Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Talk was the Christmas episode for the first season of GI... but no effort was made to make a Christmas Episode for the second season when the show went to color, and nothing the third year either. I am assuming that the network might have re-run the first year Christmas show, but has anyone ever read why a color Christmas episode wasn't made?
How sad, that you were not born in my time, nor I, in yours.
Well, I know that they did not re-run "Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Talk" for Christmas in either the second or third season. You can tell because there is no "gap" in new episodes near Christmas in the second season. In the third season, there was a gap on 12/19/67, but that was because "Gilligan's Island" and "Run Buddy, Run" were pre-empted for a special musical presentation of "Jack and the Beanstalk," starring Gene Kelly as the "peddler" (a role Jim Backus had played less than a year earlier in "V is for Vitamins"). "Jack" was played by young Bobby Rhia, Tom Bosley's "son" on the short-lived "Debbie Reynolds Show." I think you can find the special on youtube. As I recall, it was an odd combination of live action and cartoon, with the Giant (voiced by Ted Cassidy) rendered with animation.
Anyway, I doubt they would have re-shown "Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Talk" under any circumstances, simply because it was in Black & White.
It's not too uncommon for a TV series to do just one Christmas episode - often in the first season. The reason may be because a Christmas episode can't really be re-run in, say, May.
I agree that "Gilligan" should have done another Xmas episode in a later season to take advantage of color.
Of course, "Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Talk" was really just an excuse to use footage from the pilot in "flashback." They did have to re-shoot some stuff to put Russell Johnson into shots that had originally featured John Gabriel. I think they also may have shot a new scene with Tina, Bob and Dawn that was presented as a flashback. It's interesting that they re-shot some of the original footage with the Russell Johnson at the same time they shot "Goodbye Island," which I think was the first regular episode to be filmed. They clearly had it in mind to reconstruct the pilot with the new cast from the beginning, and so they took the opportunity of the boat on the beach in Malibu for "Goodbye Island" to re-shoot the unusable footage from "Marooned" in Hawaii.
I get the feeling that Sherwood Schwartz may have really, REALLY wanted to air the "fishing" scene from the pilot, come heck or high water. He seemed pretty proud of how that turned out.
And to complete the information of the people involved with "Jack & The Beanstalk" (discussed above), this was an early Hanna-Barbera special - the first being "Alice in Wonderland" on March 30, 1966 - the day before the Skipper was allergic to Gilligan! ("Allergy Time!" - March 31).
"And that's SHOWBIZ--kid."-Roxie Hart.
PROFILE PIC:Courtney Thorne-Smith.
MAGIC=Sarah Silverman.
It's not too uncommon for a TV series to do just one Christmas episode - often in the first season. The reason may be because a Christmas episode can't really be re-run in, say, May.
Jack and the Beanstalk! You really took me back! For some reason, I have no memory of watching GI in prime time, but I definitely remember all of us sitting down to watch Jack.
It doesn't surprise me that Gene Kelly would be involved in a production like that... he had already danced with Jerry the mouse in Anchor's Aweigh, and in Invitation to the Dance.
I need to see if it is still up on Youtube...
How sad, that you were not born in my time, nor I, in yours.
I remember Jack and the Beanstalk (Ted Cassidy was in the 60s and 70s a REGULAR at HB, though ironically not in their 1973 Addams Family special but was in 1992 version after that first classic hit 1990-91 movie came out) and Alice in Wonderland (also HB-I mentioned this above), and the Jack episode, broadcast just a few weeks after HB's Alice special, "V for Vitamins" (referred to again above).
"And that's SHOWBIZ--kid."-Roxie Hart.
PROFILE PIC:Courtney Thorne-Smith.
MAGIC=Sarah Silverman.
Oh, wait... it's weirder than I thought.
The version of "Jack and the Beanstalk" that pre-empted Gilligan's Island on CBS on 12/19/1966 was not the Gene Kelly version. Instead, it was a rerun of a version performed by "The Prince Street Players." [I remember that name for some reason.] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445991/
The Gene Kelly version aired just two months later on Sunday, February 26, 1967 on NBC. So it was actually up against "It's About Time," "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea," "Ed Sullivan" and "The FBI."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061830/
It's hard not to suspect that CBS was trying to undercut NBC's expensive live action/cartoon version.
If you count the Gilligan's Island version, "V is for Vitamins," that makes three versions of "Jack and the Beanstalk" on network TV in less than a year.
Here's a video link to Gene Kelly's "Jack and the Beanstalk" (1967).
http://www.toon.is/hanna-barbera-jack-and-the-beanstalk-gene-kelly_43270990a.html
Even more weider, since two times in a row, the latest posting was 8 hours ago. I rememebr the Prince Street Players. They did a large number of such specials..then thheir original and rerun shows disappeared..
"And that's SHOWBIZ--kid."-Roxie Hart.
PROFILE PIC:Courtney Thorne-Smith.
MAGIC=Sarah Silverman.
The Gene Kelly version is interesting in that it flips the cartoon mouse, Jerry, dancing with Gene Kelly in the "real" world in "Anchors Aweigh," to Gene Kelly dancing with dozens of mice in an entirely cartoon world. Putting real people into cartoons goes back at least to the 1920's with Walt Disney's "Alice" series.
Give Hanna-Barbera credit for trying some difficult shots in combining the live action and animation. There are pans, tilts, tricks to suggest motion of the live action characters when there is none and scenes where Kelly is wedged between foreground and background cartoons. Not easy stuff (and not always successful) for 1967, but ambitious never-the-less.
Its hard to celebrate Christmas where it doesn't snow
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