THE TVXOHOF 2025 BIRTHDAY HONORS LIST - AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Just like the monarch, I also have a Birthday Honors List for inductions into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.  It’s always somebody or something who/which might not get in otherwise.  For instance, the first two were Susie McNamara of ‘Private Secretary’ and Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless of ‘The Wild, Wild West’.

Susie was a special induction as one of the first TV crossovers, appearing in an episode of ‘The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour’.  (At the time, I thought she was first but I’ve since learned the first was four years earlier – Superman on ‘I Love Lucy’.  Interesting enough, both were in connection to Lucy Ricardo.)

As for Dr. Loveless, he falls into the theoretical category – I made the case that he was descended from Alexander in a ‘Star Trek’ episode and that his father was Mr. Roarke of ‘Fantasy Island’ (but under a different name in an episode of ‘Zorro’.)  And then I claimed that several other characters played by Michael Dunn – Mr. Big (‘Get Smart’), The Clown (‘Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea’), Mr. Sin (‘Amos Burke, Secret Agent’) and Arthur Boyle (“Good Night, My Love”) – were all the immortal Time Lord/Platonian hybrid under aliases.

This year my birthday is something of a milestone, not as momentous as my 50th, I guess, when every monthly induction was a special case… including myself on the actual birthday!  But with this one, I’m only marking the occasion today on my actual birthday.  And for this special event, I thought I would celebrate something completely different, not a character, not a League of Themselves televersion, not an animal, not a location (real or fictional), all of which made the grade in the past.

The 2025 Birthday Honors member is more of a situation….

THE “STARING AT THE TELEPHONE” CLICHÉ

When it comes to classic clichés in movies and TV shows – like Italian bread in shopping bags or the Eiffel Tower outside of every French window – my favorite is when somebody pulls the phone receiver away from their ear to stare at it, incredulous about what was just said to them.

Here are a few of them to show that the requirement to get inducted is easily covered:

Mary Richards

THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW
JUST AROUND THE CORNER

Frances “Gidget” Lawrence
GIDGET

Bruce Banner (as the Hulk)

THE INCREDIBLE HULK

Daisy “Granny” Moses
THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES

Ethel Mertz
I LOVE LUCY

Ash
ASH VS. EVIL DEAD
CONFINEMENT

Mark Sanger
IRONSIDE

Michael Grady
THE TWILIGHT ZONE
LAST NIGHT OF A JOCKEY

Betty Ford
THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW
THE SEMINAR

Clarence Nash
WALT DISNEY'S WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR

Fran Ryan
THE OPTIMIST
HEALTHY BODY, UNHEALTHY MIND

Stanley Adams
(Source Unknown)

And from the Tooniverse….

Fred Flintstone
THE FLINTSTONES
THE ASTRA’ NUTS

Bullwinkle J. Moose
THE BULLWINKLE SHOW

For the "2025 Class Picture", I'll be using an example from a 1970s Benson&Hedges commercial.  I wouldn't want to give any previously established TV character or show an unfair advantage.  (That's who is featured as the header up top.)

So there you have it.  Something unique for the 2025 Birthday Honors List.

Oh!  And since it is my birthday, here’s a combination of the 2025 Birthday Honors inductee with the previous 2005 Birthday Honors member….

I'm sure there are plenty more out there.  If you come across any examples (from TV, remember!) not displayed here, send them along to me!

BCnU!

TVXOHOF FOR JUNE, 2025 (THE GEMINI INDUCTIONS) - OLIVER & LISA DOUGLAS

With the June entry for the Television Crossover Hall of Fame, we salute the Gemini concept – twins, loving couples, any kind of duos (dynamic or otherwise.) 

This year we’re celebrating a partnership in marriage in which both members appeared together in all the connecting qualifiers... for Earth Prime-Time.  There wasn’t a time when one appeared but not the other… at least in the main Toobworld.  

Theirs was an unconventional marriage but they were a true partnership in which they loved each other.

OLIVER WENDELL & LISA DOUGLAS

I couldn’t do better than the Wikipedia entry, so I’ll just use that:

‘Green Acres’ is about Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert), a prominent and wealthy New York City attorney, fulfilling his dream to be a farmer, and Lisa Douglas (Eva Gabor), his glamorous Hungarian wife, uprooted unwillingly from an upscale Manhattan penthouse apartment to a dilapidated farm in Hooterville that Oliver purchases from the ever-hustling Mr. Haney, to the disbelief of the residents.

The debut episode is a mockumentary about their decision to move to a rural area, anchored by former ABC newscaster John Charles Daly. Daly was the host of the CBS game show ‘What's My Line’, and a few weeks after the show's debut Albert and Gabor returned the favor by appearing on ‘What's My Line’ as that episode's Mystery Guests, and publicly thanked Daly for helping to launch their series.

Oliver Wendell Douglas
(portrayed by Eddie Albert)

Named for Oliver Wendell Holmes, he is an attorney who makes the rash decision to leave his successful law practice and pursue his lifelong dream of being a farmer, despite having no real-world knowledge or experience, as evidenced by him doing farm chores while wearing a three-piece suit (in "The Hooterville Image," the denizens decide Oliver is ruining the town's image by doing his chores in a suit and demand that he wear overalls).

Much of the humor throughout the series derives from Oliver's striving toward success and happiness in an absurd situation, despite the rural citizenry, his high-maintenance wife, and his affluent mother (Eleanor Audley), who ridicules him for his agricultural pipedreams in the episode "The Wedding Anniversary."

Oliver is also subjected to ribbing by the Hootervillians when he launches into starry-eyed monologues about "the American farmer"—replete with a fife playing "Yankee Doodle" in the background (which every on-screen character except Oliver can hear). 

Oliver drives a Lincoln Continental convertible, a stark contrast to the often decrepit vintage vehicles generally shown. In later seasons, the Lincoln is replaced by a Mercury Marquis convertible.

Lisa Douglas
(portrayed by Eva Gabor)

Lisa and Oliver are both veterans of World War II. In "Wings Over Hooterville," she recalls how they met. According to Lisa, she was a sergeant in the Hungarian underground, and he was a United States Army Air Forces flier, forced to bail out of his plane.

However, she gives several other fanciful versions of how they met in subsequent episodes. In the episode, "A Royal Love Story," he is a tourist in Paris, and she is a waitress/tour guide, living with her father, the deposed King of Hungary.

Pampered by her wealthy family, her skewed world view and domestic ignorance provide fertile ground for recurring gags. Instead of washing dishes, Lisa sometimes tosses them out the kitchen window.

In the episode, "Alf and Ralph Break Up," Lisa admits she has no cooking abilities and that her only talent is Zsa Zsa Gabor impersonations (the real-life sisters were often mistaken for each other).

Oliver and Lisa are both depicted as fish out of water. While Oliver instigated the move from Manhattan to Hooterville over Lisa's objections, he is typically uncomprehending of and impatient with his new situation. Lisa, on the other hand, somehow understands the sometimes surreal world of their neighbors, and they in turn are accepting of her own bizarre notions.

Here are the appearances which qualified them for membership….

GREEN ACRES
170 Episodes (1965-1971)

PETTICOAT JUNCTION
12 Episodes (1965-1968)

THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES
1 Episode (1968)

RETURN TO GREEN ACRES (1990 TV Movie)

And now for the reason behind my elliptical hesitation earlier.

HI HONEY, I’M HOME
1 Episode (1992)

O'Bservation:
Lisa Douglas appeared in an episode of this sitcom in which the premise was that characters from TV shows knew they were fictional and were now living on Earth Prime-Time in some kind of witness protection program until their shows could be brought back.  As weird as it could get within the reality of ‘Green Acres’, the majority of the residents of Hooterville, like most of the Toobworld citizenry, were never fully tele-cognizant.  

So there were two Lisa Douglases, making her multidimensional.

And there you have it, the TVXOHOF team for June, 2025!

Welcome, "Oleevar" and that Hotscake herself, Lisa Douglas!

(This has not been a Filmways presentation, Dahlingks....)

HALL'S FALLEN - REMEMBERING... NORM!

THE HALL'S FALLEN

Earlier this year, I decided to start a new category for the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.  As much as I love, honor, and respect the writers for their contributions to the creation of the characters who are inducted into the Hall, it’s the actors who make them so memorable that their presence is sought to appear on other shows.  But unitl now, once they became TVXOHOF members, the characters were barely mentioned again, and the actors not at all.

It’s a conceit for this televisiologist that just because an actor passes away, that doesn’t necessarily mean the character dies as well.  Of course, that doesn’t apply to characters from the Past, like in Westerns or toga shows; even shows set in the fifties, it has to be assumed that all the adult characters and maybe even the kids are gone now in Toobworld.  And it wouldn’t be a factor for many of the shows set in the Future – most of those characters are probably not even born yet.

O’Bviously if the character’s death was written into the script, that rule of thumb doesn’t work.  Jean Stapleton lived long after Edith Bunker died.  Peter Horton still walks Earth Prime, but Gary Shepherd (‘THIRTYsomething’) and Jack Keyes (‘Gun’) have shuffled off the mortal coil.  (Ezekiel Stone of ‘Brimstone’ is a Limbo figure – died, but was brought back by Satan to fulfill his demands.  He may still be alive carrying out that mission.)

The only times I make an exception is when the character could not conceivably have been played by anybody else.  The first time I thought of that in a definitive sense was with the death of Carroll O’Connor.  Nobody else could play Archie Bunker.  (As for the police chief he played in “In The Heat Of The Night”, his character’s existence proved that it wasn’t unique.  Rod Steiger played the role first in the Cineverse.  So the chief exists in other fictional universes, and so might return one day in another TV dimension, in an alternate Toobworld.

The other time is when it’s implied that the character might not live for much longer beyond the cancellation of a show – President Jed Bartlet (‘The West Wing’), Tony Soprano (‘The Sopranos’), Dr. James Wilson (‘House M.D.).

Up to now, we had two reports for the “Hall’s Fallen” 2025 list -

1. With death of Leslie Charleson, it’s possible that Dr. Monica Quartermaine has died as well.  However, being a soap opera character, the writers might find a way to bring her back with a fresh face to at least visit General Hospital.  (It happened once already.)
   
   
2. And the one we can state with certainty is dead in the Toobworld timeline would be Tom Brewster, the legendary cowboy know as ‘Sugarfoot’.  

But now we have a new addition to the roster, one whom I know could never be a Recastaway

NORM PETERSON

"Who?  Me?"

Norm was inducted back in 2020 when I had started a weekly ceremony for “Friday Hall of Famers”.  It was June 11th, and being in the month for Gemini, he was inducted as part of a hardly dynamic duo along with Cliff Clavin, his stool-mate at the ’Cheers’ bar.

These are the reasons why Norm Peterson is in the TVXOHOF:

EARTH PRIME-TIME

CHEERS
269 episodes (1982-1993)

ST. ELSEWHERE
1 episode (1985)

THE TORTELLIS
1 episode (1987)

WINGS
1 episode (1990)

FRASIER
1 episode (2002)

THE TOONIVERSE

THE SIMPSONS
1 episode (1994)

FAMILY GUY
2 episodes (2007 & 2009)

BORDERLAND

MICKEY’S 60TH BIRTHDAY
special (1988)

DISNEYLAND’S 35TH ANNIVERSARY
special (1990)

THE EARTH DAY SPECIAL
special (1990)

One side benefit from this look back at his credits... I discovered that George Wendt is eligible for membership as a member of the League of Themselves.  Look for that face to show up again someday; the definite article you might say....

I hope you got your personal stool in Heaven, Norm….

Good night and may God bless, Mr. Wendt. 

TVHOHOF TRIBUTE - FRIDAY FAREWELL FOR JUSTICE SOUTER

From the AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Retired Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, the ascetic bachelor and New Hampshire Republican who became a darling of liberals during his nearly 20 years on the bench, has died. He was 85.

Souter died Thursday at his home in New Hampshire, the court said in a statement Friday.

While he wasn't much of a presence in the TV Universe, his fictional televersion does have at least the three required appearances to qualify for membership in the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.

DAVID SOUTER

From Wikipedia:
David Hackett Souter (September 17, 1939 – May 8, 2025) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1990 until his retirement in 2009. Appointed by President George H. W. Bush to fill the seat that had been vacated by William J. Brennan Jr., Souter sat on both the Rehnquist and the Roberts courts.

While he was portrayed by three different actors, all three of these entries can remain in Earth Prime-Time.  The discrepancies in physical appearance can be attributed to our view into Toobworld is through the eyes of some unseen TV character (whom I have given the name of “Mr. Forthwall.”)

Here are the three productions in which his character appeared:

PICKET FENCES
MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT (1994)

BOSTON LEGAL
THE COURT SUPREME (2008)

RECOUNT (TV Movie 2008)

The late Justice will now join other members of one of the most exclusive clubs.  (I’m talking about the Supreme Court, not the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.  Frak!  The TVXOHOF will let just about any motherbleeper in!  There’s even one member who technically didn’t even exist!)

Those other Supreme Court members are Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice John Paul Stevens.  I really should get Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg inducted; I’m pretty sure she qualifies, if just for references alone.  Alito and Thomas can sit outside cooling their heels; I’m in no rush to induct them.  And I’ll be damned if Clarence Thomas gets in before Thurgood Marshall! 

Another Supreme Court Justice who is elegible for entry.... President William Howard Taft!

O'Bservation:
One day I hope to get pictures from the 'Picket Fences' episode and the TV movie "Recount."

TUESDAY'S TVXOHOF TRIBUTE - GLADYS ORMPHBY

Ruth Buzzi as Gladys Ormphby
2008 Emmy Awards 

From Reuters:
WASHINGTON, May 2 (Reuters) - Comic performer Ruth Buzzi, who played a counterpoint to the 1960s sexual revolution for laughs as the frumpy, hairnet-wearing, handbag-swinging spinster on U.S. prime-time television hit "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," has died at age 88.

Buzzi succumbed to complications from Alzheimer's disease at her ranch home near Fort Worth, Texas, on Thursday, 10 years after she was diagnosed, her longtime Los Angeles-based agent Mike Eisenstadt said in a statement.

"Her husband of almost 48 years, Kent Perkins, expressed to me that she was making people laugh just a few days ago," Eisenstadt said in an email message to Reuters on Friday.

Buzzi devised a series of sketch comedy characters on the show. Gladys Ormphby, her most famous, was a scowling, irascible spinster who wore drab brown dresses and a hairnet with a spider-like knot in the center of her forehead. Sitting on a park bench, she would react to the approaches of a dirty old man played by Arte Johnson by mercilessly walloping him with her handbag when he muttered come-ons to her.

The Gladys and Tyrone bits offered a satiric contrast to the era's sexually permissive vibe celebrated on the show, which ran until 1973. The Gladys character became so popular that she began appearing elsewhere on prime time, and it became a badge of honor for a celebrity to be thrashed by Buzzi.

Appearing on one of several televised celebrity "roasts" hosted by actor-singer Dean Martin, Buzzi encountered the heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali. As Gladys, the diminutive Buzzi ranted about Ali interfering in her relationship with her boyfriend, then threateningly pointed her index finger at him.

"If you want to make something of it, I want you to meet me out in the parking lot, and we'll have it out, man to man," Buzzi tells him, unleashing dozens of rapid-fire handbag hits to the head and shoulders of the bemused champion, who took it all in good humor.

At another roast, Buzzi as Gladys tells Martin: "Look at you, sitting there so calm and cool, when last night you were yearning for my body." Martin responds: "That wasn't yearning, it was yawning," precipitating a handbag assault, with entertainment legend Frank Sinatra looking on and laughing.

"No, it didn't hurt," Buzzi told interviewer Nick Thomas in 2016. "It looked vicious, but it was just a felt purse lined and filled with old pantyhose and cotton. I was able to swing it with all my might and it still wouldn't hurt anyone, although it looked great and sounded great with a 'thud' when it landed."

Buzzi earned three prime-time Emmy Award nominations in the 1970s - for "Laugh-In" and "The Dean Martin Show" - and two daytime Emmy nods in the 1980s and '90s, including one for her work on the acclaimed children's show "Sesame Street." She won a 1973 Golden Globe award for "Laugh-In."

Gladys Ormphby will be Ruth Buzzi’s most enduring legacy in the TV Universe, with Skitlandia as her domain.  And the Television Crossover Hall of Fame honors her with this memorial induction into the Hall.  Many other characters from that show were of that time and so they were doomed to be fleeting images in the long run.  But Gladys Ormphby (and her beau Tyrone F. Horneigh) were timeless.

GLADYS ORMPHBY

From the Muppet Wiki:
Gladys Ormphby was a frumpy spinster who originated on ‘Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In’ in 1968, and was one of the few characters to remain on the series for its entire five-year run. The character's frumpy attire and stooping posture were first used by Ruth Buzzi in a stage production of Auntie Mame as Agnes Gooch, but the traits were refined and retooled for ‘Laugh-In.’

The dour, hair-netted Gladys was perpetually found seated on a park bench, where she was generally harassed by dirty old man Tyrone (Arte Johnson). Gladys staunchly defended herself by pounding him with her pocket book.

When Johnson left the series, shortly after an aborted wedding between the pair, Gladys developed an increasingly desperate dream life, creating fantasy romances between herself and historical figures. Both Gladys and Tyrone resurfaced as animated characters on the 1977 Saturday morning series ‘Baggy Pants and the Nit-Wits.’

On Sesame Street
In the 1990s, when Ruth Buzzi was a regular on ‘Sesame Street’ as Ruthie, Gladys made a few guest appearances. In one sketch, seated on her park bench as usual, she is approached by Cookie Monster who begs for cookies. Gladys sharply insists that she has zero cookies, so Cookie Monster eats her pocket book instead. Still unsatiated, Cookie Monster hungers after her sweater and hairnet, and is puzzled when she runs away.

(First: Episode 3705) Gladys also appeared in the celebrity version of "A New Way to Walk." In a 1993 episode, Gladys appears as "the Grouch Princess," complete with a magical pocket book.

Other appearances
Outside of ‘Laugh-In’ and ‘Sesame Street’, Gladys has also surfaced in such diverse venues as ads for Canada Dry ginger ale, the Dean Martin celebrity roast for Frank Sinatra, and the 1996 "Weird Al" Yankovic music video "Gump," making a cameo appearance on her favorite perch, the park bench.

O'Bservations: 
There were two instances in which Gladys Ormphby was connected to two other Toobworld characters who are also members of the TVXOHOF.  Both of them were inducted on the strength of their presence in the main Toobworld.  But with Gladys involved, these would be their Skitlandian televersions.

During that roast of Frank Sinatra, Lt. Frank Columbo showed up to get the autograph of Old Blue Eyes for his wife.  They didn't meet on screen, but within the reality of the TV Universe, they must have crossed paths off-stage at the ballroom.  And in one episode of 'Laugh-In', Gladys fantasized about working for Private Eye Joe Mannix.

In the TVXOHOF of my mind, there is that park bench in the Hall’s gardens, surrounded by daisies.  Tyrone F. Horneigh probably won’t be showing up, but I’m sure there will be plenty of other Hall members who will face the fury of Gladys’ handbag.

with Edward G. Robinson

with Sammy Davis Jr.

with Dick Martin & Dan Rowan

with James Garner

with Judy Carne

with Rock Hudson

with The Holy Modal Rounders

with Don Rickles

As Red Skelton would say, “Good night and may God bless….”