Super Saturday
by David Krell
david@davidkrell.com
When you think of 1966, what comes to mind?
The Beatles’ rousing performance in the then infant Shea Stadium?
The Dodgers’ four-game sweep of the Orioles in the World Series?
Nancy Sinatra’s signature song These Boots Are Made For Walkin’?
Maybe Jackie Gleason moving his television show’s base of operations to Miami Beach and re-titling it The Jackie Gleason Show?
How about CBS’ special airings:
March 30, 1966: Color Me Barbra (Barbra Streisand’s second television special)
May 8, 1966: Death of a Salesman (starring the inimitable Lee J. Cobb)
December 7, 1966: Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, Part II (sequel to Ol’ Blue Eyes’ 1965 special)
December 18, 1966: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (debut)
These choices represent just the tip of the iceberg of what was available for entertainment in 1966.
Through the diverse, vast, and attractive entertainment options in ’66, a craze of superior, superb, superfluous, super nature superimposed itself on the pop culture landscape.
For the baby boomers born during the Eisenhower administration, superheroes formed a great basis of childhood entertainment.
The superhero phenomenon hit 1966 Saturday morning television and network prime time with a vengeance.
Why was the superhero genre so popular in 1966? It began with the success of Batman. The camp version of the Caped Crusader debuted on January 12th and captured America’s interest. For Saturday mornings, television superprogrammer Fred Silverman’s legendary golden gut saw a golden opportunity. Hal Erickson denotes the then CBS Director of Daytime Programming’s intuition in Television Cartoon Shows: 1949-1993.
But how to combat NBC and ABC in a manner that would truly turn the [Saturday morning] shift into a big-time contender? Silverman took one look at ABC’s The Beatles and had the answer. If counterprogramming could work in the evening hours, why not apply it to daytime?
Significantly, the genre includes characters who do not possess superpowers in the technical sense. In fact, Batman does not have any superpowers at all. He relies on unparalleled logical reasoning, physical training, and athletic prowess. This entry sparked animated superheroes and live-action counterparts.
In ’66, Batmania succeeded Beatlemania as the craze of choice. Erickson attributes the show’s success to inspiring Silverman’s strategy.
Batman made the television industry ‘superhero conscious’ in the same manner that it had earlier been western- and spy-conscious. And what better genre to exploit in Saturday mornings, the land of wall-to-wall cartoonery, than the Superhero genre, which had its very roots in cartoons and comic books?
Although Batman approaches the character from a tilted angle, complete with corny jokes, pop art influence, and camp appeal, the show’s great success with Nielsen ratings, merchandising, and publicity spurred producers and programming execs to heavily market superhero characters, new and old alike.
William Dozier, Executive Producer of Batman, followed up his campy version of the Dark Knight with a rather straight depiction of a well-known character. The Green Hornet debuted on ABC on September 9, 1966. It follows the radio predecessor program in its approach. The radio version debuted on January 31, 1936.
Van Williams’ straight arrow portrayal of the title character contrasted greatly with Adam West’s tongue-in-cheek interpretation of Batman. The programs’ story lengths also varied with few exceptions -- two half-hour parts for Batman and one self-contained half-hour for The Green Hornet. Bruce Lee played Green Hornet valet/sidekick Kato years before he gained worldwide acclaim as a Kung Fu master.
From the King of Kung Fu to the King of the Jungle. Tarzan features Ron Ely, later the host of the 1980’s first-run syndicated game show Face the Music. Tarzan kicked off NBC’s hero-oriented Friday night lineup in 1966 with The Man From U.N.C.L.E. at 8:30 pm, T.H.E. Cat at 9:30 pm and Laredo at 10:00 pm.
With settings in the jungle, espionage, crime-fighting, and western arenas, NBC ran the gamut. T.H.E. Cat showcases Robert Loggia as Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat, a cat burglar who decides to use his skills in a more productive manner. He fights crime with a home base hangout called Casa del Gato. Translation: House of the Cat.
1966 also saw the first Saturday morning animation appearance of the quintessential superhero. Arguably the first superhero, Superman extends his action beyond the comic books in The New Adventures of Superman. Segments center on Superman and his teenage self, Superboy.
The Man of Steel’s place in cartoon history is firm besides Super Saturday. Soon after the character’s 1938 debut in Action Comics, Max and Dave Fleischer set a ‘super’ standard for the character with 17 cartoon shorts. Titles include stories oriented around World War II, e.g., Terror on the Midway and Japoteurs, released on August 28, 1942 and September 18, 1942 respectively.
From the traditional to the bizarre. Hanna-Barbera produced Frankenstein, Jr. and the Impossibles. Sounds more like a 1960’s rock group than a Super Saturday show. The theory is sound. Buzz controls the Frankenstein, Jr. robot via remote control and The Impossibles rock group also fights crime with super powers. The Impossibles consist of Coil Man, Fluid Man, and Multi Man.
Hanna-Barbera also produced Space Ghost and Dino Boy. This offering capitalizes on America’s fascination with the final frontier of space during the 1960’s.
Gary Owens, a disc jockey who found greater fame in segues on Laugh-In, voices Space Ghost. Space Ghost is a strange but likable space hero with powers of invisibility thanks go a magic belt. Sounds like Batman’s utility belt! Segments featuring Dino Boy detail the character’s adventures in a prehistoric world.
In 1976, the series replaced Land of the Lost with segments of Frankenstein, Jr. and the Impossibles under the title Space Ghost/Frankenstein, Jr.
From monsters and spacemen to cowboys and Indians. The Lone Ranger galloped into Super Saturday on the CBS airwaves. Lone Ranger historian Dave Holland describes this animated Masked Man as ‘unusually square-jawed’ in his comprehensive book on the character, From Out of the Past.
By the mid-1960’s, children were more sophisticated in entertainment preferences. Programming needed more...more...well, just more. Audiences of The Lone Ranger got their fill with stories more wacky, outrageous, and fantastic than the radio, film, or live-action television incarnations. Holland critiques this approach.
In an apparent effort to make the Ranger relevant, sci-fi was the name and fantasy his game. [George] Trendle [Lone Ranger’s original owner/creator] was right this time, too: ‘Downright ridiculous,’ he said. His opinion notwithstanding, the program was on CBS until 1969, ‘once again proving the enduring popularity of the character,’ [quoted from Who Was That Masked Man? by David Rothel] no matter how far it drifted from the established concept.
One important aspect of the show reflects ongoing strides in minority roles on television. Tonto’s role increased in stature, sometimes dominating stories.
The first animated Lone Ranger appeared some thirty years before this full-scale network television effort. Exact date unknown but pre-1938 according to Holland, Pathegrams’ The Lone Ranger -- A Cartoon boasts a length of forty-two seconds. Holland determines the general date by the Lone Ranger’s costume.
A date is not on the short but since the Ranger is still vested, it was obviously prior to 1938 when the first serial and the new string-front shirt outfit was released.
The superhero craze of ’66 also witnessed an entry from comics giant Marvel. The Marvel Super Heroes appeared in first-run syndication and gave Marvel Comics’ fans an outlet for their favorite characters -- Hulk, Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, Thor, and Captain America. Les Daniels describes the program in Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics: Marvel.
Produced by the Grant-Ray-Lawrence Company, the shows featured extremely limited animation, but Stan Lee says, ‘they used real Marvel stories and in some crazy way their shows captured the spirit of Marvel. The theme songs were wonderful -- twenty-five years later people still remember them.
Super Saturday not only symbolizes a phenomenon, but also serves as a study of television programming strategy in the children’s marketplace. Silverman used Superman and Space Ghost and Dino Boy as building blocks to form the foundation for Super Saturday.
Erickson states, Silverman set about busting The Beatles with his Superhero Saturday, linking up reruns of Mighty Mouse and Underdog with another new Hanna-Barbera series, Frankenstein, Jr. and the Impossibles and the cartoon debut of The Lone Ranger (Format Films). Fred Silverman’s efforts were rewarded with the all-time best Saturday morning ratings that CBS had ever posted.