The Dick Van Dyke Show In Color.

CBS aired 2 episodes back to back of colorized episodes of the Dick Van Dyke Show.
I always loved the Van Dyke Show.
And I love colorization.
As long as it's a reasonably good paint job.
This certainly was, and I wish there was more of it.
If it only gets what is now generations of people who would never look at anything in black-and-white to look at this wonderful show and see what they are missing.
But it doesn't enhance my enjoyment of it one bit.
With the Van Dyke Show, they had me at "Capri Pants".
And that was over fifty years ago.
I think I would have enjoyed it just as much if I had stumbled it on "Nick at Nite" in black and white.
I sort of lost interest in the middle of it, except of course for the capri-pants, which were black, anyway.
But I've had some wonderful experiences with colorization when it first came out.
"Casablanca" didn't lose a thing.
Neither did "The Maltese Falcon".
Neither did "It's A Wonderful Life".
"Yankee Doodle Dandy" is a far better movie in color.
It should have been made that way to begin with.
Somebody was too cheap.
I did see a horrible version of "A Night At The Opera", but that was only because it had a rotten paint job.  It looked like it was done with pastels.
The "purists" had no trouble pocketing the residuals when their color movies showed up on TV before there was color TV in wide use, so most people's exposure to them was in black and white.
So where was the outcry then?
Of course, there are things that shouldn't be touched:
"Citizen Kane",  "Raging Bull",  any of Woody Allen's movies that were made in black and white,
but I would love to see a colorized version of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre".
You might disagree, but that's me.
The technology seems to have improved today.
I wish there was more of an audience for it.
Meanwhile, the Decades channel ran a weekend binge of Sergeant Bilko, in glorious black-and-white.
Much more satisfying.
A much higher batting average of great episodes, and a much higher slugging average.
It remains the best sitcom ever.
They almost never missed.

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My books, "Show Runner" and it's sequel, "Show Runner Two", can be found at the Amazon Kindle Store.
Along with the newer ones, "The Man Is Dead", and "Report Cards".
They are all compilations of blog entries that have since been removed from the blog.
So this is the only way you can find them.
You can search by typing in my name, Cindy Williams, Laverne and Shirley, The Odd Couple, or Happy Days.
Check them out.
You don't need a Kindle machine to download them.
Just get the free app from Kindle, and they can be downloaded to an IPhone, IPad, or Blackberry.
The paperbacks, "Mark Rothman's Essays" and my new novel, "I'm Not Garbo" are not e-books.
But they are available for people without Kindle.
I have many readings and signings lined up for those, and the thing about Kindle is you can't sign one.
If you'd like one of the paperbacks, personally autographed, contact me at macchus999@comcast.net

And now, we've got my reading of my "Laverne and Shirley Movie" screenplay on YouTube.

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