The ad-libbed show initially ran five nights a week at 7 p.m., and was just as much for adults and kids. Of the initial run, there were 720 shows produced in black and white, first for NBC and then ABC. It was a one-camera show. The shows were improvised, with Burr Tillstrom as the puppet manipulator and voice and Fran Allison interacting. Other characters appeared, including Madame Ooglepuss, a crooked-nosed old opera singer, and Colonel Crackie, a Southern caricature.

In August, 1953, it became NBC’s first color show with the operetta “St. George and the Dragon” starring Arthur Fiedler and The Boston Pops.

The show was revived in 1970 in color on PBS, and the puppets were known by most of Generation X as the intro to the weekly CBS Children’s Film Festival.

Martin Tahse, a producer of ABC After School Specials bought the shows and produced 13 more for syndication. They became the last 13 shows of the series. Burr died a few years later, followed shortly after by Fran. The DVDs today are now issued by Tahse; more information is at kuklafranandollie.com.

This year, the United States Postal Service created a Kukla, Fran and Ollie Commemorative Stamp for its 60th anniversary.It’s an interesting question if the show could be revived as an actual show, as Allison and Tillstrom are dead, but with the recent revival of the Muppets (without Henson, thought he was rarely on TV with them) it might make for a potent franchise as it is known by adults 40 and up, and could be re-introduced to children who would appreciate its humor. It would have to be a clever comedienne with a sassy, hip sense of humor who doesn’t go over the top with too many adult references.

We wonder, however, who could run the puppets, and who could be Fran?

Anyone who values American culture appreciates Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch. Even if they were not critical successes when they first aired, because they have endured, you have to begin to wonder why. Here at BrandlandUSA, we are also curious about their perfection and classic status. What makes a classic? Is it chance? How do you make the chance happen? How do you recognize what will work?

Schwartz appeared on Mark Simone’s 77 WABC radio show Saturday Night Oldies. Schwartz gave some insight into his work, and explained a few things. We gathered up the best; we think they are very good life lessons.

1. The obvious is often ignored. The eternal question of Gilligan’s Island is why the Professor could devise all these crazy ways to get off the island, but he could never do the obvious, namely repair the boat. The usual, intellectual English lit answer is that it was a sitcom, and you are supposed to have a willing suspension of disbelief. But Schwartz says it actually did make complete sense: “That’s true of mankind. They can do except what they cannot do.”
2. Bad stuff turns good. Somebody can screw up something good for no reason. Gilligan’s Island was set for another year, but William Paley, chairman of CBS, had a wife, Babe Paley, who liked Gunsmoke. There is probably alot more to the story. But only two years later, Schwartz had the time to create The Brady Bunch, a show that has arguably been therapy to millions of kids around the world.
3. Ignore critics. The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island were successful, but never a critical success. That’s true much of the time: “People got the message before the critics got the message.”
4. You can do things. Overnight. Schwartz wrote the Brady and Gilligan themes, though he wasn’t a composer. The problem was that CBS had to set up the premise, but they didn’t have time in the show to actually tell the story, so they did it in the theme song. Schwartz had to write it overnight; he was told by CBS that “tomorrow, you better have the song.” So he went home, sat down at the piano, and wrote it.
5. Mix up the same pieces and make something new each week. The secret of both of the shows was to “use the same pieces of material” over and over again, but keep “readjusting those pieces” to make something different. It allowed the cast to have the time to relax, be funny, and practice lines.
6. Use what you have. Take the total of your experiences in life, and make them work for you. “You only know life from the way you experience life.”

Thanks to Mark Simone for getting Schwartz on the show. If you want to read more about Sherwood, go to his website at www.SherwoodSchwartz.com  

Almost 90, he has a wife of 67 years and grace to say that he’s been terribly lucky, when it is plainly obvious that he has made his luck, all along the way.

He said on the show that he gets letters daily from folks who enjoyed the show. If you did, write him.

Sherwood

Mickey Rooney returns as the voice of Santa Claus (I think many had forgotten he was still performing; thank goodness he is still keeping the Mickey Rooney franchise alive) and George S. Irving returns as Heat Miser. This time, Santa throws out his back and is unable to deliver gifts for Christmas, and the Misers have to help. This softer side of Heat Miser will be a relief to radioman Glenn Beck, who has said on his show that the character frightened him terribly as a child.

An ABC Family release states that the show is produced by Warner Bros. Animation in association with Cuppa Coffee Studios. Executive producers are Adam Shaheen, Howard Schwartz and Linda M. Steiner, with a script written by Eddie Guzelian and directed by Dave Barton Thomas.

Perhaps now is the time to ask for the return of the Rankin Bass brand; it has as much meaning as Hanna Barbera, and would help to define the genre, namely stop-animation figures, and perhaps bring a pipeline of specials back onto ABC. Even better, Rankin Bass is so well known it could be used in theme parks.

The ABC television drama Life on Mars with Jason O’Mara and Harvey Keitel is the perfect show for BrandlandUSA. Why did we like it? We could put it intellectually, that we liked the central theme about the overlap of past and present. And because it’s a good show.

But let’s get real. We watched the first and second episode to see what brands they scrounged from the 1970s. A few things they dredged up?

• Great music. Theme song “Life on Mars” by David Bowie. It was played on an 8-Track, the RCA logo quite visible.
• Fist fights! What happened to fist fights!
• The New York Daily News
• Chevy SS
• Plymouth
  
• A mention of Cream of Wheat
• A Flxible bus, from the GM (not Grumman) era
• A mention of the band Hall & Oates
• A screen shot of the CBS television show Cannon
• Roosevelt Hospital, with nurses in white, not bad-print shirts
• An unnamed reel-to-reel player
• Sloan Urinal Flush Valves
• Street scenes with 1970s Lincoln Continental 
• The police cars in episode two looked to be a Dodge and a Plymouth Belvidere or Satellite.
• A Mercedes, which looked at first glance to be a 300 SEL
• The World Trade Center. Gosh how we miss it and wish they were putting TWO square looking buildings back up.

The website is great. It has a video game (a sort of Pong), Sam Tyler’s soundtrack (some good Pink Floyd), and podcasts from the producer.

Good line from the show that applies to BrandlandUSA? “I am sick of this cosmic joke that everyone seems to be in on but me.”

The ads are great, and work with the show’s vintage theme. They include the Toyota Corolla, Cadillac, JCPenney and the like, though some ads might have been regional buys.

O.K. so BrandlandUSA is losing all credibility with this one, but we think all good Americans will agree. The Love Boat should come back.

Lots of great things are back. Marie Osmond is back on the American Broadcasting Corporation, starring this season on Dancing with the Stars. Sally Field is saying screwy things at an awards show. On top of all this redux, there is evidence (sketchy, we admit) that a Love Boat movie might be in the works. Yes, you heard it correctly. Tori Spelling told Entertainment Weekly‘s Dan Snierson that:

One of my dad’s dreams that never got fulfilled [Aaron Spelling died in 2006] is he desperately wanted to do a feature. He’d tell me about that every year. First he’d be like, ”I’m thinking about Jim Carrey.” Then he’d be like, ”Wait, we’re going to have a young captain and it’s going to be Ben Stiller.” It would’ve been awesome.

We agree. Because The Love Boat is a great franchise, the perfect franchise. The UPN network brought it back as the Robert Urich TV show The Love Boat: The Next Wave, but it didn’t work. It wasn’t like the old one, and people didn’t watch. Problems included

• As we recall, it didn’t have Jack Jones singing the theme song, nor did it have a laugh track.
• The logo and show credits were different. Very often, if an episode was crap, the intro graphics and TV theme song still had an appeal. TV programmers forget this and now rely upon the episode to do all the lifting.
• There was another problem, and this makes for serious point about the resuscitation of dead brands. The Love Boat franchise was intrinsically connected with the ABC brand, so when it wasn’t shown on ABC, it didn’t feel real.
• It was shown on Monday night and then Friday night. Wrong. Part of the original The Love Boat’s power as a brand was that it was shown on Saturday night. What a perfect show for people who are home, a show about old stars who are unhappy and searching for love! People who are home at 9 p.m. Saturday are either retired, young parents, single without dates or college students getting prepped for an 11 p.m. drinking binge. Hence, the perfect audience for The Love Boat.
• Saturday night is a dog night for TV networks anyway. ABC (or ABC Family) might do well to show, on occasion, a few reruns of The Love Boat at 9 p.m. Saturday, just for fun, for a test, when college football season is over. Launch it, like Nick at Nite, under an “ABC Classic” banner. It might actually do better than reruns of current shows like Full House, or could be paired with other classic ABC shows.

So if “they” bring it back as movie or TV show, don’t sex it up. Don’t make it ironic. Don’t camp it up. Don’t screw it up. Do it in a straightforward way. Do bring back Jack Jones. Do include Tori Spelling in the planning. Do think of it as Oceans 11 for Generation X.

But please bring The Love Boat back.

BrandlandUSA Rule: If you bring a franchise or brand back, it needs a few twists to keep it fresh. But it needs to resemble the old in most ways, harkening back to the old without seeming old. Easier said than done, we know.