A Small-Screen Bonanza: Altman’s First Short Cuts

Can’t make it to Sundance this year to see Robert Altman’s latest film, “Cookie’s Fortune,” which opens the festival Jan. 21?

That’s OK. Save the air fare and festival ticket fees, and watch some of Altman’s other work this weekend instead. Altman directed a lot of the episodes from the first season of “Combat!,” which KDOC Channel 56 is showing Saturday afternoons. The series’ “Any Second Now” episode, from 1962, airs at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Though it wasn’t the first episode filmed, “Any Second Now” was the first “Combat!” aired, on Oct. 2, 1962. (The pilot episode, “A Day in June”--about the D-Day invasion--now is run as the first episode, but when the series aired on ABC in the early ‘60s, it was turned into a flashback episode and shown a few months into the first season.)

Watching that episode will help get you ready for a question-and-answer session with Altman on Jan. 26 at the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills ($8 for museum members, $10 for nonmembers). It starts at 7 p.m. with clips of Altman’s TV work. Shows he wrote, directed or produced included “Bonanza,” “The Roaring Twenties” and “The Millionaire.” (His only Emmy, however, came from the HBO series “Tanner ‘88,” a political satire from a decade ago.) The Q&A; session follows, until 8:30. The museum is at 465 N. Beverly Drive. (310) 786-1000.

In “Any Second Now,” Lt. Gil Hanley (Rick Jason) is pinned under a beam and must rely on a bomb-disposal officer with shot nerves to save him. Other regulars who appear are Vic Morrow as Sgt. Saunders, Shecky Greene as Pvt. Braddock, Pierre Jalbert as Caje and Steven Rogers as Doc. (The character Kirby, played by Jack Hogan, hadn’t been introduced).

According to the viewer’s companion book “Combat,” by Jo Davidsmeyer, Missouri native Altman reworked some of the script to create a character for Kansas City friend Dick Peabody, who would become a regular named Littlejohn.

Among the Altman-directed “Combat!” episodes that will air in the next few months (KDOC has yet to schedule them, but the station generally runs the shows in order): “Forgotten Front” (No. 6), about duty and conscience; “Rear Echelon Commandos” (No. 8), by Richard Tregaskis (author of the book “Guadalcanal Diary”), about three misfit replacements; “The Prisoner” (No. 10), with Pvt. Braddock mistaken for a colonel by the Germans; “Escape to Nowhere” (No. 11), about a German general involved in the failed plot to assassinate Hitler; and “Cat and Mouse” (No. 15),, in which Saunders butts helmets with another sergeant (the episode also features Ted Knight as a German in the first of many such appearances).

Details, Details

Robert Altman directed the pilot of which other ABC war series that premiered three days after “Combat!”? Answer below.

Set Your VCR

* Director Penny Marshall hasn’t always been famous enough to star in Kmart commercials. In one of her pre-”Odd Couple” TV appearances, the two-part “Wacky Zoo of Morgan City” on “Walt Disney Presents” (Jan. 14 at 11 p.m. on the Disney Channel; part 2 is Jan. 15), from 1970, Marshall plays an unnamed secretary--and she’s way, way down in the credits. (Marshall’s future “Laverne & Shirley” rival, Cindy Williams, wasn’t doing any better at the time: They were both guest-starring on such shows as “Love, American Style” and “Barefoot in the Park.”)

* Fox Family airs the miniseries “Lonesome Dove”--starring Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall and Anjelica Huston--in two-hour chunks on four successive nights at 9 p.m., beginning Jan. 18.

* Wonder Woman’s little sister was no slouch either. Wonder Girl, who showed up occasionally on “Wonder Woman” (Friday, Monday and Jan. 22 at 6 a.m. on the Sci-Fi Channel), was played by Debra Winger, several years before “Urban Cowboy” and “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” (Don’t remember seeing her? That’s because she only contributed to E.T.’s voice).

* This month the Darlings come down from the mountains, making small-town Mayberry seem like . . . Mt. Pilot. In their debut appearance on a four-star “The Andy Griffith Show” episode (Jan. 13 at 8 a.m. on TBS), Briscoe and daughter Charlene, as usual, do the talking; the boys (off-screen, the bluegrass band the Dillards) only come to life when they’re playing. If you like that episode, tune in Jan. 15 at 8:30 a.m. for “Mountain Wedding,” which has a bonus: It’s the first episode with Ernest T. Bass. In “Briscoe Declares for Aunt Bee” (Jan. 19 at 8:30 a.m.), the Dillards play “Dueling Banjos” (almost a decade before “Deliverance”) and in “Divorce, Mountain Style” (Jan. 29 at 8:30 a.m.), Charlene leaves her husband (Bob Denver) with the idea of marrying Andy.

* Jane Greer guest stars in a “Murder, She Wrote” (Jan. 14 at 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. on A&E;) from the ‘80s, but her best decade was the ‘40s. That’s when Greer, a Howard Hughes protege and ex-wife of Rudy Vallee, co-starred in such films as “Out of the Past,” a film noir classic.

* The Disney Channel offers a couple of Oscar-winning “People and Places” featurettes: 1953’s best short-subject winner, “The Alaskan Eskimo” (Jan. 28 at 4:30 a.m.), about village life; and 1958’s “The Ama Girls” (Jan. 13 at 4:15 a.m.), about a diver in a Japanese fishing family, which was best documentary, short subject.

* If it hadn’t been for a 1979 “CHiPs” episode about a stunt driver in an accident scam (Jan. 14 at 7 a.m. on TNT), actors Dee Wallace and Christopher Stone might never have met. They ended up marrying and doing more television together (including the “New Lassie” syndicated series in 1989). Their marriage lasted 15 years--until Stone’s death in 1995.

* KNBC Channel 4 weekend morning anchor Tracie Savage appears in a “Little House on the Prairie” (Jan. 14 at 7 a.m. on TBS). She played Laura’s friend Christy in several episodes from the first season.

* If you don’t watch this “St. Elsewhere” (Jan. 30 at 11 a.m. on TV Land) because it’s the pilot episode, how about because it was directed by Thomas Carter (who played Hayward in “The White Shadow” and who’d go on to direct “Swing Kids”) or because Ed Flanders--Dr. Westphall--won an Emmy for outstanding actor for the season or because Tim Robbins plays a terrorist?

* There’s a clunker in nearly every series, even “MASH.” “Major Fred C. Dobbs” (Jan. 29 at 2:30 p.m. on FX), about Hawkeye and Trapper tricking Frank into staying at the 4077th, was once described by co-creator Larry Gelbart as “the worst.”

* Stephen Dorff turning into Matthew Perry? On a 1989 “Empty Nest” (Monday at 11 a.m. on WGN), Dorff plays Billy, a 14-year-old patient of Harry’s; Perry plays the same character--as an 18-year-old.

They’re Baaaaack

Good news for western lovers: “The Rifleman,” which was given the boot when the Family Channel became Fox Family Channel, has returned--on KDOC Channel 56, daily at 5 a.m. And KDOC is airing “Gunsmoke” 19 times a week: daily at 3 and 4 a.m. and weekdays at 1 p.m. KPXN Channel 30 is showing “The Big Valley,” weekdays at 1 p.m. (as well as weekends at 4 p.m.), followed by “Bonanza.”

* KDOC Channel 56 is airing “The A-Team” weekdays at 6 p.m.

* The Sci-Fi Channel has begun showing “Dark Shadows” Monday through Friday at 8 and 8:30 a.m. The creepy soap first aired in 1966, but Barnabas didn’t show up for the first couple hundred episodes. So the Sci-Fi Channel has started with those installments leading up to Barnabas’ unearthing. You can see his hand Jan. 19 at 8 a.m. and the rest of him at 8:30.

Answer to trivia question: “The Gallant Men,” starring Robert McQueeney and William Reynolds. It lasted one year.

Stations provide airing times and episode schedules, which are subject to change.