OMG you found it! 
Thank you…I want to go back and watch it now. That show was so freaking trippy.
Thanks installLSC! That show was awful but I loved it back then.
There were two TV-movies in the 1980s that I missed, and would dearly love to see.
“Modesty Blaise” (1982), starring Ann Turkel
“Cameo by Night” (1987), starring Sela Ward
I doubt if they are any good, but I would enjoy seeing them just because I have a crush on the actresses, and I loves me a good (or, in this case, probably stinkin’ bad) action movie. And I have never seen them available on either VHS or DVD.
I can only find clips - I’m looking for complete shows. I had the “honor” of having one of my pictures posted on the wall (segmnt they did at the onset of each show).
I even know what day my picture aired (Jan 20,1981) - the day Regan was inaugurated. I’d love to see it again.
The 1982 “Modesty Blaise” was a tv pilot, and it isn’t available officially. if you are interested in the character however, there is a 2004 production available on DVD called “My Name Is Modesty: A Modesty Blaise Adventure” that contains her origin story.
Oh, that is good to know! Thank you very much for the information.
I remember that episode. “Actual retail value: forty bucks.” She should have known it wasn’t the $25,000 as Geoff had pulled something else out of the box (smelling salts, I think) first, and there was never anything else in the box with the $25,000 check in it.
Another one, where the contestant kept the money instead of the box: “You would have won a picture of Salmon P. Chase of the Chase Manhattan Bank!” (pulls out a 8x11 or so picture of Chase; contestant is elated) “Oh, and you also would have won this picture of Chase…on the $10,000 Bill!”
This thread is about some of the recordings that have been lost or destroyed (or never even existed) over the years, but is anyone else ever surprised by the things that were kept? The Game Show Network is showing reruns of old episodes of $25,000 Pyramid. The one last night, I didn’t even recognize either of the celebrities. I wonder why they bothered to keep those all these years, and where.
In 1981, I had just graduated from high school and took a trip to China with 5 other students from my Chinese class. A Tulsa film crew also went with us. They made a documentary called Project: China which ended up winning a Peabody award. I lost my copy a long time ago.
I was home from school sick, and I remember seeing this. I would love to see it confirmed. Although in my memory the dialogue went like this:
Oprah: How do you like it when people call you “the chicken man”?
Perdue: How do you like it when people call you a porch monkey?
Cue commercial.
Since the show was taped, do you really think such an exchange would have been aired?
No, however the link says that this supposedly took place when she was on local TV and the show was live.
As hajaro points out it was a local show aired live, however it may have been taped as well. This would have been late 70s or maybe very early 80s, before video tape machines were common outside of TV studios so it’s entirely possible no one at home taped the show. Also the video tapes that TV studios use (5/8 inch, I think) are pretty pricey and tend to be used again and again, so it’s plausible that no tape of the show exists.
But so many people over the years swear that they saw this… and I remember it pretty well.
OTOH, it’s also plausible that someone told me about this 35 or so years ago, and in the interim it has become a false memory for me. That’s why it’s my TV “holy grail”; I’d love to know if I actually saw that or not.
There was a WPIX 11 special on Houdini some years ago, that I’d really like to see again. I detailed it in my posting here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=10768096&highlight=houdini#post10768096
Maybe not so much as the Donny and Marie “Twelve Days of Christmas” (see my other post back on page 3), but all this talk of local kids shows reminded me of something else.
When I was younger, KTLA (channel 5) from Los Angeles used to broadcast a large block of old Popeye cartoons from decades ago each Sunday morning. It was one of the few animated things a kid could see on Sunday mornings - back then, as now, the whole world was assumed to have been at church.
What made this neat was that the block was hosted by Tom Hatten (I remember he was one of the wayward American generals in charge of the anti-missile project in the Chevy Chase/Dan Akroyd movie Spies Like Us), who would dress the part, complete with Navy uniform and watch cap. One of the cool things he would do is accept a “squiggle” that a fan had sent by mail and transform the squiggle as drawn on a large pad of newsprint into some classic character from the early days of animation and “Sunday Funnies” like Barney Google or Betty Boop.
It would be neat to see some of those segments again; I see whomever worked on his Wikipedia entry recalls that as fondly as I do.
When I lived in the LA area as an adult I loved Tom Hatton and Popeye!
I never watched the Popeyes, but that Wikipedia page about Tom Hatten reminded me of the Family Film Festival, which I used to watch a lot when I was a kid. No kidding, as soon as I saw Tom’s name in the post, before I even went to Wikipedia, my brain radio started playing “Reminiscing.” 
I have a copy. Can’t say that it’s aged well, but still good thing to have if you’re a Serling fan. One of the producers was Joan Rivers’s deceased husband Edgar Rosenberg.
They had this music they’d play in the background when the contestant got hosed that used to crack me up. I used to call it “the degradation tune”. My mother loathed this show as much as my father and I loved it.
I remember where some lady is all psyched up and Edward’s tells her she’s won a Mercedes (or some other high-priced car). He proceeds to pull out a Matchbox car. Hilarity ensued. Cue the degradation tune.
A slim chance, but Game Show Network (GSN) used to air on Saturday nights classic black and white game shows. Among them were Beat the Clock and The Price is Right with Bill Cullen. Used to blow my mind the prizes and the value of the prizes that they would give on the latter.
Maybe worth sending them a note or calling to see where the tapes are now?