The Big Ruditsky

 

 

James Gregory

 

 

Barney Ruditsky was a real-life detective in New York City during the roaring 20’s, and later, after he retired from the force, became a well known private detective in Hollywood, California.

 

In fact, he was hired by  Joe DiMaggio to tail fiancé Marilyn Monroe prior to their marriage.

 

His work as a P.I. in Hollywood put him in contact with a number of producers, and in 1959 a TV series (very) loosely based on his career during the Prohibition years  was created called The Lawless Years.

The show was the first `roaring 20’s’ show on TV, appearing on NBC 6 months before Robert Stack would make a `Ness’ of things on ABC’s The Untouchables.

 

Ruditsky served as a technical advisor on the show.

 

The star was a James Gregory, probably better known to younger viewers as Inspector Lugar on Barney Miller, but in reality one of the hardest working character actors in Hollywood.

His first film (uncredited) was Naked City in 1948, but his distinctive looks and gravelly voice soon fetched him a series of roles in television and film.

 

He made television history by starring in the first episode of The Twilight Zone ( “Where Is Everybody?”), and played in such big-budget films as The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and PT 109 (1963).

In fact, it would be hard to find a TV show during the 1960s and 1970s where he didn’t show up in a guest appearance at least once; Star Trek, Gunsmoke, M.A.S.H., The Big Valley, The Wild Wild West  among others.

 

Beginning in 1959, and over 2 years and 47 30-minute episodes, Gregory played the role of Barney Ruditsky in The Lawless Years.

 

As a period piece, the show still holds up pretty well, and as a bonus and you’ll catch a lot of young actors in guest roles before they became household names.

 

Clu Gulager, Robert Fuller, Burt Reynolds, Martin Landau, Warren Oates, Jack Weston and Nita Talbot  . . .  to name a few.

 

The show aired on Thursday evenings at 10:30 EST, opposite the stiff competition of CBS’s Playhouse 90.

 

You’ll find 8 episodes of The Lawless years on The Internet Archive, and more will probably turn up over time.

 

"The Lawless Years"

 

James Gregory died in September of 2002, at the age of 90.  He had appeared in well over 100 television and film roles, and remains one of the best remembered faces (and voices) of the the baby boomer generation.

A Brief Hiatus

 

 

 

This blog has not been updated in more than 2 weeks, and to those who keep checking back, I apologize.

 

I will return to this blog with new features in the near future, but for now the demands of my other blog (Avian Flu Diary) - in the wake of Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis - have left me with precious little time for MOMPD.

 

I’ll try for an update this weekend, and but probably not another until I return in early April from a trip I must make to Missouri.

 

Once again, thanks for checking back.

 

And there are more than 170 blogs, going back 2 1/2 years on this site, and so you may find something of interest among those.

A Treasury Of Bob & Ray

 

 

Ray Goulding and Bob Elliott hosting The Name's the Same in 1955.

 

Show business lore is filled with stories of fortuitous pairings that led to fame, sometimes fortune.  It is difficult today to think of Abbott without Costello, or Laurel with Hardy.  

 

Yet all four were relatively obscure solo performers before getting together.

 

Another such pairing, that endured nearly 50 years, was that of radio comedians Bob & Ray.   

Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding were both radio announcers on the same Boston radio station (WHDH)  in the early 1940s, and while working separately (Elliot was a DJ, Goulding a news announcer) they became friends off the air, and developed a natural and informal banter that impressed the station management.

During Red Sox rain delays, they were called upon to `vamp’ to fill air time, and soon were given their own 15 minute (then 30 minute) daily radio spot.  Improvising as they went along, their off the wall humor (often directed at the very medium in which they worked) quickly caught on with the audience.

 

Their stock in trade was the bogus interview, done with dead-pan seriousness, no matter how absurd the subject matter (or interviewee). 

 

Along the way they create a number of memorable characters (voiced by Bob & Ray) including: inept news reporter Wally Ballou,  sportscaster Biff Burns, Charles the Poet (a sort of Percy Dovetonsils character), book reviewer Webley Webster, and a Peter Lorre clone named Peter Gorey who read gruesome news stories.

 

They also parodied radio shows of the era, with offerings such as "Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife" and "One Fella's Family" (takeoffs of Mary Noble, Backstage Wife and One Man’s Family).   The Mary Backstayge spoof ran so long, it became better known than the soap opera it lampooned.

 

In the early 1950s Bob & Ray branched out into television, but would remain firmly entrenched in radio.   A small sampling of their early television work (1951) follows, with Audrey `Alice Kramden’ Meadows.

They would do commercial voice-overs (spokesmen for Piels Beer), host a game show (The Name’s The Same), and make numerous guest appearances on variety shows, including on Saturday Night Live Special in the late 1970s.

 

They appeared in several movies including Author, Author!  and Cold Turkey, and starred in a couple of 2-man stage shows (The Two and Only on Broadway in 1970, and A Night of Two Stars at Carnegie Hall in 1984).

 

But radio was their bread and butter, and over the decades they managed to appear on NBC, CBS, and the Mutual radio networks, along with NPR.

 

During the early to mid 1970s they were the afternoon drive hosts on WOR, doing a four-hour show. They were regulars on NBC’s Monitor during it’s 20 year run, often available to fill in when technical difficulties derailed a scheduled segment.

 

For Bob & Ray aficionados, the Internet Archive has a huge treasury of material, consisting of more than 235 separate audio files.   Some of these are short bits, while many others are full 30 minute shows. 

 

Bob and Ray

 

Ray Goulding died in 1990, but Bob Elliot is still with us. You’ll find more on this talented duo at:

http://www.bobandray.com/

Their legacy of delightfully deadpan humor remains a highlight of the golden age of radio. And we are indeed fortunate that so much of it has survived over the years.

 

The British Invasion

 

 

No, not the one in the mid-1960s with the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five.

The one that arrived nearly a decade earlier, when British TV shows began to appear on American Television.

 

Shows like The Adventures of William Tell and The Buccaneers, both produced for the ITV network and syndicated in the United States (in 1958 and 1956 respectively).

 

But the forerunner for this invasion came from Sapphire Film’s successful 4-year run of The Adventures of Robin Hood, which aired on CBS from 1955 to 1960, and thereafter in syndication.

 

This was the first of succession of successful series commissioned by media mogul Lew Grade for international distributorship. Others that would follow included Roger Moore’s The Saint,  Patrick McGoohan’s Danger Man (aka Secret Agent) and The Prisoner, and The Muppets. 

Starring Richard Greene, the 143 episodes were well budgeted and shot like a movie, on 35mm film. 

Although first signed at the age of 20 in 1938 by 20th Century Fox as their answer to MGM’s matinee idol Robert Taylor, Greene’s rising star faltered when WWII broke out and he left Hollywood to serve in the 27th Lancers where he was commissioned and promoted to Captain in 1944.

 

Greene received good notices after the war (including in Forever Amber in 1947), but his career never caught fire. By the early 1950s and after a series of disappointing swashbuckling roles, his finances were in shambles.

 

He was therefore convinced to take on the role of Robin Hood, and in short order the series was big hit.

While he would appear occasionally in other shows during the 1960s and 1970s, he would never again approach the kind of success he had during those four years of wearing green tights.

 

Greene died in 1985 of cardiac arrest.

 

While Greene was undeniably the star of the show, he was joined by an ensemble cast which included:

• Alan Wheatley as the Sheriff of Nottingham.
• Archie Duncan as Little John. Duncan was already well known to TV audiences for playing Inspector Lestrade in 1954 series Sherlock Holmes (see Sherlock Holmes On The Small Screen)
• Bernadette O'Farrell (years 1&2) and  Patricia Driscoll (years 3&4)  both played Maid Marian.
• Alexander Gauge played Friar Tuck.
•  Richard Coleman played Alan-a-Dale who went on to star in a pair of British Sitcoms in the 1970s (And Mother Makes Three, And Mother Makes Five).
• Donald Pleasence, Hubert Gregg, and Brian Haines all played Prince John at one time or another.

And guest stars who either were, or would become, familiar to US audiences included Robert Shaw, Edward Mulhare, Leo McKern  and Michael Caine.

 

Scripts were often penned by blacklisted writers from the United States, caught up in McCarthyism, who used pseudonyms to stay under the radar.

While based on a fictional character, the show’s producers took pains to try to make each episode true to the times in which it took place. They utilized historians as consultants, and interwove bits of real history into the plots.

 

And perhaps most innovative of all, the show’s Art director Peter Proud put more than 140 set pieces (stairways, fireplaces, stone walls, entrance halls . . . even fake trees) on wheels, and would mix and match them to quickly create new sets.

 

Although considered a `kids’ show back in the 1950s, it is well served by intelligent scripts, great art direction, and good production values. The shows hold up pretty well, more than 50 years after they were first shot.

 

The Internet Archive has roughly 60 half hour episodes freely available for download. 

You can access them HERE:

For those of us who grew with television in the 1950s, returning to Sherwood Forrest is like going home again.  

 

If you’ve got any `kid’ left in you at all, it’s well worth the journey.

R.I.P. Betty Garrett

 

 

 

A small confession.

 

As a small lad of perhaps 6 or 7, one of my first celebrity `crushes’ was on actress Betty Garrett, no doubt stemming from having seen On The Town  and Take Me Out To The Ballgame a number of times. 

 

What can I say, musicals were very big in my house growing up.

Years later I had a 78 of Betty Garrett wistfully singing `There’s a Small Hotel’, which I played often on my wind-up Victrola.

 

You can watch her do this number on YouTube.  This from the 1948 movie, Words & Music.

 

 

 

So it is with some sadness that I report that Ms. Garrett has passed away this weekend at the age of 91.

 

Younger readers probably remember her best as “Irene Lorenzo” on All in the Family and “Edna Babbish” on Laverne & Shirley.  But for me, she’ll always be cabby Brunhilde Esterhazy, doing her best to corral Frank Sinatra in On The Town.

 

Ms. Garrett’s career stumbled badly in the early 1950s when her husband, Larry Parks, was forced to testify before the  House UnAmerican Activities Committee over his early involvement in the communist party.

 

Parks, who had been OSCAR nominated for his breakout roles as Al Jolson in two popular bio pics, was subsequently blacklisted in Hollywood.

 

Ms. Garrett made a bit of a comeback in 1955 in My Sister Eileen, and did scattered television work in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but her career languished.

 

It wouldn’t be until the 1970s, when she appeared on All In The Family, and after that on Laverne & Shirley, that her career would take off again.   She appeared in a number guest roles on TV shows and movies during the 1990s and as recently as 2009.

 

 

The Television Academy Foundation’s Archive of American Television has conducted hundreds of long-form interviews with the pioneers of early TV, and we are fortunate to have a 2 1/2 hour interview with Ms. Garrett on May 21, 2003.

 

You can view this 5-part interview HERE. 

 

I’ll leave you with this 3 minute montage of clips from Betty Garrett’s work which was put together for her 90th Birthday bash.