Here is, for my money, the most beautifully crafted of all TV logos–graphics, music, concept all working in concert to grab the viewer and seduce them into seeing what was, in actuality, a pretty crappy presentation. I speak of the ‘ABC 4:30 Afternoon Movie.’ (It’s actually more than a logo–‘intro’ is perhaps more appropriate). Unfortunately, the truth is that as much case as was lavished on this intro/logo/whatever was withheld from the movies shown. You see, the program slot ran ninety minutes with commercials. Most movies ran between ninety minutes and two hours. So a ninety minute movie needed about fifteen minutes sliced out meaning that a one-hundred and twenty minute movie would lose a full half hour (or more? My math skills are negligible). Now, many of the movies they were showing didn’t exactly collapse under the shredding–I recall them showing a lot of late Jerry Lewis (‘Boeing Boeing’, ‘Three On A Couch’, ‘Which Way To The Front’) all of which were only slightly less boring and unfunny at their reduced length. Also a lot of movies that George Hamilton seemed to be in regularly popped up and that was rarely a good thing. In any event the wholesale butchering of any finished film is really…uncool, I guess is the best word. Lousy or not, the film is what it is and ABC’s editors couldn’t have relished their job. Or perhaps they did? The hell with it. It’s still an amazing opening logo. Or intro. Or sequence. Or whatever.