TVXOHOF FOR JANUARY 2020 - SGT. ERNIE BILKO

It’s a new year and it’s time to get down to business with the Television Crossover Hall of Fame now that the holidays are over.

There is no general theme to the monthly showcase spot this year, but we’re adding a new twist for 2021.  (We’ll see how long it can last.) With the Friday Hall of Famers, the last Friday of the month will be celebrating a TV show which not only originated in Earth Prime, but which also existed as a TV show within Earth Prime-Time. Of course that means there will be Zonks a-plenty to deal with, but it should be interesting.

Meanwhile we’ve got the January Showcase to announce....

January is our Classic TV month and my only regret with this new member Is that I didn’t get around to inducting him years earlier!

M/SGT. ERNIE BILKO

From the Phil Silvers Show site:
Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko (Ernie)  Service number: RA 15042699.  Ernest G. Bilko, known to one and all as Ernie, was a master sergeant who would go to any lengths to beat the system, be it by conniving, bluffing, cheating, gambling, lying, fenagling or any other devious device known only to him. No sharper operator ever existed than Bilko, no one more capable of fleecing his fellow man or forcing even the top brass at the Pentagon to quake in their shiny boots.

No one was beyond or safe from a Bilko operation - he could smell money, and he had all human life worked out, being capable not only of predicting the thoughts of others but calculating how long it would take people to think them. But Ernie Bilko had two crucial weaknesses: like all gambling addicts, he could never resist one last bet, and, down, deep down, deep deep down, resided a conscience that prevented him from making the final, ultimate move which would garner him his life's goals: wealth and physical comfort. For all his efforts, Ernie would never win.  

Ernie ran the Motor Pool unit at two US Army camps, firstly at Fort Baxter, Roseville, Kansasand latterly at Camp Fremont, Grove City, California. Nominally the posts were run by Colonel Hall but Bilko was really in charge. He was the man who made the posts work with clockwork precision with the mere click of his fingers. The colonel would have loved to have got rid of Ernie Bilko, but he recognized immediately that Ernie was an essential part of the status quo that granted him, mostly, an easy life.

For more, click here:

Here are the shows and TV specials which qualified Bilko for membership:

1955
The New Recruits
M / Sgt. Ernest G. Bilko

From the IMDb:
This is the unaired pilot for ‘The Phil Silvers Show’/’You'll Never Get Rich’. This episode is known as “The Audition Show” and is titled “The New Recruits”, which was later re-filmed with the same title and a few different actors in different roles. The re-filmed, more polished version later aired as the first episode of the ‘You'll Never Get Rich’ TV series.

O’BSERVATION
That original pilot is how the world’s timeline originally played out before it was tampered with by any number of interfering time travelers before 1955 – everyone from Helen Cutter to the Doctor from Sam Beckett to Tony Newman and Doug Phillips.  It could have been a combination of factors from them all to account for the changes between the original pilot and the episode that later aired.

1955-1959
The Phil Silvers Show
MSgt. Ernest G. Bilko
143 episodes

From Wikipedia:
‘The Phil Silvers Show’, originally titled ‘You'll Never Get Rich’, is a sitcom which ran on CBS from 1955 to 1959. A pilot called "Audition Show" was made in 1955, but never broadcast. 143 other episodes were broadcast – all half-an-hour long except for a 1959 one-hour live special. The series starred Phil Silvers as Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko of the United States Army.

1959
Keep in Step
Sgt Ernest G 'Ernie' Bilko

From the IMDb:Spun-off from ‘The Phil Silvers Show’ (1955)
Bilko learns that a movie is to be made about him - but just who will play him?

From CBS
In 1959 Phil Silvers appeared as Sgt. Bilko with Diana Dors in "The Phil Silvers Pontiac Special: Keep in Step."  

It feels as though there should be more credits for Bilko, but that could be due to Ernie serving as the template upon which future Phil Silvers characters found their inspiration – Harry Grafton, Harold Hecuba, Shifty Shafer, and over in the Cineverse, Otto Meyer.

Bilko with fellow TVXOHOF member Ed Sullivan

Welcome to the TVXOHOF, Sergeant.  I’m sure you’ll find the poker room on your own.  Bret and Bart Maverick with Brady Hawkes and even your old buddy Corporal Rocco Barbella will be ready to test your skills at the table…..

This post is dedicated to two FB friends over in the United Kingdom - Steve Everitt and Mick Clews in honor of everything they do to keep the flame for Bilko burning over there.