Post DVD reviews here.

The review is up at http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/38956/patty-duke-show-season-one-the/

The review is up at http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/38956/patty-duke-show-season-one-the/

That was a pretty good review, but I think the writer underestimated the greatness that is Cathy. :D

Maybe someone more biased should review this.

That was a pretty good review, but I think the writer underestimated the greatness that is Cathy. :D

That reviewer is likely a Patty Lane fan :lol:

:wave: Here's another review:
http://www.elasticpop.com/dvds/dvd-review-the-patty-duke-show-%E2%80%93-season-one/

:crazy: And here's a video clip:
http://www.elasticpop.com/featured-news/the-patty-duke-show-season-one-video-clip/

Soooo looking forward to this set. Can't wait to pick it up tomorrow. :)

Here are a few more reviews:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/111157-the-patty-duke-show/

http://www.zap2it.com/dvd/zap-dvd-review-the-patty-duke-show,0,5158180.story

http://www.the-trades.com/article.php?id=11402

Randy

Patty Duke Photo Group
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/Patty_Duke_Photo_Group/

Sitcoms Online review:
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/thepattydukeshowseason1dvdreview.html

Here's some more articles about the DVD release. Not really reviews, but interesting nonetheless:

http://www.kansas.com/490/story/989870.html

Schallert recalls playing father to Patty Duke:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/25/PK1Q19KLMO.DTL

Excellent set! The picture quality is ace. Very crisp and better even than the THIStv reruns. The blacks and whites are much more defined. I am loving this set! Here's hoping Shout releases the entire 3-season series. :)

Well I just bought mine yesterday at Best Buy & stayed up til 1:30 watching 4 eps & the Bonus Feature. And while I still have 32 eps to go what I've seen so far I've liked very much.

I am so in love with SHOUT! for releasing this. And how LOVELY it is to revist the show - I only rememeber snippets of it as I was 7 yrs old when it first came on. But I do remember Patty's singles from the time and listening to them @ my cousin's house (not an Identical Cousin lol!!)

I plan to DEVOUR the remaining 32 eps by the end of the wk....!!!

Well I just bought mine yesterday at Best Buy & stayed up til 1:30 watching 4 eps & the Bonus Feature. And while I still have 32 eps to go what I've seen so far I've liked very much.

I am so in love with SHOUT! for releasing this. And how LOVELY it is to revist the show - I only rememeber snippets of it as I was 7 yrs old when it first came on. But I do remember Patty's singles from the time and listening to them @ my cousin's house (not an Identical Cousin lol!!)

I plan to DEVOUR the remaining 32 eps by the end of the wk....!!!


How much is Best Buy asking for this??

Newbie to the forum. I have all the Patty Duke uncut shows recorded from television, I am quite satisfied with those so I don't plan to purchase the discs from Shout Factory. However, if they release all three seasons and keep it a uniform six discs per season, I may go ahead and buy them. The third season might be a five disc set as there are 32 episodes instead of 36.

How much is Best Buy asking for this??

$34.99 (I only checked out 3 places near me and they were the cheapest). If you're near one chk out Target or Walmart. There's a Target not too far from me but I couldn't get there yesterday and I wanted this divine set the VERY DAY it came rolling off the assembly line!

Newbie to the forum. I have all the Patty Duke uncut shows recorded from television, I am quite satisfied with those so I don't plan to purchase the discs from Shout Factory. However, if they release all three seasons and keep it a uniform six discs per season, I may go ahead and buy them. The third season might be a five disc set as there are 32 episodes instead of 36.

No one has to buy the official release, of course, but you're not going to get the same quality that you will get from the official DVD. Also, you don't have to mess around with commercials. But if you're happy with what you've got then more power to you. :)

Very Happy with the DVDs although the first dish didn't want to start up right away..:mad: Quality is VG sound is also VG. Hope season 2 will come out soon after. Patty is just so cute;)

im newbie, thanks for a place for give greetings

Very Happy with the DVDs although the first dish didn't want to start up right away..:mad: Quality is VG sound is also VG. Hope season 2 will come out soon after. Patty is just so cute;)

Yes I hope S#2 comes out SOON! I'm on my last ep of S#1. Patty is just sublime. And Sally ain't bad either!

So far I have only managed to get through to the beginning of disc 3 but I am enjoying this. Reminds me of the days when Nick at Nite used to show this.

Here is the review I posted at Amazon:


Back in the late 90's when it became clear that the compact nature of DVD's would allow many TV shows to be released in their entirety I have been waiting for this one.

The Patty Duke Show was before my time. I had never heard of it until the late 80's, when it came to Nick At Nite. I had started to watch the channel more and more and developed a liking for older TV. It took about a couple episodes of Patty Duke to completely hook me. So much so I recorded the shows on tape. Since tape was more expensive back then, I kept recorded them in the 6 hour speed.

I was able to get most of the run of the show with the first 2 runs on Nick At Nite. That turned out to be important because after the second run, they went from editing about a minute out of the show to about 3 minutes (from 24 to 22 minutes from the original 25). The more edited versions of the show were the ones that were shown most of the time the show was on Nick At Nite.

And of course, when it came time for Nick At Nite to let go of The Patty Duke Show, it pretty much dropped off the face of the cable universe.

After that, I'd sometimes watch and would trade from those Patty Duke tapes but as my video set ups got better, the tapes looked worse.

Then came DVD and it soon became clear that DVD was a great way to get some more revenue action out of those older shows. I was only happy to get them as they came out. Still, there was one show that was always passed over.

That would be The Patty Duke Show. I had heard rumors throughout the years that a video release was being talked about. Years ago when they released Green Acres and Mr. Ed, I had heard that MGM was impressed by the sales and was prepping Patty Duke for some sort of release (either full season sets or best of).

But that iron cooled and it never happened. Some people point to the fact that studios are more reluctant to release black and white classic TV unless they are certified classics (like I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners) but whatever the reason, not much was ever heard about a release.

Until now, season one of The Patty Duke Show finds it's way to DVD from SHOUT!

It's a fantastic release with a couple caveats.

The transfers are variable in quality with some shows looking better and sharper than others. This is not a big problem as all of them are nice and watchable but they do reflect the fact that the transfers are not as up to date as the ones done for some old shows.

The sound on the shows can also be a bit wonky. Some episodes have distortion and level problems. It can be somewhat distracting and/or require you to increase the volume but it's not too much of a problem beyond that.

All the shows appear uncut with the possible exception of How To Be Popular. It runs about a minute shorter then the average of the rest of the episodes and appears to have an artificial fade out after Cathy sparks a family fight with her attempts at honesty. The 24 minute version from Nick At Nite cuts off even before that so we may never know if that is simply how the show was or if there was a small deletion for whatever reason.

Finally, it has to be explained that The Patty Duke Show had the sponsor tag announcements built into the opening credits and the final tag scene of the episode. At the end of the tag, the announcer would say "The Patty Duke Show was brought to you by..." and then they would run film of the sponsor.

Some people remember watching the show syndicated on local stations on a 16mm film chain and these sponsor tag announcements would be partially or entirely shown (shown without the sponsor, of course. The announcer would say "brought to you by..." and it would go to commercial or closing credits).

A Best of laser disc set came out a while ago that has 8 episodes intact with some commercials and all the sponsor tag material.

But on this DVD set, just as had been done with Nick At Nite the sponsor announcements were taken out and all the last scene tags have artificial fade outs before the announcer. This is why the music at the end of the tag sometimes seems to be cut short. There is no deletion of episode dialog, only the announcer that is on the end of the tag act.

I had hoped that these would be retained on DVD but it must be realized that the transfers were prepared by MGM originally for the syndication market and those are the ones that stand for DVD. Again, no big deal but I had held out a hope those moments would be kept for DVD.

As for the show itself, besides it's huge enjoyability it's also groundbreaking. Not only in having the youngest lead ever at the time in Patty Duke but also in the way the show was.

If you look at most family sitcoms of the time, Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best or Donna Reed, the daughters were demure and entirely traditionally ladylike. Nothing wrong with that, to be sure, but a little variety might be in order.

Now, here comes The Patty Duke Show. Cathy Lane was more in line with Betty "Princess" Anderson and Mary Stone but she was a sidekick. The one out in front was Patty Lane, an impulsive, alternately brilliant, alternately scatterbrained, resourceful, hip minded, ambitious free spirit who tackles things at 100 miles an hour (with an occasionally fiery temper to punctuate her usual sweet perkiness).

Also contrary to the time, Patty was often shown to be somewhat sloppy, with her hair disheveled and dressed in untucked shirts and pants. Although most of the time, she was as put together as Cathy in the dress and hair sense, they allowed her a bit a sloppiness that was unusual for girl on a TV show.

Oftentimes, Patty would proceed like a teenage Lucy Ricardo, hatching schemes to get that dress that the parents won't pay for or getting a head of a studio to see her at the high school play. She would get an impulse and tackle it in a stream of consciousness fashion. That was new.

You wouldn't find Mary Stone plunging head first into turning a popular dress of her friend's into a business or pumping out a book that makes War and Peace look like a pamphlet when she learns about another teenage writer.

Cathy was a great counter balance for Patty and often had a few surprises of her own. Cathy is basically polite, level headed and well mannered and not as outgoing as Patty. They also allowed Cathy to be jealous sometimes and to outmaneuver Patty when she thought it was important.

Patty Duke plays both girls to a turn. It never seems that one character intrudes into the other. You soon forget that it's only one talented lady playing the two (even with the sometimes awkward efforts to hide the face of Patty's double in non split screen shots).

The writing for this show fulfilled the fun loving requirements for shows like this but also managed to work in a few bits of genuine emotional effectiveness here and there.

Bottom line, shows like Gidget, The Brady Bunch and even more recent ones like Hanna Montana owe a lot to The Patty Duke Show. From the overall dynamic to even some of the story lines. The more outgoing and take charge nature of Patty Lane was a clear departure of how teenage daughters were usually portrayed in TV land as was the general acknowledgment of youth pop culture and slang.

Season one of The Patty Duke Show has some of the best episodes of the series. Some of the best include (but are not limited to):

The French Teacher: Patty falls quick for a older substitute French teacher. When he gets wise to it, the teacher asks for help from Patty's dad to discourage her in an elegant and non hurtful fashion.

The President: Both Patty and Cathy get nominated for class President and it goes from friendly rivalry to a knock down drag out.

Double Date: Cathy accidentally gets Patty's flu shot and is confined to bed for Patty's party. In order to keep Cathy's date, Patty quick changes between Cathy and herself all throughout the party (much to Richard and Cathy's date's confusion). But what is she going to do when both Patty and Cathy is entered in the dance contest?

The Actress: Patty watches Cathy try out for the part of Cleopatra in the school play but ends up getting the part when the director wants her to read too. But when Patty's scheme to get a studio head to see her act in the play is successful, she psycho-semantically loses her voice.

The Princess Cathy: Patty loses what they both think is a foreign exchange student to Cathy. He actually is a prince and soon asks Cathy to marry him.

Author!Author!: Patty sets out to write the greatest book by a teenager ever.

The Perfect Teenager: When she fails a good teenager quiz in a magazine, Patty has a crisis of confidence and enrolls in modeling school.

Patty The Foster Mother: Patty becomes a foster mother to a Korean boy but accidentally ends up adopting him for real.

Today, most fans of the show and Patty Duke know of the problems Patty Duke had during the 60's due to her having an undiagnosed mental illness and from her being managed by a controlling and sometimes abusive couple. This probably led to her being dismissive of The Patty Duke Show initially, most notably in her first book. Can you blame her? She initially had no say about what the show would and would not be and one of the controlling mechanisms of her managers was to put down her acting work.

In recent years, Patty Duke has been able to actually see some of the shows (where she really didn't have the chance before) and has come to believe that she did some good work and that the show was worthy.

Also with the retrospective on the DVD set, you see that she was able to find solace in bonding with the cast members of the show as sort of a surrogate family (William Schallert, especially).

I am glad Patty Duke has found her way to embracing the series and to see it as a positive during her troubled time.