KASY'S CREATIVE CLOSET CLIPS FROM "I LOVE LUCY"

Closets have been a staple in comedy for a long time, probably since the early days of Feydeau farce, maybe even earlier.  But definitely since the radio days of "Fibber McGee and Molly."

Kasy Long, a fellow member of the Facebook page "Classic TV Lovers' Haven" has put together this compilation of how the closet in the Ricardos' apartment played a key role in a lot of the 'I Love Lucy' episodes.

Take a look.  I think you'll enjoy the memories...... 

BCnU!

TVXOHOF (06/08/18) - THE LOS ANGELES CHRONICLE

With this new schedule of inducting a new member of the TV Crossover Hall of Fame every week, we've already seen the entries of the New York Chronicle, its managing editor Martin Lane, and - as a special Birthday Honors list induction - newspaper magnate Arthur Kennicut.  So now it's time to turn our attention to another newspaper owned by Kennicut - the Los Angeles Chronicle.

The LA Chronicle is probably most associated with 'Perry Mason'.  Many of the murder cases in which the lawyer was involved ended up blared across the front page of the paper.  But we've also seen it in episodes of 'Quincy, M.E.', 'Police Story', the pilot episode for 'Cool and Lam', among others.

Here are some examples:

'PERRY MASON'

 

'QUINCY, M.E.'

'THE ROCKFORD FILES'

'POLICE STORY'

'77 SUNSET STRIP'

'COOL AND LAM'

'COLUMBO'

(In this picture, Lt. Columbo is on the phone
with the weather desk at the LA Chronicle)

Welcome to the media gallery of the TVXOHOF!

FANFICCER'S FRIEND - THE VILLAGE DOCTOR

Yesterday was birthday which is why today's post is rather late.  I spent the day wallowing in the adventures of my favorite Time Lord, the Second Incarnation of the Doctor.

This month we also saw the 50th anniversary of 'The Prisoner' - at least as far as the American broadcast was concerned.

I always wanted to see those two TV shows combined in Toobworld, but of course it could only happen in fanfic now.  

But such an idea has flourished in the works of those who enjoy photoshop.  So, since I'm feeling particularly lazy today, let me share with you some fine examples of the Doctor and the TARDIS in the Village.....

BCnU!

TVXOHOF (06/08/18) - ARTHUR KENNICUT

‘COLUMBO’
“DEATH LENDS A HAND”

Brimmer:
Mrs. Kennicut, a detective agency runs on information. That's our raw material. Your husband owns three newspapers, two on this coast and one on the East. Whenever anything happens on the inside of business or politics or even in the jet-set....

ARTHUR KENNICUT AT HOME

It may be a flaw in my line of thinking, but I would think that it’s pozz’ble, just pozz’ble, that Arthur Kennicut might want to establish his three newspapers as a brand.  In doing so, he would have made sure that each of them had the same basic name, with only the location for the paper being the difference.

So I’m making the claim that Arthur Kennicut owned two of the best-known newspapers of Toobworld – the New York Chronicle (also known as just The Daily Chronicle) and the Los Angeles Chronicle. 

 

The NY Chronicle has been inducted in the last few weeks (along with Martin Lane, managing editor of the New York Chronicle).  The LA Chronicle will be inducted next week.  But as Brimmer mentioned, Kennicut owned two newspapers on the West Coast.  So what could be that third newspaper?

I can’t tell you how tempting it was to use this picture and claim that it was the Chronicle from Portland, Oregon.  (There was a ‘Murder, She Wrote’ which took place in Eden, Oregon.)  But this was more than likely the Chronicle from Portland, Maine, just up Route 1 from Cabot Cove.

I was ready to give up on the premise that all three papers had to be the Chronicle.  I was thinking that if Kennicut did have a second West Coast newspaper, he’d want one in a really major market, where he could exert his influence over topics like the nomination of a federal judge.  (As happened in “Death Lends A Hand”.)

So I turned to San Francisco, thinking that Kennicut would consider that an important metropolis in which to control a piece of the news media.  And if there was any fictional newspaper that represented the City by the Bay, then it would be the San Francisco Dispatch as often seen in episodes of ‘Ironside’.

I could have gone with that, with the claim that Kennicut wanted to change its name to the Chronicle, but that local pressure regarding tradition overturned that decision.

But then I saw another episode of ‘Ironside’ with Greg Mullavey as the guest star:

So there it was – a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle.  Now I had the three newspapers that could have been owned by Arthur Kennicut – the Kennicut Chronicles.

This is O’Bviously a Birthday Honors List membership, based on my desire to cement connections between shows which never existed before.

Welcome to the Crossover Hall of Fame, Arthur Kennicut!

THAT TWO-FACED TOBY O'BRIEN (A BIRTHDAY SALUTE)

Oh.  You didn’t think I was talking about me, did you?

I can’t tell you what a thrill it was back in January of 1974 when I opened the TV Guide for the week of the 15^th and found that one of the characters in that week’s episode of ‘Police Story’ was named Toby O’Brien!  I even still have the original listing in one of my scrapbooks.

Taylor Lacher played that Toby O’Brien, partner to Vic Morrow’s detective Joe LaFrieda.  However, what I didn’t know then and which I never bothered to research until the week of October 19^th of last year, was that it was not the first time that Detective Toby O’Brien had appeared in the series.  And that when he first showed up, it wasn’t Taylor Lacher who was playing him.

Grrr.  Arrrgh.  I hate recastaways!

TOBY O'BRIEN

TOBY O'BRIEN

 Joe LaFrieda – with Morrow playing the role – was the focus of the very first episode of ‘Police Story’, a TV movie pilot entitled “Slow Boy”.  And in that extra-long episode, Toby O’Brien was played by James Luisi, who would come to fame later in Toobworld as another fictional LAPD detective, Lt. Doug Chapman, in ‘The Rockford Files’.

Taylor Lacher was in that first episode of ‘Police Story’, playing the 2^nd Detective at the first supermarket robbery.  (I watched that scene twice, I couldn’t pick him out.)

So I started thinking about how to splain away this Zonk.  I knew I couldn’t use any of the usual reasons since ‘Police Story’ was pretty much grounded in “reality”; alien impersonations, quantum leapers, and even plastic surgery just didn’t feel right as a reason for the change in appearance.

So I thought – why not find some reason for Doug Chapman to be teamed up with the racist detective “Sally Pickles” but using Toby’s name?  And meanwhile Toby was still working under his own name.  But even that didn’t make sense.

So then I looked through the cast lists for both “Slow Boy” and the two-part return of Joe LaFrieda – “Countdown, Parts I & II”.  And save for Vic Morrow coming back as LaFrieda, none of the characters who returned were played by the original actors.

JENNY DALE LaFRIEDA
“Slow Boy” – Diane Baker played Jenny Dale, a hostage who fell in love with LaFrieda.
“Countdown” - She was now married to Joe, and as Jenny LaFrieda she was played by Laraine Stephens.

LT. DAVE BLODGETT
“Slow Boy” – Joe’s boss was played by Ed Asner, at the height of his popularity with Lou Grant in ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’; a great get for selling the series.
“Countdown” – Tige Andrews was now Blodgett, perhaps more believable as a hard-line detective.

SAL PICKLES
“Slow Boy” – Sgt. Piccolini was played by Harry Guardino who was shown his comeuppance for his racist ways when he was teamed up with an undercover cop played by black actress Kim Hamilton.  (And she was fantastic in the role; she should have been in more of the episode than that sub-plot.)
“Countdown” – Joe Santos, another alumnus of ‘The Rockford Files’ now took over the role.

Mel Scott as the detective known as K.T. returned for this LaFrieda sequel, but it wasn’t enough to gloss over those other recastaways.

So I had to accept defeat in keeping all three episodes in the same TV dimension.  And even though the usual rule is that the first version gets to stay in the main Toobworld, there was a reason I had to ship it off to Prequel Toobworld instead.  It was all due to character actor Scott Brady, who appeared in sixteen episodes of ‘Police Story’ as Vinnie – a retired cop who now operated the bar where the cops would hang out when off-duty.  There was no way I was going to cherry-pick those episodes out of the line-up and team them up with the pilot movie.  It was better in the long run to have the series, beginning with the second episode, remain in Earth Prime-Time while “Slow Boy” was relegated to the TV dimension of pilot episodes, Prequel Toobworld.

And so that’s why there have been three Toby O’Briens in the overall TV Universe.  James Luisi’s version in Prequel Toobworld, and Taylor Lacher for the main Toobworld. 

The third one?  Why, you’re reading him!  My fictional televersion, played by Yours Truly, was inducted into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame on this day back in 2005 as a member of the League of Themselves.  To my credit I have ‘The Hap Richards Show’ and ‘The Ranger Andy Show’, two local kids’ shows in Connecticut, the TV movie “The Deadliest Season”, and I’m spotted in the audience for the 100^th episode of ‘The Late Show with David Letterman’ as Dave handed vacation pictures to me and Patrick Scully. 

TOBY O'BRIEN

(YOURS TRULY)

WEARING THE DEEP BLUE SHIRT

Like I said, that happened on this day 13 years ago as the Birthday Honors List inductee.

So that means…. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

BCnU!

TUESDAY NEWS DAY - "DOCTOR FOSTER": ABROAD

From Wikipedia:
Doctor Foster is a BBC One drama television series that was first broadcast on 9 September 2015. The five-part series, written by Mike Bartlett, is about Dr Gemma Foster, who suspects that her husband is having an affair. After she follows several lines of enquiry, far more in her life unravels, including a streak of violence below the surface.  [The storyline was inspired by the ancient myth of Medea, a wronged wife who poisons her husband's new bride and kills their children.] The second series started on 5 September 2017 and concluded on 3 October 2017.

Even though the TV series concluded in October of last year, it is already being remade. But even so, both series will be allowed to remain in the main Toobworld.

From TBIvision:

BBC Studios has sold the 'Doctor Foster' format to TF1 for a French remake, turning it into the first scripted production for BBC Studios in the region.

The BBC’s French production base will co-produce the 6×52 minute series for TF1 with Storia Télévision and will begin filming this month in Biarritz and the Nouvelle Aquitaine region.

Mike Bartlett’s creation, originally produced by Drama Republic, will be renamed 'Infidéle' (Unfaithful) and directed by Didier Le Pêcheur.

The screenplay will be adapted by Hélène Duchâteau, Baptiste Filleul and Pierre Linhart. French actress and singer Claire Keim will take the lead role of Emma Sandrelli.

The deal with TF1 follows on from the news that Russia, licensed to Star Media for broadcast on Russia 1, will also remake the series starring acclaimed actress, Kseniay Rapporport, in the lead role.

BBC Studios’ French production base has launched a number of British shows in the region, notably 'Top Gear' ('Top Gear France'), 'The Great Bake Off' ('Le Meilleur Pâtissier'), 'Dancing with the Stars' ('Danse avec les Stars') and 'The Great Sewing Bee' ('Cousu Main').  But 'Infidéle' may be the first scripted production from the company.  (I have no verification on that.)

'Infidéle' will not cause a Zonk in the main Toobworld because there are enough differences being planned so that it won't be a carbon copy of 'Doctor Foster' - change in the characters' names and MAJOR change in location.  I might even be able to theorize that Emma Sandrelli was inspired by seeing the story about Dr. Gemma Foster on the news.

And when Kseniay Rapporport appears in the Russian version, I feel confidant that it will also be allowed to stay in Earth Prime-Time and that her character will also be inspired by Doctor Foster.....

Big hat tip to Rob Buckley of the blog "The Medium Is Not Enough" for the lead on this story.....

  

WISH-CRAFT - HARVEY WEINSTEIN & COLUMBO

"COLUMBO CRIES WOLF"

LT. COLUMBO:

Now you wanna tell me where you were? 

TINA:

I was with a very famous producer at his place in Malibu.

I can't see how the whole #metoo movement can avoid becoming, at the very least, a Lifetime movie.  And one of the key players who might even have several movies made about him would be mega-producer Harvey Weinstein.

Based on all the reports and allegations about his sickening treatment of women, I can easily imagine that the "very famous producer in Malibu" could be the televersion of Weinstein (but definitely not the real deal).  And the fictional Weinstein more than likely would have tried to take advantage of this favor he was doing for Sean Brantley.

Should there ever be a televersion of Harvey Weinstein who could be considered part of Earth Prime-Time (and not some Skitlandian on a show like 'Saturday Night Live'), then we could add this veiled reference as a theoretical connection to that performance.

(Anybody need a suggestion for casting Harvey Weinstein?  How about Jon Favreau?)

I hope a movie is made to depict his crimes.  There couldn't be a more deserving fellow to be tarred with such a pop culture stain.

BCnU!