Here's what MPI's 1996 Catalogue had to say about the DS TRIBUTE VHS release:
I watched it the other night and, unlike my initial suspicion that I did watch it back when it first came out, I now have my doubts. Nothing about it seemed at all familiar like I'd seen any of it before. However, it was well worth the wait because there were actually some things I was happily surprised to see.
Among those things were several versions of the bumpers that would come up during commercials in DS' earlier period to say DS would return in a moment, some of which were even voiced by Alexandra and Grayson (which was a big shock!) and how the show was being presented in color. With the exception of eps that have their commercials intact, it's really too bad that all of those bumpers weren't ever included on the video releases like the slates are for the pre-Barn eps.
And while I've read it in a few places, it was fantastic to get video documentation that it was indeed the Laura storyline that saved DS from cancellation because the show was renewed due to how much the ratings went up during the Laura storyline and before Barnabas made any sort of an appearance. (Though, of course, there's no taking away that Barnabas' success totally cemented the show's popularity.)
And the footage of Grayson at home was a hoot and fun to see.
And one thing that at first I thought was funny is that during the footage of Frid's interview on
The Merv Griffin Show in 1969 Merv mentions that Joan Bennett had been on the show, but while I have vivid memories of her having been on
The Dick Cavett Show and
The Mike Douglas Show, I have no memory whatsoever of her ever having been on Merv. I couldn't imagine that I would have thought there wasn't anything memorable about her appearance so I'd completely forgotten it. But once I checked the list of talk show appearances in the
DS Almanac I saw that she had been on Merv on September 25, 1967, just a couple weeks after I'd started to watch DS, so most likely I never saw her.
But what was very interesting to see with regard to all this -
SG #74's video reports:
...
It would have been interesting if we actually saw Barbara Steele interview people but I suspect we don't because that would have been engaging enough for me to remember. But who knows? I'll have to revisit it one of these days...
I wonder how far that Barbara Steele project got before it was dropped altogether. As well as the status of the footage.
- is that there's a section in the credits of the compilation that reads:
New York Segment Producers
DAVID DELVALLE
BARBARA STEELE
So apparently the interview footage with fans and perhaps some of the candid footage of some of the stars came from what Barbara Steele had shot at the '95 NYC Fest.
Now, what will be extremely interesting to see is if the tape came out in November of 1996...
