FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS 08/16/19 - ANNIE OAKLEY

With this week’s Friday Hall of Famer, we’ve chosen an historical multiversal, but only her portrayals in the greater Toobworld Dynamic, the many dimensions of the TV Universe.

ANNIE OAKLEY

From Wikipedia:
Annie Oakley (born Phoebe Ann Mosey; August 13, 1860 – November 3, 1926) was an American sharpshooter and exhibition shooter. Her talent first came to light when at age 15 she won a shooting match against traveling-show marksman Frank E. Butler, whom she later married.  The couple joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West show a few years later. Oakley became a renowned international star, performing before royalty and heads of state.

Oakley also was variously known as "Miss Annie Oakley", "Little Sure Shot", "Little Miss Sure Shot", "Watanya Cicilla", "Phoebe Anne Oakley", "Mrs. Annie Oakley", "Mrs. Annie Butler", and "Mrs. Frank Butler". Her death certificate gives her name as "Annie Oakley Butler".

For more, click here:

Here are the actresses who played her in various TV dimensions:

• Gail Davis played Oakley in the television series ‘Annie Oakley’ (1954 to 1956).
• Sarah Strange played Oakley in the episode "Mild Mild West" (2009) of the Canadian crime drama television show, ‘Murdoch Mysteries'.

O’Bservation:
She would be the same woman as played by Gail Davis.  But the differences in her appearance can be credited to being seen by us via Detective Murdoch’s perception of her.

These next two portrayals are in other TV dimensions to spread the wealth.

• Jamie Lee Curtis portrayed Oakley in ‘Tall Tales & Legends’ (1985).
• Reba McEntire portrayed Oakley in ‘Buffalo Girls’ (1996), alongside Anjelica Huston, Melanie Griffith, and Tom Wopat.

While seeing Annie Oakley interacting with already established characters like William Murdoch, I'd like to see Annie's televersion as an old woman.  She lived to the year 1926, after all.  This is a picture of her.  (Maybe Frances Sternhagen is still vital enough to assay the role?)

And the show in which she could appear would probably be the 'Murdoch Mysteries' spinoff 'Frankie Drake Mysteries'.  It's set in Toronto as well, but it takes place in the 1920s. 
 
While Ms. Davis’ portrayal is probably the least accurate historically, it also epitomizes the spirit of Buffalo Bill’s embodiment of “the show business.”  As such, she will be the face of Annie Oakley in the 2019 class of the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.

Welcome to the hall, Little Miss Sure Shot….

THEORIES OF RELATEEVEETY - THE BART MAVERICK LINE(S)

In the Facebook page celebrating actor Jack Kelly and the book about him by Linda Alexander, the focus is of course on his role as Bart Maverick in ‘Maverick’.

In December of last year, one of the page administrators, Sharon Viljoen, shared a spate of colorized publicity pictures of Bart Maverick with a handful of his leading ladies from various episodes.  (And many of those loverly ladies proved to be just that – a handful!)

STELLA LEGENDRE
"THE GOOSE DROWNDER"
(FAY SPAIN)

BELLE MORGAN
"BRASADA SPUR"
(JULIE ADAMS)

DAISY HARRIS aka DAISY HASKELL
"THE JEWELED GUN"
(KATHLEEN CROWLEY)

JANET KILMER
"THE THIRTY-NINTH STAR"
(BETHEL LESLIE)

VIRGINIA CORY
"THE NAKED GALLOWS"
(JEANNE COOPER)

LINDA
THE LASS WITH THE POISONOUS AIR"
(JOANNA MOORE)

MODESTY BLAINE
"ONE OF OUR TRAINS IS MISSING"
(KATHLEEN CROWLEY)

MYRA
"YOU CAN'T BEAT THE PERCENTAGE"
(KAREN STEELE)

SYDNEY SUE "FRENCHY" SHIPLEY
"HIGH CARD HANGS"
(LILYAN CHAUVIN)

I’m writing this up back in December of 2018 and for alls I know, Sharon has even more portraits to offer.  But for the sake of this post, I’m going with that original handful of “heroines”.

As many in Team Toobworld are probably aware, I treat what I see on TV as being its own reality.  And as such, I don’t hold to the strictures of either the scripts nor the times in which the series was originally broadcast.  And there are plenty of times in each episode – of any TV show when it comes to that! – when we just don’t see what is going on in a character’s life.  This would include not only the edits that mark a passage of time but also what goes on while the commercials are interrupting.

So who’s to argue that Bart Maverick was better than any other man?  I don’t think he would even try to make that claim.

Therefore, Bart Maverick could be seen as the Amos Burke, Sam Malone, Fonzie, and Martin Tupper of the Old West, giving James T. West a run for his money when it comes to capturing the title of “Playa of the Plains”.

As such, it would certainly provide plenty of fodder for quite a slew of theories of relateeveeties.  And there were plenty of Jack Kelly characters throughout the 1960s and the 1970s who could be considered as descendants of Bart  Maverick.  (The strong genetic imprint of his DNA passed down intact over several generations would be quite the giveaway.)  None of those future Jack Kelly roles would need to share any more of a bloodline than to have Bart as their great-grandfather or grandfather.
 
Among those characters would be Arthur Ryan of ‘Get Christie Love!’, Jack O’Shea in a couple of ‘Batman’ episodes, and Harry Hammond of the Hardy Boys half of ‘The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries’.
Happy trails to you!

O'BSERVATION:
I'll have more about two of these actresses and their characters on 'Maverick' in other posts this month.

WIKI TIKI WEDNESDAY - GOVERNOR JOHN P. ST. JOHN

Bret Maverick:
Why, the Clem Diefendorfer I’m looking for is an historian. 
Clem Diefendorfer:
Well that’s me!
Bret:
Who is the governor of Kansas?
Clem:
John P. St. John. 
Bret:
How much is his salary?
Clem:
$3000 a year.'MAVERICK'
(From the classic parody episode "Gun Shy".)

From Wikipedia:
John Pierce St. John (February 25, 1833 – August 31, 1916) was the eighth Governor of Kansas and a candidate for President of the United States in 1884.

St. John was born in Brookville, Indiana. He served as lieutenant colonel of the 143rd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War. From 1873 he sat in the Kansas Senate, and was the Republican Governor of Kansas from 1879 to 1883. Active in the temperance movement, he successfully promoted a prohibition amendment to that state's constitution. St. John also helped create the Kansas Freedmen's Relief Association during the Great Exodus of African-Americans to Kansas in 1879.

He was the Prohibition Party candidate for President of the United States in the 1884 election. On October 2, 1884 he was nearly shot, with the bullet hitting the window next to him. He received 147,482 votes (about 1.5%) on a ticket with William Daniel. The election was won by Grover Cleveland of the Democratic Party. St. John was also surpassed by two other unsuccessful candidates:

James Gillespie Blaine of the Republican Party.
Benjamin Franklin Butler of the United States Greenback Party.

St. John died after suffering heat exhaustion on August 31, 1916 in Olathe, Kansas.

The city of St. John, Kansas, is named after him.

Once upon a time, the IMDb offered a search function for characters and the actors who played them.  It was an invaluable resource for a televisiologist such as Yours Viewly, allowing me to find out if certain historical figures had been dramatized and it provided a list of all the actors who had played those roles.   But in their infinite wisdom, they dropped that feature.  (I think they had run out of server space and didn’t want to purchase more.)

So I don’t know if John St. John was ever seen in Earth Prime-Time as far as in the form of an actor whom we might have known.  But we do know he did exist in the main Toobworld, thanks to this Q&A between Bret Maverick and Clem Diefendorfer.  We even found out his middle name and his annual salary.

That’s more than can be said for a lot of the televersions for the real-life governors depicted in TV shows over the years.
Happy Trails!

MISSING LINKS - THE BAR ARCHITECT

So outside the box, this is just a case of two shows using the same studio set.  But within the reality of Toobworld?

The 'Gunsmoke' saloon is probably the Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City, Kansas.  As the caption says, the saloon for Paladin is in Nevada.  So there's no chance of a geographic crossover. 

But we could make an assumption based on the evidence - i.e. the doors, the wall sconces. 

Both of these saloons were designed by the same architect who probably also oversaw the construction of each.  The rest of the bar area probably looked the same and even the off-camera areas - specifically the rooms upstairs where the saloon girls go to make the real money and occasionally begin a new Toobworld family tree.....

Someday I'll find a wild wild West architect whom I can claim to be the man who designed both saloons.

Happy trails!

SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE - ACROSS THE HUGHNIVERSE

Extending my weekend just a bit by having a special guest appearance by one of the first “crossoverists” I ever met online – Hugh Davis: 

"The Infernal Machine," an episode of BONANZA, features Willard Waterman as Cyrus K. Throckmorton. This is likely an ancestor of Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, Waterman's character on THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE (and the TV followup to the radio series of the same name). Waterman plays the two very similarly.
-Hugh Davis

From the ‘Bonanza’ wiki:
Daniel Pettibone is trying to find financing for his new invention, a horseless carriage. Hoss tries to help with scaring up money, no one's interested until a smooth-talking stranger, Throckmorton, wants to invest. The locals then start to pony up their cash--and Throckmorton promptly skips town with their cash.  

Hugh knows as I did that family surnames on the maternal side often live on for generations as the given name.  I have friends who named their son “Jordan” which is the mother’s maiden name… in a way.
So Cyrus K. Throckmorton could be the grandfather or great-grandfather of Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, with Gildy’s mother bearing “Throckmorton” as her maiden name.  And of course, the telegenetics are quite strong in the connection between the two.
This theory of relateeveety is a great find, Hugh!  And timely too, as this is the month in which we celebrate the TV Western…..

A HAT SQUAD ANNIVERSARY

Mindy McConnell:

You know if you learned to say no, 

you probably would have a lot more time to yourself.

Robin Williams:

Whew... 

Maybe that's the last thing I want....

'Mork And Mindy'

"Mork Meets Robin Williams"

Toobworld Central remembers Robin Williams on the fifth anniversary of his death. 

Nanu nanu......

FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS - BARTENDER HARRY SPRAGUE

For our next inductee as a TV Western Friday Hall of Famer, we’re doing a massive conflation of characters – the many Old West bartenders played by character actor Harry Swoger.

From ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ wiki:
Harry Swoger was an American character actor. He portrayed a Barbershop Customer in Season 2 of ‘The Andy Griffith Show’.  

From the ‘Gilligan’s Island’ wiki

Not much is known about Harry Edward Swoger. He was born on March 6, 1919 in Clinton, Ohio, but there is not much known about his career. He was a character actor in more than a hundred television shows, mostly westerns, through the Sixties. He was a member of the Screen Actors Guild, a past master of the Farmers Lodge #153 and a 32nd Degree Mason at Scioto Consistory in Columbus, Ohio. His TV roles included appearances on "Mike Hammer," "The Texan," "Lawman," "Rawhide," "Maverick," "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" with Dwayne Hickman and Bob Denver, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "The Twilight Zone," "The Andy Griffith Show," "The Untouchables," "Gunsmoke," "Wagon Train," "The Fugitive," "Bonanza," "Gilligan's Island," "Bewitched," "Wild, Wild West," "Ironsides," "Adam 12," "The Big Valley" and "Mannix." Among his movies are "The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond," "Pocketful of Miracles," "Robin and The 7 Hoods," "The Over-the-Hill Gang" and an uncredited role in "Hello Dolly." He passed away at the age of 51 at the Valley Emergency Hospital in Van Nuys, California. He was buried at Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood, California.

In many cases, when an actor plays similar characters in a “contemporary” time period, but distant from each other and with different last names, I usually just say that they were either actual twins separated at birth or “identical cousins” whichever meaning for that you prefer.)

And when that situation has occurred in TV Westerns, usually when actors like Morgan Woodward, John Milford, and Jack Elam kept popping up in the same series over and over again as the bad guys, I attributed their new identities to either fake deaths engineered by the sinister undertaker Fabian Lavendor (‘The Wild Wild West’), or rejuvenation due to the magical powers of Jared Garrity (‘The Twilight Zone’). 

But with Harry Swoger’s run of saloon bartenders, the wild, wild West was full of itinerant cowboys who wandered from one cow-town to another.  The Mavericks are the perfect example of that.

So why couldn’t the same have happened with all of these bartenders?  Why can’t they all be the same man and for whatever reason (drunkenness, theft?), he was forced to move on to another establishment throughout the frontier.

It looks as though his longest run in any one place was in Stockton, California, where he served drinks to the Barkley Brothers and other residents of ‘The Big Valley’.  I’m going to assume that Harry Sprague was his real name, but in his travels he took on other aliases – perhaps to avoid recognition for… a past indiscretion.  When he was tending bar in Fort Hayes (as seen in ‘Wagon Train’, he went by the nickname of “Squat”.  And once he used the name of “Charlie”; another time “Mac”.  But that’s the type of nickname you use when you don’t know somebody else’s name.  And how many cowpokes just off the trail are ever going to know a bartender’s name?

Here is a partial list of those Wild West bartenders played by Harry Swoger….

The Big Valley
- The Fallen Hawk (1966)
... Bartender
- Explosion!: Part 1 (1967)
... Harry Sprague
- Explosion!: Part 2 (1967)
... Sprague
- A Flock of Trouble (1967)
... Bartender (uncredited)
- Joaquin (1967)
... Bartender (uncredited)
- In Silent Battle (1968)
... Harry the Bartender
- Run of the Savage (1968)
... Harry

The Virginian
- 50 Days to Moose Jaw (1962)
... Squat

The Over-the-Hill Gang
(1969 TV Movie) 
Mac (Bartender)

The Guns of Will Sonnett

- Reunion (1968)

... Bartender

- What's in a Name (1968)

... Charlie the Bartender
- The Man Who Killed Jim Sonnett (1969)
... Bartender 

Wagon Train

- The Gus Morgan Story (1963)

The Outcasts
- How Tall Is Blood? (1969)
... Bartender

The Wild Wild West
- The Night of the Cut-Throats (1967)
... Bartender

Tate

- Tigrero (1960)
 ... The Bartender

Now there could have been times during his journeys through the West when Harry Sprague couldn’t find a job as a bartender.  And so he had to take what work he could find.  Working in a stable might have been the best a man could do if he knew nothing else but slinging drinks…..

The Legend of Jesse
- A Burying for Rosey (1966)
... Stableman

Lancer

- Shadow of a Dead Man (1970)
... Liveryman

I’ve added the following shows because I can’t tell from the names of his characters whether or not they were bartenders.  I’m under the impression that almost any character with two names listed probably wasn’t a publican (save for Hank Green).

I’m going to try to track down these episodes and will both update this post with new information as well as update Swoger’s photo gallery in the Facebook page “TVXOHOF”.

Gunsmoke
- The Boys (1962)
... Hank Green
- Milly (1961)
... Sam Lawson
- All That (1961)
... Hank Green
- The Cook (1960)
... Hank Green
- The Badge (1960)
... Ike
- Colleen So Green (1960)
... Bull Reager
- Tail to the Wind (1959)
... Burke

O’Bservation:
I’m thinking that it could be Hank Green was a resident of Dodge City and therefore employed as a bartender?  These will be the first episodes I’ll be looking for. 

Bonanza
- Song in the Dark (1963)
... Felix
- The War Comes to Washoe (1962)
... Charlie
- The Many Faces of Gideon Flinch (1961)
... William 'Bullet Head' Burke
- Silent Thunder (1960)
... Tom
- The Avenger (1960)
... Bert

O’Bservations:
1]  I’m hoping that Swoger’s role in “The War Comes To Washoe” is as the bartender.  It would mean that the alias of “Charlie” was used by Harry Sprague more than once.  (See ‘The Guns Of Will Sonnett’ – “What’s In A Name”.  What’s in a name, indeed!)

2]  Earlier, Swoger played another character named Burke.  If we can make them the same guy, we now have his full name as well as his nickname. 

3]  If more than one of his characters on 'Bonanza' were bartenders, I've got a splainin for that.  The Ponderosa was near two towns - Carson City and Virginia City - and alternated between the two.  It's pozz'be, just pozz'ble, that he had bartender jobs in both towns and worked one on his days off from the other, using a different name at each.

Hotel de Paree
- Sundance and the Good-Luck Coat (1960)
... Moose
- Sundance and the Hostiles (1959)
... Big Huston

O'Bservation:
"Moose" sounds like a great alias/nickname for a bartender.

Perhaps, at the end of his travels, he found himself in the frozen north of Seward’s Folly…..

The Alaskans 
- The Silent Land (1960)
... Morse

It’s a shame Harry Swoger died at such an early age – only 51, in 1970.  It almost has the feel of Fate, in that the TV genre in which he excelled was also nearing its end.

At any rate, this is my small attempt to add to his onscreen immortality.

Welcome to the Hall, Harry the Bartender….

Happy trails!

THURSDAY THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY - THE PRENDERS

One of the earliest - and one of my favorite - TV crossovers was the 'Maverick' episode "Hadley's Hunters".  There were at least five definite crossover characters - 'Cheyenne' Bodie, 'Bronco' Lane, Tom 'Sugarfoot' Brewster, and the 'Lawman', Marshal Dan Troop with his deputy, Johnny McKay.  Technically, one could say that there were five and a half crossovers - Bart Maverick visited the long-deserted office of Christopher Colt, salesman for the 'Colt .45'.  (There was an in-joke appearance by Edd Byrnes as a stable hand who was similar to his role of Gerald Kookson III on '77 Sunset Strip'.  Maybe they were related, but it can't be proven.)

There was one other inferred crossover - Prender the bartender had a sawed off rifle left by a bounty hunter.  The gun had a name like Mule's Foot.  Obviously it was supposed to be Mare's Leg, owned by Josh Randall in 'Wanted: Dead Or Alive'.

All of that information... information... information is a rerun here.  But I went through all of it again because I want to talk about that bartender.

Although we would see Herb Vigran, who played the role, on 'Maverick' again, this was the only time we saw Prender.  But we might have later met one of his descendants.

'Adam-12'
"Alchohol"

From the IMDb:
Malloy and Reed help a woman recover an antique when she discovers her husband hid their savings inside.   

Reed and Malloy visited with a used appliance store hoping to find the wood-burning stove.  And the proprietor was Charley Prender.  You can ask anybody - Charley Prender gives a good deal.

Here's my theory of relateeveety - Charley's great grandfather was that bartender who helped Bart Maverick.  

Charley Prender - as if you couldn't tell! - was played by Vito Scotti, calling on all the tics and mannerisms which 'Columbo' fans knew well from his six characters over the years.  

Many of the characters he played over the years in TV shows had various ethnic backgrounds.  It could be the same in this case as well.  Somewhere between Charley and his theoretical great-grandfather, one of the Prender men may have married a lass of Mexican descent anywhere in the wild, wild West from Hadley County, where Prender tended bar at the Hadley Saloon, to Los Angeles where we would find Charley Prender.

Happy trails!

WIKI TIKI WEDNESDAY - "LITTLE BROWN JUG"

'GUNSMOKE'
"PA HACK'S BROOD"

Louie Pheeters, distantly related to Doctor MacPheeters and his son Jamie, was the town drunk in Dodge City.  But he did his best to keep himself from being a blot on the town by mopping out the marshal's office and watching over the place whenever Matt Dillon had to go out of town.

One time while he was swabbing the floor, Louie kept things lively for himself by singing "Little Brown Jug", a song made famous by Glen Miller's arrangement of it.  But unlike the time a Hank Williams, Sr. song was performed in an episode of 'The Virginian', this was not a Zonk.

From Wikipedia:

“Little Brown Jug" is a song written in 1869 by Joseph Eastburn Winner, originally published in Philadelphia with the author listed as Winner's middle name "Eastburn."

It was originally a drinking song. It remained well known as a folk song into the early 20th century. Like many songs which make reference to alcohol, it enjoyed new popularity during the Prohibition era.

In 1939, bandleader Glenn Miller recorded and broadcast his swing instrumental arrangement of the tune with great success, and the number became one of the best known orchestrations of the American Big Band era.

The same melody was used for the song "My Ding-a-Ling" written by Dave Bartholomew, which became a Number 1 hit in 1972 for Chuck Berry.

Happy trails!