THE BIRTHDAY GIRL OF BEVERLY HILLS



Today is Donna Douglas' birthday. You'll know her best for her role as Ellie Mae Clampett on 'Beverly Hillbillies', and properly for her role as the patient in 'The Twilight Zone' episode "Eye Of The Beholder". The last movie that she made (out of only five or six) was a biggie - playing the title character of Frankie in "Frankie And Johnny"... opposite Elvis Presley.

Some sources list this as her 80th birthday; others claim she's a year younger. Whichever, it's nice to pay tribute to the people who enriched my tele-viewing experience while they're still alive. So I'd like to offer up a Super Six List of Donna Douglas' best TV roles. (My brother did the same thing with his "Morning Five" at the newspaper where he's an editor. And although he took some of my suggestions, he explored her forays into other fictional universes......)

1] The aforementioned "Twilight Zone"
The interesting thing about "The Eye Of The Beholder" was that it was a different actress under the bandages, or at least doing the voice-over. (She was deemed a better actress, but not as beautiful as Donna Douglas for the big reveal.)

2] 'Checkmate'
Ms. Douglas had a recurring role as Barbara Simmons in four episodes of this detective series.

3] 'McMillan & Wife'
Donna Douglas previously worked with Rock Hudson in "Lover, Come Back" (where she played Tony Randall's secretary). In this episode, "The Man Without A Face", she played the alluring Rita, who teased Mac into a reunion with his former associates in the CIA.

4] 'Mr. Ed'
She played three different roles in three different episodes of 'Mr. Ed' but it's the first one that merits attention. Although the show was about a man who talked to a horse, the episode was about a man who would talk to a chair near the end of his career. The name of the episode? "Clint Eastwood Meets Mister Ed".

5] 'Tightrope'
Donna Douglas made her TV debut in the episode "The Casino" as Nancy.

And finally.....

6] 'The Super Mario Brothers Super Show!'
This was her penultimate TV role. (Her last role was in a video short.) What makes this special is that she reprised her role as Ellie Mae Clampett! With her appearance as Ellie Mae in a TV special and in a reunion TV movie, she is eligible for membership in the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame. And wouldn't she make a lovely candidate as the May Queen next year (when I think she really will turn 80?)

Happy birthday, Donna Douglas! And if she shares the day with her Toobworld sister, happy birthday to Ellie Mae too!

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: JACK PUMPKINHEAD

Since Fall has arrived.....

JACK PUMPKINHEAD

AS SEEN IN:

'Shirley Temple's Storybook'

"The Land Of Oz"

CREATED BY:

L. Frank Baum

PORTRAYED BY:

Sterling Holloway

TV DIMENSION:

The Land Of Oz

From Wikipedia:

Jack Pumpkinhead is a fictional character from the Oz book series by L. Frank Baum.

Jack first appeared in "The Marvelous Land of Oz". Jack's tall figure is made from tree limbs and jointed with wooden pegs. He has a jack o'lantern for a head which is where he gets his name, however unlike most jack o'lanterns, the seeds and other pumpkin guts were not removed.

Jack was made by a little boy named Tip to scare his guardian, an old witch named Mombi. From Mombi's chest he took some old clothes for Jack; purple trousers, a red shirt, a pink vest with white polka dots, and stockings, to which he added a pair of his shoes. However, instead of being frightened, when Mombi saw Jack she almost smashed him to pieces, but then she decided to test her new Powder of Life on him. The powder worked and Jack came to life.

Jack is not known for his intelligence which seems to depend on the quality and number of the seeds in his pumpkin-head at that time. However he manages to come up with random bits of wisdom and common sense often.

Jack spends much of his time growing pumpkins to replace his old heads, which eventually spoil and need to be replaced. Apparently, Princess Ozma carves new heads for Jack when necessary. The old heads are buried in a graveyard on his property.

BCnU!

SUPER COW!

WFSB, the CBS affiliate from Hartford, Ct., posted this on Facebook this morning:

Did anyone else see Olessa Stepanova's special guest this morning during her traffic report? Super Cow from Guida's [Dairy] stopped by to tell everyone to mooooove over on the highway this morning for the "Convoy of Caring" which will be making the 21 mile trek from Rocky Hill to Foodshare's Bloomfield Distribution center to help fight hunger and raise awareness of the challenges faced by 128,000 of our hungry neighbors every single day.

This makes Super Cow an actual denizen of Toobworld, if she hasn't already appeared on TV in the past (commercials and the like). Super Cow has as much validity in Toobworld as would Big Bird, Dancing Bear, Barney the Dinosaur and any other large-sized puppet people who interact with Humans.

BCnU!

O'BSERVATIONS: THE EMMY AWARDS' "IN MEMORIAM"

What I posted to Facebook a few hours after the Emmy Awards telecast....

For once, I was actually pleasantly surprised by some of those names in television who were mentioned in the In Memoriam tribute segment of tonight's Emmys Awards. Robert Easton, for example. A few better known for other fields of entertainment probably should have been skipped in favor of those they missed. And there was one name on the list I didn't even know about, so that was nice. (Letterman's make-up lady - I bet he put in a call.) 

Also, I know it was ABC's year to host so that's probably why Dick Clark got the sign-off spot, but wasn't Harry Morgan's quote perfect to have wrapped it all up?

But you know me.... I think there should have been a few names added:

• Peter Breck
• Phil Bruns
• Jonathan Frid
• George Lindsey
• Frank Cady
• Don Grady
• RG Armstrong
• Joel Goldsmith
• Ray Bradbury
• Nolan Miller
• Jerry Nelson

And that list is a lot shorter than I might have proposed!

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: TOM JONES, YOUNG AND OLDER

Two for Tuesday!

TOM JONES

AS SEEN IN:

'The History Of Tom Jones, A Foundling'

CREATED BY:

Henry Fielding

PORTRAYED BY:

Stuart Neal - Young Tom

Max Beesley - Tom as an adult

TV STATUS:

Recastaways

(Due to the aging process)

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

From Wikipedia:

"The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling", often known simply as "Tom Jones", is a comic novel by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. The novel is both a Bildungsroman and Picaresque novel. First published on 28 February 1749, "Tom Jones" is among the earliest English prose works describable as a novel. The novel, totaling 346,747 words, is divided into 18 smaller books, each preceded by a discursive chapter, often on topics totally unrelated to the book itself. It is dedicated to George Lyttleton.

Tom Jones is a bastard, the ward of Squire Allworthy, eventually revealed to be his nephew and the son of a long-deceased parson’s son, Mr Summers.

Tom Jones is a foundling discovered on the property of a very kind, wealthy landowner, Squire Allworthy, in Somerset in England's West Country. Tom grows into a vigorous and lusty, yet honest and kind-hearted, youth. He develops affection for his neighbour's daughter, Sophia Western. On one hand, their love reflects the romantic comedy genre that was popular in 18th-century Britain. However, Tom's status as a bastard causes Sophia's father and Allworthy to oppose their love; this criticism of class friction in society acted as a biting social commentary. 

The inclusion of prostitution and sexual promiscuity in the plot was also original for its time, and the foundation for criticism of the book's "lowness."

BCnU!

"JUSTICE" - "THE LEAGUE"

I've stated this in the past - I can't stand it when TV writers feel the need to splain a pop culture reference in their dialogue. If it needed to be splained away, then it wasn't worth using.

But there's another reason I detest such splainins - if left on their own, we could make the assumption that the subject of that pop culture reference shares the same world as the show which cited it.

Here's a good recent example, from 'Alphas':

When Skylar saw how upset and preoccupied Nina was, she asked: "Trouble in the Justice League?"

The remark was a comment on Nina's team-mates having super-powers by comparing them to the DC comic book super-hero team (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Aquaman, etc.)

There was no mention of comic books or cartoons, so we can make the assumption that the Justice League exists in Earth Prime-Time. (We know it exists in 'The West Wing' TV dimension, thanks to 'Smallville'.)

However......

• Superman is dead in Earth Prime-Time.
• Batman is probably retired and it's beginning to look more and more that someone else, perhaps even Bruce Wayne's son, has donned the cowl and assumed the identity of the Dark Knight.
• Being nearly immortal, Wonder Woman appears to have withdrawn from the outside world and retired to the "Paradise Island" of Themyscira.
• The Flash could still be active, or it could be that he is dead, perhaps killed by the very chemical combination that first gave him his powers.
• As for Aquaman, his pilot may not have been picked up, but it was one of the lucky ones to be broadcast. (Even though it was on Canadian TV, it still counts - putting the world in Toobworld.)

The new Green Arrow (NOT from the world of 'Smallville'!) is just a baby in comparison to the older crew.

The actual appearance of the Justice League in Earth Prime-Time, as opposed to its incarnation in the 'West Wing'/'Smallville' TV dimension, would cause some massive Zonks because of the fates and ages of those original portrayals. First off, more than likely all of the roles would be recast so some heavy splainin would be needed.

• New Superman? An escapee from the Bottled City of Kandor or the Phantom Zone determined to carry on the tradition? Mon-El?
• New Batman? Again, perhaps Bruce Wayne's son.....
• New Wonder Woman? Daughter of Diana Prince?
• New Aquaman? A citizen of Atlantis who decided to co-opt the character's name from Vincent Chase's movie (as seen in 'Entourage'?

It would take a lot of logistical limbo moves, but it could be pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that the Justice League could exist in the main Toobworld.

If I had my druthers, I'd cast the Justice League with all new members never seen in Earth Prime-Time:

• Power Girl
• Green Lantern
• Elongated Man
• Zatarra
• Black Canary
• Atom

Any other suggestions?

At any rate, even if they never show up, thanks to Skylar's comment we can claim that they still exist in Toobworld.......

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: SOPHIA WESTERN

As mentioned in passing yesterday, Samantha Morton was never in the running to be the official portrayal of Jane Eyre in Earth Prime-Time. Her televersion was from a TV movie and so a lot of details in the plot had to be scrapped to fit the running time.

I doubt Ms. Morton has ever heard of the Toobworld Dynamic, and even if she had she probably wouldn't care, but at least it can be said that she totally "pwns" the role of Sophia Western when it comes to the TV adaptations of literary characters......

SOPHIA WESTERN

Adorned with all the charms in which Nature can array her, bedecked with beauty, youth, sprightliness, innocence, modesty and tenderness, breathing sweetness from her rosy lips and darting brightness from her sparkling eyes, the lovely Sophia comes!

[Caption to a painting of Sophia Western]

AS SEEN IN:

'The History Of Tom Jones, A Foundling'

CREATED BY:

Henry Fielding

PORTRAYED BY:

Samantha Western

TV STATUS:

Recastaway (Original)

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

From Wikipedia:

Sophia Western [is] the Squire's only daughter, the model of virtue, beauty and all good qualities.

An incident occurs in which Master Blifil lets go the small bird of Sophia's, given to her by Tom as a young boy. Tom tries to retrieve it but, in doing so, falls into a canal. This incident turns Sophia against Blifil but puts Tom in her favour.

Sophia is falling for Tom but his heart is given over to Molly, the second of Black George's daughters and a local beauty. She throws herself at Tom, and he gets her pregnant and then feels obliged to offer her his protection.

In the meantime, Sophia has taken pity on Molly and requests her father to ask her to be her maid, but the family council decides to put everything on hold until Tom's intentions become clearer. Squire Western, the local parson, Tom and Sophia are having dinner when the parson informs Western of Molly's condition, at which Tom leaves the dining table. Squire Western immediately jumps to the conclusion that Tom is the father of the bastard, much to Sophia's consternation.

Tom returns to his home to find Molly in the arms of a constable and being taken to prison. He bids him free her, and they go to speak to Mr Allworthy where Tom reveals he is the father, saying the guilt is his.

An incident now occurs in which Tom comes to the aid of Sophia. She goes out hunting with her father and, on her way home, is thrown by her horse. Tom, who is riding close behind, is able to catch her but breaks his left arm in the process. The accident brings them closer and there is the first stirring of love.

BCnU!

JANE EYRE, GOVERNESS OF SKITLANDIA

Sean Cleary pointed out yet another Jane Eyre, one who can only be found in one TV dimension - Skitlandia!

 Parody - SNL - Jane Eyre from Thisbe on Vimeo.

Thanks, Little Buddy!

CRAZY GUGGENHEIM (MUSEUM PIECE)

It's time to pay the bills.....

This morning at work, I greeted an arriving co-worked named Joseph with my impersonation of Frankie Fontaine as Crazy Guggenheim. Crazy was a patron of Joe the Bartender's establishment in a series of sketches on Jackie Gleason's variety show back in the day.

"Uh - hiya, Joe!"

I should have known Joseph wouldn't get it - he came to this country in 1979. But I was amazed that even among the older co-workers, they just had no clue who he was.

When I was in second grade, Tommy Kilroy, Larry McLaughlin, and I "toured" the classes of St. Joseph's School with our presentation of a Joe The Bartender sketch. I was Joe, Tommy was Crazy, and Larry was the previously unseen Mr. Donahy. (In the TV sketches, he was the P.O.V. of the camera.)

I did a quick check of YouTube but this was all I could find for Crazy Guggenheim.....

INTER-DIMENSIONAL COMPARITIVE STUDIES: "JANE EYRE"