TWO FOR TUESDAY - SAMANTHA DAIN II

Fifty years ago, a young folksinger died and had it not been for Robert Ironside's belief in her, Samantha Dain's death would have gone down in history as a suicide.

She's practically forgotten now in Toobworld and she is basically remembered as a one-hit wonder.  As a companion piece to my earlier tribute to her, here are the lyrics to "Even When You Cry" by Samantha Dain.......

(Those lyrics which I'm not certain that I transcribed correctly are italicized.)

EVEN WHEN YOU CRY
by Samantha Dain 
Are you hungry?  Do you stammer?  Are you lonely?  Are you cold?
You're a small little fellow who is two years old. 

Hold your tongue there, boy, now that you know how to talk.
Watch your step there, boy, now that you know how to walk.

Between the day you're born to the day you die,  
You're lucky if they hear you - even when you cry
Even when you cry.

In the Good Book, buddy, learn the Golden Rule.
But forget it, buddy, once you're out of school.

Take your pick now, brother: save your soul or save your skin.
In a rat race, brother, only rats can win.

Between the day you're born to the day you die,  
You're lucky if they hear you - even when you cry
Even when you cry.

Off the grass there, Mister, keep yourself in line.
If you tell me your troubles, I won't tell you mine.

Step aside now, Grandpa, you're holding business up.
Find yourself another street to shake your old tin cup. 

Between the day you're born to the day you die,  
You're lucky if they hear you - even when you cry
Even when you cry.

You're lucky if they hear you - even when you cry
Even when you cry.

'IRONSIDE'
"THE MAN WHO BELIEVED"

TWO FOR TUESDAY - SAMANTHA DAIN

Gabe Kotter would yammer on and on so often about the various wacky members of his family that his wife Julie hardly ever got a chance to talk about her own family.  Not that doing so would have brought many happy memories.....

Julie's maiden name was Hansen and she grew up in Nebraska.  (She had come to New York for college and that's where she met Gabe.)  She was the middle of three daughters, a ranking determined by only a few minutes as she was the younger of twins.

The Trueniverse audience met Julie's younger sister, Jenny Hansen, when she came to visit and Jullie was afraid that Jenny would end up running off with Juan Epstein.  But neither of the siblings mentioned Julie's twin sister, Samantha, during that visit.  Even after nearly a decade, the subject was still too painful….  

Samantha Dian Hansen was a strong-willed, independent young girl all her life, always taking the lead in whatever childhood adventures she would embark on with the more reserved Julie by her side (and eventually with Jenny tagging along behind them.)  As she got older, she found a deeper form of escape in music, setting the poems she wrote to music and playing them at weekend campfires with her friends.

By the time she turned 18, as the Vietnam War and the counterculture began to widen the generation gap, Samantha was chafing to be free from the confines of Nebraska and the restrictions imposed upon her by her parents.  She wanted to "find herself" and felt the allure of San Francisco, with its growing communes of like-minded young people, beckoning her.

Samantha Dian Hansen left home and was never seen again in the Cornhusker State.

She shed her old inhibitions and her identity as well, changing her name to Samantha Dain.  One evening she walked barefoot into a small cafe in the North Beach area with her guitar slung over her shoulder, and without even asking permission from the owner Harry Brancusi, she commandeered a stool on their small stage and began to play.

Brancusi, as was the case with everyone in the cafe that night, was captivated by her sound, as well as by her looks and her personality, and so he allowed her to keep playing her songs.  

Also in the audience that night was Ray Harrison, a small-time manager on the lookout for fresh new talent.  (His full name was Raymond Harrison Spangler, the son of Albert Spangler - a New York attorney working for the Daily Examiner newspaper.)  The business had hardened Harrison, who had not seen much success with his clientele.  But when he heard Samantha sing from the depths of her soul, he knew he had finally found his ticket to the Big Time.

Harrison signed her that night and made arrangements with Brancusi that she should continue playing in his club in order to build her reputation.  The name of the café was changed to “The Psychedelic Daffodil” to better reflect the ambience being established each night with Samantha’s music.

Hoping to capitalize on her talent as quickly as possible, Harrison urged Samantha to record her “poem-songs” for an album.  At first the sales were anemic, so Harrison decided to take a gamble: he arranged an overseas tour for Samantha to enhance her reputation.  A vocal and very appreciative European audience transformed her into a barefoot sensation and Samantha returned to her home country a star with “Even When You Cry” as her big hit.

But it was short-lived.  She discovered during the trip home that one of the people whom she had trusted had betrayed her, had used her for their own criminal activities.  And she began to chafe from the isolation created by those same people around her who were isolating her from the outside world.

Not long after she had returned from Europe, and too soon in Life, Samantha Dain – the former Samantha Dian Hansen of Sweetwater, Nebraska, - perished from a fall off the Golden Gate Bridge, her veins full of heroin. 

(Although he couldn’t save her life, a consultant for the SFPD, Chief Robert T. Ironside, was able to rescue her reputation.  When he had be recuperating from the bullet which had crippled him, the Chief received a letter from France.  Samantha had heard about the assassination attempt and reached out to him in an effort to buoy his spirits for the months of rehabilitation which lay ahead of him.  From her words of encouragement, Ironside felt as if he knew the type of young woman was.  When no one else was willing to see beyond the “facts”, he believed in who Samantha Dain really was.  And so he was able to finally probe that she did not commit suicide, but that she was murdered.)

It has been fifty years since Samantha Dain died.  I’d like to think that her twin sister Julie Kotter still lives in Toobworld, but unfortunate events in the Trueniverse might have had influence on her fate.

Samantha’s fame has been eclipsed; basically remembered now as a one-hit wonder from the flower-power generation.  Twice a year on radio station KJCM, former SFPD officer Jack Killian would play Samantha’s one album on his late-night talk show as a tribute.  On her birthday he would spin the entire album, but then on the anniversary of her death Killian would only play “Even When You Cry” without comment.  (I think he had been infatuated with her when he was a teenager.)

In my next post, I’ll share with you the lyrics of Samantha Dain’s hit song “Even When You Cry”…..

SHOWS CITED:

• ‘Ironside’ – “The Man Who Believed”
• ‘Welcome Back, Kotter’ – “Sweathog, Nebraska Style”
• ‘Ellery Queen’ – “The Adventure Of The 12^th Floor Express”
• ‘Midnight Caller’
• ‘The Young Riders’ 

BCnU

THE HAT SQUAD - REMEMBERING ANNE JEFFREYS

Anne Jeffreys, the elegant actress who was Dick Tracy's girlfriend Tess Trueheart in the movies and starred opposite her husband Robert Sterling as "the ghostess with the mostess" on television's 'Topper', has died. She was 94.

Jeffreys later played the snobby socialite Amanda Barrington on 'General Hospital' during a long association with the soap opera and appeared as David Hasselhoff's mom on 'Baywatch'.

Jeffreys and Sterling met when she was in "Kiss Me Kate" and the actor — who had recently divorced actress Ann Sothern — was making his Broadway bow in "Gramercy Ghost" at the theater next door.

They married in November 1951, worked together on the 1952 Broadway musical "Three Wishes for Jamie" and launched a successful nightclub act. All that led to the charismatic couple being cast as the debonair wife-and-husband ghosts Marion and George Kirby — who playfully haunt sober banker Cosmo Topper (Leo G. Carroll), who now occupies their old home — on CBS' 'Topper'.

The series, which aired for two seasons from 1953-55, was based on Thorne Smith's 1926 fantasy novel that famously was adapted for the classic 1937 MGM comedy which starred Constance Bennett and Cary Grant as the Kirbys and Roland Young as Topper. (A young Stephen Sondheim wrote for the CBS show and found the pace grueling.)

Jeffreys and Sterling later starred on the 1958 ABC comedy 'Love That Jill' (they played heads of rival modeling agencies), but that series lasted just a handful of episodes. They were together until Sterling's death in 2006'.

In the 1980s, Jeffreys played Jane Wyman's romantic rival Amanda Croft on the CBS primetime soap opera 'Falcon Crest' and was Tony Franciosa's office manager on the short-lived ABC drama 'Finder of Lost Loves.

Jeffreys first appeared on ABC's 'General Hospital' as Amanda in 1984 and made her last appearance in 2004. In between, she played the character on the G.H. spinoff 'Port Charles'.

Her TV résumé also included 'My Three Sons', 'Bonanza', 'Dr. Kildare', 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' (in a reunion with her 'Topper' co-star Carroll), 'The Delphi Bureau', 'Murder, She Wrote', 'L.A. Law', the 'Rich Man, Poor Man' sequel 'Beggarman, Thief' and, in her final onscreen appearance in 2013, HBO's 'Getting On'.

(From The Hollywood Reporter)

That is an incredible cast of characters whom Ms. Jeffreys contributed to Toobworld.  O'Bviously there were many actors who added far more, but her clan were in plenty of heavy-hitters and high-shelf programs.  Thanks to so many retro TV networks on the air today, I'm sure we will always have one of her cathode haints with us. For example, Mrs. Irene Buchannon, the mother of lifeguard Mitch Buchannon:

But Prime-Time marches on in Toobworld and as with Ms. Jeffreys herself, all of her characters have aged as well.  As is customary with Toobworld policy, we now consider all of those characters whom she has played to have passed on as well.  We don't like recastaways unless there's a good splainin provided and there are times when only the original actor is acceptable i the role.  Could you picture anybody else playing Archie Bunker instead of Carroll O'Connor or Lt. Columbo without Peter Falk?  Many other actors were considered for both of those roles before them, but once they were cast, that was it.

And the same should hold true for those women played by the loverly Anne Jeffreys.

In most cases, that ruling has been taken out of our hands due to plot details or the Toobworld timeline.  For example, the roles she played in 'Bonanza' and 'Wagon Train' must be dead as both series took place circa the 1860s.  (The only TV Western characters I know would still be alive in Toobworld would be Miguelito Loveless and his father, Mr. Roarke.)

And in the case of Amanda Barrington (who came so close to gaining entry into the TVXOHOF), her death was established within the framework of the soap opera.  She was last seen in July of 2004 at the funeral of Lila Quatermaine and in 2013 it was revealed by her son that she had passed away some years before.  It's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that similar circumstances befell her characters in other shows of which I'm not aware.

But there are two of Anne Jeffreys' characters who are exempt from this consideration. And one character I'm giving a pass.  (I'm guessing you Whiz Kids of Team Toobworld can figure out who that is.)

First up is the Prime Minister of the planet Ruatha.  As she governed the planet in the 25th Century, she hasn't even been born yet.  So the Toobworld death panel has no jurisdiction over her fate.  ('Buck Rogers Of The 25th Century' - "Planet Of The Amazon Women")

It's probably unlikely, but Siress Blassie might just be still alive.  ('Battlestar Galactica' - "The Man With Nine Lives")  We know nothing about the longevity of a Galactican's life-span.  At the very least, it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that one of Ms. Jeffrey's one-shot characters - who appeared after 1980 and who had a very limited and very shallow backstory - could be Siress Blassie.  Once the Galacticans arrived on Earth, they would have hid in plain sight under an alias, passing herself off as a native Terran.

There is a one-shot character of Ms. Jeffrey's who had too deep a back-story to mess with.  But she is one of my favorites - Calamity Rogers, a former movie star who was now living in the mountains of Ghulat.  (Calamity met and married a native of Ghulat and left the world of show business to move with him back to his native land.)  She starred mostly in Westerns when she was in Hollywood, with "The Cowboy And The Single Girl" being the movie that made her a star and established her reputation as "the  girl with the fastest gun in the West".  (From 'The Man From UNCLE' - "The Abominable Snowman Affair")

What I find interesting about this character is that we can make so many theoretical connections from other shows to her. 

Most O'Bvious would be fictional movie Westerns which could have featured her as an actress.  But the big one is her name - "Calamity Rogers" could be a stage name so if Anne Jeffreys ever played an actress in some other show, or any woman with no information about her past, we might be able to parlay that into being Calamity using her real name.

And if Anne Jeffreys made any Western movies, we can use frame grabs from those films and claim that they show Calamity Rogers as the character.

And then there is the ethereal, non-corporeal beauty that is Marion Kerby.  She also predeceased Anne Jeffreys, but then came back to Earth Prime-Time to haunt poor Cosmo Topper who now lived in the house previously occupied by Marion and her husband George.

Maybe some exorcist came along after Topper and his wife passed away in order to cleanse the house, so that it could be sold to new tenants.  But she's sweet and harmless so I don't know why characters like Dean and Sam Winchester would ever be interested in driving out their spirits. 

So rest well in your state of unrest, Mr. and Mrs. Kerby.  Although we might not see either of you - or even Neil! - ever again, I'd like to think you are somewhere out there in Toobworld.

Good night and may God bless Anne Jeffreys.......

O'BSERVATIONS:
You had to wait until the penultimate shot in her episode of 'The Man From UNCLE', but Ms. Jeffreys was reunited with her 'Topper' co-star Leo G. Carroll who played UNCLE boss Alexander Waverly.  And the way she was hanging on his every word, I have a good feeling that Mr. Waverly was going to get lucky that night....

I will be doing more research into Ms. Jeffreys' other roles to see if there was one woman who could have been the Galactican Siress Blassie living among the Terrans.

I only wish Amanda Barrington had been able to gain one last appearance somewhere in the ABC schedule so that she could have the trifecta to qualify for inclusion in the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.  She had 'General Hospital' and 'Port Charles' to her credit.

BCnU!

TVXOHOF, OCTOBER 2017 - GUIDO THROUGH THE YEARS

It has long been the tradition here at Toobworld Central for the October inductee into the Crossover Hall of Fame to be somehow connected with horror, or just be horrible in general.  Even when there were year-long themes, I found a way around that - like Frank Barone of 'Everybody Loves Raymond' and Kang the Klingon from 'Star Trek'.  And that was all due to the month being the home of Halloween.

But October is also the month in which we celebrate the heritage and contributions of Italian-Americans.  (If you feel it necessary to call it Columbus Day, feel free.  I just don't think he deserves to be honored in connection with the ethnic pride of Italian-Americans.)

So since I'm using this year to catch up with the memorial inductees into the Hall, I thought I might finally tackle a thorny problem with an Italianate connection - how to splain away Guido Panzini.

 

GUIDO PANZINI

From Wikipedia:

Pat Harrington became famous in the 1950s as a member of Steve Allen's television comedy troupe, the "Men on the Street" (which also included Don Knotts, Tom Poston and Louis Nye). He made many appearances as the comedic Italian immigrant "Guido Panzini" on 'The Jack Paar Show' in the mid-1950s.

In a 1965 episode of 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' ("The Bow-Wow Affair"), Harrington reprised his role as "Guido Panzini" (whom he also played in the February 8, 1966 episode of 'McHale's Navy' and in the May 2, 1983 episode of 'One Day at a Time'). 

So the appearances of Guido Panzini split right down the middle - six shows in total, three involving comedy sketches and the other three in which Guido got involved in Toobworld adventures.  So my easy splainin is that there are two Guido Panzinis - one in Skitlandia seen in the 1950s and the other one who lived in the main Toobworld.

However....

Although Guido appeared first in the main Toobworld in an episode of 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.', on the Toobworld timeline he showed up first involved with the crew of the PT 73 during World War II.  Twenty years later he was then seen dealing with the international spy agency.  And about two decades after that, he was a fashion designer who bore an uncanny resemblance to Duane Schneider, a building super.  

And yet he didn't seem to age significantly.  In fact twenty years after World War II, he looked younger than he did during the Big One.  (I'm thinking it was done with wigs, fake beards. and makeup.)

He also had a variety of jobs - he was a con man in Italy, an expert on dogs and a veterinarian to boot when Illya consulted with him, and as mentioned earlier, a fashion designer working with Ann Romano.

Although he was a confidence trickster during the war, I don't think he was just passing himself off with those other occupations.  I think he had live long enough to gain a degree in veterinary medicine and then decided to try his hand at fashion.

Here's what I'm thinking - Guido Panzini was an immortal.  And probably the Highlander kind.

This would splain away why Guido disappeared for long stretches of time.  It was a combination of taking the time to learn a new trade, and also he was hiding from the other Immortals who were seeking to cut off his head to gain his immortal energies.

Guido Panzini was never seen again in the main Toobworld.  And as Pat Harrington has passed away, I''m afraid it's not likely he ever will grace our screens again.  In fact, I'm afraid that it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble that Guido Panzini's luck finally ran out with the other Immortals......

Now even though I said Panzini was not seen again in Toobworld, I should qualify that as meaning he was never seen again under that name.  Some of Harrington's other characters could have been Guido with an alias.  (I would not be surprised if he also knew how to drop that accent when necessary.)

But I'm not going to work through the list to find some likely candidates.  It would entail learning about those characters to see if they had back-stories which would disqualify them from consideration.

I will put forward this suggestion though - a theory of relateeveety.  I know the Immortals were supposed to be rendered sterile by their transformation from being normal humans, but what if that was just a mistakenly held myth?  What if they could procreate?

It would mean that a lot of characters in Toobworld who looked like Guido had inherited his strong telegenetics.  And Guido could have been dipping the Panzini Pencil into some willing inkwells - no, wait.  That metaphor doesn't work.  No matter.  I never metaphor I didn't like....

Anyhoo, Panzini was pretty free and easy with Li'l Guido throughout the ages, ever since he had been transformed.  So nothing says that characters played by Harrington who lived in the past - like NY Examiner columnist Mitch McCully couldn't share the same father as those who were seen in more contemporary shows like Thomas Kitzmiller, the Vice President of Public Relations for the Oceanic International Oil corporation.

But they didn't inherit his immortal lifespan.....

And as a theory of relateeveety, there's another reason the Guido Panzini deserves membership.  It might not actually be true, but who's to say so?

Here's a list of Guido Panzini's appearances in Skitlandia:

"The Steve Allen Plymouth Show" 

1 episode (October, 1958)

"The Jack Paar Tonight Show" 

13 episodes (November, 1958 - January 1961)

"Laugh Line" 

Pilot episode (1959) 

And then we have the immortal Guido Panzini of Earth Prime-Time:

"The Man from U.N.C.L.E."
    - The Bow-Wow Affair (1965)

The Man From UNCLE S01E20.The.Bow-Wow.Affair by Michael-London-65

"McHale's Navy"
    - McHale's Country Club Caper (1966)

"One Day At A Time"

    - Panzini (1983)

And Guido exists in the audioverse as well.....

One of the first crossover enthusiasts I met online, Thom Holbrook, has an amazing archive of well-researched and indexed crossovers at his Spinoffs & Crossovers site.  And he tackled the Panzini issue as well.  You can read it by clicking here.  (But I also suggest you dive in and sample other pages as well.)

So TWO Guido Panzinis enter the Hall today!

Benvenuto, Guido Panzini!  E arrivederci......

"STAR TREK" AND "THE PLANET OF THE APES" - IF ONLY.....

From Wikipedia:

Star Trek/Planet of the Apes: The Primate Directive is a five-issue crossover comic book series produced in partnership by IDW Comics and Boom! Studios and released between December 2014 and April 2015. The series was written by brothers Scott and David Tipton, with artwork by Rachael Stott, her debut work. The Primate Directive combine elements and characters from the original Star Trek series and the original Planet of the Apes film series. It features Captain James T. Kirk seeking to prevent the Klingons from installing a puppet gorilla government on the planet, which requires them working with various Apes characters such as George Taylor, Cornelius and Zira.

The Tipton brothers were approached by IDW to write the series after their work on the crossover miniseries Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation2. Stott's artwork included the likeness of Charlton Heston, which was allowed after an agreement between IDW and the Heston estate. The first issue, released on December 31, 2014, saw sales of over 53,000, though sales figures would subsequently drop. However, the series has been received positively by critics, who praised Stott's artwork and the nature of how the two franchises interacted.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~``~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
Hikaru Sulu and Uhura discover the Klingons have been seeking to expand into another universe using a gateway built of advanced technology in order to get around an Organian enforced peace treaty. The USS Enterprise approaches and engages two Klingon vessels, before pursuing one of them through a portal to the other universe. They arrive in orbit of Earth, albeit one whose history has diverged. Captain James T. Kirk leads an away team to the surface where they see the Klingon Kor providing the gorillas with rifles. They are detected and flee. Kor promises to deal with the interlopers, while the Starfleet team return to the ship. They discuss the situation and decide to stop the Klingons. Returning to the surface near the Statue of Liberty, they follow human tracks around to a cove.

They find George Taylor, who asks them to help overthrow the apes. Kirk says they cannot, but agrees to meet with Cornelius and Zira and has the group transported to their location. Once they arrive, Kirk instructs the Enterprise to use the phasers set to stun on a large group of gorillas. The two chimpanzees explain ape society to the Starfleet crew before Taylor argues that the apes should be overthrown again. Kirk turns him down, but enlists the help of the chimpanzees. Taylor abducts Pavel Chekov, steals his communicator and has himself beamed to the Enterprise. Kirk, Spock and Chekov follow him to the ship where they find him trying to steal a shuttlecraft. He and Kirk get into a fist fight, before Taylor agrees to follow Kirk's lead back to the surface to work with the apes. Kor gives Marius a disruptor and a uniform, ordering him to deliver the ape society to the Klingon Empire. The Enterprise crew detect the gorilla army movement and beam Zira into Ape City to warn Dr. Zaius and the gorilla General Ursus.

Klingon-backed gorillas attack Kirk's team, who have taken position in the Klingons' store room but the attackers are defeated. However, they discover that in the fracas, a sniper rifle was taken. Taylor, Kirk and the Starfleet crew ride out to stop the Klingons, and prevent Kor from assassinating Ursus who has gone to talk down Marius. They defeat Kor and his colleagues, but the Klingons beam back up to their ship. Ursus and Marius fight, with Ursus victorious. Kirk and his team leave to pursue Kor, leaving the rifles in the hands of the gorillas who are no longer puppets of the Klingons. The Enterprise chase Kor's ship for three days, and find themselves back at the alternative Earth as the atmosphere is destroyed by a cobalt bomb which eradicates all life on the planet. The Enterprise pursues Kor back through the portal to their own universe. Meanwhile, Cornelius, Zira and Milo are in orbit on-board a primitive space vessel having witnessed the destruction below. Not knowing what to do, they consult a tricorder left behind by Kirk's team which instructs them on how to travel through time using a slingshot effect.

Unfortunately for ye old Caretaker, the comics are focused on the film adaptations of Pierre Boulle's original novel and not on the 1970s TV series which starred Roddy McDowall, Ron Harper, James Naughton, and Mark Lenard.  Not that I would have absorbed the comic book mini-series into the greater Toobworld Dynamic, but had this been about Kirk's Enterprise crew meeting Galen, Virdon and Burke (NOT a law firm!) and not Cornelius, Zira, and Taylor, then I might have at least suggested that it took place in those years immediately following the cancellation of 'Star Trek' in 1969.  We just never got the chance to see it.

Oh well.  Still it is a fun premise and who knows?  Maybe one day my fully Toobworld concept might be attempted......

BCnU!

TOOBWORLD LOOKS AT BOOKS - "ABIGAIL AUSTIN & THE GRAND OLD LADY"

‘MURDER, SHE WROTE’

“THE GRAND OLD LADY”

From the IMDb:

Jessica narrates a story from 40 years ago when another female mystery writer helped to solve a mysterious murder aboard the Queen Mary.

In October of 1989, one of Toobworld's grande dames of mystery literature passed away - Lady Abigail Austin.  Jessica Fletcher, who had developed the ability of serlinguism, spoke to the audience in the Trueniverse and lauded the late lady with effusive praise.....

Abigail Austin.

When it came to mysteries,

she was very simply the best.

Her books will live on

long after mine are gone and forgotten.

Based on such a eulogy, I would say Lady Abigail was second only to Dame Agatha Christie in fame and talent, closely followed by Abigail Mitchell, Glynis Granville, Dame Margo Woodhouse, Eudora McVeigh Shipton, and Jessica B. Fletcher herself.  (I'm referring to women mystery writers in Toobworld only, meaning no sleight to any of the Real World's eminent women in the field.  I included Christie because she has been dramatized for Earth Prime-Time - most notably, her televersion appeared in an episode of 'Doctor Who'.)

Radio personality "Edwin Chancellor" described her career highlights (with corrections by Lady Abigail herself):

"EDWIN CHANCELLOR"

Your preeminence is without equal.  

Your marvelous detective, Dexter Saint James, the hero of 50 novels.

LADY ABIGAIL AUSTIN

Fifty-five.

"EDWIN CHANCELLOR"

Translated into a dozen languages.

LADY ABIGAIL AUSTIN

Seventeen, including Swahili.

But I think "Chancellor" was fixated only on those books about the sleuth Dexter St. James.  Perhaps he was hoping to get Lady Abigail to sign over the adaptation rights for the character to him so that he might play the role on the radio.  (At the very least, he was hoping to get her to write for his program, "The Casebook of Edwin Chancellor.")

However, I think there were more books to be found in Lady Abigail Austin's bibliography than just those 55 novels about St. James.  Like Agatha Christie, I'm sure Austin also had other amateur sleuths among her creations, perhaps only to be found in short stories, maybe in full-novels as well.  And I think, based on a comment by "Edwin Chancellor", it may be that Lady Abigail Austin had a gimmick when it came to the themes of her other mystery novels.

"EDWIN CHANCELLOR"

Well, I, for one, cannot wait

until the next Abigail Austin adventure is published.

"Chancellor" could have easily said "novel" or "book" rather than "adventure".  I think it could be that he was referring to an entire subset of stories by the writer - "The Abigail Austin Adventures", in which she wrote mysteries which were solved by a fictionalized version of herself.

It could be that there weren't that many books already published in that series, perhaps only one or two.  After all, the public was enamored of Dexter Saint James.  But those stories were still fiction and she had not written about herself having actually been involved in an investigation.

Until......

JESSICA FLETCHER:

Years ago, she was involved in a real-life mystery.

Oh, yes.

As you know, that's something that I'm familiar with.

But for Lady Abigail, I think it was,
well, a somewhat disconcerting situation.

It was two years after the war,
and she had sailed aboard the Queen Mary,

which was one night out of New York City when the trouble started.

I believe it was a disconcerting situation because Lady Abigail had never personally been involved in a police investigation before, especially a murder.  And I think she had, for whatever reason, lost the inclination to write.  It could have been writer’s block, perhaps a loss of belief in herself.

Her observational skills had been dulled by lack of use during the War and it turned out that her solution to the crime was in error.  But young amateur sleuth "Christy McGinn" came up with the correct answer to the puzzle.  However, he didn't tell his Dad - Police Inspector "Martin McGinn" - until after Lady Abigail disembarked, so that her renewed excitement in her chosen vocation would not be dimmed.

You may have noticed that three of the characters I've mentioned so far in this piece had their names listed in quotation marks.  Only Lady Abigail and Jessica have their names unadorned.  That's because we saw those two as "actual" people of Toobworld.  Everyone else in this émission de télévision a clef had an alias.

The problem for Jessica is that - basically...?  She was having a senior moment.  Cabot Cove CRAFT.  JB had a brain fart.  Although she was describing what really happened during that fateful cruise, she was using the names of the characters from Lady Abigail’s novelized version of the events.

Lady Abigail, newly enthused with the joy of writing, rushed back to her New York residence, no longer interested in heading to her first home in Brighton.  There she began writing with a passion and by the end of the next year, her latest "Abigail Austin Adventure" - "Abigail Austin And The Grand Old Lady" - was published.

She had no problem with appearing as herself in the book, but rather than dealing with all of the legal paperwork needed to mention the others involved, she fictionalized everybody else who was on board the Queen Mary during that investigation.  And that included "Christy McGinn" - the young crossword puzzle creator who actually solved the case because he was helping out his policeman father ("Martin McGinn".)  

In Toobworld, these were Lady Abigail’s roman a clef versions of Ellery Queen and his father, Inspector Richard Queen.

From Wikipedia:
Ellery Queen, is a mystery writer and amateur detective who helps his father, Richard Queen, a New York City police inspector, solve baffling murders.

The obituary writer for the New York Daily Examiner summed up the basics about Ellery:

ARTHUR VAN DYKE
Queen, comma, Ellery.

Mystery writer of some renown

Born April 2nd, New York City, 1912.

Father: Queen, comma, Richard.

Inspector, New York City Police Department.

Lady Abigail changed enough of the details about Ellery Queen so that it was not readily evident as to his real identity.  Unless the reader was aware of the murder case and/or a true aficionado of all mystery writers, not just Lady Abigail, then the casual reader might have assumed “Christy McGinn” was fully fictional.

Lady Abigail enjoyed writing in the roman a clef style which afforded her the chance to create her “word puzzles with a key” when it came to the names of her characters.

Let’s take a look at some of the characters in “Abigail Austin and the Grand Old Lady”.....

CHRISTY McGINN - The stand-in for Ellery Queen was a creator of crossword puzzles for the New York Daily Examiner, but yearned to be a reporter on the crime beat.  In “real” life, Ellery was already a published author by 1947.  (I think Austin’s only reason to treat him so dismissively was so that she could hold center stage in the story as the one true mystery writer.)

As for his name, “Christy” was inspired by a young man whom Lady Abigail knew all of her life: Christopher R. Milne.  His father, A. A. Milne, authored the “Winnie The Pooh” stories and put his son into those tales as “Christopher Robin”. By the 1940s, he was a young man trying to make his way in the world, away from his father’s influential shadow.  And as for ‘McGinn’, Lady Abigail remembered the writings of William Maginn, a writer for periodicals in the middle of the 19th Century whose reputation was nearly forgotten.  I don’t think she wished that upon Ellery Queen, but she preferred to keep the limelight to herself on this case.

As for Christy’s father, “Martin”, she found her inspiration in Martin Sheridan, an NYPD police detective who was praised as one of the greatest athletes with five Olympic medals to his credit from three separate Olympic games.  I think it meant that Lady Abigail saw great potential in Inspector McGinn’s career with the NYPD.  (Sadly, Martin Sheridan died in 1918, a victim of the flu pandemic.)

Of the other major participants in the Queen Mary murder case, “Edwin Chancellor” is easy to recognize as being the fictional counterpart to Simon Brimmer, the “celebrated” radio show host.  Lady Abigail based his name on a British minister she knew during World War I, when she and her first husband lived in Lancaster.  Edwin Samuel Montagu was the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1915 and 1916, and he played a role in a sex scandal in the government which led to the United Kingdom taking a stand on the issue of a Zionist state in Palestine as mapped out in the Balfour Declaration.  

For Lady Abigail, who knew his wife Venetia (once the mistress of the very much married Prime Minister H.H. Asquith), Edwin Montagu immediately came to mind when she first saw Brimmer with his receding hairline, his jowls, and mustache.

As for the others, “Captain Oliver” had to be Captain John D. Snow, R.D., R.N.R., who took command of of the Queen Mary on July 4, 1947. As to how she chose “Oliver” as his alias in the novel, I believe her business dealings in New York City were handled by a young lawyer in the firm named Oliver Douglas.  Douglas, a veteran of the recent war who had flown as a fighter pilot, had graduated from Harvard Law School and now advised Lady Abigail on matters of contract law in her dealings with her publisher.  While in the service he met a young Hungarian woman named Lisa and they fell in love; he brought her back to America as his war bride.  Lady Abigail found it charming that Lisa called her husband “Oleevar” due to her accent and that kept running through the author’s mind as she wrote the first draft of her mystery.

The murder victim was a Nazi named “Otto Kreitzmann”, who was also traveling under an alias, as “Peter Daniken”, allegedly from Denmark.  In the real life of Earth Prime-Time, he was still a Nazi, but he was known as Otto Klaus.  He had been involved in the scheme Himmler had dubbed “Operation Geltkreig” (translation: “Money War”) which would have made American currency worthless in the global economy.    As we saw in this episode, “Kreitzmann” was not successful in getting the other half of the forged currency plate off the Queen Mary, and he paid for it with his life.  In the meantime, his brother General Gunther Klaus, who had proven that he had secretly been against the Nazi regime for the sake of his baby daughter Mitzi, came into contact with a criminal (and former Gestapo agent) named Von Golling, who was running a mountainside hotel in Switzerland.  Although Klaus wanted nothing to do with the former Nazi, his greed for the hidden cache of counterfeit American money drove him to join Von Golling’s scheme.  Nearly twenty years later, General Klaus - like his brother Otto before him - paid with his life because of that counterfeit money.

I don’t know who was the inspiration for “Arthur Bishop”, the impatient fashion designer who lost his life during the investigation. Whether or not this other victim had been a fashion designer, it was definitely an alias used in the book. It may be that this character didn’t even exist in the actual investigation, that Lady Abigail simply created him to pad out her story and provide her readers with yet another suspect to consider.  Quite the coincidence to have a clue steeped in chess and then find a character named Arthur Bishop of Majesty Fashions…. Bishop.  Arthur - as in King Arthur, perhaps?  And Majesty - that could have been a reference to either a King or to a Queen.  So the involvement of Ellery Queen in the case might have been Lady Abigail’s inspiration.

A small but significant role in the story was the editor at the New York Daily Express.  In Lady Abigail’s story, and repeated by Jessica, his name was “Harry Krumholtz”.  But in “reality”?  The editor of the Daily Express in 1947 was Thornton Johns, for a time a suspect in the murder of the newspaper’s publisher.  (So in a way, this episode of ‘Murder, She Wrote’ is a fictionalized sequel to an episode of ‘Ellery Queen’.)

One final character I’d like to examine - “Major Dan McGuire”.  The soldier had been wounded during the war, leaving him a prisoner of an eye-patch.  

During his two-year recuperation in a military hospital in Lancaster, England, “Major McGuire” fell in love with his nurse, “Ellie Cantrell”, even though he was already married.  When they were finally allowed to disembark after “Christy McGinn” solved the murder, “McGuire” was greeted by his enthusiastic wife while a heart-broken “Ellie Cantrell” faded into the background.

“Major Dan McGuire”, of all the characters, needed to be presented with an alias if he was to appear in the novel.  As “Chancellor” pointed out, he had been a member of an advance company which took Gestapo headquarters at the end of the war.  

A company of spies.

The real figure was known as Captain Howard, and even that may have been a cover identity.  He was in the O.S.S. and spoke perfect French, which helped him pass as a native Frenchman.  One of his assignments had been to infiltrate a small insignificant French village near the LeClair River and find out why the Germans had taken such an interest.  (They had rigged the entire village with explosives in order to lure the Allies in and blow them up real good.)

In “Abigail Austin and the Grand Old Lady” novel, Lady Abigail wrote “Major McGuire” as wearing an eye-patch.  This may have been an affectation for the sake of the story.

There is so much more I plan to write some day, mostly about Ellery Queen in the TV Universe, but also about Lady Abigail Austin.  During the episode, still a serlinguist, Jessica Fletcher told the audience that the newspapers reported Lady Abigail as being 101 years old at the time of her death.

What if I told you that when she died in 1989, Lady Abigail Austin was actually almost 120 years old?

More on that someday soon.....

BCnU!

O'BSERVATIONS:

1] Arthur Van Dyke appeared in the ‘Ellery Queen’ episode “The Adventure of the 12th Floor Express”.  Van Dyke worked at the “real” New York Daily Examiner.  This is the episode in which we also find editor Thornton Johns, the inspiration for Harry Krumholz.

2] William Maginn and Martin Sheridan were real people in the Trueniverse, but they were never portrayed on television.  

Edwin Samuel Montagu was an historical figure and only by luck do I have that connection to Lady Abigail via the Chancellery for the Duchy of Lancaster.  However, at this time I have no known “televersion” portrayal of Montagu.  The best I could get was a gathering of Asquith's ministers during those war years in 'The Life and Times of David Lloyd George" which was shown on PBS in 1981. Therefore, one of the “atmosphere people” seen above is supposed to be Montagu.

A.A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin are of course famous in the Trueniverse and both have been portrayed on television.

3] In Jessica’s telling of the tale, “Edwin Chancellor” looks nothing like either the real Simon Brimmer or Chancellor Edwin Montagu.  More than likely Mrs. Fletcher had never seen a photograph of Brimmer (She’s not all-knowing, after all.)  It could be that we are privy to her mind’s depiction of the radio performer based on his voice in old time radio tapes, influenced perhaps by a man she met on an archaeological dig in Mexico, Gideon Armstrong. (‘Murder, She Wrote’ - “Murder Digs Deep”)

4]  The Queen Mary set sail from South Hampton on its first post-war voyage on July 31st, 1947.  Taking about four days to make the crossing, the Queen Mary probably remained docked for a few days before making the return trip - or at least trying to (that pesky murder, don’t you know?)  So this episode of ‘Murder She Wrote’ took place by the end of the first week of August, 1947.

5] I wrote about the Nazi plan to flood the world’s markets with their near-perfect counterfeit American bills.  Click here to read more about it.
http://toobworld.blogspot.com/2017/09/wiki-wednesday-nasty-nazi-notes.html

6]  From Wikipedia:
The Allied doctrine of unconditional surrender meant that "... those Germans — and particularly those German generals — who might have been ready to throw Hitler over, and were able to do so, were discouraged from making the attempt by their inability to extract from the Allies any sort of assurance that such action would improve the treatment meted out to their country."  

So it will be my assertion that General Gunther Klaus had been ready to throw over the Nazi regime.  

7]  By the end of the episode, Jessica Fletcher professed her belief that “Ellie” and “Dan” would end up together, and I think she probably had inside information.  Lady Abigail likely wrote their sub-plot to end on such a downer only to show that the Ellie character was strong enough to step aside so that she wouldn’t be the cause of the wife’s pain if she learned the truth.  But like “Arthur Bishop” the fashion designer, I believe the wife was just a fictional character in the mystery novel.  There was no impediment to Ellie and Dan - or whatever their real names were - getting their “Happily Ever After”.

SHOWS CITED:

• 'MURDER, SHE WROTE' - "THE GRAND OLD LADY"
• 'ELLERY QUEEN' - "THE ADVENTURE OF THE 12th FLOOR EXPRESS"
• 'MURDER, SHE WROTE' - "MURDER DIGS DEEP"
• 'DANGER MAN' - "UNDER THE LAKE"
• 'COMBAT!' - "9 PLACE VENDEE"
• 'SHIRLEY TEMPLE'S STORYBOOK' - "WINNIE THE POOH"
• 'MR. SELFRIDGE' - "EPISODE 4.4"
• 'GREEN ACRES' - "WINGS OVER HOOTERVILLE"
• 'THE LIFE AND TIMES OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE' - "NO. 10"

BCnU!