Gloria Blondell

Calvin and the Colonel is an animated cartoon television series in 1961 about Colonel Montgomery J. Klaxon, a shrewd fox and Calvin T. Burnside, a dumb bear. Their lawyer was Oliver Wendell Clutch, who was a weasel. The colonel lived with his wife Maggie Belle and her sister Sue, who did not trust the colonel at all. Colonel Klaxon was in the real estate business, but always tried get-rich-quick schemes with Calvin's unwitting help. The series was an animated remake of Amos 'n' Andy [or, more or less, "Andy and The Kingfish"] and featured the voices of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll from the radio series. Using animals avoided the touchy racial issues which had led to the downfall of Amos 'n' Andy. Because of low ratings, the show was cancelled after two months, but returned two months later to complete the first season contract. For a year afterward reruns were seen on Saturday mornings, and eventually syndicated through the 1960s. It was also adapted as a comic book by Dell Comics, and as such the first of two issues was the final installment in the company's extremely prolific Four Color anthology series.

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Thriller is an American anthology television series that aired during the 1960–61 and 1961–62 seasons on NBC. The show featured host Boris Karloff introducing a mix of self-contained, macabre weird-horror and morbid, hitchockian crime stories, in some of which he also starred.

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The Detectives is an American crime drama series which ran on ABC during its first two seasons, and on NBC during its third and final season. The series, starring motion picture star Robert Taylor, was produced by Four Star Television. Captain Matt Holbrook (Robert Taylor) is head of the detective division of a large metropolitan police force—a man whose devotion to duty, professional brilliance, and quick judgment are reflected in his 20-year career on the force. His aides, Lt. Johnny Russo (Tige Andrews), Lt. Otto Lindstrom (Russ Thorson), and Sgt. Chris Ballard (Mark Goddard) form a team that is both proficient and warmly human. The stories stress the interrelationships between the men as well as the solutions to crimes and the apprehension of criminals, adding a dimension of human drama to the excitement, action, and suspense inherent in each story of the detectives' difficult, sometimes thankless, and frequently dangerous assignments.

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Wanted: Dead or Alive is an American Western television series starring Steve McQueen as the bounty hunter Josh Randall. It aired on CBS for three seasons from 1958–61. The black-and-white program was a spin-off of a March 1958 episode of Trackdown, a 1957–59 western series starring Robert Culp. Both series were produced by Four Star Television in association with CBS Television. The series launched McQueen into becoming the first television star to cross over into comparable status on the big screen.

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Matinee Theater is an American anthology series that aired on NBC during the Golden Age of Television, from 1955 to 1958. The series, which ran daily in the afternoon, was frequently live. It was produced by Albert McCleery, Darrell Ross, George Cahan and Frank Price with executive producer George Lowther. McCleery had previously produced the live series Cameo Theatre which introduced to television the concept of theater-in-the-round, TV plays staged with minimal sets. Jim Buckley of the Pewter Plough Playhouse recalled: When Al McCleery got back to the States, he originated a most ambitious theatrical TV series for NBC called Matinee Theater: to televise five different stage plays per week live, airing around noon in order to promote color TV to the American housewife as she labored over her ironing. Al was the producer. He hired five directors and five art directors. Richard Bennett, one of our first early presidents of the Pewter Plough Corporation, was one of the directors and I was one of the art directors and, as soon as we were through televising one play, we had lunch and then met to plan next week’s show. That was over 50 years ago, and I’m trying to think; I believe the TV art director is his own set decorator —yes, of course! It had to be, since one of McCleery’s chief claims to favor with the producers was his elimination of the setting per se and simply decorating the scene with a minimum of props. It took a bit of ingenuity.

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An anthology series based on the activities of clergymen from different denominations.

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A college professor, left alone by his wife for the weekend, discovers his new TV set is not only alive, but determined to take control of his entire life.

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The Red Devils, a professional ice hockey team, owned by Jack Monohan, is in the midst of a long losing streak, due to bribes being accepted from gamblers by the star player. When the team is joined by cocky Mike Connors, a boyhood friend of Jack's, they begin to regain their former winning ways.

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Riley worked in an aircraft plant in California, but viewers usually saw him at home, cheerfully disrupting life with his malapropisms and ill timed intervention into minor problems.

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An airline pilot pursues a live-in babysitter at his hotel and gradually realizes she is not as stable as perhaps she should be.

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Cuban Bandleader Ricky Ricardo would be happy if his wife Lucy would just be a housewife. Instead she tries constantly to perform at the Tropicana where he works, and make life comically frantic in the apartment building they share with landlords Fred and Ethel Mertz, who also happen to be their best friends.

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Lux Video Theatre is an American anthology series that was produced from 1950 until 1959. The series presented both comedy and drama in original teleplays, as well as abridged adaptations of films and plays.

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It's the 1890s, and Donald is riding his penny-farthing bicycle to see Daisy when Chip 'n Dale make fun of him. It quickly escalates into a full-fledged war between Donald and the chipmunks.

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Donald and Daisy are walking when he is hit by a flowerpot. He's convinced he's a famous singer, and he croons divinely, but does not recognize Daisy. He in fact does become famous. Daisy is devastated by her inability to get over him and sees a psychiatrist. He tells her she has to choose between the world having Donald, or her getting him back. She picks herself, and drops another flowerpot, which restores him.

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Donald Duck would never believe it, but he suffers from sleepwalking. In this blessed innocent state he makes a nightly call at Daisy's, as if it were the time of their romantic appointment; knowing one should not wake or contradict a sleepwalker, she plays along, but finds it increasingly difficult to follow Donald and prevent him coming to harm when he ignorantly strolls the most dangerous places, such as the lion's cage in the zoo, including impossible ones, such as up a wall and even upside down. When she finally gets Donald safely in bed, he wakes up and thinks, seeing her sneak out, she's the sleepwalker.

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A basic explanation of the purpose and process of menstruation, told largely with diagrams.

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Daisy tells Donald he has to improve his English and manners before she'll see him again. Fortunately, an exact double with an English accent, clear speech, and impeccable manners happens by. Donald talks him into posing as Donald, but grows increasingly jealous as Daisy hugs and kisses the stranger.

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Donald visits Daisy. When he can't open a window, he flies into a rage and practically destroys her house. She won't see him again until he takes care of that temper. He orders a mail-order insult machine, which promises that if Donald can endure 10 minutes of abuse without losing his temper, he'll be cured. It proceeds to deliver physical and verbal abuse, and Donald is cured. He goes back and Daisy tests him on the balky window.

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On the night he promised to take Daisy out, Donald Duck discovers he's broke. Desperate for spending money, he gets it in the last place he knows: his three nephews' piggy bank. After their night out, Daisy thanks the 'rich' big spender, which only makes Donald remember how penniless and remorseful he is. What ensues is Donald's guilt (and imagination) taking him on a nerve-wracking ride in the role of a wanted man.

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Complications in a dressmaking firm when a model has to hide her marriage.

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The stooges are phone repairmen who are mistaken for the psychiatrists in whose office they are working. A rich man hires them to treat his impetuous young wife who is always running of for submarine rides and the like. The boys ruin a dinner party at their clients mansion but their antics so amuse his wife the she is cured and the stooges are paid off handsomely.

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Charley gives his girlfriend a mink coat he was supposed to be guarding for three showgirls; when the ladies want their coat back, Charley goes to great lengths to recover it.

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Andy mistakenly believes his wife and brother-in-law are conspiring to murder him for insurance.

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A former college football hero and his college sweetheart get married. Marital turmoil ensues as her criminal law practice soars while he cannot get his career as an architect off the ground. They separate, and the man begins making extra money by singing in a nightclub. When he is unjustly accused of murder, it is up to his estranged wife to defend him in court.

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Public Defender Gary Franklin, frustrated by being unable to save criminal Dutch Adams from a death sentence by blaming the slums environment as the cause of Dutch's crimes, enlists the aid of Dutch's sister, Marcia Adams, to get the slum dwellers at appeal for public monies to provide recreational places for the slum kids.

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A public relations man falls for his most difficult client's granddaughter.

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A married insurance claims adjuster investigates a gang of accident-fraud racketeers, but they retaliate by targeting his wife.

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To spite his girlfriend, the owner of a successful bus company, an auto racer goes to work for her rival.

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Silent home movies, in both black and white and color, featuring footage of Dick Powell and Joan Blondell in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs. Scenes include backyard shots by a swimming pool, dancing near the pool, dogs and puppies, Joan’s son Norman playing outside, Joan and Norman posing in a car, scenic shots from a roadtrip, a backyard party, and Joan and her sister Gloria dancing. From the collection of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

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