Bill Edwards

Bill Edwards

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The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh

Once upon a time television was mostly black and white but in the mid 50's RCA invented a way to transmit color that could also be received on black and white sets as required by the FCC. We purchased a color set when I was in junior high school (before they changed it to the ridiculous name "middle school"--gag!) and my friends loved coming over to watch the few color shows on the air at the time. Sunday night was really "must see TV" starting off with Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color followed by Bonanza. Those shows were magic and family entertainment at its best and, BONUS, no parental guidance ratings needed. I've been a fan of Walt Disney and his work for all my life but since learning more about Disney, they genius and the man, my respect is boundless for his amazing man who outwardly looked like a regular guy. Inside he was anything but--a boundless ball of energy and an imagination that flowed like a fountain. If he wanted a project done--it got done. When his producers told him something didn't exist to do what he wanted to do, he made them invent it. He originally began working on producing Mary Poppins in the 1930s when he came home from work one night and found his young daughter reading and very much enjoying the story of the fictional nanny. He began working on getting rights and copyrights that took nearly 30 years before it finally hit the screen. He came up with the idea of a full length cartoon--Snow White--and all Hollywood "experts" laughed because nobody would sit through a 90-minute cartoon, of course.

Disney was always innovating and proving the "experts" wrong time after time. His movies and cartoons always had a moral and much was based on The Holy Bible, brilliantly disguised as an entertaining story. And he was politically savvy too and saw the evil of Communists infiltrating the movie industry. He testified before Congress several times warning them about it but they did little about it and they did indeed take over. The same reason Howard Hughes got out of the movie biz. When Walt--as he always preferred to be addressed, none of this "Mr. Disney" stuff--came up with the idea of Disney-oriended theme park, the "experts" laughed again and he had a heck of a time getting it financed. ABC finally came to his financial aid. The list goes on.

With Halloween here I wanted to share with those of you whose parents may not have even been alive in the 1960s I wanted to you to become familiar with one of my favorite Disney television series ever. A few of the Disney stories were in two parts but The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh was (as far as I can remember) the only three-parter. It was great and I couldn't wait for the next episode when it was originally aired in 1962 or maybe '63. It still holds up today and introduced me to a wonderful young actor, Patrick McGoohan who played the vicar Dr. Syn whose alter-ego was "The Scarecrow" fighting for the people of his community in England being overwhelmed by the King's taxes. I highly recommend this timeless series for you and your kids and grandkids. Enjoy it, watch it on Netflix or You Tube or order the DVD or whatever technology is available this week. You'll thank me for this! Happy Halloween!!!


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