Another benefit of the Joe Adamson book (mentioned by others here) is that he isn't reluctant to point out the weaknesses of the Marx movies. With regard to the topic at hand, at one point he includes a "nausea rating" of nine different leading men in the romantic subplots, with Tony Martin (who sings the "Tenement…

Oh, come on, dude or dudette - the mirror scene in Duck Soup doesn't make you laugh?

I watched It's About Time as a 10-year-old. Halfway through its single season, the show underwent a big format change: The astronauts managed to return to the present, along with the prehistoric couple played by Imogene Coca and Joe E. Ross. The opening credits were redone, with new lyrics to fit the new story ("To…

I love "Shelter from the Storm" despite the incredible clunker in its final stanza: "If I could only turn back the clock to when God 'n' her were born." I know that the alternatives ("she 'n' God"? "God 'n' she"?) would have been even worse. (Actually my favorite part of the song is the wordless final verse.)

The Doors' "L.A. Woman"
I see your hair is burnin'
Hills are filled with fire
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar

Gul Madred is also … a father
Very thorough write-up as usual, much appreciated, but perhaps you should have mentioned not only that Madred talks to (the childless) Picard about being a parent, but actually is visited by his daughter during the proceedings. This, together with Madred's discussion of what he himself…

Okay, 20 years - the movie was 1972.

A lot sooner than "30 years" - the Broadway production opened in the spring of 1969.

The original Broadway version
My 9th-grade class in Pennsylvania took a bus trip to see 1776 on Broadway at the end of 1969; John and Yoko's "War Is Over / If You Want It" billboard was visible high up on a building near the theater. The discussion of the movie's "acts" in this post reminded me (I checked my Playbill)…

Sinatra's "retirement"
Thanks for the discussion of the changing music scene and Sinatra's place within it - I knew his top-40 radio hits of the late 1960s but had never heard of the Watertown album until now. Perhaps its failure led to Sinatra's much-publicized retirement in 1971, which of course lasted only a few…

No, the linked photo is not the one that had been up - glasses versus no glasses. This is really curious… An actor so vain as to ask for the photo to be replaced wouldn't have allowed the first photo to be used in the first place, would he? As Capt. Kirk once said, "This is damn peculiar."

I was already a fan of Twilight Zone and Night Gallery when I had the chance to meet Serling - he gave a talk about the state of the TV business and answered questions - a month or two before his death, in April 1975 at Muhlenberg College, Allentown PA. I admired him greatly, but he was so wizened! - I had never until…

The last "Lou Grant"
I taped this one sometime in the '90s and had seen it when first broadcast in 1982. I was always a fan of Patrick Williams' music for the series but particularly loved the fifth-season big-band arrangement of the opening title theme; at the end of the final episode, the theme is reprised slowly…

In point of fact, the Lampoon started to become unfunny a few years earlier, in 1975 or so - that's when I stopped subscribing.

Daniel Roebuck: an ideal Random Roles candidate
Dan Roebuck played Leno, with prosthetic chin, in The Late Shift. He's had at least as varied a career in movies and TV as the estimable Mr. Higgins, and has played opposite actors as varied as Dennis Franz, Michael Emerson, Andy Griffith, and Frankie Muniz. C'mon, it's…

Nicholas Meyer
…was the writer-director of Time After Time, which Ricardo Montalban saw and loved, after which he agreed to reprise the role of Khan for Meyer's second directing job, Star Trek II - which in turn led to the success of the Trek film series, which in turn led to various good and not-so-good films…

The rooftop hosing scene
received an affectionate reprise at the very end of the February 2000 series-ending TV movie, just after the squad-room scene with Gee, Crosetti, et al. I know the series pretty well but never knew until now what episode that came from; in early 1993 I did see about half of the original…

You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)
…the flip side of the Let It Be single (although supposedly recorded several years earlier). It uses the ancient traditional form of Theme and Variations - who else has pulled this off in the context of a rock-era track?

Sorry, that should be just Buick Limited (a coupe is pictured at www.crossfireforum.org/gall… the Electra name (also Invicta and LeSabre) started with the 1959 model year.

The 1958 Chevy Impala
…is NOT a "beautiful car." Overwrought is what it was, although less so than the other GM cars that year (Buick Electra Limited, for example).