FRIDAY HALL OF FAMER 5/31/19 - GINGER GRANT

The Television Crossover Hall of Fame began in 1999.  (This is our twentieth anniversary.)  With its sophomore year, the Hall celebrated the Year of the Woman since they were so under-represented in the premier year.  Two of the members that year were Mary Ann Summers and Lovey Howell from 'Gilligan's Island'.  But I didn't even consider their fellow female castaway, Ginger Grant, because Tina Louise only played the role in the series. 

Over the ensuing two decades, I came to look at the characters on his or her own merits, rather than on who (and how many) played them.  I can usually come up with some sort of splainin nowadays for that, and I've got a good one in this case.

There have been six actors who have played Ginger, but there have been only three Gingers in the greater TV Universe.  It is the Ginger of the main Toobworld who is being inducted, even though three actresses have played her.

First, let's take a look at the basics of Ginger Grant.

From Wikipedia:

Ginger Grant is a fictional character portrayed by actress Tina Louise in the 1964 to 1967 television sitcom 'Gilligan's Island'.

Grant is a "movie star", and would casually mention names of some of the biggest movie stars of the day, as co-stars or acquaintances, suggesting that she too was a great star. She also mentions her roommate and fellow actress, Debbie Dawson, several times.

In the series' Season 1 Episode 1 "Two on a Raft", Ginger is also "singing in a club in Waikiki", the same gig mentioned by the radio announcer, after which she was seen boarding the tour boat "still wearing the evening gown from her last performance".

"When I first broke into show business, I used to work with a magician", Ginger confesses in Season 1 Episode 33 "It's Magic".

Ginger was sometimes seen helping the Professor with his experiments, dressed in a lab coat and spectacle frames, and they conspired together in the episode 'Ship Ahoax' to make it appear as though she were fortune-telling. They also shared romantic scenes, although these were usually in the form of a "lesson in love", such as in the episodes 'Erica Tiffany-Smith to the Rescue' and 'The Postman Cometh'.

She also appears to have been the object of desire of The Skipper in several episodes. The Skipper chooses Ginger as his preferred contestant in the "Miss Castaway Pageant" held on the island (Season 2 Episode 2 "Beauty Is As Beauty Does"). In addition, when Skipper loses his memory in the first season Episode 30 "Forget Me Not", he is much more attracted to Ginger than Mary Ann, asking Ginger, "Hi, beautiful!  What's your name?" while leering at her with delight. Ginger does not know about the Skipper's memory loss and she answers, with appropriate Hollywood pique, "Ginger, big boy, what's yours?"

Ginger sides with Thurston Howell, III on many occasions - acting as a witness during a trial over treasure, serving as a sort of spy to divulge information from Gilligan by scratching his back and allowing herself to be bribed by Howell, such as during the "election" of who was to be President of the island. It should also be noted that her secret agent code name and her measurements were both 36-25-36.

She is also close friends with Mary Ann; the two are around the same age.

Ginger Grant, due to many prior film roles in Hollywood, spent her time on the island occasionally taking on the roles of chanteuse, barefoot fortune-teller, lab assistant, hair stylist, and psychoanalyst – as well as fronting the hastily formed island musical trio: The Honeybees. She also had to deal with a doppelganger, a plain mousy girl named Eva Grubb (also played by Tina Louise).

Unlike the other female castaways, who were seen in more than one set of clothes, Ginger initially appeared only in her evening gown. Later episodes did include changes in apparel for her as well.

First off, let's get the other Ginger Grants out of the way.  There was one in the Prequel Toobworld and one in The Tooniverse (but for whom two actresses provided the voice.)

From Wikipedia:In Gilligan's Island's pilot, actress Kit Smythe, was hired to portray Ginger, who was then a secretary.  

For 'The New Adventures of Gilligan' the voice was provided by Jane Webb, while Dawn Wells had double duty as both Mary Ann and Ginger for 'Gilligan's Planet'.

And now, let's look at our inductee from Earth Prime-Time!

We know Tina Louise was THE Ginger Grant for the entire run of the series, but when it came to the sequel reunion movies....

From Wikipedia:
In the 1978 made-for-TV-movie, "Rescue from Gilligan's Island"; Tina Louise refused to return, for she believed the role had typecast her forever as a glamor queen, and was replaced by Judith Baldwin. Baldwin also portrayed Ginger in the sequel "The Castaways on Gilligan's Island".

However, Baldwin didn't return for the third sequel, "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island"; therefore, Constance Forslund, stepped in as the fourth actress to play the "movie star". 

This turns out to be one of the easiest - if not the wildest - splainins I ever needed for a recastaway.

During the course of the series, almost every castaway met up with their identical lookalike on that remote deserted island.  The island had berries which gave the person who ate them telepathic powers.  And most importantly, there was the meteor which emitted cosmic rays that would supposedly cause them to die of old age in one week.

So there's our splainin for why the physical appearance of Ginger changed in the decade since we last saw her.  It could have been that same meteor, or perhaps another amazingly landed on the island and its cosmic rays only affected Ginger, altering her physiognomy. 

By the third TV reunion movie, her looks again changed and I think we can also assume that she died from that exposure which was ravaging her cellular structure.  Even all three of the actresses were still alive, I think it best to consider Ginger as the second castaway to pass away in Toobworld.  (I think we can all agree that Thurston Howell III must have died soon after that third TV movie.)

So even though it wasn't the same actress who played Ginger in all four outings for 'Gilligan's Island' in the main Toobworld, it was still the same Ginger Grant.

Hi, Beautiful!  Welcome to the Hall!

THURSDAY THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY - SHIRLEY & HER NEWS-MOM

Toobworld is full of the "atmosphere people" - in the Real World they are the extras in the scenes, sometimes not even seen but acknowledged that they exist.  Like the 400 people who were also on board the starship Enterprise besides the bridge crew.  Think of all those people seen on the streets of New York, Minneapolis, and Chicago, in the opening credits of 'The Odd Couple', 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show', and 'The Bob Newhart Show' respectively.  

And all of those are characters with their own lives, with friends and family, expanding the population of Toobworld considerably.  

Today I'd like to propose a theory of relateeveety for one such minor character.....

'Monk'
"Mister Monk Gets Fired"

This reporter was played by Shirley Jordan who already has a character in the Television Crossover Hall of Fame - a nurse who has worked in various parts of the country.  I did induct her as a Dr. Escobedo as well, but that is under review.  And if I can find one more nameless character from Boston played by her, I can induct her realtor Nancy Sosha from 'Ally McBeal' into the Hall.  (She already was on 'Boston Legal' as a jury forewoman whom I claim is Ms. Sosha.)

But this particular reporter in San Francisco where 'Monk' took place had a life beyond this one episode's scene.  She had to have family, a mother and a father at least.  And I think we could make the assumption that the reason she became a reporter was all due to the influence of her mother who also was seen on the TV news of Toobworld as she did her job.

See that lady reporter to the right in the yellow dress at Sgt. Coopersmith's press briefing?  

'The Rockford Files'

"The House On Willis Avenue"

It's my theory of relateeveety that she is the mother of the reporter played by Shirley Jordan.  I have no clue who that actress is, but I'm going to claim her character - who was seen for all of five seconds? - inspired her daughter to go into the field as well.  She raised Shirley's reporter in Los Angeles, but the daughter found employ in San Francisco when she grew up.

And so there you have it - a theory of relateeveety which can connect 'Monk' with 'The Rockford Files', no matter how trivial the link.

The best thing of all about such theories - it's all conjecture.  But that doesn't mean it can't be true!

Hi Shirley!

WIKI TIKI WEDNESDAY - THE HOOPOE

'MIDSOMER MURDERS'
"A RARE BIRD"

Quotes from the episode:

"I spotted a blue-crested hoopoe." 

• "Ralph Ford's spotted a blue crested hoopoe, up by Swansdown Lake."
• "A hoopoe? In Midsomer?"
• "Yeah, that's what he says."
• "Probably flopped in on its way to Africa."
• "Be a British first if Ralph's spotted it right."

"It's not just a seldom-seen, Ralph, it's an endangered species.  Native to Uganda."
"Not spotted the hoopoe, have you? The blue-crested hoopoe! Extremely rare visitor to Britain."  

"You're as likely to see a blue-crested hoopoe land in Midsomer as Concorde, truth be told."

DCI John Barnaby:

'The female blue-crested hoopoe has multiple partners,
and attacks the male viciously in the nether regions,
after mating.'

Sarah Barnaby:

Well, that should stop them feeling frisky.

From Wikipedia:
Hoopoes are colourful birds found across Afro-Eurasia, notable for their distinctive "crown" of feathers. Three living and one extinct species are recognized, though for many years all were lumped as a single species—Upupa epops.

The diet of the hoopoe includes many species considered by humans to be pests, such as the pupae of the processionary moth, a damaging forest pest. For this reason the species is afforded protection under the law in many countries.

Hoopoes are distinctive birds and have made a cultural impact over much of their range. They were considered sacred in Ancient Egypt, and were "depicted on the walls of tombs and temples". At the Old Kingdom, the hoopoe was used in the iconography as a symbolic code to indicate the child was the heir and successor of his father. They achieved a similar standing in Minoan Crete.

In the Torah, Leviticus 11:13–19, hoopoes were listed among the animals that are detestable and should not be eaten. They are also listed in Deuteronomy as not kosher.

Hoopoes also appear in the Quran and is known as the "hudhud", in Surah Al-Naml 27:20–24: "And he took attendance of the birds and said, "Why do I not see the hoopoe - or is he among the absent?  I will surely punish him with a severe punishment or slaughter him unless he brings me clear authorization."  But the hoopoe stayed not long and said, "I have encompassed [in knowledge] that which you have not encompassed, and I have come to you from Sheba with certain news.  Indeed, I found [there] a woman ruling them, and she has been given of all things, and she has a great throne. I found her and her people prostrating to the sun instead of Allah, and Satan has made their deeds pleasing to them and averted them from [His] way, so they are not guided."

The sacredness of the Hoopoe and connection with Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is mentioned in passing in Rudyard Kipling's "The Butterfly that Stamped." 

Hoopoes were seen as a symbol of virtue in Persia. A hoopoe was a leader of the birds in the Persian book of poems The Conference of the Birds ("Mantiq al-Tayr" by Attar) and when the birds seek a king, the hoopoe points out that the Simurgh was the king of the birds.

Hoopoes were thought of as thieves across much of Europe, and harbingers of war in Scandinavia. In Estonian tradition, hoopoes are strongly connected with death and the underworld; their song is believed to foreshadow death for many people or cattle. In medieval ritual magic, the hoopoe was thought to be an evil bird. The Munich Manual of Demonic Magic, a collection of magical spells compiled in Germany frequently requires the sacrifice of a hoopoe to summon demons and perform other magical intentions.

Tereus, transformed into the hoopoe, is the king of the birds in the Ancient Greek comedy The Birds by Aristophanes. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, book 6, King Tereus of Thrace rapes Philomela, his wife Procne's sister, and cuts out her tongue. In revenge, Procne kills their son Itys and serves him as a stew to his father. When Tereus sees the boy's head, which is served on a platter, he grabs a sword but just as he attempts to kill the sisters, they are turned into birds—Procne into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale. Tereus himself is turned into an epops(6.674), translated as lapwing by Dryden and lappewincke (lappewinge) by John Gower in his Confessio Amantis, or hoopoe in A.S. Kline's translation. The bird's crest indicates his royal status, and his long, sharp beak is a symbol of his violent nature. English translators and poets probably had the northern lapwing in mind, considering its crest.

The hoopoe was chosen as the national bird of Israel in May 2008 in conjunction with the country's 60th anniversary, following a national survey of 155,000 citizens, outpolling the white-spectacled bulbul.  The hoopoe appears on the logo of the University of Johannesburg and is the official mascot of the university's sports teams. The municipalities of Armstedt and Brechten, Germany, have a hoopoe in their coats of arms.

In Morocco, hoopoes are traded live and as medicinal products in the markets, primarily in herbalist shops. This trade is unregulated and a potential threat to local populations.

Three CGI enhanced hoopoes, together with other birds collectively named "the tittifers", are often shown whistling a song in the BBC children's television series 'In the Night Garden....'

DCI John Barnaby:

To the blue-crested hoopoe, 

A very rare bird indeed.

 

TREKKIN' TUESDAY - SCOTTY'S BIRTHPLACE

From Wikipedia:
Following [James] Doohan's death, several Scottish towns campaigned to be named Scotty's "official birthplace". Scripts, production materials and Doohan's family support Linlithgow's claim to being Scotty's birthplace. However, Scotty says in "Wolf in the Fold" (1967) that he is "an old Aberdeen pub crawler", and Aberdeen city leaders proposed plans to erect a monument to the actor and character. 

I don't see a problem here.  Scotty could still have been (that is, will be) born in Linlitgow.  Later, when he grows up, Scotty could be attending the University of Aberdeen's School of Engineering.  And when is a better time to go pub-crawling than while at college?

There is one way to find out for sure....

BCnU!

 

MEMORIAL DAY IN TOOBWORLD 2019

Today is Memorial Day. I try to celebrate in a Toobworld fashion every year because I know my freedom to delve into Television Arcana is all due to the sacrifices of the real-life men and women who gave their lives defending our country.  (I do the same with Veterans' Day in November.)  

I thought this year, rather than focusing on one TV character who had served in the armed forces of "Telemerica", I would instead look back at some of the tributes over the past years.......

LITTLE JOE CARTWRIGHT
'BONANZA'

PRIVATE KELLY
'COMBAT'

COLONEL SHERMAN POTTER
'M*A*S*H'

LT. WILLIAM "FITZ" FITZGERALD

'THE TWILIGHT ZONE'

LT. (JG) DOUGLAS ROBERTS

'MISTER ROBERTS'

SGT. "CHIP" SAUNDERS
'COMBAT'

AUDIE MURPHY

JOSEPH KENNEDY

PFC EUGENE SLEDGE

'BAND OF BROTHERS'

LT. GIL HANLEY

'COMBAT'

'COMBAT' VIDEO USED FOR MEMORIAL DAY IN THE PAST

Thank you all for your service and your sacrifice......

VIDEO SATURDAY - ENSIGN CHUCK PARKER

Our Video Saturday is dedicated to celebrating Ensign Charles Parker, recently inducted into the Television Crossover Hall Of Fame.

First up, we have the first episode of 'McHale's Navy' as a series.  Most of the cast had already worked together in a more dramatic pilot called "Seven Against The Sea".  The first episode of the series introduced Tim Conway as the new ensign assigned to McHale's unit.  This certainly established Conway's bumbling nature, especially showcased in a cartwheel into the grass.

I will becoming up with a theory of relateeveety eventually based on this episode in which I surmised that Parker married his French sweetheart.  I'd just like to find some Parkers in other TV shows who could be their descendants.  (If you can think of any, let me know!)

And of course, we have to have a blooper reel!

Finally, here's the late Tim Conway remembering how he got involved with 'McHale's Navy'.....

Rest in peace, Mr. Conway. Thanks for the laughs!

FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS - REMEMBERING LAVERNE DEFAZIO

From Variety:
[December 18, 2018]
Penny Marshall, who starred alongside Cindy Williams in the hit ABC comedy “Laverne & Shirley” and then became a successful director, died on Monday night at her Hollywood Hills home due to complications from diabetes, Variety has confirmed. She was 75.

Marshall was the first woman to direct a film that grossed more than $100 million, the first woman to direct two films that made more than $100 million, and she was only the second woman director to see her film Oscar-nominated for best picture.
“Laverne & Shirley” ran from 1976-1983 and proved an enormous success for ABC. It was the No. 3 show on television in 1975-76, No. 2 in 1976-77, and No. 1 in 1977-78 and 1978-79, spawning ancillary revenue in the form of merchandising, a record album, and an animated series based on the show.

As you may have noticed starting with last Friday’s Hall of Famer induction ceremony for Doris Day, we had five straight days of memorial blog posts – three for Miss Day as a member of the League of Themselves, one for Peggy Lipton’s Norma Jennings from ‘Twin Peaks’, and then a “Two for Tuesday” salute for Tim Conway (one for himself and one for his first breakout character of Ensign Chuck Parker.)

All of those followed on the heels of the news about their passing.  Laverne DeFazio is a powerful enough TV icon that she should have been a monthly showcase, but I was already committed to making this a theme year for the Hall’s 20th anniversary with TV adaptations of superheroes and villains.

We also could have had her as a Friday Hall of Famer at any point ealier this year, especially in January for the Classic TV theme.  However, I thought it appropriate to save her for this month as one of the Queens of May.

Here are the credits which locked her in as deserving of the TVXOHOF membership.

Happy Days
(1975-1979) 
5 episodes

Laverne & Shirley
(1976-1983)
178 episodes

Blansky's Beauties
- Nancy Remembers Laverne (1977)

Mork & Mindy
- Pilot (1978)

She can also be found in The Tooniverse:

Mork & Mindy/Laverne & Shirley/Fonz Hour
(1982)
8 episodes

Laverne & Shirley in the Army
(1981-1982) 
13 episodes

Here is some of the information… information… information… about Laverne from her show’s wikia:

FAMILY:

• Frank DeFazio (father)
• Unnamed mother, deceased 
• Antonio DeFazio (cousin)

ABOUT:
Tough-talking type, she's the rather gutsier of the two, being she and longtime roommate Shirley, both in Milwaukee, where she also grew up, and in California

Laverne DeFazio is one of the main characters on Laverne & Shirley who appears in 177 of the 178 episdoes of the series. The character was played by Penny Marshall, who also played the character in five guest appearances of its parent TV series, ABC-TV's Happy Days. Laverne also appears in the pilot episode of another popular Happy Days spinoff, Mork & Mindy, as well as the short-lived spinoff ABC-TV's Blansky's Beauties in the episode "I Remember Laverne". 

About Laverne
Laverne is known for being a tough-talking tomboy. She was born and grew up in Brooklyn, NY with her Italian immigrant parents. Laverne's parents later moved to Milwaukee when she was about 11 years old, where her mother later died. 

Friendships
Laverne worked alongside best friend and roommate Shirley Feeney, whom she's known since moving to Milwaukee as a child. They attended high school together, and worked together as bottle-cappers at Shotz Brewery there in Milwaukee, before packing up and moving to California, along with her father Frank DeFazio and his new wife, Edna Babish, who was the landlord of the apartment building in which they shared an apartment together for 5 years. Her other friends included Lenny, Squiggy, Shirley's boyfriend Carmine, Rhonda, and even good ole Rosie Greenbaum (although it's more of a "frenemy" relationship as they often feud with each other). The same thing can be said about her and Shirley's relationship with Rhonda Lee, a tall, blonde buxom actress/model whom they meet upon their move to Burbank. 

Laverne and Shirley soon would find jobs as gift wrappers at Bard's Department Store in Burbank, CA, where she would meet a stuntman and aspiring actor named Sonny St. Jacques (Ed Marinaro) and begin dating him for several episodes. 

Milk and Pepsi is Laverne's favorite drink. Her trademark is the script letter "L" monogrammed on her shirts and sweaters, an idea Marshall got from seeing a vintage sweater in the wardrobe department with an initial sewn in the upper left corner, something that would help the audience remember that she is Laverne. 

Laverne came close twice to marrying; she almost married a sailor named Sal Malina, although she didn't love him. Another was a fireman named Randy (also played by Marinaro), whom she began dating while in Milwaukee, but he died in the line of duty.

Unlike her friend Shirley, who winds up marrying an Army doctor named Walter Feeney, Laverne's never been married.

I’d like to think that Ms. DeFazio lived in Toobworld as long as Ms. Marshall did in both the Real World and the main Toobworld.  I did a little (very little) research into her first appearance on ‘Happy Days’.  That was broadcast in 1975 when Ms. Marshall was 32 years old.  In that first episode (“A Date With Fonzie”), Potsie Webber sang “Great Balls of Fire” which Jerry Lee Lewis recorded and released in 1957.  I’m thinking Potsie was singing that by at least 1958, so I’m going to claim that Laverne – being the same age as Penny Marshall at the time she made that episode, was born in 1926.  That means she was 92 years old when she passed away last December.

Good night and may God bless, Laverne.  

Welcome to the Hall.    

THURSDAY THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY - THE WILLES WOMEN

‘McHale’s Navy’
“Send Us A Hero”
&
‘The Twilight Zone’
“Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?”

Submitted for your approval: Congresswoman Clara Carter Clarke, visiting elected official from Massachusetts, came to Taratupa when she was forty years old.  She left her husband and their daughter Ethel to find a PT boat commander whom she could bring home to the States in order to make speeches to bolster the war effort.

Back home, her young daughter, Ethel, would grow up with dreams of becoming a dancer, only to be disillusioned by Life, men, and what being a “professional dancer” would entail. 

She would marry a man named McConnell, which would prove to be the first of the misjudgments she would make in Life. The last one would be getting back on a bus to cross a rickety bridge on a snowy night.  She was only 38 at the time.

As for her mother the Congresswoman, Representative Clark would have a lasting impact on History by introducing a young PT boat skipper from her home state of Massachusetts to the people of America. 

That young man would eventually become the President of the United States.

Former Representative Clarke died in 1989 when she was 87 years old....

[Jean Willes played both roles.]

WIKI TIKI WEDNESDAY - MEGGAZONES

When they show newspaper front pages in a TV show, I look for more than just the key headline.  Usually it's the masthead for the paper which sometimes I can use to link one series to another.

This time around, it's an advert that filled the corner of the page....

'Father Brown'
"The Great Train Robbery"

I never even heard of Meggazones before, but reading up on them, I realized I just knew them by other names.....

From Caroline's Miscellany
Meggezones are menthol pastilles (they also used to contain peppermint, licquorice, chloroform and benzoin), whose strange name comes from the firm's founder, a Mr Meggeson. He started the company in 1796, and by the early nineteenth century it was making a range of syrups, sweets and lozenges for coughs and colds at its Bermondsey factory. Other products included dyspepsia tablets and lemon barley water. Today, the brand is owned by multinational Schering Plough.

From Wikipedia:
A pastille is a type of candy or medicinal pill made of a thick liquid that has been solidified and is meant to be consumed by light chewing and allowing it to dissolve in the mouth. They are also used to describe certain forms of incense.

A pastille was originally a pill-shaped lump of compressed herbs, which was burnt to release its medicinal properties. Literary references to the burning of medicinal pastilles include the short story "The Birth-Mark" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the poem "The Laboratory" by Robert Browning, and the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. They are also mentioned in the novel McTeague by Frank Norris, when the title character's wife burns them to mask an unpleasant odor in the couple's rooms. In Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, "a half-filled package of violet pastilles" are among the items found in Joel Cairo's pockets. They were also widely used during the eighteenth century in Western cultures to take herbal curatives and medicines, which eventually were developed into candies.

Pharma News Online
Meggezones pastilles contain menthol. They provide a soothing effect for sore throats through the promotion of saliva secretion. The preparation contains glucose as excipients and therefore should not be recommended to diabetic patients.

KEEP A PITCHIN' IN
George Meggeson was a London chemist (pharmacist), in business as early as the 1790s. One authority says that Meggeson was a “pioneer in sugar-based lozenges and was one of the first to make medicated pastilles” – in other words, he invented the cough drop, by adding menthol to a candy base that, according to a contemporary advertisement, lasts “long enough to release [its] numbing effect on very dry tickles and hoarseness. [This helps] to soothe the inflamed larynx which can be the cause of voice loss.”

For some 50 years, George Meggeson, assisted by his unmarried daughters, lived above his chemist’s shop on Cannon Street, described as then “being so narrow that one could almost shake hands across the street,” dispensing the syrups and pills he manufactured at his factory on Bermondsey. The firm eventually passed out of family hands, but continued to thrive through much of the 20th century. It is now owned by the multinational company Schering Plough, and its lozenges, marketed under the brand name Meggezones, can still be ordered online (I’m wary of linking to online pharmacy sites, but they’re there).

BCnU!