WEBB SEARCH - LINKING "IRONSIDE" & "THE DORIS DAY SHOW"

'IRONSIDE'

"EAT, DRINK, AND BE BURIED"

"We were driving along the beach road;
I'd had a couple of drinks. 
An old man came up out of nowhere,
I hit him. 
Panicked, just... kept on going. 
The papers said he wasn't badly hurt. 
But... hit and run....  

Goodbye column, goodbye everything...."

Francesca Kirby

Just before she confessed to this, Francesca Kirby established the timeline when she began her splainin as to why she agreed to marry jazz drummer Mitch Kirby:

"Because of one stinking minute almost three years ago."

This 'Ironside' episode was broadcast October 5, 1967.  And as is usually the case for Toobworld, we consider the events of the episode to take place around that same time.  So that means the hit and run happened at some point in 1964.  

There are a couple of real-world  events which we might tie into this Toobworld incident.  It could be that Francesca and Mitch had been out drinking and decided to get out of the city in order to avoid these disruptions to their everyday life.

From Wikipedia:

MAY 2

Some 400–1,000 students march through Times Square, New York, and another 700 in San Francisco, in the first major student demonstration against the Vietnam War. 

JULY 16

At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco, U.S. presidential nominee Barry Goldwater declares that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice", and "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue".

But we don't have to have such reasons for Francesca and Mitch to escape the City by the Bay.  They had admittedly been drinking and so decided to take a drive.

I think they headed north across the Golden Gate Bridge and headed up 101, eventually taking an exit to that beach road.  And that's where they hit the old man.

So....  Who was that old man?

At first, when I had the idea for this essay, I thought it would be too arduous a task to find an old man from San Francisco in some TV show set in 1964 who could have been hit by a car and survived with no impact on the TV show.  And I'll be honest - I didn't want to do that kind of work.

So then my knee-jerk reaction was to turn to my favorite show for filling in the blanks: 'Doctor Who'.  Why not do a bit of fanfic in which the First Incarnation of the Doctor and his grand-daughter had landed alongside that beach road?  The Doctor, for whatever reason - trying to escape some alien or even supernatural threat, perhaps - stumbled into the road and received a glancing blow from Francesca's car.  This sent him flying into the bushes and they drove away without checking on him.

I still think it would be a great idea for fanfic, especially having the Doctor visit the San Francisco area before his Eighth Incarnation was there for the new Millennium.  And I'd rather have it be a supernatural threat rather than an alien menace as we too often see in the series.

But then, before I wasted too much time amped up with writing such a Fanficcer's Friend post, it suddenly occurred to me that there was the perfect old man to have escape grievous injury in that hit and run.  But he wasn't seen in a TV show set in the San Francisco area back in 1964.  However, we know he was there.  In fact, he wouldn't even show up in Toobworld until a year after this 'Ironside' episode ended.

Buckley "Buck" Webb
'The Doris Day Show'.

Buck lived on a rural ranch near Cotina in Mill Valley, which is north of San Francisco.  He raised his daughter Doris there, but she moved away after marrying a man named Martin.  After Mr. Martin's death, Doris Martin and her sons Billy and Toby returned to the ranch in order to regain their bearings in Life.

So even though we didn't meet Buck Webb until 1968, he was living north of San Francisco back in 1964.  He could have been on that beach road which would have led to him being struck down by Francesca Kirby.

But why was he there?  Why wasn't he back home on his ranch?

We could go back to either one of those two real-world events and this is where we could tie one of them into the fabric of Toobworld.  I'm going to go with the 700 student rally against the Vietnam War instead of that Republican wankfest to nominate Barry Goldwater.  It is tempting to think about the research in finding significant Republicans who might have been portrayed in Toobworld and who might have been there and then add them to this bit o' fanfic.  

But then again, it is the Republicans....

So instead let's go to the protest rally and make the claim that some of those 700 protesters were TV characters who were radicals and hippies and radicalized students from other TV shows.  For instance, how about Mike Stivic from 'All In The Famiy', who was known back then by the hippie pseudonym of Moondog (as seen in an episode of 'Gomer Pyle USMC'.)

Here's the premise I came up with - ranch hand and itinerant nitwit LeRoy B. Simpson had been in San Francisco on that Saturday, May 2, when he stumbled into the mass of protesters and was considered by the police to be one of the trouble-makers.  With the one call he was granted after he was arrested, LeRoy phoned Buck Webb to come and rescue him.  Much "hilarity" would ensue as the crusty old rancher took on the SFPD in his fight to get LeRoy freed.

(Here's the only defense Buck would have had to present.  "Just look at that, boy; he's an idjit!"  And the cops would have realized LeRoy didn't have the brains to get involved with the protesters.)

"I couldn't be protesting, honest!
I don't like taking tests; I'm anti-testing!"

It would have been later that night by the time they headed home to the ranch.  And as they traveled up the highway, Buck's old truck must have broken down.  Limping along because it was as stubborn as its owner, Buck pulled the truck off the highway and parked alongside the shoulder on a beach road.  In hopes of getting a ride into town to get a tow truck to come out, Buck stepped into the road in order to flag down a car that was heading toward them.

And that's when a drunken Francesca Kirby ran him down.

Buck was a tough old bird and he survived the collision.  And maybe his daughter Doris and her husband came back to visit him with the boys as he recuperated.  Of course the ornery old cuss would have claimed it was nothing more than a glancing blow and that they should stop fussing over him.  

By the time we finally did actually meet him in Toobworld some four years later, it would have been considered ancient history as far as Buck was concerned.  Having his daughter and grandsons back home with an uncertain future would have been a more pressing concern.

"Toby, you're my favorite.
Your brother Billy can suck wind."

And so that's how I'm tightening up the mosaic of Earth Prime-Time.  And with that peace rally, there are even more TV shows which I could probably weave into the fabric.

BCnU!

With all - some - apologies to my own brother Billy.....

SPLAININ TO DO: A ZONK UNMASKED

Ross: 

She hates Pottery Barn?

Rachel: 

I know, she says it’s all mass-produced, nothing is authentic, 

and everyone winds up having the same stuff.

'Friends'

‘SECRET AGENT’
“THE GALLOPING MAJOR”
3 July 1965

In 1965, John Drake was in an African nation, undercover as a Major Sullivan during the lead-up to the election for prime minister.  He stayed with a Mrs. Manningham in her home where she had a lot of African art hanging on the wall, including that mask on the wall to Drake’s right.

'SECRET AGENT'
“PARALLEL LINES SOMETIMES MEET”
1 January 1966

Six months later, Drake was on assignment in Haiti, trying to find a missing British couple who were nuclear scientists.  At the hotel where he was staying, that same mask could be seen outside the suite of his Soviet counterpart, Major Nicola Tarasova.

This is such an easy Zonk to splain away.  Mrs. Manningham (who may have been related by marriage to Jack and Bella Manningham of London in the late 19th Century*) probably thought her mask was an original work of art.  Her late husband Henry, who seemed to have shaped all of his wife’s opinions, probably bought a cheap knock-off in some tourist trap of a souvenir shop and passed it off to his wife as an original.

The manufacturer of that mask shipped them all over the world, perhaps even to Pottery Barn, which does have a televersion thanks to an episode of ‘Friends’.  (The show practically kissed the ass of that company for the product placement.)

Hotels are always looking for faux objets d’art to display in the rooms and hallways and the lobby.  That mask would certainly have fit the bill if they were trying for the ambience of voodoo.

I bet if Mrs. Manningham could tear herself away from her Tanqueray straight no chaser long enough, she could probably take that mask off the wall and look on the backside – where she would find a “Made In China” stamp.

Simple splainin.

 BCnU!

* The Manninghams were the main characters in the play "Angel Street", later made as the movie "Gaslight".

HISTORY, CHANNELED - KHRUSHCHEV & DISNEYLAND

'BURKE'S LAW'

"WHO KILLED THE JACKPOT?"

This is the episode which introduced multidimensional private eye Honey West into the world of the Toob.  With Anne Francis in the role, she went on to headline her own series and was eventually inducted into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame (thanks to some splainin by yours truly to get that third requirement.)

But this episode also had another crossover... in a way.  Actually it was more of a verification of the existence in the TV Universe of a real person from the Trueniverse.  But this person has been represented in at least one Toobworld series and so I see it as a viable crossover.

At one point in this episode, Captain Amos Burke was tied up on the phone with the Governor of California and then a Senator when he should have been out catching a killer.  And the longer he was held up, the more likely it was that Honey West was going to be in trouble.

During the conversation with the Senator, we heard Captain Burke's side of the dialogue exchange:

"He's coming here?

That's very nice... 

And you want me to take him on all the rides,,,?

Yes, I know he didn't make it the last time. 

I feel sorry for the poor fellow."

On the Toobworld timeline, this episode took place in April of 1965.  And as far as I can figure, there could only be one person Amos Burke could have been referring to......

From history.com:

SEPTEMBER 19, 1959
In one of the more surreal moments in the history of the Cold War, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev explodes with anger when he learns that he cannot visit Disneyland. The incident marked the climax of Khrushchev’s day in Los Angeles, one that was marked by both frivolity and tension.

For more details, click here.

Nikita Khrushchev has had several actors portraying him on television, but not all of them in Earth Prime-Time.  One definite appearance in the main Toobworld happened in... 'The Twilight Zone'.  The episode?  "The Whole Truth".  Used car dealer saved his own livelihood by selling to the Soviet premier an antique car which compelled its owner to only speak the truth, and nothing but.

There have been other portrayals of Khrushchev in many TV dimensions, not only in the main Toobworld.  Among them are:

"Danger 5"
5 episode (2015) 

Played by Steven Zachary Parker (as Khrushchev)

"Vasiliy Stalin" 

12 episodes

"The Folklorist"
    - Cuban Missile Crisis, American Army of Two, the Grasshopper & the Ant, Amelia Earhart (2013) 

Played by Jim Hammond

"The Untold History of the United States"
    - Chapter 6: JFK - To the Brink (2012)  

Played by Mark Ivanir (as Nikita Khrushchov)

"Mosgaz" (2012) 

Played by Sergey Losev (as Nikita Khruschyov)

"Zhukov"
    - Episode #1.8 (????) 

Played by Aleksandr Potapov

"The Kennedys"
    - Cuban Missiles (2011)  

Played by Eugene Lipinski

"The Company"
    - Episode #1.1 (2007) 

Played by Zoltán Berzsenyi (as Nikita Khruschev)
    - Episode #1.2 (2007) 

Played by Zoltán Berzsenyi (as Nikita Khruschev)

Georg (2006)
Played by Andrus Vaarik

"Space Race"
    - Race for Rockets (2005) 

Played by Constantine Gregory (as Khrushchev)

"Timewatch"
    - Who Killed Stalin? (2005) 

Played by Miroslaw Neinert (as Khrushchev)

"Passions"
    - Episode #1.674 (2002) 

Played by Alex Rodine

Stalin (1992)

Played by Murray Ewan (as Khrushchev)
"Hot Metal" 
    - The Modern Promethius (1986) 

Played by Aubrey Morris (but as a Nikita Kruschev impostor)

Red Monarch (1983) 

Played by Brian Glover (as Nikita Kruschev)

"Presidentti"
    - Episode #1.4 (1982) 

Played by Ari Piispa (as Nikita Hrustsev)

Suez 1956 (1979) 

Played by Aubrey Morris

Francis Gary Powers: The True Story of the U-2 Spy Incident (1976)

Played by Thayer David 

The Missiles of October (1974) 

Played by Howard Da Silva (as Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev) 

"The Twilight Zone" 
    - The Whole Truth (1961) 

Played by Lee Sabinson

"Playhouse 90"
    - The Plot to Kill Stalin (1958) 

Played by Oskar Homolka (as Khrushchev)

Most of those would be shipped off to alternate TV dimensions but the episodes of 'The Company', 'The Twilight Zone', and 'Passions' at least would be sharing the same Toobworld as the reference from 'Burke's Law'.  (Actually, in 'Passions' we're seeing Khrushchev's soul in Hell.)

BCnu!

BLIPVERT MONDAY - JIMMY FEBREZE

This is Jimmy’s room.  We don’t know what Jimmy’s last name is, but for filing purposes I’m calling him Jimmy Febreze as he’s found in a Febreze blipvert.

Jimmy has gone “nose-blind”.  He doesn’t smell the sweaty gym socks stored in his room like his Mom can. 

But how about that other guy?  Who’s he?  I’m thinking he msut be Jimmy’s best friend.

Why can’t he smell the dirty socks in Jimmy’s room?  Maybe he does smell them.  But for the sake of their friendship, he doesn’t say anything.

Or maybe there’s another reason…..?

Oh, by the way.  This is Jimmy’s Mom.

Never mind.  I withdraw the question…..

BCnU!

VIDEO SUNDAY - "LAURA" REMADE

I don't know why, but September just feels right for mystery programs.  The weather is getting crisper, the days are getting shorter.....

There are different ways for the Cineverse to have counterparts in the greater Toobworld Universe.  Usually it's with TV series adaptations of the movies.  ('M*A*S*H', 'Limitless', 'Buffy The Vampire Lover') 

Then there are the movies which are extensions of the original TV series. ('Maverick', 'Batman 1966' and the first eight 'Star Trek' movies, plus the ninth - until Spock goes into the black hole.  He be dead, Jim!  After that it was all fantasy.)

Other times there would be something about a particular movie that demanded it should be absorbed into Toobworld.  ("North By Northwest" - The Professor is Alexander Waverly.)

But during the fifties, there were anthology shows from the studios which adapted their movies into one-shot recreations of those films.  'The 20th Century Fox Hour' ran for three years with such adaptations as 'Cavalcade', 'Miracle On 34th Street', and 'The Ox-Bow Incident'.

Our Video Sunday offering today is another of these movie adaptations.  "Laura" is one of the greatest noir films for me, directed by Otto Preminger and starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Dame Judith Anderson, and Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker.

This version from 'The 20th Century Hour' is titled "Portrait of Murder" (a title worthy of 'Columbo'!) and it stars Robert Stack in Andrews' role, Scott Forbes standing in for Price, and Dana Wynter as Laura.  Best of all, Clifton Webb's Lydecker is ably replaced by the man born to play the role: George Sanders.

Enjoy.........



BCnU!

FRANK VINCENT - A HAT SQUAD BLIPVERT

And now a word from our sponsor.....

.
Frank Vincent passed away this week after open heart surgery.  He made his mark playing to his strengths, looking as he did like a made man in some crime family.  He worked in the movies "Goodfellas", "Casino", "Raging Bull", "Do The Right Thing", and "The Pope of Greenwich Village".

But I think the role for which he'll be remembered the most was not in the Cineverse, but in Toobworld - as Phil Leotardo in 'The Sopranos'.  A lot of characters got whacked on that show, but his death was one of the more interesting.  Look around, you'll probably find it.

I wrote about Phil Leotardo once, and made the claim that it is Phil we saw dealing with the AFLAC duck.

Click here if you want to read that story.  As you can see, that original YouTube copy of the blipvert is no longer viable.  So use the one in this story.

Good night and may God bless......

BCnU!

CROSSING ZONE - "MIDNIGHT SUN" & "SEINFELD" AND THEN BACK AGAIN ON FLIGHT 33

We haven't done a "Crossing Zone" post so let's launch another one.

WARNING!  If you haven't seen the 'Twilight Zone'' episodes "The Midnight Sun" and "The Odyssey of Flight 33" and the 'Seinfeld' episode "The Gymnast", be forewarned - there will be SPOILERS!

Our focus for this Crossing Zone is "The Midnight Sun", which starred Lois Nettleton as Norma and Betty Garde as Mrs. Bronson.  

The Twilight Zone
- The Midnight Sun (1961) 

When the Earth falls out of orbit, two women try to cope with increasingly oppressive heat in a nearly abandoned city.

In a world that is getting ever nearer to the sun, people are trying to find ways to deal with the extreme heat. Most people have gone north with Norma and Mrs. Bronson the only two people left in their apartment building. There is little or no infrastructure remaining and water is one commodity that is very much in demand. They panic when an intruder breaks into Norma's apartment and holds them, at least for a few moments, at gunpoint. All is not as it seems however. 

Many episodes of 'The Twilight Zone' took place in the main Toobworld, but there were a lot of them that could only exist in alternate Toobworlds.  And "The Midnight Sun" is one of those stories.  In fact, I don't think that particular Toobworld exists anymore.

But even so, the people of that Toobworld (Terra Gelida) had doppelgangers back in Earth Prime-Time, the main Toobworld.  And while we met several others of the eight million stories in that world's 'Naked City' - the doctor, the neighbors, the intruder - we're going to be concerned only with the main players of this doomed little tale, Norma and Mrs. Bronson.

As she was the main character, we'll begin with Norma.  Let's see who she might have been in Earth Prime-Time......

Seinfeld
- The Gymnast (1994)

 ... Mrs. Enright

George's girlfriend's mom thinks he is a bum when she catches George eating an éclair out of the trash can, among various other coincidences.

We never hear what Mrs. Enright's first name was.  And we never learned what Norma's maiden name was either.  I'm going to suggest for this edition of "Crossing Zone" that Norma was divorced from Mr. Enright (a brother to Sgt. Charlie Enright perhaps?) already in that TV dimension; they were divorced before 1961 and had no children in that Toobworld.  In the long run, that was probably a blessing.

But in Earth Prime-Time, they remained married at least until after the birth of their daughter, Lindsay, in 1965.  Lindsay would grow up to date George Costanza, whom Mrs. Enright thought was a bum after seeing him eat an eclair out of the garbage and clean a car windshield with a newspaper.

"See that painting behind me?
I painted that."

We don't learn anything else about the life of Mrs. Enright, but it could very well be that she was a painter just as her doppelganger was in that frozen Toobworld.

Now let's turn our attention to Mrs. Bronson.  We don't even have to leave the parent series of 'The Twilight Zone' to find her again in the main Toobworld.....

The Twilight Zone
- The Odyssey of Flight 33 (1961)

 ... Passenger

Passing through the sound barrier a commercial airliner inadvertently travels back in time.

Global Flight 33 is en route from London to New York in what appears to be a routine flight in a modern jetliner. Suddenly however, the jet's speed increases to an incredible 3000 knots and they arrive in New York rather quickly. Neither the captain or his well-trained crew can explain what happened - a strange tail-wind perhaps - but they are certainly not prepared for what they find as they survey the land below them.

The name of that passenger never comes up during that adventure for Flight 33, so there's nothing to impede us from making the claim that she was indeed Mrs. Bronson.  Unfortunately, I don't think she fared any better than her doppelganger in Terra Gelida.  We never saw the outcome of that last attempt by the flight crew to pierce the temporal vortex and return to their own time.  But I don't think they ended up back in the Jurassic age nor did they return to the New York City of 1939. 

But the Captain was determined that they should not return to a world in which they might significantly cause an impact on the future of Mankind.  But wherever they did end up, it was going to be their last attempt; they just didn't have enough fuel to try again. 

I'd like to think they had to make an emergency landing in the New York area after the age of the dinosaurs but before the first stirrings of Early Man in the region.  There they would just have to live out their lives as best they could, with the agreed determination not to bring any more children into that timeline.

They would have had to cannibalize the airliner, of course.  That could accelerate the advancement of humanity once it was found, if only to be melted down to make weapons.  

And so, depending on whether or not she survived the plane crash, the Mrs. Bronson of Earth Prime-Time lived out what was left of her life - perhaps dying a million years before she was born......

BCnU!

"ENDEAVOUR" & "MIDSOMER MURDERS" - A THURSDAY THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY

So I've put together a theory of relateeveety which can connect 'Midsomer Murders' to the 'Inspector Morse' prequel, 'Endeavour'.  And of course that means it would connect to the Morse mothership and to the sequel 'Inspector Lewis'.

The focus of the theory is DS Daniel Scott, whom we saw transferred to Causton CID in 2004.

From a 'Midsomer Murders' wiki:

Daniel Scott is a Detective Sergeant who joined CID after DS Gavin Troy's transfer. City boy Scott was reluctant at first to be working in Midsomer with Tom Barnaby, but soon warmed up to the job, despite itching to get back to London. He felt his transfer to Midsomer was punishment, so he was eager to prove himself a good detective. He is portrayed by John Hopkins and is not an original character in Caroline Graham's books.

Detective Sergeant Daniel 'Dan' Scott first joined the Midsomer team in 2004, in the episode, Bad Tidings, where he was thrown straight into a murder investigation. One of the first things that his new boss said was, when looking down at the dead body of a woman, "By the way, welcome to Midsomer." Not much is known about Scott's life before transferring to Midsomer but we do know that he worked for the Metropolitan Police Service in London. 

It is standard for Toobworld Central's televisiological studies to consider a TV character to be the same age as the actor who portrays him or her.  Therefore, Scott was born in 1974, just like John Hopkins who played him for two years (14 episodes) in 'Midsomer Murders'.

In Toobworld, telegenetics are strong.  For anyone who was able to witness such a thing - a time traveling doctor, for instance - they might see that exact likenesses can echo exactly down through the ages.  And such was the case with DS Scott's natural father.....

'ENDEAVOUR'

"LAZARETTO"

In 1967, Dr. Dean Powell was working at Cowley General Hospital with an eye to eventually succeed Sir Merlyn Chubb as the Chief Surgeon.  And while there, he built up quite the reputation as a ladies' man.....

Lyle Capper:
Course, most of them are potty about Dr Powell.
Except for Sister Clodagh, of course.

Later in the episode, when the nurses were relaxing and kibbitzing in their break room, Dr. Powell was the topic of conversation:

NURSE #1

Dean says they've been in and out of everything.

NURSE #2

Dean, is it, now?
I think "Dr Powell" would be appropriate.

NURSE #1

I think after last night, I can call him what I like.

NURSE #3

You're wasting your breath.

She's a big girl.

NURSE #4

But you know what his reputation's like.

And they do talk, doctors.

NURSE #3

She doesn't want to be just another notch on the bedpost.

NURSE #4

We nurses need to look out for each other.

NURSE #2

 I don't get it at all.

Give them a white coat and a stethoscope, 

and we're expected to fall at their feet?

By 1973, six years later, Dean Powell may well have still been practicing medicine at Cowley General.  (He may have even succeeded Sir Merlyn as he had progressive tremors in his hands.  Sir Merlyn might also have died by that point in time.  (I shall have to keep track of David Yelland's status in the real world, but I expect he - and Sir Merlyn - will hopefully live on for some time in their respective timelines.)

And in that time, Dr. Powell may have continued on as the medico lothario, eventually enthralling and seducing the young woman who would become the mother of Daniel Scott.

To be fair to the woman, I don't think she cheated on her husband.  I don't even think she was married at the time.  I think she may have been a nursing student or already a staff nurse at Cowley General and perhaps an easy mark to the more experienced Dr. Powell.  He may have plied her with over romantic gestures, such as making a request to Lester Fagen (the hospital's deejay who called himself "The Nightfly") to play one of her favorite pieces of music - "Midsomer Rhapsody".  And eventually she succumbed to his charms... and became pregnant.

As I said, it was 1973, and Daniel's mother may have been seeing more than one man at that time.  That other man, with the last name of Scott, would be the man she would eventually marry.  She may have been torn between the two men until she discovered that after sleeping with Dean Powell, she discovered that he had still been having sex with the other nurses she worked with.  Overcome with shame, she cut ties with Powell and turned to Scott, accepting his proposal of marriage.

It was after they made plans to marry when she discovered that she was pregnant.  She would not have had any clue as to which man was the father, but she couldn't take the chance.  She begged her future husband to not only hasten their marriage ceremony, but also that they should move away from Thames Valley and move to London.  Should it turn out that her child grew up to look like Dean Powell, she didn't want this to be noticed by the people surrounding their family.

And so they eloped and moved to London where Dan Scott grew up, looking like Dr. Dean Powell as his mother had feared.  When he graduated from college, Dan Scott went to work for the Met in London until his unwanted transfer to the Midsomer area.

This is of course conjecture.  But ain't it fun to think about?

BCnU!

WIKI WEDNESDAY - NASTY NAZI NOTES

JOHN DRAKE:
"These were made by order of Himmler during the war, by expert technicians who were prisoners in the concentration camp that once stood at the side of [unintelligible]. As the allies marched in, the Nazis dumped the residue of their counterfeit fortune in the lake."

'DANGER MAN'

"UNDER THE LAKE"

I keep replaying this voice-over narration by McGoohan but I just can't make out the name, so I don't know if he's referring to a lake or a mountain.  (It sounds like it begins "Steinberg", which makes me think he's talking about a specific mountain.)  McGoohan's clipped, precise diction sounds perfect for the German inflections.  Perhaps it's a little too perfect; I'm wondering if someone fluent in German could undestand what he's saying?

Nevertheless, even if the locations of the lake and the mountain were fictional, the basic back-story was not.

From Wikipedia:

Operation Bernhard was an exercise by the Nazis to forge British bank notes. The initial plan was to drop the notes over Britain to bring about a collapse of the British economy. The first phase was run from early 1940 by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) under the title Unternehmen Andreas (Operation Andreas). The unit successfully duplicated the rag paper used by the British, produced near-identical engraving blocks and broke the algorithm used to create the alpha-numeric serial code on each note. The unit closed in 1942 after its head, Alfred Naujocks, fell out of favour with his superior officer, Reinhard Heydrich.

The operation was revived in July 1942; the aim was changed to forging money to finance German intelligence operations. Instead of a specialist unit within the SD, prisoners from Nazi concentration camps were selected and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp to work under SS Major Bernhard Krüger. The unit produced British notes until mid 1945; estimates vary of the number and value of notes printed from £132.6 million up to £300 million. By the time the unit ceased production, they had perfected the artwork for US dollars, although the paper and serial numbers were still being analysed. The counterfeit money was laundered in exchange for money and other assets. Counterfeit notes from the operation were used to pay the Turkish agent Elyesa Bazna—code named Cicero—for his work in obtaining British secrets from the British ambassador in Ankara, and £100,000 from Operation Bernhard was used to obtain information that helped to free the Italian leader Benito Mussolini in the Gran Sasso raid in September 1943.

In early 1945 the unit was moved to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, then to the Redl-Zipf series of tunnels and finally to Ebensee concentration camp. Because of an overly precise interpretation of a German order, the prisoners were not executed on their arrival; they were liberated shortly afterwards by the American Army. Much of the output of the unit was dumped into the Toplitz and Grundlsee lakes at the end of the war, but enough went into general circulation that the Bank of England stopped releasing new notes, and issued a new design after the war. The operation has been dramatized in a comedy-drama miniseries 'Private Schulz' by the BBC and in a 2007 Austrian film, "The Counterfeiters" (Die Fälscher).

If you speak German and would like to check out that speech, see if you can decipher what McGoohan said, it's in the 'Danger Man' episode "Under The Lake" in the very last scene.  The episode is only half an hour in length if you're interested in watching the whole thing, and as an added bonus - Roger Delgado, the original Master of 'Doctor Who' is the guest star.

Auf wiedersehen!

TWO FOR TUESDAY - LESLIE NIELSEN IN "COLUMBO", TWICE OVER

‘COLUMBO’
“LADY IN WAITING”

Peter Hamilton was a lawyer working with the Chadwick advertising agency, one of the largest on the West Coast.  Soon after joining, he began dating Beth Chadwick, the sister of the company’s chairman, Bryce Chadwick.  But it was a clandestine relationship because Beth knew that Bryce and their mother would not approve of her suitor.

Bryce still found out however, and threatened to fire Hamilton if he didn’t end his relationship with his sister.  This led to the death of Bryce Chadwick and a transformation in the life of his sister.

Peter Hamilton came from a well-established banking family which had been founded by John Hamilton, the president of the North Fork Bank in New Mexico during the 1880s.  I’ve written about Mr. Hamilton in the past:

THE HAMILTON BANK & “MacMILLAN & WIFE”

THE HAMILTON BANK & “BARNEY MILLER”

But Peter Hamilton didn’t stay in the family business, not even in his capacity as a lawyer.  His twin brother didn’t either.

Oh, you’ve seen this ‘Columbo’ episode and don’t remember Peter Hamilton having a twin brother?  Well, remember – this is Toobworld.  We never limit ourselves to just one episode of a show; we don’t even respect the borders between TV series!

But in this case, we are sticking to the ‘Columbo’ bailiwick.  Leslie Nielsen played Peter Hamilton, but he returned a few seasons later as a spy known by the alias of AJ Henderson and the code name of “Geronimo”.  (The real AJ Henderson actually was in the advertising business and traveled the world as part of his job.  This made him a perfect mark for Geronimo to steal his identity.)

The full name for Geronimo’s true identity isn’t known, but I’m going to assert that his surname was Hamilton, making him Peter Hamilton’s twin brother.  This “splains” away at least his visage reappearing a second time on ‘Columbo’.  But this splainin certainly wouldn’t work for all the characters played by Vito Scotti (six) and Mike Lally (28!)  Having sextuplets and putting them all up for adoption might work for the mother of the Scotti characters, but having 28 kids - even if they weren’t all from the same zygote! - would surely have killed the poor mother of all those Lally boys!

Just one more thing....

One of their cousins in the Hamilton family line also was a lawyer, but he may have still had a hand in the family banking business.  And even though he didn’t share in the established family surname – his name was Paul Williams – it’s O’Bvious that Williams was descended from John Hamilton.  The telegenetics were strong in that one.

Paul Williams could also be found in a ‘Columbo’ episode.  In fact, he was in the second pilot for the series, “Ransom For A Dead Man”.  Paul Williams was the leading attorney in a law firm which he established with his second wife, Lesley Williams (who was the one who killed him.)

And unfortunately for him, Paul Williams had the distinction of being the second murder victim seen in the series.  (And unfortunately for the actor, Harlan Warde, he didn’t have a single line of dialogue!)

So there’s my theory of relateeveety for three characters from ‘Columbo’, linking them all back to ‘The Rifleman’.

BCnU!