I picked up a few episodes of Man With A Camera from The Internet Archive. It's a series that ran from Oct 1958 to Feb 1960. Two short seasons, 29 shows, 14 of which are up on the IA. Charles Bronson stars in this half hour action show. He's a freelance photographer who seems to get into a different hair raising scrape each week, only escaping death with the help of the writers. If I was a criminal I would have shot him sooner but he's the hero and it's tv. Plenty of other people are getting killed, usually one or two per episode. Mostly Bronson hangs out in New York City, even though the show was really filmed with LA standing in for the Big Apple.
Occasionally he leaves the city, in one episode he went all the way to Lisbon to help an old pal, in another just an hour into the New York countryside. That last one is the show where Bronson gets kidnapped by a fame seeking thrill killer and is forced to take pictures of the guy on his robberies. Bronson leaves clues in his photos to help the police catcht the guy. That was a pretty murderous episode and I've never been a fan of the psycho killer genre. Who needs to be reminded about that? There's the occasional lady but they seem to be either the damsel in distress kind or the criminal type. It's the 50's what would you expect. There's the occasional interesting guest star. I saw Grant Williams, Angie Dickenson and Frank Faylen in the first half a dozen episodes I've watched so far. There are only two regulars and they don't appear in every episode. Bronson's father, played by Ludwig Stossel, has a photography store. Bronson drops by, sometimes to visit, and sometimes to get advice. It's a 26 minute show and there isn't much time for visiting. Sometimes Bronson has encounters with the police in the form of James Flavin playing Lieutenant Donovan. It's a tough business being a freelance photographer, especially when you take pictures where you aren't supposed to. I don't think it's that great of a show but it's kind of fun to watch. I've certainly wasted my time watching worse crap than this.
I also noticed this Red Skelton Show episode with Peter Lorre on it. Some CBS exec are meeting. They've just signed Peter Lorre to do a new tv show. Peter wants to do a comedy and he wants Red Skelton to help him with the show. Red drops in to Peter's house and Peter has a gorilla for a maid. It's whacky. For some reason, perhaps comedic, I don't know, they decide to do a Honeymooners show with Peter as Ralph, a Vampira look alike as Alice, Red as Norton and some chubby lady as Trixie. Ralph drives a hearse instead of a bus. It's all the Honeymooners jokes and catch phrases. It's pretty silly and worth a gander for the Peter Lorre fan.
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