Master Index

We’re in reruns this week … but, hey, it’s a lot of reruns!

A couple of years ago I noticed that the blog had started to get unwieldly.  Even with the very rough array of categories on the right, it’s hard to navigate to the older pieces.  And some of those have become inexplicably Google-proof — in fact, sometimes I even have a hard time finding an old post when I need to refresh my memory.  So, finally, I’ve gotten around to putting together a master list with links to all of the longer essays on the blog — one-stop shopping, as it were.  If you’ve been a regular reader for a while, but not from the very beginning (five and a half years ago!), maybe you’ll find something of interest here that you haven’t already read.

I’ve broken the list down into a few basic types, and listed everything in reverse chronological order.  I’ve deliberately excluded link roundups, short obits, and anything else that I thought was dated or ephemeral.  In other words, this isn’t a full index of every blog post, just those that may have some lasting value.  Unless I get lazy, I’ll continue to append new pieces to this list, so that it will remain an up-to-date table of contents (accessible via the MASTER LIST link in the Categories section at right).

Old TV Shows

Playhouse 90 (3/17/24, revising a compromised 2014 piece) and a sidebar (3/28/14).

Shane and a sidebar with director Robert Butler. (11/30/23 & 12/5/23)

The Man in Room 17, It’s Dark Outside, The Plane Makers, and Public Eye. (4/25/17)

The Defenders. (7/14/16)

The 91st Day. (5/2/16)

“Time and a Half on Christmas Eve” (Run For Your Life). (12/25/15)

The Senator (for The A.V. Club) and a comprehensive oral history of the series. (6/24/15 & 7/25/15)

Lee Marvin Presents Lawbreaker. (5/27/15)

“Barbed Wire” (Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater). (11/6/14)

Then Came Bronson (for The A.V. Club) and a sidebar on Stu Klitsner, the station wagon man. (11/5/14)

Thriller (for The A.V. Club). (10/8/14)

The Andy Griffith Show (for The A.V. Club). (7/9/14)

Mannix (for The A.V. Club). (5/27/14)

The Richard Boone Show (for The A.V. Club) and a follow-up. (4/21/14)

(The Many Loves of) Dobie Gillis Part One and Part Two. (4/11/14 & 5/1/14)

Peyton Place (for The A.V. Club). (11/11/13)

The Fugitive (for The A.V. Club). (9/11/13)

Ben Casey (for The A.V. Club) and a follow-up. (8/5/13 & 10/4/13)

The Gallant Men. (4/2/13)

Dorothy. (11/5/12)

Wagon Train (follow-up). (10/17/12)

“Alas, Babylon” (Playhouse 90).  (8/23/12)

Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful” (Goodyear Playhouse) and “The Traveling Lady” (Studio One). (8/10/12)

“The World of Sholom Aleichem” and “The Dybbuk” (Play of the Week) and a sidebar with actor Conrad Bromberg. (5/21/12)

“A Night to Remember” (Kraft Television Theatre). (4/25/12)

“The Noise of Death” (The Untouchables). (3/23/12)

McCloud. (2/15/12)

Mike Hammer and a follow-up. (1/8/12 & 6/20/13)

Dennis the Menace. (7/29/11)

Kojak. (10/18/11)

The Haunted and Stryker (unsold pilots) and a follow-up. (3/1/11 & 4/5/11)

The Restless Gun. (9/19/10)

Late Innings: Notes on Late Episodes of Have Gun – Will Travel, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Hawaii Five-O, Dr. Kildare, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (9/7/10)

“A Sound of Different Drummers” (Playhouse 90). (8/19/10)

“Three Plays by Tennessee Williams” (Kraft Television Theatre). (6/23/10)

The Bill Cosby Show and Love American Style.  (4/19/10)

Rawhide. (3/12/10)

The Patty Duke Show. (2/11/10)

The Paper Chase. (11/1/09)

Wagon Train and Ironside (follow-up). (10/13/09)

Thirteen Underrated and Overlooked Episodes of The Twilight Zone. (10/2/09)

“What Makes Sammy Run?” (Sunday Showcase). (9/30/09)

Wagon Train and Ironside. (9/15/09)

Studio One and interviews with some people who worked on it. (12/6/08 & 1/27/09)

The Donna Reed Show. (11/14/08)

Man With a Camera, Tate, and Laredo. (10/10/08)

Brenner. (7/7/08)

Banacek. (4/23/08)

Crime Story Parts One and Two. (12/7/07)

Arrest and Trial. (1998; revised 2008)

The Invaders. (1998)

East Side / West Side. (1997; revised 2007)

Recent TV Shows

Breaking Bad (for The A.V. Club). (8/12/13)

Leverage. (2/19/13)

Lie to Me. (7/25/12)

Recasting Mad Men. (3/26/12)

Fringe (follow-up), Nurse Jackie, and The Good Wife. (3/7/12)

Southland. (1/31/12)

24 (follow-up). (5/19/11)

Fringe. (10/15/10)

The New Classics: The Best TV Series of 2000-2009. (12/30/09)

24 and Swingtown. (7/9/09)

Interviews

D. C. Fontana (for Shout! Factory). (12/11/19)

Harlan Ellison. (6/30/18, excerpted from an unpublished 1996 conversation)

David Levinson. (5/12/16)

Frank Wood (for The A.V. Club). (4/16/16)

Leigh Chapman (11/17/15) and a personal note (11/4/15).

Diana Rigg (for The A.V. Club). (6/23/15)

Anthony Heald (for The A.V. Club). (3/4/15)

Seamon Glass. (6/26/14)

Joy Munnecke on Playhouse 90. (4/3/14)

Ralph A. Woolsey. (1/22/14)

Everett Chambers on Peyton Place. (11/26/13)

Ed Lauter (interview by Tom Donahue, text by me). (10/18/13)

Gail Kobe. (9/6/13)

Richard C. Sarafian on The Gallant Men. (4/12/13)

Cliff Osmond Parts One and Two. (1/3/13 &1/8/13)

Robert Pine. (7/12/12)

Burton Armus on Kojak. (11/1/11)

Gerald S. O’Loughlin. (8/26/11)

Harry Landers. (5/31/11)

Leigh Chapman. (12/8/10)

Shirley Knight and a follow-up. (7/10/10 & 7/24/10)

Jason Wingreen Parts One and Two. (5/13/10 & 5/21/10)

Tim O’Connor. (2/26/10)

Collin Wilcox. (3/25/09)

Lonny Chapman. (12/19/07)

Oral Histories with Early Television Writers. (2007-2009)

Obituaries

Alden Schwimmer. (4/12/24)

Christopher Knopf. (2/27/19)

Andy Lewis. (4/6/18)

Meg Mundy. (1/29/16)

Lionel E. Siegel and Ron Roth. (1/5/15)

Jerry McNeely. (10/8/14)

Noel Black. (7/23/14)

Stanford Whitmore. (6/12/14)

Gordon Hessler. (1/31/14)

Nate Esformes. (8/6/13)

Norman Borisoff. (6/13/13)

Gerry Day. (2/27/13)

Winrich Kolbe. (10/23/12)

Frank R. Pierson. (8/12/12)

Edward Adler. (6/15/12)

Jerome Ross. (3/1/12)

Ben Gazzara and Zalman King. (2/4/12)

Walter Doniger. (12/13/11)

Tom Donovan and Robert Collins. (11/3/11)

Allan A. Buckhantz. (10/15/11)

David Pressman. (9/19/11)

Alfred Brenner and Lyman Hallowell. (8/23/11)

James H. Brown. (8/3/11)

Charles F. Haas. (5/21/11)

Sidney Lumet and an oral history of his television years. (4/22/11 & 7/18/11)

Gerald Perry Finnerman. (4/12/11)

Donald S. Sanford. (3/4/11)

John McGreevey. (2/12/11)

Janet MacLachlan. (10/21/10)

Arthur Penn. (10/11/10)

Alvin Boretz. (7/30/10)

Peter Haskell. (5/7/10)

Robert Culp. (4/12/10)

Mary Scott. (12/18/09)

Paul Wendkos. (12/3/09)

Collin Wilcox. (10/22/09)

Paul Burke and George Eckstein. (9/21/09)

Clement Fowler. (8/22/09)

Philip Saltzman. (8/20/09)

Mort Thaw. (7/25/09)

Steven Gilborn and Pat Hingle. (1/15/09)

Earl Booth. (12/18/08)

Paul Schneider and Thomas Y. Drake. (11/21/08)

Nina Laemmle. (11/6/08)

Luther Davis. (8/2/08)

Irving Pearlberg. (7/2/08)

Eliot Asinof. (6/26/08)

C. M. (Chris) Gampel. (5/14/08)

Harry Kleiner. (2/11/08)

Barry Morse. (2/6/08)

Frank Lewin. (1/20/08)

Miscellany

Book Reviews: Patrick Stewart’s Making It So, Bonnie Bartlett’s Middle of the Rainbow, Ed Begley Jr.’s To the Temple of Tranquility…And Step On It, Julia Bricklin’s Red Sapphire: The Woman Who Beat the Blacklist, and some short takes. (1/30/24)

Freiberger’s Last Word. (7/28/17)

Mary Tyler Moore’s Best Performances on The Dick Van Dyke Show (for Vulture). (1/26/17)

Shrug (on the autobiography of Edd “Kookie” Byrnes). (10/14/15)

The Fabulous Career of Stanley Chase. (10/14/14)

Very Long Wait: An Update on the Netflix Betrayal. (9/17/14)

Green and Yellow: Notes on Susan Oliver (and the documentary The Green Girl) and James Shigeta. (8/26/14)

Book Reviews: Steve Taravella’s Mary Wickes: I Know I’ve Seen That Face Before, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s Mary and Lou and Ted and Rhoda, Sally Kellerman’s Read My Lips: Stories of a Hollywood Life, and Herbie J. Pilato’s Twitch Upon a Star. (3/5/14)

How Long Is Yours? (On Long Takes). (2/20/14)

Where Were You the Day Mia Farrow Cut Her Hair?: A Micro Oral History. (2/11/14)

TV Club 10: David E. Kelley (for The A.V. Club). (11/20/13)

The Nurses of Ben Casey. (10/16/13)

Richard Kimble Was Guilty. (9/17/13)

The Casting Files of Marion Dougherty. (8/29/13)

Le Cinéma de Vince Edwards. (7/25/13)

Hard to Find (on auteurism among television directors). (6/4/13)

Why Pulling an Episode of Hannibal After the Boston Bombings Was a Mistake (for The A.V. Club) and a sidebar about airdates. (5/3/13)

Book Reviews: Alice Denham’s Sleeping With Bad Boys and Laura Wagner’s Anne Francis: The Life and Career. (4/18/13)

Doing It Right (A Conversation with Stuart Galbraith IV About Home Video and Streaming Media). (3/7/13)

The Candy Fudge Sundae Girl (about actress Kathleen Murray). (2/11/13)

Stanley Milgram Goes to Medical Center. (12/20/12)

Turkeys Away: An Oral History of the Famous WKRP Thanksgiving Episode. (11/21/12)

Well I Heard Mister Young Sing About Her: On Nostalgia, or My War with the Home Theater Forum: Part II (6/27/12)

A Kettle of Precious Fish (Untangling the Rights to Naked City and Route 66). (6/12/12)

End of the Road (Salesman, Run For Your Life, and Route 66). (3/15/12)

Procrustes Comes to Syndication. (2/25/12)

Book Reviews: A Little Solitaire: John Frankenheimer and American Film and The Garner Files: A Memoir. (1/26/12)

The Golden Age of the Episode Title, or: Guess Who’s Going to Vomit? (12/1/11)

A Life at the Video Store. (11/10/11)

Late Bloomers (Series That Peaked Late in Their Runs). (10/24/11)

3 x 87 (Early TV Adaptations of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct Novels). (7/7/11)

The Empty Envelope (and several subsequent ruminations on How Netflix Blew It). (3/28/11)

The Uncredited Actors of Naked City: Parts One, Two, and Three (March 2011); and a belated Four (12/9/13).

Hilda & Hildy (on Hildy Brooks, aka Hilda Brawner). (2/7/11)

Who and Where Is Hudson Faussett? (11/17/10)

Book Review: Stephen Battaglio’s David Susskind: A Televised Life. (10/19/10)

Two Cop Shows and One Missing Producer (Bob Markell, Hawk, and N.Y.P.D.). (9/22/10)

Sixteen Footprints of the New Wave. (8/12/10)

Dirt in the Bathtub: Shilling for Screeners, and Leave It to Beaver. (6/30/10)

Cloud Minder Girl  (Charlene Polite). (3/21/10)

Trickle-Down Stupidity: My War with the Home Theater Forum, Part I. (3/20/10)

Murder, He Wrote (on Laurence Heath, the Television Writer Who Killed) plus comments thread and a follow-up. (12/7/09)

Book Review: Martin Grams, Jr.’s The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. (8/26/09)

Perception Studies in Seventies Crime Shows. (7/30/09)

Networking (Live Television Directors and the Movies). (6/12/09)

Confessions of a Recovering Trekkie. (5/14/09)

The Class of ’69 (Don Carpenter and Then Came Bronson). (4/28/09)

Dear Bobbie (Roberta Collins). (9/5/08)

Benefactors (The Defenders, Mad Men, and Abortion). (8/15/08)

Mannix, The Paper Chase, USC, and Some Personal Geography. (8/6/08)

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Fugitive Musical Scores from a Fugitive DVD Release. (6/13/08)

Something About Sydney Pollack. (5/27/08)

The TV Writer and the Playboy Bunny (Jack Laird and Jeri Emmett). (3/31/08)

Another Good Reason to Hate the Internet Movie Database (on its unholy bargain with the WGA). (1/28/08)

Starting a List of Great TV Episodes. (December 2007)

Dining Out on Tony Randall. (12/14/07)

On Film and Theater

Finding Frederick Melton (for NYPL) (1/26/18).

Jerome Coopersmith Remembers Baker Street (for Broadway World) (10/31/17).

Jacques Rivette’s Out 1 (for BAM) (10/14/15).

Obituaries for Mike Nichols (11/20/14) and Stephen Porter (6/14/13) (for NYPL).

The Circle in the Square’s Archives (for Broadway World) (10/14/15) and an interview with its first photographers, Justin & Barbara Kerr (for NYPL) (3/14/14).

The Upper Crust (1981): Frank Gorshin Gives the Performance of His Career in a Forgotten Austrian Thriller (for World Cinema Paradise) (4/19/14).

Scorsese / Walsh (for BAMcinématek) (3/11/14).

No Love For Jacques Rivette (for World Cinema Paradise) (1/17/14).

Finding My Way Into Schlock (for World Cinema Paradise) (12/19/13).

Dorothy Loudon’s papers (8/2/17), her connections to Noel Coward (8/15/12) and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (10/17/12), and her work in Annie (11/28/12) and Luv (4/16/13) (for NYPL).

Andrzej Zulawski: Untameable Heroines (for BAMcinématek) (3/7/12).

Great Directors: John Frankenheimer (for Senses of Cinema) (November 2006).