No direction home: Coronet Blue

When speaking with friends about obscure TV shows, while someone always remembered T.H.E. Cat or Colonel Bleep, nobody seemed to have any recall of the 1967 summer replacement show called Coronet Blue – a fitting response for a show about a guy (Frank Converse) suffering from amnesia, with no memory of his name or past.

In the opening moments of the first episode, Converse's character boards what looks like a sightseeing boat for a meeting with a woman and two men who claim they “know what he’s up to.” There’s a scuffle and Converse is knocked unconscious and his personal items are taken before he’s thrown into the river and left for dead. He survives, but he emerges a blank slate, able only to dredge up the phrase, “coronet blue.” Armed with that, and little else, he goes off to what it means and who he is. (He names himself Michael Alden after the doctor treating him and hospital where he’s recovering).

I watched at least the first episode of Coronet Blue that summer, and it was probably the TV Guide Close Up below that drew me in, but didn’t stay with it and, with the show seemingly lost forever, I couldn’t go back and figure what went wrong for me. Then, out of nowhere in 2017, came a DVD collection of all 13 episodes of Coronet Blue – only ten of which aired. Here was my chance to resolve my personal case of amnesia. Fifty years later, was it worth the wait?

Coronet Blue seemed to quickly lose its way. While the first episode hinted that Michael Alden was involved in spy work, as he’s followed around by the same people who threw him off the boat and one tries to pick him off with a high-powered rifle, the concept sort of faded away with subsequent episodes. His search became a plot device that each week had him follow some slim lead, stumble into a stranger’s life, interact a bit, then move on – more Run For Your Life or The Fugitive than The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

At times Converse was like a guest on his own show. Michael Alden gains a British sidekick (Brian Bedford) and in one episode – I’m guessing Converse had a commitment to do Shakespeare in the Park that week – it’s Bedford’s character stumbling into a stranger’s life, interacting a bit, then moving on.

Converse and Bedford are joined by an impressive roster of youngish actors about to make their name, like Jon Voight, Candice Bergen, Hal Holbrook, Alan Alda, Sally Kellerman and Brenda Vaccaro. Dick Clark makes a rare appearance on CBS (he was always synonymous with ABC) sharing screen time with another perennial teenager, Murray the K. Watching them together, it’s easy to figure who had a TV career and who stayed on the radio.

The series wound down with no resolution to Michael Alden’s true identity, but the show’s creator, Larry Cohen (he also created The Rifleman, The Invaders and the 1966 Robert Goulet spy vehicle Blue Light), who had no input into Coronet Blue once filming began, later disclosed that his original concept had Alden turning out to be a Russian double agent.

The idea of a TV program revolving around a search to “find one’s self,” was probably first explored by Tod and Buz on Route 66. While their quest for identity and meaning was more philosophical, Michael Alden’s is literal. Coronet Blue was filmed during the summer of 1965 (and shelved for two years), no doubt at the same time Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” was climbing the charts. I wonder if anyone made the connection back then that Alden was a “complete unknown, with no direction home?” Or am I just retrofitting a pop culture mash-up for my own amusement?

Anyway, here is what I remembered best about Coronet Blue, its dynamite opening and groovy theme song sung by Lenny Welch, who had a big hit in 1961 with “Since I Fell For You.”