Newsday TV Book, October 1-7, 1972.

Welcome to October! I don't know if I felt so at age three in 1972, but I have long thought that this begins the most wonderful time of the year, autumn and winter. Cold weather, less daylight, Halloween and Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, and of course tons of new tee-vee to invest way too much time and brain power into!

I think this is the first issue of my collection where the photo bleeds into the upper panel, so we get to see all of Angel Tompkins' hat. According to the accompanying (surprisingly candid) article by Leo Seligsohn, if you picked up the February '72 issue of Playboy, you saw a lot more than her chapeau. She mentions learning foreign languages, but if the unintelligible posts on her current Facebook page are any indication, she maybe should have concentrated on pinning down English first. (If you want to see more of Angel here, just click on the pics, they get bigger!)

The TV Line this week offers the address of Geraldo Rivera's parents, an acting challenge to Pamelyn Ferdin (with a picture that's supposed to be the 12-year-old actress but which looks more like Barbara Barrie), and the unavailability of both Bill Cosby's sickle cell anemia special and his Dick (Cavett) t-shirt.

This season premiere of New York Philharmonic Young People's Concert was the first since 1958 without Leonard Bernstein. It instead had Michael Tilson-Thomas, who in this episode demonstrated tempo. All the information I find online seems to indicate the show formally ended in March of 1972, but it appears it continued with different hosts for at least several more years. Yes, this was a weekend network television show for children! Can you believe it? (If you can't, the early eps can be found on DVD here.)

This is the one. The John Cashman review that begins, "This is the one." It's here on this ABC Sunday Night Movie showing of Love Story. (His much more favorable review for Casablanca began "This is it.") It's the only review of his I can think of that offers this remarkably subjective star rating, either two or four stars depending on your sap tolerance. (I might have preferred more highlights from the Pulaski Day parade.)

The tenth anniversary of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson got shortly shrifted on Monday night with a regular time slot airing instead of a prime-time special. Of the luminaries listed, only Jerry Lewis is still with us.

Wednesday brought the very first airing of the ABC Afterschool Special, an animated Hanna-Barbera offering called "Last of the Curlews." Narrated by Ross Martin, it won an Emmy the following year. Here's a close-up along with the other programs of the day.

I'm not especially interested in either Laurence Luckinbill or The Delphi Bureau, but I like that this Thursday close-up makes reference to his appearances in TWA commercials running at the time.

Elinor Donahue makes her second appearance as Felix' lady friend (special lady?) Miriam Welby on The Odd Couple, which is somehow categorized here as a variety show. Check out the listing for Love, American Style--I spot three typos among the guest stars' names...

Here's your Saturday morning line-up, with two shows in the 1 pm hour involving monsters being faked. It was quite a problem in the early 70's, and sadly it continues on reality TV to this day.

Finally, we get a one-week respite from dull bank ads on the back cover, so enjoy this colorful ZePel treated Early American living room set from Macy's!

Next week, we'll learn all about Roger Davis, who took over Peter Duel's role on Alias Smith and Jones after Duel's suicide. You don't remember Roger Davis? Or Peter Duel? Or Alias Smith and Jones? What the hell are you reading this for?

Whoops, almost forgot the latest cheesecake ad from Holiday Spas! See you next week, Lumpy Thighs!