We are going to look at Pulp Scenarios that showed up in the wacky sitcoms of the 1960s. I’m not going to suggest that Sherwood Schwartz or the makers of The Flintstones sat in their offices reading old copies of Black Mask or Weird Tales. I’m sure they didn’t. (Though they may have when they were younger.) They stole everything from the movies. The movies got it all from the Pulps.
Rear Window
A perfect example is Cornell Woolrich. He wrote for all the detective magazines from Detective Fiction Weekly to Manhunt. He wrote “It Had To Be Murder” (Dime Detective, February 1942). The story was made into the famous Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window in 1954. It was that film the TV producers parodied, as well as AH’s television show.
“Alvin Bricrock Presents” (The Flintstones, October 6, 1961) has Fred Flintstone in the Jimmy Stewart role. (Barney is along for the ride.) To make it more fun, instead of a Raymond Burr stand-in, they had Alfie play the villain.
“Greer Window” (Get Smart, March 15, 1969) has Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) watching with binoculars.
Black Curtain
Woolrich moved onto novels in the 1940s, with classics like The Bride Wore Black (1940) and Black Curtain (1941). (Black Alibi was made into The Panther Woman (1943) and its escaped leopard showed up in a Warner Bros. cartoon “Tree For Two”(1952) but let’s stick sitcoms.) Black Curtain is a novel about a man who gets hit on the head and loses his memory. His previous life, filled with crime and violence, comes to claim him. The TV producers borrowed the hit in the noggin and mayhem following.
1964 saw two shows created around the same idea, what if monsters lived in suburbia and tried to be normal. The Addams Family (based on the Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoons) and The Munsters (based on Universal Studios monsters) offered pretty much the same thing in two episodes using the lost memory plot.
“Amnesia in the Addams Family” (The Addams Family, February 19, 1965) has Gomez losing his memory after taking out life insurance. When he wakes, he doesn’t realize he is monster and freaks out at his old life. He thinks everyone wants to kill him to collect the money. The answer to the problem: a second whack on the noggin.
“John Doe Munster” (The Munsters, November 11, 1965) goes in a different direction. When Herman has a safe dropped on his head, he regresses to a child. The only way Lily can keep him at home is to adopt him as her son. At least this time we get to go to court.
Curses
Weird Tales provided plenty of curses, but it was its short-lived competitor Strange Tales who gave us “The Thirteenth Floor” by Douglas M. Dold (November 1931). John Thunstone dealt with “The Half-Haunted” in Weird Tales, September 1941. Seabury Quinn wrote several tales for that magazine about long-descended curses.
“The Curse of Chester W. Farnsworth” (Petticoat Junction, January 12, 1965) has Uncle Joe convinced the Shady Rest is haunted by a guest from long ago.
Bewitched is a particularly Pulpy show, taken from films that barely using ideas by Fritz Leiber. The novel was called Conjure Wife (unknown, April 1943) and the films include Weird Woman (1944), Bell, Book and Candle (1958), Burn, Witch, Burn (1962). The TV producers had lots to work with. Any episode could be considered Pulp but I picked a couple that go a little further.
“We’re in For a Bad Spell” (Bewitched, September 30, 1965) has a friend of Darrin and Samantha cursed with an old family hex. As a descendant of Salem, MA., Adam will go to jail for crimes he didn’t commit, unless the couple can free him of the curse.
“A Most Unusual Wood Nymph” (Bewitched, October 13, 1966) is another one of note. Similar in idea, it is Darrin who has been cursed this time. His ancestor was cursed back in the 15th century by a wood nymph, sworn enemy of witches. The couple have to time travel to remove the curse. “Darrin the Bold” will appear again on a later episode, “The Return of Darrin the Bold” (1971).
Ghosts and Haunted Houses
The theme of haunted houses, and people staying in them to win a reward, predates the Pulps, but the scenarios seen here certainly were recycled there. Weird Tales gave us the late-in-the day H. R. Wakefield story “Ghost Hunt” (March 1948) with its Radio show from an actual haunted house.
Fred Flintstone wishes to inherit a fortune but he must spend a night in a haunted house in “A Haunted House is Not a Home” (The Flintstones, October 29, 1964).
Haunted furniture is a little more specialized. Charles Dickens used it in the Victorian age. “Sam’s Spooky Chair” (Bewitched, December 1, 1966) has a sorcerer transformed into a chair much as Professor Horace Slughorn hid himself as a chair in Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince (2005). Pulp stories that include haunted furniture include “The Ghost Table” by Elliott O’Donnell (Weird Tales, February 1928).
“My Master, The Ghostbreaker” (I Dream of Jeannie, February 20, 1968) has Tony inherit a mansion in England. He takes Jeannie and Roger with him to see the place. The sales agent tries to scare him away by telling him the place is haunted. Ghostbreakers date back to at least 1871 but the Pulps were full of them: Jules de Grandin, Pierre d’Artois, Dr. Muncing, John Thunstone, etc. the idea of the person trying to scare off prospective owners with fake ghosts dates back to Flaxman Low (1898) at least, possibly the Gothics. Scooby-Doo would employ it often.
“The Ghost of Clampett Castle” (The Beverly Hillbillies, October 23, 1968) has Mr, Drsdale (Gale Gordon) tell Granny that the Clampett’s home is haunted by Lady Clemetine. Her husband was murdered in the castle and so she seeks revenge.
UFOs
UFOs were all over the media after 1947. But it was Pulp editor and writer, Ray A. Palmer who helped that particular field of investigation expand in fiction and non-fiction in his magazine Flying Saucers from Other Worlds. The phenomenon didn’t disappear in the 1960s so TV used it for laughs. The show My Favorite Martian took this approach weekly. One of the first Pulp humorous UFO stories was “The Mississippi Saucer” by Frank Belknap Long (Weird Tales, March 1951).
“Ten Little Flintstones” (The Flintstones, January 2, 1964) has Fred being duplicated by invading little green men. The immensely strong zombie clones only say “Yabba-dabba-doo”. Fred thinks at first it is a gag by his water Buffalo pals but learns the truth. The aliens dump him and go home. When he tries to tell anybody about it, they don’t believe him. I am reminded of August Derleth’s “The Dark Brotherhood” in which multiple Edgar Allan Poe show up. maybe Derleth was inspired by Fred Flintstone since his story appeared in 1966.
“Extra! Extra! Sensory Perception!” (My Favorite Martian, November 1, 1964) has Bill Bixby’s character working on a newspaper story on ESP. he brings home Professor Hammerschlag, a psychic. Ray Walston’s Martian character is worried that the man will figure out his alien nature. Unfortunately it is Mrs. Brown who gets zapped and becomes like a baby. The cure is hiccups.
“The Saucer Season” (Green Acres, March 15, 1967) has UFOs on the farm. When Eb Dawson sees a UFO, it brings tourists to Green Acres. Even the Air Force shows up looking for little green men.
Others
“Grampa’s Call of the Wild” (The Munsters, January 7, 1965) takes its theme from Jack London’s novel (1903) but also the film versions. The Northern send up shares many jokes with the whole sub-genre of Pulp that came after London’s classic. While camping, Grampa gets homesick for Transylvania and turns into a wolf. Herman has to go and find him.
“Gilligan Meets Jungle Boy” (Gilligan’s Island, February 6, 1965) is obviously in debt to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes (1914), through processed through Hollywood. A Jungle Boy shows up on the Island, while the castaways are constructing a hot-air balloon. Of course, he ends up taking the flight alone. Since he only knows three words he can’t tell anybody about the lost people on the island. A twelve-year old Kurt Russell played the part. There are many assumptions in the episode about what a jungle boy is though no one ever states why.
“The Friendly Physician” (Gilligan’s Island, April 7, 1966) the island crew meet Dr. Boris Balinkoff (played by Vito Scotti) who takes them to a creepy castle where he keeps his mind transference machine. The viewer gets some laughs when he switches the Professor’s mind with Mrs. Howell. A sequel involving a mind-controlling ring followed in the last season. The concept of mind swapping is an old SF chestnut that wasn’t even new when Edgar Rice Burroughs used it in 1927 for The Mastermind of Mars.
“The Apes of Rath” (Get Smart, November 29, 1969) has agents being killed after receiving a banana in the mail. The killer is an ape that has been changed to look human. When Max gets a banana, he knows he will be next. Killer apes and mind-swapping were big in the 1930s with Arthur Burks.
These are just some of the more obvious examples in sitcoms. Western and detective shows are full of further examples. Television liked to recycle certain Pulp scenarios, ideas, tropes and gags with little regard as to where they came from originally. The Pulps were the television of the 1930s. Television became the Pulps of the 1960s.
