I'm sorry to admit that I'm sharing this today because I was caught empty-handed for something proper to be shared on Video Saturday. But it does feature Peter Wyngarde, one of my faves from his work in 'The Prisoner', 'The Avengers', 'Jason King', and 'Sherlock Holmes'. Sadly, we lost Wyngarde earlier this year.
Apparently, the demon Mr. Sweet was at work in London when Lucille Carmichael came to town.....
Technically, today’s Friday Hall of Famer should have been inducted on Wednesday, but only because I wanted to give Wednesday’s blog post fully to Edward G. Robinson’s birthday induction into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.
So this is a belated salute to Bob Barker in celebration of his 95th birthday! And we’re going to mark it with his own induction into the Hall.
Bob Barker, come on down!
From Wikipedia: Robert William Barker (born December 12, 1923) is a retired American television game show host. He is known for hosting CBS's ‘The Price Is Right’ from 1972 to 2007, making it the longest-running daytime game show in North American television history. He is also known for hosting ‘Truth or Consequences’ from 1956 to 1974.
It’s because of that longevity on ‘The Price Is Right’ (and perhaps for his passionate advocacy for animals) that Mr. Barker appeared on enough TV shows as his fictional televersion to qualify him for membership. Here’s a list of them….
The Nanny - When You Pish Upon a Star (1994)
From the IMDb: Maxwell and C.C. decide to hire Jack Walker, a precocious and not very talented twelve year old television star, to star in their stage production of Oliver! They're hiring him purely for his marquee value. His television series, Royal Flush, seems oddly familiar to the Sheffields. Fran inadvertently persuades [Jack] to give up show business.
From the Game Show Wiki: In 1994, Bob Barker guest-starred on The Nanny where he sat at a table when Nanny Fran Fine (Fran Drescher) spotted him.
Cybill - Pal Zoey (1996)
From the IMDb: Following her breakup, Zoey bonds with Cybill. Meanwhile, Maryann tries to make Ira jealous by leading him to believe she's having a fling with Cybill's visiting redneck cousin Lyle.
From the Game Show Wiki: In the sitcom Cybill, Cybill Sheridan's cousin from Arkansas named Lyle Clocum is obsessed with being a contestant on TPIR.
Martial Law - Shanghai Express (1998)
From the IMDb: Sammo Law a cop from China comes to L.A. to find a criminal. The LAPD assigns him two cops to help him.
O'Bservation - Sammo and his partner were in the audience where he was called to come on down. He went on to win the Showdown Showcase. He knew all the prices because he watched the show via satellite in China.
Yes, Dear - The Ticket (2001)
From the IMDb: Greg gets a ticket in the mail for going through a red light, but it is Jimmy driving the car. Greg is upset that Jimmy borrowed his car. Turns out Christine & Jimmy borrow a lot of items from Greg & Kim. Kim borrows Christine's camera.
From the Game Show Wiki: In a 2001 episode of the sitcom Yes Dear called "The Ticket" Jimmy (played by Mike O'Malley) cheats on TPIR by spinning the wheel from behind to go to $1.00. He cheated because he got another traffic ticket. After Barker rebukes Jimmy, it makes him cry as Barker comforts Jimmy by hugging him. After this, Barker tells him that after the show that they'll play Plinko and that there's a trampoline in the showcase for today, which makes Jimmy feel much better.
How I Met Your Mother - Showdown (2007)
From the IMDb: Barney becomes a contestant on "The Price Is Right" so that he can confront Bob Barker, because he believes that the game show host is his biological father.
Barney is preparing for his upcoming appearance on the game show The Price Is Right. Although Barney is certain he can win all the prizes he wants (with the exception of not mastering how to spin to the $1 space on the big wheel), he confesses that he has an ulterior motive to be on the show: to meet his biological father, Bob Barker.
From the Game Show Wiki: During Bob's final year as host, the show made an appearance on How I Met Your Mother for the episode "Showdown" in 2007, in which Barney Stinson was a contestant on the show. Barney claimed that Bob Barker was his father (which is completely untrue since Bob never had human children, and Neil knows it), so he came on the show just to meet and impress him. Barney was on a roll that day. The pricing game he played was Clock Game and he got the price of the first prize on his first guess (an achievement at least two contestants on the real show did) though we never saw it; on the second prize, Barney purposely guessed $1,000,000 all just to show Bob Barney's self pictures; by the time the clock almost ran out, Barney came through with the right answer and won. Later Barney spun $1.00 on the wheel and bids exactly right on the Showcase (something that would really happen during Drew Carey's second year as host); and just when Barney was about to tell Bob that he was Bob's son, he instead congratulated Bob on 35 years as host of The Price is Right. Barney never kept any of the prizes he won; instead he gave them all as wedding presents to his friends and newlyweds Marshall and Lily. (Neil [Patrick Harris] went on to actually be a special guest on ‘The Price is Right’ during celebrity week at the beginning of 2012 and won $65,238. 40 for his favorite charity.)
WWE Monday Night Raw (2009)
From Game Show Wiki: In a September 7, 2009 episode of WWE Monday Night Raw, a spoof of The Price is Right was parodied as The Price is Raw featuring Bob Barker as its guest host for the episode.
State Farm commercial (2011)
From the Game Show Wikia: In 2011, a State Farm commercial featured a brief cameo appearance by Bob Barker as he says "And...a new car" as an orange vehicle with a black female model waving inside suddenly drops from the sky.
The Bold and the Beautiful - Episode #1.6814 (2014)
- Episode #1.6900 (2014)
One of the B&B characters meets with Barker in his office to discuss the campaign to spay and neuter pets. Weeks later, Mr. Barker left something behind so that B&B regular raced after him to return it. His friend Wyatt showed up and kept insulting Bob Barker as a pet-lovin’ wacko until Barker went full-on Happy Gilmore rerun on his ass. There's a great Zonk in that last scene. Just before he throws his first punch, Barker pulls back his right arm... and then lands the blow with his left!
Watch the video again while it's still there....
Bob Barker even has a presence in the Tooniverse!
THE TOONIVERSE
Futurama - The Lesser of Two Evils (2000)
O’Bservation – Bob Barker’s Head serves as the emcee for the Miss Universe Pageant.
Family Guy - Brian In Love (2000) Brian was watching the end of an episode and Bob gave his "spayed and neutered" signoff; a frustrated Brian wished he would "just die already." - Screwed the Pooch (2001) Peter Griffin as a contestant on Survivor, as he accidentally knocks over the reality show's backdrop revealing the set of TPIR (both shows run on CBS). - Fat Guy Strangler (2005) In contestant's row; after a contestant bid $780, the last contestant bid $781. That infuriated the contestant bidding $780, so he said, "F**K YOU!". - Tales of a Third Grade Nothing (2008) Prince was on the show, he bid $350, a bid Bob initially did not understand and bid exactly correct.
All of those summaries are from the Game Show Wiki.
Beavis & Butt-Head - Screamers! (1995)
From the Game Show Wiki: Beavis and Butt-Head are watching the show on their TV. It had ladies screaming when they've won their showcase and then the announcer says "Tomorrow on The Price is Right". O’Bservation – Although he wasn’t seen, Mr. Barker has to be accepted as the host of the show during that time, even in the Tooniverse.
Bob Barker also exists in the TV dimension which houses stop-motion puppetry shows like ‘Davy & Goliath’, ‘Moral Orel’, ‘Gumby’, and in this case, ‘Robot Chicken’ and ‘Celebrity Death Match’. (I don’t have a name for that world yet. Any suggestions? I was thinking Claymatia, but I’m not crazy for it.)
The shows that actually made Bob Barker famous on TV would not normally be considered part of his qualifications for membership in the TVXOHOF. But both ‘Truth Or Consequences’ and ‘The Price Is Right’ have been acknowledged and/or watched by TV characters and ‘The Price Is Right’ was even incorporated into episodes of ‘Martial Law’ and ‘How I Met Your Mother’.
The New Truth Or Consequences 34 episodes
1972-2015 The Price Is Right 6,718 episodes
The Price Is Right Million Dollar Spectacular 16 episodes
There are also several anniversary specials and salutes to the troops for ‘The Price Is Right’.
Welcome to the Hall, Mr. Barker, and I hope you had a great 95th birthday! And if I might speak for you….
I've covered today's topic in the past, but there are always new members in Team Toobworld, new readers of the blog, so I thought it would be convenient for them to rerun some of the terminology I use. So here''s my splainin to do...
There are two Toobworld terms I’ve coined which denote certain people in Earth Prime-Time who are somewhat aware that they live in the television universe.
SERLINGUIST, SERLINGUISM This is the most common of the two terms. A serlinguist is someone who knows there’s another universe out there and who then addresses the people of that universe directly. Within the reality of Toobworld, perhaps the earliest known serlinguist might be the televersion of George Burns.
However, because of the “lingua” root word, the term gets its name from another famous multiversal conversationalist – Rod Serling, who hosted the greatest anthology series of all time, ‘The Twilight Zone’. The televersion of Serling is not the same man from the Trueniverse. Not only could he speak directly to the audience at home, but he had cosmic powers – he could expand his size to match that of a mountain woman on the alien planet of Brobdingnagia (the name derived from Swift’s Brobdingnag); he could materialize anywhere in the world, even foreign countries which don’t exist in the Real World; and he could not be seen by others in the vicinity when he began addressing the Trueniverse audience. In Toobworld, he also hosted the televersion of the TV show ‘The Twilight Zone’ and was friends with Los Angeles lawyer Perry Mason. Playwright Gregory West knew the real Rod Serling and may even have “created” him, thanks to his powerful imagination and his tape recorder. At one point West destroyed the snippet of tape which cemented Serling’s existence, but he O’Bviously made a new one since we continued to see Serling talking to us with each episode of the show. (Serling was inducted into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame in October of 2009.)
Other serlinguists include characters in TV commercials in which they suddenly pull out of the situation to address us in the Trueniverse. (Actual commercial spokesmen, anchormen, and talk show hosts may not be applicable.) But here's a question I put to you, Dear Readers: Do you consider the family members in 'Modern Family' to be serlinguists, or just people talking into the cameras of a documentary camera crew as was the case with the staff in 'The Office'? My brother and I were arguing this point while I was writing it. (I say camera crew.) Let me know what you think!
As for the other Toobworld term….
TELE-COGNIZANCE, TELE-COGNIZANTS
Tele-cognizants are those people in Toobworld who know they are living in TV Universe. But they’re not necessarily serlinguists. There’s a couple of them on TV now in a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial in which they are aware of the captions appearing in front of their midsections.
Perhaps the most famous of TV characters who was tele-cognizant was David Addison from ‘Moonlighting’….
Maddie Hayes: You are eye crust! David Addison: The better to see you with, my dear. Maddie Hayes: You are navel lint! David Addison: Expensive navel lint. Maddie Hayes: You are... David Addison: Don't go much lower, they'll take us off the air.
Man: You can't just burst in here like that. David Addison: Oh yeah? Tell that to the writers.
David: Get serious? Maddie, I just touched your rear end, if I get any more serious they're gonna move us to cable!
And apparently they weren’t the only ones on that show with the power of tele-cognizance…..
Clara DiPesto: Where's Dave and Maddie? Agnes DiPesto: They're not in this episode.
When I was putting together the tribute induction into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame for Kirk Douglas on his 100th birthday back in 2016, I watched the 'Lucy Show' episode he did in which there were other cameos by Vince Edwards, Jimmy Durante, and Edward G, Robinson. And I thought Mr. Robinson could also be eligible for membership in the TVXOHOF.
From Wikipedia:
Edward G. Robinson (born Emanuel Goldenberg; December 12, 1893 – January 26, 1973) was a Romanian-born American actor. A popular star on stage and screen during Hollywood's Golden Age, he appeared in 40 Broadway plays and more than 100 films during a 50-year career. He is best remembered for his tough-guy roles as a gangster, such as his star-making film "Little Caesar" and "Key Largo".
During the 1930s and 1940s, he was an outspoken public critic of fascism and Nazism which was then growing in Europe. His activism included contributing over $250,000 to more than 850 organizations involved in war relief, along with cultural, educational, and religious groups. During the 1950s, he was called to testify at the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare, but was cleared of any Communist involvement.
Robinson's character portrayals have covered a wide range, with such roles as an insurance investigator in the film noir "Double Indemnity", Dathan (adversary of Moses) in "The Ten Commandments", and his final performance in the science-fiction story "Soylent Green". Robinson received an Honorary Academy Award for his work in the film industry, which was posthumously awarded two months after his death in 1973. He is ranked #24 in the American Film Institute's list of the 25 greatest male stars of Classic American cinema.
My personal favorites of his roles are that of Mr. Wilson in "The Stranger" and Barton Keyes in "Double Indemnity". (I'd like to think Keyes would have made for a great partner on a case with Lt. Columbo.)
I looked through the IMDb and his fictional televersion just barely covers the membership requirements of three different appearances:
'The Lucy Show' - "Lucy Goes to a Hollywood Premiere" (1966)
'Batman' - "Batman's Satisfaction" (1967)
'Bracken's World' - "Panic" (1969)
All three of them are cameos, but they establish his existence in the Television Universe. And therefore he is qualified for membership in the Hall of Fame.
But I decided to hold off until the next momentous occasion in his timeline occurred, even though he's been gone since 1973. So even though I'm writing this up in December of 2016, it won't run until Mr. Robinson's birthday in 2018, when he would have turned 125 years old!
Of these three cameos, his appearance in that 'Batman' window cameo is probably the most famous. It certainly captured his love of Art and even imparts a small lesson for the kids on various artistic styles.
The hardest to find is that for his cameo in the second episode of 'Bracken's World'. He would later return to the series to play another character, but this first appearance would as himself. Alls I know about his involvement was in this excerpt from an encyclopedia about Robinson:
(That's a picture of Edward G. Robinson meeting Eleanor Parker in the movie "A Hole In The Head". Thelma Ritter is in the middle.)
I ran the full episode of 'The Lucy Show' with all of those cameos once before, but it doesn't hurt to share it again.....
I guess that's the best to hope for when you probably had very little time in getting so many stars for any rehearsal at all. But especially with Robinson, Douglas, and Durante, wouldn't it have been great to get them an episode showcase of their own, each playing to the individual star's strengths?
In fact, I can think of other shows in which Mr. Robinson could have shown up as himself, both sitcoms and dramas:
'All In The Family'
'The Odd Couple'
'Bewitched'
'I Dream Of Jeannie'
'Car 54, Where Are You?'
''Make Room For Daddy'
'The Dick Van Dyke Show'
'Naked City'
'77 Sunset Strip'
'Peter Gunn'
'Mr. Lucky'
'Johnny Staccato'
'The Trials Of O'Brien'
Oh well.....
So here's to you, "Little Caesar". This honor, such as it is, comes way too late for you to have seen it, but then again.... I'm setting it up so far in advance, I may not live to see it either!
It was twenty years ago today that Oscar-winning “Shakespeare In Love” opened in general release here in the United States. My brother Bill and I watched it over the weekend and had fun pointing out the actors we would come to know better in later roles. Both of us came away with ideas for lists – he’s going to post a “Morning 5” list of Oscar winners in the movie for the newspaper where he’s the editor. For me, it’s a Super Six List.
As I mentioned earlier, several actors were not familiar to me at the time. Among them are Mark Williams, whom I later came to know from the “Harry Potter” franchise as well as the ‘Father Brown’ series and Martin Clunes – I had yet to see ‘Doc Martin’. There was even one I knew very well but didn’t recognize (and he wasn’t credited) – John Inman, Mr. Humphries of ‘Are You Being Served?’, who was playing Juliet’s mother Lady Capulet in the play within a play.
So here is my Super Six List – six of the actors in “Shakespeare In Love” who would also play roles in my favorite TV series, ‘Doctor Who’. I have them listed by actor name with their “SIL” role in parentheses, followed by their role in the long-running sci-fi/fantasy series.
1] Simon Callow (Master of the Revels Tilney) as Charles Dickens - The Unquiet Dead (2005) - The Wedding of River Song (2011)
O’Bservation: Mr. Callow is a member of the Television Crossover Hall of Fame for his portrayal of the Victorian author, not just in ‘Doctor Who’ but also in several TV movies.
2] Martin Clunes (Richard Burbage) as Lon - Snakedance: Part One (1983) - Snakedance: Part Two (1983) - Snakedance: Part Three (1983) - Snakedance: Part One (1983)
O’Bservation: Of these six, Clunes is the only one who appeared in the original run of the series.
3] Mark Williams (Wabash) as Brian Williams - Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (2012) - The Power of Three (2012)
4] Imelda Staunton (Viola’s Nurse) as Voice of the Computer Interface - The Girl Who Waited (2011)
O’Bservation: I never noticed the credit for this role. It could be that by this point, I really do believe I’m listening to the voice of a computer in shows! And I’m not that familiar with Ms. Staunton’s voice. But my nephew who is a fan of the “Harry Potter” movies, guessed right away that this was the actress who played Mrs. Umbridge.
5] Barnaby Kay (Nol) as Heidi - The Girl Who Died (2015)
6] Nicholas Boulton (Henry Condell) as Businessman - Gridlock (2007)
Consider this a taste of the “Who’s On First?” blogathon on New Year’s Day.
‘MURPHY BROWN’ “RESULTS MAY VARY” “BEAT THE PRESS”
In both of these episodes, the actual President Trump was seen onscreen in archival footage. But when he spoke, the P.O.V. switched to that of the TV characters watching him on TV and then we heard the voice of actor Bob DiBuono doing an imitation of him. (The script called for him to recite dialogue he never actually spoke in the Trueniverse and this was just a simpler, cheaper way to achieve the effect instead of using CGI on those lips.)
This wasn’t the first time Bob DiBuono has imitated the President. In fourteen episodes of ‘The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore’, he also imitated Trump. (i don"t know if that was just a vocal impression, however.)
‘Murphy Brown’ takes place in Earth Prime-Time. But DiBuono’s impression of Trump in ‘The Nightly Show’ would be relegated to Skitlandia, the sketch comedy TV dimension.
Donald Trump is a member of the Television Crossover Hall of Fame – as is Murphy – but he was inducted as a member of the League of Themselves (April 2009). The fact that his own voice was substituted with that of another actor doesn’t invalidate the appearances on ‘Murphy Brown’ nor cast it into some other TV dimension, because I’ve got some splainin to do: because of rigorous campaigning across the country during the mid-terms, Trump did some damage to his vocal chords. This isn’t a permanent condition, so the next time (if ever) he appeared as himself in a fictional show, we would expect him to be using his own voice again. All he would have to do is keep from speaking for awhile to recuperate.
We're continuing our look at the televersion of 'Peyton Place' with the first of two sequel movies to the prime-time TV soap opera. "Murder In Peyton Place" was broadcast in 1977 and featured quite a few of the stars from the TV show, including Dorothy Malone as Constance MacKenzie. (She's our December inductee into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.)
Every Saturday until Christmas, I'll be sharing a classic holiday episode from Toobworld. Today we're spending Christmas with Charlie Ruggles and his family in 1949....
Back in 2009, when the Inner Toob blog was celebrating its tenth anniversary, we inducted a new member into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame every week, with each month divvied up into four categories – League of Themselves, As Seen On TV, Toons, and Locations.
It’s been a while since we inducted a location into the Hall; I think the last time was 2017’s tribute to Las Vegas, in memory of those who were murdered at that open air country music festival.
So I thought as the year draws to a close, another location would be a perfect candidate for the Hall. And since I want to celebrate Multiversals during December, I wanted a location which not only existed in Toobworld, but in other meta-fictional universes as well.
And one such location came easily to mind – especially since we inducted one of its residents into the TVXOHOF as the December monthly showcase just last week – Constance MacKenzie of ‘Peyton Place’.
Peyton Place is a true Multiversal location – first introduced in BookWorld, then in two versions of the Cineverse (due to recastaways), and in two different TV dimensions: Earth Prime-Time and Toobworld2.
In all of those worlds, Peyton Place is a fixed point in Space, always in the same location, not vaguely located somewhere in the South/Midwest like Hooterville. It’s definitely in New Hampshire.
From Wikipedia: While never mentioned explicitly by name, the novel does make several references that suggest Peyton Place is located within the state of New Hampshire: Vermont can be seen from across the Connecticut River; Lake Winnipesaukee is a short drive from the town; nearby New England town is called White River; a character is spoken of as attending the New Hampton School for Boys; and several mentions are made of a lake called Silver Lake, of which there are three located in New England, all in the state of New Hampshire, in the cities of Harrisville, Hollis and Madison.
Here’s a quick summary of each of the Peyton Places…..
BOOKWORLD
Peyton Place is a 1956 novel by Grace Metalious. The novel describes how three women are forced to come to terms with their identity, both as women and as sexual beings, in a small, conservative, gossipy New England town, with recurring themes of hypocrisy, social inequities and class privilege in a tale that includes incest, abortion, adultery, lust and murder. It sold 60,000 copies within the first ten days of its release and remained on the New York Times best seller list for 59 weeks.
The novel spawned a franchise that would run through four decades. Twentieth Century-Fox adapted it as a motion picture in 1957, and Metalious wrote a follow-up novel that was published in 1959, called Return to Peyton Place, which was also filmed in 1961 using the same title. The original 1956 novel was adapted again in 1964, in what became a wildly successful prime time television series for 20th Century Fox Television that ran until 1969, and the term "Peyton Place" – an allusion to any small town or group that holds scandalous secrets – entered into the American lexicon.
An NBC daytime soap opera, titled Return to Peyton Place, ran from 1972 to 1974, and the franchise was rounded out with two made-for-television movies, which aired in 1977 and 1985.
Return to Peyton Place is a 1959 novel by Grace Metalious, a sequel to her best-selling 1956 novel Peyton Place.
O'Bservation - Because visuals are not involved, BookWorld is a world of the mind. The characters who continue on in the sequel can be accepted as being the same from the original novel.
THE CINEVERSE I Peyton Place is a 1957 American film drama from 20th Century Fox in color by De Luxe and CinemaScope. It was produced by Jerry Wald, directed by Mark Robson, and stars Lana Turner and Hope Lange. In co-starring and supporting roles are Lee Philips, Lloyd Nolan, Diane Varsi, Arthur Kennedy, Russ Tamblyn, and Terry Moore. The film is based on the bestselling 1956 novel of the same name by Grace Metalious.
The storyline follows the residents of a small fictional New England mill town in the years surrounding World War II, where scandal, homicide, suicide, incest, and moral hypocrisy belie its tranquil façade.
The film centers on the life and loves of bestselling author Allison MacKenzie, who follows in the footsteps of her mother Constance by having an affair with a married man, her publisher Lewis Jackman. This film version has nothing to do with the plot of Grace Metalious' novel of the same name. Allison's trip to New York to meet the editor of her novel and the names Allison MacKenzie, Constance MacKenzie, Michael Rossi, Selena Cross, Roberta and Ted Carter are all that remains of the author's sequel to "Peyton Place". The movie's plot bears no resemblance to the plot of the novel. Grace Metalious may have already been seriously impaired by heavy drinking to have consented to let Hollywood completely rewrite the plot of her novel.
TOOBWORLD Peyton Place is an American prime-time soap opera which aired on ABC in half-hour episodes from September 15, 1964, to June 2, 1969.
Based upon the 1956 novel of the same name by Grace Metalious, the series was preceded by a 1957 film adaptation. A total of 514 episodes were broadcast, in black-and-white from 1964 to 1966 and in color from 1966 to 1969. The first color episode is episode #268. At the show's peak, ABC ran three new episodes a week. The program was produced by 20th Century Fox Television. A number of guest stars appeared in the series for extended periods, among them Dan Duryea, Susan Oliver, Leslie Nielsen, Gena Rowlands, and Lee Grant, who won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Drama for her role of tough-as-nails Stella Chernak. The series served as the springboard for such performers as Mia Farrow, Ryan O'Neal, Barbara Parkins, Christopher Connelly, David Canary, Mariette Hartley, and Lana Wood.
TOOBWORLD2 Return to Peyton Place is an American daytime serial which aired on NBC from April 3, 1972 to January 4, 1974. The series was a spin-off of the primetime drama series Peyton Place rather than an adaptation of the 1959 novel of the same name by Grace Metalious.
The storylines from the daytime show were a continuation of those from the primetime series. Both James Lipton and Gail Kobe worked as writers on the series during its run. Frank Ferguson (as Eli Carson), Evelyn Scott (Ada Jacks), and Patricia Morrow (Rita Jacks Harrington) reprised their roles from the earlier series.
Selena Cross, a major character in the original novel and the films both it and its sequel inspired, had not been included in the primetime TV series because her storyline was considered too risque at the time. She was a featured character in the daytime soap.
O'Bservation - All of those summaries are from Wikipedia.
As with Constance MacKenzie, the town might be a Multiversal but we’re technically celebrating the Peyton Place of Earth Prime-Time. It was the location from the prime-time series and two sequel TV movies.
So another location in the TV-GPS is now part of the Hall and the residents don’t even have to move!
From the Los Angeles Times: Ken Berry, an actor and dancer who played the affable and clumsy Capt. Wilton Parmenter in the 1960s sitcom “F Troop,” has died. He was 85.
Berry died Saturday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, hospital spokeswoman Patricia Aidem confirmed. The cause of death was not provided by Berry's family.
“F Troop” was on only from 1965-67 but the show lived on in syndication and the accident-prone Capt. Parmenter became one of Berry's most well-known roles. After “F Troop,” Berry went on to star in “Mayberry R.F.D.,” a spinoff of “The Andy Griffith Show,” on which Berry appeared during the show's final year.
Berry's last television series was “Mama's Family,” which aired for six seasons beginning in 1983. But “F Troop” was the show that remained closest to Berry's heart.
“I have never been that happy in my life,” Berry once said, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
It is standard Toobworld practice to consider a TV character to be the same age as the actor who played the role (unless otherwise specified in the script.) So I looked up Mr. Berry’s stats and then set about to reconcile that with the life of Wilton Parmenter.
This was one of the most interesting – and certainly easiest! – “toobulations” for a character’s life. ‘F Troop’ began in 1965; according to the theme song, Wilton Parmenter’s onscreen life began when the end of the Civil War was near. (Thanks to research by my brother Bill, I’ve decided that the decisive battle in which Wilton Parmenter made his name was the Battle of Five Forks in April of 1865. The battle was going against the Union Army but they were able to overcome the odds and take the day. General Lee surrendered at Appomattox about a week later.)
So Wilton Parmenter’s age at the end of the Civil War should be the same age of Ken Berry when he started production on the ‘F Troop’ series. Basically that’s a difference of 100 years.
Ken Berry was born in November of 1933, so Wilton Parmenter was born in June of 1833. (The birth month was determined by a script reference.) And thus, he was approaching his 32nd birthday when he ceased the retreat at the Battle of Five Forks and reversed it to victory.
Another standard tradition with the Toobworld timeline is that, as the Curator, I prefer to think that the cessation of the life of a TV character should also follow closely that of the actor who played the role. So, with that span of 100 years between Berry and Parmenter, sadly the former Scourge of the West lost his battle in November of 1918.
But more on that later.
The following biography of Wilton Parmenter falls under fanfiction for the most part; anything that deals with ‘F Troop’ is taken from the TV show, but the extrapolations will be my own. Any connections made to other TV series are theoretical links I came up with.
So let this cathode conjecture commence!
Wilton Parmenter was raised in his family’s home city of Philadelphia, but he was born in Connecticut, around June 24, 1833.
He came from a long line of military men on the Parmenter side of the family. His father, Thor X. Parmenter, was a career general in the United States Army who was in charge of the military detail that protected President Andrew Jackson.
In June of 1833, President Jackson and his Vice President, Martin Van Buren, traveled to the Mohegan Royal Burial Grounds in Norwich, Connecticut, with their retinue, including General Parmenter and his guard troops. They were in the Nutmeg State to attend the ceremony for the cornerstone of the monument dedicated to the memory of the Mohegan sachem known as Uncas.
Mrs. Parmenter traveled with the delegation, but she was heavy with child at that point. By the time they reached Wilton, Connecticut, she and her maid had to abandon the rest of the journey. The rigors of the trip had induced her into going into labor. As a new but fervent member of the leading anti-slavery women’s group in Philadelphia, Mrs. Parmenter insisted that she should be taken to the home of William Wakeman, which was a stop on the Underground Railroad. General Parmenter grudgingly agreed, not that he supported her passion on the issue, but he insisted that he had to return to Jackson’s entourage. So he wasn’t present to witness the birth of his son. Upon his return to his wife’s side, Parmenter declared that the boy would be named “Wilton”, after the town in which he was born.
This was a break from the tradition in the Parmenter family in naming their offspring with the names of the gods from pagan mythologies. Just among his immediate family there was Wilton’s father, of course, General Thor X. Parmenter, as well as his uncle Jupiter Parmenter, and cousins Achilles and Hercules Parmenter. Wilton’s great-grandfather was Major Hannibal Parmenter, who was with General George Washington at Valley Forge.
This naming tradition stretched back centuries and was based on a family legend that the Parmenter lineage had been founded by one of the demi-gods of mythology. As the story was passed down, his name was Parmen and he had descended from the skies with other demi-gods during the age of Plato, sometime before 340 BC, before these “gods” boarded their “chariot” and returned to the heavens.
Unlike another family tree which had begun with a companion of Parmen (the dwarf known as Alexander who had inspired the myths of Hephaestus), the Terran-born child of Parmen did not inherit any of the father’s eugenics-based powers.
But Thor X. Parmenter did not pass down that tradition with his first-born son, giving him the hardly heroic appellation of “Wilton”. Even Wilton’s younger sister gained a traditional Parmenter name – as Daphne, she was named after the daughter of the river god Peneus, a nymph who escaped the amorous pursuits of Apollo by getting herself transformed into a laurel tree. (Coincidentally, the state flower of Connecticut is the mountain laurel.)
When Wilton was old enough to learn about his family’s history, he asked his mother why he wasn’t given such a mythic name as the other males among the Parmenters. She told him about the circumstances of his birth and in such a way that it sounded as though it was a wonderful story. However, even at that age he could tell that she was hiding something from him.
But how could she tell the boy that his father, who never did develop a close bond with a son who was not of his blood? Thor X. Parmenter never came out and accused his wife of infidelity, but she knew that he knew. Most likely he said nothing because he didn’t want her sin to be cast on him as the cuckolded husband.
She kept the identity of Wilton’s true father as a secret to the grave, so Parmenter never learned that his birth father was a legend of the Old West. He was the son of a dapper gunslinger and Texas Ranger known only as the Baltimore Kid.
He never met the man, even though it’s pozz’ble, just pozz’ble, that their paths crossed out West. But even had he known to track down the name of the Baltimore Kid, Wilton would have found the trail cold. Twice over the Baltimore Kid had faked his own death and was now living under a different name – hiding in plain sight with his birth name.
Mrs. Parmenter had grown up in Baltimore, Maryland, and had grown up with the charming and debonair gambler who gained a reputation with the pistol that could not be contained in the state of Maryland. Upon her return to Charm City for the funeral of her mother, she had run into her old swain again and the flame had not dimmed for either of them. And before she returned to Philadelphia, she made the trip to the nation’s capital in order to spend a night with her long-absent husband.
Of course, this was her insurance in case – as it turned out – that her liaison with the Kid left her with a kid.
(By the way, Mrs. Parmenter’s name was never revealed during the course of the series, not even in the one episode in which she appeared. I’m not going to suggest any name for her, but I will insist upon it not being “Sally”. In my theory of relateeveety for the Parmenter family, Mrs. Parmenter had a twin sister named Sally. Their family name was Fergus. As a young woman, Sally felt the call of the West and left Baltimore for the frontier. There she spent the rest of her life grubbing for a fortune and like the Baltimore Kid she may have crossed paths with Captain Wilton Parmenter without ever realizing that she was his aunt.)
I don’t know if he ever thought about it, but when Wilton Parmenter was forced to confront his identical look-a-like known as Kid Vicious, the bank robber looked just like him because they were indeed brothers. They were half-brothers, both sharing the Baltimore Kid as their father.
When the War Between The States broke out, Wilton Parmenter enlisted without calling on his father or any of his other jingoistic relatives for their influence in getting him a plum assignment. So he ended up in the quartermaster corps under the overall command of General Phil Sheridan.
It was while he was delivering the laundry for his superior officers, that Corporal Parmenter was overcome with such an attack by the pollen that he had a bout of uncontrolled sneezing. Sheridan’s officers heard his sneezing which had the tonal quality that made it sound as if General Sheridan himself was shouting “Charge!” (It was actually the sound of his sneeze – “Kerchaar!”)
And so the heralded career of Wilton Parmenter began. Since Fort Courage in Kansas had recently lost its commanding officer with the retirement of Captain “Cannonball” Bill McCormick, it was decided that Parmenter should be promoted to Captain and take over the management of Fort Courage.
We know most of Captain Parmenter’s history from that point for the next two years thanks to the TV show. But as 1870 approached, Wilton decided it was time to leave the Army. There were several factors in his decision – one was that the Secretary of War was not going to let him defer promotion any longer. And it was in the works that he should be transferred from Fort Courage anyway.
(O’Bservation – in the future, Fort Courage would eventually be decommissioned and torn down. But a new military site would be erected on the same location; and as the location was near Baxter Springs, Kansas, the outpost was rechristened Fort Baxter.)
But the major reason he felt it was time to leave the army was his love for Jane Angelica Thrift. As he explained to her in an episode near the end of the series, the reason was he was so standoffish with her was because he had seen how the men in his family were so hellbent on their military careers, that it was practically a cruelty to their wives. He didn’t want that for Wrangler Jane.
After leaving the command of Fort Courage, they didn’t actually leave. They still had Jane’s trading post to run and Wilton became the town and fort’s postmaster.
Throughout her career running the trading post, Jane dealt exclusively with the dry goods mercantile empire of Isidore Levinson which was centered in Cincinnati, Ohio. At one point some years after the birth of his daughter Cora, Izzy Levinson traveled out West under the protection of a hired gun who was known only as “Paladin” in order to finally meet his best client on the plains.
Levinson was so impressed by Jane’s business acumen and the ideas she had for expanding his empire that he hired her on the spot to come back East to Cincinnati and become an executive in his business. And so the Parmenters moved to Ohio, with their children (at least two, probably both girls, but I’d like to think the family name of Parmenter continued to future generations.)
Wilton was at a loss as to his future until Izzy Levinson suggested that he should run for Congress from their Peaksville district (which has since been gerrymandered out of existence since it disappeared from existence in this world.) Levinson pointed out how a Civil War hero with the bonus legend of being “The Scourge Of The West” would be welcomed by the citizens of Ohio as their congressman. (And being a former postmaster didn’t hurt either.)
Wilton gave it a try and no one was more surprised than he that he won the election. But it might have been that the race was tipped in his favor when he accidentally tripped and foiled an assassination attempt on the life of Senator Clay Waterford. Parmenter had stepped off the stairs at the Peaksville courthouse too soon and knocked over the assailant, but to the crowds gathered to see Senator Waterford give a speech, it looked like Wilton had tackled the gunman.
SENATOR WATERFORD
Wilton’s career in Congress was undistinguished, yet the people back home kept re-electing him. Jane and the children stayed behind in Ohio, but he made frequent visits home.
Among the many TV characters who could have met Wilton Parmenter were these whom I’ve gathered in one of my Super Six Lists:
Doctor Miquelito Loveless (Of course!)
Will Sonnet and Jeff Sonnett
Professor Quentin E. Deverill
Secret Service Agent Bosley Cranston
Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry
Doctor Galen Adams (But not in Dodge - when Doc was back at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore)
Jared Garrity (He may have already met the confidence trickster with an amazing power, but under the alias of Professor Cornelius Clyde)
When America went to war with Spain (probably under falsified reasons), Parmenter couldn’t deny the call to duty which all Parmenters answered. He offered to resign his seat in Congress and instead re-enlist.
Of course, by this time Wilton Parmenter was 65 years old. His children were grown, and Jane had left her position with the Levinson corporation to be with her husband in Washington. She wasn’t keen on the idea that he wanted to go to war down in Cuba, but the political bigwigs back home in Ohio were keen on the idea. That’s because the party in power was now the opposition and they had their eye on Parmenter’s seat. So they put the pressure on the Secretary of War to accede to Wilton’s wishes.
Looking over Parmenter’s record of military service, he hit upon the perfect plan to keep everybody happy. Wilton was offered the chance to serve as the Deputy Quartermaster General, going back to his roots as a lowly corporal in the Quartermaster Corp during the Civil War. He was given his own office where he kept coming up with ideas to make the disposition of supplies to the troops more efficient. He depended on Jane for many of these ideas, calling on her expertise in shipping dry goods throughout the country.
One of those in the Quartermaster Corps with whom he dealt with was a younger man named Zebulon Walton. Zeb wanted to be alongside Teddy Roosevelt in his charge up San Juan Hill, but he was deemed to important in the position he was maintaining. Of course, that didn’t stop him from telling everybody back home that he had been there alongside Roosevelt and the Rough Riders.
Most of Parmenter’s ideas were ignored and many of his superiors thought he was becoming a pain in the sadde. Hoping to get him to stop bothering them, he was finally put in charge of the Mortuary Affairs department. One of his duties in that department was to inform the families of those who died during service, and sadly this was the only time Wilton Parmenter came into contact with the Cartwright family of the Ponderosa ranch near Carson City, Nevada. He had to send them the official letter alerting them that Joseph Cartwright had died during the rush up San Juan Hill.
Wilton Parmenter came into his own for four days in 1916, as his time with the Quartermaster Corps paid off.
The United States by that year was deep into their involvement with the Great War in Europe. Even though he was now 83 years old, Parmenter had no intentions of shirking his duty as the Deputy Quartermaster General. One reason was that the year before, his beloved Jane had passed away; nothing but his work could fill the hole in his heart.
And then on September 12, 1916, MG James B. Aleshire resigned his position as the Quartermaster General. But MG Henry G. Sharpe did not take over the position until four days later, on September 16. So for four days, Deputy Quartermaster General Wilton Parmenter was in charge of the Corps.
After Sharpe was installed as the new QM General, the Parmenter daughters convinced their father to finally step down from his service to his country, to spend his remaining days with them so that his grandchildren and great-grandchildren could really get to know him. (By this time, there were new surnames in the family tree – Jones, Daniels, Harper, among others.)
Sadly, Wilton Parmenter’s retirement was short-lived. In January of 1918, the “Spanish” influenza pandemic was first observed in Haskell County in Kansas. By the time the pandemic was tamed, 50-100 million people worldwide would die from the flu.
And Wilton Parmenter would be counted among its victims.
As he lay in his bed at home, wanting bed space at the hospital to be used for the returning veterans, Wilton Parmenter was granted one last surprise….
“Captain?”
Wilton opened his eyes with some pain, but they brightened with delight to see two former troopers once under his command. Despite the agony he was in as the flu wracked his body, his mind was clear and he easily recognized former cavalry sergeant Randolph Agarn.
“I just wanted to check on The Old Man,” said Agarn, feigning a cheerful smile. Agarn had to be at least a decade older than his commanding officer, but he always referred to Parmenter as “The Old Man”.
As for the other visitor, there was no way he could forget Hannibal Shirley Dobbs, the F Troop bugler. How could he forget Dobbs? Soon after Wilton and Jane had married, Dobbs accepted the inevitable and married Wilton’s sister Daphne. They had often been at the Parmenter home for family reunions and his unique name combination was the source of inspiration for several of the grandchildren and great-children. There was a Hannibal, a Shirley, and even a Dobbin. When Wilton became the congressman from Peaksville, Dobbs accompanied him as his chief of staff.
It would have been nice if his old sergeant Morgan O'Rourke could have been there as well, but even as the end was darkening his mind, Wilton remembered that O'Rourke had died decades before.
By this time, Wilton Parmenter couldn’t speak and his friends were just grateful to be in his presence one last time. But a few minutes later, he looked beyond them as though someone else had joined them in the room. Agarn turned to look but nobody was there. When he turned back, Wilton Parmenter was gone. Both men saluted his passing.
One of Wilton’s daughters would later say that it was her mother come to escort Wilton to the next stage.
Her sister smiled. “It would be just like Dad to stumble his way into Heaven….”
SHOWS & MOVIES CITED: F Troop The Wild, Wild West The Twilight Zone Dirty Sally Bonanza The Waltons The Dick Van Dyke Show Mama’s Family Downton Abbey Have Gun, Will Travel Alias Smith and Jones The Guns Of Will Sonnett Gunsmoke Star Trek Q.E.D. The Over The Hill Gang Rides Again
This theory of relateeveety is a Wiki Tiki Wednesday post as well. Much of the background information is actually from the history of the Trueniverse.
As the Trickster once said, "Reality is boring, that's why I change it whenever I can."
I'm just "The Man Who Viewed Too Much", and "Inner Toob" is a blog exploring and celebrating the 'reality' of an alternate universe in which everything that ever happened on TV actually takes place.
Most of my theories about the TV Universe come from thinking inside the box and thus can't be proven. But I've never been one to shy away from a tall tale.....
Remember: "The more you watch, the more you've seen!"
