![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||||
|
Click
on the title to order - huge discounts Love
American Style - Season 1, Vol. 1
Written and directed by the guys who were working on most of the sitcoms of the day, Love American Style was a skit comedy show with three stories with a series of Laugh-In style blackouts between. By 1970, Love American Style had joined ABC's powerhouse Friday night line up that included, over the years, The Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, Nanny & the Professor, That Girl, Room 222, Odd Couple and other lasting classics. The show often feels like a haphazard collection of failed pilots and scripts left over from cancelled sitcoms like Love on a Rooftop or Mayberry R.F.D. (in fact, although not included in this set, the original rejected pilot for Happy Days appeared on this series). The skits are peppered with B level TV stars like Marty Allen, Henry Gibson, Jane Wyatt, Joe Flynn, Yvonne Craig, Andy Devine, Jack Carter, Dennis Day, Rosemary DeCamp, Hamilton Camp, Sandra Gould, Aldo Ray, Phyllis Diller, Les Crane, Bob Crane, Hal Smith, Broderick Crawford, Wes Stern, Richard Deacon, Vito Scotti, Bill Bixby, Tina Louise, Carolyn Jones, Ted Bessell, Red Buttons, Judy Carne - even a very young Harrison Ford. And that's just scratching the surface. While it's mostly a lukewarm mixture, there are some funny bits - Ozzie & Harriett star in an amusing storyline, and ventriloquist Paul Winchell (with Jerry Mahoney) meet puppeteer Shari Lewis to hilarious effect. Flip Wilson along with Eddie "Rochester" Anderson and the infamous Mantan Moreland also appear in an amusing setup. What a joy to see these veteran performers in a slightly different setting. The laughs are broad (when there are any) and all too often the show falls back on mildly insulting stereotypes but that was TV in the late-1960s - sheer silliness, mindless entertainment at its best. With this austere DVD collection you get 12 hour-long episodes (the show was later cut to 30 minutes, then switched back to an hour). It's a pleasant trip back to 1969 TV sensibilities. Thankfully presented in broadcast order, the episodes are numbered in production sequence. Nice touch. TV on DVD Reviews: |