When I went to UCLA for grad school, I knew it had one of the country's best film and TV archive for a university, though it was difficult for the public to get access to.  It was pretty much only available for academic research, which included students -- and happily I qualified for that.  I didn't access it much, I think I only went to watch two things there, but they were gems.  

They had a full collection of the classic Hallmark Hall of Fame series, and I watched two of them.  One was the emotional drama A Storm in Summer, written by, of all people, Rod Serling, which won  an Emmy as Best Actor for Peter Ustinov, which isn't shabby considering his competition that year included Sir Laurence Olivier.  (I wrote here about the time years latter when I worked with Ustinov and had a wonderful experience related to discussing this production.)  It had originally aired only a few years earlier, and I loved it so much that I wanted to see it again)  The other was much fuzzier in my memory, having seen it as a kid, and I wanted to confirm it was as great as I recalled, and from the perspective of a kid.  It was the great play, The Magnificent Yankee, about Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and his wife, and it starred the legendary Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, in one of their rare performances on film or TV.  And happily, it was as brilliant as I'd thought.  The utter shame is that this has aired only once, and as far as I know is pretty much lost to all expect in archives like this.

All of this is to mentioned that at least part of the UCLA Film and Television Archive is available online.  It's limited, of course, but still quite good.  You can check it out here. 

And that in turn is prelude to one of the shows in their archive that I'm able to embed here.  It's a production from the U.S. Steel Hour that aired on January 13, 1960, titled Queen of the Orange Bowl,  What is so notable about the hour-long show is that it stars the legendary host of The Tonight Show Johnny Carson.  It's only his second scripted, character-role (other than small appearances, or walk-ons as himself) and as far as I can, his last.  He took over The Tonight Show two years later.  And the thing is, he does a nice job -- no small thing since, as I said, it was done live.  No re-takes if you screw up and want to do it better.  One chance, and that's it.

The light-hearted comedy concerns a sort of "bohemian" young woman who tries in to get her new boyfriend to take their relationship seriously.  

The show has a pretty good pedigree beyond just Carson.  The female lead is played by Anne Francis, who had a long career is such films as Bad Day at Black Rock and starred in the detective series Honey West.  And supporting performers included Elizabeth Wilson (who played Dustin Hoffman's mother in The Graduate), Al Lewis (best-known as 'Grandpa' in The Munsters), and Frank McHugh (who was Bing Crosby's best-friend in Going My Way.)

Also, the production was directed by Paul Bogart, who later directed over 90 episodes of the series All in the Family.  It was written by Robert Van Scoyk, who had a long career that included two episodes of Columbo and five seasons as executive story editor of Murder, She Wrote, for which he wrote 21 episodes.and three made-for-TV movies.

As you may know, this year is the 50th anniversary of Sesame Street.  This is a very nice behind-the-scenes tribute to the show that was done on 60 Minutes -- but no, not that 60 Minutes, but the one that they do down under in Australia.

So, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, mate.

As I've mentioned previously, The West Wing always seemed to do especially good episodes for Thanksgiving, but also for Christmas.  This may be their best ending of a Christmas show, one called "In Excelsis Deo."  Unfortunately I can't embed it on this site, but you can watch it here.

I wrote about this piece of remarkable TV history back in 2014, and it remains one of my favorites.  Though there's some background music in it, it's not about music at all, but it will nonetheless sit for today's Holiday Music Fest, mainly on the Fest part.  Back in my initial posting on this site about Kukla, Fran and Ollie, I wrote about how the show's brilliant creator, puppeteer Burr Tillstrom won an additional Emmy Award that was not involved with KF&O, but for his work on his own.  It was for one of the "hand ballets" that he performed on occasion for the satirical news series, That Was the Week That Was.  

That Was the Week That Was was a smart, pointed, very sharp British sketch-comedy show which was brought over to the U.S. in the early 1960s.  Among other things, it introduced to American audiences one of the original British cast members, David Frost.  It's also the show that introduced Tom Lehrer to most Americans.  He wrote periodic songs for the series, and then recorded them for his now-classic hit album, That Was the Year That Was.

And it also brought Burr Tillstrom into the national spotlight in a way people hadn't seen or expected.

​His hand ballets were little vignettes that didn't use any puppets at all, but merely Tillstrom's bare hands, using them alone to evoke some story in the news he wanted to get across.  It was done with great artistry, often movingly.  And one of them so artistic and moving that it won him an Emmy Award.

In 1963, two years after the Berlin Wall had been erected, a very brief concession was made.  The Wall would open for the Christmas holiday and allow those in the West to travel into East Berlin and visit family and loved ones, needing to return a few days later.

This is what Burr Tillstrom did a hand ballet about shortly after.  And --

-- I found the video of it.  It is one of the favorite videos I've been able to find.  I'm thrilled

The quality of the video is a little rough, especially at the beginning, but it's fine.  And ultimately, as you watch -- one brilliant artist using only his hands -- the quality of the video won't matter one whit.  

And if anyone ever wonders where the humanity of Kukla, Fran and Ollie came from, to bring such life into puppets, now you'll know.

When I posted this last year, I got a perturbed note from a reader who found nothing worthwhile about the video, and took me to task for wasting his time.  In the spirit of the season, I will refrain from anything ad hominen.  I will just say that I feel completely comfortable in recognizing the legend of this piece, and anything else is an understandable matter of personal taste.  Wherever that may lie.  I say this knowing that it's not just my opinion on this, but the members of the of the Television Academy who voted Tillstrom the Emmy Award.

But to be fair, I guess I should add a disclaimer.  If anyone doesn't like old black-and-white video or just looking at hands for three minutes, or politics and history, or quiet, thoughtful, emotional storytelling with the sparsest of action or jokes, centered instead on pure artistry, I get it, and so by all means avoid this.

For everyone else, here it is.

Media Alert.  The Kennedy Centers Honors broadcast is tonight at 8 PM on CBS -- when (among other people, of course) Linda Ronstadt gets her tribute. I don't know if her response to Mike Pompeo was widely known at the time this was recorded and is either commented on or affects the audience reaction, but it will be interesting to see...But even without that, it should no doubt be a joy.

Also, among the other honorees is Sally Field.  If anyone wants to make a bet that no performer says something during her presentation like, "Sally, we like you, we really like you!!", I'm more than happy to take that bet and even give great odds that someone does.

For today's Fest, we have two more songs from the wonderful Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, with a score by Broadway composers Jule Styne and Bob Merrill.  I wrote about it yesterday, so you can see all the details here.

This first song is "Winter Was Warm," sung by Belle, Scrooge's former lover from the Ghost of Christmas Past.  When I was a little kid and first saw the show, I absolutely loved it but this particular song was the least interesting to me.  It was nice enough, but let's get on with the story.  I am no longer a little kid, and understand and admire the great deeply-wistful charm of it.

The second song is "We’re Despicable," which comes from the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come sequence.  It's sung by thieves who have robbed the home of the late Ebenezer Scrooge.  It really is the most unnecessary song in the show -- it doesn't advance the plot or develop character, it just reinforces the situation -- and arguably is the funniest and most fun.
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One of the best made-for-TV animated specials was Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol.  In fact, it was the very first animated Christmas special on American TV, which first ran on NBC in 1962.  The hour-long show aired annually until 1969, but because the animation was considered a bit primitive, it unfortunately (and in my biased opinion, foolishly, since the special is so terrific and not all that much more primitive than, say, ​Frosty the Snowman) went off the network air, though showed up over the years in syndicated local airings.  Back in 2012, however, NBC did run the show again for its 50th anniversary.

The shame that it hasn't been seen even more is that not only is it wonderfully done (and actually quite a good adaptation of the Dickens story), but it has arguably -- and I'm tempted to say, inarguably -- the best score of any animated TV special made.  The songs are by Broadway composers Jule Styne and Bob Merrill who at the time they were working on this show were also working on their upcoming musical, Funny Girl.  Their score is absolutely wonderful and at that level.  In fact a story is that one day the Magoo producer was walking past the office where Style and Merrill were working, overheard them playing a new song and told how great he thought it was.  They had to explain that the song wasn't for the TV special (though it would have fit), but rather it was for their Broadway show.  The song was "People."

I'll post a bunch of the songs during the Fest, and here for starters are three of them.

This first, "Ringle, Ringle" introduces Scrooge and also Bob Cratchit in the counting house, featuring the voices of Jim Backus and, as Cratchit, Jack Cassidy.

Second is the Cratchit family during the Ghost of Christmas Present section with big "showstopper" of sorts, "(We'll Have) The Lord's Bright Blessing."

​And third is the achingly touching, "I'm All Alone in the World," sung by Scrooge and his younger self from the Ghost of Christmas Past.

We'll end our Thanksgiving extravaganza with one final scene from The West Wing.  I particularly wanted to post it, not just for how funny it is about a Thanksgiving tradition, but also because it has one of my favorite lines in the series.  It comes around the :38-second mark, and is President Barlett's response to CJ telling him what will happen to a turkey.  And as a bonus, there is a hilarious, but very subtle, throwaway line by Donna near the end, so low-key that it's easy to miss.
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Trundling along with our Thanksgiving gala, The West Wing always seem to go out of its way to have wonderful episodes for Thanksgiving.  This is one of the funniest and most memorable scenes from them.  President Bartlett and the Butterball Hotline.

Okay, let's head back to The West Wing.  As long as I mentioned the one song that people sing on Thanksgiving, I thought I might as well include a scene where the show uses the song, as well.  It's also perhaps the quintessential scene that explains why Aaron Sorkin and the writers loved writing shows about the holiday.  The image is fuzzy at beginning, but it only lasts a few seconds and the words are crisp and lovely.
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