FRIDAY HALL OF FAMER 01/17/2020 - LOVE THAT BOB COLLINS!

For this Friday’s Hall of Famer, keeping it in the Classic TV Groove, we’re inducting a true museum piece – Bob Collins of ‘Love That Bob!’’

BOB COLLINS

From Wikipedia:
‘The Bob Cummings Show’ (also known as ‘Love That Bob’) is an American sitcom starring Bob Cummings, which was produced from January 2, 1955, to September 15, 1959.  ‘The Bob Cummings Show’ was the first series to debut as a midseason replacement.

The series stars Cummings as dashing Hollywood photographer, Air Force reserve officer, and ladies' man, Bob Collins. The character's interest in aviation and photography mirrored Cummings' own, with his character's name the same as the role he played in the 1945 film “You Came Along”.

O'Bservation: There may be more in that movie which Zonks the main Toobworld, so I'll just leave it there in the Cineverse and have two Bob Collins living in separate metafictional universes.

Back to Wikipedia:
The series also stars Rosemary DeCamp as his sister Margaret MacDonald.

From Rod Amateau:
He [Cummings' character] was unsuccessful. He would never score with these girls because his nephew, his sister or Schultzy would show up.He had dreams and illusions of being a playboy but he wasn't making it. His frustration is what made the show funny.

O’Bservation:
Amateau wrote many of the scripts.

Here are the reasons why Bob Collins is elegible for membership in the Hall:

The Bob Cummings Show
160 episodes
(1955-1959)

The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show
- A Marital Mix-Up
(1957)

From the IMDb:
Gracie plays Cupid by trying to find a wife for their plumber, Mr. Jansen.  Robert Cummings appears in his role as fashion model photographer Bob Collins.

O’Bservation:
Interestingly, Bob Cummings also appeared in an episode of this series as himself.  This was just a cameo.

Here's Lucy
- Lucy's Punctured Romance
(1972)

From the IMDb:
Lucy has a new boyfriend Bob Collins, but Kim and Uncle Harry are worried. The milkman doesn't help matters when he informs the pair the Lucy's boyfriend is a playboy. Kim & Harry cook up all kinds of crazy stunts to scare off Bob.

O’Bservation:
Cummings also played a different character in another episode, but although his first name was Robert/Bob, his interests lay in antique furniture.  Not worth jumping through hoops to come up with a splainin to do about them being the same guy.  Instead, I think it’s easier to claim that they were “identical cousins”….

From Wikipedia:
In some episodes, Cummings also doubled as Bob and Margaret's grandfather, Josh Collins of Joplin, Missouri.

O’Bservation:
If Bob Collins does have DNA as strong Corporal Randolph Agarn’s, it’s pozz’ble, just pozz’ble that other TV characters played by Bob Cummings in Toobworld could be related to him… including Bob Cummings.

The Twilight Zone
King Nine Will Not Return

From the IMDb:
A pilot of a downed WWII comes to in the African desert and desperately tries to find out what happened to the rest of his crew.

If all the relatives to Bob Collins (hopefully just the males) look alike, then Captain James Embry, who piloted the B-25 bomber nicknamed the King Nine during World War II, could be his uncle.

I figure he’d be the son of Josh Collins’ sister and he served as an inspiration for Bob Collins to get into aviation.

No fate was ever mentioned for Bob Collins, but I think it’s safe to say that he most likely died around the same time as Robert Cummings did, in 1990.

Whether he was still flying at age 80 like his Grandfather Josh did, he may have died flying his plane at that age.

It might not only be the date of death for Bob Collins which connects him to Cummings.  If other facets of the actor’s life influenced that of his character’s off-screen life, it could be that Bob Collins was pretty "methed-up" when he took off on his last flight….

Welcome to the Hall, Mr. Collins.  You should meet up with a few others you know here – George Burns and Lucille Carter among them….

Don't get all teary-eyed....

BY ANY OTHER NAME? GET SMART, PERRY MASON

In ‘Get Smart’, we never learned the real names of CONTROL’s Chief and Agent 99.  However, in a few episodes of the series, the Chief (as played by Edward Platt) was addressed as Thaddeus, but he was working undercover and so that may be an alias.

From Wikipedia:
The Chief (Edward Platt) is the head of CONTROL. Although sarcastic and grouchy, the Chief is intelligent, serious, and sensible. He began his career at CONTROL as "Agent Q". (He joined the organization back when they assigned letters rather than numbers.) He is supportive of Agents 86 and 99 and rates them as his two closest friends, but he is frustrated with Smart for his frequent failures and foul-ups. As revealed in the season-one episode "The Day Smart Turned Chicken", his first name is Thaddeus, but it is rarely used. His cover identity (used primarily with 99's mom) is "Harold Clark". Another time, when KAOS arranges for the Chief to be recalled to active duty in the U.S. Navy (as a common seaman with Smart as his commanding officer), his official name is John Doe.  

“John Doe” is an O’Bvious alias.  “Harold Clark” also is an alias and as the article mentioned, it was specifically used when dealing with 99’s mother.  I accept “Thaddeus” as being the Chief’s real name.

The interesting part of that Wikipedia synopsis for me is that the Chief was recalled to active duty in the US Navy.  As such, I think we have a candidate for another appearance by the Chief in the main TV Universe.

PERRY MASON
THE CASE OF THE SLANDERED SUBMARINER

From the IMDb:
Perry moves to military court to defend a submariner of two murders - one his wife. The second victim is an officer investigating the murder and in charge of approving a new device for the Navy from a company bought by his father-in-law.  

In the episode, Ed Platt played Commander Driscoll.  Driscoll served as the prosecutor in the murder hearing against Perry’s client Robert Chapman.

At least as far as the IMDb lists the characters, he’s only named as Cmdr. Driscoll.  So who’s to say his first name wasn’t Thaddeus in that episode?  And he might not have been on active duty, he may have been recalled from his then-current position as an agent of CONTROL.

I’m not saying this has to be considered as official.  Your mileage may vary.  But it works for me.

BCnU!

MONDAY MEMORIAL TVXOHOF TRIBUTE 01/13/2020 - GERALD LLOYD KOOKSON III (AKA KOOKIE)

From the Associated Press:
Edd Byrnes, who played cool kid Kookie on the hit TV show “77 Sunset Strip,” scored a gold record with a song about his character’s hair-combing obsession and later appeared in the movie “Grease,” has died. He was 87.

Byrnes died Wednesday at his home in Santa Monica, his son, Logan Byrnes, said in a statement.

Edd Byrnes came to regard the role of Kookie as a millstone, typecasting him and limiting future roles.  But it also has now provided him with an immortality in his video legacy.

And to acknowledge that, this is a memorial induction into the TVXOHOF.  We haven't done one of these in a while - for which I'm thankful.

In the month when we celebrate the classic characters of Toobworld, we’re inducting Gerald Lloyd Kookson III (better known as “Kookie”) into  the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.

From Wikipedia:
[Edd] Byrnes was cast in “Girl on the Run”, a pilot for a detective show starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr. Byrnes played contract killer Kenneth Smiley who continually combed his hair – Byrnes said this was an idea of his which the director liked and kept in.

Around this time Byrnes decided to change his acting name from "Edward" to "Edd". "I just dreamed it up one day," he said. "Edward is too formal and there are lots of Eddies."

The show aired in October 1958 and was so popular Warners decided to turn it into a TV series ‘77 Sunset Strip’.  Byrnes' character became an immediate national teen sensation, prompting the producers to make Byrnes a regular cast member.

They transformed Kookie from a hitman into a parking valet at Dino's Lodge who helped as a private investigator.

Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., explained the situation to the audience:

We previewed this show, and because Edd Byrnes was such a hit, we decided that Kookie and his comb had to be in our series. So this week, we'll just forget that in the pilot he went off to prison to be executed.
— From the pre-credit sequence for the episode "Lovely Lady, Pity Me"

O’Bservation – Kookie and Kenneth Smiley were identical cousins.  That way we don’t have to banish the pilot to some alternate Toobworld.

More from Wikipedia:
The 'breakout' character, who had not been included in the pilot film, was Gerald Lloyd "Kookie" Kookson III (Edd Byrnes), the rock and roll-loving, wisecracking, hair-combing hipster and aspiring PI who initially worked as the valet parking attendant at Dino's, the club next door to the detectives' office. "Kookie" often found a way to get himself involved in the firm's cases, and was eventually made a full partner in the firm with his own office.

Kookie's recurring character—a different, exciting look that teens of the day related to—was the valet-parking attendant who constantly combed his piled-high, greasy-styled teen hair, often in a windbreaker jacket, who worked part-time at the so-called Dean Martin's Dino's Lodge restaurant, next door to a private-investigator agency at 77 Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Kookie frequently acted as an unlicensed, protégé detective who helped the private eyes (Zimbalist and Roger Smith) on their cases, based upon "the word" heard from Kookie's street informants. Kookie called everybody "Dad" (as in "Sure thing . . . Dad") and was television's homage to the "Jack Kerouac" style of cult-hipster of the late 1950s.

To the thrill of teen viewers, Kookie spoke a jive-talk "code" to everyone, whether you understood him or not, and Kookie knew, better than others, "the word on the street." Although the Kookie character was at least several years older than Jim Stark, James Dean's character in the film “Rebel Without a Cause”, Byrnes exuded a similar sense of cool. Kookie was also the progenitor of Henry Winkler's The Fonz character of the ‘Happy Days’ series (switch hot rod for motorcycle; same hair and comb). By April 1959 Byrnes was among the most popular young actors in the country.

"I was a nobody," said Byrnes. "Now I'm dragging in over 400 letters a week and I'm a name."

Byrnes made a cameo as Kookie in ‘Surfside Six’ and ‘Hawaiian Eye’, a 77 Sunset Strip spin off.  

Here are the appearances made by Byrnes which qualified Kookie to become a member of the TVXOHOF:

1958-1963
77 Sunset Strip
163 episodes

Hawaiian Eye
- Swan Song for a Hero
(1960)
- Among the Living
(1962)

Surfside 6
- Love Song for a Deadly Redhead
(1962)

Kookie & Co. (TV Movie)
(1964)


O’Bservation: This was a TV movie made in West Germany.  Beyond a list of his co-stars, I know nothing more about this.  Byrnes may not have been appearing as his ’77 Sunset Strip’ character.  For years he’s been saddled with Edd “Kookie” Byrnes whenever his name showed up in print.  It could be this was just a variety show which he headlined as himself.

I’m including it for now, but if it has to be jettisoned, its absence won’t affect Kookie’s eligibility for the Hall.

This won’t be the only Edd Byrnes role which will find a home here in the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.  Another will be inducted in September when we look at characters who appear on Toobworld television.

I can’t tell you his name, however.  I don’t know it!

Welcome to the Hall, Mr. Kookson.  You’ll find your old buddies Stu Bailey and Jeff Spencer already ensconced here, dig?