Hi:

Jorgenson was also a guest on "The Mike Douglas Show." I recall watching it as a young boy & asking my older sister what that was all about? She was rather embarassed & never explained. About ten years ago, either A&E, AMC, TCM or TNT aired the film "The Christine Jorgensen Story," and I recorded it. If you'd like a copy of it--I'm not sure if one may send a private mesage on this system?--I could copy it for you, but will have to be on VHS, as I don't yet have a DVD recorder or DVD drive on my computer.

Speaking of "The Mike Douglas Show," that's another one on which some good video company should pick up. As with Cavett, there had been a release of John & Yoko on Mike's show, where they co-hosted for an entire week (as was the frequent practice on that show, at least in its days airing from Philly). That was released on VHS (which is still available in a video rental store near me), but I never saw anything beyond that & never made it to DVD.

I was once lucky enough to have found a copy of a rare Anissa Jones ("Buffy" on the original "Family Affair" series) episode of "The Mike Douglas Show" (from 1969) on eBay. And I had also once contacted the company that owns the rights to the Douglas program, who said they would sell me a copy of a specific episode for which I had been searching, although that was not their usual practice. They were looking for $90, and I have as yet to pursue the matter. 

Shout! Factory, which does an excellent job with its releases (I have several so far, including two Cavett sets, the Jack Paar set, "You Bet Your Life" and "Here's Lucy") would be the perfect entity to relase "The Mike Douglas Show," should they someday wish to do so, if they can obtain the rights. I was also not disappointed with Alpha Video's set of "The Merv Griffin Show," although they don't typically have the nice bonus material that Shout! products have (because they probably can't afford it). But they did a good job with the Griffin set (before Merv died, too)!

MPI has also done a good (if rather straightforward & no-frills) job, at least in terms of shows they have chosen to release in the past, from "Hullabaloo" and "Music Scene" to "Dark Shadows" and "The Rifleman." But they don't have the rights to either music series anymore, and I'm not sure what's up with the other two, especially as I saw a recent release of "Dark Shadows" by Shout! Factory.

Another company which has an excellent track record (though with fewer releases and longer periods of time between them) is S'More Entertainment, which released the excellent first season of the legendary Wally Cox live sitcom, "Mister Peepers" (amazing they got the whole series preserved on kinescope!), and has just released Season Six of "The Danny Thomas Show." I understand they plan to finish both seasons of "Peepers" and also the remaining CBS years of the Thomas program. Now all that remains is for some company to issue a complete, quality set of the ABC years when Thomas' series was titled "Make Room For Daddy." All that has been released heretofore have been public domain sets, albeit a decent enough two-volume set of eight episodes from Critic's Choice.

IMHO, both Shout! & S'More do a better job than any of the so-called "major" TV home video producers--Fox, Paramount, Sony, Warner Bros., etc. These two indie companies have a reverence for the material they release and include some clever and creative bonus features. Would that the major companies could hire these indies to be in charge of their TV home video divisions (and marketing), then maybe we would see more of our favorite TV shows released and done justice!

By the way, I echo sentiments in another post--it would be an artistic injustice if the remaining seasons of "Leave it to Beaver" are not released on DVD. And shame on Universal if they don't either see it through or have the sense to license the property to another entity that might be happy to finish the job! "LITB" is one of those iconic series, like "The Andy Griffith Show," "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "The Honeymooners" and "I Love Lucy," that is mandatory for home video release. I would add "The Jack Benny Program" in there too, as well some others on that "absolute-must" list of TV series warranting home video releases.

But on the whole I am more optimistic we might all again one day get to see our favorite TV shows (and younger folks some real gems for the first time), either on DVD or in the digisphere on the Web. If one looks thoroughly enough, one may find many of them (albeit in less-than-ideal quality) even now, among collectors and in the public domain on the Web. Sadly, though, what will never again be seen are many of those live shows (mostly daytime game shows and serials, but also live, prime-time dramas and variety programs), which were either never preserved on kinescope or videotape or were victims of mass erasures by the networks in the days when they had little foresight about the historical value of their archives and/or when recording material & storage were prohibitively expensive. 

Jim