EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by Jason, who made a one-time donation and told me to pick any 70’s TV I wanted. So how about an entire week?

Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

Telethons were a big deal in the 1970s. So much so that more than one movie got made about them — besides this, there’s Americathon from 1979 — and the Easter Seals and Jerry Lewis MDA telethons were marathon events that we all watched because, well, we didn’t have that many channels.

A Las Vegas hospital is running out of money and the chance to have their annual telethon unless they raise $8 million this year. Filmed in and around the Dunes Hotel — which closed January 26, 1993 after a time where it became a shadow of itself and also had a series of arsons — this is like a disaster movie, in that it has a huge cast whose stories are all interconnected, mostly with Marty Rand (Red Buttons), the entertainer who has hosted the event every year being considered too old. His illegitimate daughter is also coming to Vegas to tell him that she’s his daughter,  Matt Tallman (Lloyd Bridges) saves Elaine Cotton (Janet Leigh) in the midst of a brawl — Vegas seems beyond Sin City here and not the family destination that it became — and you get people like Jimmie Walker, Sugar Ray Robinson and David Burton all playing themselves.

Plus you get Jill St. John, David Selby, Randi Oakes, Polly Bergen, Dick Clark, Eve Plumb in an adult role, Kent McCord, Edd Byrnes and John Marley all in the cast. Yes, the mob is involved and when isn’t it in Vegas?

Director David Lowell Rich is one of the kings of the TV movie, as well as the disaster film. After all, he made SST: Death Flight, The Horror at 37,000 Feet, The Runaway Train, Adventures Of the Queen and the theatrical disaster that was The Concorde … Airport ’79. He also directed Satan’s School for Girls, That Man Bolt, Scandal Sheet and episodes of Naked City, Route 66, The Twilight Zone, Mannix and Cannon.

It was written by Roger Wilton, who is a one and done writer.

Originally airing on November 6, 1977 on ABC, Telethon is a caught in amber view of what Vegas was like in 1977, a dangerous and violent place where you could win big money or lose it all just as easily.

You can watch this on YouTube, complete with commercials from Las Vegas, which makes the experience so much better.