Laramie ws an American Western television series by NBC that was shown on BBC TV from 1959 to 1963. It originally starred John Smith as Slim Sherman, Robert Fuller as Jess Harper, Hoagy Carmichael as Jonesy and Robert Crawford, Jr. as Andy Sherman. YouTube shows the credits here in colour, though of course we only ever saw them in blurry black and white…
Although Hoagy Carmichael was dropped after the first series, I never forgot having first seen him on telly as the raddled-looking Jonesy. It was astonishing to later learn that he’d been a glamorous composer earlier in the century, responsible for hits like “Stardust”, “Two Sleepy People” and in particular the superb “Georgia On My Mind”.
Starring Ty Hardin, Bronco was a US import to the BBC in the laste 50s/early 60s and had one of the more memorable theme songs of the era with its chorus about “tearing across the Texas plain”…
Unfortunately at that time the UK also had a brand of hard glossy lavatory paper with the same name. As a result, my chums and I used to think it was terribly funny to change the words of the chorus to: “Bronco… Bronco… Tearing down the dotted line”. My, how we laughed.
Bronco toilet paper – and the rival brand Izal usually found school lavatories – were f**king awful to wipe your arse with. Whoever dreamed up the idea of selling us non-absorbant toilet paper that was hard and shiny on one side – and fibrous and rough on the other- deserved to go out of business. Oh, hold on – they did.
Harry Worth’s shop window routine – from the opening credits of his TV series “Here’s Harry” – was justly famous and of course we all tried it for ourselves at the time. The uncredited theme music was Comedy Hour by Ivor Slaney. Until searching for him on YouTube this morning I’d forgotten how genuinely likeable he was. But this clip advertising a compilation DVD of his later work brought it all back…
In black and white, just like we used to watch it in 1960 – the instantly memorable Top Cat credits. In the UK the name was already being used by a popular pet food brand, so inRadio Times (and a special still placed at the end of these credits) the BBC billed this series as “The Boss Cat” in order to avoid endorsing a commercial company. Perish the thought. ..
The BBC television series Dixon Of Dock Green was adapted from an low-budget 1949 UK crime film called The Blue Lamp. The TV series was written by Ted Willis and ran from 1955 to 1976. Like the original film, it starred Jack Warner in the role of George Dixon.
As Susan Sydney-Smith writes on ScreenOnline: “Warner portrayed Dixon as the archetypal British bobby, tackling ordinary, everyday, rather than serious crime. He patrolled a world in which victims of petty theft and larceny were treated to a nice cup of tea and a ‘talk’; viewers were addressed at the beginning of each episode with his best remembered phrase, ‘Evenin’ all’, and wished farewell in homilies to camera concerning the episode just gone.”
“The fact that Warner was near retirement age in 1955 added to the sense that this series was about nostalgia rather than real life. For the next 21 years, despite the arrival of (more realistic police dramas such as) Z Cars in 1962, Dixon of Dock Green attracted audiences of over 14 million in its heyday. By the time Warner finally retired in 1976, he was over 80 years old… At his funeral in 1981 officers from paddington Green Police Station carried his coffin.”
The earliest episodes of the series apparently had a whistled version of “Maybe It’s Because I’m A Londoner” but it was quickly replaced by its own iconic tune composed by Jeff Darnell and performed by the Canadian harmonica star Tommy Reilly.
Given the show’s popularity at the time, this theme music was surprisingly hard to find online. There’s a God-awful ‘modernised’ version on YouTube dating from 1970s episodes of the programme. Worse still, Warner murdered the tune with a later cash-in single called “An Ordinary Copper” – which featured George Warner’s own toe-curling homespun lyrics.
But here’s a downloadable version of the original short TV version of the theme used in the show’s heyday:
