I used to watch this series years ago when it was on the Disney Channel all the time. They played the episodes out of order so I never got a sense of the arc of the series. Did Zorro finally confront and take out Monastario at some point?
shareWell, it was a bit complicated... In episode 13 of season 1 it really looked as if Monastario would finally succeed with his dark plans. But of course, Zorro wins in the end and Monastario is arrested. We learn that he is about to face trial in Monterey.
I think they could have brought back Monastario to the series if they had wanted to. The audience certainly wanted him back and hundreds of letter demanding his return poured into the Disney Studios each week.
If you are interested in the 13 Monastario episodes of the Zorro series I highly recommend the book Britt Lomond aka. Capitan Monastario wrote about his work on the series. It's called "Chasing after Zorro" and includes every little detail about the Monastario plus a lot of anecdotes and fun facts.
The reason Monastario was not brought back was because Walt Disney didn't want him to return. Seems the actor, (the now-late) Britt Lomond, was getting as much fan mail (if not more!) than Guy Williams, and Walt's response was, "We can only have one star on this series and that's Guy!" So Lomond, in essence, was "fired" for being too popular! And no amount of letters demanding his return would change Walt's mind, unfortunately. But that mistake of Walt's (Lomond was the best villain the series ever had) was surpassed by an even bigger and fatal one by Walt: pulling the series off the air at the height of its popularity because Walt was feuding with ABC and wanted to "show those execs" a thing or two--but it backfired, as the network wouldn't budge on its demands (namely, to partially own everything he produced for them, and to plow in more and more commericals--which killed off the original Mickey Mouse Club).
shareWhy Walt? WHY!!!!!!!!????????????
http://www.livejournal.com/~mononoke_lynn/
I also heard that, once a large portion of the viewers now had color televisions or would be getting them soon, ABC wanted to do ALL their shows in color and that Walt was insistent that Zorro be in black and white. (I suppose to somehow make it look more "period". Black and white means "old" to us, right?) ABC wouldn't budge and neither would Walt. Anyway, sad to say that the magnificent Guy Williams never quite made it back to his ultra-popular status and, over time, this ruined his marriage and his career. (He almost made it "big" again on Bonanza, as a regular playing the cousin of Little Joe, etc., when Pernell Roberts' contract was in dispute, but in the end they kept Pernell and let Guy go - which was a mistake, IMHO.) Guy ended up leaving his family behind and moving to Argentina where he still had a large fan base due to Zorro being terribly popular there, and lived there until the end of his days. Even though he moved to South America, he and his wife never divorced, and evidently Guy had a good relationship with his son and daughter who visited him often over the years. If Zorro hadn't been canceled due to all the Hollywood politics, I'm sure it could have run for several years more and Guy's career and life might have turned out totally different. He died alone, sitting in a chair, in 1989 of a brain aneurysm in Buenos Aires at the young age of 65.
Britt Lomond was also a fantastic actor and fencer, and might have gone on to be a leading man, rather than playing character parts in numerous series over the years, if Walt had been able to hammer out something better than letting him go for being "too popular". To me that just doesn't make sense! He didn't do any acting in the last 25 years of his life and only dabbled at directing for a few years after he stopped acting. He had such a screen presence on Zorro. I couldn't decide whether I loved or hated Monastario! ;-) So sad to see him pass away last year.
I was a kid at the time. We got a color TV in 1960 and that was a bit ahead of the curve. They were pretty expensive and we got one because my grandparents bought us one.
ABC did not for all-prime-time color until September of 1966. NBC had done that the season before. CBS went all-color at the same time as CBS.
I doubt if ABC would have cancelled a shwo because they wanted it in color. They were broadcasting a lot of their shows in Black & White until the end of the 1965-1966 season.
Sam Tomaino
Here is a clip from the IMDB trivia page for this show:
"Although "Zorro" was the most popular show in its Friday evening slot, the series was pulled in 1959 due to legal wrangling between the Disney Studios and the ABC network. Disney tried to keep the character before the audience by shooting four one-hour episodes for another anthology series, but by the time the lawsuit was settled, the studio had decided the public had lost interest in the character and the series was canceled."
As far as I know, the legal suit was over Walt wanting B&W and ABC wanting color.
The last regular episode was July 1959 while the 4 one-hour eps. were aired in late 1960 and early 1961.
BizzyMom
[deleted]
If Walt wanted B&W and ABC wanted color, why did he switch over to NBC when that network offered him color? I think the legal wrangling was over ABC wanting to take more control over Walt's shows and shoving more commercials in them; NBC allowed him to retain total control over his product. But it's true: Walt also thought the series wouldn't work as well in color and killed it when he went over to "colorful" NBC.
share"ABC wanted to do ALL their shows in color"
Eventually, yes, but not in 1959, when it was just not feasible for a number of technical and economic reasons. Of the three networks, only NBC was really even trying much to get a few shows on in color---Bonanza, which was the first major filmed series shown in color, only premiered in 1959, and over the next five years even NBC only had a few other color shows (Disney's World, Virginian, Laramie, Hazel, Wagon Train, and few others). CBS and ABC had virtually no color series till 1965. NBC was almost all in color in the 1965/66 season, but all three networks were not fully color in prime time till the fall of 1966. So I doubt that the color issue had much to do with why Zorro was not renewed.
This site tells more about why Zorro was not renewed:
http://www.billcotter.com/zorro/hour-episodes.htm
The reason Monastario was not brought back was because Walt Disney didn't want him to return. Seems the actor, (the now-late) Britt Lomond, was getting as much fan mail (if not more!) than Guy Williams, and Walt's response was, "We can only have one star on this series and that's Guy!" So Lomond, in essence, was "fired" for being too popular!
Monasterio, not Monastario... and you call yourselves fans... :)
You don't know what you're talking about, even if you do have a name like Castro. I just watched an episode with him, and in the credits it said Monastario. So, either the credits are wrong, or you are wrong.
shareSeason 1 episode 13 at any rate. Deigo out wits the Capitan, who is then arrested by the visiting Viceroy, played by late great character actor John Dehner.
shareOh! When I watched them they showed them in order!
WARNING, SPOILER ALERT!!!!
Zorro doesn't actualy get Monostario! Diego and a few of his friends trick everyone into making it seem like he thinks everyone is Zorro, and that he's trying to put innocent people in jail, and one of the soldiers or someone orders his arrest and they take him away!
Well its now back on some stations we're getting here in NYC on Antenna TV our local NBC sub station.
Its out out of order on this one as well.
Side note a few yrs after the show ended they had some of the first season eps as
a Theatrical film with the ep where Monastario is Arrested
on location with SUPERMAN I,& OTHER STARS
http://www.vbphoto.biz/