The first Tuesday of November sees several season collections released for fans of classic television. You can pick up Here’s Lucy: Season Two from MPI Home Video. Included are all 24 episodes from the 1969-1970 season. Bonus features, according to MPI’s website, include new introductions from Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr., a featurette titled “Here’s Lucy on Location,” production files, CBS network promotional spots and syndication promotional spots, and a “lost interview” with Carol Burnett. The episodes are said to be uncut and digitally remastered.
Also out today, from Paramount Home Video, is Mission: Impossible – The Final TV Season. It includes all 22 episodes from the 1972-1973 season. There are no extras that I am aware of. Available from Universal Home Video is The Rockford Files: Movie Collection, Vol. 1, a 2-disc collection with four telefilms originally broadcast between 1994 and 1996, more than a decade after the series went off the air.
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment is releasing both seasons of Zorro in exclusive “Disney Treasures” tins. All 82 episodes have been remastered and are hosted by Leonard Maltin. Walt Disney Treasures: Zorro – The Complete First Season also includes a two-part special titled “Zorro: El Bandido” (originally broadcast in 1960); Walt Disney Treasures: Zorro – The Complete Second Season has two one-hour specials: “Zorro: The Postponed Wedding” and “Zorro: Auld Acquaintance” (both originally broadcast in 1961).
Finally, Shout! Factory releases Merry Sitcom! Christmas Classics from TV’s Golden Age, with seven Christmas episodes of classic television sitcoms, including Window On Main Street, That Girl, The Donna Reed Show and McHale’s Navy.
The four “Zorro” hours [three stories in four parts: the two-part story, “El Bandido” and “Adios, El Cuchillo”, in November 1960; the other two in January and April 1961, respectively], were originally telecast during the final season of “WALT DISNEY PRESENTS”. ABC had cancelled “ZORRO” as a weekly series after its second season because of the “legal mess” surrounding the cancellation of ‘THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB” in the spring of ’59, but Walt still believed there was an audience for new segments, and “revived” the character during the 1960-’61 season the way he’d previously schedued “floating” episodes of “The Swamp Fox”, “Texas John Slaughter” and “The Nine Lives Of Elfego Baca” {and a short-lived “Daniel Boone” mini-series starring Dewey Martin, for 1960-’61} in earlier seasons.
I’m quite sure the closing credits for the “HERE’S LUCY” episodes in that box set feature the products primary sponsor Lever Brothers “pitched” during those shows, on alternate weeks, in the lower left-hand corner of the screen {in ’80s syndicated reissues, a superimposed oval with an “L.B.P., Inc.” logo covered them, although at times I quickly saw a bar of Dove or another Lever product in that corner before Lucy’s production logo appeared}.