The Other Side of Paradise

So now I finally know the real story behind Max Paradise.

Back in 1980s there was a horror anthology show I occassionally watched called Tales from the Darkside.

It was a kind of Twilight Zone knockoff and while there were a handful of decent episodes, there were a lot more misses than hits.

The series aired in October 1983 with “Trick or Treat” with Barnard Hughes, which was one of the better episodes.

Another favorite of mine was “Going Native” whivh concerns an alien who infiltrates a therapy group so she can study human beings up close and very personal.

Kim Griest plays the extraterrestrial and she spends a good portion of the episode narrating her observations over a series of still photographs depicting earth as cruel, savage place.

The episode accomplishes a lot on a low budget and few locations.

And then there’s “Distant Signals”, which stars one of my favorite actors, Darren McGavin, who was the lead in Kolchak: The Night Stalker in 1970s.

Mr. Smith Goes to Earth

Here he plays Van Conway, a washed-up actor who is working as a bartender when the episode opens.

Van had once starred in a failed TV show called Max Paradise, where he portrayed a private eye with amnesia searching his for true identity.

The series tanked, as did Van’s career, and the amnesiac detective show was quickly forgotten.

Except by the mysterious Mr. Smith who shows up out of nowhere looking to shoot several episodes of the show, including the finale where we find out who Max Paradise really is.

Mr. Smith pays his way through Hollywood with gold bars, declaring the old show to be "the height of televisual art.”

I have a couple of spoiler alerts under my belt and here’s the first one: Mr. Smith is alien who came from a distant planet where the people really loved Max Paradise.

He never says this, of course, but he does assure the somewhat mystified cast and crew that “your work will be seen and loved by millions.”

The episode is enjoyable, but I really liked the show-within-a-show concept of a private eye who doesn’t know who he is. That portion of that episode is shot in black-and-white, which I absolutely love.

Wanting to know more, I bounced over to IMDB for some trivia and was greeted with this description:

“The fictional TV show ‘Max Paradise’ was obviously inspired by the actual TV series Coronet Blue, which ran for 11 episodes on CBS in the summer of 1967. Created by Larry Cohen, the series centered around a young man with amnesia, whose only memory are the words ‘coronet blue,’ being pursued in New York City by would-be assassins. The show was not renewed in the fall and viewers never learned the solution to the mystery.”

Obviously inspired? Well, it wasn’t obvious to me. I’d never heard of Coronet Blue and no memory of seeing it as a child. But now I had to know more.

You could find a ton of old movies and TV shows on YouTube and sure, enough, I found episodes of “Coronet Blue,” which starred Frank Converse, as Michael Alden, as the memory deprived hero.

Tangled up in Blue

I wish I could tell you that I stumbled upon a lost treasure or an underappreciated masterpiece, but the truth is that Coronet Blue just didn’t do much for me.

I’ve seen three episodes so far and I didn’t particularly enjoy any of them. On top of that, the show has an atrocious theme song that, of course, I can’t get out of my head.

But what it does have is plenty of fine actors before they were famous. One episode on a college campus centers around three students portrayed by Jon Voight, David Carradine and Candace Bergin, while Richard Kiley plays the dean.

Another one stars Jack Cassidy and features the fabulous Roy Scheider in bit part as a building manager. Other episodes include the likes of Patrick O’Neal, Hal Holbrook, Brenda Vaccaro, Alan Alda and Dick Clark (!?).

The show also includes several New York locations, including Central Park, Columbus Circle, and Lincoln Center, where we get a quick look at a bar-restaurant called The Ginger Man, which opened in 1964 and belonged to Patrick O’Neal and his brother. The place later became O’Neal’s Balloon and then O’Neals before closing in 2010.

Years after Coronet Blue was cancelled, Larry Cohen said Michael Alden was really a KGB agent who had been trained to act like an American and assigned to a team in operating in the States codenamed, yep, Coronet Blue. He decided to defect, and his irate comrades, in turn, tried to punch his ticket.

In my research I’ve found TV show websites praising the program and lamenting its demise. One post said that CBS sat on the episodes before dumping the show as a summer replacement, where it was greeted with rave reviews.

I've decided to watch a few more episodes of Coronet Blue. Who knows? Maybe I’ll end up enjoying it, But right now my advice to any aliens thinking of trekking across space to film the show’s final episode is to stay home and read a book.