Sometimes approaching the World Wide Web is like unleashing the Library of Alexandria on yourself (before it went up in flames, anyway). For example, the other day I stumbled upon something that I had been wanted to re-see since the ’60s: the short lived TV show Coronet Blue. Since it was so obscure to begin with, I never thought I’d ever have a chance to see and reassess the program, but now, here it is.

Beginning and ending its life as a summer replacement on CBS in 1967, Coronet Blue was one of the first of the shows to adopt a running mystery that teased the viewer from week to week, an ur-Lost or X-Files. Coronet Blue concerned itself with an amnesiac who takes the name Michael Alden after he is found by the riverside. What he doesn’t remember but which the viewer sees in a teaser opening to the debut episode that “precedes” Alden’s memory loss is that he appears to be either a gangster or an undercover cop. Alden is shown making his way through a Manhattan ferry just before it sets off. He spies a room with the words “Danger” written across it, and that seems to be a rendez-vous of some kind for him, but before he has a chance to enter it, a man addressing him as Chico tells him that Margaret wants to see him. He is led to the roof of the ferry, where he is confronted by Margaret as a some kind of spy, though the language is intentionally vague. He is attacked, then he is thrown overboard and the series begins. Though aired in ‘67, the show was shot in 1965, and though it was popular as a summer replacement, the lead actor, Frank Converse, had by then signed up for another show, N.Y.P.D.

The rest of the series follows Alden Fugitive - Run For your Life style as he tries to uncover his past and figure out why someone somewhere is still trying to kill him. Seeing the first few episodes after so many years can only lead to disappointment, if only in so far as the program was less interested in Alden’s mystery than in the sort of mixed, incoherent social commentary and “relevance” that shows went in for in those days. For example, the third episode, called “The Rebels,” and probably meant to be the second one aired, has Alden on a UC-Berkeley like campus willing to be subject to the experiments of a scientist (Richard Kiley). The “mystery” is deflected as Alden gets involved with a mixed bag of campus radicals, who include Jon Voight, David Carradine, and Candice Bergen. While keeping the exact nature of the students’ dissatisfaction vague, the episode manages to flatter all possible argument adherents. Though Converse was the agreeable star of the show, it’s funny to watch his fellow actors, all stage or screen competitors, flail for attention behind their waxy make-up (we must have still had a black and white TV when this show was on, as I was startled to see that it was in color). Both Bergen and Converse look like carefully sculpted Al Capp characters.

The show appears to have been youth skewed, from its subject matter and its theme song, sung by one Lenny Welch (”Coronet Blue, Coronet Blue / Deep down inside my brain I keep hearing that wild refrain / Coronet Blue, no other clue /I know that this must be the thing that can set me free /For I was born just yesterday along a misty river / Always a-moving like the river /If I lay here I will die / And as so I go my lonely way / Every day can be a danger / Even to myself a stranger / Wondering who am I.” )

One reason for film students to view the show, at least in part, is because it was created by Larry Cohen, who was very involved in TV at the time, but who later emerged as one of the key horror films specialists of the 1970s. The program was also produced by the late Kenneth Utt, who was much involved in the career of Jonathan Demme and produced The Silence of the Lambs among numerous other key films starting in the ’70s and though into the 1990s.

Coronet Blue is easy to find on the Internet if you know where to look, or is in pieces at YouTube, and is aired, or was, on TVLand.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Reel Politique - Film columnist DK Holm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.