...It was on ABC on Friday night from 9-9:30 from January 1975-June 1975....It was and still remains one of m
y very favorite sit-coms. It was very controversial at the time and it originally was an award winning Broadway play...Norman Lear adapted it for TV and even though it was terrific, it was buried on a Friday night at 9pm and it just didn't make it..I absolutely fucking loved it...It broke my heart when they took it off..It took p
lace in the lobby of a seedy hotel. The E had burnt out of the Hotel...giving you an idea right off that it wasn't exactly the Ritz...So it was the Hot l Baltimore...It stared James Cromwell(of Babe fame and now Jack Baurer's bad Daddy on 24)...along with Conchata Farrell, who is giving Charlie Sheen hell on 2 1/2 Men as the housekeeper..It brought sexual innuendo and racy dialogue to television.Among the cast were the desk clerk Bill Lewis and his love April Green.Bill was played by James Cromwell and April Green was played by Conchata Ferrell.There is nothing I love better than t
o here Conchata Ferrell laugh...Clifford Ainsley(Richard Masur)was the harried manager, Charles Bingham(Al Freeman, Jr.) was the philosopher, Suzy Marta Rocket(Jeannie Linero) was the Colombian prostitute, Millie(Gloria Le Roy)the unemployed waitress, Jackie(Robin Wilson) was the tomboy,Mr. Morse(Stan 
Gottlieb) the septugenarian who was always on the verge of dying....George and Gordan(Lee Bergere and Henry Calvert) played the homosexual couple, and last but not least Mrs. Bellotti played by Charlotte Rae, who had a 26-year old prankster son Moose who never appeared on screen.Moose delighted in such escapades as buttering the hallway, staging the Poseidon Adventure in the bathtub and collecting unlikely pets, like beavers..Once when the tenants protested a rent increase, Moose glued himself to the ceiling of his room in sympathy..Richard Masur's character Clifford was always being harassed by his mother, and I swear one time I heard him say "mother can get fucked.'....maybe not..maybe he said another word that was soooo similar that you couldn't tell the difference..I have always wanted to write Norman Lear and ask him what he said.
The goings on with Mrs. Bellotti and Moose was hysterical..I remember her screaming into a walkie-talkie from the lobby to his bedroom:'Blue leader to red dog, over.
. Blue leader to red dog.'...One bit that really sticks in my mind is when someone offhandedly asked what the capital of Alaska was...and Suzy Marta Rocket the Columbian prostitute says 'Whoneau!...Whoneau!...(the capital of Alaska is Juneau)and someone said :'it's Anchorage, isn't it!' and Suzy's screaming 'Whoneau, Whoneau,'..someone else says 'No, I think it's Fairbanks.'...Suzy's still yelling 'Whoneau'...finally April looks at her and says"Who cares."....It still makes me laugh..I wish they would put it out on DVD...If you never got to see it, you really missed a great TV show...I'm not for sure, but think it was the first TV that featured gays...
This was my little trip down TV's past...
28 comments:
Jaysus. Not for nothing, but I was only four years old when that show was on. That should be against the law!
I wish there was a bootleg DVD of the few shows that were actually aired! Dammit!
your sense of color and font size is rong
Hot L Baltimore, great memories. Our community theatre did this play in the late 70's and I was in the cast. One night six people from a local church came in with reserved front row seats. As soon as some cuss word or other was uttered, they got up as a group and walked out.
Funniest thing I've ever seen happen in a theatre.
Jan from Poodles and dogs
PS You're getting kind of snobby with your "no anonymous comments" aren't you?
Jim cracks me up.
There was a tomb stone with the next to the last letter missing
and it always reminded me of that show. But like you said, it was on at a bad time, hardly ever watched it.
There's no such thing as a sense of font size and wrong is spelled incorrectly.
dis is all greek to an indian in india
by the way
i noticed u use fucking as an adjective
but fucking is about doing
its a verb
buddha;jeeze, I have underwear older than you....you would love it..it was really a great tv show..
jim: ok...
jan: well, Jim up there has a tendency to leave weird and insulting messages on anonymous so was hoping to send him a message, but guess not..
what part did you play..it was on broadway and won all kinds of awards before it hit tv..wonder why they don't bring it back..maybe I should write norman lear and tell him to update it..
tex: that would suck to have them misspell your name on your tombstone..haha
allan: thanks allan, Jim is sort of scitzo...
Jim: if you will keep reading me you will see that I use fuck as a verb, adverb, adjective, noun, pronoun and any other form I can think of ...what would fuckity fuck fuck fuck be????
I played one of the ho's, of course.
Jan
It might have been one of the first shows that featured openly gay men, but there were loads of closet-cases and "confirmed bachelors" over the years. (Charles Nelson Reilly, Paul Lynde, etc...)
I have to agree with Josh. . . Then there was also Liberace. . .
I loved Hot L Baltimore!!! Conchata was (and continues to be) a HOOT!! I would love to have her as a friend. She and Charlie Sheen work so well together in Two and a Half Men(and likely the only woman in Hollywood he hasn't tried to nail LOL!!!).
It wasn't too long after Hot L that Tom Hanks and Peter Scalari introduced us to crossdressing. . . That was an interesting period in Prime Time TV. . .
Today we have "Reality" shows. . . Fuck me `til Howie Mandel looks good and Simon gets manners. . .
I'll stick with L&A and SVU. . .
Love ya!!!
Jan: gasp* you a ho..??? nah...
Josh; yea, there were a lot of 'confirmed bachelors'...ha...but Hot l Baltimore was the first tv show to actually have a show with gays in the cast...wonder if it would play today?...Lets recast it..who would play who????
Lauren:yup, I think the only reason I watch 2 1/2 men is for Conchata ...she cracks me up..that laugh just slays me..remember her in Mystic Pizza???
'Fuckme till I am a reality show'..
I'm trying, but I just can't recall it. That seems like a pretty short run, So I probably missed it.
That was on during the time in my life, about 5 years when I watched no TV except Saturday Night Live in it's first few years.
I do remember that name though so maybe I saw it somewhere.
Maybe they will put it on TVLAND someday.
Has the walking ladie run you into the ground yet?
RE
RE
: your zombieland comment-
PERV.
he he he
I remember the title but I never actually watched it. Do you remember Mary Hartman Mary Hartman? I don't think they've ever even rerun that show! My parents used to watch it. I didn't really get it because I was only 10 or 11 at the time, but I was fascinated by it. I'd be interested to see what I thought of it now.
Granny, there is no getting rid of Jim in any of his forms. He is like a particularly tough form of amoebic dysentery.
Ah, the memories you bring back! I'm sitting here laughing my ass off this morning.
And for some reason, in a weird sort of way, this vaguely reminds me of Evening Shade. Remember that one?
Hilarious stuff.
Thinking about it a little longer, I realize that I was in error with the parasite idea regarding Jim. He is more like a virus. They are unwelcome and they mutate so they can continue to invade and irritate.
Fuck Jim. He's just wanting hits to his blogs of many.
I was about 5 when that show was on. I don't remember it.
i tink i just made the grade in dis Netherworld
i never ever seen a chick with her feathers so ruffled
my favourite serial was
I love LUCY
Oh my Goddess, I haven't thought of that show for years. I LOVED it. Maybe we'll get lucky one of these days and TV Land will pick it up and run it :D
I remember that show! I had totally forgot it until you tickled my memory with this post.
Jim has to harass folks because he has no friends, kinda like the school yard bully. It takes far less IQ points to be a troll than to actually write an interesting post yourself
cyber: yeah, I think it only ran less than 6 months..but it was a goodun..
nitwit: i hope tvland will bring it back...Margaret and I still go walking every day...except sunday I begged off..sunday is my day to lounge around in my drawers, night shirt, socks, reading the paper, doing cross word puzzles and screaming at the tv set..wait, that's what I do every day...but Sunday is a no walkie day...plus Sat the wind was blowing so hard I felt like i did 2 days worth of walking...
zero:MOI? PERVE? nah....well, maybe..
cei: you can go to top of my blog and where it says this blog..type in mary hartman mary hartman and it will pull up the post i did on the show..another one of my favorite shows...and yeah, Jim's a dingle berry on my ass...
Old Broad: oh, Evening Shade..I loved that show...I liked Nub, or Dub or who ever that weird guy with the red wagon was...and Billy Bob Thortnon..was on it a time or two..
Cheesy: Jim will be introduced to the delete button..
babs: sigh* what a sheltered short life you have led...I will have to educate you to the joys of tv from the 70's..ha
Jim: you're wrong..you are being egnored..as of now...bye bye sugar..
Jean:wouldn't that be great if they brought it back?...I would like to see them redo it as a sitcom today...new cast, new stories..but Concheta Ferrell as april...
Juney:like nothing better than tickling your memory..ha
I did a search on the show and found out where I heard the title. It was based on a book and Broadway Play. They did 13 episodes and it was paired with one I did watch in reruns you might remember, Barney Miller. It was expected to be the big hit but look what happened.
Keeping Jims comments on the blog makes the rest of us seem more intelligent. I was hoping to find the show on one of the online TV sites but so far no luck. Sony owns the rights to the show now and their tight fisted about letting their shows be used for free. :)
et tu yellow dog?
nitwit: I loved barney miller...I liked the sad faced japanese guy...who played in the movie flower drum song..but I liked Hot L Baltimore better...yeah, it won awards on broadway as a play...
nitwit: I loved barney miller...I liked the sad faced japanese guy...who played in the movie flower drum song..but I liked Hot L Baltimore better...yeah, it won awards on broadway as a play...
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