Cancelled TV Shows That Never Provided A Proper Ending

[andreajesus]

Sorta like the books that David Cassidy and Wolfman Jack wrote about themselves. Cousin Brucie Morrow wasn't exactly a fan of the latter nor his book.

...Bruce Morrow was a lousy disc jockey who lucked his way into a good job. If New York radio was all I had to put up with in the early '60s, I'd have kept my dial bouncing between Mitch Reed on WMCA and Murray the K on WINS and constantly passed Morrow by...

Other than brief air-checks, and little sound bites of him in movies (Dirty Dancing, etc.), I only heard Cousin Brucie live on air once - on WCBS-FM about 1993. I was astonished. CBS let him ramble on and on (obviously because he was the great Morrow). He wasn't talking incoherently, or anything, but it was trivial, multiple-minutes long each time, and B-O-R-I-N-G. As a radio nerd who loves the great jocks of that era, I'm always upset that management doesn't let them talk more. But Brucie - at least on that night - was a great argument for "just shut up and play the music."

I was in NYC in 1999 and I heard Brucie on WCBS-FM and yeah..he seemed to be well..way into talking..a LOT.

Around the same time Barry Williams' book "Growing Up Brady" came out ( mid 90's ) Wolfman Jack's bio came out too and Brucie went off at some of the stuff in the book, pretty much calling the Wolfman a "liar". Then David Cassidy's book came out and some of his foes did the same. Then on top of that there was Bob Denver who did his own bio where he mentioned that one day on the set of Gilligan's Island, he couldn't get a nap in or something because Tina Louise was having loud sex in her dressing room which was near Denver's. Tina denied that. Anyway at the time a lot of people were starting to wonder exactly how much in those books were true or how much was made up to sell books. Cousin Brucie started that. Then again one could easily agrue that Christina Crawford got the ball started when she wrote the infamous "Mommie Dearest".

Hold on here, you guys, hold on -- I gotta put in my $.50 on this one - you guys are going negative on my boy Brucie, and as a NATIVE New Yorker, I have to defend him!!

With The Cuz, what you see is what you get - Bruce Morrow is as REAL and as HONEST and as TRUTHFUL as can be! He writes and speaks from his heart and from his life experiences and from the fact that he IS a NATIVE New Yorker! Brucie is a REAL PEOPLE communicator - he communicates to the people, to us...his gift is that even though he IS broadcasting to an audience of MILLIONS of people, when you listen to him, he makes you feel as if he is talking just to you...Let's give Brucie a little more R-E-S-P-E-C-T, okay??

Andrea

 

[Ultimajock]

Bruce Morrow is as REAL and as HONEST and as TRUTHFUL as can be! He writes and speaks from his heart and from his life experiences and from the fact that he IS a NATIVE New Yorker!

...so were Murray The K, Wolfman Jack and B. Mitchel Reed. Morrow still has a weed up his you-know-what simply because (a) all three of them dared to compete directly against his show and (b) all three had bigger tastes of national success in media Morrow couldn't crack -- TV, films and records. Where's your defense of Murray, Wolfman and BMR against Morrow's sour grapes?...

;D

 

[Corky Marlowe]

I had always thought "The Fugitive" was the first show to have closure in its last episode (Kimble and Gerard finally catch the One-Armed Man).

Question: I remember seeing Andy Taylor and Helen Crump's wedding, but I can't remember if it was the last ep of "The Andy Griffith Show" or the premiere of "Mayberry RFD". Bueller? Anyone?

Re Ed Sullivan, I read a biography of Ed some years ago called "Impresario", and it indicated that when he was told he was being cancelled in the spring of 1971, he had assumed he'd get to go out on his own terms after 25 years, which would have been the spring of '73. On the other hand, the book also indicated that at the time of his death in '74, he was believed to be in the early stages of Alzheimer's.

I also have a question about the final season of "The Dick Van Content Filter Show"...Was the last ep the one where Rob got the job offer from the ventriloquist (Paul Winchell w/"Jellybean"), or was it Buddy's bar mitzvah?

Edit: My 2c on NY Radio...Cousin Brucie wasn't even the best jock on WABC. That would be Dan Ingram.

 

[andreajesus]

Bruce Morrow is as REAL and as HONEST and as TRUTHFUL as can be! He writes and speaks from his heart and from his life experiences and from the fact that he IS a NATIVE New Yorker!

...so were Murray The K, Wolfman Jack and B. Mitchel Reed. Morrow still has a weed up his you-know-what simply because (a) all three of them dared to compete directly against his show and (b) all three had bigger tastes of national success in media Morrow couldn't crack -- TV, films and records. Where's your defense of Murray, Wolfman and BMR against Morrow's sour grapes?...

;D

Hold on hold on hold on!! Morrow is a NATIVE NEW YORKER who took the lessons of these three and made them his own - NOT to mention the fact that he has a scene in "Dirty Dancing" and SUCCESSFULLY built on that (at that time, he was STILL working on terrestrial radio.....) That's my whole point - Murray, Wolfman, and BMR opened the door which Brucie went through....

Andrea

 

[Markxxx]

The last episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" was where Goober went to a computer dating service. I guess the producers wanted to save Andy's wedding for the continuation show "Mayberry RFD."

I've read that Marlo Thomas ended "That Girl," because she had taken the character as far as she could, and at the end Don and Ann were engaged but she didn't want the characters married and since Ann couldn't be successful as an actress and keep the format the same, nor could they continue the engagement forever, they ran out of ideas and decided to end it.

"Mama's Family," never got a good send off either. It ended with Naomi giving birth to Tiffany Thelma Harper. I thought Mama would've been great with a baby, but I guess I was the only one.

 

[mleach]

"Mama's Family," never got a good send off either. It ended with Naomi giving birth to Tiffany Thelma Harper. I thought Mama would've been great with a baby, but I guess I was the only one.

That would have been great !!

I myself believe Mama's Family could have easliy lasted another 2 to 4 years !!!

But the show's producer Joe Hamilton was dying of cancer ( he died soon after the last Mama's Family ), Ken Barry was getting bored, Carol Burnett didn't want anything to do with the syndicated Mama's Family ( her and Hamilton had just gone through a very bitter and nasty divorce ) and Vicki Lawrence was about to do her Group W Talk show "Vicki"....talk about drama !!!

 

[IdentityProgramming]

"Providence" never got a proper send-off. A thoughtful and well-produced show about my home town.

Cheers,


Gary Begin/Consultant
Identity Programming
Jackson, TN
www.garybegin.com

 

[andreajesus]

That's TRUE (and Mike Farrell was, like, SO CUTE on it!! 8) 8))

Andrea

 

[Braves2005]

I think that Green Acres should have had a proper ending despite being one of the several shows that was cancelled by the rural purge by CBS instead of going out with back door pilots as its last shows that aired. There were 2 episodes as I recall from syndication that fit that. One of those episodes featured Elaine Joyce and Richard Deacon as a married couple with little or no mention of Oliver and Lisa in that episode and perhaps the best one was where Oliver and Lisa went to Hawaii to a hotel that was run by a father and daughter played by Don Porter and someone who looked almost like Sally Field (think of a college-aged Gidget) and the daughter had rented a room to a group of college kids while she was trying to get Oliver and Lisa out of the way to another hotel room.

 

[chris12]

Different Strokes never had any ending episode, its last episode had Arnold and Dudley doing a report on steroid use in their high school and also in that episode Willis, Kimberly, Maggie and Pearl didn't appear.

 

[tlyle]

Didn't Andy Griffith have a proper ending movie in the 80's called "Return to Mayberry"? I believe they showed just about all the loose ends from the Andy Griffith show. However, they did not do much with Mayberry RFD.

If I recall, Green Acres also had a reunion movie in 1990.

 

[bpatrick]

It would have been nice if Tony and Doug (James
Darren and Robert Colbert) of "The Time Tunnel"
had made it back to the present. I understand,
though, that ABC had considered moving it to
Wednesday 7:30, against another Irwin Allen show,
CBS's "Lost In Space," then decided to run the short-
lived "Custer" instead. Maybe that's why they never
wrapped it up.

 

[landtuna]

Re Ed Sullivan..... the book also indicated that at the time of his death in '74, he was believed to be in the early stages of Alzheimer's.

How could one tell? Remembering all the hosts and emcees of TV in the 50's I think Sullivan was the most wooden and uninteresting.

 

[LKellerIII]

Re Ed Sullivan..... the book also indicated that at the time of his death in '74, he was believed to be in the early stages of Alzheimer's.

How could one tell? Remembering all the hosts and emcees of TV in the 50's I think Sullivan was the most wooden and uninteresting.

Yes - he was totally wooden as host of his own show - the best impressionists all did Ed Sullivan. It was odd, because he wasn't a bad actor...at least not at playing himself (Bye Bye Birdie), and if you saw him interviewed, he was animated and engaging.

 

[bpatrick]

If you can find it, read a book published in
1968 called "Always On Sunday." It talks
about Sullivan's relaxed demeanor off-camera
but also says he suffered from stage fright from
the very first show in 1948; the camera appeared
to intimidate him.

Sullivan always had trouble remembering names
and would misread the teleprompter. He once said
he took belladonna for his ulcer; belladonna tends
to blur the eyes, making it difficult to read a teleprompter.
It led to some classic garble-de-goofs: "I'd like to prevent
Robert Merrill," he once said, introducing the opera singer;
another time he introduced an actress as "now starving on
Broadway." As far as this topic goes, Sullivan was quite bitter
over his show's cancellation and didn't have the heart to do
the last show on June 6, 1971; that show was a rerun.

Lawrence Welk was another with a tendency to misspeak.
He committed a classic in political incorrectness once when
he said, "Da Italian people are a musical race, always wid
a song in dare heart-a." But to get back to the topic, at least
his show got a proper ending, since he ended it himself at
age 79.

 

[bpatrick]

"SCTV" once provided a great ending to "The
Millionaire." John Beresford Tipton has been
giving away money for so long he's down to
handing out $50 checks, which are no help
to any of the recipients. Michael Anthony is
still delivering the checks out of loyalty to his
boss. One day an Arabian sheik shows up with
a million-dollar check for Tipton; when Anthony
asks why he's delivering the check, the sheik says
it's because he doesn't have anyone to do it for him.
Seeing an opportunity, Anthony turns Tipton around
to the camera, and we see that he looks like Howard
Hughes in his last years. Anthony then takes off with
his new employer, the sheik.

 

[Ultimajock]

...I think the two worst TV show emcees of the 50s I ever saw (on kinescope, of course, since I was born in '61) were Ed Sullivan and Clifton Fadiman, the latter being the occasional guest host when John Daly was unavailable for What's My Line? And it's for the same reason -- on camera, whatever possible charisma they ever had was non-existent. In Fadiman's case, this is unusual, as I am a big fan of his '30s-'50s radio show Information Please, and his radio work is extremely appealing in the same easygoing manner as Dave Garroway's was. For some reason, when Fadiman was seen as well as heard, he was incredibly dull. Sullivan was a great newspaper columnist, and from what I've been able to tell a fairly good radio broadcaster (replacing arch-rival Walter Winchell on CBS' Sak's on Broadway in the early '30s), but it's what he knew about show business that was essential to the TV show, not what he was able to articulate on camera (or, more accurately, inarticulate)...

 

[radiorob2.0]

Of course "Turn-On" never had a proper final episode.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063960/

 

[mleach]

If you can find it, read a book published in
1968 called "Always On Sunday." It talks
about Sullivan's relaxed demeanor off-camera
but also says he suffered from stage fright from
the very first show in 1948; the camera appeared
to intimidate him.

Sullivan always had trouble remembering names
and would misread the teleprompter. He once said
he took belladonna for his ulcer; belladonna tends
to blur the eyes, making it difficult to read a teleprompter.
It led to some classic garble-de-goofs: "I'd like to prevent
Robert Merrill," he once said, introducing the opera singer;
another time he introduced an actress as "now starving on
Broadway." As far as this topic goes, Sullivan was quite bitter
over his show's cancellation and didn't have the heart to do
the last show on June 6, 1971; that show was a rerun.

Even though Sullivan was bitter at how his show was cancelled, even had CBS NOT cancelled chances are his show would not lasted much longer anyway due to Ed's declining health. Not only was Ed suffering from cancer ( which would kill him in 1974 ) but Ed Sullivan was also suffering in the early 70s ( I read this in one of those Lucy books ) from the then-unkown disease...Alzheimer's.

 

[dustintv]

"Providence" never got a proper send-off.  A thoughtful and well-produced show about my home town.

Actually, Providence did air a series finale in which Sydney finally married Owen, but a lot of people missed it due to lack of promotion, plus with the fact the final episode aired in January of all things.