Robin Williams' First Starring Role

---

---

Poopdeck Pappy (Ray Walston): Children. They cry at you when they're young, they yell at you when they're older, they borrows from you when they's middle–aged, and they leave you alone to die — without even paying you back.

---

I remember watching Popeye cartoons when I was a child, but I don't think those cartoons ever told the story of how Popeye came to be in the coastal town of Sweethaven or how he met his future bride Olive Oyl. So I never knew how that happened — until the movie "Popeye" was released on this date in 1980.

Popeye was one of my favorites when I was a little boy. In fact, there was a time — when I was probably 4 or 5 — when I really believed that my muscles would grow like Popeye's if I ate my spinach. And I remember eating spinach and then flexing my muscles, and my mother would ooh and ahhh — not because my muscles really grew but probably because I was eating at least one of my vegetables. Like all mothers, she liked that idea.

Like most kids, I suppose, I didn't care for vegetables. I love spinach today — and not because I think it will make my muscles grow, either. I just honestly like it. But I can't eat spinach, even today, without thinking of Popeye. He has had a permanent influence on my life.

For those of us who grew up with Popeye, the movie was a treat. In his first starring role in a movie, Robin Williams played Popeye, which was something I struggled with before I saw the movie. In hindsight, I have to say it was the right role for him at the time. He was in his Mork from Ork period, arguably the most outlandish, off the wall phase of his career — and the role of Popeye gave him an opportunity to really spread his creative wings.

---

---

I thought the casting of Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl was positively inspired. Since the movie's debut 35 years ago, I have heard many people say that Olive Oyl was the role Duvall was born to play. I don't know if I would take it to that extreme, but I do think Duvall was the only actress in 1980 who could have been a plausible Olive Oyl.

Ray Walston, who was probably best known for his sitcom My Favorite Martian, was a little over the top as Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye's long–lost father, but he was only in the movie in its last half hour.

At the time I recall reading reviews of the movie that were rather lukewarm, but critic Roger Ebert said it was "lots of fun," and I agreed.

Ebert was one of those critics who said Duvall was born to be Olive Oyl. As I said earlier, I'm not sure I would go quite that far, but I can't argue with Ebert on this: "She brings to Olive a certain ... dignity, you might say. She's not lightly scorned, and although she may tear apart a room in an unsuccessful attempt to open the curtains, she is fearless in the face of her terrifying fiancé, Bluto."

I guess "Popeye" came along at the right time for me. John Lennon had been shot and killed only a few days before, and I badly needed something like "Popeye," a reassuring reminder of my childhood.

---

---

Calling the comic strip (which of course was where Popeye began) "one of the most artificial and limiting of art forms," Ebert acknowledged that director Robert Altman's movie "suggests that it is possible to take the broad strokes of a comic strip and turn them into sophisticated entertainment. What's needed is the right attitude toward the material."

As I recall, Harry Nilsson's score was pretty well received, as it should have been. As Ebert wrote, the songs "fit into all of this quite effortlessly. Instead of having everything come to a halt for the musical set pieces, Altman stitches them into the fabric. Robin Williams sings Popeye's anthem, 'I Yam What I Yam' with a growling old sea dog's stubbornness. Bluto's 'I'm Mean' has an undeniable conviction, and so does Olive Oyl's song to Bluto, 'He's Large.'"

Nilsson's music was dripping with irony, which may well have been lost on younger viewers.

"Popeye" got a bad rap from the critics of the day. It was better than many thought and deserves to be seen again through fresh eyes.

'Fantasia': A Live Action/Animation Triumph

---

---

Mickey Mouse: [Pulling on Stokowski's coat] Mr. Stokowski! Mr. Stokowski!

[Mickey whistles to get Stokowski's attention]

Mickey Mouse: My congratulations, sir!

Leopold Stokowski: [shaking hands with Mickey] Congratulations to you, Mickey!

Mickey Mouse: Gee, thanks! Heh heh! Well, so long! I'll be seeing ya!

Leopold Stokowski: Goodbye!

---

Classical music and cough drops. That's what I think of when I think of Walt Disney's "Fantasia," which premiered on this day in 1940.

I was a senior in high school when I saw "Fantasia" for the first time. I had seen other Walt Disney movies, of course, just not that one. And I probably wouldn't have seen it then, had it not been for the fact that I was in love and my girlfriend talked me into seeing it when it was being shown one night on one of the college campuses in my hometown.

I don't know why I hadn't seen it before. It doesn't seem to have been a conscious choice that I made, but maybe it was. Maybe I saw or heard about something that was in it that I didn't like and decided I didn't want to see the movie, but I honestly have no memory of anything like that.

And, while I probably wouldn't have said this at the time, it would have been a mistake never to have seen it.

If I did make a conscious decision not to see it, it was probably because of the classical music. I didn't care for much classical music when I was 17. My tastes have changed since I was a teenager — it happens to all of us — and today I am inclined to view "Fantasia" as a multimedia triumph.

---

---

The movie opened with a fellow named Deems Taylor, a composer/music critic, who explained to the audience that "Fantasia" had "three kinds of music ... First, there's the kind that tells a definite story. Then there's the kind that, while it has no specific plot, does paint a series of more or less definite pictures. Then there's a third kind, music that exists simply for its own sake."

The composition that would open the movie, Taylor said, was of the third kind. It is called absolute music, and Taylor said it would be accompanied by images on the screen that might be like the mental images one would have while listening to the music being performed in a concert hall.

The result was a two–hour experience that was, simultaneously, like ones I had had at home and unlike any I had ever had.

My parents made sure I was exposed to all kinds of music when I was growing up. My mother loved bluegrass, my father liked Middle Eastern music, and they both liked classical music. I added some personal favorites to the list — rock music, of course, and jazz and blues. As a result, my music collection looks like a rummage sale — albeit a classy rummage sale.

The music wasn't entirely unfamiliar to me. But the Walt Disney animation was a new twist on things.

And there was no telling what kind of images would be conjured by the music.

---

---

Probably the most famous segment of the movie was the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" starring Mickey Mouse.

That, as I understand it, was the inspiration for the movie — a short cartoon of the "Sorcerer's Apprentice." Disney and conductor Leopold Stokowski concluded that the concept of merging animation and classical music with live action imagery was too good to limit to a single cartoon so they went about putting together a two–hour movie.

I had no complaints about the music that was included in the movie, but at the time I would have liked to have seen "Peter and the Wolf" included. As a child, I remember listening to a recording of "Peter and the Wolf" and enjoyed it immensely. It was probably my first real introduction to classical music.

I learned later that Disney made a feature based on the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" in 1946 that was originally meant to be a sequel to "Fantasia." Great minds, huh?

---

---

Oh, and about those cough drops ...

We went to see this movie at about this time of the year, and I had a cold. Karen had a very strong nurturing instinct, and she insisted that I pop a cough drop in my mouth before we went to the movie. The flavor of wild cherries always seems to be in my mouth whenever I see "Fantasia," and I haven't used cough drops since that afternoon.

The American Film Institute rated "Fantasia" No. 58 on its 1998 list of the top 100 movies of the previous 100 years. Oddly, it received no Oscar nominations, not even for music or animation.

But 75 years later it is still one of the best animated motion pictures you will ever see.

Taking a Trip Through a Tollbooth

---

---

Milo (Butch Patrick): That's my speech! I didn't know I was going to eat my words.

King Azaz (Hans Conried): Of course you didn't. That's what we're all doing. You should have made a tastier speech.

---

I don't remember when I first saw "The Phantom Tollbooth," which made its debut on this day in 1970 — but I can tell you where I saw it.

As I have mentioned in this blog before, the merchants in my hometown used to sponsor free movies for kids on Wednesday afternoons in the summer (it's been a long time since I was in my hometown in the summer so I have no idea whether that is still done. Probably not.). My hometown was small and only had one single–screen theater downtown (and a drive–in on the outskirts of town) when I was growing up.

The free movies that were shown were hardly first–run movies. Most were two or three years old, if not older, so my guess would be that "The Phantom Tollbooth" was probably shown in my hometown in the summer of 1972 or 1973. But I could be wrong about that.

I went to a lot of those free summer movies when I was a boy, and my memory is that the kids who went to them — and that was probably most of the people I knew — rarely watched the movies. They were too busy throwing popcorn at each other. Come to think of it, I didn't usually pay much attention to the movies that were shown, either.

But I paid attention to "The Phantom Tollbooth."

I don't know why. I mean, I never read the book on which it was based, and the people I know who have read the book have told me it is superior to the movie — which wouldn't surprise me. I've known for a long time that books are almost always better than the movies they inspire.

But, as I say, I never read the book so I wasn't watching the movie to compare the two.

I guess I was initially drawn to it by the fact that a child actor named Butch Patrick was cast as Milo, a boy who was bored with his life and came home from school one day to find a tollbooth in his room. Who was Butch Patrick? you ask. Well, shoot, back in those days everyone knew who Butch Patrick was — but perhaps not by name. I know I didn't know his name until many years later, but I knew who he was on television — Eddie Munster.

He looked a lot different without the wolfman makeup.

---

---

Anyhow, it turned out this tollbooth had magical properties. Milo had nothing better to do so he got into a toy car and drove through the tollbooth into a world of puns and idioms.

Milo found himself on a road to Expectations, got mired in the Doldrums and was rescued by Tock, a watchdog with an honest–to–God pocketwatch in his belly. The two set off on their journey through the Kingdom of Wisdom. They had to rescue Princesses Rhyme and Reason and restore order to the kingdom.

On this journey they encountered all sorts of oddballs whose voices were supplied by actors most of my contemporaries would have recognized from their TV work, not the least of which was the voice of Hans Conried, whose face was known from his many TV appearances and whose distinctive voice was easily as recognizable as his face.

I doubt that most of my friends were familiar with Mel Blanc's face — and most of us probably didn't know what his real voice sounded like. After all, he created the voices of cartoon characters we all watched on Saturday mornings — Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam. Blanc was known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices," a figure that must have included the three characters he voiced in "The Phantom Tollbooth."

There are many people who believe — and justifiably so — that Blanc was the most influential voice actor who ever lived.

---

---

There were times when Patrick did some voice acting, too. Most of the movie, in fact. Once he crossed through the tollbooth, his character was an animation. This was 1970, after all. Oh, sure, there had been some live action combined with animation in some Walt Disney movies, but not much else. "The Phantom Tollbooth" shifted from live action to animation and back again rather seamlessly but didn't combine the two.

Well, it might have. It's been a long time since I have seen the movie, and it may be that I have forgotten something — but I don't recall anything like what was seen in "Mary Poppins" several years earlier — or "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" nearly two decades later.

It seems to me that I would have remembered if "The Phantom Tollbooth" had merged live action with animation. I think I would have made a mental note of that, as unusual as it was. Perhaps the process was so expensive at that time that you had to be a Walt Disney to afford it. Come to think of it, Disney was behind "Roger Rabbit," too.

Well, anyway.

I guess my greatest issue with "The Phantom Tollbooth" was its music. Sometimes it could be shrewd and inventive, I'll grant you that, but it could also be tedious. Might have been effective to use the tedious music in the tedious places in the story — like the Doldrums.

And I would have to say that, while I always liked The Munsters, I really found it hard to empathize with Patrick's character, which he played so churlishly that it was difficult for me to imagine anyone really having much sympathy for him — in the beginning, anyway. My memory is that his character got better as the movie went on. But you know the old saying — you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and I think Patrick lost a lot of the audience early.

---

---

Still, my memory is that, overall, the movie was clever, a good children's flick. Unfortunately, Patrick was a teenager when he made it, a bit old for his part even if he was short for his age.

'Mary Poppins' Was a Musical Moneymaker

---

---

"Kindly do not attempt to cloud the issue with facts."

George Banks (David Tomlinson)

---

Fifty years ago, it was still possible to win an Oscar for acting in a musical that was, essentially, written for children.

Julie Andrews proved that, winning Best Actress for her performance in "Mary Poppins" over some formidable competition: Anne Bancroft, Sophia Loren, Debbie Reynolds and Kim Stanley.

"Mary Poppins" was nominated for 13 Oscars in all and won five. Few musicals have had the kind of influence on the culture that "Mary Poppins" had. For years after they saw "Mary Poppins" at the theaters, kids everywhere were singing "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," "A Spoonful of Sugar" and "Chim Chim Cher–ee" as effortlessly as any of the older, more traditional (and, perhaps, in some quarters, better known) songs of childhood.

My family had the soundtrack, and my brother and I listened to it over and over. Even though the movie had been away from the big screens for years. Surely, we weren't the only ones!

Just about every child must have recognized Mary Poppins with her trademark umbrella, especially when she was descending over the London skyline. It's kind of hard to forget a thing like that.

---

---

In the movie, the enchanting Mary Poppins was retained to be the nanny for two children who had a reputation for running off nannies. But things just had a way of working out for Mary Poppins.

So she came to work in the Banks household — the family patriarch, the aptly named Mr. Banks, was a banker. Turned out Mary was a close friend of a jack–of–all–trades by the name of Bert (Dick Van Dyke). Bert happened to be in her neighborhood, and their interplay suggested that they had been friends for a long time. Long enough, anyway, for Mary Poppins' abrupt arrivals and departures to come as no surprise to Bert. Apparently, he'd seen it all before.

I never had the opportunity to see "Mary Poppins" on the big screen. I saw it on my family's TV, and I loved the whole movie, but my favorite scene involved Ed Wynn as Uncle Albert who floated in the air when he laughed.

---

---

Uncle Albert loved to laugh; appropriately, his song was "I Love to Laugh."

The songs in "Mary Poppins" were all first rate. "Chim Chim Cher–ee," sung by Bert as a chimney sweep (one of several jobs he had during the movie), won the Oscar for Best Song.

It's been a long time since I have seen "Mary Poppins." In fact, I probably haven't seen it all the way through since I was a child. But even now, when I see a clip of a song, the lyrics come easily to my mind, summoned forth from wherever they were buried in my brain. I couldn't have recited the lyrics a few minutes before, but hearing the music and seeing the images brings it all back.

That was the magic of "Mary Poppins," which was the jewel of Walt Disney Studios when Disney was alive. It was the top moneymaker of 1965, bigger than "The Sound of Music," which also starred Andrews, bigger than "Goldfinger," bigger than "My Fair Lady."

---

---

Of course, those were the days when movies could — and did — stay at theaters for months, even years.

No one could blend live action with animation the way Disney could, and that was the kind of thing that made money for Disney over and over again — but never quite as well as in "Mary Poppins."

However, I would never underestimate Andrews' contributions to the movie's success.

Day's Dream

---

---

Did you ever notice how much dreams figured in the career of Doris Day (who recently marked her 90th birthday)?

This isn't a joke. I'm serious.

Her second hit song was "My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time."

She had a 10–inch LP called "I'll See You in My Dreams," which was the soundtrack for one of her movies, and she had two 12–inch LPs, "Day Dreams" and "I Have Dreamed" (which had seven songs that included the word dream in the title).

She appeared in two movies that had dream in the title and one TV short from the mid–1960s, "Every Girl's Dream."

Well, to be fair, I guess dreams do figure prominently in the existence of entertainers. In a sense, it is their business to sell dreams. I guess they aren't much different from sales people — except that they have to be entertaining. They're not selling a product; they're selling a mood, a state of mind. That's the key difference.

Most entertainers are not as obvious; they find synonyms (suitable ones for dream, for example, are "imagine/imagination," "fantasy," "thought," "reverie" and so on) to use.

But Doris Day was more direct with her fans, I suppose. And, to be fair, few entertainers have been as entitled to dream — even after it seemed their dreams came true — as Day.

At one time a frequent star of the big screen, Day hasn't been in a movie since the death of her husband/manager in 1968 left her penniless and deep in debt. She re–created herself for the small screen of television.

Initially, her dream was to be a dancer, but after she nearly died in a car crash, she refocused her attention on singing and acting.

In her mid–20s, she made her big–screen debut in a movie with Jack Carson, and a partnership of sorts was born. It may seem as if she made many more movies, but Day was in 39 — some with Carson, and, more widely remembered, some with Rock Hudson.

Her second movie, director Michael Curtiz's "My Dream Is Yours," which premiered 65 years ago today, also co–starred Carson.

---

---

Like many of Day's movies, "My Dream Is Yours" was so light and airy it could have floated away on its own.

Carson played theatrical manager for Day, a widowed mom. He took her to Hollywood where she became a star. Her blossoming career, achieved in part at the expense of another performer for whom she has feelings, keeps them apart through most of the film — but not, apparently, off screen.

Suffice to say, the plot was not really the main attraction for the movie — nor is it today.

But, whereas Day was certainly an attraction for audiences in 1949, today the main attraction is to see an early example of a truly Roger Rabbitesque touch.

---

---

Day and Carson, dressed in bunny suits, did a live action/animation sequence with Bugs Bunny and Tweety Bird (voices supplied by the late Mel Blanc) to "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" by Franz Liszt.

Now that was a dream sequence.

The Birth of the Feature-Length Animated Film

---

---

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."

Walt Disney

---

By the time I was born, Walt Disney had an established reputation as the first — and last — word in animation.

My memory is that Disney and family entertainment were synonymous terms — and it was implied that animation was a big part of that although I have vivid memories of seeing Disney productions that had no animation whatsoever.

Hand–drawn film animation is a pretty crowded field (although perhaps the field is dominated by computer graphics artists today) — but, like anything else, it had to start somewhere.

And, 75 years ago today, it did.

Animated films had been around for awhile, but they had been in the short–feature form. My parents saw them in theaters when they were children; my generation knew them as Saturday morning cartoons. But, until this day in 1937, no one had made a feature–length movie in that format. And no one had produced an animated feature film in full color.

It's likely that animation would have progressed eventually, anyway, although I think it is equally likely that it would not have come as far as quickly as it did if not for Walt Disney.

And the root of that, it seems to me, has to be "Snow White," which premiered on this day in 1937.

It's hard to imagine the mindset, but the primary objection to the project was the belief that no one would be willing to sit through a 90–minute cartoon. Critics called the project "Disney's Folly" — yet, five years ago, the American Film Institute recognized it as one of the Top 100 movies of all time.

But Disney was a master showman who understood his audience better than almost any of his contemporaries. He knew that, for feature–length animation to be commercially successful, he needed to appeal to adults as well as children.

"Snow White" combined more realistic human features in the prince and Snow White, who faced the most dramatic circumstances, with the cartoonish dwarfs, who provided most of the comic relief.

One can argue that, with its tale of Prince Charming awakening a slumbering (and beautiful) Snow White with a kiss, the story and characters perpetuated stereotypes under which women have struggled for the last 7½ decades.

But, recently, Judith Welikala and Emily Dugan wrote in The Independent of how Disney's female characters have — to borrow an old advertising expression — come a long way, baby.

(I suppose it could be argued that they might not have come as far as they have in Disney movies if Disney had not died in 1966.)

The heroines of Disney's early movies, wrote Welikala and Dugan, had to have "a handsome prince, a tiny waist, a pearly white smile and an urgent need to be rescued."

---

Queen: Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?

---

In three–quarters of a century, they have evolved to be more independent, more self–reliant. More liberated.

Princess Merida of this year's "Brave," they observed, is "the first Disney princess who does not have a love interest."

That may be, as a columnist and Disney historian told Welikala and Dugan, more a reflection of the times. Women were more dependent on men in the 1930s. They entered the work force during World War II and many were reluctant to leave it after the war ended.

More and more women found themselves having to make the choice between their professional and personal lives. Although women were frequently told they could "have it all," most have found it a tricky — and elusive — accomplishment.

In many ways, "Snow White" is a glimpse into the values that prevailed in the 1930s — much as TV shows from the 1950s are said to epitomize that time in our social history — a time when children were told fairy tales they continued to believe into adulthood.

Kind of a time capsule — in full color.

Centennial of an Artist

---

---

When I was in elementary school, I had a lunchbox that was covered with illustrations from The Flintstones.

It was one of my favorite TV shows when I was a child.

In fact, it was a prime time program through the first half of the 1960s. My family didn't get a TV set until after it had been taken from the prime time lineup, but it must have been shown in nighttime syndication for awhile because I distinctly remember seeing it at night when I was in the second or third grade.

Prime time animated programming pretty much disappeared in the 1970s and 1980s, but in those years, as well as the 1960s, Hanna–Barbera Productions was the studio that was responsible for most of the cartoons being produced in America. Cartoons were seldom shown with feature films, anymore, and cartoons could mostly be found on Saturday morning TV.

I remember watching many of them — The Jetsons, Tom and Jerry, Huckleberry Hound, Jonny Quest, Scooby–Doo, Quick Draw McGraw, Top Cat, Yogi Bear — on Saturdays when I was a child.

And I was a fan of them all, but The Flintstones probably was my favorite.

The reason I'm telling you this is because today would have been the 100th birthday of Joseph Barbera, the co–founder of Hanna–Barbera. He almost made it to his centennial, too. He died at the end of 2006 at the age of 95.

---

---

(His partner wasn't too far off, either. Hanna would have turned 100 last July, but he died on March 22, 2001, at the age of 90.)

Part of what I really enjoyed about The Flintstones was the way it merged the modern world with the Stone Age world in what I always thought were clever word plays.

Names of modern people and places were altered to include "rock" or "stone" or something similar — for example, celebrity names in the fictional town of Bedrock were given Stone Age twists. Ann–Margret became Ann Margrock, Tony Curtis became Stony Curtis, Cary Grant became Cary Granite.

In the Flintstones' world, they seemed to have all the conveniences of modern life — but they were all powered in some way by dinosaurs or birds or some other prehistoric creature.

In the intro, for example, the audience saw the gang getting in Fred's "car" which was powered by his feet, not gasoline (that was funny at the time, but it doesn't sound too bad now that gas is around $3.50 a gallon, does it?) and going to the drive–in to see a movie — that's a rather quaint notion nowadays, too, wouldn't you say? I mean, how many drive–ins have you seen lately?

---

---

It was pretty much the same formula that was used on The Jetsons — only, in that program, the emphasis was on the Space Age. The names had the same futuristic theme (George Jetson's boss was named Spacely) and all the great advances of the future, whether they have come to pass or not, were born in the minds of the children of my generation.

I absolutely believe that Hanna–Barbera is the reason why some people in the 21st century wonder why they can't drive flying cars yet. (Some of them still think it will be achieved in their lifetimes, believe that or not!)

Sometimes, I guess, it really was hard to see where reality left off and fantasy picked up in a Hanna–Barbera cartoon. The line was often blurred.

It's a funny thing about The Flintstones, too. For a long time, I have heard that it was modeled after the classic TV series, The Honeymooners.

I've never really formed an opinion on that. The Honeymooners was only on the air for a single season, and it had long been gone from the prime time lineup by the time I was born. It may have been shown in reruns when we got our first TV, but my parents never watched it so I wasn't exposed to it when I was growing up.

Hanna reportedly admitted that The Honeymooners was the inspiration for The Flintstones. But Barbera disputed that.

Whatever the truth, there were, at the very least, similarities between the shows. The Honeymooners was about two married couples who were good friends, just like The Flinstones. And, although it was a cartoon, there was a strong physical resemblance between Fred Flintstone and the lead male character in The Honeymooners, Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason).

As a matter of fact, I understand that the original voice of Fred Flintstone was provided by Alan Reed, who looked and sounded a lot like Gleason.

In 1986, Gleason told Playboy that he thought about suing Hanna–Barbera but, in the end, decided to let it slide.

It may have been a primarily pragmatic decision made by a star who was reluctant to bite the hands that so generously fed him.

"Do you want to be known as the guy who yanked Fred Flintstone off the air?" he said his lawyers asked him. "The guy who took away a show that so many kids love, and so many parents love, too?"

That would have been a considerable demographic in my house.

Christmas Tradition

---

---

I have written before of Christmas viewing traditions — mostly theatrical releases, such as "It's a Wonderful Life" and "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" but also holiday episodes of TV series like The West Wing.

I've even written about one of my mother's favorite Christmas movies, "We're No Angels."

I always loved the Christmas season when I was a child. I suppose most children do. But I remember observing at an early age that there was a kind of Christmas bandwagon effect — Christmas music and decorations everywhere and ever earlier in the season, always encouraging people to spend, to give — and it troubled me.

There were the Christmas TV specials with their subliminal — and not–so–subliminal — messages.

Often, the holiday specials seemed to be about self–promotion. Entertainers were always doing Christmas specials when I was growing up, and I noticed there was often more emphasis on the entertainer's newest record than on a celebration of the season.

Then there were the animated programs — the ones about Rudolph the Red–Nosed Reindeer, the Little Drummer Boy, Frosty the Snowman.

And there always seems to be at least one Christmas movie in the theaters at Christmas time. Well, it was that way when I was a kid. My mother always knew what the hot Christmas movie was, and she made sure the family went to it. Some were good; others, not so much.

Many movies and TV shows aspire to be holiday traditions. Few actually become them.

There are so many. And some are clearly better than others. I can understand the pressure to do something that makes your project stand out from the rest. Unfortunately, many of the Christmas projects end up coming across as predictable.

Maybe the secret is to not try so hard to be profound, to be touching, to be sentimental.

And it would help if some holiday–oriented movies and specials didn't seem to be in a hurry to brand themselves Christmas traditions. If it is their destiny to become traditions, it will happen without any outside help.

I don't know when anything actually makes that transition from a thing or an activity or whatever to a tradition.

But you can usually pinpoint when such a thing made its first appearance.

And Thursday will be the anniversary of such a debut. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" first aired on CBS on Dec. 9, 1965.

I don't think I watched it when it first aired. My family didn't get a TV until a year or two later.

Perhaps, though, even in that comparatively primitive time, my parents heard the hype about the TV special and asked their friends who did have a TV (and there weren't all that many of them in those days) if we could watch it with them — and, thus, it is possible that I saw it when it made its debut.

But my earliest memory of watching it is in the house where I grew up ... on the relatively small black–and–white TV set that didn't come into our home until I was in elementary school. By that time, whenever it may have been — a year or two later, possibly, perhaps more — the program was being touted as a "Christmas tradition."

And perhaps I, being a young and impressionable boy, accepted that it was a tradition without questioning the assertion. If I did, I did so without all the facts.

But neither I nor the assertion were wrong.

I don't recall ever seeing those early ratings for "A Charlie Brown Christmas" — but I figure they must have been pretty good because, if nothing else, time has proven that "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is truly a broadcasting tradition. It has been shown at least once every year since it premiered.

By the time I saw it in my home, I suppose, the program had established a track record that qualified it as a tradition. That's what they told me, anyway, and I accepted it.

Thankfully, they were right. This time.

For many years, the program aired only once a year. A couple of times, the special aired on the nights before my family was going to drive to Dallas to spend Christmas with my grandparents.

We always watched it, even if we were planning to spend the next day on the road, and I remember gazing dreamily out the car window as we drove to Dallas, watching the sun settle on the western horizon and hearing the sounds of the Peanuts gang in my head.

Christmas in my grandparents' home was always magical for me, and all I need to do is hear a few of the jazzy notes from Schroeder's piano or the first words of Linus' recitation (see above) to feel that magic rush through my body again — at least for a few seconds.

In recent years, the program has been shown a couple of times during the Christmas season.

I say that because ABC will be showing it tonight at 7 Central time.

So, if it won't be shown a second time this holiday season, this will be your only opportunity to make it a part of your holiday tradition for 2010.

Don't let it slip away.

Porky's Debut

---

---

If you're a fan of that stuttering cartoon character, Porky Pig, you might be interested to know that it was 75 years ago today that he made his debut in the animated short, "I Haven't Got a Hat."

He just went by the name Porky in those days. He didn't look like the Porky we know today, either. He was a rather shy young boy in his debut. Later on, he became the somewhat obese and verbose adult we think of when we hear Porky's name today.

That stutter, though, was authentic. The voice actor who portrayed Porky from 1935 to 1937 actually did have a stutter, but he couldn't control it, which led to excessively high production costs. Mel Blanc, who was hired to replace the actor, continued to use the stutter, but he used it to greater effect.

Incidentally, most of Blanc's fans may remember him as the voice of Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck or hundreds of other animated characters. But his gravestone — per his request in his will — bears Porky's famous signature line that came at the end of nearly every Looney Tunes presentation — "That's all, folks!"

But Blanc's death wasn't the end for Porky. He continued to appear in animated productions after Blanc died in 1989.