Bud Yorkin Movies

Best of Spike Jones, Vol. 1 features some of the wildest musical moments from performer Spike Jones' hit 1950s television variety show. Jones and the band the City Slickers play "Beetle Bomb," "Cocktails for Two," and more. Billy Barty performs a show-stopping Liberace routine. Jones plays impressive drums in a duet of "Minka" with trumpet player George Rock. And the video features still other sketches. Picture and sound quality are excellent. ~ Betsy Boyd, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a middle-aged woman discovers that she is pregnant, to the dismay of her husband and surprise of the town. The husband doesn't feel up to the challenge, and their daughter is now forced to cook and clean around the house, and meanwhile, tries to get pregnant herself. After a drunken argument with the mayor and another with his wife, the husband finally accepts the inevitable. ~ Steve Huey, All Movie Guide

The famously inept but accidentally brilliant Inspector Clouseau returns to help foil a group of daring robbers in this comedy, the only film in the long-running series not to feature Peter Sellers as the bumbling inspector. Instead, the talented Alan Arkin assumes the role, blundering his way through the expected series of absurd, slapstick situations. The plot centers on a series of Swiss bank robberies under investigation by an uptight Scotland Yard inspector (Patrick Cargill), who naturally becomes infuriated by Clouseau's unwelcome intervention. Meanwhile, the robbers decide to confuse matters by wearing Clouseau masks, offering further opportunities for farcical mistaken identities. Due to the absence of both Sellers and director Blake Edwards, Inspector Clouseau has largely been forgotten in comparison to the other Pink Panther films, though it maintains some interest as a curious aberration in the popular comic series. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Two French peasants are mistaken for a pair of aristocratic nobles in this historical situation comedy. Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland play the dual roles. Happy to be taken for nobles, the pair soon runs to escape the guillotine in the wake of the French Revolution's blood purge of the upper class and royalty. Hugh Griffith play Louis XVI, with Billie Whitelaw as the amorous Marie Antoinette. The pair are chased by the evil Duke d'Escargot (Victor Spinetti). Orson Welles appears at the beginning and the end of the film as the narrator. Wilder and Sutherland encounter a variety of comical situations in their dual roles of peasants and blue-blooded eccentrics. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

"The program you are about to see is All in the Family. It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter, we hope to show -- in a mature fashion -- just how absurd they are." With this carefully worded disclaimer, the CBS television network ushered in a new era of television comedy on January 12, 1971, with the premiere of All in the Family. Inspired by the British sitcom Till Death Do Us Part, the series was proposed by producers Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin in early 1968, and a pilot episode titled "Those Were the Days" was commissioned by ABC. From the beginning, Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton were "set" as leading characters Archie and Edith Bunker (original last name: Justice), though two unknowns were cast as the couple's daughter, Gloria, and son-in-law, Mike Stivic. Also from the beginning, it had been decided to retain the controversial nature of the original British series, with bigoted hard-hat Archie forever at odds with his flaming liberal son-in-law. Alas, ABC had just been burned by the hostile reception afforded another hot-potato project, Turn-On, and had lost its taste for controversy, even when Lear and Yorkin toned down the venom in a second pilot. But in 1970, CBS, in desperate need of a hit for its sagging Tuesday-night lineup, decided to take a chance on "Those Were the Days," which by now had been christened All in the Family, and had added Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner to the cast as Gloria and Mike. Worried that audiences might be unkindly disposed to Archie Bunker's incessant harangues against "hebes," "spics," and "coloreds," CBS prefaced the first episode with the aforementioned disclaimer. Though the opener ended up an anemic 54th in the ratings (due primarily to the decision by several affiliates not to air the program, or to reschedule it to a "fringe" time slot), the first All in the Family was the topic of conversation in virtually every household and place of business in America before the week was out.

By the time the series began in its second season in the fall of 1971, All in the Family was CBS' top-rated program, a status it enjoyed for the next five years. Archie Burnker, a loading-dock supervisor who resided at 704 Houser Street in Queens, NY, was a firm and immovable believer in America, right or wrong (but mostly far, far right). Offsetting Archie's racial slurs, antediluvian political beliefs, and incessant malapropisms was his somewhat foolish but fundamentally good-hearted wife, Edith (or "Dingbat," as Archie designated her); his budding-feminist daughter, Gloria; and Gloria's long-haired, radical husband, Michael Stivic (aka "Meathead" and "Polack"), who while attending graduate school lived with Archie and Edith, and all but ate them out of house and home. In virtually every episode, an Issue (with a capital "I") was brought to the forefront -- gun control, the sexual revolution, homosexuality, religion, integration, rape -- with Archie taking the diehard conservative viewpoint, Mike assuming the liberal stance, Gloria siding with Mike, and Edith sitting on the sidelines making inane (but sometimes surprisingly sensible) comments. Usually, Archie would be hoisted by his own bigoted petard, but sometimes Mike would be trapped in the morass of his good intentions. Whatever the case, All in the Family tackled subject matter that only a few years earlier would have been rejected out of hand on network television, using language that likewise had seldom if ever been heard on the small screen. In this respect, All in the Family can be regarded as the single most influential situation comedy in television history.

Over the years, Archie's character mellowed a bit, but fundamentally he remained the same opinionated jerk he'd been in the first episode. Through it all, however, one never doubted that the members of the Bunker family all loved one another dearly and intensely. In addition to the "core" regulars, several other recurring characters paraded past Archie's beloved easy chair: Lionel Jefferson (Mike Evans), a black friend of Mike and Gloria's who, much to Archie's dismay, became their across-the-street neighbor (Lionel's upscale black family would later be spun-off into their own series, The Jeffersons); Irene and Frank Lorenzo (Betty Garrett and Vincent Gardenia), who were every bit as broad-minded as Archie was not; Bert Munson (Billy Halop), an employee at the cab company where Archie moonlighted; Archie's co-worker and lodge buddy Barney Hefner (Allan Melvin); and Tommy Kelsey (Brendan Dillon, and later Bob Hastings), owner of Kelsey's Bar, Archie's favorite hangout. At the beginning of the 1975-1976 season, Gloria and Mike moved next door to Archie and Edith, and in December of 1975, Gloria gave birth to her first child, a boy named Joey. During the 1976-1977 season, Archie met yet another sociological opponent in the form of Puerto Rican boarder Teresa Betancourt (Liz Torres). And as the 1977-1978 season began, Archie made the momentous decision to quit his job and purchase Kelsey's bar, which he renamed Archie Bunker's Place. This season ended with Mike, Gloria, and Joey bidding farewell to Archie and Edith when Mike landed a teaching job in California. The Stivics' former sleeping quarters were taken over in 1978 by Stephanie Mills (Danielle Brisebois), Edith's niece, who had been abandoned by her ne'er-do-well father.

All in the Family per se came to an end with the final episode of the 1979-1980 season; thereafter the multi-award-winning series was known as Archie Bunker's Place. In addition to its prime-time run, All in the Family was seen in rerun form as part of the CBS daytime lineup from December 1975 to December 1979; and in 1991, selected episodes of All in the Family were run in tandem with a newer but much (much) less successful Norman Lear production, Sunday Dinner, which debuted and wrapped within a month. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The pilot episode of Sanford and Son was adapted from a script which aired several years earlier on the series' British prototype Steptoe and Son. After a quick introduction to the main characters -- irascible old junk dealer Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) and his frustrated son and business partner Lamont (Demond Wilson) -- the plot proper begins, when Lamont purchases a porcelain figurine from a retired movie star. Though Lamont paid a mere 20 dollars, Fred is convinced that the figurine is valuable, and uses all sorts of undehanded methods to up its price during an auction. As usual, however, Fred's dreams of sudden wealth are doomed to smash into a million pieces (literally). The Steptoe and Son version of "Crossed Swords" originally aired in 1965; the Sanford and Son remake was telecast as the series' debut episode on January 14, 1972. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lamont Sanford (Demond Wilson) is certain that his recent purchase of some copper pipe at an incredibly low price is the ticket to untold wealth. His dad, Fred (Redd Foxx), is equally certain that there's something fishy about the deal. It turns out that Fred's insticts are right on target. The pipes were stolen property -- and just guess who they were stolen from? "The Copper Caper" was first broadcast on February 4, 1972. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A confirmed hit in its inaugural 14-episode season, the NBC sitcom Sanford and Son returned to its familiar Friday-night berth for a second batch of 24 episodes beginning September 15, 1972. In true "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" tradition, producer Norman Lear made virtually no changes in the series' winning format. Cantankerous junk dealer Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) was still umbilically joined to his cash-poor salvage business; Fred's son Lamont (Demond Wilson) was still seeking a way out of the family trade and into a more lucrative profession; and Fred continued to prevent Lamont from leaving by a variety of methods, primarily by staging highly suspicious "heart attacks." The only significant differences between Sanford's first and second seasons were manifested in the supporting cast. Hal Williams continued to make periodic appearances as police officer Smith (aka "Smitty"), albeit with a new partner, Officer Hopkins (Howard Platt), who was immediately nicknamed "Hoppy." The Sanfords' circle of friends was more or less solidified, with the departing Slappy White (as Melvin) replaced by Fred's somewhat shady crony Bubba Hoover (Don Bexley), and Lamont Sanford gaining a new chum in the person of reckless Rollo Larson (Nathaniel Taylor). More significant additions -- at least in providing grist for the comedy mill vis-à-vis Fred Sanford's endless personal insults -- included Gregory Sierra as the Sanfords' new neighbor and business rival, Puerto Rican junk dealer Julio Fuentes and especially LaWanda Page as Aunt Esther, Fred's contentious, Bible-thumping sister-in-law (Page was a slightly younger and more volatile replacement for Beah Richards, who had made a handful of appearances as Aunt Ethel). Also, Lynn Hamilton continued popping up from time to time as Fred Sanford's erstwhile fiancée, nurse Donna Harris. As with season one, some of the episodes seen during Sanford and Son's second season were adapted from scripts previously telecast on the series' British prototype Steptoe and Son, but these were fewer and farther between than in previous months. And also as with season one, Sanford sustained its enormous popularity, ranking as the second most popular TV series in America (another Norman Lear effort, All in the Family, was first). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Still riding high in the ratings, Sanford and Son returned to its by then traditional Friday-night NBC time slot for a third successful season on September 14, 1973. The basic premise -- crotchety old Fred Sanford running a rundown Los Angeles junk business with his restless son Lamont -- was still firmly in place, as were many of the familiar regulars: Redd Foxx as Fred; Demond Wilson as Lamont; LaWanda Page as Fred's pious, abrasive sister-in-law Aunt Esther; Lynn Hamilton as Fred's off-and-on fiancée, nurse Donna Harris; Don Bexley as Fred's wheeler-dealer buddy Bubba Hoover; Nathaniel Taylor as Lamont's foolhardy crony Rollo Taylor; Hal Williams and Howard Platt as local beat cops Smitty and Hoppy; and Gregory Sierra as the Sanfords' Puerto Rican neighbor and business rival, Julio Fuentes. The most prominent of the new recurring characters was Whitman Mayo as Grady Wilson, Fred Sanford's best friend and severest critic. Grady came in very handy when, in the middle of season three, Redd Foxx walked off Sanford and Son due to a well-publicized contractual dispute with the series' producer (of Foxx' many demands, the press chose to focus on the most trivial: the actor insisted that a window be installed in his dressing room). It was then hastily explained that Fred Sanford had gone on an extended trip to St. Louis, leaving Grady in charge of Sanford and Son Salvage -- and as temporary head of the Sanford household. Despite the temporary defection of its star, Sanford and Son continued to reap excellent ratings. By the end of the 1973-1974 season, the series ranked as the third most popular American TV program. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Season four of Sanford and Son was ushered in on Friday, September 13, 1974, with wonderful news for longtime fans of the series: after a well-publicized volley of recriminations between star Redd Foxx and the series' producers over Foxx's numerous (and somewhat bizarre) contractual demands, the actor was back to stay in the role of irascible Los Angeles junk dealer Fred Sanford. Before long, it was "business as usual," with Fred ruling the roost over his backyard junk business and his long-suffering son Lamont seeking out better means of making a living. Likewise, Fred resumed his ongoing war of words with his Bible-quoting, purse-swinging sister-in-law Esther (LaWanda Page), and his hot-and-cold engagement to nurse Donna Harris (Lynn Hamilton). Having more or less replaced Fred as head of the Sanford household during the waning months of season three, Whitman Mayo was back as Fred's oldest friend Grady Wilson, though by the end of season four Mayo would himself temporarily exit the series to star in his own spin-off sitcom, the short-lived Grady. Other regulars returning to the Sanford fold during the 1974-1975 season were Hal Williams and Howard Platt as police officers Smitty and Hoppy, Don Bexley as Fred's shifty pal Bubba, Nathaniel Taylor as Lamont's crony Rollo, and Gregory Sierra as rival junk dealer Julio Fuentes. Only one character of significance joined the series during this season: Pat Morita as Japanese-American restauranteur Ah Chew. The return of Redd Foxx performed wonders for Sanford and Son's ratings. Ranked third among America's most popular series during season three, the program was restored to the coveted "Number Two" spot during season four. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Season six of Sanford and Son was launched on September 24, 1976, with the series' only two-part episode -- and also one of its funniest -- "The Hawaiian Connection," largely filmed on location in Honolulu and its environs. Then it was back to South Central Los Angeles, where irascible Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) and his long-suffering son Lamont (Demond Wilson) divided their time between their junk business and their new enterprise, a boarding house called the Sanford Arms. Most of the series' familiar recurring characters were still in attendance. LaWanda Page continued to wield her heavy purse and spout Scripture as Fred's contentious sister-in-law Aunt Esther, with Raymond Allen occasionally showing up as Esther's mild-mannered husband, Woodrow, and Eric Laneuville making a handful of appearances as Esther and Woody's newly-adopted son Daniel. Fred Sanford persisted in his romantic relationship with his erstwhile fiancée, nurse Donna Harris (Lynn Hamilton), while son Lamont made preparations to wed the widowed Janet Lawson (Marlene Clark) and adopt Janet's son Roger (Edward Crawford). Additionally, the Sanfords played host to a variety of male chums, among them Bubba (Don Bexley), Rollo (Nathaniel Taylor), and, from time to time, Grady Wilson (Whitman Mayo, whose own spin-off series Grady had recently been canceled). Absent from the proceedings were neighborhood cops Smitty and Hoppy, previously played respectively by Hal Williams and Howard Platt. At the end of season six, it would seem that Lamont was headed to the altar, while Fred would continue maintenance of both Sanford and Son Salvage and the Sanford Arms. Though its ratings had slipped a bit, Sanford and Son still enjoyed a robust prime-time viewership, and was now being seen in rerun form as part of NBC's weekday schedule. Its future as a Friday-night fixture appeared to be completely secure. But appearances can be deceiving. Having been offered his own weekly ABC variety show, Redd Foxx opted to leave Sanford and Son for good and all. The series' producers were all prepared to continue the property under the new title The Sanford Arms, with Demond Wilson promoted to top billing. Unfortunately, Wilson squabbled over what he felt was inadequate financial remuneration for taking over as sole series star, and also took a walk. After the final nighttime telecast of Sanford and Son on September 2, 1977, The Sanford Arms was launched as scheduled on September 16. Many of the old Sanford regulars -- LaWanda Page, Whitman Mayo, Raymond Allen -- were still on board, but without the combined star power of Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson, this "new" series floundered and sank within four weeks of its premiere. Three years later, Redd Foxx tried to make the magic happen again with the "revival" project Sanford, with only Foxx and Nathaniel Taylor (Rollo) repeating their roles from the original series. Alas, audiences were unable to shake their pleasant memories of the old Sanford and Son, and Sanford was quietly terminated after a single season. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The urban sitcom What's Happening!! was introduced in August of 1976, with a four-episode trial run. In the opener "The Runaway," Raj Thomas (Ernest Thomas) hires a babysitter for his kid sister Dee (Danielle Spencer) so he can attend a party with his pals Rerun (Fred Berry) and Dwayne (Haywood Nelson) -- only to risk the wrath of his Mama (Mabel King) when Dee disappears. Next up is "The Birthday Present," wherein Raj is falsely accused of shoplifting; this is followed by "When Daddy Comes Marching Home," marking the first series appearance of Raj's deadbeat dad Bill (Thalmus Rasulala); and "My Three Tons," in which Rerun is hired to join a dance group consisting of fat kids. The series' first season officially begins with the next episode, "Saturday's Hero," and ends 17 episodes later with "Puppy Love." In between, Shirley Hemphill is provided a showcase in her supporting role as waitress Shirley Wilson in the episode "Shirley's Date"; Mel Stewart appears as an embittered veteran of the Negro Baseball League in "The Hospital Story"; veteran character actress Alice Ghostley shows up as the employer of Raj's mother in "The Maid Did It"; and another familiar TV face, Dick Van Patten, plays a TV producer who hires Dee and Shirley for a TV commercial in "The Burger Queen." Footnote: most of the first-season episodes of What's Happening!! were directed by Mark Warren, formerly the chief helmsman of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and the only African-American director ever to win an Emmy award. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The third and final season of What's Happening!! finds former high schoolers Raj (Ernest Thomas) and Rerun (Fred Berry) sharing an apartment, with chubby Rerun hilariously pursuing a variety of odd jobs and get-rich-quick schemes while Raj and his longtime buddy Dwayne both attend college. Also still on hand are Raj's wisecracking little sister Dee (Danielle Spencer) and sassy waitress Shirley Wilson (Shirley Hemphill). Conspicuous by her absence this season is Raj's "Mama," Mabel Thomas. It seems that actress Mabel King had wanted Raj to have both a mother and a father, and had lobbied for the writers to bring her character of Mrs. Thomas back together with her ex-husband Bill. However, the powers-that-be elected to write Bill out of the series early in season two. Thus, in protest, Mabel King also ankled the project at the end of the same season. Newcomers to What's Happening!! during its terminal network season include Leland Smith as Raj's college chum "The Snake," a basketball champ; John Welsh as Raj and Rerun's neighbor, a police detective named Big Earl (whose last name changes from episode to episode, from Babcock to Barnett to Barrett); and Big Earl's son Little Earl (David Hollander), who develops a crush on Dee. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide