Tonight's Episode: Thin Books For A Fat Man

[cromagnonman]

Seems an appropriate title for a thread, I think. You can almost hear it in portentious voice over right after the announcement of "Cannon: A Quinn Martin production".

I used to love Cannon. Back in the Mesozoic Era of three channel tv the saturday night schedule always used to reserve a prime time slot for a big US import. And few things came bigger than Cannon;  a PI played by the wheezing waddling man mountain that was William Conrad. It seemed to run for years before being superseeded by the infinitely cooler Starsky & Hutch.

The US networks used to produce so many shows of this generic type that each had to have some gimmick to distinguish one from another. Cannon's signature schtick was that he was a fat bloke; end of. All pursuits were therefore conducted by car instead of on foot, although the latter might have made for a funnier show.

The strange thing about Cannon is that it never seems to get shown anywhere these days. And if its ever been released on dvd then I've never seen it. Its almost as if CBS is embarrassed by it. No reason why they should be; it was a slick, fun and well written show insofar as I remember it, with an uber cool theme tune and charismatic star. Could it be the victim of some modern anti-obesity bias, I wonder?

A mark of just how popular it once was is the fact that no less than nine tv tie-in novels were published to capitalise upon it, spread across three different publishers. Most of them were written by Douglas Enefer, both under his own name and the pseudonym Paul Denver. Here's a couple of the ever cheap and cheerful World Distributor originals:

  

[Swampirella]

I used to watch Cannon too; probably because there was nothing much else to watch than because I really liked it. I know I liked it more than "Ironside"

[dem]

Jun 18, 2017 12:48:18 GMT cromagnonman said:

A mark of just how popular it once was is the fact that no less than nine tv tie-in novels were published to capitalise upon it, spread across three different publishers. Most of them were written by Douglas Enefer, both under his own name and the pseudonym Paul Denver. Here's a couple of the ever cheap and cheerful World Distributor originals:

The Stewardess Strangler is terrific!

[cromagnonman]

Jun 18, 2017 17:38:50 GMT dem said:

Jun 18, 2017 12:48:18 GMT cromagnonman said:

A mark of just how popular it once was is the fact that no less than nine tv tie-in novels were published to capitalise upon it, spread across three different publishers. Most of them were written by Douglas Enefer, both under his own name and the pseudonym Paul Denver. Here's a couple of the ever cheap and cheerful World Distributor originals:

The Stewardess Strangler is terrific!

Thanks for the recommendation Dem. I don't have this one as yet but will be sure to give it reading priority when I do. Great review.

You have to love the aptness of the publicity still chosen for the cover which lends the impression that old fatso himself is the strangler. Except with his build he was always more likely to be a stewardess suffocator than a strangler.

I think I'm right in saying that this was one of only two Cannon tie in novels to be originally published in the US. The show seems to have been far more popular over here. Where, of course, it had practically no competition.

[andydecker]

I also have a faint recollection of this. I have a hard time watching this old stuff today. You expect that Charlie's Angel is awful, which it is, but I watched a re-run of Starsky&Hutch some time ago and thought it astoningshly boring.

I remember Conrad better as Nero Wolfe which also was not very good. I think 80s american crime shows are much more terrible then 70s today. But Cannon was likable.

You are right that a lot of those old series are out of the loop. Especially the shorter ones. I think that Magnum is constantly being re-run for the last ten years, just watched an episode yesterday, but I would like to see something like Harry O or even Perry Mason again.

[cromagnonman]

Jun 19, 2017 19:00:10 GMT andydecker said:

I also have a faint recollection of this. I have a hard time watching this old stuff today. You expect that Charlie's Angel is awful, which it is, but I watched a re-run of Starsky&Hutch some time ago and thought it astoningshly boring.

I remember Conrad better as Nero Wolfe which also was not very good. I think 80s american crime shows are much more terrible then 70s today. But Cannon was likable.

You are right that a lot of those old series are out of the loop. Especially the shorter ones. I think that Magnum is constantly being re-run for the last ten years, just watched an episode yesterday, but I would like to see something like Harry O or even Perry Mason again.

Harry O would certainly be a good one to see again. But it seems to me that with the televisual polyfilla of the Law & Order, CSI and NCIS franchises occupying every available slot across multiple networks in perpetual loops there is almost next to no chance of such shows ever getting an airing now. Unless someone chooses to remake them of course.

Perhaps Cannon isn't as good as I choose to remember; nostalgia does play a big part in boosting the status of such shows. But the original Hawaii 5-O remains a consistently good show to watch today, as does Kojak. Even The Rockford Files has held up well (at least those episodes without the timelessly irritating Angel in them have). So there's no reason to think that Cannon hasn't either.
I'd like the chance to see Matt Houston again too, deliberately cheesy though that one was.

Incidentally, its worth making the point that Cannon was a pioneer in the modern vogue for series crossovers. In one two part story he teamed up with Barnaby Jones. Another now forlorn and forgotten show.  

[mcannon]

Jun 18, 2017 12:48:18 GMT cromagnonman said:

Seems an appropriate title for a thread, I think. You can almost hear it in portentious voice over right after the announcement of "Cannon: A Quinn Martin production".

I used to love Cannon. Back in the Mesozoic Era of three channel tv the saturday night schedule always used to reserve a prime time slot for a big US import. And few things came bigger than Cannon;  a PI played by the wheezing waddling man mountain that was William Conrad. It seemed to run for years before being superseeded by the infinitely cooler Starsky & Hutch.

The US networks used to produce so many shows of this generic type that each had to have some gimmick to distinguish one from another. Cannon's signature schtick was that he was a fat bloke; end of. All pursuits were therefore conducted by car instead of on foot, although the latter might have made for a funnier show.

The strange thing about Cannon is that it never seems to get shown anywhere these days. And if its ever been released on dvd then I've never seen it. Its almost as if CBS is embarrassed by it. No reason why they should be; it was a slick, fun and well written show insofar as I remember it, with an uber cool theme tune and charismatic star. Could it be the victim of some modern anti-obesity bias, I wonder?>>


I've seen at least the first two seasons of "Cannon" released on DVD here in Australia; don't know if any more of the show has made it to disc. I used to rather enjoy the show - not least because of the shared surname, which gave me a buzz when I was a youngster. Mind you, as the years go by I'm starting to increasingly resemble William Conrad, at least in his bearded phase as Nero Wolfe (the links don't seem to stop there - his last series was "Jake and the Fatman" and my elder son is named Jake).

Tenuous horror link - if you listen to much American Old Time Radio, including such classic anthology series as "Suspense" and "Escape", you'll often hear William Conrad. Apparently he was known as "The Man of a Thousand Voice", because no matter what role he played, his gruff tones never changed, and were always easily identifiable. He played Marshall Matt Dillon on "Gunsmoke" for many years - alas, when it transferred to TV he wasn't considered to have the right look for the part.

Mark

[elricc]

Do you remember him as the Mikado in G&S's operetta, same series that had Frankie Howerd in Pinafore

[cromagnonman]

Jun 23, 2017 11:01:14 GMT mcannon said:

Jun 18, 2017 12:48:18 GMT cromagnonman said:

Seems an appropriate title for a thread, I think. You can almost hear it in portentious voice over right after the announcement of "Cannon: A Quinn Martin production".

I used to love Cannon. Back in the Mesozoic Era of three channel tv the saturday night schedule always used to reserve a prime time slot for a big US import. And few things came bigger than Cannon;  a PI played by the wheezing waddling man mountain that was William Conrad. It seemed to run for years before being superseeded by the infinitely cooler Starsky & Hutch.

The US networks used to produce so many shows of this generic type that each had to have some gimmick to distinguish one from another. Cannon's signature schtick was that he was a fat bloke; end of. All pursuits were therefore conducted by car instead of on foot, although the latter might have made for a funnier show.

The strange thing about Cannon is that it never seems to get shown anywhere these days. And if its ever been released on dvd then I've never seen it. Its almost as if CBS is embarrassed by it. No reason why they should be; it was a slick, fun and well written show insofar as I remember it, with an uber cool theme tune and charismatic star. Could it be the victim of some modern anti-obesity bias, I wonder?>>


I've seen at least the first two seasons of "Cannon" released on DVD here in Australia; don't know if any more of the show has made it to disc. I used to rather enjoy the show - not least because of the shared surname, which gave me a buzz when I was a youngster. Mind you, as the years go by I'm starting to increasingly resemble William Conrad, at least in his bearded phase as Nero Wolfe (the links don't seem to stop there - his last series was "Jake and the Fatman" and my elder son is named Jake).

Tenuous horror link - if you listen to much American Old Time Radio, including such classic anthology series as "Suspense" and "Escape", you'll often hear William Conrad. Apparently he was known as "The Man of a Thousand Voice", because no matter what role he played, his gruff tones never changed, and were always easily identifiable. He played Marshall Matt Dillon on "Gunsmoke" for many years - alas, when it transferred to TV he wasn't considered to have the right look for the part.

Mark

Any opinion on the picture quality of the Cannon dvds? I've heard reports of straight video transfers.

I can't say I've ever given much thought to Conrad even having a radio career before. On reflection its obvious of course, what with those dulcet tones. Speaking of which, for one entire generation he's probably remembered for the Buck Rogers voiceover and nothing else.

Sobering to realise that he was in The Conqueror: the movie infamously filmed downwind of atomic tests which ultimately wiped out a third of the cast and crew.

[mcannon]

Jun 23, 2017 20:04:11 GMT cromagnonman said:

Jun 23, 2017 11:01:14 GMT mcannon said:

>Any opinion on the picture quality of the Cannon dvds? I've heard reports of straight video transfers.>>


Going completely from memory, I suspect that they were straightforward video transfers, rather than being remastered (or whatever technical hijinks they do to improve the picture quality these days).

I can't say that it bothered me all that much though. While I enjoy a high-quality Blu-Ray edition of some classic old B&W horror film as much as the next buff, it seems somehow appropriate to watch 1970s American TV in the same slightly fuzzy, washed-out quality in which I originally saw it. For similar reasons, I often watch such stuff on the small - by modern standards - TV that I have in my study, rather than on the house's main, largish TV.

Of course, the fact that Mrs mcannon would probably comment "what dreadful old rubbish are you watching now?" has nothing whatsoever to do with my preferences in this regard.......

Mark

[helrunar]

This is off topic but mcannon, your comments about the old Cannon shows on disc struck a chord.  My current diversion is watching the occasional episode of this series from circa 1972 called The Protectors, co-produced by Gerry Anderson and some bloke named Reg, with Robert Vaughn and the chicly witty Nyree Dawn Porter (who steals every scene she's in).  I think this series may have been filmed on 16 mm as was the case with that delirious camp artifact Jason King, and the DVDs are grainy and the color sometimes off but somehow, it's all part of the experience.  This series did run somewhere or other over here in the US but I never saw any of it till now. It's mostly fun stuff, but on Friday I viewed an intense episode with Ed Bishop (from UFO) as a Vietnam vet who had gone down a psychotic rabbit-hole.  That one was very downbeat and most of the show was just Vaughn and Bishop having their inevitable confrontation, with John Collin as a cigar-smoking by-the-book police sergeant (or maybe some critter a bit higher up the ladder--it was unclear to me). Filmed mostly without musical score on an airfield somewhere--surprisingly grim stuff.

cheers, H.

[ripper]

I really liked Cannon and would watch it avidly when it was shown. I am not aware of it being released on DVD here in the UK. I have a single entry in the Cannon book series titled The Golden Bullet. It has been quite a while since I read it, but I think I remember it as being okay, though not particularly memorable.

Andy mentioned Harry O, which is another series I enjoyed greatly. His gimmick was that he had been shot in the back and invalided out of the police force, and he couldn't run much due to his injury. David Jansson was terrific in the lead role.

[helrunar]

Ironically, I remember reading a few years ago that David Janssen died of a heart attack while he was working on Harry O.  I hope that wasn't right.  I read that one of the other action series stars--I think it was Garner on Rockford Files--demanded a less taxing schedule when he heard about Janssen.

The only thing I recall about Harry O is this marvelous character bit with Thayer David in an unusual episode that was otherwise mostly cast with African-American actors.  The scene with Thayer was shown at a Dark Shadows fan event I attended and I was so struck with it I acquired that episode on videotape from a fan vendor way back when. The entire story was very well done.

And today is the 51st anniversary of episode one of Dark Shadows--not a series at all known in the UK, so far as I am aware, but it was memorable for American kids of my generation (those who were children during the Sixties).

H.

[Swampirella]

I remember being very scared by "Dark Shadows" as a (very young child! But when I watched a video clip a few years ago, it didn't seem very scary....

[ripper]

Jun 27, 2017 14:53:21 GMT helrunar said:

Ironically, I remember reading a few years ago that David Janssen died of a heart attack while he was working on Harry O.  I hope that wasn't right.  I read that one of the other action series stars--I think it was Garner on Rockford Files--demanded a less taxing schedule when he heard about Janssen.

The only thing I recall about Harry O is this marvelous character bit with Thayer David in an unusual episode that was otherwise mostly cast with African-American actors.  The scene with Thayer was shown at a Dark Shadows fan event I attended and I was so struck with it I acquired that episode on videotape from a fan vendor way back when. The entire story was very well done.

And today is the 51st anniversary of episode one of Dark Shadows--not a series at all known in the UK, so far as I am aware, but it was memorable for American kids of my generation (those who were children during the Sixties).

H.

Janssen did indeed die due to a heart attack at the age of just 48, but it was about 4 years after Harry-O was canceled in favour of Charlie's Angels. Much as I liked Charlie's Angels for obvious reasons, the cancelation of Harry-O was disappointing. Janssen's world-weary style was perfect for the role imo. As an aside, if you get the chance, watch Janssen in the outstanding 1973 made-for-TV movie "Birds of Prey".

I don't know if Dark Shadows was screened in the UK. If it was then I have no memory of ever seeing it.