Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 435551" data-attributes="member: 57984">I&#039;d almost forgotten how dark the hour-long B&amp;W episodes could get (especially after Philip Leacock took over as producer from 1963 to 1967).The early, half-hour B&amp;W episodes (retitled &quot;Marshal Dillon&quot; for decades in syndication) were so narratively truncated that they could only go so deep (of course, some of those were still better than others).Today, I was watching a 1965 episode from Season 11 (the year which has my favorite opening theme, for some reason) and directed by Mark Rydell! (Yesterday, I watched an installment written by Sam Peckinpah!). And there&#039;s a scene in the Dodge House hotel where a gunman, badly injured and with a $30,000 bounty on his head, tells the very young man (an impoverished farmer with a pregnant wife) who&#039;s been deputized to oversee him, chucklingly, &quot;Strangle it -- save it from the miseries of life...,&quot; referring to the farmer&#039;s imminent baby.You&#039;d have a tough time getting a line like that on network television today!&nbsp;&nbsp; When GUNSMOKE switched to color in 1966 for Season 12 (you had to make the transition by fall of &#039;66) some fans carped that the show had &quot;been prettified&quot; and &quot;gone Hollywood&quot;... Well, no, the series really hadn&#039;t done that at all -- it just went to color... But it does change the atmosphere a bit, inevitably: the starkness is seriously reduced (even though a late-&#039;60s coldness remains until it warms up for the &#039;70s and becomes almost cozy) and a foreboding artfulness shifts into something else as the B&amp;W goes away.&nbsp; Watching Season 11 from THE LOVE BOAT:[MEDIA=youtube]kR0K0hNAmYU[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Snarky Oracle!, post: 435551, member: 57984"] I'd almost forgotten how dark the hour-long B&W episodes could get (especially after Philip Leacock took over as producer from 1963 to 1967). The early, half-hour B&W episodes (retitled "Marshal Dillon" for decades in syndication) were so narratively truncated that they could only go so deep (of course, some of those were still better than others). Today, I was watching a 1965 episode from Season 11 (the year which has my favorite opening theme, for some reason) and directed by Mark Rydell! (Yesterday, I watched an installment written by Sam Peckinpah!). And there's a scene in the Dodge House hotel where a gunman, badly injured and with a $30,000 bounty on his head, tells the very young man (an impoverished farmer with a pregnant wife) who's been deputized to oversee him, chucklingly, "Strangle it -- save it from the miseries of life...," referring to the farmer's imminent baby. You'd have a tough time getting a line like that on network television [I]today! [/I] When GUNSMOKE switched to color in 1966 for Season 12 (you had to make the transition by fall of '66) some fans carped that the show had "been prettified" and "gone Hollywood"... Well, no, the series really hadn't done that at all -- it just went to color... But it does change the atmosphere a bit, inevitably: the starkness is seriously reduced (even though a late-'60s coldness remains until it warms up for the '70s and becomes almost cozy) and a foreboding artfulness shifts into something else as the B&W goes away. Watching Season 11 from THE LOVE BOAT: [MEDIA=youtube]kR0K0hNAmYU[/MEDIA] [/QUOTE]

Verification

Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?