Thanks for the post HessianWarrior. Yes I really liked Columbo and the Rockford Files as well. Another good show from that era was " Banacheck " ( ??? on the spelling ) with George Peppard.

Yeah Banacheck was great. I hated that it wasn't on that many times.

Good point, if I remember correctly they had a rotating schedule of several different shows once a week on what they called Mystery Theater. For a while I think that they had four different shows to rotate thru so each one only came on once per month.

Early on in this thread I had mentioned Westerns and I now remember a show of that type which would also fit into this post and that was " The Wild Wild West ". They had some interesting stories in that series and I think that it starred William Conrad.    

Actually, The Wild Wild West starred Robert Conrad, although William Conrad was the voice of Matt Dillon on the old Gunsmoke radio show, IIRC.

 "Rat Patrol", based on the North Africa campaign during WWII. "Rawhide" has been mentioned, but one of my all time favorites. Watched it with my grandfather around age 5. Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates, and who can forget "Mushmouth", the trail cook. Also "Highway Patrol" and "Sky King". Don't think anyone has mentioned the old "Roy Rogers" show. Happy Trails!

Maverick with James Garner is one of my favorites for the last 40 some years. The ones with Garner and Kelly were the best.

It is said you are an intellectual if you can listen to the William Tell Overture & not think of The Lone Ranger.  I can't... 

Come with us now to the days of yesteryear...

Thanks for all of the recent posts. Javan64, as often is the case my memory for names was a bit off, Robert Conrad was the guy in " The Wild Wild West ", Thanks for the info. Also as you said it is difficult to listen to the William Tell Overture

without thinking of the Lone Ranger but I do enjoy hearing the whole Overture, however when they get to " The Gallop " it is --- Hi Ho Silver Away !!!  lol.

NAVYAFdad, I'm glad that you mentioned The Rat Patrol as I was a fan of that show as well. Another War based show that was quite good was Combat, starring Vic Morrow ( I hope I'm right on the name ).Also another show of that era that I liked

was Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea with Richard Basehart and David Hedison. I had a model of the sub from that show, the Seaview which had viewing ports at the bow end.      

HessianWarrior I was also a fan of The Maverick, James Garner did a great job with that show. Another show that I remember from back in that time is High Chapperal, but for some reason it didn't last that long.  

Ah yes, William Conrad!  One of my favorites.  He was:

--The voice of Matt Dillon in the radio version of Gunsmoke

--Cannon

--an actor in The Killers (the film debut for Burt Lancaster)...where he bore a more than slight resemblance to Orson Welles in his youth

--the director of one of my favorite movies, Brainstorm (starring Jeffrey Hunter, Anne Francis and Dana Andrews)

--the narrator of two classic shows:  The Fugitive and Rocky & Bullwinkle (swear to God!)

--the narrator of the following classic commercial (featuring Iron Eyes Cody):

Eek!  I think you need to do a little more looking... 

I Loathe Lucy!

i dont know if this relevant helpful or nice, but here goes (that's alot of pressure btw)

on the subject of comedies- on local cable they have been playing laurel and hardy movies and they are great!  and hardy was a world class tournament chess player ( i just made that up in the interest of being relevant )

also Iron Eyes Cody - wow that brings back memories and ironically his parents were sicilian not native american ( i didnt make that up - but thats my helpful bit of irrelevant info)

but speaking as a person who wasted way too much time on tv- this is a great thread ( thats the nice part )

Oh yeah, that pretty much covers all the comedies (lol).

AndyClifton, I really like your avatar!  HR Puffinstuff is one of my all-time favorite shows.  My favorite character on there was (of course) WitchyPoo! 

Thanks for the many recent posts. Johnnyrocco, no pressure here as we have a nice friendly thread going. Thanks for mentioning Laurel & Hardy, I've loved their films since I was a little kid.

Thanks for the info on William Conrad, AndyClifton. The " Cannon " series was a show that I loved and being a car-guy from way back I was of course very envious of the big Lincoln that he drove.

Javan64, with all of the funny shows going back thru a period of over 60 years there ought to be a couple of other good Comedies in there somewhere. Of course some of the story lines were wacky  lol. I mean " Mr. Ed " the talking horse, or the friendly Witch in " Bewitched " , the weird people next door in " The Munsters " & " The Addams Family ". They were way out there but they were funny ( or more recently the Aliens in " Third Rock From The Sun " ).     

I saw a photo on another thread recently which reminded me of  another favorite, Kung Fu.  I always thought that Master Po was really cool...

Susan Olsen (aka Cindy Brady) opined that he resembled a giant penis in boots.  Personally I've always admired the big dark circles under his eyes (no doubt they have a great deal to do with what inspired him). 

Btw here Witchie is (with the guy from Lidsville):

Though I've always tended to prefer him in this incarnation:

Ahhh Charles Nelson Reilly, everyone's favourite game show guest. He also was a frequent guest on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and  appeared in Motion Pictures as well.  

I would like to add "The Odd Couple" with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall to the list of great old TV comedies. Also "Love American Style" was pretty good in its day as well.