jeffandnhi

In 1965 Ed Vane took over as head of daytime programming at ABC. Saturday mornings were dominated by CBS- Vane wanted to change that. He felt the best bet was a Beatles cartoon. Working with Al Brodax at King Features, a deal was made for 26 shows with 2 cartoons per show at a budget of $32,000/show (cheap for 1965). And Brodax had just 5 months before the premiere. Result was a rush job with all the animation outsourced outside the U. S. Results were as you would expect-simple animation with lots of cycles repeating. Still, "The Beatles" was the top rated cartoon for the year, and ABC came in #1 on Saturday mornings. That shocked CBS into opening its wallet and spending millions on a complete revamp of their lineup.

13 more Beatles cartoons were made over the next two seasons- since they're not as rushed the quality is noticeably better. Al Brodax went on to produce the Yellow Submarine film.

In the early 1950's, NBC and CBS try to figure out how to program Saturday daytimes. They decide the afternoons will be devoted to sports, with mornings to children. At first that means Saturday Mornings became the home for Howdy Doody, Pinky Lee, and Mr. Wizard as well as reruns of westerns.

Then in 1955 CBS buys the Terrytoons cartoon studio for $3.5 million. On December 10, 1955 at 10:30AM EST, the network debuts the Mighty Mouse Playhouse (sponsored by Colgate Dental Cream). The show's an instant hit and CBS will air (and profit from) it through 1966. The episodes originally aired four cartoons from the Terrytoons library- one Mighty Mouse with the rest featuring characters like Farmer Al Falfa and Gandy Goose. Over time the older toons are phased out and more Mighty Mouse cartoons added until the lineup is 3 Mighty and 1 "other". CBS, NBC and later ABC add more cartoons to their Saturday Morning schedule. By the time Mighty leaves CBS, the networks have 24 cartoons airing on Saturday morning. But he was the one who showed the way.

This was one of the films Clark Gable was in between "It Happened One Night" and "Mutiny on the Bounty". Today it's remembered mainly for what happened between Gable and Loretta Young off camera.

This is a very loose adaptation of the Jack London book, but you expected that going in. Much of it was filmed at Mt. Baker (in January!) and those scenes are wonderful to look at- especially the scenes filmed on the Nooksack River. The actors do a great job considering how cold it was. Plus we now get the original 1935 release version as opposed to the reissue version which is a whopping 14 minutes shorter-Katherine DeMille finally gets her moment. I found the film entertaining but I do wish they had stayed with the original ending instead of going with that silly "happy ending". I won't go into the details except to say that the original ending does explain some of the dialogue and character reactions we get in the last 30 minutes. We have the preview audience to blame for that.