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The Lids Off

R

ricksegers

I recall back in the early 70's (post House Party), Art Linkletter and his son Jack hosted a short lived I believe syndicated show called "The Lids Off with LInkletter". Everybody else thinks I'm crazy. I know I did not dream it. Does anybody on here remember or have I finally gone off the deep end?

Thanks
Rick
 
Jack Linkletter had "On the Go."

A daily show with a mobile unit that went all over. Have you GOOGLED "Lid's Off?"

Ther are LOTS of excellent "encyclopedia" type books that list daytime and or nighttime tv shows. I'd try Amazon, too.

Good luck.
 
I do know that Art and Jack co-hosted "Life With
Linkletter" on NBC from December 1969 to September
1970. I also know that Vincent Terrace mentions it
in his encyclopedia of old shows but gives no details
(and frankly, I don't trust Terrace's accuracy).

I have an Atlanta listing from the summer of 1970
that shows an Art Linkletter show on WAGA Saturdays
at 7. This could be the show you're talking about;
if it is, I don't think it had a very wide syndication.
 
Hey BP,
I know that "People are Funny" was in longtime syndication. WGN, Chicago used it on Saturday nights for a while, but it seems to me earlier than 1970. They also showed the syndicated "Kids Say the Darndest Things" using Art's kid interviews from House Party.
 
Hey TJ,

I never said it was "People Are Funny." The
listing in the Atlanta Constitution always said "Art
Linkletter." "People Are Funny" did air in the mornings
on WSB in the mid-'60s, but I think it was out of
syndication by 1970; WSB (Atlanta's NBC affiliate
in 1970) didn't carry "Life With Linkletter."

I also recall WBTV Charlotte carrying a show
TV Guide listed simply as "Art Linkletter" around
6:30 in the morning; this would have been about
1973. This show lasted about 10 or 15 minutes
each day, Monday-Friday. This gives me added
reason to believe that he did do a show called
"The Lid's Off."

BTW, re Jack Linkletter: "On The Go" aired
on CBS in the mornings in 1959-60; he and a crew
broadcast from locations all over California and
Nevada in a sort of Charles Kuralt "On The Road"
show. Before that, he hosted a nighttime version
of "Haggis Baggis," which Dennis James did in daytime,
on NBC (1958); later he did "Hootenanny" (1963-64)
and "The Rebus Game" (1965) for ABC, and "America
Alive!" (1978) on NBC. Today he's a motivational
speaker and raises livestock, and he's enjoying a
very comfortable life.
 
I NEVER said it was People are Funny, but just wanted to add that to the list of Linkletter links.

I thought JACK Linkletter was deceased, as is Art's daughter.
 
If Jack is deceased, when did this happen?
I did find an obit for a Jack Linkletter in Colorado,
but it's not the same person. But I've heard
nothing, and there's a guy called CrankyYankee
who's good about posting obits.

To TJ, I missed your point about "People Are
Funny"; it sounded like you were asking if
that was the show WAGA had on Saturdays
in 1970. But no matter; it wasn't.
 
bpatrick said:
I do know that Art and Jack co-hosted "Life With
Linkletter" on NBC from December 1969 to September
1970. I also know that Vincent Terrace mentions it
in his encyclopedia of old shows but gives no details
(and frankly, I don't trust Terrace's accuracy).
Click to expand...

...Alex McNeil's TOTAL TELEVISION lists two series with the title "Life with Linkletter." The first was a nighttime half-hour ABC version of Art's daytime "House Party" that aired from 6 October 1950 to 25 April 1952 at 7:30 ET on Fridays (opposite Roberta Quinlan's music and John Cameron Swayze's news on NBC and Douglas Edwards' news and Perry Como on CBS, all 15-minute programs). The second was the daily half-hour Art co-hosted with Jack on NBC middays from 29 December 1969 to 25 September 1970. (Coincidentially, that show premiered on NBC on the same date that Dick Cavett's late-night version of his chat show premiered on ABC)...

...interestingly, the IMDb lists Art's daughter Diane Linkletter as the co-host of "House Party" during its last year, when it had been retitled "The Linkletter Show"; McNeil lists the last air date of that series as being 5 September 1969. Sometime during that last year, Art and Diane cut tracks for a 45rpm single that Ralph Carmichael produced for Capitol Records; Art's side (the plug side as far as chart listings go) was titled "We Love You, Call Collect," and Diane's response side was titled "Dear Mom and Dad." The two sides made up a first-person story about the correspondence between a runaway teenager and her parents' sorrow. Diane committed suicide on 4 October 1969 (jumping out a 6th story window in Los Angeles, and, despite Art's claims at the time, she was *not* on LSD when she died); the Capitol 45 began charting almost immediately after the suicide, reaching #44 on the Cash Box Top 100 on 29 November 1969. In his 28 November 1969 "Glass Teat" column in the Los Angeles Free Press, Harlan Ellison indicated that within the seven weeks between the suicide and the column Art had appeared to testify to a government panel on drug abuse, perpetuating the mythical LSD connection (which Ellison appears to have mistakenly accepted at the time). Although a Googling of the title "The Lid's Off" with the name Linkletter brings up nothing relating to a TV series, I wonder if indeed Art Linkletter may have made a series of commentaries and interviews relating to drug abuse at some point using that or a similar title, and syndicated them through Earl Nightingale's company or some similar conservative-based broadcasting distributor of the period, not unlike Paul Harvey's TV commentaries of the same time...
 


...interestingly, the IMDb lists Art's daughter Diane Linkletter as the co-host of "House Party" during its last year, when it had been retitled "The Linkletter Show"; McNeil lists the last air date of that series as being 5 September 1969. Sometime during that last year, Art and Diane cut tracks for a 45rpm single that Ralph Carmichael produced for Capitol Records; Art's side (the plug side as far as chart listings go) was titled "We Love You, Call Collect," and Diane's response side was titled "Dear Mom and Dad." The two sides made up a first-person story about the correspondence between a runaway teenager and her parents' sorrow. Diane committed suicide on 4 October 1969 (jumping out a 6th story window in Los Angeles, and, despite Art's claims at the time, she was *not* on LSD when she died); the Capitol 45 began charting almost immediately after the suicide, reaching #44 on the Cash Box Top 100 on 29 November 1969. In his 28 November 1969 "Glass Teat" column in the Los Angeles Free Press, Harlan Ellison indicated that within the seven weeks between the suicide and the column Art had appeared to testify to a government panel on drug abuse, perpetuating the mythical LSD connection (which Ellison appears to have mistakenly accepted at the time). Although a Googling of the title "The Lid's Off" with the name Linkletter brings up nothing relating to a TV series, I wonder if indeed Art Linkletter may have made a series of commentaries and interviews relating to drug abuse at some point using that or a similar title, and syndicated them through Earl Nightingale's company or some similar conservative-based broadcasting distributor of the period, not unlike Paul Harvey's TV commentaries of the same time...
[/quote]

That's very interesting about this as I did not know that Art Linkletter was a recording artist as was his daughter. Were these spoken word records(recitations) by either or both of them?

Getting back to The Lid's Off,perhaps it could have been public service announcements that Art did about the dangers of drugs among other things titled that or it could have been a segment of Life With Linkletter towards the very end of the show where he talked about serious topics of the day.
 
According to the Internet Movie database (usually reliable) HE is ALIVE. That website has a page of him looking for speaking engagements and an e-mail address. Do they have the internet in Heaven?
 
From what I can tell, it premiered on 14 September 1967 on the ABC O&Os and a handful of other stations. For the O&O's, it had the 10:30 PM Thursday slot (ABC didn't program that half-hour in 1967). It looks like it stopped airing in December 1967.


--Mike
 
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