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?

FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS 01/10/20 - CHARLIE THE DRUNK

Last August, the Television Crossover Hall of Fame inducted Corporal Randolph Agarn of ‘F Troop’ and his amazingly powerful DNA which accounted for not only his identical relatives in that series but for all of the other characters played by Larry Storch in the main Toobworld.

Mr. Storch’s birthday was two days ago – he turned 97!  So in honor of his birthday, we’re inducting another of his TV characters into the TVXOHOF, someone whom Toobworld Central considers to be part of the Agarn family tree.

This is what I wrote during that “ceremony” for Corporal Agarn:

Not only am I considering Charlie for the Agarn family tree, but he’ll also be a Friday Hall of Famer in January of 2020 when we celebrate the Classics.

“Charlie” should be well-known to the visitors of a certain police station in the Bronx….

Charlie Adamopolis

‘Car 54, Where Are You?’

In my theory of relateeveety, Agarn had gone back to Passaic, New Jersey, and married a hometown girl.  And he probably had daughters, or perhaps even just one daughter who gave Agarn a lot of granddaughters.  They all married and took their husbands’ names, which would be the name of all their sons who resembled their great-grandfather. 

So that’s why we never see any other characters from the 1960s to the 1990s who are named Agarn.

One of these Agarn great-grandchildren would have been born of the union between one of Agarn’s granddaughters and an American of Greek descent by the name of Adamopolis.

I guess it could be said that Life wasn’t kind to Charles Adamopolis.  He eventually became known as “Charlie the Drunk”.  He haunted the precinct house on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, but eventually he went out West where he would later be found in San Francisco before he drifted down the coast to San Diego.

Here are the TV show appearances which qualify Charlie Adamopolis for membership in the Hall.

Car 54, Where Are You?
That’s Show Business

From the IMDb:
Muldoon's sister Peggy lands a part in the play "Waiting for Wednesday" and the boys of the 53rd Precinct become financial backers before learning that it's a gritty play about police brutality.  

Pretzel Mary

From the IMDb:
The boys finally bust a nasty nuisance in the Park - "Pretzel Mary". When they see her deplorable living conditions they replace her furniture - not realizing what they're taking away.  

Here Comes Charlie

From the IMDb:
The boys of the 53rd Precinct attempt to help rehabilitate chronically drunk Charlie by finding him a job where he won't be tempted to drink, but the officers' regular visits to check up on Charlie have an unnerving effect on his teetotalist coworkers. A Larry Storch tour de force!  

Phyllis
- Off the Bench (1976)
... Bum

From the IMDb:
Phyllis's bum friend Van has a crush on a higher class woman, Lucille. Phyllis tries to clean him up to make him into a more presentable gentleman.

O’Bservation:
Van ends up giving his new clothes to another bum in exchange for that hobo’s duds.  That other bum would be Charlie.

CPO Sharkey
- A Wino Is Loose (1977)
... The Bum

From the IMDb:
When a homeless drunk enters the barracks and makes himself at home, Sharkey is livid. And nothing that the men do dislodges the man from his comfy quarters.

O’Bservation:
You can’t dissuade me from claiming that this bum was Charlie as well.

Here’s what I wrote about those last two episodes when Corporal Agarn was inducted into the Hall:

Neither of these two bums were given names in those two episodes, so I’m going to claim that they are not only the same man, spending time in San Francisco before traveling down the coast to San Diego, but also that he’s actually Charlie Adamopolis who used to haunt the 53rd Precinct in the Bronx.

Welcome to the Hall, Charlie.  Hats off to you….

SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE LIVING FICTIONAL

'THE FATHER DOWLING MYSTERIES'

"THE CONSULTING DETECTIVE MYSTERY"

SHERLOCK HOLMES:

I am in fact precisely whom I appear to be - Sherlock Holmes.

FATHER DOWLING:

But Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character!  

You can't be him! You can't be here!

SHERLOCK HOLMES:

Yet I am here.

FATHER DOWLING:

How is that impossible?

SHERLOCK HOLMES:

You summoned me.

FATHER DOWLING:

I did?

SHERLOCK HOLMES:

Not perhaps by conscious thought; 

yet you sought my counsel as you have so many times before.  

But this time there was a difference.

FATHER DOWLING:

What difference?

SHERLOCK HOLMES:

You must have heard it said that certain... 

fictional characters are so real to their readers that they come alive.

FATHER DOWLING:

Yes.

SHERLOCK HOLMES:

Your belief in my deductive methods - and me - made me real.  

But yesterday your faith in my methods was shaken.

FATHER DOWLING:

More than that.... Wait a minute! 

Are you saying that if I stop believing in you, you'll cease to exist?

SHERLOCK HOLMES:

Precisely.  And that is why I am here: 

to help restore your belief in my methods... and me.

From the wiki for "The Librarians":

Fictionals are a race of magical beings summoned from stories encountered in the second season of the Librarians.

According to Jenkins there are two main types of Fictionals; those that can be summoned by powerful magic and those that come into being of their own accord. The second type are iconic characters whose stories are both well written and well known.

Though rare in the modern day, Jenkins believed there was most likely a small group of Fictionals living in the modern world; their magical existence sustained by the fame and acclaim of their stories. Also, and thankfully, most of them don't cause too much trouble; the Library has also struggled to keep track of them. Flynn commented he had always heard about them but had never actually met one.

Generally, Fictionals do not adapt well to the world outside their stories; Jenkins explained that their minds are only as complex has what their creator wrote meaning they may not be able to understand little if anything outside their stories. Fictionals from older or well written stories tend to have a better time adapting.

Fictionals are bound by their stories, but also empowered by them.

Outside of defeating them in the way their story dictates a Fictional can be destroyed if the specific book they appeared from is destroyed.

This incarnation of Holmes was a fictional, summoned by Father Dowling.  And the priest was the only person who could see him... at first.  But he was fully realized at least as far as Frank Dowling was concerned - to the point that Holmes drove a car with the priest riding shotgun.

This Holmes was summoned out of a specific book - Father Dowling's copy of "The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes".

And it's that book as seen in this episode which helps buttress the claim that in Toobworld, Dr. John H. Watson actually did chronicle the cases which Holmes investigated.

Here's how the title page looked in the episode:

There is no mention of Dr. Watson as the author, true.  But then again, the name of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle isn't seen either.  Doyle wasn't mentioned at all during the case.  If it weren't for the fact that Fictional Holmes' existence was dictated by the boundaries established in the book, I'd say he made a convincing case for Watson to be the true author:

SHERLOCK HOLMES:

Dr. Watson rarely chose to chronicle my failures.

But I'll settle for there being no Zonk in this episode.  Small victories.....

BCnU!

O'BSERVATIONS:

• This is my annual celebration of Sherlock Holmes, one of the greatest and most recognizable literary characters in all of history, and by extension, his best portrayal in the greater TV Universe - that by Jeremy Brett.  

• And why today?  Because it is generally accepted by Sherlockians that the birthday of Sherlock Holmes was January 6 and he was born in 1854.
    
• This post was written In April of 2017.  Hey, when you only honor the Great Detective one day of the year, those stories tend to pile up......

TVXOHOF FOR JANUARY 2020 - SGT. ERNIE BILKO

It’s a new year and it’s time to get down to business with the Television Crossover Hall of Fame now that the holidays are over.

There is no general theme to the monthly showcase spot this year, but we’re adding a new twist for 2021.  (We’ll see how long it can last.) With the Friday Hall of Famers, the last Friday of the month will be celebrating a TV show which not only originated in Earth Prime, but which also existed as a TV show within Earth Prime-Time. Of course that means there will be Zonks a-plenty to deal with, but it should be interesting.

Meanwhile we’ve got the January Showcase to announce....

January is our Classic TV month and my only regret with this new member Is that I didn’t get around to inducting him years earlier!

M/SGT. ERNIE BILKO

From the Phil Silvers Show site:
Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko (Ernie)  Service number: RA 15042699.  Ernest G. Bilko, known to one and all as Ernie, was a master sergeant who would go to any lengths to beat the system, be it by conniving, bluffing, cheating, gambling, lying, fenagling or any other devious device known only to him. No sharper operator ever existed than Bilko, no one more capable of fleecing his fellow man or forcing even the top brass at the Pentagon to quake in their shiny boots.

No one was beyond or safe from a Bilko operation - he could smell money, and he had all human life worked out, being capable not only of predicting the thoughts of others but calculating how long it would take people to think them. But Ernie Bilko had two crucial weaknesses: like all gambling addicts, he could never resist one last bet, and, down, deep down, deep deep down, resided a conscience that prevented him from making the final, ultimate move which would garner him his life's goals: wealth and physical comfort. For all his efforts, Ernie would never win.  

Ernie ran the Motor Pool unit at two US Army camps, firstly at Fort Baxter, Roseville, Kansasand latterly at Camp Fremont, Grove City, California. Nominally the posts were run by Colonel Hall but Bilko was really in charge. He was the man who made the posts work with clockwork precision with the mere click of his fingers. The colonel would have loved to have got rid of Ernie Bilko, but he recognized immediately that Ernie was an essential part of the status quo that granted him, mostly, an easy life.

For more, click here:

Here are the shows and TV specials which qualified Bilko for membership:

1955
The New Recruits
M / Sgt. Ernest G. Bilko

From the IMDb:
This is the unaired pilot for ‘The Phil Silvers Show’/’You'll Never Get Rich’. This episode is known as “The Audition Show” and is titled “The New Recruits”, which was later re-filmed with the same title and a few different actors in different roles. The re-filmed, more polished version later aired as the first episode of the ‘You'll Never Get Rich’ TV series.

O’BSERVATION
That original pilot is how the world’s timeline originally played out before it was tampered with by any number of interfering time travelers before 1955 – everyone from Helen Cutter to the Doctor from Sam Beckett to Tony Newman and Doug Phillips.  It could have been a combination of factors from them all to account for the changes between the original pilot and the episode that later aired.

1955-1959
The Phil Silvers Show
MSgt. Ernest G. Bilko
143 episodes

From Wikipedia:
‘The Phil Silvers Show’, originally titled ‘You'll Never Get Rich’, is a sitcom which ran on CBS from 1955 to 1959. A pilot called "Audition Show" was made in 1955, but never broadcast. 143 other episodes were broadcast – all half-an-hour long except for a 1959 one-hour live special. The series starred Phil Silvers as Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko of the United States Army.

1959
Keep in Step
Sgt Ernest G 'Ernie' Bilko

From the IMDb:Spun-off from ‘The Phil Silvers Show’ (1955)
Bilko learns that a movie is to be made about him - but just who will play him?

From CBS
In 1959 Phil Silvers appeared as Sgt. Bilko with Diana Dors in "The Phil Silvers Pontiac Special: Keep in Step."  

It feels as though there should be more credits for Bilko, but that could be due to Ernie serving as the template upon which future Phil Silvers characters found their inspiration – Harry Grafton, Harold Hecuba, Shifty Shafer, and over in the Cineverse, Otto Meyer.

Bilko with fellow TVXOHOF member Ed Sullivan

Welcome to the TVXOHOF, Sergeant.  I’m sure you’ll find the poker room on your own.  Bret and Bart Maverick with Brady Hawkes and even your old buddy Corporal Rocco Barbella will be ready to test your skills at the table…..

This post is dedicated to two FB friends over in the United Kingdom - Steve Everitt and Mick Clews in honor of everything they do to keep the flame for Bilko burning over there.