INNER TOOB

Monday, March 12, 2012

"BURGLAR PROOF" ("ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS")

Here's the episode of 'Alfred Hitchcock Present' in which we find the half-brother of Emmett Clark of 'Mayberry RFD'......

BCnU!

HARTMEN

Paul Hartman

Out of all the TV characters to be found in the Tele-Folks Directory, it might seem surprising to learn that Emmett Clark, Mayberry's Mr. Fix-It, is a future candidate for the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame. And that doesn't even depend upon the following theory of "relateeveety".....

By the way, this is all conjecture.....

Emmett Clark had an older half brother from his mother's first marriage. His name was Sammy Morrissey and he was close to his younger half-brother when they were younger. They even went to a locksmith school together, but with different life goals in mind - Emmett wanted the expertise to expand his skills, so that he could fulfill his dream of opening his own fix-it shop. He chose to do so in Mayberry, North Carolina.

Sammy Morrissey, on the other hand, used the newfound knowledge of locksmithing to help him become a better cracksman - that is, a safe-cracker.

Sammy was good at his criminal endeavors, but not so good that he never got caught. He was eventually arrested and sent to prison. That time away prevented him from seeing his daughter Dorothy grow into adulthood, but she never stopped loving him. On the other hand, Emmett must have gravely disapproved of his brother's sinful ways, because he never mentioned Sammy or even acknowledge his existence to his friends in Mayberry. (Gee, I wonder why.....)

Eventually Sammy Morrissey got out of prison and he was approached by an advertising agency (rival to Sterling Cooper and McMann & Tate) to endorse their client's new "burglar-proof" safe. I'll be posting the video in the next post so that you can see what happened.

Meanwhile, his brother Emmett lived out his life with more low-key pursuits in Mayberry (although he did entertain the notion to open up a new business in Greenwood, North Carolina - as seen in 'The New Andy Griffith Show'.)

Like I said, Emmett Clark has enough TV credits to qualify for entry into the Hall of Fame, but this makes for a nice embellishment to his stature....

BCnU!

Sunday, March 11, 2012

DANGER 5 IS GO!

Rob Buckley of "The Medium Is Not Enough" (link to the left, Thunderbirds!) turned me on to this crazy show from Australia:

The first episode is available through YouTube as well......

BCnU!

IT IS A SILLY POST.....

"LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!"

From my Toobworld novel:

As the car raced over the bridge and out of the City (equipped with an eldritch EZ Pass), Toob finally allowed himself to relax.

"A couple of guys once did a study to see what cliched phrase was most often used in the movies and in TV shows. They fed thousands of scripts into the computer, programming it to find the most repeated line of dialogue. They had a preconceived idea that it would be 'I love you'."

"So what was it?" asked Keefe.

"It was 'Let's get out of here!' Funny, huh? Just about sums up the essence of humanity. But you have to admit, that's about the size of it. I'd guess we've had reason to say that at least a dozen times already this weekend. We deserve a break today!”

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: MOLL FLANDERS

And on a Lenten Sunday too... tsk, tsk tsk......

MOLL FLANDERS

CREATED BY:

Daniel Dafoe

AS SEEN IN:

"The Fortunes And Misfortunes Of Moll Flanders"

AS PLAYED BY:

Alex Kingston

TV DIMENSION:

Alternate, Land Of Remakes

STATUS:

Recastaway

From Wikipedia:

"The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders" (commonly known simply as "Moll Flanders") is a novel written by Daniel Defoe in 1721, after his work as a journalist and pamphleteer. By 1721, Defoe had become a recognised novelist, with the success of "Robinson Crusoe" in 1719. His political work was tapering off at this point, due to the fall of both Whig and Tory party leaders with whom he had been associated; Robert Walpole was beginning his rise, and Defoe was never fully at home with the Walpole group. Defoe's Whig views are nevertheless evident in the story of Moll, and the novel's full title gives some insight into this and the outline of the plot:

"The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c. Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums"

Back in the 1960's, there was a serialized version of the story starring Julia Foster, so she's the official Moll Flanders of Earth Prime-Time.

BCnU!

Saturday, March 10, 2012

NUMBER 7400

I've often said that should I ever write my memoirs, the title would be "Living On The Periphery". All my life, I've always been on the very edge of anything significant in the world, never at the center of it. And probably that's a good thing - keeps my name out of the police blotter that way.

My best example? When the Iranian hostage crisis broke, I was working for the Savak, the Shah's secret police - but as a cashier in a NYC restaurant that they owned. Woop-ti-doo. (Although it was unnerving to one day read an article in "New York" magazine about how one of my bosses used to wire the genitals of prisoners and another of the bosses once raped a woman in the embassy while her husband was left cooling his heels downstairs in the lobby. After that, I would panic if I heard my name crop up in their conversations in Farsi.....)

I may not be the one in the headlines with important court cases, or starring in TV sitcoms, or hobnobbing with the legends of the music biz, but I'm friends with those people.

Like I said, I'm on the periphery.

This is probably my first example, at least the earliest documented one*:

I'm sure most of you have seen that video at least once in the last week, or at the very least a snippet of it during the news - that's the late Davy Jones of Monkees fame as the Artful Dodger. He had been nominated for the Tony Award for that role, but lost to David Burns of 'A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum'.

Before the death of Davy Jones, the main reason this video was of notice was because it was from the February 9, 1964 broadcast of 'The Ed Sullivan Show' - the same night in which the Beatles made their debut on Ed's show.

And yes, there is a peripheral connection to me with that clip - the moppet in that snippet playing Oliver is Ron Kroll. We used to go to St. Joseph's School together in Meriden, Connecticut, until one day he was off to the Great White Way to be a part of the "Oliver!" cast. And eventually, in time for the Sullivan broadcast, he had been elevated to the title role.

Years later we were acting together on stage in the Platt High School production of "The Odd Couple". I was Murray the Cop, Ron was either Vinnie or Roy. One thing I remember from that production was the backlash before we opened - a lot of people were upset that we weren't doing a musical. With a musical, there would have been more student participation. But the teacher who used to direct those in the past had stepped down, and Antia Madzik, who took over, wanted to start off with a play to get the basic experience first.

Here's a couple of pictures from the high school yearbook about that show.....

That's Ron, sitting at the piano next to Miss Madzik. As for the other picture? That's me with our Cecily and Gwendolyn Pidgeon sitting on me. It's not part of the play, but at that point in the photo shoot I wasn't concerned with veracity.....

So that's my connection to "Oliver!", Davy Jones, and the Beatles. Not even worth playing the degrees of separation game with that one. But I'm still friends with Ron, reconnected through Facebook, so that's what really counts.

Oh, and by the way, this is my 7400th post for Inner Toob since I started blogging in 2004!

* When he was nine years old, the late Phil Hartman lived in my hometown. I would have been just a baby in the carriage at that point, but who's to say we didn't pass each other with our Mommies at some time in the supermarket?

BCnU!

REMEMBERING BOB THE PUPPET

Bob is a puppet being who is missed here at Toobworld Central. If only a place could be found for him in some other televised venue.....

BCnU!

CHUCK McCANN DOWLOADS... IN HIS PANTS

Here's some wonderful, off-color bidness from Chuck McCann:

This definitely takes place in Skitlandia. Hey, would you really want this alien visiting Earth Prime-Time? There's enough bleep stinking up the airwaves as it is in the main Toobworld!

But as for Chuck McCann himself? Always welcome, and despite the situation with this particular character, his bleep don't stink!

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: TARZAN

For this Saturday edition of the Video Weekend, we're featuring a Neil Innes character in the "ASOTV" showcase for no other reason than we want to. And because I found a good video in the Skitlandia version of the WNU.

Plus it's been one hundred years since the introduction of Tarzan to the world. It's about time Inner Toob celebrated his existence in the multiverse!

Okay, so I had three good reasons.....

TARZAN

aka

JOHN CLAYTON, EARL GREYSTOKE

CREATED BY:

Edgar Rice Burroughs

AS SEEN IN:
'The Innes Book Of Records'

AS PLAYED BY:

Neil Innes

TV DIMENSION:

Skitlandia

STATUS:

Recastaway

"Enchanted" by Mr. Sweet

From Wikipedia:

Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer. Created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan first appeared in the novel "Tarzan of the Apes" (magazine publication 1912, book publication 1914), and then in twenty-five sequels, three authorized books by other authors, and innumerable works in other media, authorized or not.

Tarzan is the son of a British Lord and Lady who were marooned on the Atlantic coast of Africa by mutineers. When Tarzan was only an infant, his mother died of natural causes and his father was killed by Kerchak, leader of the ape tribe by whom Tarzan was adopted. Tarzan's tribe of apes is known as the Mangani, Great Apes of a species unknown to science. Kala is his ape mother. Burroughs added stories occurring during Tarzan's adolescence in his sixth Tarzan book, "Jungle Tales of Tarzan".

Tarzan is his ape name; his real English name is John Clayton, Earl Greystoke (the formal title is Viscount Greystoke according to Burroughs in "Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle"; Earl of Greystoke in later, non-canonical sources, notably the 1984 movie "Greystoke"). In fact, Burroughs's narrator in Tarzan of the Apes, describes both Clayton and Greystoke as fictitious names – implying that, within the fictional world that Tarzan inhabits, he may have a different real name.