Gore Vidal: Writer, Political Provocateur and All-Around Contrarian

"We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic."---Gore Vidal on the modern United States

I note with sadness the passing of Gore Vidal the other day, at age 86.  Not that I agreed with all his historic viewpoints,  his stubborn belief that  Franklin Roosevelt's embargo of oil and iron exports  to Japan was an invitation for that Empire to destroy the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, and the reasons behind the rise of Christianity in the Ancient World to name two .   But I found him to be that rare person who not only wrote interesting novels about American life and its checkered past, but also someone who was quite capable of speaking his mind in television and radio interviews in an entertaining and provocative way.  His was a voice that allowed me to see the world in a different light.  

 

I am also writing this little note to give the man his due---his views from the 1960's to the 90s were pretty much correct--the USA was an empire, both parties were controlled by giant corporations, especially the Republicans but too often the Democrats,   that the war on drugs was un-winnable,  that Ronald Reagan was a corporate shill and he would bring worse shills to follow his path, that religion could be used as an instrument of hatred and intolerance, that it didn't matter a hoot in hell who people choose to sleep with, etc. 

 

And that Mr. Vidal could make all these statements in his interviews and highly cogent essays with a big dollop of wry and sharp humor. If he was a  Jeremiah issuing warnings against the inflated hopes of American Exceptional-ism, he did it with panache and satiric skill.  He was as much an entertainer in the best sense as he was a pundit and that former attribute had to be the ONLY reason he had such a high--profile platform in America's mainstream media.        

There wasn't much Gore Vidal didn't do in that major media.  He started out as one of many promising post-war novelists (after spending three years in the US Navy) and had the family connections to pursue a career in politics.  According to Vidal in his first volume of memoirs, he had  a god shot at an open seat for Congress in the state of New Mexico, where he had attended prep school.  But his novel "The City and the Pillar" about two male gay lovers, published in 1948, put an end to those chances.  Homosexuality was a no-go and even a hint of it could kill a political career, as Vidal himself showed in his  most famous play, "The Best Man" (1963) about  political in-fighting at an American party convention.

 

  A television and Hollywood screenwriter in the 1950's, he left America often to write his novels in the more tranquil old-world vistas of central Italy.  Starting with "Julian" (1964) , a novel of the last non-Christian emperor of Rome,  most of his novels were popular, despite the fact that he broke taboos and smashed icons that others had tried and failed to make pay either form a lack of talent or censorship.   It was no matter if he was writing about a transvestite hero in 1940's Hollywood, "Myra Breckinbridge" (1968) or revealing the warts-and-all biographies of our sacred Founding Fathers in his favorite novel of mine,  "Burr" (1973) or writing a more sympathetic novel of the trials of the Civil War, "Lincoln" (1985), Vidal's books were entertaining and subtle subversive.  

Each of his historic novels took him about a year of research and it paid off in my view.  He also was a prolific contributor to "The New York Review of Books" "Time", "Smithsonian" , "The Nation", et al, and his book tours always gave his fans plenty of vigor and vitriol even before they bought the book.  I still recall how, in an appearance on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in the mid-80s', how he  blithely predicted that the United States would overtly  invade Mexico because "we've done it before for land and now we need their oil."   Carson's look of faux-stoicism and quick cut to a commercial was a priceless moment. 

The Mexican invasion  didn't quite happen of course,  although the prophecy came all too true in the Middle East first with Bush I and then Bush II in Iraq and Kuwait on behalf of Big Oil and Big Military Contractors like Vice President Cheney's own boys club at Haliburton.        

 

 His feuds with his contemporaries like Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and his old friend Tennessee Williams  were also famous.     Indeed I don't think we will ever see his like again---the writer-figure as a personage in him or herself, known to anyone interested in his nation or in politcal ideas.  Vidal  was right again--the value of the profession writer was ebbing in American  mainstream society , he noted lamentedly several times in interviews. I see nothing today to dispute that.       

Monty Python's "The Piranha Brothers, Part 1" (1970)

"Dinsdale!"

A searing look at gang crime in 70's Britain. This segment of BBC's "Ethel the Frog" documentary team spotlights the notorious Dinsdale and Doug Piranha Gang, the two guys who made the Krays and Al Capone look like boy scouts.

As far as I know Spiny Norman was never captured and Luton Airport is still out of service.

Part two of the documentary is here: http://youtu.be/nhV856sXf3w

Friday Funny, American Edition: Police Squad (In Color!) Intro and "Naked Gun 2 1/2" (1991)

After subjecting television viewers to a slew of mediocre television crime shows, spawned in the 1960s and 70's (with stoic, rigid and near-humorless law-and-order spouting walking manikin-coppers) from the likes of actor/producer Jack "Dragnet" Webb and Quinn Martin ("Streets of San Francisco", "Cannon" ,et al) producers David and Jerry Zucker finally did something about it.

After making a big pop culture success "Airplane" in 1980, they turned their attention to lampooning the old-style cop procedural with a short-lived six -episode series in 1982 called "Police Squad".

The show featured Canadian-born Leslie Nielsen, an actor previously trapped as a guest star in formal and uninspired roles as urban cops and detectives, as Frank Drevin of "Police Squad, A Special Branch of the Police Force".

The ratings were not good but the show took on a cult following in VHS releases. A big screen adaptation, "Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad" (1988) was a success. Nielsen was perfect in his comic turn on this material, and the actors and actresses around him spoofed some of the same stoic cops, femme fatales and one-dimensional big-time crime bosses they had played previously. Two more film sequels followed. Later Nielsen spent the last part of his career doing take-off films playing authority figures (vampires and U.S. Presidents) gone zany.

Boston Legal: Television With Conviction

 "Boston Legal" was a show that ran for five seasons on ABC and was one of the few long-running shows  that blended comedy and drama together in a unusually  offbeat and engaging manner.  The setting was a major law office which somehow manage to stay together despite some very disparate characters.  The main payoffs to this shows came in the court-room scenes and in the behind-the scenes relationships between pompous and past-it super lawyer-satyr  Denny Crane (William Shatner, nicely riffing on his reputation for playing authority figures) and Alan Shore (James Spader), a younger lawyer who specializes in  ringing closing arguments.      Crane represented the Red State conservative aspects of Fortress America and Shore was the liberal smart-aleck.  All the supporting cast, including Candice Bergen, Mark Valley and Constance Zimmer, made up a fine roster of actors.  

 Serious social and political issues of the Bush/Cheney Era came up frequently.    Here's an episode from the second season on a gun control trial.  

Although I can't endorse all of the writers' views on the Christian religion here, this next example is another of "Boston Legal" going unafraid into territory few American shows would dare tread.

 

 

 

 

This last clip has some graphic images but it shows part of the counter-argument against the assault on civil rights and the Geneva Convention that was carried out by Team Bush. Did it make a difference in the 2008 elections? Maybe not, but suffice to say this was an usually frank show that snuck in a  good political agenda in with the laughs.      

Dr. Tongue's Evil House of Pancakes

One of the highlights from " Second City Television Series" (SCTV) from around 1980: Canadian actor Joe Flaherty as "Count Floyd", spoofing the over zealous late-night horror film hosts of local television during the pre-satellite television era.

"Have Gun, Will Travel"--Knight Without Armor in the Old West

"Have gun, will travel reads the card of a man/ A knight without armor in a savage land." --"Ballad of Paladin" (Johnny Western, Richard Boone and Sam Rolfe)

There was a time in America-from the fifties to the mid-sixties, before the cultural "youth quake" tuned to secret agent shows like "Man From UNCLE" and "The Avengers"   when network  television was chock-a-block with Westerns.   There were as many as nineteen running at one time! Many of these I saw when I was a little older in the 1970's and shows like this  ran in re-runs on local channels in the days of weekend syndication.

 

 

Many of these "oaters" or "horse operas" , like the dramatic cop procedural  shows we have today,  are not very memorable.  I don't think I'd be interested in watching episodes of  "Bonanza" or "The Big Valley", for instance  today (unless there was a trip to Maui in it for my trouble.) And the Western show I really liked as a kid, the James Bondian Western "The Wild, Wild West" was  just that: a show mostly for kids with perhaps an unusual guest character to liven up a gimmicky, stunt-driven series..    

 But one show I found held up rather well after many years was "Have Gun--Will Travel", a monochrome Western that follows the exploits of a man known to the audience only as "Paladin" or "Mr. Paladin".  Paladin (as played by the gruff but erudite-looking actor Richard Boone) was an ex-Union officer form the Civil War some ten years after that conflict ended.

 A West Point graduate and from an apparently distinguished if unnamed Boston Brahman family, Paladin made his home at the ritzy Carlton Hotel in San Francisco.  He wore what the locals might call "fancy duds" and attended both the opera and the stage. He was as comfortable reciting Shakespeare or recalling a battle strategy of some ancient Greek general or playing chess as he was on a dusty trail in the hinterlands tracking down a murderer or a bandit.    

That was how Paladin made a living: he was essentially part bounty-hunter, part private eye, and part knight on a quest in the framework of the  Arthurian legends.For his forays into the Western hinterlands, Paladin took on the black clothing and stetson hat of a bad guy.  He wasn't of course, but a little intimidation might not be bad if you're heading for a isolated settlement where no law exists. 

 

     I can imagine there was no other show on the air at that time where you will find a protagonist reciting John Donne's "Death Be Not Proud" over the grave of an old friend.  

 When living the highlife drained his expenses, he would look for trouble in the newspapers and then go offer himself as the man to help someone (a pretty damsel, especially) or any other a highly-paid client might offer.

The twist was Paladin was a man of scruples. Sometimes he would turn against his clients if they were committing an injustice, like stuffing ballot boxes to keep a corrupt town corrupt, or terrorizing Chinese miners in a gold rush town, or wanting to lynch a man who hadn't been proved guilty by a real court of law.  

He was fast on the draw, as any You Tube compilation of the series will show you.  But there was more to Paladin than that. He genuinely did not wish to use his gun and rarely drew it unless he had to.  (Not that would-be "gunnies" could count on him playing fair; our hero could frequently pull out a ladies' type  small derringer pistol to surprise his opponents.) It's easy to see why Boone's character chooses the "knight" as the emblem of his card and on his holster: the knight, as he points out in one episode, is the most versatile piece (other than the Queen)  on the board and can attack in many different ways. And Paladin was also a chess master I believe.

 

  Many of the best episodes I've seen offer echos of the best Western dramas of the time that were on the big screen in films like "The Magnificent Seven"(1960) , John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence" (1962) or the films that Anthony Mann directed with James Stewart in the fifties, such as "The Naked Spur" and "Bend of the River" all fillms which turn the Western (a genre for America's Age of Heroes just as Homer's epics were for the ancient Greeks)  into a deeper drama      

 In a sense, "Have Gun..." was the first show the effectively wed the private eye genre and the Western--he was mercenary by need at times but not by nature and it was this friction (and Richard Boone's capacity to portray a man of two worlds--the cosmopolitan gnetleman and the frontier "equalizer") that make this a stronger drama that transcends any easy genre  mold. 

Two of the writers who worked on this program (which garnered Top 5 ratings for most of its six seasons) included Bruce Geller and Gene Roddenberry. Geller was later a producer of the highly-thought-of "Mission: Impossible" series which ran from 1966--1972.  Roddenberry, you might recall, had a show he created called "Star Trek", easily  the most popular American science-fiction program (or programs, given the spin-offs) ever made. 

   People interested in an above-average action show with some taut dialogue and adult themes could do little better than to give "Have Gun Will Travel" a look if they can find an episode or two online. 

 

     

 

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"The Movie Star"-- Tina Louise Birthday Tribute

Born on February 11 in New York City as Tina Blacker, this actress was one of the earliest sex symbols I remember discovering on television as a youngster, courtesy of the kid-popular show "Gilligan's Island".

Her role as "Ginger Grant, movie star" stranded on an island for three seasons with six other disparate characters (including the incomparable Jim Backus, as reprobate capitalist Thurston Howell) made her a household name for a time. It did not help her main career goal as a serious actress, but then female actors usually have a narrow window to establish themselves and the people who ran the studios decided Tina was a better commodity for them in sexy lightweight fare of which "Gilligan" was perhaps the lightest on record.

Accepted into Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio in New York as a younger thespian, she worked in several films with outstanding directors like Anthony Mann, Robert Altman, Roberto Rossolini, Michael Curtiz and Richard Brooks. She also did some outstanding small roles in television films showing a dramatic side they hinted at what kind of career she might have had given the right break.

But that as it may, I've always had a fondness for Tina, not just for the fact that she is beautiful (she was voted the second most beautiful woman in television history a few years back according to TV Guide) but also for the confidence she brought to her appearances on talk shows and her determination not to let Ginger Grant define who she was.

I discovered last year that she continues to live in Manhattan and volunteers as a reading teacher to young children. She also has written a memoir and at least one best-selling children's books (and looks good for a lady of a certain age.)

Anyway, here Ms. Louise is in her career salad days, in a nice tribute put together from a You Tube subscriber. (Which also features
a classic R&B song from the Isley Brothers.)

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" - Opening (Christmas Time is Here)

This low-key but charming animated holiday special, featuring Charles Schulz's beloved "Peanuts" characters, is one I always associated with the happy Christmas memories. Seeing it again this season (its been aired since 1965 annually network television) it is still a more realistic depiction of the American-version of the Nativity holiday than many a live-action "mature" film of more recent vintage.

Even grown-ups who might find this familiar tale of cartoon-dom's favorite angst-ridden Everyman, Charlie Brown, and his holiday despair--and the exasperation this behavior causes to his precocious younger friend Linus and his sister, the loud-mouthed and rather clinical Lucy-- a bit too familiar now can enjoy the wonderful piano jazz of composer Vince Guaraldi, a soundtrack of music that is also perfect for opening your presents if you can find the soundtrack on CD!

Favorite Oscar® moment - The Streaker (David Niven,1974)

I watched the Academy Awards last night although I had not seen either of the two films ("Avatar", "The Hurt Locker") that were the main contenders for Best Picture. The show is always diverting to me because its basically a live show and people sometimes use the "Oscar Awards" to make some interesting political or social statements about their work. (It also gives me a chance to see which documentaries and short subjects might be worth renting at the local DVD store or looking up here on the computer.)

My favorite Oscar moment goes back a long time. I saw it when I was thirteen and involved that impeccable actor, author and chat-show raconteur David Niven. At the time, for whatever reason, a lot of people were involved in "streaking" in America. They would cast off their clothes and dash about in a public place like at a football game or a college graduation ceremony. It was like the last embers of the 1960's freedom movements dying out before the popular culture turned away from controversy to conformity.

Anyway this is the bit that Niven contributed to that telecast seen 'round the world.

Music for Impossible Missions: Four By Lalo Schifrin

Lalo Schifin was born in 1932 in Buenos Aries, Argentina. As a composer he came to my attention for the great film and television scores he composed and conducted in the USA from the sixties  into the nineties.  Very often his music was the best thing about the films--especially the Clint Eastwood "Dirty Harry" films, of which I am not a fan.    He did dozens of other film scores, usually in the action genre, as well as independent work in jazz and romantic music. 

the official website of Lalo Schifrin 

His most famous score in America was the title track and incidental music for the series "Mission: Impossible" (1966-72), usually featuring Peter Graves, Martin Landau, Barbara Bain and a repertory of good actors playing con-artists/espionage agents in an above-average spy series that relied less on flashy characters and more on genuine suspense. (More Hitchcockian  than derivative James Bond.) The show  benefited greatly from the hard-driving,robust tempo of the music.   

Schifrin came early to music, studying with some of the best teachers in Buenos Aries.  His father was a violinist with a major symphony orchestra.  

From Wikipedia:

 "At age 20, he successfully applied for a scholarship to the Paris Conservatory. After returning home to Argentina, Schifrin formed a jazz orchestra, a 16-piece band that became part of a popular weekly variety show on Buenos Ai-res TV. Schifrin also began accepting other film, television and radio assignments. In 1956, Schifrin met Dizzy Gillespie  and offered to write an extended work for Gillespie's big band. Schifrin completed the work, Gillespiana, in 1958.    

Here's Schifrin performing with Gillespie's quintet , holding forth a great piano performance in a 1959 television variety show:    

 

In the category of spy film music, this Schifrin tile track is a very guilty pleasure.  Only John Barry himself could have captured a score that brought out the pop-art best in the title sequence from the Dean Martin/Matt Helm mock-spy feature "Murderer's Row" (1966);

 

 

One of the best non-title tracks I've found from Schifrin's works  comes from this piece called "Shifting Gears" which was used to set up the famous and authentic nine-minute car chase for the movie "Bullitt" with Steve McQueen and Jacqueline Bisset. (Video compilation by "Trouserparts")    

And now, to bring the maestro full-swing back to his Argentine roots, here is a more recent musical work, "Tango de artardecar"

The Avengers: Diana Rigg (Emma Peel) & The Kinks

Karate chops, flips, and just being gorgeous... what the heck more could you want from a female role model for young women and an scintillating attraction for the guys?

John Steed & Emma Peel saved England's Royal Bacon on "The Avengers" for 50 episodes from 1965-68, defeating one diabolical mastermind and his dirty crew at a time.
Honor Blackman started the ball rolling as a karate-chopping anthropologist and part-time spy (Dr. Cathy Gale) in the first Yin-Yang incarnation of "The Avengers" (1962-64). It was a big hit in the UK and Australia.

When the show went from "as-live" video to film a year later, Ms. Blackman had left the show for the movies and Ms. Rigg--a RADA graduate--was chosen out of 300 applicants. The show was picked up in The States in 1966, and became a network and late-night syndication staple for three decades.


Emma Peel, the distaff part of the patnership, could be both damsel in distress and damsel kicking ass, depending on what was called for. In doing so, she was a decade and more ahead of any "emancipated" ladies in action shows on American television. Here's a tribute to now-Dame Diana Rigg, editted by the kellygarrett You Tube website

George W Bush; Space 1999 Parody

I enjoyed the Gerry Anderson series "Space:1999" (1975-77) with Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, at least in its first season.
As a teenager I often wondered what life would be like in the new century. Would we be putting our energies into space exploration, or would the world continue in perpetual conflicts, some drummed up by our own leaders? Would there still be poverty and racial-tinged neglect in our cities?

Thirty-some years on, I had my answer.

Fawlty Towers (Season One, 1975)

There are some shows that hold up well on multiple viewings and I think Fawlty Towers is one prime example. To watch Basil Fawlty's pathetic schemes come to naught is painful and funny--like watching a man trying to saw a limb off the branch of a tree he is sitting on--and then to take said
branch and beat his malfunctioning minicar with it!
His inexcusable physical attacks on Manuel and the odd traveling spoon-salesman aside, I always felt confident that each episode revealed a bit more sadness behind this hotelier's desperate attempts to crash into a stratum of society he could never pull off. It was equally true that few characters got their just desserts at the end of each episode than this demented example of the human frailty most of us share writ large in a person so, so very much in the wrong profession.


And I would caution all viewers please "don't mention the war" in any comments they might wish to include below. Your patronage as always is deeply appreciated and please consider stopping at "Doug's Site" when you make plans for next season's social networking holiday.

Marty Feldman: Comedian

Seeing some of my Multiply pals post some great skits from Monty Python films and television episodes got me to thinking about the first British comedian I saw who struck me as being distinctly "off-the-wall".  That honor belongs to Marty Feldman (1934-1982) and the show I remember was a half-hour sketch comedy on called The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine" (1971) which was on for one season in America in 1972-3.  

It was clear after watching this program that, for me,  Feldman was not only funny but truly bizarre and more than a little subversive by American standards of television comedy.   I didn't know anything about Surrealism and such as twelve-year old, but it was clear this guy was coming on as if he had landed from another planet.    Actually, his "alien in a strange land" persona did have an American precedent; Feldman was a big fan of the work of Buster Keaton.  In a very real way, although he had other influences, Keaton was almost reborn in Feldman's capacity to mix imaginative situations on film with extreme physical risk.   

 

Keaton was a major hero for Feldman.  According to writer David Waddle in a "Sight and Sound" magazine article, he kept a photo of Keaton in his dressing room wherever he went.  "To remind me of my roots," he said.  One of the sad things is that he had been working on a script for a film about Buster, but it was never produced due to Marty's death from a heart attack down in Mexico while finishing up a role as a pirate in "Yellowbeard".

 

   It was much later, after reading about "Monty Python Flying Circus" that I discovered how much Feldman's format on his earlier shows in America and the UK had influenced the Python group (John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, et al)  most of whom had worked with and were mentored by Feldman as young writers him during the 1960's on shows like "The Frost Report" and "At Last the 1948 Show". 

Marty had become a comedian in front of the camera in Britain for several years by the time 'The Comedy  Machine" appeared.  My defining memories of the show included was the bizarre animation material that opened and closed the show (done by yet another Python, Terry Gilliam ).  and also the funny and socially daring skits--the funniest as I remember being something called  "Stalking the British Aristocracy".  The sketch was filmed in what looked like a park and showed a bunch of working-class city people driving around in cars and shooting at men and women--presumably titled gentry--dressed from feet to neck in giant grouse costumes and making weird bird noises.   (Marty was one of the hapless and earth-bound birds, primed to be shot!) 

 

What could have been simply cold-blooded was made actually quite silly--on the surface--by  those bird costumes. I wish I had that skit to play, but this other one gives an idea of how unusual and inventive he could be:

      

 

Most non-British film-goers probably remember Marty as Igor in "Young Frankenstein"(1934), a film generally recognized to be the best of Mel Brooks' cycle of film parodies. Here he channels another famous American comedian from the past:

In the first movie Feldman both directed and co-wrote, "The Last Remake of Beau Geste" (1977) he assembled an excellent cast of comedic and dramatic actors to make a quite funny film. Some of it was in the vein of his work with Mel Brooks, but many scenes were far beyond what Brooks could come up with as far as surrealism and drawing from older films to make not just a spoof, but a homage to great films (and tired action-movie cliches) of the past.  Here is a Keatonesque scene from the film, where Marty (as one of the Geste brothers) is helped to escape from prison so the villains can get a hold of a diamond they believe he might have stolen.  

Hawaii Five-0: Richard Nixon's America in A Tropic Clime

In September 1968, CBS put the crime drama "Hawaii Five-0" on the air.  It starred the steely-eyed and hair-unruffled Jack Lord playing a well, steely-eyed and unflappable  Lead Detective Steve McGarrett. Lord, the first Felix Leiter from the James Bond series entry "Doctor No" (1962), was the head of a fictitious Aloha State police unit called "5-0".  These coppers operated out of the Iona-ni Palace in Honolulu, built in the 1880's as the last residence of the Hawaiian Royal Family. (A sure indication of American Mainland Hegemony moving on in and adding insult to injury.)  

Perhaps the producers realized even in those days that they couldn't pretend Hawaii was a Caucasian enclave in the Pacific---three of "5-0" detectives were Asian or Samoan Americans.  It was likely the first US-made television show to do this.  (Although I remember some of the early episodes had white actors playing Asian villians in traditional Charlie Chan/FuManchu style).  According to Wikipedia, many Hawaiians worked behind the scenes on the show and learned television production from the ground up.  (This  was in part because the show was filmed entirely in Hawaii and television crews of high calibre were hard to come by.)  

 

The show lasted twelve seasons (284 episodes) and was the longest running cop show in American television history until the original "Law and Order" series passed it's mark in 2006.

The show's impact has carried in pop culture beyond its span as a regular and syndicated cop show. It is now slated to be revived for television in the 2009-10 season with an actor playing, you guessed it, Steve McGarrett's son.  

Lord, by the way,  died in 1998, after a long battle with Alzheimer's Disease.   He became a  

recluse in the last eighteen years of his life and had little if any public appearances. Perhaps he wanted to be remembered only as McGarrett, 5-0, the guy who caught the bad guys and said  "Book-em, Dan-O--Murder One" at the end of each successful snuffing out of trouble in paradise. 

     

What  made the show so successful? 

 In a word, Hawaii. 

Yes, there  were good production values to the show, but was the writing that much better?  My viewing some of the shows in reruns in the 80's discounts that theory.  Was Lord and his co-star James MacArthur (son of Broadway legend Helen Hayes) playing compelling characters, with nuance and interesting character arcs.  Please.  As critic said of another actor, Jack Lord's McGarrett was so stiff I think his dramatic range went from one to four winkles on his forehead.  

The only bigger zombie-cop on American Television at that time was super-minimalist Jack Webb's authoritarian robot from "Dragnet." 

 

From their earlier work in films, its clear  both Lord and MacArthur we're better actors than the parts they were playing indicated, but television at this time dictated that police types were stoics, above emotions beyond righteous anger and smug satisfaction at booking crooks and arch-criminals.  Of all the arch-criminals, of course, their most dangerous adversary was the diabolical renegade Red Chinese agent, Wo Fat.  "Wo Fat" was named after a Chinese restaurant in downtown Honolulu. 

 

As the show's success increased Jack Lord reportedly became more and more an imperious tyrant on the set, trying to insure quality (and also to some crew members, retaining control of every aspect of the show to his McGarrett persona's advantage .)  He apparently had few if any friends from the show. It's easy to imagine there must have been some resemblance between the set of this show and the pressure cooker of the other imperious star, Richard Nixon, back in Washington audio-taping his own destruction in the White House of the early 1970's after the Watergate Break-In.   Lord's politics were decidedly close to America's President: Law and Order and One Man in Charge.   

 

Although he was harder to work with than the average star, when his wife passed away a few years ago, it was discovered that they had left most all of their 40 million dollar estate to charity.     

I think people tuned in because it was set against a tropical paradise most Americans could only hope to visit.    I mean, if you're sitting in your house in Chicago or Toronto on a cold night or anywhere where they have real Winter, wouldn't this show's opening  be appealing to you?  The soundtrack was created by the veteran composer Morton Stevens and it's still very recognizable.       

 

 

In this typical "5-0" scene McGarrett is trying to find out if a small boy can identify his kidnappers.  How ironic that Hawaii's Top Cop is wearing is so sombre, wearing a blue suit in a hot climate and using a tape recorder.  He is the perfect cop of the Nixon Era, complete with the Watergate Scandal accesssory of then top-drawer recording equipment.  

Here for music fans is an extended version of Morton Stevens pop classic. 

Three By Woody Allen

Although honored as a filmmaker over more than four decades , Woody Allen would have had no trouble making a living as a stand-up performer.  Here he is in an appearance on "The Dean Martin Show"  from the Sixties.  What is exceptional about Allen is how well he weaves together all kinds of issues from the milieau of the period into a seamless tableau of humor that is neither preachy nor condescending to MIddle American prejudices.  He is operating in a field somewhere between Lenny Bruce and Bob Hope with a mind for linkages all his own. 

Allen's first feature films ("Take the Money and Run" 1969, "Bananas" 1971 )  are funny but a bit ragged around the edges.  In the 1973 classic "Sleeper", his abilities as a director take a quantum leap.  Here he plays around with popular culture again--this time as a former Greenwich Village Health Food Store owner, Miles Monroe, who suffers a hospital mishap during a ulcer operation.  He is "frozen" in a suspended state by nervous hospital administrators and wakes up 200 years later. America has turned into a totalitarian police state with little knowledge of its 20th Century past.  What might be a standard science-fiction allegory is turned into a series of funny  sequences. Here a scientist asks him about the world he inhabited---a perfect vehicle to  drop in some wild flights of intermingled fancy  as well as  take pot shots at a certain egotistical writer, a  well known preacher and a couple nasty politicians or two.  

The last clip is from 1975's feature "Love and Death".  A spoof of Ingmar Bergman films and Russian Literature, the movie is the closest Allen has made to an epic.  Shot in Yugoslavia, it's also a unusual film in that most of the writer-director's later work will set in and around New York City until declining financial returns from his films forced him to make films in Europe, where his stature is somewhat higher.   "Love and Death" is also, to me, one of the funniest films ever made--as this trailer shows. Perhaps it helps that I was studying Russian novellas like  "Notes From Underground" in High School and seeing some of Bergman's bleak,  existential films about when this film first opened.       

Interesting Television: The Prisoner (1967), and "The Prisoner" --Reloaded-- (2009),Part Two of Two

Production shot from "The Prisoner" (1966 or 67) at Portmeirion.  Note the giant meteorlogical  ballon, "Rover", which served as the nasty device that "retrieved" people who tried to check out of "The Village".    

 

 

"…We're run by the Pentagon, we're run by Madison Avenue, we're run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don't revolt we'll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche… As long as we go out and buy stuff, we're at their mercy. We're at the mercy of the advertiser and of course there are certain things that we need, but a lot of the stuff that is bought is not needed…

…We all live in a little Village… Your village may be different from other people's villages but we are all prisoners."--Patrick McGoohan, from a 1977 Interview 

"I don't want to raise THE PRISONER to any more than it was, just a bit of television entertainment, but if it has a deeper meaning it is the fact that we are all prisoners. You know, the thin man is a prisoner because he's thin, a fat man can't go and buy the thin man's clothes, a very famous person can't go to the pub and have a drink because everyone recognises them. The Queen can't go shopping in a department store whenever she wants to, she's a prisoner in that sense. People are prisoners of their health, their religion, their wealth, their poverty, and that's an interesting theme to explore."

 --George Markstein (1914--1987) , co-creator of "The Prisoner" , from a 1984 interview.   Markstein served as producer and story editor of the series for most of its production until he and his star, McGoohan, had a serious falling-out over creative control near the last part of the shooting schedule.  McGoohan himself wrote the last episode of the series (called, ironically "Fall Out".)

  

 Markstein had served in British Intelligence during World War II and told McGoohan twenty years later about rumors he had heard of a special camp in Scotland set up for retired undercover agents  who knew too much to simply be out in public.  Patrick McGoohan, who was looking for a way to get out of doing any more episodes of  the popular series "Secret Agent" (or "Danger Man") , jumped at the chance to take the series in a totally different direction. The actor   later claimed that the character he was playing was not "Danger Man" John Drake, although photos from his time on the show are used in the opening.  The allegorical ending to the series--where Number 6 finally gets to meet  "Number 1"--led to initial disapointment  with the show, which reportedly lost money even after the rights were sold to CBS in America.  Interest in it rebounded when it was released in the 1970's and 80's.       

After a brief 1981 ITV interview with Patrick McGoohan--who talks about  the controversy over the the ending of the series and its cult folowing--there are some highlights from the original "Prisoner" series. (see  below)    There were many interesting episodes dealing with the some thorny issues of modern consumer societies.  The application of technology and scientific  progress had, in the minds of the producers, undercut individuality. People were made more vulnerable to institutions rather than free-thinking and fully-functioning individuals. (This was a similar theme explored about the same time by Stanley Kubrick in his film adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey".) 

Patrick Mc Goohan made attempts to get a film made of the series in the 1990's, and reportedly had Mel Gibson--his co-star from "Braveheart"--interested in playing the lead in the big-screen version.   This didn't pan out, but there is a new version of "The Prisoner" as a six-part television series due out next June  with Jim Caviezel as Number 6 and Ian McKellen as No.2.  It will be shown on the American Movie Classics cable station in the USA.  

 

 

 

The clips from the series show below (editted by Fragile78 from You Tube) feature several of the actors who played Number 2, including the pentultimate adversary, played by the great Australian actor Leo McKern from the later series  "Rumpole of the Baiiley".  

 

 

 

This last clip is from my favorite episode in the series.  Entitled "The Girl Who Was Death", it shows Number Six back at his old job tracking down a mad Napoleonic character and his young flirty daughter who plan to destroy London with a Super Rocket.  It's a rare episode which contains a good deal of funny scenes and good satire of the spy game, such as this one coming up where Our Hero stops at a pub to have a pint.   

 

Interesting Television: The Prisoner (1967) and its remake (2009)--Part One

This was the opening dialouge to almost all episodes of "The Prisoner":

 "Where am I?"

"In the Village."

"What do you want?"

"Information."

"Whose side are you on?"

"That would be telling…. We want information. Information! INFORMATION!"

"You won't get it."

"By hook or by crook, we will."

"Who are you?"

"The new Number Two."

"Who is Number One?"

"You are Number Six."

"I am not a number — I am a free man!"

"The Prisoner" is a unique piece of television. It addresses issues such as personal identity and freedom, democracy, education, scientific progress, art and technology, while still remaining an entertaining drama series. Over seventeen episodes we witness a war of attrition between the faceless forces behind 'The Village' (a Kafkaesque community somewhere between Butlins and Alcatraz) and its most strong willed inmate, No. 6. who struggles ceaselessly to assert his individuality while plotting to escape from his captors."--Stuart Besick, from "The Prisoner" International Movie Database Website.   

I first saw "The Prisoner" as a CBS Summer Replacment show in  1969.  I was still a kid, but had seen my share of  American  spy dramas on telelvision ("The Man From Uncle", "Mission:Impossible") and spoofs of the James Bond craze ("Get Smart").  I had even seen some of "The Avengers" which was a hybrid of both the dramatic and the tongue-in-cheek espionage series.

But none of that prepared me for this show.    Even after I had watched several episodes  of it, I wasn't sure what to make of the whole thing.    In 1978 I got reaquainted with the series in a syndication run.  This time the series, starring Patrick McGoohan, the star of "Danger Man" (or "Secret Agent Man" in the USA) had me hooked by its enigmatic qualities.  The oppressive and eclectic athmosphere of "The Village" and its allegorical views of what constitutes freedom and individual integrity had resonance now that I knew something about George Orwell's and Franz Kafka's most popular writings.  But I still couldn't get a handle on what point on the politcal spectrum the show fell on.  And the last episode of the show "Fall Out", where "Number 6/The Prisoner" (McGoohan) finally gets to meet the "Big Brother/Number One" seems to be the most perplexing  ending to any work of drama I'd seen to that date.   

  And apparently I wasn't alone. Millions of adults had seen the series in the United Kingdom when itoriginally aired in 1967/1968 and didn't know quite what to make of it either. The American host of the station that presented the series claimed that McGoohan himself had felt the need to to leave England and for Switzerland and then America because so many people were angred by the enigmatic ending to the show.

This intrigued me.  Television dramas could be interesting of course but casual viewers usually don't get so worked up over a show that the star and co-creator has to hot- foot himself and his family out of the country to avoid people who were in an uproar over what was only a James Bond genre show, right?  Didn't make sense. It's onlly after seeing a couple episodes that you see that McGoohan and producers George Markstein and David Tomblin were subverting the whole "cold war spy" series into something that was neither stoic action-drama or smug spoofery.

(Exteriors for "The Prisoner" were shot along the coast of north Wales, at the resort of Portmierion. This was the backdrop for "The Village.)   

After the show had aired a few more times in the 1970's and 80's it took on a cult status, a status which apparently was only increased by the Internet, from which several "The Prisoner" sites can be found with a quick Google search. That cult status has not escaped the notice of movie and television executives either--a new "Prisoner" television series is currently in production in Namibia and Capetown, South Africa, to be broadcast next year on the AMC network.  Here's a link below for information on the new series.

http://www.amctv.com/originals/the-prisoner/    

The premise of the original series is deceptively simple.  A man who works for some British intelligence service marches into the office of his boss in the bowels of the Parliament Building, slams down a written resignation and then takes off in his sportscar to pack for a trip to the tropics.  But he finds himself waylaid to a place called "The Vilage", an idyllic little seaport where people are generally friendly but from which no person can leave. Every one has a number they wear on a badge on their person at all times.   

(above, McGoohan's character campaigns for the office of "Number Two" in the episode "Free For All".  In "The Village" elections are held from time to time. If he manages to win, freedom will be won and things will certainly change for the citizenry. Or will they?)     

 

Almost every week "Number 6" had to deal with a new leader of the village , an administrator known only as "Number 2", usually a man but in one episode a woman.   The new "boss" would try to get him to break down and acknowledge why he resigned from the service and/or entice him to join "The Village" as a proper good citizen.  Rather than simply eliminating him, or subjecting him to brute torture, the forces behind these various Number 2s had a mission to win him over as a potential new "boss" of the Village.  Number Six is no ordinary agent, one must surmise, but has great value.  (I later learned the basic premise of the show bears some resemblance to the philosophy of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, a philosophy of extreme selfishness I cannot say I am impressed with any more than I am with the notion of mass conformity in peace-time civilization.)        

Here is a scene from one of my favorite episodes, "Hammer And Anvil", which shows a quintessential encounter between Number 6 and the authorities. Number Two is played by the fine actor Patrick Cargill.  His character has just driven Number 73, a fragile woman prisoner, to suicide.  He now works his "charms" on our hero.  

 

In the next section of the blog, I will post a few more "Prisoner" clips and talk about why I think this is one series that is worth looking out for, even if you've never seen it.  The best aspects of the show have a unique way of being thoughtful and entertaining. 

Until then, here's a bit of a taste of the previous series McGoohan starred in,'Danger Man".  It  made him a big star on the small screen and the highest paid actor in British television.  It also reportedly bored him after awhile, but  its success in the UK and North America gave him the clout to  get something as off-the-wall as "The Prisoner" off the ground.  

 

 

Michael Palin for President 2008--Approved by the Silly Party, USA

The following is propaganda, bordering on treason or common sense:


Finally, a Palin for the rest of us! Mr. Michael Palin, formerly of "Monty Python's Flying Circus", "Ripping Yarns", the films "A Fish Called Wanda" and "A Private Function" should be Our Next President.

The facts speak for themselves. In addition to being a world figure and a reputed nice man, Palin is also an explorer in the tradition of Magellan, Drake, Lewis and Clark, et al, leading a series of television documentary crews on global excursions around and over the poles and such to prove that the earth is indeed not flat. A man so brave that he once led an expedition in Peru to cross the Andes using frogs. He is a man not afraid to slap another man with a large fish. He is a lumberjack (and that's okay). He is a closet "trainspotter". Can Senators Mc Cain or Obama make similar claims?
Commander Palin is head and shoulders above any of the national nominees for Chief Executive and Vice-Chief. I understand that, unlike the major candidates, he not only writes books as they do, but reads those written by others as well!

Some in the USA will say, "Dream on, dude! That's downright unAmerican. That English dude from England is not an American citizen. You gotta be born here, bubba, right here in this here country or our territories. You hear me! Born here and the like, junior. Don't make me tell you again! "


But thanks to Article Two, Section 9 of the American Constitution of 1787, there is an "nullification clause" to that--slipped in by the Founding Fathers out of fear that just such a situation could come to pass as we face now, to wit:

"Congress shall have the power to rejoin our late enemies government if this experiment in self-government by the free and independent states proves to be a bigger pain in the arse than it is worth. So, if this whole Enlightenment thing goes gunny-bags, disregard all this other stuff about a "more prefect union" and all. We really got too carried away. Sorry. Sorry."

Or, as James Madison ("The Father of the Constitution") said in Philadelphia's Independence Hall during the Constitutional Debates, "Why should we assume future generations will be able to maintain a republic? Is it not possible, my fellow delegates, that our government's Representatives can and indeed will one day be as corrupt and as bad as that pack of rum-swilling ineffectual card-playing whore-mongers those guys back in London, or whatever the place is called, are? Why should we as Americans be heavily taxed to support a local government as bad as anything the King's ministers' could offer us--and at a better rate?"

To which the great elder statesman Benjamin Franklin replied: "Sounds good, Jimmy. Now can anyone remind me where to pee?"
So, it all could work out by a simple two thirds majority in the Congress. Our nation is in crisis. Let's us before it is too late put the right Palin in the White House!

http://www.michaelpalinforpresident.com/

Peter Cook: The Man With A Handy "Wry Twist"

 Peter Cook (1937--1995) started out his career in show biz as one of four members of a satirical comedy revue "Beyond the Fringe" which debuted in Edinburgh in 1960 and "broke out big", playing for years afterward in London and New York.  Even John Kennedy went to see their show on Broadway.  The others three comedians/writers were Dudley Moore--a major film star in the 1980's, of course (much to Cook's reported envy),  Johnathan Miller a medical doctor and stage director, and playwright Alan Bennett, who wrote "The Madness of King George" amongst other works. Miller in an interview called Cook the best improvising comic actor he ever saw. The last part of Mr. Cook's life was not very happy (not unusual for a comedian) but he was a brillant comic who worked right up to the end and was both an inspiration and a hard act to follow.  Here he is sounding off on the "joys" of being a miner in a stage routine from something called "Pleasure at Her Majesty's" .

Next as the lead singer of "Dwinble Wedge and the Vegetation's" (aka Mr. Spiggott aka Lucifer) from the 1967 comedy "Bedazzled".  (A far sight better than the more recent remake with Liz Hurley and The Guy In All The Mummy Films) Cook's long-time partner from "Beyond the Fringe" , Dudley Moore, is the upset pop star and Eleanor Bron is the starstruck young lady.

And here is Cook and Moore one more time, from their 1970's stage show "Behind the Fridge" 's