Jackie Gleason

My dad may know Jackie Gleason as being Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, and you may know him as the sheriff in the Smokey & The Bandit movies, but I know him as the man behind a strange series of super-schmaltzy muzak albums in which he neither performed, composed, nor conducted.

In a somewhat Warholian fashion, Gleason organized the recording sessions and had people compose the songs according to his directions. Sometimes he would come up with melodies in his head and hum them to his staff to transcribe; sometimes he merely gave vague instructions in bold strokes, like "make it silky." Most interestingly, as opposed to the increasingly cerebral jazz, Gleason presented his albums as "background music", something to set a mood in a room, not something to be studied or focused on. He actually went so far as to describe it as "musical wallpaper". I found this idea fascinating as a kid when I scored his albums at yard sales. I still do, in fact.

His album Lonesome Echo, by the way, sported cover artwork by none other than Salvador Dali.

Gleason was born in Brooklyn but moved to Miami in the mid-1960s - primarily, it is said, for the golfing. In addition to his many pursuits, he was an avid researcher of the paranormal, and bequeathed his sizeable collection of books and materials to the local university.

His grave can be found at Our Lady Of Mercy Cemetery, 11411 NW 25th Street in Miami.

Flipper

The beloved TV show Flipper (wait, what do you mean you've never heard of it? You damn kids!) originally aired from 1964 to 1967, and was based on the movie of the same name that was a box office smash in theatres in the summer of '63. It was, like I Dream of Jeannie, one of the few classic TV shows set in Florida. Unlike Jeannie, this one was actually filmed on location here, in Miami.

The show starred Brian Kelly as Porter Ricks, a warden at a marine preserve on Florida's Coral Key. He's a single dad trying to raise two sons, Sandy and Bud, while fending off gangsters, escaped convicts, lobster poachers, and surly characters snook-fishing out of season. And then there's the show's namesake, Flipper - a hyperintelligent dolphin who always saves the day with increasingly unlikely feats of Lassie-like skill.

Like Mork & Mindy a decade later, Flipper suffered from a constant revamping by its producers, leaving a very erratic legacy with a multitude of short-lived characters. Even Ricks' widower status was a retcon from the original movie, where Mrs. Ricks is very much alive.

The show's first season featured Andy Devine as a comical lout named Hap, regaling the boys with very implausible tall tales about his days as a seafarer. Then the character vanished, as did the Ricks family dog, Spray, who was never seen or mentioned again after the first season. Flipper's pelican friend, Pete, also didn't last long. In the second season they threw in a female love interest for Ricks, a Swedish oceanographer named Ulla who tootled around the Atlantic in her own personal miniature submarine. By the third season she was gone too, without explanation or exposition.

For the third season, advance promos for the show hawked the addition of a new girlfriend for Sandy to the cast. She appeared in only one episode before the producers apparently got bored and wrote her out of the show. By the end of the series, even Sandy and Bud themselves were written out - a very special two-part episode explained that Sandy and Bud had gone off to private schools in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and were being replaced on the show by a family called the Whitmans, consisting of a widowed mother with two kids of her own.

By this time NBC decided enough was enough, and pulled the plug on the show immediately after this "Cousin Oliver" moment.

In real life, Flipper was a female named Mitzi, who lived at the Dolphin Research Center (then known as Santini’s Porpoise School) where Mitzi was the very first student dolphin trained to do tricks. Mitzi died in 1972, and is buried in the courtyard of the DRC with a small plaque: "Dedicated to the memory of Mitzi, the original Flipper, who resided at this facility from 1958 to 1972″.

WPLG Newswatch-10, 1979

This is one of those times that I love the Internet; some helpful soul has, for no valid reason, uploaded to YouTube some snippets of Miami's WPLG Newswatch-10 evening news show from 1979. The 1970s were a pretty ugly decade, and gazing upon this grey old footage instantly conjures up grey old memories of dreary family dinners, forced to watch local news with the parents. So why then do I find it so refreshing at the same time? Perhaps because of the simpler times it represents - a pre-Internet, pre-Reagan, pre-cellphone world.

And yes, Stanley Kubrick fans, that's the same Glenn Rinker who makes an appearance (as himself, on a television doing the show) in the movie The Shining.

Magic Beach Motel

This wacky inn is located on that island near St. Augustine that has no name, but I call it Vilano Key because Vilano Beach is its primary hub unless you count Mickler's Landing and I don't.

Originally this motel, which is very near the pier and the pavilion that once was the Vilano Beach Casino, was called simply Vilano Beach Motel. But in 1999, it was used as the set for the TV series Safe Harbor, which altered the sign to read "Magic Beach Motel" because the show's setting was in the fictitious town of Magic Beach, FL. After the show was cancelled, the owners chose the keep the sign and the name change, and is now of Florida's most elusive specimens: a old-school retro "Cadillac" motel that is also clean, updated and modern at the same time.

And yes, at night when the sign's turned on, the neon bunnies light up in a staggered manner so that it creates the illusion of them bounding out of the top hat.

TV Personalities of Interzone

These newspaper ads ran often in Palm Beach, back in the 1960s and early 1970s, usually around Christmas time, hyping events at Sears where, in addition to holiday sales and free donuts, kids got the opportunity to see in person their "favorite TV personalities". Apparently back then, that meant a bunch of old guys in hats. (I coulda been a contender!)

At first I lacked the necessary suspension of disbelief to even consider that a kid in 1968 would call these guys their favorite TV personalities, but remained fascinated by these grainy old newsprint images of crusty sailors. A quick glance at the googles and we find that sure enough, Skipper Chuck hosted a very popular children's show called Popeye's Playhouse in South Florida from 1957 to 1979. The "Uncle Don" shown in the ad is also from Skipper Chuck's show, according to Wikipedia:

"Skipper Chuck's first musical sidekick who played the Hammond Organ and wore loud Hawaiian shirts....he also served as a straight comic foil for Skipper Chuck's often droll jokes. Don Sebastian Pesce was a local musician who played at local supper clubs in South Florida for years. Don was responsible, with Chuck and Annie, for many of the original songs written for the show."

Additionally, Captain Jack also had a well-loved kids show in Florida, with Banjo Billy (who had his own show, Banjo Billy's Funboat) and Jumpin' Jack O'Brien, from 1961 to 1969. I'd hoped to find some actual footage of these shows on youtube but all I could located was this news piece with a montage of old photos.