From Out of the Blue of the Western Sky
Posted by: Brad Nixon | September 3, 2010
Out of the Blue of the Western Sky … Adios, Penny
Many years ago, children, there was a television program about the adventures of an Arizona rancher who, from his Flying Crown Ranch, flew a two-engine Cessna named "Songbird," rounding up bad guys and representing good in stories similar to those of his contemporary TV heroes, Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger and Superman.
Each week, the program began with a shot of his plane zooming above the arid desert, while the announcer's voice intoned:
"Out of the blue of the western sky … comes … SKY KING!
Sky was usually accompanied by his niece, Penny (and sometimes his nephew, Clipper). Penny was always being captured by criminals hiding treasure in the Arizona desert and stuff like that. Inevitably, Sky managed to fly Songbird in and save the day at the last minute. His secret for always finding a place to land in the desert was that they filmed at places like El Mirage Lake. Neat trick. Penny and Clipper also piloted when Uncle Sky let them.
"Songbird" might not have been quite as majestic as its contemporary hero-horses Trigger or Silver, but was still pretty darned cool. With the help of the local sheriff, Sky always managed to bag the baddies without shooting them.
For the official Sky King Web site CLICK HERE
The reason for indulging in this bit of nostalgia is the news is that Gloria Winters, who played Sky King's niece, Penny, died this week. Ms. Winters had retired from acting after the series ended in about 1959, and so, for us, she'll always be the perky, indominatable Penny, who, when she wasn't being held captive by society's ne'er-do-wells, raced airplanes and helped on the ranch.
One thing I did not know until checking the Sky King site was that the series, which started life well before I landed on the planet, began an as a radio serial, and was probably based on the real life of Jack Cones, the "Flying Constable of Twenty-Nine Palms." That's neat.
For Ms. Winters' obituary in the New York Times, CLICK HERE.
I don't normally indulge in this sort of nostalgia trip for its own sake, but I can't think of any deep philosophical conclusions to draw from the hours I spent watching Sky and Superman and the Lone Ranger. A simpler, gentler world, then? Certainly. I was probably also a simpler, better person, but I was a kid. I'm not certain what the excuse is for the mindlessness of current TV programming: Are there more kids? One might imagine what a contemporary remake of Sky King would be like …
AUDIO: eerie, wafting native flute music and the sound of a wind blowing across open space
WIDE SHOT: Some iconic western landscape.
ANNOUNCER, VO: "The desert. Timeless. Spanned by the vast blue vault of the western sky, it holds its secrets and harbors the unknown."
AERIAL SHOT: Zoom out from desert landscape to high-altitude view of Sky King's Lear Jet, "Moneybird" zooming over the desert.
OK, so Sky is a billionaire rancher (think Ted Turner as played by Harrison Ford) and he's always trying to get his niece, Penny, who works in a hospice in Phoenix to come back out and get involved with running the ranch but she won't because he keeps drilling oil wells and digging copper mines there instead of putting up wind farms. Penny, of course, is constantly getting involved inadvertently with evil boyfriends who are part of drug smuggling or illegal alien smuggling or terrorism or mountaintop mining, which means that Sky is always jetting off to Oaxaca or Cartagena or Kagoogistan to rescue her, and his buddy is not the Sheriff but the head of the U.N. drug interdiction …
… and I think we'll just return to the good ol' Flying Crown, if you don't mind.
If you'd like to hear those timeless words of the TV intro once again, CLICK HERE.
© Brad Nixon 2010, 2018
I regret that there are no Sky King images here, but copyright is copyright, folks. The Sky King site has some photos, and you'll find plenty more around the Web.
Source: https://blaknissan.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/out-of-the-blue-of-the-western-sky-adios-penny/
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