The ABC Movie of the Week Companion:A Loving Tribute to the Classic Series by Michael Karol

Author:Michael Karol [Karol, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780595616619
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2008-11-12T16:00:00+00:00

Short Walk to Daylight, October 24, 1972 Way before Sylvester Stallone flexed his muscles rescuing people trapped in the Lincoln Tunnel in 1996’s Daylight came this MOTW featuring a varied group of people trapped in the New York subways after an earthquake. James Brolin and Ironside’s Don Mitchell are the only “names” in this cast, but this MOTW got about as much respect from the critics as Sly’s later effort, which is to say, none. Here’s a snip from the Williamstown (Massachusetts) Transcript: “Short Walk to Daylight is hysterical, loud, frenetic and filled with unbelievable contrivances. Basically eight characters, seven of them clichéd, are in the subway in the early hours of a Sunday morning, en route home to Brooklyn. A devastating earthquake hits and they attempt to find their way through the rubble to safely. Only the subway conductor, played by James McEachin is believable, although Abbey Lincoln as a concerned black mother and Suzanne Charney as a lonely girl with a sense of humor manage to bring a few good moments to their roles.”

Family Flight, October 25, 1972

When a plane crashes in the Mexican desert, tensions between family members get in the way of finding a solution to their problem. Rod Taylor is the solid-as-a-rock dad, Dina Merrill his alcoholic wife, and Kristoffer Tabori their son, who’s returned home after 18 months away with his daughter. The four fractured psyches get on a plane and head for Baja. A crash landing leads to a desperate search for a way out. Good acting keeps this one from falling into familiar clichés.

• The movie’s climax was filmed with the cooperation of the U. S. Navy, using the carrier USS Ranger.

• Sandbagged: The Bee (Danville Va.) interviewed Taylor and noted he was “back in the sand again for filming of Family

Flight, despite a promise to himself never to do another desert picture. The main setting of the film is an isolated desert area. ‘The year before, I’d done a series, The Bearcats, which filmed on location in Arizona and New Mexico,’ the rugged actor explained. ‘Then I went to the Mexican desert for a John Wayne film with Ann-Margret. It was hot and grubby, and I vowed no more desert pictures. Then, after I had been back in Hollywood only two weeks, the offer came to do The Heroes with Rod Steiger, and I couldn’t afford to turn it down even though it meant shooting on the Sahara.’

“When Taylor returned to Hollywood and was asked to star with Merrill and Tabori in Flight, he reasoned, ‘Only three days of the movie were to be filmed on the desert, in the Apple Valley area of California. Besides, it would mean a reunion for Dina and me—we’d worked together in 1960 in an episode of Hong Kong, my first fling in a TV series.’”

�The Bounty Man, October 31, 1972

Not Nancy Walker’s male paper towel counterpart, but rather, hunky Clint Walker, who goes after his wife’s killer and, on a tip, finds an isolated almost-ghost town filled with wanted criminals, including his quarry, John Ericson (Honey West).

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