Robert's Robots (1973-1974)

Robert Summerby is not your ordinary brilliant eccentric inventor. He has developed a group of humanoid robots in the laboratory of the country house he shares with his aunt and uses two of them - the clunky "KT" and the much more advanced Eric - to help him build and develop other robots as well as do chores around the house. The scrapes that he and his robots get into formed the basis of Bob Block's 1973 children's sitcom Robert's Robots... and they certainly got into a lot of them! 

Bob Block was the brains behind several memorable children's comedies, including Pardon My Genie and Rentaghost, so when his name comes on the screen, you know it's going to be a funny show. What provides the most humor in Robert's Robots is the fact that Robert Summerby wants to keep his humanoid robots a secret, even from his fiancée Angela, and comes up with wild excuses for the way they sometimes behave. Adding to the fun is Mr. Marken and Mr. Gimble. Marken (Leon Lissek) represents a foreign electronics firm who wants to find out what Summerby's latest invention is and so he hires Mr. Gimble (Richard Davies), a private detective, to find out. Each episode has the twosome peering into or above bushes trying to look into Summerby's laboratory. Marken speaks English well enough but has a tendency to pick other words that sound like the ones he wants to use. 

"I can smell from the aroma that this is not immediate coffee. Has it been soiled?"

"He means ground."

John Clive was cast as Robert Summerby and he is marvelous as the English inventor always coming up with new ideas or ways to improve the robots... for example, he recircuited Eric's emotional control once to make him less impatient and more caring towards humans. This backfired of course, but it was a clever idea. Clive tends to talk nervously so luckily his calm and comforting Aunt Millie (Doris Rogers) is always there to give him some stability. She thinks Robert's work is wonderful and uses the robots throughout the house. Katie "KT" (Brian Coburn) always listens to Aunt Millie but sometimes does things wrong. "And what did we do wrong, Katie?" she asks him every time he busts through the door without opening it first. 

Eric (Nigel Pegram) on the other hand, never makes mistakes and often rolls his eyes at Katie and the other robots' incompetency. Eric is so life-like that Robert's fiancée Angela (Jenny Hanley) thinks he is Robert's lab assistant. It is not until the final episode of season 1, that she realizes he is a strange character... and then we never see Angela again. Season 2 brought a few other changes, like the replacement of Mr. Gimble with Mr. Plummer (David Pugh) as the private "eyeball". 

Unfortunately, Robert's Robots lasted just two seasons and, since they were UK shows, each season only have 7 episodes so it was a short-lived program but a memorable and a funny one. 

Film Albums: Drive-In Movie Time - Bobby Vinton Sings Great Motion Picture Themes

It's time to hit the drive-in and sit back and listen to that famous Polish-American pop star Bobby Vinton as he sings "Great Motion Picture Themes". This Epic album not only boasts a great cover design but does indeed cover a lot of themes from great motion pictures. Many of these songs appeared on numerous albums of the early to mid-1960s but Vinton gives them a touch of his unique style....granted, it's a style that not everyone may warm up to (after years of listening to Jerry Vale, I still make a face when he hits those Jolson-like high notes). 

Drive-In Movie Time was released in 1965 and it was Bobby Vinton's twelfth studio album. Vinton's popularity began to wane in 1966, but he continued to have a loyal following of fans and released two albums every year up until 1977. He was quite a versatile performer and, in addition to writing some his own songs, he had a few albums where he was featured playing the saxophone. 

"Lonely Girl" from Harlow (1965) is a highlight of this album. It was penned by Neal Hefti for the Carroll Baker film (not the Carol Lynley film of the same title). 

Click here to listen to the full album on Youtube. 

Track Listing

Chim-Chim Cher-ee

Around the World in 80 Days

Theme from A Summer Place

Goldfinger 

Moon River

Never on Sunday

More from Mondo Cane

The Song from Moulin Rouge

From Russia with Love

Theme from Harlow "Lonely Girl"

The Exodus Song

Dear Heart

Top Picks: Around the World, Theme from A Summer Place, The Song from Moulin Rouge, "Lonely Girl", Dear Heart

From the Archives: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)

Walter Pidgeon and his group of submarine sailors head down into deep waters in the 1961 action-adventure film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, produced by 20th Century Fox. In this scene, Robert Sterling and John Litel share Walter Pidgeon's concern that the Earth will burn up and sync their watches as the Seaview races to launch a rocket to blow up the Van Allen belt before the Earth is destroyed. 

From the Archives is our latest series of posts where we share photos from the Silverbanks Pictures collection. Some of these may have been sold in the past, and others may still be available for purchase at our eBay store: http://stores.ebay.com/Silverbanks-Pictures

Gidget Grows Up (1969)

Gidget Grows Up has been playing a number of times on the Cinevault channel on Roku over the past few months and I always happened to catch little bits of it but never had time to sit and watch it all the way through... until today, that is. 

Like many women, I grew up with the Gidget film series and have seen them all many times over. A lot of people say Sandra Dee is their favorite Gidget, no doubt because she was the first and defined the role, but I always liked Cindy Carol in Gidget Goes to Rome and Sally Field in the Gidget television series. Years ago, I read about a television movie being made with Karen Valentine in the role but never looked into it, so when Gidget Grows Up started playing on television, I had to check it out...and I am so glad that I did! 

Karen Valentine does an excellent job of playing Gidget in her various stages of maturing. She begins much like Sally Field, as an energetic headstrong girl and then blossoms - in the span of one hour and fifteen minutes - into a lovely young woman. As one might expect, Gidget has a breakup with her surf-hero Moondoggie again (played by Paul Peterson) and once more falls for an older man, but not the grizzled Kahuna from the first Gidget movie, instead it is the dapper Australian diplomat Alex McLaughlin (Edward Mulhare). For you see, Gidget has taken on the job of being a guide at the United Nations building in New York City so she is a long way from the beach now. 

Frances Lawrence aka Gidget is learning about love and relationships in a deeper way then what she experienced at the beach, and this makes the film more touching than any of the other Gidget pictures. Yet, it still has a light and playful air about it in keeping with the series. 

The film has a surprisingly good cast of seasoned actors for a made-for-television movie. These include Robert Cummings as Gidget's father, Paul Lynde as a movie-loving landlord, Nina Foch as her teacher at the UN, and Warner Anderson as an ambassador. In addition to the big name actors, you will enjoy spotting a number of bit-time actors who were busy in television in the late 1960s and 1970s. 

James Sheldon, a veteran TV director, did an excellent job of filming Gidget Grows Up and the musical montages are especially nice. The background music is performed by Jean King who sings "Growing Up" beautifully. You can hear it in this sequence. 

Gidget Grows Up is currently available to watch on DVD, via streaming with Tubi (along with all of the other Gidget films), or for free on Youtube. 

The Impossibly Difficult Name That Movie Game

It's a new year and that means a new round of Impossibly Difficult screenshots for you to identify! This one has a couple plotting something together but we won't tell you what that is.... all you have to do is name the movie it comes from and you can win yourself a prize. 

As always, if you are not familiar with the rules to the Impossibly Difficult Name that Movie game or the prize, click here!

GAME OVER. 

Congratulations to Damsbo for correctly identifying this scene from The Golden Blade starring Rock Hudson and Piper Laurie. In this scene, Gene Evans and Kathleen Hughes are plotting against the princess to take over the realm (of Ancient Baghdad, of course).