Brethren, let us celebrate “Lost in Space”

Still shocked to know Harris was married to a woman and had a kid

I strongly suspect à lavender marriage.

Like Tony Perkins. It was just necessary in those days.

Don't you mean... LET'S DISCUSS

I do mean that, r3. I am filled with shame.

As you should be, R4, as you should be.

LET'S DISCUSS r4's irrevocable shame, let's discuss it

I was 10 years old when the series premiered.

The pilot, the first episode, scared the shit out of me. That damn robot was a berserker.

Hot dark and curly man sex!

The first B/W episodes were very cerebral and dry. I loved it.

But it soon had to compete against Batman and later the Monkees. Those were the two shows we all switched to.

I guess to compete, Lost in Space became more and more cartoonish and hard to watch.

No one, male or female, ever screamed more convincingly than Jonathan Harris as Dr. Smith :-)

Oh the pain, the pain…

Jonathan Harris was a gifted speaker as well as highly trained actor. His stories of his work on LIS is highly entertaining. Enjoy.

Skip to 22:15 for Jonathan's segment.

The hotness that was Mark Goddard:

Dr Smith and the Robot remind me of many a gay couple

Was Dr Smith British?

I was fascinated by their washer/dryer that produced clean, folded neatly packaged clothes. I really thought we would have machines like that in the future.

Amazingly the cast all remained very close. In every interview they speak very warmly about each other.

Mark Goddard gave an interview a couple of years before he died and spoke about how close he was with Harris.

Marta Kristen gave an interview after Goddard died and talked about the crush she had on him. She also said they remained close friends even though they disagreed politically. Knowing Goddard was a liberal, I’m hoping Kristen is just conservative and not a full blown MAGA.

Angela Cartwright and Bill Mumy collaborated on a book and have appeared together for interviews.

They all speak glowingly of June Lockhart.

OP: "queenier" - LOVE IT!

It's clearly Mark Goddard's day -part of two Datalounge threads! He and his then-wife discovered the body of the murdered Karyn Kupcinet. She had dined with them the night before, and they were concerned about her when she failed to answer her phone the following day...

Not sure what episode OP is talking about? I've seen every episode so many times I can practically recite them from memory. The blu-ray release is truly amazing. Since the show was filmed (as opposed to video taped) the detail revealed is beyond belief.

I think the show was ultimately betrayed by its writers, who couldn't bother to get even the most basic science correct. There are many episodes that were quite good -until ruined by a laugh line like, "We traveled through that galaxy last night." And then there are those fiery comets always threatening to melt the Jupiter 2 and cook the people inside...

If only the rest of the series could have lived up to the first five episodes!

Those Irwin Allen shows had great intros.

The original 1965 intro...with music by John Williams:

What’s the other thread R18

Here you go, R20.

Bloop, bloop!

Thanks R22

Debbie the Bloop was lucky. She was remembered and taken along from planet to planet. That poor dog from Episode 13 was completely ignored, and left to die when the first planet exploded at the top of season two...

[quote] Has there ever been a queenier character than Dr Smith?

OP, let me introduce you to 'Uncle Arthur' on BEWITCHED...whom we were introduced to for the very first time*, 60 years ago today.

*Actor Paul Lynde was first on the show in season one, as a driving instructor.

I liked the jet pack. I want one.

I was 13 when LIS came out. I wanted Mark Goddard to make wild, nasty love to me.

I think every gay guy in America wanted Mark Goddard to make wild, nasty love with them. Sadly, he was a bit of a homophobe.

Yet he was close friends with Jonathon Harris for the rest of Harris' life.

I don't know that they were "close" friends - just friendly colleagues. By all accounts, Harris was intensely private. Bill Mumy once said he never even knew Harris had a wife until after Lost In Space had gone off the air. June Lockhart once hinted that she thought Harris was gay -but that's really all we have to go on. He was an actor playing a character, after all. The voice was a deliberate put-on to disguise his natural Bronx accent.

Watching LIS reruns after school, Will Robinson was my first childhood hero. I was fascinated by all the adventures and gadgets and space creatures and having chats with the robot, and also since I knew at the end of the episode all would end well.

While the series was best in the first B&W season, I preferred the way it looked in color for seasons 2 and 3, especially the Easter colors of the 3rd season, and I loved the way that season played with the opening theme, starting with a countdown.

But I never understood why they didn’t have more clothes — they weren’t exactly uniforms they wore ( like the silver lamé ones) and they were presumably presumably able to manufacture them, so why not different colorful clothes for every episode, or at least some variations and alternatives for each character?

OP: on DL, it's more like "Sistren"

Simple answer, R32: Irwin Allen was cheap. He was the king of cheap. He would spend a record fortune on the pilots for his shows, with first-rate cinematography and special effects, but once the show was picked up for a series he pinched pennies tighter than anyone.

The Lost in Space theme performed by the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra.

Another cool Irwin Allen show with a John Williams theme: "The Time Tunnel" (1966). The theme is very similar to the "Lost in Space" theme.

Question: Color TV in the 1960s had a look that was vaguely similar to Technicolor...it made everyone look beautiful. It was soft but clear and the colors were lovely especially skin tones. Color TV seemed to change over time, moving toward the bright, hash, contrasty look we have today. Anyone know why color TV looked so good back then? I remember our 1967 RCA receiver and being astonished by the color.

[Quote] I wanted Mark Goddard to make wild, nasty love to me.

Well, don’t keep us in suspense—did he?

I've seen more than one Jonathan Harris interview in which he insisted that he rewrote the script every episode because the original was garbage and that the writers were grateful that he could improve on their mediocrity. I'm surprised no one from the writing staff (never mind the writers' union) ever contradicted that claim, but I think it was kind of them to allow him his boasting.

Some of my favorite episodes are the one with the giant gay carrot man hissing for "MOIST-chaaaaah! I need MOIST-chaaaaah!", and the ones with the Green Girl ("Ooooooh! Handsome, pretty-handsome Doctah Smeeeeeth!")

I liked the black and white two parter The Keeper with Michael Rennie. The giant cyclops from an easier episode is one of the monsters Dr, Smith accidently releases from The Keeper's zoo. But now he is man-size.

...earlier not easier.

I think 60s color was better because it was on film, not videotape. The film had to be processed and treated very much like a feature film.

Well, R41, there was color on videotape in the early '60s, and even earlier, but you're correct that LOST IN SPACE was filmed, not videotaped.

The 1960 version of Mary Martin's "Peter Pan" was shot on color videotape, with the intention of being rerun annually. The earlier versions from 1955 and 1956 were aired live and survive only on black-and-white kinescopes.

As a child I was thrilled to bits to see Jonathan Harris in an episode of Bewitched.

I never said there was no videotape in the 60s -color or otherwise. But the norm for network television shows was to shoot on film. Videotape was introduced in 1956, and was mostly used for low-budget things that were unlikely to be rerun (children's shows, news broadcasts, etc.) Videotapes were archived for a period, but lots of them were erased for reuse. Network shows that were expected to be rerun were almost all shot on 35 mm film. The Twilight Zone did tape a few episodes as a cost-saving measure, but went back to film when the video quality of the tapes was deemed unsatisfactory.

Going back to R36's original comment, videotape does not age well. The older the tape, the more degraded the image is. Compare the original VHS releases of Lost In Space with the current DVD and Blu-ray. The color is wildly different. That is partly due to the transfer, and partly due to the condition of the original film prints that were used. But there is also a lot of degradation due to the 30-year age of those tapes.

Another point worth discussing is that when color was new to television, there wasn't a lot of consensus about which colors and how much color to use. What filmed and aired well in black and white did not look normal in color. Shows like Bewitched were constantly repainting their sets and changing out furniture to see what looked good in people's living rooms. With Lost in Space, the color choices were vibrant, and the palate included a lot of bright yellow, orange, green, etc. compared to the more muted colors worn for black-and-white filming. By the third season there were pastels and purples galore.

I loved the elevator.

Circa 1998, I was working at the Museum of Television & Radio when they had a big Lost in Space reunion. It was crazy.

We were informed that Dr. Smith and June Lockhart did NOT get along. She called him "the old man" and he called her "the whore of Babylon." We were advised to seat them as far from each other on stage as possible.

The format was to run an episode and then do a Q&A. It was reported that June Lockhart would only do the reunion if we ran the unaired pilot. Which doesn't have Dr. Smith in it.

Meanwhile, Mark Goddard was there, who had a few years before married my mother's best friend from college. I introduced myself "ohhh you're Cathy's son!" There was an open bar, and Mark was feeling no pain.

So everyone is introduced, and they get seated and the episode starts. Someone screwed up. They'd put the real first episode on, not the unaired pilot. No one seemed to care, except June Lockhart. She actually started chanting UN AIRED PILOT! UN AIRED PILOT! And then she stormed out of the theater. About 15 mins in, the episode was stopped. And 5 mins later the unaired pilot started.

Afterwards, the stars return to their seats. Mark Goddard is TRASHED. Beyond drunk. And he had been hitting on anything in a skirt. Mark literally fell out of his chair twice. No one really seemed to care, and no one was surprised. When I told my mom she certainly wasn't.

I always thought it was shitty that the guy who did the voice of the robot was there, but he wasn't allowed to be on stage with the cast! Why not? He was an important element to the show.

One regret- it was years later that I heard about Karyn Kupcinet- young actress, daughter of Chicago columnist Irv Kupcinet. She was found murdered in 1963 in an apartment on Sweetzer, just below Sunset. It was the week Kennedy was assassinated. Mark Goddard was the one who found her body. I wish I could've asked him about that. That stuff fascinates me. I can't remember if I mentioned his stint as Derek Barrington on General Hospital.

Working at the Museum of Television & Radio must have been interesting. Any other good stories, r47?

The show went to crap when Dr. Smith went from being an evil agent for a foreign power to a silly clown.

I liked it until the Dr. Smith character went from being an evil agent of some secret criminal organization to a silly clown.

Test

Is something funny going on with DL? My pasts in the last hour or so are going through but not showing up.

R47, have you told that story before? It was very familiar. If it wasn't you, that it is confirmation that all you said was true. There was no love lost between June and Jonathan. She and Guy Williams were hired to be the stars of a series, and ended up being glorified extras. I've heard that Williams had lost interest in acting, and really didn't care all that much -his paycheck was a star's paycheck. He retired after Lost In Space, but June kept working for many more years.

For R46 - There is a company that installs elevators in homes for people with mobility issues, and they offer one that is the spitting image of the Jupiter 2's "glide tube." If you've got some money (and a two-story house) you can have it! :)

R48 tons. But the granddaddy of them all was having lunch with Beatrice Arthur in 1998 when I was 28. I feel so lucky and privileged to have that memory.

I also met Milton Berle, Esther Rolle, Carol Burnett, Parker and Stone of South Park, Roseanne, Jack Black, Fred Willard, and on and on. Maybe I'll do a whole thread on it.

OH here's a good one for this week. Not much happened but it was an encounter- but it requires a quick set up:

In 1996 ish I was working at Tower Records on Sunset. In came Diane Keaton. I was working the register. I remember she was buying several cassette singles, and on small post it note on each one of the she wrote research.

I don't get star struck too often, but this was Diane Keaton! As I was helping her, I said "wow I can't let this opportunity go by without letting you know how often you've made me laugh and to thank you for all the great work." She was VERY polite, but not what you'd call effusive. THEN, I said something, and the thought of it makes me cringe to this moment. I actually said "La de da, Annie."

She did the thing where you tilt your head back and say "Ha." I was mortified.

Maybe two years later when I was working at the Museum, she scheduled an appointment to come and tour the museum (which has designed by Richard Meyer) for location scouting and it fell on ME to give her the tour. The person who set it up said "Diane wants to do for LA what Woody did for Manhattan in Manhattan."

Not sure she accomplished that, but this was my chance to redeem myself. This time I was COMPLETELY professional and I gave her the tour. Of course, she was absolutely delightful.

So I'm glad I was able to get a second bite at the meeting Diane Keaton apple.

R49 I think June Lockhart agrees with this.

Never mind I figured it out. I blocked myself. LOL

The change in a more campy Lost In Space was to compete with the then current very popular Batman series. They discovered episodes that featured Dr Smith, Will & the Robot has noticeably better ratings than the episodes that did not. It was also to keep the show profitable, as the ratings were middling at best and the producers were concerned about the show continuing.

R53 yes, I've definitely told it here before.

Yes the consensus at that reunion I mentioned among the cast was that the black and white episodes were vastly superior to the color episodes. Billy Mumy mentioned the talking spaghetti strainer.

[quote]Going back to [R36]'s original comment, videotape does not age well. The older the tape, the more degraded the image is. Compare the original VHS releases of Lost In Space with the current DVD and Blu-ray. The color is wildly different. That is partly due to the transfer, and partly due to the condition of the original film prints that were used. But there is also a lot of degradation due to the 30-year age of those tapes.

You seem to be very confused. You were, of course, correct in your previous statement that LOST IN SPACE was shot on film rather than videotape, but here you seem to be contradicting yourself more than once. Are you okay?

[quote]The change in a more campy Lost In Space was to compete with the then current very popular Batman series.

In fact, Batman was in the same time slot over on ABC. It debuted a few months after Lost in Space.

And then NBC launched The Monkees another wildly popular show among kids and young teens.

Those shows were silly and cartoonish but big hits, and Lost in Space needed to keep up.

[quote I don't get star struck too often, but this was Diane Keaton! As I was helping her, I said "wow I can't let this opportunity go by without letting you know how often you've made me laugh and to thank you for all the great work." She was VERY polite, but not what you'd call effusive. THEN, I said something, and the thought of it makes me cringe to this moment. I actually said "La de da, Annie."

[quote] She did the thing where you tilt your head back and say "Ha." I was mortified.

That's a pretty kind reaction from her, all things considered.

Why would you have thought she would appreciate such a trite comment from you?

[quote]I liked it until the Dr. Smith character went from being an evil agent of some secret criminal organization to a silly clown.

As a kid, I was confused by the fact that Jonathan Harris was billed throughout the series as a "special guest star," and yet he not only appeared in every episode, he essentially became the star of the show.

All of the billing for the original cast was contractually agreed upon with the filming of the pilot. Harris could have had fourth billing, but he opted for last -with the "special guest star" credit that he invented. Kurt Kasznar also used that billing in Land of the Giants, but only in the second season for some reason...

R54, great stories! You should definitely start your own thread

Harris is the only star I've ever seen readily admit that his accent is a "complete affectation", albeit one he's done so long he's not capable of going back to his Bronx brogue.

R62 I guess reading comprehension isn't your bag. The whole point of the story is it was a foolish comment, and that I regretted it the moment after I said it.

R63 that's a good trivia question. "What do Jonathan Harris and Heather Locklear have in common?"

wonder if Smith was banging Will?

I love Dr. Smith’s panic when he is pursued by the slutty alien.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall in someone like Harris' home, just to witness the dynamic between him and his wife of 64 years. The same with Vincent Price who had 3 marriages (the shortest of which was 10 years). I'll give those 2 old queens onr thing. Somehow they made marriage to women work.

In his Museum of Television interview, Bill Mumy tells the story of "Celebrity Family Feud" trying to get the Robinsons back together. He passed. Then one day he got a call from Jonathan Harris:

"Dear boy, are you going to do this Family Feud?"

When Bill said no, Harris cackled and said "GOOD! Without us there IS NO SHOW!"

Bill seems like a chill, funny guy with a good perspective on his life, who doesn't take himself too seriously. His interviews are fun and insightful.

The Family Feud team was June, Guy, Angela, Marta, and Bob May the body inside the Robot.

I enjoyed Parker Posey's take on Dr. Smith in the Netflix reboot of "Lost in Space."

R71 "My wife, the actress Coral Browne..."

If they ever re-make it again, I'd appreciate someone gay and bitchy as Dr. Smith, like Cole Escola.

Babbling buffoon!

Nickel-plated ninny!

Cantankerous collection of clanking parts!

[quote]Cantankerous collection of clanking parts!

That one is very reminiscent of an insult that the Wizard of Oz aims at the Tin Man :-)

I'm almost embarrassed to bring this up, but did you catch that remake LIS movie starring Matt LeBlanc? Everyone who took part in that movie I'm more than sure are still embarrassed by it.

Every planet they went to was a balmy 78* and had oxygen...

Some of those 60s sitcoms must have been humiliating to act in. Like Ginger bringing 27 lame' gowns on a 3-hr. boat tour. Most of them had no post-show careers.

Most of them had no post-show careers

That's what television does to actors. They get typecast.

R79 Not too embarrassed. It knocked Titanic out of the top spot when it premiered.

It may not be as well remembered (by a long shot) but it was briefly #1.

Some of those 60s sitcoms must have been humiliating to act in

I used to be embarrassed for Marc Goddard & Guy Madison when they'd be frantically working the controls of the ship trying to get out of some near tragedy. I would think 'they have to be embarrassed at what they're doing to make a living".

Guy Williams.

Oops, you're right. Williams.

I think that by the time of the giant talking vegetables, this show had clearly jumped the shark.

[quote]I was able to get a second bite at the meeting Diane Keaton apple

Pics please.

r36, lower definition. Acts like a filter.

I always wanted Billy Mumy to wish Jonathan Harris into the cornfield.

R79, I know nothing of this film whereof you speak.

R69 (your post timing was very apt), I've long imagined the XXX version of the show: Lust In Space. Don is banging Judy and Penny -and Will. Dr. Smith is banging Will and Penny. John and Don are fooling around on the side. Judy and Penny have a sisterly lesbian thing. Even the robot gets into the act with a vibrating dildo attachment to one of his claws. The only monogamous one in the bunch is Maureen, who turns a blind eye to all that's going on around her. Or so we think. Debbie the Bloop is spending a lot of time in Maureen's cabin...

Irwin Allen would never have approved -but I can imagine Sheila smiling...

R86 Yet, in 1997, TV Guide's "The 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time" issue rated "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" as #76, over Star Trek's "City on the Edge of Forever" (ranked #92).

Classics take all forms!

[Quote] I've long imagined the XXX version of the show: Lust In Space. Don is banging Judy and Penny -and Will. Dr. Smith is banging Will and Penny.

The pedobear energy is strong in this one

Why oh why does no one celebrate (oops discuss) Harris's other TV show set in the future? Space Academy! His co-star was Pamela Ferdin and Peepo!

ORECO, R94! I loved that show when I was a kid, though it was a bit strange watching Jonathan Harris in the patriarch role rather than the sniveling comic relief. I didn't like that Loki kid, though. He had all those cool powers that should have been helpful but he caused more trouble than he was worth.

Thanks R95... now NOT to derail this LIS thread, but here's something about a Space Academy cast member; one of the actors was Ric Carrott (awful awful name, dude should have changed it). Ric was the original Chuck Cunningham when Happy Days was a segment on Love American Style. Now there's a claim to fame! I bet people would line up for his autograph at one of those Chiller Expos. He did other work, but seems to have stopped acting. Don't what he does now.

R91 not X-rated by any stretch but back in the 90’s Bill Mumy put out a Lost in Space comic book. It was adult oriented and what he envisioned for a LIS follow-up.

[quote]Yet, in 1997, TV Guide's "The 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time" issue rated "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" as #76, over Star Trek's "City on the Edge of Forever" (ranked #92).

I never saw that, and I clearly missed nothing. Ranking "City on the Edge of Forever" below any "Lost in Space" episode shows that the list was utterly worthless, as most "The Greatest . . . " lists tend to be.

This classic Conan O’Brien interview with Jonathan Harris is a must watch for any fan of his. What a hoot.

R99 that is great. Thanks!!!

I saw Mark Goddard on Broadway in The Act with Liza Minnelli. I wonder if they fucked?l

Hoot and a half R99

He seemed to be friendly with Cheech Marin. That’s not a friendship I’d expect to see.

Howard Stern's version. Pretty funny.

Wasn't The Act on during the time Mark Goddard was married to Susan Anspach? I can see her wanting to jump his bones, but not the other way around.

He's delightful. Can you imagine attending a cocktail party with him?

Celebrate Guy Williams' outrageous VPL. Was he doing that to draw focus away from Jonathan?

[quote]back in the 90’s Bill Mumy put out a Lost in Space comic book. It was adult oriented and what he envisioned for a LIS follow-up.

Mumy also wrote a script for a TV movie follow-up that would have resolved the loose ends from the series. He didn’t run it by Irwin Allen first and Allen was not having it

Yeah, Irwin Allen was known for being an egotistic asshole.

[quote]Yeah, Irwin Allen was known for being an egotistic asshole.

But he introduced us to the megatalent known as Sheila Allen, who somehow almost exclusively appeared in her husband's films. She was his Rossellini, his Theresa Russell, his muse.

[quote]She was his Rossellini, his Theresa Russell, his muse.

In terms of talent, she was more like his Vera Hruba Ralston.

June Lockhart and Guy Williams laughed so much at the "monsters" in one episode that Irwin Allen had them written out of the last two episodes of the show.....they both lost their paychecks for those episodes.

Actually, they were written out -but WITH pay (according to Bill Mumy). Not much of a punishment...

In defense of Sheila Matthews Allen -she wasn't bad -just a "type." Her first appearance in the first season episode where Will returns to Earth was perfectly good. In her second-season role as Brunhilde I'm sure the director told her to be as over-the-top as possible. Her only bad appearance in Lost In Space was as Aunt Gamma in season three -but that was a terrible script. Streep herself couldn't have saved it.

Prior to her Irwin Allen connection, Sheila Matthews appeared in eleven Broadway musicals, including the 1954 Show Boat and Carousel, the 1957 Brigadoon, and the original productions of Oh Captain! and Destry Rides Again. Never in a big role, but she was considered a very solid singer.

Interesting bit of trivia: In the original novel The Poseidon Adventure, Linda Rogo's sole acting credit was a failed Broadway musical called Hello, Sailor -which was a thinly-veiled version of Oh Captain! Fun coincidence that she should end up in the film of Poseidon...

Where did you consider the robot’s “face” to be?

A) the glass dish on top

B) the controls between the arms

I see people are ashamed to out themselves on robot face placement. Ok I’ll go first. I’m a control panel face advocate.

I have to admit, R113, that over the span of more than fifty years since I've been aware of this show, I have never contemplated what should be considered the Robot's face.

I suppose I've always assumed the bubble on top was sort of a hat, the lower dome a hairline, and the blinking panel to be his "face." The area on his torso where the buttons and dials are placed would be his chest and tummy.

Since the panel would blink on and off when the robot spoke, I guess I always thought of it as the equivalent of his mouth.

I would think this is a question the actors had too so they would know where to give eye line to. But I never noticed where they were looking.

R112 thanks for the salary info - much appreciated.

R117 -I think you'll find they (the adults) generally looked at the lower dome -as that's were Bob May's eyes were.

I always thought it was c) the metallic ring just above the gold panel.