Keaton on ROUTE 66

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Gary Johnson
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Keaton on ROUTE 66

Postby Gary Johnson » Sat Jun 08, 2013 3:42 pm

For the past year I've been following local airings of the cult classic TV serie's ROUTE 66 up here in Wine Country just in order to catch Keaton's appearance on the show.
Oh sure, I could had probably found it on UTube or gone and purchased the DVD set but that would had been no fun. This slowly turned into an old-school quest.

At first I began watching this program sporadically but I kept noticing the array of guest stars that appeared on the show, both established names (Dan Duryea, Martha Hyer, Walter Matthau, Lee Marvin, Sylvia Sidney and Doug Fairbanks Jr.) and up and comers (Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, James Caan and Inger Stevens). I was also taken with the terrific production values of on-location filming as each week our heroes would roll into a new American city in their Chevy Corvette and help solve some problem of the local denizens. And these were not the placid problems usually seen on television in the early Sixties. We are talking drug addition, spousal abuse, pandemic outbreaks, drought, racism, bipolar disorders, split personalities and mid-life crises. All heavy topics that rarely came across as preachy thanks to the writing skills of Stirling Silliphant. He was the Aaron Sorkin of his day, a prolific writer who wanted to uplift television drama by not writing down to the masses. He wrote with the soul of a poet and the heart of a liberal, and it is the rare episode that doesn't contain at least one touching plea for mankind's humanity.

All four seasons of the show featured many outstanding and touching episodes, such as "A Month of Sundays" with Anne Francis as a young Broadway star dying from a rare disease (lupis - which would become the terminal medical de jour on HOUSE whenever they wanted to telegraph to the audience that this patient is toast). Tod learns her secret, his buddy Buzz does not as he falls hard for her and can't understand why she keeps him at arms length. Even though we know what her characters outcome will be, it is still shocking when she suddenly collapses on the street and all we hear are the anguish cries of George Maharis. "A Fury Slinging Flame" features Leslie Nielsen as a nuclear physicist who becomes convinced that the Russians will launch their atomic bombs on the US within days and leads his son and a group of followers into Carlsbad Caverns to wait out the fall-out. Nuclear paranoia, survivalists, press sensationalism and morality all get bandied about by the members of the cast. "Good Night, Sweet Blues" is a valentine to blues legend Ethel Waters as a stroke victim who enlists Buzz and Tod's help in locating and reuniting her old band together before her time is up. Miss Waters gets to sing, laugh and exhibit her brand of religious faith throughout the show. The final scene leaves a lump in the throat and if I didn't know that Ethel Waters lives for another 15 years I would have believed this to be her final appearance on TV.

Which brings us to "Journey To Ninevah". Obviously it is one of the lighter episodes of the series but it is also obviously put together by a production team with a great appreciation for Buster Keaton. After a quick set-up of the plot involving Joe E. Brown and a stolen diamond ring, mention is made of his jinx of a brother and the camera cuts to a traveling shot along an Ozarks road and comes upon a lake and a familar figure wearing a flat hat with his back to the camera. It is a typical Keaton entrance and either the filmmakers had a vast knowledge of Keaton's character or they just allowed him to set up the shots himself. What follows are a series of silent bits as Keaton tries hitchhiking and then gives up and goes fishing. Fishing is a familar motif of Keaton's and he can ring as many gags out of that situation as he can with baseball in his films. Eventually Buster takes a header into the water, which allows Buzz to dive in to save him. This is in keeping with the series principles since every week our heroes rush in to help complete strangers. This time, though, drama goes out the window as George Maharis becomes an unwitting pawn in a soggy, slapstick rescue. While trying to reach Keaton from the dock he leaps over onto a little island and drops straight out of sight into the bog - all part of Keaton's unstable Universe.

And so it goes on. The entire episode plays out like a leisurely two-reeler as Keaton's mishaps keep piling on from changing tires to boating out on a lake in a most shaky craft that could had been christened "The Damfino III". Keaton is in his element here. For all of his vast TV work more often he was stuck in a studio set chatting with the likes of a Donna Reed. But here he is out on location helping to create gags that are part of the environment. I find this program to be one of Keaton's better TV appearances and a fine example of his mind at work. And I am not surprised to find it in a TV series that I have grown to admire.

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Re: Keaton on ROUTE 66

Postby Joe Moore » Sun Jun 09, 2013 10:56 am

At out Movie Nights we've watched a few episodes of Route 66 ("Journey To Ninevah" and "Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing" among them) as well as viewed some very rare behind the scenes 16mm color footage of them shooting an episode out in Apache Junction. I've also caught the odd episode here and there in recent years but have not watched the show on a regular basis since I was a kid.
Your commentary here though has me wanting to check out the whole series.

Thanks

Joe

Gary Johnson
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Re: Keaton on ROUTE 66

Postby Gary Johnson » Mon Jun 10, 2013 12:05 pm

That's what happened to me. I set out just to find the Keaton episode (and the Karloff, Lorre episode is coming up in a few weeks) and I ended up a big admirer for the entire series.

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Re: Keaton on ROUTE 66

Postby Gary Johnson » Sat Jun 15, 2013 2:28 pm

And now I've finally caught up with the episode featuring Lon Chaney, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff, "Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing". It is definitely one of the more odder episodes in the series history, in that the three guest stars play themselves. They arrive incognito at a Chicago hotel to discuss the new changing face in horror films but don't bother to disquise themselves. They merely sign in using aliases so everyone in the hotel immediately recognizes them. While the trio is suppose to be playing themselves, they are actually acting roles of the screenwriters creation of themselves. Lorre carries the bulks of the scenes as the manipulator of the group, a familiar role for him, but by this stage of his career he seems to sleep walk through much of it. Chaney is on hand as comedy relief while Karloff takes great pains to enact the part of the learned crypt-keeper who fears that their style of horror is passe. The highlight for move buffs is when Karloff and Chaney don their famous movie masks, but seeing Karloff back in his Frankenstein's monster makeup on a TV budget is more akin to seeing Glenn Strange than James Whale's version.

To keep up with all of this lightheartedness there is also a subplot involving a secretarie's convention being held at the same hotel. This is a conceit the series used often whenever they wanted a break from their heavier episodes. Buzz and Tod would continually find employment either working for a modeling agency or chaperoning a group of show girls or even helping out a stranded All-Girls orchestra. The era's sensibilities towards women is showcased when Chaney puts on his wolfman costume to find out if he can still scare women and all of the secretaries react to these obvious Halloween masks by fainting dead away. Not just one of them but all he encounters....in groups....enmasse.
It's meant to be a funny sight gag in 1962 watching women drop to the floor like bowling pins but it just comes across as plain silly.
To make up for that slight the writers slip in a telling moment during one of the cocktail functions at the hotel. The camera pans across the room catching snippets of conversation among the ladies and we hear talk of 'equal pay for equal work', sex discrimination and even sexual harassment. It shows that even in lighter episodes the show's writers were ahead of the curve when it came to discussing social issues that still rage to this day.

As a stand alone episode it is a pleasant enough hour but it is hardly indicative of the emotional depths the series could reach. It is too bad that Karloff was not brought back to guest star in a solo dramatic episode. Chaney made two other appearances during the series four year run and acquit himself just fine - especially in "The Mud Nest" the previous year as the head of a clan of backwoods hooligans who's family lineage may be linked to Buzz. I could see Karloff handling some of the more loftier speeches that Silliphant liked to turn out in each episode. He would had acquit himself just fine also.


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