Monday, October 26, 2009

The Endangered List (Case File #50)



THE BAGEL REPORT (1972)

Written, produced and directed
by
Hugh Wilson

Cinematography by
Joe Shelton

Starring
Bill Dial
as
Dr. Bagel

with
Angela Gale (a.k.a. Gale Sigmon)
Steve Ullman
Janet Wells
Janet Meshad
Roger M. Teeter
and
Ben Jones

MPAA rating: X

This film supposedly had three screenings at the Ansley Mall Film Forum, an independent art house/revival house in Atlanta, sometime in 1972. After scrolling through 4 years of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on microfilm (1972-1975), we found no evidence of these screenings nor any other theatrical exposure for THE BAGEL REPORT in Atlanta during those years.

[TOS trivia: the Ansley Mall Film Forum was managed by actor George Ellis, who turned his "Bestoink Dooley" character from THE LEGEND OF BLOOD MOUNTAIN into a horror host on Atlanta's CBS affiliate WAGA]

from the Atlanta pages in Boxoffice magazine...

Chalk up another "local boy makes good in Hollywood" for localite Hugh Wilson. Just three years after he left Georgia, Hugh is a Hollywood success story. He is the creator and producer of WKRP IN CINCINNATI, which debuted on CBS-TV and has garnered rave reviews from critics coast to coast. Wilson, a 35-year-old former advertising man, is an affable, unassuming personality with a wide creative streak. Wilson once made his own motion picture here, THE BAGEL REPORT. It had a $40,000 budget. "I borrowed $25,000 from good old Citizens & Southern Bank," he recalls. It was supposed to be a funny takeoff on the Kinsey Report, but it didn't have enough sex in it, says Hugh. THE BAGEL REPORT now is gathering dust in a city warehouse. "The day when I'm back in town, I'm gonna pick up all those cans of film, go down to the Gulf, rent a boat, travel a few miles and bury them at sea." -- Boxoffice, October 9, 1978, p. SE-2

Ben Jones says...

"Once I was in a low-budget sex comedy called THE BAGEL REPORT, a spoof on The Kinsey Report. I played a character whose fetish was wearing women's panties over his head. He was also a chain-smoker, and as he talked the panties caught fire....It was directed by Hugh Wilson, who went on to produce WKRP IN CINCINNATI, among other successes. I think that by now he has probably destroyed all copies of THE BAGEL REPORT." -- from Redneck Boy in the Promised Land: The Confessions of "Crazy Cooter" by Ben Jones (Harmony, 2008, p. 141)

[More TOS trivia: Lead actor Bill Dial, a former critic for the Atlanta Constitution, became a successful TV writer and producer thanks to his association with Wilson a few years later on WKRP IN CINCINNATI]


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