Sometimes
when I try to come up with topics for the Tuesday
Timeline
portion of the blog, I sometimes stumble upon a topic that I call a happy
accident. In today's case, this subject
is the only idea that I could come up with that was holiday related - but the
fun thing is that when I was doing research on it and watched the clips on
YouTube, I found it to be enjoyable, fun...and I couldn't wait to talk about
it!
It's
also appropriate for Day #20 of the POP CULTURE ADDICT'S ADVENT CALENDAR!
Of
course, as always, we'll be taking a look at the events that didn't make the
cut - starting with...
69 - Vespasian enters Rome to claim the title of
Emperor
1606 - The Virginia Company loads three ships with
settlers, setting sail to establish the first permanent English settlement in
the Americas - Jamestown, Virginia
1803 - The Louisiana Purchase is completed
1860 - South Carolina is the first state to make an
attempt to secede from the United States of America
1916 - The Battle of Verdun ends, resulting in victory
for France, during the First World War
1917 - Actress Audrey Totter (d. 2013) is born in
Topeka, Kansas
1939 - Actress Kathryn Joosten (d. 2012) is born in
Chicago, Illinois
1942 - Calcutta, India is bombed by Japanese air forces
during World War II
1946 - "It's a Wonderful Life" premieres in
New York City
1951 - Nuclear power becomes a reality as a plant in
Idaho becomes the first to generate electricity
1957 - The first production model of the Boeing 707
makes its first flight
1971 - Doctors Without Borders is established by Bernard
Kouchner and a group of French journalists
1973 - Singer Bobby Darin dies at the age of 37
1984 - The Summit Tunnel fire takes place near the
community of Todmorden, England
1985 - Pope John Paul II announces the institution of
World Youth Day
1989 - The United States Invasion of Panama deposes
Manuel Noriega
1995 - 159 people are killed when American Airlines
Flight 965 crashes into the side of a mountain in Colombia
1996 - Astronomer, cosmologist, and astrophysicist Carl
Sagan dies at the age of 62
1999 - Canadian country singer Hank Snow passes away at
the age of 85
2007 - Queen Elizabeth II surpasses Queen Victoria as
being the oldest monarch to rule over the United Kingdom
2009 - Actress Brittany Murphy dies, aged just 32
And
for celebrity birthdays, join me in wishing the following famous faces happy
birthday! Birthday greetings for Beverly Pepper, John Hillerman, Kim Weston, Bobby Colomby, Peter Criss, Uri Geller, Dick Wolf, Alan Parsons, Cecil Cooper, Oscar Gamble, Peter May, Jenny Agutter, Michael Badalucco, Blanche Baker, Anita Ward, Billy Bragg, Mike Watt, Robert Cavanah, Rich Gannon, Chris Robinson, Jonah Hill, and Joanna "JoJo" Levesque.
All
right. Now comes the fun part. Can you guess what date I'm going to go back
in time to this week? Go on. Take a guess! Okay, okay, I'll tell you.
Believe
it or not, we're going to go back in time 46 years to the date of December 20, 1970.
Now,
I do not remember this date at all. It
was ten and a half years before I was born.
But it was on this date that a very special edition of a talk show that
aired every Sunday night until 1971 was broadcast.
I
wish I could have been alive to have seen the Ed Sullivan Show when it was in
its prime. Sadly, Sullivan died seven
years before I was born, so I've never known a world without Ed Sullivan in
it. It's a real shame too, as his talk
show was one of the premiere spots to catch the hottest bands on the music
scene. I mean, we're talking about the
talk show in which the Beatles made their American debut! Now that's a very big deal! I think that maybe only the Ellen DeGeneres
Show could even slightly compare to the Ed Sullivan Show when it comes to
introducing new talent.
Of
course, it wasn't just musical groups that the Ed Sullivan Show hosted. In fact, Jim Henson and his Muppets made at
least twenty-five appearances on the show between 1967 and 1971! Add the fact that Sesame Street had debuted
in 1969, and you might say that Jim Henson was extremely busy as the 1970s
arrived.
On
December 20, 1970, the Ed Sullivan Show aired a very special holiday special
which featured Ed as the narrator of the story that he was reading to a group
of children - who were the children of members of the crew that worked on the
very show. And given that this would be
the very last holiday special that the Ed Sullivan Show would air before going
off the air, it had to be something very special.
After
watching it online just recently, I have to say that not only did Sullivan and
the Muppets succeed in creating a heartwarming special, but it also featured
the first appearance of a well-known Muppet (though he went by a completely
different name in this television special).
So,
sit back and hear the story of "The Great Santa
Claus Switch"!
Now,
your favourite Muppet performers are a part of this special, and of course, Jim
Henson plays the role of unlikely protagonist Fred, the Christmas elf (as well
as a sidekick of the main antagonist), but other Muppet performers in this Christmas
story include Richard Hunt, Frank Oz, Fran Brill, Jerry Nelson, John Lovelady,
Danny Seagren, Cary Antebi, Greg Antonacchi, Byron Whiting, Marilyn Sokol, and
John Byrum. As far as human characters,
there was only two - Santa Claus and the nasty Cosmo Scam. Both were played by Art Carney.
The
story begins at the North Pole, where Santa's six elves - Zippity, Skippity,
Hoppity, Bing, Bong, and Fred are busy finishing up the toy order in time for
Christmas Eve. Santa Claus is excited
to be spreading the Christmas magic around for another year, but ironically
enough, his magic trick of trying to make a coin disappear fails each and every
time. Fred is doing his best to try and
make Santa's workload a lot lighter, but nobody seems to take him seriously at
all, and he sometimes struggles to be heard.
Believe me. Sometimes I know
exactly how Fred feels.
Unbeknownst
to the elves and Santa in a nearby cave is the hideaway of the nasty Cosmo
Scam. He and his menagerie of creatures
which include two gigantic monsters in green and blue named Thig and Thog, a
spider like creature named Lothar, and this curious looking creature...
...which
kind of looks a lot like GONZO, don't you think? Truth be told, this is really the first appearance of Gonzo in
the Muppet franchise, but back then he was given a different name - Snarl. And Danny Seagren provided his voice back
then. By the time he was renamed Gonzo,
Dave Goelz had assumed the role full-time.
Back
to the story, it appears as though Cosmo is getting really annoyed with
Christmas in general and he decides that he wants to sabotage it. And how he plans on doing exactly that is by
kidnapping Santa Claus and switching places with him until Christmas is over. It seems like an ingenious plan.
And
considering that Cosmo makes the switch with Santa while Fred is singing a song
about wanting to be more helpful, I'd say his job was made surprisingly easy!
But
as Cosmo quickly learns, sometimes it's not easy to fool everybody. One by one, beginning with Fred, the elves
suspect that Santa isn't exactly acting like himself. I mean, one of them catches Santa smoking a cigar - which to me
is a death wish as his beard could ignite like a roman candle - but that would
be the child in me saying this. But as
the elves discover that Santa isn't really Santa, Cosmo imprisons the elves one
by one - replacing them with his own minions.
Meanwhile,
Santa tries to break through the hard shells of Thig and Thog by teaching them
the true meaning of Christmas, and showing them that giving is much better than
taking. That was where the real magic
of the holiday lies. But can Santa get
through to them in hopes that they release him on time for his trip around the
world? And will an unlikely hero step
up to the challenge of stopping Cosmo from ruining Christmas?
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