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Michael and Farrah and Ed

June 26, 2009

The passing of three renowned celebrities over the past week several days certainly inspires the web’s bloggers and surfers to lean forward and open their eyes a bit wider than usual, if only for a short time. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson—the final days of whom were quietly, tragically and mysteriously played out, respectively—were all well-represented in the home entertainment market and will no doubt be remembered  via Youtube and the world’s DVD and VHS players--that's right, VHS players, as a number of releases featuring the three are not yet available on DVD (or are out of print).

 

McMahon, of course, can be seen primarily in R2 Entertainment’s Johnny Carson compilation releases, as well as in 1993’s Love Affair, playing himself, and in lively appearances in The Last Remake of Beau Geste (available only on used VHS) and Fun with Dick and Jane, both from 1977. He was an affable guy, or at least he appeared to be. And nice guys live long lives, don’t they? McMahon was 83 when he died.

 

And then there’s Farrah, oh Farrah, the blonde-tressed dream of so many teenage boys (and their dads) back in the Seventies. Her breakthrough TV work as sexy private eye Jill Munroe on Charlie’s Angelshas long been available on DVD from Sony, as are the majority of her films. Though she never made much noise in her major motion pictures, Farrah certainly had an opportunity to strut her stuff in handful of different genres, from sci-fi (1976’s Logan’s Run and 1980’s awful Saturn 3, directed by Stanley Donen, of all people) to wacky comedies (1981’s The Cannonball Run) to silly romantic thrillers (1978’s Somebody Killed Her Husband and 1979’s Sunburn, both available only on used VHS). There’s no denying that Farrah’s finest movies were those made for the small screen. It was there that she drew assorted Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for her work in 1984’s The Burning Bed, 1986’s Extremities and Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story and 1987’s Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story, most of which are represented on disc. They were respected films, yes, but I personally still hold a special place in my heart for her role in the deliciously awful Myra Breckinridge (1970) and as Roger Healy’s gorgeous girlfriend in Season Five of TV’s I Dream of Jeannie.

 

Michael Jackson, the self-proclaimed King of Pop, exited the stage just as he had lived on the one that the world provided for him—quickly, dramatically and shrouded in mystery. But the mark he made on the entertainment industry is crystal clear, as a quick glimpse at many of his accomplishments confirms. Nearly 110 million copies of the album Thriller sold, 13 Number One singles (more than any other male artist

since the Fifties), 750 million albums sold, 13 Grammy Awards, and so on. And this, of course, doesn’t even take into account the artistic and cultural legacy that he created and which will undoubtedly remain firmly in place for many years to come.

 

But it’s Jackson’s impressive feat in the packaged home entertainment arena that’s most notable for our purposes. Back in 1983, a little company named Vestron (we all remember Vestron, the Dirty Dancing-est VHS company of them all) issued a little making-of music doc entitled The Making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It was the age of video rental stores and Vestron president Jon Peisinger and his team had the outrageous idea that this VHS might be one that people would want to own and not just rent. Hmmmm…

 

Getting accurate numbers in the movie and record business is always tricky, particularly when it comes to home entertainment—even more so when it involves the industry’s glorious early days in the late Seventies and Eighties. For my source on Thriller, I used Frederick Wasser’s 2001 tome Veni, Vidi, Video: The Hollywood Empire and the VCR, which is the most respectable and accurate (I think) examination of the VHS era I’ve ever come across. Here’s what he had to say about Jackson’s record-breaking VHS title:

 

“The Making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller was released at the end of 1983 for the low price of $29.95. The low price was designed to attract individual viewers as well as well as rental stores. It sold 550,000 in the U.S. and 750,000 worldwide. Vestron had the first major musical hit, receiving venues in excess of $10 million….In hindsight, Jon Peisinger concluded that the runaway success of Thriller had more to do with Michael Jackson’s celebrity power than with a repeatable popular music format.”

 

…and that runaway success, a landmark if ever there was one, helped to launch the sell-through VHS business, which then gave way to the DVD industry, and, well, you know the rest…

But I guess the joke is on us, courtesy of Mr. Jackson, perhaps: The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller was never issued on DVD in the U.S., as strange as that is to believe. You can find it from used VHS brokers who are undoubtedly gonna get a pretty penny for it, at least for the immediate future.  

Rest in peace, all.

Posted by Laurence Lerman on June 26, 2009 | Comments (1)