The Baileys of Balboa

Dang, someone beat me to this! Here I have been trying to think of obscure TV shows or films to be the first person to comment upon! Oh well.

I'm a big Paul Ford fan but I don't think I ever really watched this during its brief life.

It probably ran against something my 9-yr-old self found more compelling. Or worse, ran against something the rest of my family wanted to watch.

I wish re-run channels like TVLAND would run obscure, never syndicated shows like this more often. Heck, imagine a day devoted to following Judy Carne thru her many shows. Or her ex-husband, Burt Reynolds, thru HIS many shows!

Holy cow, does anyone even remember this one? Evidently unavailable in general circulation (hmmm, any trade tapes out there?), it is certainly a lost gem of TV land of the 60s. If memory doesn't fail me, Paul Ford is the patriarch of a goofball family that make its living off the wharves of San Francisco Bay. Their main source of income is the sale of a unique item at their shanty restaurant of "Bailey's Smoked Fish-On-A-Stick" though they always seemed to be dirt poor (er, or fish poor, as it were) and cooking up get-rich-quick schemes to get around the fact of their ineptitude at making an honest living. Any series, albeit short lived, that has Judy Carne as a regular and Rachel Welch as a walk-on is fine by me!

The "Baileys Of Balboa" was portraying the real island of Balboa, not San Francisco. As to the running joke about the "Fish On A Sitck" it was to make fun of the "Chocolate-Dipped Banana On A Stick" shops that opened there on the tiny Balboa Island. Sterling Holloway actually lived on Balboa and did all his own produce shopping at the local open-air market on Balboa Boulevard. There were a few other actors who lived on the same island at that time; all members of the Balboa Bay Club.

I worked in a local restaurant that catered to him, as well as Gary Moore, John Wayne and Edgar Buchannon and Peter Lorrie's brother, whose name escapes me at the moment.

Another show that used Balboa Island as a backdrop was "Mr. Nice", which lasted only a couple of months as I remember it.

The series revolved with the scheming Commodore Wyntoon trying to destroy the Baileys charter fishing business.

Along with Paul Ford(Sam Bailey), there was Les Brown Jr. as Jim Bailey, Judy Carne as Barbara Wyntoon, Sterling Holloway as Buck Singleton, John Dehner as Commodore Cecil Wyntoon and Clint Howard as Stanley (who baited his hooks with a peanut butter sandwich)

All the episodes were gems, far funnier than other sitcoms of the time, but by far , the funniest episode was where Sam was trying to avoid a eviction notice by keeping his charter boat out all day.

After being out for ten hours, the passengers started complaining, wanting to go back to shore. They all complained that they had all caught over their limit when one man chimed in "Yes, and if they catch the kid(speaking of Stanley), He'll get the chair."

I remember this show very well. I never missed it. I love Paul Ford. The episode I remember best was a Halloween special in which someone tried to scare them by dressing up like Dracula and swooping in to declare "I stopped by to borrow a cup of blood!" At the very end, the little boy from next door (played by Clint Howard, who went on to "Gentle Ben" and played a small (adult) alien in Star Trek's "The Corbomite Maneuver") showed up in his Dracula costume for Halloween and said "My mother sent me over to borrow a cup of -- SUGAR." I was very taken with Balboa and Newport Beach as they were shown on the program and I always wanted to go there. Well, today I did! I wouldn't mind living there myself except it's probably very expensive and I'd end up combing the beach for a living too.