The stage show Walking Happy was also based on an antique play, in this case Hobson's Choice. Comedian Norman Wisdom plays a boot maker who tries to marry off his three daughters, only to see one wed a rival shoe maker. Not the strongest story in the world, but a few of the Sammy Cahn-Jimmy Van Heusen songs are charming. The title song was the biggest hit at the time. I also like "Think of Something Else" in the opening and "I'll Make a Man of the Man."
Beatles for Sale is where their music started getting a little darker and moodier after a meeting with Bob Dylan inspired them to look inward. John Lennon in particular was feeling introspective with "No Reply" and "I'm a Loser." Paul perks things up with the gentle "I'll Follow the Sun," and we get the hit "Eight Days a Week." The guys were so tired from all the running around and touring they were doing, they weren't able to write enough new songs for the album. Of the covers, Ringo's country-ish "Honey Don't" is the most fun, along with George's "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" and John really getting into "Rock and Roll Music."
Worked on the inventory after breakfast. I had just enough time to add those Classic Disney collections and finish the soundtracks. I found the fourth volume on cassette at a book store in Wildwood when I lived there around 2004, but I didn't get them all on CD until Lauren gave me a gift card to Giveanything.com for my birthday in 2007. Although these collections are almost 30 years old, I love them for the sheer variety of music on display. There's a lot of music you won't hear anywhere else, like two songs from Disney's Wonderful World of Color ("I'm Professor Ludvig Von Drake" and "The Spectrum Song"), "A Whale of a Tale" with Kirk Douglas from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the title song of The Monkey's Uncle by Annette Funicello and the Beach Boys. I'll start listing the cast albums tomorrow.
I was originally going to take my bike today...but then I looked out my window and saw it was raining. I wasn't getting soaked, so I called Uber. The drivers going to and from work both arrived within 8 minutes. No problems on the road either time. Though the rain stopped by the time I got there and the sun came out, it was still very humid. I knew we weren't done with Mother Nature.
No problems pushing carts at work and sweeping the store at work, either. It must have been a lot busier this morning. Despite it being fairly quiet, the carts were empty when I came in. I spent the entire time other than ten minutes where I returned cold items doing the sweeping and the carts. I heard noise up front when I was sweeping. I didn't see it, but the managers caught some lady trying to steal, and apparently she screamed and pitched such a fit, they had to call the cops.
I wasn't able to avoid the weather, either. Turns out I was right about that rain. It started showering heavily around 3:30-4 PM. At least it waited until the last hour or so. I only got wet for a half-hour before I finished. Thankfully, it disappeared again when I went home. It's been off and on for the rest of the night. There was a really nasty storm at 11;30 with heavy rain and wind and booming thunder.
Soon as I got in, I had a quick leftovers dinner, then spent the rest of the night watching the second half of the Peter Marshall Tribute marathon. This one was so big and had so much going on, it started at 1 PM! I came in for one of the two weeks of Match Game that Marshall appeared on during the syndicated run. He joined Bill Daily, Marcia Wallace, and Bonnie Franklin during his first week. The second, except for Brett, featured panelists who had been game show hosts (Peter, Dick Martin, Bill Cullen), or would be in the future (Betty White, Elaine Joyce). I really wish Peter had done more than those two weeks and their corresponding nighttime episodes. He was charming, very funny, and actually a pretty good player.
Match Game wasn't the only show where he was a panelist. I got to see his second week of Password Plus, where a game Susan Richardson beat the pants off him. He was also one of "The Marvelous MCs" on a special week of Family Feud featuring game show hosts as teams, with Jim Lange, Bert Parks, Tom Kennedy, and Leslie Uggams. The one episode I saw was the only day that week that they actually made it to the Fast Money round. He did an early Liar's Club episode with Betty White, Larry Hovis, and original host Bill Armstrong in 1969. We also got one more episode of the 2002 Hollywood Squares Game Show Week with Peter in the center square.
Marshall hosted other shows besides Hollywood Squares. All-Star Blitz from 1985 was one of Merrill Heatter's attempts to recapture that Squares magic. In this case, guessing the panelist's bluffs correctly allowed the contestant to uncover a word or letter. If they guessed the phrase those words led to correctly, they won the round.
It didn't last a year, but at least it did better than Yahtzee. This complicated cross between Hot Potato, Match Game, and High Rollers had two teams of friends or co-workers guessing how five celebrities would answer a question. If they won, they got to roll dice to win cash. It barely ran a month and ended in a flurry of litigation between the producers when they tried to run off with parts of the set.
It's an all-star blitz of classic game shows, with more that I didn't see in the first half, including Tattletales, What's My Line?, and Fantasy, the show he hosted with Leslie Uggams.
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