BLIPVERT SATURDAY GETS ON THE WAGEN

And now a word from....

The advertising companies and their clients understood the potential to be found in designing commercials for the World Cup, a bigger bonanza than to be found in the Super Bowl.

For me the best so far have been the advocates of varioius countries in the tournament trying to get America (who isn't) to support their teams.  And while they're at it, they're pushing various styles of Volkswagens.....

Here's my personal favorite:

And keeping the "world" in Toobworld.....

Good luck to your team!

THE TVXOHOF 06/27/18 - A LITTLE BIT OF SOULE

With this new feature of inducting new members into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame on Fridays, it’s not always going to be the inanimate objects like the recent new members Let’s Potato Chips, Heisler Beer, and the Los Angeles Chronicle.  There will be actual characters who would not exactly qualify without some splainin to do.  For instance, when we inducted Martin Lane from ‘The Patty Duke Show’ and its reunion movie many several decades later.  Those were the only two shows which officially qualified him, leaving him one short.  However, he was the managing editor of the New York Chronicle in all of its manifestations in other shows… just never named as such.  So we filled in the blanks.  It’s kind of like a birthday honors list entry but on a weekly basis.

And we have such a case for this Friday’s induction….

Olan Soule, one of the charter members in the "Hey, It's That Guy" Club, played a California court clerk in Los Angeles four times over the years in 'Perry Mason':

“The Case of the Married Moonlighter” (1958)

“The Case of the Glittering Goldfish” (1959)

“The Case of the Deadly Verdict” (1963)

This may have been his most important showcase as that clerk – he had to make the official proclamation of the jury’s verdict, that Perry Mason’s client was guilty at the beginning of the episode.

“The Case of the Latent Lover” (1964)
He only has a short scene near the beginning of the episode, but it looks like the clerk was working exclusively for Judge Robert Alder by 1964.

 

Olan Soule (as his character, natch!) held that job on other TV series as well.

'The Jack Benny Program'
- "Jack Arrested for Disturbing the Peace" (1960) 

Jack keeps all of Beverly Hills awake with his violin playing and is arrested for disturbing the peace.

‘Make Room for Daddy’
“Jose's Guided Tour” (1963)
Jose makes extra money as a tour guide for Danny's apartment.

This is what I wrote about that episode for the “Make Room For Daddy Fans” page on Facebook:

One of the guest stars in a small role was Olan Soule, usually seen as clerks and scientists. I have three roles of a court clerk to his credit which I'm going to one day claim were all the same guy. (Makes it even better that all three appearances were in the LA court system.) So I'm going to add this small bit to the batch - that his court clerk came to NYC on vacation in 1963 and took Jose's tour of the Williams' apartment.

‘Kraft Suspense Theatre’
- “A Cruel and Unusual Night” (1964) 

A stern Lucas County, California "letter of the law" judge is kidnapped and "sentenced" to death by a man he once sentenced to death. 

(The IMDb claims that he was a bailiff in Judge Stimming's courtroom, but he wasn't wearing a bailiff's uniform and he went uncredited for the episode. Therefore, this is really just the opinion of the IMDb. 

It also supposedly takes place in Lucas County, California.  The only Lucas County is in Ohio here in the real world.  This normally wouldn’t be a problem for Toobworld – we have plenty of fictional counties in “Telemerica”.  But I don’t think a clerk in Los Angeles County could hop over to another county to cover for a sick colleague or a clerk on vacation.  I’m going to just consider Lucas County as being a very small county covering a few of the LA suburbs.  But in name only – Los Angeles still controls much of Lucas County’s bureaucracy especially the judicial branch.)

I don’t know if Olan Soule had a name in mind for his court clerk, something to help him lock into the character, but for me, I’ll call him Clark.

From Wikipedia:

Clark is an English language surname, ultimately derived from the Latin clericus meaning "scribe", "secretary" or a scholar within a religious order, referring to someone who was educated. Clark evolved from "clerk". First records of the name are found in 12th-century England. The name has many variants.

I think it was in his genes to be some kind of clerk, handed down through the generations.  You should see how many hotel/motel clerks he played through the last couple of centuries as well as telegraph clerks in the wild, wild west!

At any rate, we are celebrating his Los Angeles court clerk today with membership in the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.  Welcome aboard, “Clark”!

The Hall is adjourned!

THURSDAY'S THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY - THE GALVINS

'WINGS'

"THE WRONG STUFF"

ACE GALVIN

From the IMDb:
Brian tells Joe they need to drum up more business, and suggests that they hire a celebrity spokesman and the man Brian wants him to consider is Ace Galvin, a former astronaut. Brian brings him over to the island and while trying to schmooze him, he goes around like a wild man which makes Joe wonder if he's the right man. But when it comes time for him to sign, they learn that Roy snatched him. Roy spends his time gloating until he learns of his latest antic.

'COLUMBO'
"TRY AND CATCH ME"

EDMUND GALVIN

From the IMDb:
An aging but successful and wealthy crime fiction writer blames the death of her niece on the girl's husband. One night she invites him up to the house to sign their wills before getting him to leave and return within a few minutes so she can spring a trap (locking him in her soundproof safe). Detective Columbo arrives and suspects the writer of murder but clues are few and far between.

Ace Galvin was that astronaut.  Edmund Galvin was his murderous nephew who died back in 1977.  Ace was seventeen when Edmund was born and based on his lascivious reputation, I would not be surprised if he had fooled around with his older brother's wife and was Edmund's biological father.  And from what we learned about Edmund in that 'Columbo' episode, he certainly took after his father, even if he thought  that Ace was his uncle.

Everything about Edmund's burial would have been handled by his own family, and I don't think it was unreasonable that Abigail Mitchell, the aunt of Edmund's dead wife Phyllis, would not attend the funeral.  We certainly saw no sign of her involvement in the arrangements during the course of Lt. Columbo's investigation.

BCnU!

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS NEEDS OUR HELP! TEAM TOOBWORLD TO THE RESCUE!

In the great scheme of the blogosphere, I know Inner Toob gets a lot of visitors - the clicker tells me so.  But I don't have delusions about its impact; it's just a little diversion geared to my own O'Bsession, for my own bleeps & giggles (as they would say in the non-premium areas of Toobworld.)

So it's always a thrill when I hear from the type of people with whom I never would have crossed paths here in Winsted, nor even in the forty years I spent in Manhattan.  The first time I was so chuffed was when I got email from a member of Michael Dunn's family, thanking me for a lengthy blog post in celebration of Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless of 'The Wild Wild West' (in my mind, the greatest TV character of all Time!) 

Another time was when I published the April Fool's post about the 1949 sitcom "The Frank Morgan Show" which only got six episodes completed before the actor who played the titular character in "The Wizard of Oz" passed away.  I received a response from the historian of the Screen Actors Guild who wanted to know where I found my very detailed information - I had her fooled!  And there were others.

Well, just the other day, I got an email from one of the archivists for the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

Hi Toby—

Just discovered your blog and I’m loving it!  Maybe you can assist me?  Here at the LOC, I’ve been trying to ID some super hard movie and TV stills and you might just have the “eye” to solve some.  Can you take a look at the link below and let me know?

Thx.

Cary O’Dell
National Recording Registry
Library of Congress

Cary provided a link to the latest page of these pictures and that had links to the previous two requests for help.

I looked through them and I only recognized two people who were already identified.  (One was Mary Martin and I wouldn't even have known that had it not been she was on a poster with her name emblazoned above it.  I'm better with TV characters in their natural habitat than the actors who portrayed them.)

Most of the people in the Library's collection of the unknowns seem to be outside the purview of television.  But as I said, there are many visitors to Inner Toob from all walks of life.  Who knows?  Someone among you might recognize some of these.

Here are the three pages of links supplied by Cary O'Dell, each with a sample picture shown here as an example: 

https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2018/04/photo-blog-post/?loclr=blogns#

https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2018/05/mystery-photos-who-am-i-part-2/?loclr-blgns#

The bearded fellow is Howard Da Silva,
but the other two men are still waiting
to be identified.

Everybody knows that's Ian Ziering
of 'Beverly Hills 90210'.
But who's the lady with him?

https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2018/05/who-am-i-part-3-of-3/

If you have any information as to the identities of the people in these photos, leave a comment on the appropriate page for Mr. O'Dell.  

I hope somebody in Team Toobworld will be able to help.....

BCnU!

ANOTHER SOLORIO SPOTLIGHT - COLUMBO IN TOONTOWN

Thirty years ago as of last week, the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" was released.  In it, a human private eye in 1940s Los Angeles investigated a murder over in Toontown, the section of Hollywood which was segregated for the use of the "toons" - living cartoon characters.

It was a big hit and there were a few follow-up film shorts, but after that there were no sequels or even a TV adaptation base on the original book ("Who Censored Roger Rabbit?")

But what if there was?

Conceivably, it could take place in Earth Prime-Time as toons have been seen in the live-action Toobworld, but they came over from the Tooniverse.  Just this year, the Winchester brothers crossed over there and encountered the Scooby Gang in an episode of 'Supernatural'.  Daffy Duck was looking for a job on 'The Drew Carey Show' while Wile E. Coyote was hauled before the 'Night Court' judge.  Toons like Foghorn Leghorn and Daffy Duck (again) were interviewed by Pat Paulsen on his sketch comedy show.  Angelica Pickles was interviewed by Rosie O'Donnell and David Letterman interviewed Beavis and Butthead.  One last example - Donald Duck co-hosted the 1957 Academy Awards telecast.

So if Disney and Warner Brothers continued their collaboration in creating a TV show, perhaps there could be guest appearances by other - live-action - TV characters, played by the actors who originated the roles.

Artist Theo Solorio has thought along those lines.

Theo's version of "Try And Catch Me"

Theo is an ardent fan of 'Columbo' and has recreated many key scenes from the series with cartoon anthropomorphic animals in a "Bluthesque" style.  But she has played with the idea at times, like having the animal versions of the three most repeated actors to have played the killers - Culp, Cassidy, and McGoohan - gather for a conspiratorial drink.

Theo's versions of Paul Hanlon,
The Great Santini, and Colonel Lyle Rumford

But just recently, to mark the remembrance of Peter Falk on the date that he died (June 23), Theo had her character of Lt. Columbo Fox appear with Lt. Columbo himself.

If Toontown was in the main Toobworld, here we would have the Rumpled One working with the cartoon fox inspired by him.

In the long run, I think Mr. Levinson and Mr. Link would have insisted that such an appearance be set in an alternate TV dimension.  That may prove to be to the benefit of the Toontown show.  Who knows what type of plot lines they could come up with?

What kind of animal characters would be the killers, or the victims?  Who among live-action actors might make a cameo?

"Columbo in Toontown"....  I think it would make a great idea for a fanfic story!

BCnU!

MONDAY MINUTIAE - WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

Occam's Razor in action!

Robyn came up with the best pozz'ble splainin.  And that saves Toobworld Central a whole lot of pudding brain hurt!

Thanks, Robyn!

VIDEO SUNDAY - MOE HOWARD WITH MIKE DOUGLAS

This past Tuesday was the 121st anniversary of the birth of Moe Howard, the "tough guy" of the Three Stooges.

He made several appearances on Mike Douglas' talk show back in the day and it's O'Bvious that Douglas was a big fan.

Somebody put together this compilation of his appearances on the show.

The Stooges were a great daily highlight of my life in T-House at UConn back in the 1970s.  Like most people, my first favorite was Curly, Moe's brother.  And then I learned to appreciate the work of his other brother, Shemp, who had the thankless task of stepping in when Curly was sidelined permanently due to health problems.  Nowadays, my favorite is Larry Fine.

I don't know why I never considered Moe, maybe because he was the belligerent, abusive one, making him hard to like.  But he's the strong center which holds the trio together and that should be acknowledged and celebrated.

So here's to you, Moe!