, there was a big storm and their electric went out.
It would be 20+ years before I FINALLY saw the first episode on TV Land!
6. For as long as I can remember, The Ten Commandments has aired the Saturday before Easter. I may be a heathen but I watch it every year, and when God instructs Moses to “Put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place where thou stands is holy ground” I become a Christian for the next couple days.
(I’m usually a heathen again by late Monday, early Tuesday morning.)
7. I have never missed an episode of Saturday Night Live (which premiered on October 11, 1975) until their current season. 48 years of SNL is quite enough for this old noodle of mine, thanks.
8. The older I get, the less network television I watch. I’m down to 2 shows: Matlock (the new one with Kathy Bates) and Elsbeth (from the makers of The Good Wife), both on CBS.
9. When I was 10-11 years old, I fell in love with Barbara Eden on I Dream of Jeannie. When my mom saw a record album with Barbara Eden on the front, she bought it for me—not knowing the various celebrities (and Barbara) on the album weren’t singing songs, but speaking on behalf of the Epilepsy Foundation in 1969.
By unlucky coincidence, in my early teens I was diagnosed with epilepsy. When the doctor told my parents, my mom told him about Barbara Eden and that Epilepsy album. She asked if my subconscious could be causing my seizures, to win Barbara’s approval. The doctor told her no, the subconscious couldn’t do that.
Here’s that album. Mom’s theory sounded good to me then, still does. Love you Mom… you too Barbara.
