Long before it was the CBS station in the DFW metroplex, KTVT (channel 11) was an independent station which we were able to watch in Tyler, thanks to the miracle of the newfangled cable. Not a box, but an actual cable. Most of the original programming consisted of local news, weather, and sports, as well as a before-school children’s show called Slam Bang Theatre.
Hosted by one Icky Twerp (played by Bill Camfield), the show laced cartoons and Three Stooges comedies with some live action skits with Icky and a couple of guys in pretty obvious ape masks. Compared to Captain Kangaroo on channel 4 and Mr. Peppermint on channel 8, Icky and troop were downright subversive. I need not tell you who I watched most frequently.
Much of what aired on KTVT consisted of old movies and old television series that had gone to syndication. Between Bette Davis and Lana Turner movies would be reruns of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Perry Mason, and The Twilight Zone. Just as surely as night follows day, every afternoon I Love Lucy would lead into The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Looking back, I spent a couple of hours each week during some of my formative years with Mr. Van Dyke and, of course, Mary Tyler Moore. (Did anyone else ever look that good in capri pants?) With the celebration of Mr. Van Dyke’s 100th birthday last weekend and an open Sunday, I decided to watch the double feature provided by Turner Classic Movies for the occasion.
When I first saw Mary Poppins, I was so young and so new to watching movies in a theater that who the stars were–Mr. Van Dyke and Julie Andrews—did not make so much an impression on me. Besides, at that time, the only star for me was Annette Funicello. Watching the Disney classic for the first time since I was a child, I was surprised by how much I remembered and how much I had forgotten. The movie must have seemed nostalgic for a more simple time to the adults in the 1964 audience who were living in more complicated times. I watched it over sixty years later feeling nostalgic for those less complicated times of 1964.
Then I watched Bye Bye Birdie, released the year before, which I have watched a couple of times over the years. It’s pretty lightweight except in those moments when the budding star known as Ann-Margret seems caught between the high school girl she is portraying and the “kitten with a whip” she will play the following year. By the time the movie was over, I was in nostalgia overload. It was then I did something to take me back to the future.
Turning over to cable news just to see what crazy thing might have happened while I was watching my double dose of Mr. Van Dyke, I immediately found out about the murders in Hollywood. Well, Brentwood, to be more exact. At the point I tuned in, Rob Reiner and his wife were not being reported as the ones who had been killed. But the family soon acknowledged it had been them, and my supercalifragilisticexpialidocious moment was over.
When I went to bed, my mental speculations went into overdrive. Was it some movie deal gone bad? Some Charles Manson wannabe? Or was it political, having to do with Mr. Reiner’s outspoken criticism of Trump?
Well, as it has turned out, it was none of the things I thought. But in a strange but not shocking post (you were shocked? Really?), Trump made it about politics and specifically about him. The whole post is readily available on the internet, but I will pull a couple of threads from it. He refers to a “massive, unyielding, incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease” and an “obvious paranoia reaching new heights.” In context, Trump aims these barbs at the murdered man who was not yet cold, as they say back home. With due apologies to Shakespeare, someone doth protest too much, methinks.
But what most gave me pause was that Trump clearly thought the murders were political and in retaliation for Mr. Reiner’s criticism of him. And, somehow, that would be understandable if not completely justifiable.
Sometimes I just need another movie. Maybe another musical. Nothing too heavy and political like Cabaret. Maybe something with Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore. But, nothing that is too thoroughly modern. I can only take so much.
