Telly Savalas and the Quota quickies

[doebag]

Radio 4 FM this saturday morning at 10.30 26th April

10:30 Telly Savalas and Quota Quickies
Laurie Taylor recalls a series of 1970s B-Movies, created by the late Harold Baim, in which Hollywood star Telly Savalas waxes lyrical about the charms of certain British cities, including Birmingham, Portsmouth and Aberdeen, not generally recognised as tourist attractions.

[Windthrop]

Originally Posted by doebag Radio 4 FM this saturday morning at 10.30 26th April 10:30 Telly Savalas and Quota Quickies Laurie Taylor recalls a series of 1970s B-Movies, created by the late Harold Baim, in which Hollywood star Telly Savalas waxes lyrical about the charms of certain British cities, including Birmingham, Portsmouth and Aberdeen, not generally recognised as tourist attractions.

I've seen the one about Portsmouth where Telly (who I doubt left LA to do the voice over) makes a dreadful pun about a library being a 'castle of learning' . He couldn't have been that short of lolly (geddit ?) so am puzzled as to why he got involved cos short films were only given a fixed fee by the distributers (which is why they died out) of several thousand so Telly wouldn't have pocketed much. Maybe he was being altruistic and trying to help British tourism

[orpheum]

By the way it is distributors.They did not die out because of the fixed fee.They died out because Eady Levy was brought to an end so there was no benefit to the exhibitor in showing them.Many of them were awful.I remember ones on motor sport,which i loathed,i would come out of the cinema for 20 minutes till it had finished.

[Windthrop]

Originally Posted by orpheum By the way it is distributors.They did not die out because of the fixed fee.They died out because Eady Levy was brought to an end so there was no benefit to the exhibitor in showing them.Many of them were awful.I remember ones on motor sport,which i loathed,i would come out of the cinema for 20 minutes till it had finished.

Nicholas Parsons no less directed two. One of which won an award Mad Dogs and Englishmen, which I haven't seen and another Relatively Greek which I did and where NP played various members of his family on a Greek island and used lots of exaggerated accents to denote the different characters.

[batman]

Originally Posted by Windthrop I've seen the one about Portsmouth where Telly (who I doubt left LA to do the voice over) makes a dreadful pun about a library being a 'castle of learning' . He couldn't have been that short of lolly (geddit ?) so am puzzled as to why he got involved cos short films were only given a fixed fee by the distributers (which is why they died out) of several thousand so Telly wouldn't have pocketed much. Maybe he was being altruistic and trying to help British tourism

Telly was over here a lot in the 70s performing and promoting his 'music', so he may have taken time out from murdering our eardrums and spent a day in the recording studio doing them all in one go.

[julian_craster]

Didn't these shorts get double the Eady cash ?

Harold Baim had a very cosy reltionship with United Artists (who distributed his films) and was making serious money in the early 1960s, much to the annoyance of makers of quality short films who found it difficult (if not impossible) to get their films booked by the circuits......