FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS - RANDOLPH AGARN AND HIS DNA

And now for something completely different - we're inducting into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame a TV character's genetic makeup.

From Wikipedia:
Lawrence Samuel Storch (born January 8, 1923) is an American actor, voice actor, and comedian, best known for his comic television roles, including voice-over work for cartoon shows, such as Mr. Whoopee on ‘Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales’, and his live-action role of the bumbling Corporal Randolph Agarn on ‘F Troop’.  

His most famous role was the scheming Corporal Randolph Agarn on the situation comedy ‘F Troop’ (1965–1967), with Forrest Tucker, Ken Berry and Melody Patterson.

Corporal Randolph Agarn (Larry Storch) – Randolph Agarn is O'Rourke's somewhat dimwitted sidekick and business partner in the shady O'Rourke Enterprises (his name is a play on both Randolph Scott and John Agar who were cowboy stars).

The character Agarn, originally from Passaic, New Jersey, took six years after enlistment to become a lowly corporal. At the time of the series, Agarn has been in the cavalry for 10 years, and has been posted to Fort Courage for the last four, apparently spending the Civil War years at Fort Courage.

He has impersonated Generals George Washington and Ulysses Grant. However, in dual roles, Storch played numerous lookalike relatives of Agarn, including his French-Canadian cousin Lucky Pierre, his Russian cousin Dmitri Agarnoff and his Mexican bandito cousin Pancho Agarnado, known as "El Diablo." (In the same episode he also played Granny Agarn, Uncle Gaylord Agarn of Tallahassee and Pancho's sister Carmen Agarnado). 

Confrontational and often overly-emotional in every respect, Agarn frequently collapses in tears with the phrases "Oh, Cap'n!" or "Oh, Sarge!" (depending on whose chest he buries his head in). To get the men to attention, he barks out his trademark loud and exaggerated (but unintelligible) "Aaaaa-aaahh" command.

Whenever he becomes frustrated by something one of the troopers does wrong (which is often), short-tempered Agarn hits him with his hat which, unlike everyone else's, is white. A hypochondriac, Agarn thinks he's contracted the illnesses he reads or hears about or which others around him have (including a horse).

One running gag during the second season involves Agarn's delayed reactions, which usually ran: Agarn would make a suggestion; O'Rourke would respond: "Agarn, I don't know why everyone says you're so dumb!" At the beginning of the next scene (which could be several hours or days after the original comment), Agarn, suddenly indignant, demands: "Who says I'm dumb?"

Agarn was briefly promoted to Sergeant in the episode "Lieutenant O'Rourke, Front and Center". Larry Storch was nominated for an Emmy Award for "Outstanding performance by an actor in a leading role in a comedy series" in 1967.

To be a member of the Television Crossover Hall of Fame, a TV character has to connect three different series.  In the beginning, that meant strictly three actual appearances in those shows.  I expanded that to include references to the character in other shows.  (Batman and Captain Kirk are really good for that.)

Well, I’ve been doing this for twenty years now; I’m getting older.  And basically flirted with death a few times in the last five years.

So I’m not as strict with the TVXOHOF as I once was.  I need to remember this is just a site with which I can have some fun and keep my mind relaxed.  Life literally is too short to get hung up about stuff.

But I’m still excluding the printed word and audio dramas.  Toobworld will always be a visual medium universe.  (But there are times when I admit that certain things in BookWorld or the Audioverse could have happened in Toobworld.  But on the whole it leaves me free to toss aside things that don’t work for my telly vision… like “Oswald Cobblepot” being the real name of the Penguin from Earth Prime-Time.  (The alternate TV dimension of ‘Gotham’ can do as it pleases.)

I did have another character whom I was claiming was Randolph Agarn using an alias, as was often the case in the tall tales of the Old West.  What made this “Game of the Name” tempting is that he was teamed up with another TV character who looked EXACTLY like Agarn’s former sergeant and business partner, Morgan Sylvester O’Rourke….

The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams
- Gold Is Where You Find It (1977)
... Wally 

From the IMDb:
Two inept men with dreams of gold search for it on the mountain, with a map they got for ten dollars. Their efforts upset the calm balance of nature around them, leading Adams and others to try and stop them before real damage is done. 

The real John “Grizzly” Adams died in 1860, and Toobworld has seen the lives of historical figures be altered with regards to their timelines in the past (example: Jules Verne in ‘The Secret Adventures Of Jules Verne’.)  And that’s nothing compared to some of the changes made to historical figures – like Lily Langtry as a vampire in ‘The Kindred’.

But in the end, after watching the episode, I decided it was getting too complicated.  So citing Occam’s razor, I’m going to claim that Wally Tait and Ernie Ketcham (or were they Ernie Tait and Wally Ketcham?) were identical cousins to O’Rourke and Agarn.  It was already established in ‘F Troop’ that the Agarn Family had strong genetics, but in the case of Morgan O’Rourke and Ernie, I think we saw a case of infidelity on the part of Sgt. O’Rourke’s father back in Ireland, 1819.  (The mother of this bastard child must have fled the Emerald Isle in shame and raised young Ernest in America*.) 

One easement to my rules about TVXOHOF was on display last week as I honored the memory of Sir Roger Moore with the induction of Beau Maverick for a theory of relateeveety in which I posited that he was responsible for extended family trees for the Mavericks, the Templars, and the Sinciairs.  And this week we’re continuing that theme with perhaps the greatest example of Toobworld’s strong telegenetics with the induction of Corporal Agarn.

In this case, I think we're inducting Agarn's DNA sequence.  

Anyhoo

As mentioned above, every so often on the sitcom a new member of Agarn’s family would show up at Fort Courage.  And each of them was played by Larry Storch.

LUCKY PIERRE

DMITRI AGARNOFF

PANCHO AGARNADO (“EL DIABLO”)

CARMEN AGARNADO

UNCLE GAYLORD AGARN

GRANNY AGARN

I’ve often written about the power of tele-genetics, that  Toobworld combinations of DNA can repeat several times over down through the generations.  And as we see here, it doesn’t have to be a direct line of descent.  All of these cousins and other relatives had an ancestor who looked like them and that DNA sequence then was passed down through the many branches of the Agarn family tree.

In this particular case, I call the phenomenon of this particular DNA combination “agarnosis”.

But with all of those cousins, they do nothing more to establish Agarn’s eligibility for the Hall than to establish how strong the Agarn DNA chain is.

Based on that, however, I don’t think it’s hard to imagine that any characters portrayed by Larry Storch in later years of the Toobworld Timeline could be descended from Randolph Agarn.

Here are the main Storch characters who are likely to call Randolph Agarn “Great Grandpa”:

Eddie Spencer
‘The Ghostbusters’

Charlie Duffy
‘The Queen And I’

Duke Farentino
‘The Doris Day Show’

Charlie Adamopolis
‘Car 54, Where Are You?’

In my theory of relateeveety, Agarn had gone back to Passaic, New Jersey, and married a girl back home.  And he probably had daughters, perhaps even just one who gave Agarn a lot of granddaughters.  They all married and took their husbands’ names so that’s why we never see any characters from the 1960s to the 1990s who named Agarn. 

But he could have had a son, because there was one of his single-shot characters who could have had the last name of “Agarn”:

The Groovy Guru
‘Get Smart’

So here are just a few more TV characters who could be descended from Randolph Agarn.  First off, since he may have left his wife and brood of daughters in New Jersey while he went back to Fort Courage in Kansas, then it’s more believable that any of Storch’s NYC-based characters are more likely to be descended from Agarn.

McCloud 
Return to the Alamo (1975)
... Parkes

All in the Family
- Oh Say Can You See (1973)
... Bill Mulheron

The Persuaders!
- Angie. Angie 
... Angie

Charlie Duffy of ‘The Queen and I’ and Charlie Adamopolis of ‘Car 54, Where Are You?’ would be included in that New York contingent.  In fact, it could be that the two of them shared not only Randolph Agarn as their great-grandfather, but a man named Charles as their grandfather.  And that might explain why they shared the first name, named after that grandfather in tribute.

Here are some other TV characters of interest who were either descended from Agarn, or from somebody in that family tree.

‘Columbo’
- “Negative Reaction”
Mr. Weekley

The driving examiner is probably one of the most seen of Storch’s characters, because of the popularity and availability of the shaggy detective’s series.  I think he’s one of the Agarn descendants who stands alone without identical cousins or twin brothers.  But even so, he’s considered still to have Agarn as his great-grandfather.

The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries
- The Mystery of the Silent Scream (1977)
... Jesse Miller

Kolchak: The Night Stalker
- The Vampire (1974)
... Swede

Miller was a nightclub performer in Las Vegas.  Duke Farentino was a prize fighter who became a dance instructor and then an entertainer in San Francisco several years earlier.  I was tempted to conflate them into one character, but decided against it.

However, I think “Jesse Miller” was a stage name; that his last name used to be Grytofsky.  His twin brother is James Grytofsky who used to be a newspaper reporter in Las Vegas.  And he changed his name as well to “James Bright” before taking a job as the anchorman at a TV station in Cincinnati.  But no matter what name he used, everybody called him “Swede”.

Switch
- The Case of the Purloined Case (1976)
... Benny Shore

Like Jesse Miller, Benny Shore was a Las Vegas nightclub comic who went bad and ended up murdering his girlfriend to protect himself.  But I don’t think they can be conflated, just because of the timeline and jail sentences.  But I’m open to the idea of Jesse (and his twin brother Swede) having an identical cousin in Benny.  And by “identical cousin”, I’m thinking of the darker interpretation – that Pops Grytofsky carried on an illicit relationship with Benny’s mother while his own wife was heavy with twins.

The Flying Nun
- The Not So Great Impostor (1969)
... Joe Barnes/Roy Barnes

Barnes could be another one of the “identical cousins” of the Grytofsky boys whose father was biologically the same as Jesse and
James’.

This is an interesting one…..

The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo
- Buttercup, Birdie, and Buried Bucks (1979)
... Pappy Beauregard

Pappy Beauregard….  Sounds familiar, right?  If you’re a fan of ‘Maverick’, it should be.  Had “Beauregard” been Pappy’s first name, I would have a field day with creating a family tree connection to Beauregard “Pappy” Maverick.    

But as it stands, with “Beauregard” as the family name, it’s just a fabulous coincidence.  And it doesn’t invalidate the Agarn genealogical connection.

Phyllis
- Off the Bench (1976)
... Bum 

From the IMDb:
Phyllis's bum friend Van has a crush on a higher class woman, Lucille. Phyllis tries to clean him up to make him into a more presentable gentleman.

CPO Sharkey
- A Wino Is Loose (1977)
... The Bum

From the IMDb:
When a homeless drunk enters the barracks and makes himself at home, Sharkey is livid. And nothing that the men do dislodges the man from his comfy quarters. 

Neither of these two bums were given names in the episode, so I’m going to claim that they are not only the same man, spending time in San Francisco before traveling down the coast to San Diego, but also that he’s actually Charlie Adamopolis who used to haunt the 53rd Precinct in the Bronx.

As such not only am I considering Charlie for the Agarn family tree, but he’ll also be a Friday Hall of Famer in January of 2020 when we celebrate the Classics.

Randolph Agarn wasn’t the only member of the family who had a descendant in modern times:

Phyl & Mikhy
- The Seduction of Mikhail Orlov (1980)
... Ivan

Being from behind the Soviet Iron Curtain, it’s O’Bvious to me that he must be descended from Dmitri Agarnoff.  I wouldn’t be surprised if that was his last name as well.  (But I could be wrong.  I usally am.)

Finally….

I Dream of Jeannie
- Fly Me to the Moon (1967)
... Sam

How strong was Agarn’s DNA sequence?  It’s possible that it exists even in a different evolutionary branch, as Jeannie was able to transform Sam, a NASA chimp, into a human who looked just like Agarn.  Those who do magic in Toobworld can’t just summon results out of thin air; they have to have something to work with.  So the basic building blocks were there and probably within the genetic makeup of Sam’s chimp ancestors since the original divergence.

Just sayin’ is all…..

I just thought of another possibility - Larry Storch played himself in an episode of 'Married... with Children'.  So the televersion of Mr. Storch could even be related to Randolph Agarn!

As of 1919, Randolph Agarn was still alive, born a century before Larry Storch.  Here's to them both having many more years to come!

At any rate, welcome to the TV Crossover Hall of Fame, Corporal Agarn.  I don’t why people think you’re not worthy……

Happy Trails!

O’Bservation:
* It’s pozz’ble, just pozz’ble, that Ernie was named after his father, even if he didn’t marry Ernie’s mother.  Therefore, Mr. O’Rourke’s given name could have been Ernest.  But I’ll have to watch that episode to make sure.