Newsday TV Books, July 1974.

I promised more and, like a kid with a sackful of Grit, I'm delivering!

The cast of Ironside is strong-armed by Raymond Burr to go along with the various prevarications of his official bio, listed dutifully in the accompanying article. Dead wives, dead kid, etc. etc., no mention of a certain young fella Burr met on the set of Perry Mason...

As with June, I'm going bare bones for these dull summer months, sticking with the Gary Viskupic drawings and whatever else tickles me. This one looks pretty lame until you realize that G.V. was just being cheekily literal. The schedule is for late Sunday.

 Now it's late Monday, and Visk illustrates a horror classic made for TV.

Viskupic draws on the Amerasian blues for this Tuesday NBC News special.

Here's a page just for fans of Gilbert Gottfried's podcast: The premiere of pod guest Tony Orlando's variety show, and a John Cashman review of The Swimmer, a Gilbert favorite airing on the CBS Late Movie.

I love this meat company ad, which strangely references the JGE Appliances television commercials of the day which asked "Hey, Jerry! What's the story?" Throw in some equally puzzling cheesecake and you've got a classic, unearthed at last for the Internet Age!

 Speaking of puzzling, the inexplicably popular Mac Davis shows up on the next week's cover.

Fittingly enough, it's a ho-hum week, with just this Visk drawing of little people and an ad for the ancient Milleridge Inn capturing my interest.

John Amos and Esther Rolle roll out the Good Times.

Gary V. squeezes out a less-than-vintage piece for The Grapes of Wrath on Sunday afternoon.

His drawing for auteur Gordon Parks' The Learning Tree is more refined and elegant (and the reviews by John Cashman are, as usual, sublime).

Little Ronny Howard was bigger now, and starring on Happy Days. Forget Fonzie on water-skis--this show jumped the shark midway through season one.

Viskupic keeps the beat on (when else?) Sunday for this close-up on (what else?) a news special.

Another news special, another G.V. melding of technologies simple and complex, another case of everything-old-is-new-again...

Mary Tyler Moore graces the month's last cover, with Mare backed against a funhouse mirror for reasons only a photographer can make up.

Another busy week for Gary: An energy crisis cornucopia...

 ... a delicate portrait for A Streetcar Named Desire (unsigned, but I can't imagine what other Newsday artist it could be)...

 ...and finally, Garbo's unmistakable profile holds the key to Grand Hotel on Saturday.

More? I'm working on it, I'm working on it!

Newsday TV Books, June 1974.

Back at it and hoping to knock out some of these dull summer months in one shot! Time's a-wasting, so here's June! (Click the pics, they'll blow up real good!)

Nipsey Russell and Barbara Feldon host a limited-run show highlighting comedy from home and abroad. And what a broad she is!

Since I'm doing an abbreviated overview here, I'll mainly be including pages featuring Gary Viskupic's artwork. A typically unsettling Viskupic drawing goes with a CBS Reports special about famine (and the Monday late-night schedule with reviews by the incisive John Cashman).

The Anderson Tapes on Friday evening...

...and lastly, a neat back cover ad for Spa Health Resorts.

Next up, an unnamed actor is seen as General Yamashita in a Stanley Kramer-produced docudrama about the "Tiger of Malaya."

I'm only including the TV Line when it has a nugget of info that really piques my interest. This one mentions a recent TV production that had featured a rarely-seen Marx Brothers clip.

 For the late Tuesday page, Viskupic takes on the Tiger...

...and then, on Thursday, the Woolf.

Mid-June brought a mini-series about the Primal Man, with actors in heavy caveman make-up applications.

The story behind the scenes was even heavier: Thirty-one (!) members of the cast and crew were killed during filming.

Quite a bit of Visk this week: "The Amazon" late Sunday...

"Renoir" on Monday...

Women's specials on WNET channel 13 on Wednesday evening...

...and for Friday evening, an amusingly simple take on inflation.

The last week of the month brings the lovely Lee Meriwether. I'm not including her story, but I did find an interesting paragraph where she laments the apathy that eventually follows an American political crisis such as the McCarthy hearings, a "laziness" which she worried would inevitably leave the lessons of Watergate forgotten. Hmm. Lovely and prophetical!

This TV Line spotlights an odd moment in pop culture, when untold numbers of Americans clamored fruitlessly for the discontinued wallpaper seen in an Alpo dog food commercial.

Viskupic's buxom bunny-woman has appeared in this blog previously, but now here's the full page.

I'm limiting the ads, but this one for "All Method Working People Hair Center"--featuring a dead ringer for Morrie from Goodfellas--was too good to exclude. There's a little Monday morning sched for ya too.

Finally, Friday evening offers a freaky Visku-pic to go along with a poorly-written close-up for a Wide World Special about fantasy fulfillment. Naturally, the program features Peter Graves and Rodney Allen Rippy.

Newsday Rae.

I've neglected the Newsday TV Book posts of late, partly because I'm busy, but also the summer months tend to be a bit dry as far as interesting tidbits go. The news of Charlotte Rae's passing inspired me to dig out one of my later issues (1981) for a few scans, click to enlarge:

The accompanying article was written by Bill Kaufman, who tells us that Rae liked Fred Silverman, Westbury's Nancy McKeon enjoyed barking, and Kim Fields encouraged stalkers.

This is a summer issue, so like I said, there's not a ton of stuff I was stoked to put up here. You could try some of this trivia, I guess (good luck!)...

I won't make you turn your monitor upside-down--here are the answers...

Here's a page of ads: "Fun For Kids & Parties For All." Check out the lower right, "Eastern Onion Singing Telegrams." The Bellygram, the Macho Man, the Super Onion Man... Boy, I can't decide which I'd like to avoid the most!

Finally, no better way to close a week (or a blog post) than with a little Saturday night classic horror on channel 13.

I'd also like to mention that the "Fright Night" feature on WOR (channel 9) at 1am that morning was The Baby. It's really fucking weird.