Newsday TV Book, June 30-July 6, 1974.

 We are just one week into my two least-favorite months of the year, July and August, and I've already had it with the heat and humidity and bugs and daylight. I heard "September" by Earth, Wind & Fire on the radio, so that helped, and the thought that it's only two months away is comforting. Then I remember that it's usually pretty hot for most of September and I really just need to stop thinking about the whole thing altogether and deal.

The TV Book for the beginning of July is strangely bereft of Independence Day references, so much so that it's the only day--that year, as with this very year, a Thursday--not represented in my scans. The only show explicitly celebrating the holiday is that night's Stars and Stripes Show with Tennessee Ernie Ford and Bob Hope, and even that's only interesting to me because it features kid actor Ricky Segall, who was born two weeks before me in my hometown, presumably in the same hospital.

Anyway, the cast of Ironside is on this issue's cover, and the story inside about Raymond Burr mentions various events of his life. As a gay man in Hollywood living a closeted life, his biography (as offered in interviews, by Burr or his representatives) tended toward fictionalization, to the point where he reportedly had trouble keeping the details straight himself.

Writer-inners to the TV Line column wondered about Jan-Michael Vincent and Erin Moran, inquired as to who was to blame for the Osmonds, and rued The American Horse and Horseman being put out to pasture.

I wanted to share three of the four pages covering Sunday's schedule, so I just went ahead and did them all. The morning had the Mummy, Bud and Lou meeting Frankenstein, the Bowery Boys, and the East Side Kids!

The afternoon page has an ad for Harvest House Cafeteria, a restaurant chain run by Woolworth (or Woolworth's, if that's how you knew it) in the Sunrise Mall in Massapequa (on Long Island, duh). My family never went there, but if we did, it probably would have been on a Tuesday, to my utter horror and dismay.

The late listings page offers a terribly literal Viskupic illustration, the usual bracing Cashman reviews, and a David Susskind Show episode that I would love to find (but I believe his catalog of shows is only available through pricey rentals).

We jump ahead a bit to Monday's late programming, with another Viskupic, this one his take on Jekyll and Hyde...

...and Tuesday's slate of late shows offers even more Visk, for a news special about Vietnamese orphans.

Tony Orlando and Dawn began its four-week run, which led to a regular variety series.

Here's all day Friday and Saturday.

From the Quick Guide, here are Sports, Special, For Children, and Next Sunday.

And now, a word from their sponsors: More cheesecake served up by Holiday Spas; a beef purveyor with some mysterious cheesecake of its own, not to mention an equally-mystifying reference to a popular local commercial of the day (for JGE Appliances); and the Noseless Preggo of Maternity Factory Outlet gets another head and a third leg to announce the opening of a new location.

By the way, those JGE ads featured co-owner Jerry Rosenberg, who would invariably be asked by an off-screen voice, "What's the story Jerry?" (I guess this was referencing the movie Lovers & Other Strangers, where Richard Castellano's character asked his son, "What's the story, Richie?" again and again to great comic effect.) At the end of each commercial, after touting the current sales, Rosenberg would lean back so his sizable belly pushed out of his shirt and say, "That's the story!" (Being New York City, however, it was more like "Dat's dastaw-ree!")

Years ago, I somehow became connected with a family member of the late Jerry, who told me there's a whole tape cassette of those old ads in her possession, and she'd see about getting a copy to me. Well, it's been many years now and I'm still trying. I found her on Facebook two years ago and caught up with her that way, to no avail. I just now sent her another message, so cross your fingers, maybe this will happen and I'll get those lost gems on my YouTube channel...

Enjoy the fourth!