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* Classic & Current TV Blog *
SAD
PASSING
Kevin S. Butler writes: William Stulla, former Denver and Los Angeles
based radio/TV broadcaster best known to kids as "Engineer Bill"
is dead.
Mr.
Stulla passed away at his Westlake Village, CA. home on Tuesday August
12, 2008 at the age of 97. A native of NYC, Mr. Stulla and his parents
(his father was a printer) moved from NYC to Erie, Pa, Cleveland, Ohio
and to Buffalo, N.Y. before settling in Denver, Colorado.
After
graduating from high school in Denver, Bill Stulla read an ad posted on
a trolley that was promoting classes in radio broadcasting techniques
at the University Of Denver. He took the classes, graduated and eventually
acquired his first radio job with KFEL in Denver; later he worked for
NBC's Denver affiliate KOA as an announcer and a scriptwriter. He remained
with KOA for five years before he moved to Southern California where he
joined the NBC affiliate KFL in 1939.
Stulla's
broadcasting career was interrupted by his service during WWII. Instead
of fighting in the infantry he worked as a broadcaster for Armed Forces
Radio where he broadcast news and entertainment for the troops in the
Far East. Upon his return to the States, Stulla hosted a radio variety
series Bill Stulla's Parlor Party on local radio and TV in L.A. until
1954 when KHJ (now known as KCAL) TV Channel 9 mentioned that they were
holding auditions for a new kids series titled Ranger Ed, a forgettable
rip off of KTTV 11's Lunch With Sheriff John.
Stulla's
wife insisted that her husband audition for the show - he was interested
but not as a copy of Mr. Rovick's lawman character. "I've got an
idea for a better show. It's a railroad show," Mr. Stulla explained
to the L.A. Times."I want to be an engineer and run trains and play
cartoons ,because I knew that the station had bought some cartoons."
Accepting
his concept the station execs at KHJ TV hired Stulla and in late 1954
The Cartoon Express With Engineer Bill went on the air as a weekday evening
kids wraparound program set against the backdrop of a roundhouse. Each
night Mr. Stulla's kindly, old train man would interview two kids, a boy
and girl, who would send in their model toy trains to be exhibited on
the program. He would also try to bring out the kids' personalities in
his impromptu conversations with the youngsters.
Stulla
would also play games with the kids in the studio, engage them in craftmaking,
hobbies, train lore and interview guest performers and personalities in
between the reruns of Gumby puppet films, Spunky & Tadpole, Q. T.
Hush, Col. Bleep TV cartoons and Superman movie cartoons. The show even
had it's own theme song "Who's that coming down the track, who's
that puffing smoke so black? Who's at the throttled? It's Engineer Bill!"
Stulla
was also able to instill good values in his viewers and studio audiences
by having them promise to do the right thing and encourage his little
train "Little Mo" to move up the hill (a model trainer was shown
moving slowly up a small scale track in a pre filmed segment ala "The
Little Engine That Could".
He
got the kids to drink their milk via an on camera game called "Red
Light/ Green Light" where the kids at home would watch "Engineer
Bill" and his in studio guests drink a glass of Cow Juice, they'd
drink when a superimposed image of a green signal light was seen on screen,
they'd stop when a Red signal light was shown on screen.
More
often than not Mr .Stulla's trainman character would interject some humor
into this segment when a series of loud noisy footsteps were heard off
camera he would complain about a member of his trainer crew by saying,
"That man will never learn to march properly". Other times the
consumption of too much milk would force poor Mr. Stulla to let out a
belch and he'd say "I've been sick."
Stulla
became a popular personality with Southern California kids and he was
always in demand for personal appearances and he became friendly with
L.A.'s other kids TV MC's including "Sheriff John" Rovick and
"Skipper Tom" Hatten.
He
continued to maintain Ch. 9's Roundhouse until 1966 when the station execs
at KHJ TV decided to create, produce and air shows aimed at a teenage
audience. Mr. Stulla tried hosting a show for teens set against the backdrop
of a local soda shop but he found out that his type of programming was
really meant for very young children and he left kid's TV soon after,
He remained in local broadcasting until 1976 when he retired to become
a stockbroker.He later moved to Westlake Village here he and his wife
would remain for the rest of their lives.
Mr.
Stulla made only two public appearances later in his life, the first was
on a local TV tribute to L.A.'s kid's show hosts Weekday Heroes.The special
which was produced by Jack and Phyllis Spear (the creative duo who helped
to develop Captain Kangaroo and later hosted their own kid's TV shows
Pip The Piper on ABC and NBC in the early 1960's and later The Jack &
Phyllis Show in L.A.) and hosted and narrated by former Leave It To Beaver
star Tony Dow. Stulla and his fellow L.A., kid's TV contemporaries Charlie
Runyon "Chucko The Clown" and "Sheriff John" Rovick
recalled the creation, development and the success of their local programs.
It aired on KABC TV Ch.7 in 1987.
Stulla's
second and last public appearance was in 1997 at a seminar honoring local
L.A.,Cal. kids TV series staged at the West Coast branch of The Museum
Of TV & Radio (now Known as The Paley Center For The Media) where
Stulla, "Skipper Tom Hatten", "Skipper Frank" Herman
and Jimmy Weldon showed clips from their TV shows and recalled their careers
for a theater full of fans at the Museum.
Stulla's
wife Ruth passed away in 1999, he is survived by his daughter Ms. Kathryn
Stulla.
Saturday,
August 16, 2008 - 8:50am
WOULD YOU
LIKE TO RESPOND
NETFLIX
OFFLINE
If you subscribe to Netflix you may be interested to know they are having
a nationwide computer meltdown - nothing's been logged in or shipped since
Monday! Actually, there's actually some confusion as to whether some DVDs
are being shipped or not. I just spoke with a customer service person,
they don't know what the problem is or when it will be fixed. The company
promises to offer a rebate for those affected.
Thursday,
August 14, 2008 - 10:52am
WOULD YOU
LIKE TO RESPOND
WHO
SLOT J.R.?
 There's
going to be another Dallas reunion show in November on CBS. Dallas
is my one of my guilty pleasures, so bad it's good, but this won't be
a scripted drama but another clip show; time to drag out the same drunken
fights and familiar cliffhangers they showed during the last reunion special,
I guess. The event is open to the public with tickets costing between
$100 and $1,000, they go on sale August 22nd. Speaking of which, whatever
happened to that Dallas big screen film with John Travolta as
JR? Talk about your travesties...
Thursday,
August 14, 2008 - 10:15am
WOULD YOU
LIKE TO RESPOND
WIT
MAN'S SAMPLER
I'm looking forward to the Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget
airing on Sunday, August 17 at 10:00 p.m. with John Stamos serving as
the evening's Roast Master along with Roasters Susie Essman, Jeff Garlin,
Greg Giraldo, Gilbert Gottfried, Cloris Leachman, Jon Lovitz, Norm Macdonald,
Jim Norton, Brian Posehn and Jeffrey Ross. Now that's a great lineup.
Here
are some samples, starting first with Cloris Leachman:
Jeffrey
Ross describes the acting lessons Bob taught to the Olsen twins.
Thursday,
August 14, 2008 - 8:03am
WOULD YOU
LIKE TO RESPOND
TV
GAY MARRIAGES OF THE 1960s?
A couple of years ago, an article in Salon put forth the theory that
Jim West & Artemus Gordon from The Wild Wild West
were a gay couple.
 Personally,
I always thought My Favorite Martian was the first gay show -
the story of two single guys, one younger, one an older 'Uncle,' who live
together in a small apartment and go to great lengths to keep their landlord,
the cop and the rest of the town from discovering their secret.
Typical
plot: 'Uncle' Martin can't get it back down so he and Tim frantically
try to conceal his protrusions from their landlord, Mrs. Brown - who is
growing suspicious that the boys upstairs are hiding something.
Wednesday,
August 13, 2008 - 10:49am
WOULD YOU
LIKE TO RESPOND
IS
IT CHRISTMAS YET?
This looks good: Shout! Factory is delighted to bring you holiday
cheer with the October 7 release of the 4-DVD box set The Johnny Cash
Christmas Specials 1976-1979, as well as single DVD releases of The Johnny
Cash Christmas Special 1978 and 1979. The Christmas Specials of 1976 and
1977 were released in 2007. The footage on these DVDs has been unseen
for 30 years, and is being made available through an exclusive agreement
between Shout! Factory and the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum.
For his 1978 Christmas special, the third in as many years, Cash moved
the usually Tennessee-based taping to Los Angeles, and, unsurprisingly,
the program takes on a Hollywood feel. Guests include Kris Kristofferson
and singer Rita Coolidge, both friends of the Cash family, who perform
a heartfelt “Please Don’t Tell Me How The Story Ends,”
and Steve Martin, one of America’s hottest new comics at the time.
June Carter Cash, as always, performs with her husband, and other family
members make appearances in this special as well.
For the 1979 broadcast, Cash’s annual CBS Christmas special returns
to Nashville for a program featuring his father, Ray Cash, and his older
brother, Roy Cash, in a visit to the small home in Dyess, Arkansas, where
Johnny and his siblings were raised. Guests include Canadian pop and country
star Anne Murray (“You Needed Me”), who was enjoying the most
successful period of her career, and country music’s Tom T. Hall,
whom Cash introduces as “my very favorite songwriter” before
Cash and Hall launch into a medley of Hall’s hits “(Old Dogs,
Children And) Watermelon Wine,” “The Year That Clayton Delaney
Died,” “I Love” and “Country Is.” The show’s
comic foil is the late Andy Kaufman, who appears as his character Latka
Gravas from the hit network show Taxi.
The Johnny Cash Christmas Specials 1976-1979 4-DVD box set includes these
two discs as well as the special from 1976 and 1977, previously released
on DVD in 2007 by Shout! Factory. Taped from the family homes in Bon Aqua
and Hendersonville, Tennessee, The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1976
featured special guests Roy Clark, Merle Travis, Barbara Mandrell, Tony
Orlando and Billy Graham. The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1977 includes
an all-star tribute to Elvis Presley with Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis
and Roy Orbison, a selection of Christmas songs, as well as Perkins’s
“Blue Suede Shoes,” Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman,”
and Lewis’s 1957 Sun smash “Whole Lot Of Shakin’ Going
On.”
Tuesday,
August 12, 2008 - 10:18am
WOULD YOU
LIKE TO RESPOND?
I
STOLE THE TV
Why
is Law & Order star Jerry Orbach's son angry at his widowed
stepmom? The
usual.
Sara Gilbert will become a regular on Big Bang Theory starting
this fall, joining her former Roseanne love interest Johnny Galecki.
They're so cute together!
This
from CMT:
These are the true lost treasures of country music. But for an alert radio
station employee with a nose for sniffing out treasure, these recordings
would have been lost to the world forever. It was an accident that they
had been recorded in the first place. The fragile acetate discs were cut
so that when Hank Williams and his band were on the road, Nashville station
WSM could still air his 15-minute early-morning “Mother’s
Best” show sponsored by the flour company of that name. The old
acetates (which were metal discs covered with acetone, with recording
grooves etched into that) would have lain unnoticed in the bottom of the
dumpster where a thoughtless radio station staff member had tossed them.
Then they would have gone on to the dump to be forever lost. Even after
being found, they remained in legal limbo until a Supreme Court decision
freed them up.
Many early television programs suffered a similar fate. In those days
of live television and primitive recording facilities, some TV shows were
preserved on flimsy kinescopes that usually were discarded. Of Williams’
relatively few TV appearances, only about nine minutes of his performances
were saved and exist today. Add to that about nine minutes of known silent
home movies and that’s the known extent of Hank Williams on screen.
These early Hank Williams radio show recordings will be released in increments
beginning this fall. They provide entire new openings into Hank’s
psyche, to his soul, to his very musical being. In a sense, they’re
a very real magical key to opening what few doors he would ever allow
to be opened. His musical tastes were far wider than had been supposed.
The easy banter here with his band members and with his wife and would-be
country singer Audrey are as revealing as we are likely to ever discover
about him. His song selection on these shows is equally revealing. He
can go from “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” (which his mentor
Fred Rose wrote in the early 1940s, long before Willie Nelson ever thought
of cutting it) to the 19th-century, Southern-by-way-of-Scotland death
dirge “Lonely Tombs” to the 19th-century lament “The
Blind Child’s Prayer” to blues songs to old folk songs such
as “On Top of Old Smoky.” He also recorded a PSA about venereal
disease, which will not make its way into general release. Unfortunately.
Williams’ life remains a cipher in many ways. He confided in no
one, as far as we can tell. He poured out his heart and his guts in his
songs. He created his own musical universe, populated by himself and like-minded
lonely souls. But the music lives and breathes, and it will last a long,
long time.
Finding these Williams songs is akin to discovering a similar treasure
chest of lost recordings by the bluesman Robert Johnson or early jazz
genius Louis Armstrong or opera great Maria Callas.
The 143 “Mother’s Best” recordings do much more than
just about double his known recorded output of songs. They demonstrate
his range and taste in music, which goes far beyond the songs that are
usually identified with him. Few people today have actually hear many
original Hank recordings and the songs that they likely would have heard
are the few big hits, from “Cold, Cold Heart” on to “Jambalaya”
and so on. But the “Mother’s Best” recordings show a
more accessible, down-to-earth side of Hank.
At the time he recorded these songs throughout 1951, Williams was reaching
the end of what amounted to the happiest period of his life. “Cold,
Cold Heart” hit No. 1 on the country charts in May, and Tony Bennett
recorded it that same month and it would soon top the pop charts. Even
while Hank was becoming an enormous musical success, he never quit doubting
himself, it seemed, even while he was under constant pressure to keep
being a hit machine and financially support those around him. On the road,
he was such a big draw that the hugely popular comedian Bob Hope was unable
to close the shows on the Hadacol Caravan tour that summer -- the fans
wanted Hank back. He signed a multi-movie deal with MGM Pictures in September.
He appeared on national TV on the Perry Como Show.
Throughout it all, he was in almost constant back pain from an undiagnosed
birth defect that was worsening. He turned more and more to drink and
drugs. In December, he had back surgery that didn’t fix him. He
let his band go and gave up his Mother’s Best sponsorship. Audrey,
once his one true love, filed for divorce again, and his downward spiral
continued until he died on his way to play a New Year’s date at
the end of 1952.
Through it all, he kept writing and recording music. The spirit of Hank
Williams shines through on these radio shows. He may have been singing
to farmers milking their cows early in the morning and to farm wives beginning
the day’s chores, but he gave it his all and reached through the
microphone and the radio speaker to grab and engage his listeners. It
was just him and an audience of one: you, the listener.
This is not Hank Williams, the legend you are hearing in these lost songs.
This is Hank Williams, the man.
Monday,
August 11, 2008 - 11:59am
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LIKE TO RESPOND?
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