So you're an unabashed couch potato. But none of the fall television series seem to whet your appetite. There's no reason to panic, because numerous popular, classic and cult TV series are making their bows on home video.
Saddling up to video stores is "The Rifleman" (MPI, $20 each; $80 for the set). Each volume contains five episodes of the compelling western, which originally aired on ABC from 1958 to '63.Former baseball player Chuck Connors starred as the widowed New Mexico homesteader Lucas McCain, and Johnny Crawford was his young son Mark. Lucas was never without his trick rifle, a modified Winchester with a large ring that cocked it as he drew.
"The Rifleman" was penned by such talents as Sam Peckinpah and Frank Gilroy ("The Subject Was Roses"). Guest stars featured in the collection include Dennis Hopper (in the first episode), a pre-"Bonanza" Michael Landon, Martin Landau, James Coburn, Sammy Davis Jr. and Robert Culp.
Another beloved sagebrush saga, "Wagon Train," also is making its video debut. Columbia House Video Library is offering "Wagon Train: The Collector's Edition," which features two episodes digitally remastered from the original films. Bette Davis and John Wayne are guest stars on the first volume.
Each season, the series, which aired from 1957 to '62 on NBC and 1962 to '65 on ABC, followed a wagon train traveling from St. Joseph, Mo., to California. The memorable cast included Ward Bond (1957 to '61), Robert Horton (1957 to '62), Terry Wilson, Frank McGrath, John McIntire (1961 to '65), Scott Miller (1961 to '64), and Michael Burns and Robert Fuller (1963 to '65).
The first volume is $5 and subsequent volumes are $20. To order call 1-800-638-2922.
For sci-fi fans, Paramount Home Video has released the first six episodes of the popular syndicated series "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." The first tape features the two-hour pilot ($20). Episodes three through six are on separate tapes ($15 each).
The "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Collector's Edition" is also available through Columbia House Video Library. Each volume features two episodes. As with "Wagon Train," the first "Deep Space Nine" volume is $5; subsequent volumes are $20.
Six more episodes of the long-running British sci-fi series "Dr. Who" (BBC Video and CBS/Fox, $20 each) have also beamed down to our TV galaxy.
On Sept. 24, FoxVideo will release three more installments in "The X-Files" collection (two episodes per video; $15 each).
Comedy fans may get a hoot watching "Green Acres: The Collector's Edition" (Columbia House Video Library). Each volume features four episodes from the wacky 1965 to '71 CBS comedy series, which starred Eddie Albert, Eva Gabor and Arnold the Pig. (The first volume is $5; subsequent tapes are $20 each.)
On Sept. 24, Columbia TriStar Home Video introduces its latest line, "TV Screen Gems," which features three volumes each ($10 each; $25 per set) of "Burns and Allen," "The Flying Nun," "I Dream of Jeannie" and "Bewitched." Each tape contains two episodes.
Several British comedy series have also arrived on our shores. In the 1980s, MTV viewers devoured the cult punk comedy series "The Young Ones," staring Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson. BBC Video has released three volumes of the show ($15 each). Among the guest stars featured are Jennifer "AbFab" Saunders, Emma Thomp-son, Stephen Fry and Hugh Lau-rie.
Also new from BBC Video ($20 each) are two comedies currently playing on PBS stations: "Keeping Up Appearances," featuring a fun performance by Patricia Rout-ledge as the ultimate snob, and "Waiting for God," set in a retirement home.
- TWO OF SHIRLEY TEMPLE'S very popular early films, "Little Miss Marker" and "Now and Forever," come to home video for the first time Tuesday, and for the first time in color.
Temple starred with Adolph Menjou (who played bookie Sorrowful Jones) in "Little Miss Marker," a Damon Runyon story in which she was left as an I.O.U. for a debt and melted the hearts of a gang of hardened gamblers.
During the making of the film, Menjou said of the child actress, "That Temple kid scares me. She knows all the tricks. She backs me out of the camera, blankets me, grabs my laughs. She's making a stooge of me. Well, she's an Ethel Barrymore at 4."
Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard co-starred with Temple in "Now and Forever," a sentimental drama about an international swindler and his lady love, and a little girl who turns their lives upside down by demanding "honor bright" - telling the truth.
Temple adored Cooper, who gave her a teddy bear that she called Grumpy. Cooper also spent time on the set giving "Wiggle-britches" (his nickname for Temple) drawing lessons.
The two full-length films are priced at $14.98 each, and each runs approximately one hour and 20 minutes.
Temple was only 6 when the two movies were released in 1934, the year she received a special Academy Award for her "outstanding contribution to screen entertainment." She quickly became "America's Little Sweetheart" and the top box-office draw of 1935-1938.
And by 1938, Temple's income was the seventh highest in America. The top six were industrialists.
Shirley Temple Black has been active in politics for more than 25 years and has been ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia as well as U.S. chief of protocol. She was an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1967.
Many years later Temple said of her childhood, "I stopped believing in Santa Claus at an early age. Mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph."
- Martie Zad
(The Washington Post)