If you have current Wild, Wild West-related news, drop us a line.
back to CURRENT NEWS & INFO
go to NEWS & INFO 2000
For a lifetime of stunt performance excellence, Whitey will receive the Golden Boot Award at their annual gala August 10th, 2002.
Congratulations Whitey! This is well-beyond overdue! (We'll print more details as they become available.)
Read all about Whitey Hughes.
SEPTEMBER 2001
Break a leg, Sue. :-)
How to celebrate? In the past, we've had the Wild Wild West Appreciation Dinner as the finale to four or five days of Wild, Wild West events here in the Los Angeles area. Year after year the AGs have been a wonderful tribute to our favourite program, and everyone really misses them. Alas, all good things must come to an end.
Since we stopped holding the AG, this is the first and only time we have been extremely thankful we did. This year the AG would have taken place Sept 12-16, and many of our east coast regulars would have been taking early flights to Los Angeles last Tuesday. In fact, one of the event's regular organizers would surely have been on one of the Tuesday 6 am ET flights out of Dulles as she has always done in the past.
So Happy Anniversary, Wild Wild West, and THANK YOU for what we've been spared. We're grateful beyond words.
AUGUST 2001
EpGuides.com is petitioning TV Land & Nick At Night to stop cutting/split-screening their programming.
In the petition you can state what show you would like TV Land /Nick to pick up.
Send in your petition and tell them you want to see them air The Wild Wild West UNCUT and UN-DEFACED.
Tell all your friends. :-)
Sign the petition and ask for THE WILD WILD WEST at the EpGuides.com web site.
Weirdness from an October 1973 magazine... really - can you even imagine Bob Conrad going in a discotheque? ;-)
Read the weirdness for yourself.
A character actor and the director of several WWW episodes (TNot Arrow, Legion of Death, Pelican), Mr. (Alex) Nicol died on Sunday, 29 July, in Montecito, California, at the age of 85.
Those interested may read an obituary at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/05/obituaries/05NICO.html
He is survived by his wife, three children, and four grandchildren, all of whom receive our sincere sympathy.
What might have been, eh?
Read more about Mike Masters.
JULY 2001
"Coming up this weekend on Entertainment Tonight -- whatever happened to your favorite tv stars? Why Peter Falk wasn't the first choice for Columbo. And Robert Conrad's brush with death on the set..."
Just in case, check out E.T. this weekend.
(There is a) Marj Dusay Live Voicechat (on) 7/19 (at) 8PM EST.
Marj has her own official site...being revamped right now. She also chats live at her official yahoo club regularly. You may also leave her messages there on her posts board. Tell your friends they are welcome to join in.
Here's the URL: http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/marjdusaysofficialchatclub
The series photo used is a cropped version of Jim West leaning one arm on The Train, while below the caption reads:
"Robert Conrad says his 'off-camera' personality got him the job on WILD WILD WEST. He was complaining about his shoes (too small) and making sarcastic remarks about the casting process. In 1969, Dr. Frank Staton, then president of CBS, took the program off the air to honor his pledge to congress to reduce television violence."
Doesn't something (or things) sound wrong in Paramount's caption? What do you think? e-mail us.
...on July 3rd, I was watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. (John's) guest was Martin Short and they were discussing who leaves messages on Martin's answering machine.
Jon asked,
"Does Steve Martin ever leave a message?"
And Martin replied,
"Steve Martin leaves messages... Ross Martin from Wild, Wild West leaves messages...." ( big laugh from audience and Jon! )
Coincidence, indeed...
Please make July 3rd a day of celebration. Celebrate the life of an incredible personality who brought so much enjoyment to friends and fans of The Wild, Wild West everywhere. Choose something cullinary Artemus Gordon would enjoy, and drink a toast to Mr. Martin - the true soul of Mr. Gordon... and don't forget to pour Ross a glass, too!
Read about the extraordinary life of Mr. Ross Martin.
JUNE 2001
O' Connor family.
More as it becomes available...
Remember that Ross Martin was the CARIH National Chairman for the Theatre Arts - a lifetime appointment. As such, RM did a great deal of volunteer work on behalf of this organization and the children with lung disease who have always been CARIH's beneficiary. The wildly-successful Ross Martin Celebrity Tennis Tournaments on behalf of CARIH in the early 1970s epitomizes both Mr. and Mrs. Martin's committment to this incredibly worthy cause. CARIH merged with National Jewish in the late 1970s and exists today as the pediatric wing of the Denver, CO facility. If you've read the 2000 or 2001 CARIH Fundraiser pages on this site, you probably already know all this...
What isn't widely known is that many of CARIH's historic records were lost the late '70s merger, including all data regarding RM's involvement with the charity. We stumbled upon this unfortunate and somewhat shocking fact while conducting research for the 'contribution to the community' portion of the Hollywood Walk of Fame submission. It occured to us that we were actually in a unique position to return some of CARIH's missing historical documentation to the organization.
It's important to note here that it is well-known that RM would never insist that National Jewish know anything about his work on behalf of CARIH. Ross took up the volunteer work because of the cause, not in any way for personal gain. He would never want anyone putting this information to National Jewish for any reason other than strict historical documentation. Everyone involved has been very aware of this fact and the entire effort was undertaken and conducted for the sole reason of reconstructing as much of the historic CARIH documentation which disappeared in the merger as possible for National Jewish.
After detailed discussion with the Martin family , we received permission to proceed. The Martins allowed us to digitize relevant documents from their personal collection as well as giving their permission to do the same from The Ross Martin Special Collection in the Cinema/Television Library at the University of Southern California. Special permission to scan archived material was later generously granted by USC. The material was processed, organized, and turned over to National Jewish today on CD ROM as well as in hard-copy with the 2001 CARIH donation.
A heartfelt thank you goes out to everyone who sent in a monetary donation for the CARIH fundraiser. We're grateful to the Martin Family, archivist Ned Comstock of the USC Cinema Television library, and Ms. Wendy Luck for making the complete donation today possible.
Wild, Wild West stunt coordinator Whitey Hughes, stuntman Robert Herron, and WWWest bible author Sue Kesler, are among the many western stars who will be appearing at the Tombstone Western Film Festival and Symposium July 6-8 in historic Tombstone, Arizona.
Among the featured events is a panel of the Hollywood stunt corps elite hosted by Whitey Hughes. Time is running out to register for this unique event.
For more information, the current advertising flyer for this event is here.
MAY 2001
APRIL 2001
Robert Conrad is seriously considering throwing his hat in the political ring for governor of California. The news piece opened with "Move over, Arnie..." referring to Arnold Schwartzenegger's rumored run for the CA gubernatorial position.
Good Day L.A. reported that RC would run as a Republican (no surprise there) and that one of the reasons for his decision is that he is angry with how Hollywood is treating George W. Bush. Cited was Martin Sheen's public naming of GWB as a 'moron'...
Read RC's Crossfire appearance transcript.
MARCH 2001
February 2001
Our thoughs are with Ms. Sharpe-Kramer and her family.
Well, it is - but in France. One DVD containing TNot Inferno, TNot Green Terror, and TNot Bogus Bandits was released by CBS/FOX there, and it does contain the original audio track as well as the dubbed French audio track. Cost is around $25 US depending upon the vendor. Not too bad...
However, the FOX release is unfortunately in the European broadcast format (PAL) and is a Zone 2 or Region 2 (Europe) DVD. A DVD with either of these properties cannot be properly viewed using a regular US (Zone 1) DVD player and US (NTSC format) television.
There are apparently a number of ways to circumvent the Zone mismatch both on consumer DVD players and computer DVD drives, many of which are discussed in hairy detail in DVD journals and on DVD web sites. One of the easiest is to just purchase one of the new zone-free or multi-zone DVD players such as Toshiba and Panasonic offer. These are relatively expensive units (around $400 US) and usually are not multi-standard as well, meaning they do not convert between PAL and NTSC (the US format). If you buy a multi-zone/zone-free DVD player that is not multi-standard, you will need a PAL/NTSC converter box as well, prices of which begin around $250.
Thankfully, we found a consumer grade DVD player that does the conversion, can be set to any zone (or zone-free), and will bypass Macrovision (copy guard) -- everything you need to watch the French, Wild, Wild West release -- at a very reasonable price. The Sampo DVE-620 DVD player retails for close to $200 but can be found on the web for less. Its multi-standard playback, zone-free, Macrovision bypass features are not advertised as things this unit will do, usually. Like a number of other DVD players on the market, the DVE-620 has hidden menus where these features are accessed by pushing the correct button sequence(s) on the remote. DVD players with hidden menus and how to access them are covered pretty thoroughly by the DVD journals and web sites such as DVD Reviewer.
Without knowing anyone who had actually tried this unit, we took a chance and purchased one from Yahoo's home electronics site, DynaDirect.com, for $149.99 and test-drove it on the Zone-2, PAL format Wild, Wild West DVD. Following instructions we found on-line, we had no problem accessing the hidden menus and setting the playback to NTSC/Zone-free, and disabling Macrovision. The playback was crystal clear, and after changing the audio from the default French-dubbed to the original track, we were able to watch all of the Wild, Wild West episodes as they were originally filmed on our plain-old US television set. We then made a test-recording of the DVD with the original audio track onto VHS and when played backed, this cassette looked great on all our plain-old US VCRs. No obvious playback artifacts from the PAL => NTSC conversion were seen, and the picture was AWESOME!
The moral? You can enjoy The Wild, Wild West on DVD even if it is never released on DVD in the States. We do recommend the Sampo DVE-620 as one way to circumvent the format/region issues and can defintely say that we bought one, it had the hidden menus, and it does what you need it to do to watch the French Wild, Wild West DVD release on a plain-old US televsion set... and IT LOOKS GREAT!
Hopefully CBS/FOX will continue to release more episodes of The Wild, Wild West on DVD.
Check out the Sampo DVE-620 at DynaDirect.com
Check out Les Mysteres de l'Ouest (Wild, Wild West) DVD volume 1 at PlanetCinestore.com
Determine the DVD costs in US dollars using the Universal Currency Converter
Research zone free/multi-zone, hidden menu DVD players at DVD Reviewer
Read Mr. Kennedy's credit list from his prolific career on the Internet Movie Database web site.
Says Archives owner Danny Biederman: "NEW NEWS for fans on the CIA Exhibit -- the CIA just shipped it out to a museum in New Mexico where it is currently on exhibit to the PUBLIC! I just returned from there. It's at the National Atomic Museum, which is located on the Kirtland Airforce Base in Albuquerque. The museum (Cold War-themed) is surrounded by multi-million-dollar U.S. bombers and missiles! Across the street is a U.S. counterintelligence HQ. I was there this past week for an invitation-only reception on Friday night, where I made a speech; and then Saturday was the grand opening to the public, featuring an hour talk that I gave.
"The exhibit features approximately 2/3 of the artifacts on display at CIA (due to space limitations). But it's quite nice. There are two large cases on display on WILD WILD WEST. Heavy press coverage -- I was interviewed by two TV news shows, did two radio shows, plus numerous newspaper interviews, which will be running probably this week over there..."
Read all about it at the National Atomic Museum's web site.
Read our interview with Spy-Fi Archivist Danny Biederman.
Vote for The Acting God (Ross Martin) at the Favourite Actors (passed) page -- www.freevote.com/booth/lockhart7 Vote The Action God (Robert Conrad) your Favourite Actor (living) at: www.freevote.com/booth/lockhart1 Vote The Wild, Wild West the Best Show (off-air) at: www.freevote.com/booth/lockhart6 You can cast one vote per day at this web site, so please vote daily.
Check out the Lights Along The Path web site. Wild, Wild West stunt coordinator Whitey Hughes and stuntman Robert Herron are among the many western stars who will be appearing at the Tombstone Western Film Festival and Symposium this July in historic Tombstone, Arizona. Among the featured events is a panel of the Hollywood stunt corps elite hosted by Whitey Hughes. For more information, the current advertising flyer for this event is here.
January 2001
| current news main page | questions? | back to top |
