"A crimp, Gene, is a man who delivers live bodies to ships who need crews."
Jarrod Barkley
'The Big Valley'
Jarrod Barkley
'The Big Valley'

But at least they were able to have a self-contained season and brought the Cain Kidnapping to a conclusion.
At any rate, during the run of the series, Agent King told the story of San Francisco's Calico Jim, a Chileno crimp whose customers at his Battery Point bar kept disappearing - kidnapped by Calico Jim's press gang to fill out the rosters of ships. The police went undercover in order to find out how it was happening and each of them were shanghaied into service.
I think the creative team for the show meant for us to think that this was the fate that lay in store for Leopold Cain. However, as it turned out, I think the story was really clueing us in about policemen who aren't always who they appear to be....
As Jim Dale would say, the facts are these:

"Some time during the eighteen-nineties Calico Jim is said to have shanghaied six policemen who were sent, one after another, to arrest him. Soon afterwards he left San Francisco. When his victims returned from their enforced cruise, they pooled their resources, chose one of their number by lot, and sent him to South America to search for the crimp. After several months the policeman came upon Calico Jim in the streets of Callao, Chile, and shot him six times, once for each shanghaied officer."
[From a San Francisco History page]

No one has brought Calico Jim to life in Toobworld. Paul Fix did play the crimp in the movie

But because Agent King told the story of Calico Jim as historical fact, we know he existed in the TV Universe as well.
BCnU!
Toby OB
No comments:
Post a Comment