12/15/1972: Week Two

December 15, 1972  (Friday)

It was one week after I was born, and today was the day my mother and I were finally due to be released from hospital. However, the city was hit with a heavy snowstorm that day and the hospital felt it best for us to remain until it had passed, thus delaying our homecoming for at least another day.

Elsewhere, in the world outside the hospital I had yet to see, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was established as a specialized agency of the United Nations.  This program would coordinate the U.N.'s environmental activities, assisting developing countries in implementing environmentally sound policies and practices.  The program was created by a vote of 112-0 of the U.N. General Assembly.

On the other side of the world, the Commonwealth of Australia Conciliation and Arbitration Commission issued a decision ordaining equal pay for women.

*     *     *

Released into record stores today was Piledriver, the fifth album by British rock band Status Quo.  

After their previous two albums had suffered from relatively poor sales, Status Quo departed from Pye Records.  They subsequently had their major breakthrough when they signed with the heavy rock and progressive label Vertigo.  Their first album for that label was Piledriver, which they chose to self-produce.  The album heralded a heavier sound for the band (before then, they had dabbled in both pop psychedelia and a hard rock/boogie sound) and became the stylistic template for all of their future albums until the mid-'70s.

Only one single was released from the album, "Paper Plane."  The song peaked at #8 on the UK singles charts.  It would be the first of 33 consecutive Top 40 hits for the band.  Piledriver itself peaked at #5 on the UK album charts, spending 37 weeks there.

Standout tracks for me, aside from the aforementioned "Paper Plane," were "A Year" and "Big Fat Mama."

*     *     *

On television tonight, much of the three major networks' regular primetime programming did not air, substituted instead by reruns or various TV specials, old and new.

On CBS, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour was a repeat episode, which was followed by the broadcast of a movie, 1967's The Ambushers, starring Dean Martin as super-sleuth Matt Helm.

ABC aired encore presentations of two animated Christmas specials.  This was followed by a brand-new comedy/musical special, Love Is... Barbara Eden.  IMDb's description of the show is as follows:  "The subject is Love and Barbara Eden is the star of an hour of song, comedy, and romance looking at the many kinds of Love in music."  Robert Goulet, Charley Pride, and Tim Conway also starred.

At 10 p.m. on ABC was the broadcast of John Lennon & Yoko Ono Present One-to-One Concert.  Recorded at Madison Square Garden in New York City on August 30, this was a benefit concert for the Willowbrook Institution for Retarded Children, organized by Lennon, Yoko, and Geraldo Rivera.  There were two concerts performed that day, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, both of which were edited into a single, hour-long television special.  The show featured performances by Roberta Flack, Stevie Wonder, Melanie, Sha-Na-Na, and, of course, John & Yoko themselves.

Only NBC's Friday night primetime line-up remained unchanged, with new episodes of Sanford & Son, The Brian Keith Show, Ghost Story, and Banyon.

Sanford & Son, episode 27 (or #2.13), was entitled, "Fred & Carol & Fred & Donna," written by Lloyd Garver and Ken Hecht and directed by Rick Edelstein.

In this episode, Fred begins two-timing his fiancée, Donna (Lynn Hamilton), with an attractive door-to-door saleswoman, Carol (Kim Hamilton), but then pays for his mistake when he accidentally invites them both over for dinner on the same evening.

Not a consistently funny episode, though it does have its moments.  Most of the laughs come from watching Fred squirm throughout the dinner, attempting some fancy "juggling" in order to avoid a total catastrophe, while Lamont watches the entire proceedings with amusement.  There are also a few funny lines, such as during Fred's flirting with Carol, and some amusing verbal exchanges between Fred and Lamont.  My favorite of these occurs when Lamont chastises his father for his two-timing ways:

FRED:  Listen, Lamont, I'm not married.  I still gotta sow some wild oats.

LAMONT:  Pop, at your age, you ain't got no wild oats.  You got Shredded Wheat.

This was not Lynn Hamilton's first appearance as "Nurse Donna" and, in spite of Fred's behavior this episode, it would not be her last.  Donna first appeared during the first season episode "The Barracuda" (which is what Lamont derisively called) and throughout the early run of the run of the series, Lamont was openly hostile, even ambivalent, towards her, as he saw Donna as a threat to his personal relationship and business partnership with his father.  He also saw her and Fred as trying to "smear his mother's memory" and tried to break them up on more than one occasion (this episode being one of them).  As the series progressed, however, Lamont began to warm up to Donna, becoming close friends in the care of the aging Fred, and they would often serve as the dual foil to many of his later antics and schemes.

Finally, on late-night TV, Johnny Carson's guests on The Tonight Show were singer/actor Sammy Davis, Jr., actress and comedian Sandy Duncan (currently the star of her own CBS sitcom, The Sandy Duncan Show), veteran comic actor Mickey Rooney, and musical guest Melanie.

*     *     *

That night, my father went to bed anxiously awaiting the time -- which would be very soon now -- when he would finally have his wife and infant son at home with him where they belonged.

12/11/1972: Man of La Mancha and a Moon Landing

December 11, 1972  (Monday)

While my mother continued to spend the next few days in hospital recovering from my birth, a noteworthy moment in the history of space travel took place.

Mankind landed on the moon for the sixth and final time, as the Apollo 17 lunar module, which had launched on December 7, touched down at the Taurus-Litrow crater at 1:54 p.m. Houston time.  The three-member crew consisted of Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module pilot Harrison Schmidt.  The first moonwalk of the mission began approximately four hours after landing, at about 6:55 p.m.

Back on Earth, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union declared "Don't Buy Farah Day," which asked Americans nationwide to boycott the non-union Farah Manufacturing, one of the largest clothing makers in the United States, in protest over low wages and benefits.  During the course of a strike that lasted from May 1972 to March 1974, Farah's sales dropped by twenty million dollars.

NHL player Daniel Alfredsson was born in Gothenburg, Sweden.  He would grow up to play for the Ottawa Senators and, later, the Detroit Red Wings.

*     *     *

1972 was a notable year for The Rolling Stones.  Not only was it the band's 10th anniversary, but they had also, earlier in the year, released Exile on Main St., the album widely considered to be their greatest.  On this date, they also released a new compilation album - the follow-up to their hugely successful 1971 compilation Hot Rocks 1964-1971.

More Hot Rocks (big hits and fazed cookies) featured the hits that could not be shoehorned onto its predecessor, as well as many tracks that until now had only been available in the UK. The record eventually reached #9 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart and sold over 500,000 copies in the U.S. alone.

On a personal note, this album is one I have in my collection, making More Hot Rocks the first album that was released in my lifetime that I own.

*     *     *

As I wrote in the previous blog entry, Hollywood's standard practice of releasing new movies into theaters on Fridays didn't exist prior to the mid-'70s, and, as such, new films could open any day of the week.  Therefore, it wasn't uncommon in the early '70s for one to find, on any given week, a different new release opening in theaters every day, several days in a row.  Such was the case during the first week I was born, with new films released every day from December 10-13.   The second of those films, released when I was but three days old, was Man of La Mancha.

Man of La Mancha was based on the stage musical by Dale Wasserman, with music and lyrics by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion, which in turn was inspired by Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote.  The play had won numerous Tony Awards during its original Broadway production and has played in many other countries around the world.  The show's success made it inevitable that a Hollywood film adaptation would eventually follow.

The film version starred Peter O'Toole as both Miguel de Cervantes and Don Quixote, Sophia Loren as the scullery maid and prostitute Aldonza, whom the delusional Don Quixote idolizes as "Dulcinea," and James Coco as both Cervantes' manservant and Don Quixote's "squire," Sancho Panza. The only member of the original Broadway cast to reprise his role was Gino Conforti, who played The Barber.

The movie had a troubled production history, with numerous casting changes, disputes between the play's creators and United Artists executives, and a revolving door of screenwriters and directors.  (Arthur Hiller was the final, credited director.)  As such, it's hardly surprising that the final product, like most films that go through several creative hands, was perceived as a colossal mess and a failure, and it received overwhelmingly negative reviews from most film critics.  Even Dale Wasserman, the play's creator, strongly disliked the film, calling it "exaggerated" and "phony."

As for my own opinion of the film, although I liked Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren's performances, I thought the entire production reeked of artifice and cheap sentiment, the pacing was poor and plodding, the production design was sub-par, and the staging of the musical numbers lacked any real energy.  I've never seen the original stage production, but I'm sure the material was much better served on the stage than it was on the screen.  

I'd never seen the film version of Man of La Mancha before now.  It was just one of those movies I'd never gotten around to seeing nor had any inclination to check out, even though Peter O'Toole is an actor I've always admired.  When was the last time you were at a video store and either said or overheard someone saying, "Hey, let's rent Man of La Mancha!"?  Now that I have seen it for the purposes of the Retrospective, I can now be thankful that I will never have any other reason to slog through it again.

*     *     *

Monday.  The end of the weekend and the start of a new week.  On TV, that meant the networks resumed their regular weekday programming.

Daytime television at this time consisted of children's shows like Sesame Street and The Electric Company; game shows like The New Price is Right (with its new host, Bob Barker), The Newlywed Game, and The Hollywood Squares, among many others; daytime talk shows like Dinah's Place and The Mike Douglas Show; and soap operas such as All My Children, General Hospital, One Life to Live (on ABC) Search for Tomorrow, As the World Turns, Guiding Light (on CBS), and Days of Our Lives, The Doctors, and Another World (on NBC).

In the evening, CBS's primetime line-up consisted of new episodes of Gunsmoke (still on the air for an impressive 18th season!), Here's Lucy, and The Doris Day Show.  NBC aired new episodes of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.  And on ABC -- before NFL Monday Night Football, which broadcast a game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders (Oakland won, 24-16, for any interested parties) -- was the latest episode of their newest police drama, The Rookies.

Having begun as an ABC Movie of the Week back in March, The Rookies debuted as a weekly series on September 11.  The show centered around three rookie police officers, Mike Danko (Sam Melville), Terry Webster (Georg Stanford Brown), and Willie Gillis (Michael Ontkean), and their superior officer/mentor, Lieutenant Ryker (Gerald S. O'Loughlin).  Produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, each episode of the show would showcase highly dramatized versions of police cases and activities, often intertwined with the off-duty lives of the officers and their significant others, though Danko was the only rookie who was married, to Jill Danko (Kate Jackson), a registered nurse.

Back row:  Michael Ontkean, Sam Melville, Georg Stanford Brown
Front:  a pre-Charlie's Angels Kate Jackson

This week's episode (#12), entitled "A Bloody Shade of Blue," was written by William Binn and directed by TV veteran E.W. Swackhamer.  (Always loved that name.)  The plot involved a pair of snipers who are shooting indiscriminately at anyone dressed in a police uniform.  Webster becomes their most recent target and, although he survives the attempt on his life, he temporarily loses his eyesight.

And finally, on late-night TV, Johnny Carson continued to dominate the airwaves as host of The Tonight Show, the only late-night talk-show on television.  Johnny's guests that night were legendary comedian Steve Allen (who also happened to guest star on tonight's episode of Laugh-In) and Dr. Irwin Maxwell Stillman, creator of the Stillman Diet.

12/8/1972: And So It Begins

The year was 1972.

Richard Nixon had recently been re-elected for his second term in the White House.  Here in Canada, Pierre Trudeau had become Prime Minister again.  The war in Vietnam was still raging, although peace negotiations were in progress.  Germany was still divided and the Soviet Union still existed.  The Beatles had broken up two years before, but all four members were still alive.  And Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift were still decades away from being unleashed upon an unsuspecting populace.

1972 was a Leap Year that began on a Saturday.  And within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), it was the longest year in history, as two leap-seconds were added -- one on January 1, the other on December 31 -- an event which has not since been repeated.  (Anyone who is curious about Coordinated Universal Time and what it all means, you read about it here.)

December 8, 1972 (Friday)

Dr. Mahmoud Hamshari, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) representative in France, was fatally wounded by a bomb, planted near his telephone by agents of Israel's Mossad, in retaliation for his suspected role in the 1972 massacre at the Munich Winter Olympics.  After the explosive had been placed while Hamshari was absent, a Mossad agent posing as a journalist telephoned him and asked enough questions to confirm his identity.  The bomb was then detonated by remote control, possibly by a signal through the telephone line, making Hamshari the second target in the Mossad's "Operation Wrath of God."

United Airlines Flight 553 Boeing 737 from Washington to Chicago crashed at 2:29 p.m. while attempting to land at Chicago's Midway Airport during an ice storm.  43 of the 61 people aboard were killed, as were two people in a house at 3722 W. 70th Place.  The dead included Dorothy Hunt (a CIA employee and the wife of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt), CBS News reporter Michelle Clark, and Illinois Congressman George W. Collins.  Hunt was revealed to have been carrying $10,000 in her purse when the plane crashed, leading some to allege that she was supplying the Watergate defendants with money for legal expenses.

Meanwhile, in the fabled northern land known as Canada, in the southeastern Ontario town of Cornwall, I slid headfirst out of a vagina with no clothes on into the freshly-shaven crotch of a screaming woman.

This monumental event occurred at approximately 8:30 a.m. at the Cornwall General Hospital.  I weighed 9 lbs., 2-1/2 oz., hence the aforementioned screaming.  I was the firstborn child to my parents, who had been married nearly 16 months when I came along.  At the time, my father was a truck driver, and my mother, until she went on maternity leave, worked in the packing department at MCA Records.  Mom couldn't recall what the weather was like that day, but she does remember that there was already snow on the ground.

In record stores, Marvin Gaye's twelfth studio album, Trouble Man, was released.

Following the success of his previous album, What's Going On, Gaye won creative control of his music, as well as a renewed $1 million contract, making him the most profitable R&B artist of all time.  After the success of Isaac Hayes' soundtrack to Shaft and Curtis Mayfield's for Superfly, Gaye was offered the chance to compose a film soundtrack of his own, one for the blaxploitation crime thriller, Trouble Man.  Gaye not only composed and produced the film's soundtrack but its musical score as well.

The title track was released as a single, and its success bolstered the album into the Billboard Top 200 albums, where it peaked at #12.  The album would be Gaye's first and only soundtrack and film score.

On TV, ABC's Friday night line-up that season consisted of returning shows like The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222, and The Odd Couple.  NBC aired new episodes of The Brian Keith Show, the anthology series Ghost Story, Banyon (starring Robert Forster), and, of course... Sanford and Son.

For any readers too young to be familiar with the show, Sanford and Son was a half-hour sitcom that starred comedian Redd Foxx as Fred Sanford, a bigoted and cantankerous old junk dealer who ran a junk and antique dealership with his son, Lamont (Demond Wilson), who was usually a peacemaker and more conscientious.  At times, both characters would involve themselves in schemes.  Based on the BBC sitcom Steptoe & Son, the show was adapted by Norman Lear and was considered NBC's answer to All in the Family.

The series debuted in January 1972 as a mid-season replacement for the cancelled The D.A., and as such, the first season only ran for 14 episodes.  But the show returned for a second, full season in September.

I never saw the show as a kid, although I had heard of it in later years when I became familiar with Redd Foxx.  It wasn't until 1992 or so, when Atlanta's TBS (later Peachtree TV) became available through our local cable provider, that I had the opportunity to finally see the show.  It aired in syndicated re-runs from Monday to Friday at 7:30 p.m., and my best friend and I would watch it every day.

Episode 26 (or #2.12), which originally aired on December 8, 1972, was titled "A Guest in the Yard," directed by Jack Shea and written by Ilunga Adell.  Fred and Lamont discover a homeless man named Gus (Liam Dunn) sleeping in a bathtub in their yard.  When they try to kick him out, he continuously manipulates them into letting him stay.  Once they realize they're being played for suckers, Fred tries to forcibly eject him from the premises.  But Gus pretends to injure himself then threatens to sue the Sanfords unless they tend to his every need.

This was one of several episodes of Sanford and Son written by Ilunga Adell, then a 20 year-old alumnus of Joseph Papp's Public Theater.  While the plot itself is a good one, offering a humorous variation on the old "Man Who Came to Dinner" premise, the dialogue is hit-and miss.  Some lines offer solid laughs, while others warrant a mild chuckle at best.  One of my favorites is the following exchange between Fred and Lamont:

LAMONT:  Wait a minute, Pop.  You think this dude [Gus] is serious about killing himself?

FRED:  I don't know, Lamont.  It's not my affair.

LAMONT:  How would you like to pick up the paper tomorrow and read about how this guy killed himself because we kicked him out of our junkyard?

FRED:  Well, I won't read the paper tomorrow.

LAMONT:  What's it going to cost to extend ourselves a little, Pop?  Haven't you ever heard of the Good Samaritan?

FRED:  You know I don't like them Japanese movies.

Little gems like these, along with expert delivery by the cast, make up for some of the weaker dialogue and the one-liners that don't quite work.  "A Guest in the Yard" remains an enjoyable episode, with a solid plot, enough laughs to keep it afloat, and a satisfying resolution to the entire situation.

And that's the day I was born.

Introductory Stuff

So what exactly is The 40-Year Retrospective?

Shortly after my 40th birthday, I embarked on what was to be my most ambitious movie marathon to date: a retrospective of the 1980's, spanning the calendar decade of 1981-1990, in chronological order of release date. As 1981 progressed, I began to add TV shows and music as well. It was fun and more than a little nostalgia-inducing, as I felt like I was revisiting my childhood through the media and pop culture of the era.

One day, while talking about this marathon, a friend said to me, "Why only do the '80s? Why not start with the year you were born? Then you'll be able to revisit your childhood in its entirety." This was a tad more ambitious than I felt I was ready for, but the idea never strayed far from my mind. I began asking several friends for their input: should I start with the year of my birth or just stick with the '80s? Some suggested the latter while others liked the former.

Then my friend and co-worker, Ian, had a particularly intriguing suggestion: "Start with the year you were born, but don't do the entire year. Start with the day you were born, then work your way up from there. Don't watch anything that came out before you were born." I liked this idea immensely. When I ran it past my friend Vincent, he suggested blogging the whole thing, and The 40-Year Retrospective was born.

This Retrospective will span the period between the day I was born (December 8, 1972) and the day I turned 40 (December 8, 2012). Why 40 years? Why not 30 or 20? I don't know, 40 just seems like a seminal year to me. Turning 30 didn't feel like as big a deal to me as turning 40, and so 40 seems like an appropriate ending point for this retrospective.

What will The 40-Year Retrospective cover?

It will cover the following:

MOVIES -- As a lifelong film buff, I will primarily be focusing on movies. I won't be watching everything, of course, but I will be covering a great deal of movies. I will be re-visiting old favorites, re-watching films I haven't seen in years, and, of course, see movies I haven't yet gotten around to seeing. This also gives me the opportunity to purchase whatever movies I do not yet own, as well as finally upgrading some old VHS tapes to a less, shall we say, prehistoric format.

TV -- Since the medium of TV dates back farther than I do, I need to be a little selective with this one. Therefore, I will not be watching any TV series that debuted before 1972. (Unfortunately, this means no All in the Family, which debuted the year before.) The only exception to this rule is Doctor Who, simply because I have been a fan for most of my life, and the Doctor was a big part of my childhood, so it wouldn't seem right to exclude him. I'll also be checking out various made-for-TV movies and miniseries.

MUSIC -- Every Saturday, Billboard Magazine has always released their weekly Hot 100. I'll be checking out the songs that debuted on the chart each week, and listening to each week's Top 20. I'll also be noting what albums were released and, as with the movies, will use this as an opportunity to fill in the gaps in my music collection -- upgrading old cassettes to CD and so forth.

VIDEO GAMES -- These days I'm not the gamer I used to be, but like most of my generation, I grew up with an Atari, played Nintendo and Sega throughout my adolescence and early 20s, and indulged in the occasional PC game. And there's no denying that video games are a huge part of our culture today. Therefore, I'll be following the evolution of the medium from its fledgling days of Pong and Gotcha to the pop culture juggernaut it has become today.

WORLD EVENTS -- No work of art exists in a vacuum. Every film, TV show, song, video game, etc. is very much a product of its time. I plan on reviewing world events, both major and minor, throughout this retrospective in order to put everything, including my own life, into a proper historical context.

And that's what The 40 Year-Retrospective is: quite possibly the most ambitious and comprehensive movie-and-TV marathon ever attempted. I have to admit I'm enthusiastic and excited about this - it promises to be entertaining, historically interesting, and even nostalgic once I get to the years I can actually remember. And I hope those who follow this blog enjoy reading about it as much as I will enjoy embarking upon this massive undertaking.

Of course, the real challenge will be completing this retrospective without taking another 40 years to do so. :P