There are apparently 3 movies called Soul/Sole Survivor, the movie I’m thinking of didn’t have The Shat in (there are comments on that link were people have seen the same movie I saw!) and it was about a bomber that ditched in the desert. The crew were whiling away the time before a rescue team found them,
and there were no survivors, the rescue team found their bodies and as each body was found and their dog tags read, the person’s ghost vanished…all bar one fella who’s body was eventually found.
no dice on buck barry, but song of the south isnt TOO hard to get a hold of. just check your local flea markets… And prepare to be disappointed, its not near as offensive as its made out to be.
There was a psychic-investigation show called E.S.P. sometime in the 1970s. Internet’s being dodgy during a local thunderstorm, so I can’t find a reference, but that may be what you’re looking for. “SST” was the SuperSonic Transport airplane that caused some environmental controversy around the same time.
Do you know if it was (a) an NBC or an ABC episode, and (b) if it was a daytime or a prime-time episode? (I am guessing from the amount won that it was a nighttime episode).
Most of the NBC nighttime episodes still exist; GSN ran them on a weekly basis for years about 10 years ago. Sadly, only four of the nighttime episodes from after it moved to ABC exist. (Only one daytime episode exists; it may have been kept because it includes a plug for an upcoming episode of Twenty-One which turned out to be the episode where Charles Van Doren finally lost.)
However, when Fremantle Media obtained the rights to TPIR from Mark Goodson Productions, one of the things it did was to prevent GSN from airing episodes of either version as long as the current version is still on CBS. (Even if they do eventually allow them to be re-aired, it’s possible that they would not allow the ones with furs (this is already a condition for the modern version).)
As for my own “holy grails”, the two big ones are wrestling programs.
The first, which is almost certainly unavailable, is the Sacramento NWA shows from the 1970s. (Someone who works for the station where they were recorded - it’s now Sacramento’s Fox affiliate - looked into finding them, and discovered that not only do none exist as far as he can tell, but the same tapes were used over and over on something like a monthly basis.)
The second is the pre-1984 WTBS wrestling shows, with Gordon Solie and (at one point) Ole Anderson. These may still exist, but even if they do, presumably WWE would own the rights to them, and Ole and Vince McMahon are not exactly on speaking terms (which is one of the reasons why, when the Four Horsemen get inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, Ole will not be one of them). (WWE took over the WTBS broadcasting in 1984, and then Jim Crockett Promotions took over in 1985; the JCP episodes have been airing on WWE On Demand for years.)
There is one that I’ve wondered about for a long time, not so much because I want to see it again for any kind of enjoyment, but because I feel it had an impact on my life.
I’m pretty sure I was no older than 9, maybe 10, so this would have been in the late 70s or very early 80s. It was some hour-long medical drama show. This particular episode had a child rushed to the hospital - I don’t recall what was wrong with him, but it was an illness of some sort, not like a car accident or anything. The kids parents come in, and they are very religious - I don’t recall what religion, but they didn’t believe in doctors and medical science (Christian Scientists, maybe?); they thought god would make him better if they prayed and it was his will. So, against the doctor’s advice, they took the kid away from the hospital. The doctors are sad, but there’s nothing they can legally do. I remember thinking, oh man, that kid is going to die…
But of course, at the end of the episode, the family comes back to the hospital, and the kid is perfectly fine and happy and running around and playing. All better; cured. See, they tell the doctors, we prayed and god made him better. The doctors shrug and smile and the sentiment was, as I remember, “well, sometimes maybe we just don’t know everything”, or something like that.
I have a distinct memory of being angry at this ending, even as a child. I knew that wasn’t the way it worked. It really started me thinking about things I hadn’t thought of before.
I’m sure the writers meant it as a feel-good, spiritual story, but I honestly think that episode started me down the road to eventually becoming an atheist.
For many years my holy grail was the original production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella with Julie Andrews and Jon Cypher, broadcast live in 1957. Fortunately the kinescope was eventually found, restored and released on DVD.
Currently I’d love to be able to see two short-lived cable series from the early 2000’s: Bull, a show about stockbrokers with Alicia Coppola and Elisabeth Rohm, and Breaking News, a show about a 24-hour news network with Tim Matheson and Patricia Wettig (not the Albert Brooks/Holly Hunter movie Broadcast News). Bull had a second season that was never shown in the U.S. that I’ve always wanted to see.
Wouldn’t have been cool if the docs slipped the kid some medicine before the parents took him away? Then the doctor’s final lines would be with a wink.
That actually would have been a pretty great ending. It would have communicated a respectful side of the doctors, letting the parents feel good about themselves, and not had a silly, unrealistic resolution (save for the doctors risking getting the hell sued out of them for giving medicine to a child without the parent’s permission…).
(Until the next season, when the kid gets appendicitis, and the parents are all, “But praying worked last year, don’t you remember!?”)
Sadly though, no, that’s not what happened. It was the prayin’ that saved him!
For me I think this was a tv movie that was meant to be a series. It was about a small genetically engineered creature that was essentially to be a servant. The creature was short, round, bald with big eyes, though the details are fuzzy. Two docs or lab workers go on the run with the thing and try to avoid recapture.
I think it came out in the early 80’s but have never been able to find any referene to it.
Thanks Don…It was definitely NBC…we have the audio (TPIR pressed vinyl records for the contestants). My best guess would be before April 1963. Where could I look to see any of these. I would LOVE to see my dad. He has been gone for 20 years.
When I was a kid in the '50s, I was on local TV three times . . . twice, playing the violin . . . once with a small orchestra and once playing solo. My mother and I were also on, in a mother-son spelling bee. I seriously doubt anything of these shows were saved.
Were you born around 1970? That sounds an awful lot like an episode of *House Calls *with Wayne Rogers and Lynn Redgrave back in the day.
The episode I recall didn’t have the family coming back, though. The parents pulled their son out of the hospital and Ray Buktenica’s character tracked them down to their house, with Wayne Rogers close behind. By the time Rogers got there, Buktenica was emerging from the house, genuinely perplexed. Behind him came the family along with the son, now completely healthy. Rogers asked if they’d gotten another doctor. “Best one in the world,” replied the father.
It creeped me out a little, too.
I’m at work and I can’t get IMDB, but that episode shouldn’t be too hard to find.
