TDVDS@50: A LOOK AT MRS. GLIMSHER

On 'The Dick Van Dyke Show', Sally Rogers often mentioned the mother of her boyfriend, Herman Glimsher. But the woman only appeared once, in the episode "Uncle George".

She was a domineering woman who cowed her son into submission and often came between him and Sally - she'd even go on dates with them! (And to make matters worse, she'd sit between them.)

Mrs. Glimsher's husband died many years before, something which he must have seen in his final moments as truly a "blessed release". And so Mrs. Glimsher must have needed a job to make enough money to raise her Mama's Boy.

A woman so overwhelmingly strong-willed would easily be hired for a supervisory position in the workforce.

And I think we got the chance to see Mrs. Glimsher in action.......

BCnU!

MORE "DVD SHOW" GOODNESS

On October 3rd, Ivan Shreve of "Thrilling Days Of Yesteryear" hosted a blogathon in celebration of the 50th anniversary of 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'. I did my part, and probably overdid that, by posting every hour - with about 29 posts published by the time I was done.

And even then, I still had so many ideas for other posts of a Toobworld nature about the show.

So I decided that an event of such magnitude ("Pop Pop!") - after all, 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' is the platinum standard by which all other TV sitcoms must be judged - should not be limited to just one day, or even a week. Therefore, I'm going to be coming back to the topic on the first day of the month throughout the year until the 51st anniversary comes around.

To kick things off, there will be a post today about a woman who was spoken of many times in the series, but only appeared once - Mrs. Glimsher, mother of Sally's boyfriend Herman. But first up, here's a quick trivia question:

'The Dick Van Dyke Show' has two somewhat tenuous connections to Andy Warhol. One was "outside the box" - one of those six degrees of separation situations on the production side. The other was within the "reality" of the show - one of Andy Warhol's works of art actually appeared in an episode.  (I'm thinking Team Toobworld will figure out the answer to the first one easily enough.....)

Can you tell me what these two connections were?

I'm going to let that trivia question just hang out there in the Ethernet for the year until an answer comes up. Hopefully I'll remember to answer it myself (if nobody else does first) when October 3, 2012 rolls around.....

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: PONSONBY, BRIT

FREDERICK PONSONBY

AS SEEN IN:
'Edward The King'

AS PLAYED BY:
Dennis Lill

From Wikipedia:
Frederick Edward Grey Ponsonby, 1st Baron Sysonby GCB GCVO PC (16 September 1867 – 20 October 1935), was a British soldier and courtier.

Ponsonby was the second son of General Sir Henry Ponsonby and his wife the Hon. Mary Elizabeth (née Bulteel). A member of a junior branch of the Ponsonby family, he was the grandson of General Sir Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby and the great-grandson of Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough. Arthur Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede, was his younger brother. Ponsonby was a Major and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel in the Grenadier Guards and served in the Second Boer War and in the First World War.

He also held several court positions, notably as Equerry-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria from 1894 to 1901, as Assistant Keeper of the Privy Purse and Assistant Private Secretary to Queen Victoria from 1897 to 1901 and to Edward VII from 1901 to 1910; as Keeper of the Privy Purse for George V from 1914 to 1935, and as Lieutenant-Governor of Windsor Castle from 1928 to 1935. Already a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) and a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO), he was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) in the 1921 New Year Honours. In 1935 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Sysonby, of Wonersh in the County of Surrey.

Lord Sysonby married Victoria Lily, daughter of Colonel Edmund Hegan Kennard, on 17 May 1899. They had three children:

Victor Alexander Henry Desmond Ponsonby (19 June 1900–24 November 1900)

Hon. Loelia Mary Ponsonby (1902–1993), married 1st, as his third wife, the 2nd Duke of Westminster, and 2nd, as his second wife, the explorer Sir Martin Lindsay of Dowhill, 1st Bt., M.P.

Hon. Edward Gaspard Ponsonby (1903–1956)

Lord Sysonby died in October 1935, aged 68, only four months after his elevation to the peerage. He was succeeded in the barony by his surviving son Edward. Lady Sysonby died in 1955.

His autobiography "Recollections of Three Reigns" is full, frank and entertaining. Nancy Mitford wrote to Evelyn Waugh that there was "a shriek on every page".

BCnU!

RHIANNON AND THE ZOMBIES

One last post for All Hallow's Eve....

I just wanted to share a more personal Halloween story, even though it still has TV connections.

My god-daughter Rhiannon and her family live in Taiwan; they've been there for at least six years, I believe. (I tend to lose track of time, prime or otherwise.) And she makes her godfather proud when I see that she'll be ready for the coming Zombie apocalypse.....

Here's what her father, my Little Buddy Sean, wrote in Facebook back in June:

Rhiannon: "Daddy, why do they say 'rest in peace' when someone dies?"

Me: "Well, it's because you hope they won't come back as a zombie and you'll have to hack them to lots of pieces..."

Rhiannon: "You have to get the zombies in the head, right? In the brain?"

... first she's holding her air pistol with just one hand, now this. Makes a daddy proud...

And yeah, that is TV-related. 'The Walking Dead' has returned to huge ratings (although I don't watch it - it takes place on Earth Prime-Time/Z.) And zombies are supposedly the number one costume choice this season.

BCnU!

A LOOK AT GRANDPA SAM DRACULA

Since it's Halloween, I thought we should take a more expanded look at one of the members of the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame - Grandpa of 'The Munsters', inducted in October of 2008.

There are those who think he's "Grandpa Munster", in much the same way they think that Daisy Moses is "Granny Clampett", but both those last names belong to their sons-in-law, Herman and Jed, respectively. Grandpa's name is now Sam Dracula, but some people consider him to be Count Dracula - Herman's boss even addressed him as such once. And although Grandpa might accept that honorific out of egotism, he is NOT Count Dracula. Grandpa was embraced into the Kindred of the Dracule, and so now bears the family name in honor of his sire.

But he's not Vlad Tepes. We met Vlad the Impaler in his mortal form in the TV movie "Dark Prince" and as his vampiric Majesty in the "Buffy vs. Dracula" episode of 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer'.

All of the other Draculas seen in TV would fall into the same category - they are "Dracula" because they have been "sired" by the Vampire Lord. (As much as I admire the "soul clones" theory of the Wold Newton Universe, I think my splainin works best for the Drac Pack of Toobworld.)

Grandpa may be a Dracula, but he's pure New York, with his accent and his attitude - more Brooklyn and the Bowery than Bavaria.

And yet the gravestone he keeps in his car says he was "born" in 1367. None but the Amerinds were in the New York area back then, so how could he be in such a New York State of Mind?

Easy splainin: Time Travel.

We know Grandpa was a crackpot inventor. He may have developed a time machine during his mortal life back in the New York City of the 1950's. Perhaps he was working off the designs first developed by previous scientists, perhaps even going back to the steampunk time machine helmet created by Professor Gilbert in upstate New York back in the 1890's. (As seen in the 'Twilight Zone' episode "Once Upon A Time".)

The mortal Grandpa (not yet a true family man) used his time machine to go back in Time, where he met such historical figures as Nero, King Arthur, and Richard the Lionhearted. (As for his encounter with Jack the Ripper, Grandpa could have eventually met the man named Sebastian while Grandpa was living out his undead life... O'Bviously at some point before the Vorlons drove the Redjac entity out of the serial killer.)

Eventually his travels - both temporally as well as geographically - landed him in the Transylvania area before 1367. There he fell in love and settled down, eventually fathering a daughter who was named "Lily".

And then his path crossed that of Count Dracula in 1367.

From that point on, Sam Dracula's life would be as it was recounted in the many episodes of 'The Munsters' - with his daughter Lily being embraced as a vampire as well.

But who was Sam Dracula in his mortal life before he was embraced?

I've looked at the roles played by Al Lewis before he was cast as Grandpa, and I think the best candidate for Grandpa's mortal life would be Mr. Carrari from the 'Naked City' episode of "No Naked Ladies In Front Of Giovanni's House!"

Mr. Carrari
'Naked City'

Mr. Carrari was one of Ben Giovanni's neighbors and he complained - often! - about Ben Giovanni's escapades. It could be that Carrari wanted Giovanni reined in because he didn't want that spotlight to fall on him and his activities (like various potions, spells, and that time machine.....)

Since his character name was simply "Mr. Carrari", it could have been that his first name was "Sam".....

Realizing that the heat was on because of the Giovanni investigation, Sam Carrari may have panicked and utilized that time machine to escape into the past.

Al Lewis played other roles in 'Naked City' and I was tempted to choose Harry McGoglan from "A Corpse Ran Down Mulberry Street". The basic plotline sounded perfect - a truck crashed into a hearse and then the body inside got up and walked away from the accident.

It turned out to be part of an illegal immigrant scheme - this was a fairly realistic cop show, after all. But wouldn't it have been the type of situation which could have involved the future Grandpa - reanimating the dead perhaps?

As for those other roles on 'Naked City', maybe they were "identical cousins" to Mr. Carrari. Maybe they were all Sam in disguise. Who knows? Maybe Carrari whipped up a "Multiplicity" potion which created those five doppelgangers? But whoever those five other Al Lewis characters were on 'Naked City', there had to be something about them that differentiated them to the detectives, if not to the TV audience.

As Sam Carrari, here are some Toobworld citizens he may have met in the New York area:

Ellery Queen
Nero Wolfe
Archie Bunker
Alan Brady
Buddy Sorrell
Patrolman Columbo
Jose Jimenez
Martin and Ida Morgenstern
Alexander Waverly
Felix Unger
Oscar Madison
George & Weezie Jefferson
Ricky and Lucy Ricardo
Fred & Ethel Mertz
Daniel J. O'Brien
Martin Kane
Martin Lane
Richard Diamond
Johnny Staccato
Adam Schiff
Phil Fish
Theo Kojak
and even Leo Schnauzer!

(Some of those he may have met later, as Grandpa. during his trips into the City from the suburb of Mockingbird Heights.)

As long as that list was, as Sam Dracula he must have met thousands of TV characters throughout History since 1367, both famous and non-famous. Far too long a list to compile even the usual suspects, but I think he must have at least encountered the Time Lord known as the Doctor - if only to guide Grandpa away from any potential cataclysm to the time-stream should he meet himself as Sam Carrari.

Then there's his life after 'The Munsters'.

There were a few TV movies and even a theatrical release that has been absorbed into the TV Universe. But I think we also saw Grandpa working as a security guard in an episode of 'Taxi'. (Maybe Grandpa needed some extra cash for one of his experiments.....)

Because the Munster family had no qualms about venturing into the world around them, eventually the whole world had to know that there was a family of monsters out there who looked just like the creatures from the Universal movies. There would have been news stories, reports on television.... Eventually the covert organization I've created for splainins such as this - "UNReel" - must have stepped in and created a TV show about them to put off any further intrusion into their lives... for the sake of the Munsters as well as the general public.  (He may also have received protection from a certain government intelligence agency... and loving it!)

And that's why there would be mentions of Grandpa and the other Munsters - and of that TV show within a TV show about their lives - in such shows as:

'Wizards Of Waverly Place'
'The Nanny'
'Roseanne'
'90210'
'Everybody Hates Chris'
'The Sopranos'
''Til Death'
'Psych'
'Ideal'
'Extras'
'Monk'
'Six Feet Under'
'Fresh Prince of Bel Air'
'Caroline In The City'
'Red Dwarf'
'Full House'
'Cheers'

It could be that Grandpa wanted a return to the anonymity of his past life; that could be the reason he took that night watchman job. There, he could use an alias (Alex called him "Henry") and not be bothered by fangbangers when the next wave of vampire fandom swept the nation.

Alex met "Henry" in 1981, and Henry said that he had been on the job for twenty years. This was either a lie to protect Grandpa's cover story, or it just felt like twenty years by that point.

(By the way, I think Judd Hirsch, who played Alex Reiger, would be the perfect choice to play Grandpa when they finally get around to recasting it once again.)

BCnU!

A HALLOWEEN BLIPVERT

BCnU!

HALLOWEEN ECHOES

BCnU!

PUDI'S PUMPKIN PROMO

Did you catch the Halloween episode of 'Community' this year?

BCnU!

SKED ALERT! "BORED TO DEATH" ON HALLOWEEN.....

A new episode of 'Bored To Death' airs on HBO Halloween night. Here are a couple of clips:

BCnU!

TRICK OR TREAT! IT'S THE TRICKSTER

Whoa.

When I watched the first episode for the fifth and final season of 'Chuck', I had no clue who this actor was in the opening sequence before the credits. I didn't even get that feeling of "I've seen this guy before." And if I'm not mistaken, he must have received no billing for the part - I watched the guest star credits and the names of Richard Burgi, Craig Kilborn and Ethan Philips jumped out at me, but not this guy's.

Because of the accent, I assumed he was a German-born actor. And thinking back on what he looked like without visual aids, at best I thought he could have been William Forsythe. (Seeing a picture of him, however, dispels that notion. It's all in the nose.)

It wasn't until I read the review of the episode by Alan Sepinwall that I learned who it was.

Have you figured it out?

It's Mark Hamill, cousin to Luke Skywalker (according to 'The Muppet Show'.)

Confession time: I immediately fell back on my old standby of insult humor - posting to Facebook that if he should ever appear in a "Star Wars" movie again, Hamill will probably have to play Tattooine. Several friends joined in with Jabba jokes and a 'Simpsons' quote about playing the role of the Death Star.

To be fair, I did acknowledge that I certainly have no right to point out how heavy somebody else is, but still......

I also posted that maybe he could play the role of Oliver Reed in a videography someday.

But once I got over the shock of how he's aged during these years when he's mostly dedicated himself to voice-over work, my mind then thought of ways to expand the "life during prime time" for his 'Chuck' character, Jean-Claude.

As you're probably aware, the following is pure conjecture on the part of Toobworld Central.....

Ian Keefer was a troubled teen who grew up in Elm Ridge. There he witnessed the death of an FBI agent, burned alive in a barn by a woman conducting experiments to stop the aging process.

Two weeks later, Ian was in the local mental institution where he got the chance to see 'The Magician', Anthony Blake, perform a magic act in which a woman disappeared in a ball of fire. This triggered the awful memories and left him hysterical. But with the help of the local sheriff, Anthony Blake was able to uncover the truth of Ian's trauma and bring the mad woman scientist to justice.

Ian Keefer's doctors were convinced that they could get him the help he needed for a full recovery now that they knew the truth about the root cause to his mental anguish.

As it turned out, Ian's mind was still a dark morass and he turned to a life of crime, operating under a multitude of guises - as a doctor in Seattle, a lawyer in Des Moines..... He almost won election as Mayor of San Antoine in 1988. Under six different names, he was wanted for murder in six different states.

And in Willow Haven, he was wanted for crimes committed while he was posing as a magician......

Having seen Anthony Blake in action inspired Ian to pursue his own career in magic once he was cured - or believed to be cured, at any rate - and released from the sanitarium. After decades of practice, he performed his own stage act as a cover for the crimes he committed.

But he also assumed the alias of James Jesse and became known as the costumed villain (or if you prefer, freak) Trickster. In Center City, California, the Trickster became the nemesis of the superhero known as 'The Flash' and engaged him in battle at least twice. (At one point, he confronted Barry Allen while in disguise as an FBI agent - using the very identity of that FBI agent he saw burned alive back in the 1970's.)

Although he was ultimately captured, "James Jesse" eventually escaped incarceration

As such, he was one of three headliners invited to a weekend charity event to fight world hunger - along with Alexander the Great and Maurice Gillette.

Simon the Sorcerer & Maurice Gillette

When Alexander the Great was murdered - shot to death while in a coffin that had been underwater for two hours - Simon the Sorcerer was one of the leading suspects. However, he was cleared of suspicion by the Chief of the L.A. Homicide Department Amos Burke and his son Detective Peter Burke. The Burkes were so focused in figuring out "Who Killed Alexander The Great", that they never even considered that another crime could be happening right under their noses.

The so-called Simon The Sorcerer was at that charity event more for a heist than for hocus pocus: he was going to abscond with the money raised to fight world hunger. And if Amos Burke didn't follow his own rule (known as a 'Burke's Law') - "Never call your captain unless it's murder" - maybe they would have been able to stop Simon's scheme (which all took place after the episode ended, by the way.)

But then, Amos Burke wasn't at the top of his game anymore. At his age, the signs of Alzheimer's were already beginning to show themselves. After all, had his memory been sharp enough, surely he would have remembered that he solved the exact same style of murder thirty years before. Only the victim's name had changed - back then Burke was trying to figure out "Who Killed Merlin The Great". But it was the same scenario and the second murderer, in a similar situation, must have studied the details of that original case. (As did another copycat killer who was eventually done in by Harry 'Blacke's Magic'.)

Simon the Sorcerer continued through the 1990's using his magic act as a cover for his crimes until circumstances eventually pointed him out as the culprit. Feeling the heat, Ian fled the country to a nation without an extradition treaty with the United States. (I'm sure we could find a suitable country to use from the list of candidates in 'Mission: Impossible' that would fill the bill.....)

And from there he would have finally landed in another country where he adopted yet another persona - that of Jean Claude, an international playboy and leader of a vast criminal organization. There he grew heavier and even developed a slight accent as he enjoyed his indolent life-style.  He even changed his ways - as far as his criminal modus operandi was concerned - to become more of a dealer in stolen items rather than pulling off his heists as a one-man show.  He built up his criminal empire so that he had a cadre of henchmen working for him.

As Jean Claude, he slipped back into the United States to conduct his nefarious schemes, such as stealing a priceless vase which had a microchip imbedded within it.

And that's how Ian Keefer - AKA James Jesse, AKA Agent Bob Bondicott, AKA Simon The Sorcerer, and AKA Jean Claude - soon crossed paths with 'Chuck' Bartowski and the rest of the Carmichael Industries team of spies for hire........

SHOWS CITED:

'Chuck'
'The Magician'
'The Flash'
'Burke's Law' I
'Burke's Law' II
'Blacke's Magic'
'Mission: Impossible'
'The Muppet Show'

Trick or Treat!