LIFE AFTER PRIME-TIME - A YEATS REFLECTION

‘POLICE STORY’
“SLOW BOY”

When we see our favorite TV characters aging like everybody else when they’ve been on our TV screens for a long time, sometimes we don’t even notice the differences or remember how they looked when a show first started.  Of course, that’s hard to pull off with the advent of DVD collections and streaming services but even so, we accept them as being the same character even decades later.

Lieutenant Frank Columbo is a good example, seen here in his first appearance (“Prescription Murder”) and his last (at least in the main Toobworld) – “Columbo Loves The Nightlife”.

But then there are the characters whom we just never expect to see again on our TV screens; they only had very limited time in their TV shows and even though the characters lived, they were never expected to ever come back on screen… at least by that previously established name.

More than likely I’m not making myself clear.  Let me give you an example….

This is Walter Yeats.  In the early 1970s he was working in a supermarket and threw in his lot with a criminal named Slow Boy who had a penchant for robbing supermarkets.  He just needed the help of an inside man and in Slow Boy’s last heist Walter Yeats filled that role. 

It wasn’t stated as happening – this was ‘Police Story’ after all, not ‘Dragnet’ – but Walter Yeats ended up doing a stretch in prison for the part he played in that botched robbery.  I imagine he probably served ten years tops and was at least out by the time the 1990s were approaching.  Who knew what he made of that modern world?

And who knows what he must think of the world as it is today?  But he was at least out of prison long enough for the eventual societal changes to be eased into place.

We’re never going to see Walter Yeats ever again in Toobworld.  Looking him up in the IMDb, I don’t know if I ever saw the actor who played him in any other TV show or movie.  Charles Isen is his name and at least Isen’s entry in the IMDb lets us see what Walter might look like today:

WALTER YEATS
1972

Every so often, should I find an actor whose classic TV character is of interest, I’ll track down a relatively recent photo of them (or the last known picture should they have already passed away) and share it here at Inner Toob.

As to what these “atmosphere people” did with their lives after their brief moment in the Toobworld spotlight, maybe I’ll come up with some ideas, maybe not.

In the case of Walter Yeats, we know he went to prison.  Maybe he got a reduced sentence because he did help the police at the end… reluctantly.  But I think that if they hadn’t caught him, he never would have stepped forward and turn evidence against Slow Boy.

I’m also intrigued by the idea of a roman a clef televersion of Jack Henry Abbott, a prisoner who wrote “In The Belly Of The Beast” while incarcerated.  The book gained him fame and Norman Mailer fought to get him released from jail.  However, he soon got in trouble again, this time stabbing a young man to death.  Abbott was sent back to jail, where he finally died in 2002.  (I would not be surprised if one of the incarnations of ‘Law & Order’ fictionalized Abbott’s life as a “ripped from the headlines” plot.)

Maybe something similar happened with Walter Yeats.  However, his life wouldn’t have to slavishly follow that established by Jack Abbott.  Yeats could very well be still free, still writing, and perhaps even with a family of his own.

If so, this is what Walter Yeats would look like today, thanks to a publicity photo of Charles Isen…..

BCnU!