Newsday TV Book, February 8-15, 1975.

 I told myself I wasn't gonna do this week's issue, but then I went and done it. This is almost entirely because I looked at it and saw a Slugger Ryan reference in the TV Line, and I happen to have a clip on YouTube with that marionette. That decided it.

Here are two greats, Maureen Stapleton and Charles Durning, on the cover for the CBS TV Movie premiere of Queen of the Stardust Ballroom.

The marionette in question is the Sheldon-Leonardesque Slugger Ryan, one of Bil Baird's puppety oddballs seen on Life with Snarky Parker in 1950, also a CBS production, directed by Yul Brynner(!?).
Also in the TVL: Reviewer John Cashman sets a reader straight on Byron and Gig, and recently-departed Mike Henry is mentioned in a Tarzan question. (Btw, that's Smokey and the Bandit's Mike Henry, not Family Guy's Mike Henry. Duh.)

Here's that early-eighties clip, where Slugger asks clueless parents if they know where their children are at the start of WNEW's 10 O'Clock News.

Here's Sunday morning, if only because I kinda sorta remember both the Abbott & Costello and the Bowery Boys movies, but I was usually taken by force to church (hisssss!) at that hour.

And now the page of afternoon listings, mainly for the Takashimaya Valentine's Day ad, with jade trinkets for the Buddhist, Jew, or goombah you love. Oh, and you see that blurb at the bottom touting the Quick Guide? That's coming up--tease, tease!

Here are a couple of Gary Viskupic illustrations, for Sunday's Bogart movies and the Monday premiere of ABC's Legend of Lizzie Borden.

Let's pause now for a word from our sponsor. I don't know if Expressway Carpet later became Jim Flack Carpet, but I'm pretty sure that's who was known in these ads as "the guy with a hole in his head." Putting a pic of Abraham Lincoln next to Jim (with his perforated skull) seems a little tasteless, but I guess it was the holiday, so whatever...

Linda Blair went from Beelzebub to booze in this TV Movie, and biopic-hungry night owls could stay up late to learn all about the "Wizard of Menlo Park."

As teased, here's that Quick Guide, which I rarely bother scanning, but the week was a little light (although I just noticed I missed a late ABC showing of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, dammit!).

Next Sunday:
Sadat: Action Biography!
(That's what it says, anyway.)