CHURCH ON SATURDAY

Here's our weekly 'Doctor Who' content - a little something from Skitlandia.....

FEARLESS FELIX!

This has to be a Real World winner in this year's Toobits Awards!

NORM!!!!!

Here's another example of a TV character appearing in an interstitial for ME-TV:

Norm Peterson was already qualified for inclusion in the TV Crossover Hall of Fame with appearances in 'Frasier', 'Wings', and 'Cheers' of course. Plus there was a side excursion into the Tooniverse thanks to 'The Simpsons'. So this is just icing on the cake!

BCnU!

AS SEEN IN - THE MOVIES? CAPTAIN DANBURY

Usually when the Toobworld Dynamic "absorbs" a movie out of the Cineverse (the movie universe name coined by Craig Shaw Gardner), there's already some kind of connection to the TV Universe - like the appearance of a TV character, for example. The original 'Star Trek' franchise, "Maverick", the 1966 "Batman" movie.... But not "The Beverly Hillbillies" - even though Buddy Ebsen does appear as 'Barnaby Jones', the rest of the characters are recastaways. So that Barnaby Jones is the movie counterpart to the televersion.

I've often wanted to grab a movie - kidnap it, actually - and claim it for the Toobworld Dynamic. "John Carter" is a good example of that - I had a bit of a meltdown over the idea. (If you're so interested in seeing me go bat-bleep, look for it yourself. I'm not going to help you!)

But there is a movie with no real connection to TV for which I will defend my "kidnapping" - "The Velvet Touch", a murder mystery starring Rosalind Russell, Leo Genn, Claire Trevor, Leon Ames, Dan Tobin, and Sydney Greenstreet. The format of the movie is highly reminiscent of a 'Columbo' episode in which we see the murder committed and it's about twenty minutes before the detective shows up. After that, it's not whodunnit but how is he going to solve it.

The movie even features an appearance by Mike Lally, who appeared more often in 'Columbo' than any other actor, and it has the line "Just one more thing" (although not spoken by the detective.)

It's because of Sydney Greenstreet as Captain Danbury of the NYPD that I want to claim this movie for Toobworld. His style of interrogation suggests that of Lt. Columbo who would come along twenty years later. Since it's been established that Columbo began his career in New York City before moving to Los Angeles, I'm going to suggest that Captain Danbury was an indirect influence on the future detective.

Columbo has claimed that it was a New York cop named Sgt. Gilhooley who taught him everything he knows as a detective. Well, I think among those detectives we see in the squad room is Sgt. Gilhooley, and that he learned everything he knew from the master, Captain Danbury.

If you can find a copy of this film, watch it. Every so often it shows up on TCM, so set up a schedule for yourself at their website to give you an alert when it's coming around again.

In the meantime, here's a scene from the movie in which Captain Danbury acts somewhat "Columbo-ish".......

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: LT. ARTHUR TRAGG

LT. ARTHUR TRAGG

AS SEEN IN:

'Perry Mason'

CREATED BY:

Erle Stanley Gardner

PORTRAYED BY:

Ray Collins

TV STATUS:

Recastaway (Original)

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

From Squidoo.com:
Ray Collins' Lt. Arthur Tragg was Perry Mason's big nemesis along with Hamilton Burger. He played a hard nosed police lieutenant who often butt heads with Perry and often suffered frustration at the hands of the lawyer and Paul Drake.

From Wikipedia:
Ray Collins played the part of the crusty, dedicated police lieutenant, Arthur Tragg, who often frustrated Mason. Collins' appearances diminished toward the end of the 1963–64 season (he was 67 when the series began and died in the summer of 1965), and he was assisted by Wesley Lau as Lt. Andy Anderson, who took the position by himself until the end of the 1964–65 season.

Ray Bidwell Collins (December 10, 1889 – July 11, 1965) was an American actor in film, stage, radio, and television. One of Collins' best remembered roles was that of Lt. Arthur Tragg in the long-running series 'Perry Mason'.

He may be best remembered for his work on television, playing Lieutenant Tragg on 'Perry Mason' in the 1950s and 1960s.

By 1960, while immersed in the 'Perry Mason' series, Collins found his physical health declining and his memory waning, problems which in the next few years brought an end to his career. On the difficulty he was beginning to encounter in remembering his lines, he commented, "Years ago, when I was on the Broadway stage, I could memorize 80 pages in eight hours. I had a photographic memory. When I got out on the stage, I could actually -- in my mind -- see the lines written on top of the page, the middle or the bottom. But then radio came along, and we read most of our lines, and I got out of the habit of memorizing. I lost my natural gift. Today it's hard for me. My wife works as hard as I do, cueing me at home."

On July 11, 1965, Collins died of emphysema at the age of 75.

O'BSERVATION:

Ray Collins made his final appearance in a 'Perry Mason' episode at the end of Season 8 in "The Case Of The Mischievous Doll" (May, 1965).  I'd like to think that Arthur Tragg retired from the force in June of that year and - even though Collins was dead by July of that year - enjoyed another five years in retirement before he passed away in 1970.......

 

Lt. Tragg is shooting rubber bands at a paper doll effigy of Perry Mason.

BCnU!

LIFE DURING PRIME-TIME - ADA SAMPSON

'ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS':

"DE MORTUIS"

'PERRY MASON':

"THE CASE OF THE LOQUACIOUS LIAR"

"THE CASE OF THE RED RIDING BOOTS"

"THE CASE OF THE ENVIOUS EDITOR"

The Higher Education Act of 1965 and the Pell Grants which began in 1972 (but under a different name) would not have been of much help to a young man in the 1950's struggling to get through college and then on to law school.

A young man named Sampson was faced with such a dilemma, and I believe he put himself through school by driving a truck. And being the handsome, virile specimen that he was, he bedded a lot of women - some of them married, not that it mattered - along his routes. One of these women was Irene Rankin, wife of a professor living in a small town.

Once he graduated law school, Sampson got himself a job as an assistant district attorney for the city of Los Angeles, California. He was abrasively zealous in his pursuit of convictions, most notably in the murder cases listed above. 

 But that doesn't necessarily mean that the leopard changed his spots. From these three cases, we know nothing of ADA Sampson's private life. So it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that he continued with his womanizing ways.

This is only supposition, based on the fact that H.M. Wynant played both roles in Toobworld. And thanks to my blogging buddy Ivan of "The Thrilling Days Of Yesteryear" (Link to the Left, My Students Of The Macabre!), this "By Any Other Name" post was made better by the screen captchas from 'Perry Mason'.

Here's the "De Mortuis" episode from 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents':

BCnU!

ASOTV ADDENDUM: "THE ADVENTURES OF BLACK BEAUTY"

There was a TV series based on "Black Beauty" in 1972. But although it was set in the original England, it had less to do with the novel than did the Americanized mini-series.....

From Wikipedia:

'The Adventures of Black Beauty' is a British children's television drama series produced by London Weekend Television and shown by ITV in the United Kingdom between 1972 and 1974. It was distributed internationally by London Weekend International.

The series was not an adaptation of the book by Anna Sewell, but a "continuation" featuring new characters created by Ted Willis, most prominently Dr James Gordon, played by William Lucas, and his children Vicky, played by Judi Bowker (who became Jenny, played by Stacy Dorning, in the second series) and Kevin, played by Roderick Shaw. Other writers included David Butler and Richard Carpenter, while directors included Charles Crichton and Peter Duffell. 

The series, which was filmed mainly at Stockers Farm, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, was widely acclaimed for its high production values and quality of writing and acting, and at times had remarkable English gothic overtones for a children's series.

O'BSERVATIONS:

There is a Black Beauty in Toobworld who is based on the horse in the original novel, even though the setting was changed to America.  This version can remain in Earth Prime-Time, however, because in the end, it's just a name given to a horse.  The plotline was completely changed.

 As for the "recastaways" of Vicky and Jenny, both were Dr. Gordon's daughters. But he could only afford to send one off to finishing school at a time, so when Jenny came home, Vicky left for her schooling.

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: BLACK BEAUTY

When Black Friday comes.....

BLACK BEAUTY

AS SEEN IN:

'Black Beauty'

CREATED BY:

Anna Sewell

PORTRAYED BY:

N/A

TV STATUS:

Americanized

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

From Wikipedia:

"Black Beauty" is an 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell. It was composed in the last years of her life, during which she remained in her house as an invalid. The novel became an immediate bestseller, with Sewell dying just five months after its publication, long enough to see her first and only novel become a success. With fifty million copies sold, "Black Beauty" is one of the best-selling books of all time. While forthrightly teaching animal welfare, it also teaches how to treat people with kindness, sympathy, and respect. "Black Beauty" became a forerunner to the pony book genre of children's literature.

The story is narrated in the first person as an autobiographical memoir told by the titular horse named Black Beauty—beginning with his carefree days as a colt on an English farm with his mother, to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country. Along the way, he meets with many hardships and recounts many tales of cruelty and kindness. Each short chapter recounts an incident in Black Beauty's life containing a lesson or moral typically related to the kindness, sympathy, and understanding treatment of horses, with Sewell's detailed observations and extensive descriptions of horse behaviour lending the novel a good deal of verisimilitude.

Darkie/Black Beauty/Black Auster/Jack/Blackie/Old Crony—The narrator of the story, a handsome black horse. He begins his career as a carriage horse for wealthy people but when he "breaks his knees" (i.e. develops scars on his knees after a bad fall) he is no longer considered presentable enough and is put to much harder work. He passes through the hands of a series of owners, some cruel, some kind. He always tries his best to serve humans despite the circumstance.

From the Turner Classic Movies website:

['Black Beauty' is a] sentimental, all-star retelling (the ninth and most lavish filming since 1906) of Anna Sewell's beloved animal classic, stretched out in its premiere showing over five nights in hourly episodes. Subsequently shown in two parts over four hours.

O'BSERVATIONS:

Although the story was "Americanized", it still covered many of the same situations as were in the novel.  I am not sure if there was any voice-over by Black Beauty.  If so, we could make the assertion that he was a Houyhnhnm as seen in the mini-series 'Gulliver's Travels' (based on the novel by Jonathan Swift.)

The full mini-series is available on DVD.

Every so often I dedicate the ASOTV showcase to someone.  Today's feature is dedicated to Cindy Weich, a horse-lover who also lived in T-House when I was at UConn......

BCnU!

ECCE PROMO: THE PRICE OF MEL

If you've been paying attention the last two weeks, you know that I'm caught up in the reruns bonanza (including 'Bonanza'!) that is ME-TV (as well as Antenna TV and to a lesser extent, TV Land.) Besides having old favorites like 'Perry Mason', 'Rockford Files', 'The Dick Van Dyke Show', 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' and 'Columbo', ME-TV has great promos for itself. (I tip my cap to their research staff for finding the appropriate clips.)

There's one particular interstitial that gets lots of play which features Alan Brady touting 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'.

Not Carl Reiner. Alan Brady.

After all the time I spent this past year writing about 'The Dick Van Dyke Show', hopefully you'll remember that mentions of that classic sitcom in other TV shows are not a Zonk.

THE SPLAININ:

Alan Brady bought the rights to Rob Petrie's memoirs with the intent of adapting it as a sitcom for himself. The original pilot "Head Of The Family" is the result, and the only episode filmed. As it also played out in real life with Carl Reiner, the network was cool to the idea of Brady in the role of Rob Petrie. Hoping to salvage the project, Brady hired a young actor named Dick Van Dyke because he bore an uncanny resemblance to Brady's former head writer. And so it's the show within the show that everybody mentions.

Got that?

So that's what Alan Brady is talking about - his own production of 'The Dick Van Dyke Show', not Carl Reiner's.

But that's not what is interesting about that promo.....

According to the notes connected with that YouTube video, it first aired in October of 2007. About four years earlier, CBS broadcast 'The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited', a reunion special that reconnected the Trueniverse audience with Rob, Laura, Sally (and Herman), Alan, Millie, Rob's brother Stacey, and blink-and-you'll-miss-him Ritchie. But it was mentioned in the course of the show that Buddy, Mel, and Jerry had all passed away.

And yet in this 2007 promo, Mel is apparently still alive?

We hear a snippet of his dialogue from some episode and we see an outstretched arm. (Because of the death of Richard Deacon in the real world back in 1984, that was O'Bviously a recastaway.)

Alan looks at the off-camera Mel and asks, "What's the matter with you?"

Maybe he's a zombie?

No, even I'm not going there.

THE SPLAININ:

Alan Brady got himself a new flunky named Mel.

The only sticking point would be the use of Richard Deacon's voice, but haven't there been times in your own life when you heard somebody and thought it was someone else? That's what we're claiming in this case.

So who is this new Mel?

Alan Brady is a very demanding boss and as such would only want someone with experience in the TV biz to be his right-hand man.

So I have a candidate. I nominate Mel Price.

For three episodes of 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show', David Ogden Stiers appeared as the new station manager for WJM.

• He played hardball with Mary and Lou in their contract renegotiations.
• He hired critic Karl Heller to do an acidic arts segment on the Six O'Clock News.
• He fostered 'The Ted And Georgette Show'.
• And although not seen in the episode, Mel Price was probably responsible for getting Sue Ann's show 'The Happy Homemaker' canceled.

In the intervening decades, Mel Price probably had many other career opportunities in television. (For the suits behind the scenes, it must be a volatile job market.)

But by 2007, Mel Price could have been the Veep in Alan Brady's production company (which doesn't mean he's still working there now!)

Buddy would have loved to loathe him - the right-hand man for Alan Brady who's tall, bald, AND named Mel?

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: BARBIE BATCHELOR

BARBIE BATCHELOR

AS SEEN IN:

'The Jewel In The Crown'

CREATED BY:

Paul Scott

PORTRAYED BY:

Dame Peggy Ashcroft

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

'The Jewel In The Crown' was the umbrella title for this adaptation of Paul Scott's four novels in the "Raj Quartet". Barbie Batchelor's story comes mostly from "The Towers Of Silence".

From Wikipedia:

"The Towers of Silence" is the 1971 novel by Paul Scott that continues his Raj Quartet. It gets its title from the Parsi Towers of Silence where the bodies of the dead are left to be picked clean by vultures. The novel is set in the British Raj of 1940s India. It follows on from the storyline in the "The Day of the Scorpion".

Miss Batchelor is a retired missionary schoolteacher who lives with Mabel Layton at Rose Cottage. Barbie is a simple, down-to-earth woman, who believes strongly in her god and in egalitarian Christianity and has clear ideas about right and wrong. She is troubled that in all her years of missionary work, she was not very successful in converting the children in her charge to Christianity ("How many of them did I bring to God?" she asks herself.) Above all, Barbie wants to be useful and to have a role in the society in which she lives.

Barbie is haunted by the suicide of her friend and former colleague, Edwina Crane, who in "The Jewel and the Crown" witnessed a brutal murder during rioting "on the road to Dibrapur."

Barbie comes from a working-class background, and this — as well as her taking up space in Rose Cottage — causes Mildred Layton to resent her. Barbie's egalitarian attitudes, based on her communal Christian beliefs, annoy and exasperate Mildred.

Barbie is a figure of fun for the English elite in Pankot. They mock her and roll their eyes at what they view as her hysterics and spread rumors that she is a lesbian. However, Sarah Layton, especially, and her sister, Susan, have affection for her.

She talks a lot and fondly remembers her father, a drinker from Camberwell with a joy for life.

The author uses Barbie and other characters to show how India changes Europeans until they no longer resemble those they left behind. Barbie speaks fluent Hindi and is perhaps more Indian than British.

The novel begins with the story of Barbie Batchelor, an old missionary schoolteacher, who, after years of service to the church, decides to take her pension and retire. She finds a place as a paying guest with Mabel Layton, a member of the aristocracy of the English in India, at Rose Cottage in Pankot. Barbie and Mabel become close. Late one night, Mabel tells Barbie that she will only go to Ranpur when she's buried, which Barbie interprets to mean that she wants to be buried in Ranpur, next to the grave of her late husband, James Layton.

Barbie is proud of her working class background and her simple Christianity, but she does her best to behave in a manner that makes upper-class Pankot comfortable. Unfortunately, they will never accept her as one of their own, treating her as a peculiar and unwanted intruder.

Barbie, wanting to show her affection for Susan with a nice wedding-cum-21st birthday gift, buys a set of silver Apostle spoons and gives them to Sarah to pass on. Mabel, while going through some old clothes, comes upon a piece of cloth that remained from a christening gown. The fabric is embedded with woven butterflies, symbolically imprisoned in the material. She gives the piece to Barbie, who is quite taken with its fragility.

In order to make up for having the wedding out of town, Mildred throws a buffet luncheon at the Pankot Rifles officers' mess for Pankot society. Mabel and Barbie go together, but are efficiently separated from each other under Mildred's instructions. Barbie is puzzled that her gift of spoons is not displayed with the other wedding gifts.

Mabel Layton has a stroke and dies. Worried about the state of Mabel's soul, Barbie worms her way into the morgue at the hospital and thinks she sees the anguish of eternal torment on the face of her dead friend. She is then shocked to learn that Mabel will be buried in Pankot and not in Ranpur, as she had wished. She barges in on Mildred to plead for her friend's last wish, but Mildred rebukes her harshly for interfering and offers a vicious evaluation of her character. Mildred gives Barbie until the end of the month to vacate Rose Cottage.

Barbie tries hard to get back into the missionary service, but finds a position difficult to secure. She learns through Sarah that Mabel has left her an annuity in her will. Barbie is embarrassed by the gesture and predicts that Mildred will cause trouble over it.

Mildred blames Barbie for planting the idea [of infanticide] in Susan's mind and returns the Apostle spoons through Clarissa.  Barbie, deeply hurt by the insult, sends notes to Colonel Trehearne and Captain Coley saying that she intends to make a gift of silver to the 1st Pankot Rifles. She then sets off in search of Coley to deliver the goods. Arriving at Coley's bungalow in a rainstorm, Barbie gets no answer at the door. Finding it unlocked, she goes in to leave the gift inside. But hearing an odd sound, she investigates and comes upon the sight of Coley and Mildred Layton rutting furiously.

Undetected by the lovers, she flees from the bungalow, but is caught in the rainstorm and falls seriously ill, coming down with bronchopneumonia.

Barbie, recovering from pneumonia but unable to speak above a whisper, finally donates the spoons to the regiment. She gets a letter from Calcutta, offering her a position as a teacher in Dibrapur, the site of Edwina Crane's horror.

Captain Coley informs Barbie that a trunk full of her things has been found stored in a shed at Rose Cottage and it had better be removed before Mildred finds out. Knowing that she will soon be leaving the Peplows and will have enough space of her own, she goes up to the vacant cottage to retrieve her trunk. There she encounters Ronald Merrick, who is in town for treatment at the local military hospital and has come in search of the Laytons; however, no one is currently in residence. Barbie is excited to finally meet Merrick and asks him about Mayapore. She opens her trunk and presents him with her copy of the painting, "The Jewel in the Crown". Merrick recognizes it as one he saw among Edwina Crane's things and accepts it gratefully.

Barbie has the tonga-wallah load the large trunk onto the tonga she is travelling in. Merrick worries that the load is too heavy, especially on such a steep road down from Rose Cottage. Barbie sets off anyway as it begins to rain.

The dirt road becomes slick and the tonga-wallah loses control, dumping Barbie and the trunk in a ditch. Barbie is physically and mentally injured in the accident and ends up at a sanitarium in Ranpur. Her view is of the Parsees' towers of silence of the title. Sarah visits her, but she cannot seem to get through. Barbie dies just as the atomic bomb is exploded over Hiroshima in August 1945.

You can find 'The Jewel In The Crown' in about a dozen segments on YouTube....

BCnU!