Not Anyone Can Pull a Stunt Like This

May 15, 2023May 12, 2023 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Since this month is a Potpourri Month, I thought it might be fun to look at the career of stuntmen on television. I’m calling this one “Propourri” because you have to be well trained to do these types of stunts.

Left to right: stuntmen Bob Miles, Bob Herron, Whitey Hughes, actor Michael Dunn, stuntman John Hudkins, Bill Shannon, and actor Quintin Sondergaard. Photo: famousfix.com

A stuntman or stuntwoman is a person who performs dangerous action sequences in a movie or television show. They have usually had extensive training to do these perilous moves safely. Sometimes they are hired as a team with a stunt crew, rigging coordinator, and special effects coordinator.

Stuntmen like Evel Knievel are daredevils who perform for a live audience. If someone fills in for a specific actor all the time, they are stunt doubles. So, what type of stunts do these professionals perform? Sometimes it’s car crashes, explosions, fights, or falls.

The first stuntmen to entertain audiences were performers who traveled around, often in circuses. Later these types of performers worked with Buffalo Bill and in shows that celebrated the Old West.

Today we are going to concentrate on television performers. Currently, stunt professionals must be certified to obtain the insurance producers need to obtain.

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences now awards Emmys for stunt coordinators but there is no Oscar for this work.

Life-threatening injuries are not uncommon in this work and sadly, deaths do still occur. While most of my research found stuntmen killed in movies, I only found one relating to television. In 1985, Reid Rondell was killed in a helicopter explosion filming Airwolf.

I thought it would be fun to look at the careers of a few stuntmen from the golden age of television. Most of these men made their money in films, but all three of them had successful careers working on television shows as well.

Whitey Hughes

Whitey Hughes was born in 1920 in Arkoma, Oklahoma. He grew up on a farm, so in addition to working with plows and horse teams, he learned to break horses with his father. When he was sixteen, the family moved to Los Angeles. After graduating from high school, Whitey became a Screen Actors Guild member in 1947.

Whitey began his movie career in 1946. During the fifties, he worked on a lot of western films. Hughes said that in the early part of his career, he often had to be a double for the leading lady. (We’ll come back to this subject later in the blog.) He did stunt work for a variety of actresses including Anne Baxter, Rita Hayworth, Barbara Hershey, Virginia Mayo, Stephanie Powers, and Lana Turner.

Speaking of women, one of the roles, Whitey loved best was being the husband of Dotti; they were married for seventy years.

During the fifties, Whitey worked on a lot of westerns including Cheyenne. In the sixties, you would see him on Rawhide or as Kurt Russell’s double on The Magical World of Disney. If you want to see him in action, the best show to watch would be The Wild Wild West; his crew did some amazing things on that show and Whitey coordinated the stunt work for 1965-1968.

The eighties found him in Fantasy Island, Wonder Woman, and BJ and the Bear while in the nineties he was part of Little House on the Prairie and The Fall Guy. His last work was in a movie in 1998. In 2009, Whitey died in his sleep. It is good he died peacefully; I can’t imagine the toll that this type of work took on his body for fifty years.

Hal Needham

Hal Needham was born in 1931 in Memphis, Tennessee. He served as a paratrooper in the US Army during the Korean War. After the war, he worked as an arborist doing tree-topping services. He was also the billboard model for Viceroy Cigarettes while he was trying to establish his career in Hollywood.

Hal’s first big job was the stunt double for Richard Boone on Have Gun, Will Travel. From 1957-63 he was in 225 episodes. During the sixties, he would show up in many television series including Laramie, Wagon Train, Laredo, The Wild, Wild West, Star Trek, Gunsmoke, Big Valley, and Mannix.

Hal was the highest-paid stuntman in the world. That seems fitting because during his career he broke 56 bones, broke his back twice, punctured a lung, and lost a few teeth.

Needham was responsible for wrecking hundreds of cars, fell from many buildings, was dragged by horses, perfected boat stunts and was the first human to test the car airbag.

He revolutionized the work of stuntmen and worked to get his craft recognized and appreciated. He mentored up-and-coming professionals.

His career transitioned from a stuntman to a stunt coordinator to a second unit director to a director. In all, he would work on 4500 television episodes and in 310 films, according to imdb.com. He made his directing debut on a movie he wrote called Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds and would go on to direct Hooper and The Cannonball Run for Reynolds among other series and films.

In 1977 Gabriel Toys debuted the Hal Needham Western Movie Stunt Set with a cardboard saloon movie set, lights, props, a movie camera, and an action figure that could break through a balcony railing, break a table and crash through the window. They have become highly collectible.

Needham owned a NASCAR race team. He also set a Guinness World Record as the financier and owner of the Budweiser Rocket Car which is now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

He also managed to win both an Emmy and an Oscar. Reynolds and Needham were close friends; Needham lived in Reynold’s guest house for 12 years and their relationship was used as the basis for the plot in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Bob Herron

Bob Herron was born in 1924 in California. When his parents divorced, he moved to Hawaii with his father. The swimming and high diving he did there was a boost to his stunt career. His mother married Ace Hudkins who was a supplier of horses to the movie industry. Herron helped his stepfather in this business before enlisting in the Navy.

In 1950 he began doing stunt work. His first job was on Rocky Mountain with Errol Flynn and he was shot off horses. This would be a piece of cake compared to his role in Oklahoma Crude where he fell 55 feet from the top of an oil derrick into a stack of boxes.

In the sixties, he began his stunt work on television. He was in Gunsmoke, I Spy, I Dream of Jeannie, The Man from UNCLE, The Girl from UNCLE, Star Trek, Mission Impossible, Get Smart, and Bonanza. He doubled for Ross Martin in The Wild, Wild West. During the seventies, he appeared on Petrocelli, Little House on the Prairie, Marcus Welby, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Rockford Files, Kojak, and Charlie’s Angels among other shows. He was still going in the eighties doing his stunts on Hart to Hart, Magnum PI, Remington Steele, the Dukes of Hazzard, Matt Houston, Airwolf, The A-Team, and MacGyver. Despite being almost seventy, he continued in the nineties on shows like Father Dowling’s Murder Mysteries, The Wonder Years, and Murder She Wrote.

I did smile a bit to see shows like I Dream of Jeannie and The Mary Tyler Moore Show on this list. The Jeannie episode is one where she brings her great-grandfather to Cocoa Beach to show Tony how to desalinate water and the Mary episode is one where Sue Anne falls in love with someone who doesn’t return the feelings. I guess it proves you never know where a stunt person will show up.

I don’t know how he managed to survive sixty years performing dangerous stunts but he must have been in amazing physical shape.

I did promise to come back to men having to double for women in the forties and fifties. Thankfully, that is no longer the case, and women’s numbers are increasing among the 3400 stunt performers in SAG.

Former gymnast Shauna Duggins did the hard fighting work in Jennifer Garner’s show Alias. Because pay is determined by union contracts, stuntwomen do not suffer from the pay discrimination that sometimes shows up in the industry. Stunt performers are paid a minimum of $1005 for one day of work and they can negotiate higher pay based on their experience.

Shauna Duggins and Jennifer Garner
Photo: broadwayworld.com

Duggins was at the University of California Davis when she first thought about being a stuntwoman. She learned more about martial arts and spent hours working out in gyms after graduation. In 2000 she auditioned for stunt work in The X Files as Krista Allen’s double and got the job. Then she was in Charlie’s Angels for Kelly Lynch and Cameron Diaz.

It was after that movie that she got the role on Alias where she worked for five years. To protect these women, SAG has a 24/7 hotline for performers to phone if they feel they have been the victim of sexual abuse.

In 2018 Duggins won an Emmy after twenty years in the business. Her advice to young women who decide to make this their career: “train as much as you can in various skills. Go to different gyms with stunt performers, train with all of them and just learn from each other.”

I’m glad we took some time to learn about the tough and dangerous job these performers do. It was so interesting to learn a little bit about some of these industry stars.

If We Were the Prop Master: Our Favorite Items On TV

May 8, 2023May 8, 2023 / thewritelife61 / 4 Comments

This month is our blog series is “Potpourri Month” and we have a sub-theme every day; today’s is Propourri” for the pro who handles props. When you think of your favorite shows, there are props included in those great memories: the couch at Central Perk, Fonzie’s leather jacket, or the cereal boxes on Seinfeld’s refrigerator. First let’s learn a little about the Props Master and then we’ll take a look at some of our most-loved props.

The Prop Master heads up the Props Department. They are charged with acquiring, organizing, and safely handling the props for the shows.

Each episode has a list of props that will be needed for the show. The props master reviews the scripts and has meetings with various department heads to ensure everything that is needed is on the list.

Sometimes the props master does research to see what would be appropriate for a specific era or place. Cars were quite different in the fifties than the eighties. A grocery store does not look the same in China as it does in Atlanta.

During filming, the props master has to keep track of props and make sure everything is put back in its place.

So, what are some of the props that have become synonymous with our favorite series? Let’s put together a prop list that includes props from our favorite shows.

Living rooms have a lot of cool furniture. When you think of comfortable places to sit, you have to think of Modern Family’s couch, Archie’s chair from All in the Family, Chandler and Joey’s Barcaloungers from Friends, and Martin Crane’s duct-taped, worn chair on Frasier.

The Bunkers’ Chairs Photo: comparativemediastudies.com

Many of the Modern Family characters are interviewed on their couch which sits in front of their stairs to the second floor right as you enter the front door. The walls are Benjamin Moore’s Labrador Blue. The couch itself is from Sofu-U-Love and the primary-colored striped pillows are from Pottery Barn just in case you want an interview sofa of your own.

Archie Bunker’s chair is from the 1940s. It’s covered in an orange and yellow woven fabric. The props master purchased the chair from a thrift store in Southern California. Whenever anyone but Archie sits in the chair, it is made obvious to them that they need to find another seat.

The barcaloungers Joey and Chandler use were originally made in Buffalo New York, named after the company that made them. They have moving parts to allow for footrests and reclining. Joey’s Barcalounger is brown leather and he calls it “Rosita.”

Martin Crane’s chair is in the same color family as Archie Bunker’s. The prop department made it, so it’s a one-of-a-kind piece. It’s striped and quite unattractive looking especially with Frasier’s expensive tastes echoing in the rest of the room, but Martin loves it and Frasier loves Martin so it stays. In the first episode, a guy carries in the chair when Martin and his dog Eddie move in with Frasier. On the last episode, the same guy carries the chair out when Martin gets married and moves out. The chair is really almost a character during the run of the series.

Jeannie in her bottle Photo: blazenfluff.com

There are a lot of fun accessories from our favorite living rooms. Just a couple include Jeanne’s bottle from I Dream of Jeanne, the “M” that was on the wall in Mary Richard’s apartment on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and the Chihuly sculpture from Frasier. Who can remember The Dick Van Dyke Show without thinking about the ottoman Rob Petrie might trip over?

Jeannie uses her Arabian glass bottle to sleep in and to hide in when someone other than Tony and Roger is in the house. The bottle has a long, purple couch with her blankets and pillows. She also has an Arabian candle, a photo of Tony, a mirror, and her book about genies.

Mary’s “M” stood for so much more than her first name. We knew that an independent, smart woman lived in that apartment. Everyone wanted to grow up and be able to put their own initial on the wall just like the brass one Mary had. When she moved to her newer, more modern apartment, the M went with her.

Martin’s chair on Frasier Photo: jacksonville.com

In contrast to Martin’s puke-colored chair on Fraiser, Frasier had so many expensive items scattered around his home. One of them was Dale Chiuly’s Macchia. This blown-glass vase was green and brown. It was worth $30,000 at the time, and the props master locked it up after filming each episode.

We all recall the opening of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Will he or won’t he? I think most of us remember him falling over the ottoman, but do you know sometimes he walked around it? Reiner wanted a clever opening for the show and while talking with John Rich, the director, they decide Rob will fall. But then Reiner suggested a variation, so they filmed him not tripping. No one ever knew from episode to episode if he would fall or not.

Burns and Allen have their closet adjoining the living room. While Fibber McGee and Molly have a ton of items in their closet, whenever Gracie opens hers, we see a collection of hats that men have left when they are in a hurry to get out of the Burns house after dealing with Gracie’s logic.

When I think of some of my favorite kitchen items, I think about Jerry Seinfeld’s refrigerator with its revolving display of cereals. I know if I visited My Three Sons, I would get to sit around the kitchen table where all the action happens on the show. And Gracie would definitely take me into her kitchen to have some coffee from the pot she almost always kept full for her and Blanche to talk over.

Jerry always has cereal in his cupboard. Some sources say he had up to seventeen at a time. Knowing that cereal doesn’t last all that long, he ate a lot of cereal. I’m hoping Fruit Loops was one of those choices.

My Three Sons’ table Photo: pinterest.com

While as viewers we love that the kitchen was the heart of the Douglas home. From the first episode when Steve got Chip to help him with the dishes to talk to him about “love,” to the grown boys gulping down orange juice at the table to leave early for their busy day, we spent a lot of time in that room. Uncle Charlie’s bedroom was just off the area, so he could come and talk with someone getting warm milk in the middle of the night. The actors might not have had the same warm, fuzzy feelings. Barry Livingston discussed their filming schedule because Fred MacMurray did all his filming in two short groups of days. He said sometimes, “you would sit at the kitchen table all day long and they would do close-ups. You would be sitting in the same place at the same table and you would do a close-up from 12-15 different episodes. All you would do was change your shirt because they couldn’t see anything below.”

Gracie and Blanche always made time to have coffee to talk over things. Whether it was 7 am, 1 pm, or 7 pm, the coffee pot was always on. Burns and Allen also did coffee ads for Maxwell House, so I am assuming that it was Maxwell House the friends drank daily on Burns and Allen.

I know if I explained every item to you in detail, we would still be on this blog next week, so I’ll just some up the rest of the categories.

Bedrooms: Beds are definitely the focal point. We have the Petries’ twin beds that are not convenient for a married couple. Lisa and Oliver Douglas had a very large bed on Green Acres; unfortunately, it was open to the outside where anyone could come in or out. Oscar Madison had a bed on The Odd Couple, but no one knew it because his room was so messy. We definitely remember Bob and Emily Hartley’s bed because not only was it important in The Bob Newhart Show but it was in the finale of Newhart. It is also hard not to recall Alex Keaton’s Ronald Regan poster that took up one of his bedroom walls on Family Ties.

Batman with bust and phone Photo: batnews.com

Libraries and Dens. Three specific rooms come to mind. On Batman, we had the Shakespeare bust that hid the bat phone in their library. We had George Burn’s television on Burns and Allen where he could watch was going on during the show without the other characters knowing he was listening in. Finally, we think back to The Brady Bunch where the six kids fought over what to watch on television and did their homework after school.

Garages: The Jetsons they kept their flying car in the garage, Last Man Standing where Tim kept his antique car, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, where they kept everything but the car. Ozzie was always out there looking for something.

Workplace: When characters go to work, we get a whole new scene full of fun props. Who would visit Dunder Mifflin without stopping by to see Pam at the front reception desk? Rob Petrie had a couch where the writers worked their magic. Central Perk featured the orange couch everyone remembers from Friends. The sofa was so beloved that replicas of it went on a world tour in 2019 for the shows’s 25^th anniversary. The actual sofa used on the set was sold at auction in 2011 and it went for about $5000. Of course, Cheers would not have been the same without the stools for Norm and Cliff. Get Smart had so many fun props, it’s hard to choose; the Cone of Silence was certainly fun for everyone who could hear what was said inside by characters who thought they were speaking where no one could hear them. And Hogan’s Heroes also had a lot of fun items including the coffee pot that could relay anything said in Colonel Klink’s office.

Clothing: While I love almost everything they wore on Burns and Allen, The Brady Bunch, and The Partridge Family, there are a few other pieces that really stand out. Who would not want to wear Fonzie’s leather jacket? Columbo’s coat might be a bit rumpled but it had been around to solve a lot of mysteries. Sally on McMillan and Wife had the San Francisco jersey that she wore to bed. And talk about special clothing, Laverne’s wardrobe with her iconic “L” on everything was a big part of Laverne and Shirley.

Unusual Items: Last, but definitely not least, we have those special objects that belong to specific characters. When you think about Radar on M*A*S*H, don’t you also think about his teddy bear? Barney Fife would never leave the house without his silver bullet. Half the plots would disappear if Gilligan’s Island did not have a radio for the Professor to try to repair and hear about the world outside the island. Buffy’s Mrs. Beasley on Family Affair was very popular; the doll was sold for decades after the show went off the air. Kojak’s lollipops had to be on the list. Also, if you are talking about “things,” how could we not include the “Thing” from The Addams Family?

I hope you enjoyed getting to know something about some of our favorite furniture and recalling special props from well-loved shows. If you want to see a couple of these items, visit The Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. where you can see Archie’s chair and Fonzie’s leather jacket. I’d love to hear your favorites.

George Barris: Kustom Kar King

May 1, 2023November 13, 2022 / thewritelife61 / 4 Comments

This month’s blog series is “Potpourri.” We begin the month with “Autopourri.” Take a moment and think about some of your favorite cars from classic television: the Batmobile, the Beverly Hillbillies’ jalopy, the Munsters family car, or Kitt from Knight Rider. There is one thing they have in common: George Barris. Today I thought it would be fun to get to know a bit more about George.

Barris was born in Chicago in 1925 to Greek immigrants and his name was George Salapatas. After his mother’s death in 1928, their father sent George and his brother Sam to California to live with an uncle and aunt. George loved building model planes and eventually model cars. He won several competitions for his design and construction. George was also interested in the fine arts of painting, sculpture, and music. He became a great piano and saxophone player.

The brothers began restoring a 1925 Buick. It became the first Barris Brothers custom car. They straightened the body and added accessories. They gave it an orange paint job with blue stripes. Once they sold it, they used their profit to buy a 1929 Model A.

The brothers started hanging out in some of the local body shops, including Brown’s and Bertolucci’s in Sacramento. Harry Westergard, a tradesman at Brown’s, became George’s mentor. He taught him the skills of layout and paneling. While still in high school, Barris formed a club called Kustoms Car Club. George took classes in shop work, mechanical drawing, and design.

In one of his first cars, he cut the suspension coils, so it would ride lower in the front and be kicked up in the rear. He would “french” the headlights, which basically means molding them into the body to get a smoother look. At one point, it was said to get the right shade of pearl, he grated the scales from a sardine and mixed them up in the paint.

A lot of the Sacramento teens, including George and Sam, showed off their custom cars and drive-in movies and restaurants in Southern California. George gave his 1936 Ford convertible a custom silver paint job (probably the sardine story above) and removed the door handles to make it look more streamlined. He removed the running boards and shaved the fenders for a pointed front end.

After high school, Sam entered WWII, but George was turned down. He moved to Los Angeles. He opened his first shop in Bell, an LA suburb, in 1944. When Sam came home in 1945, he partnered with George. They opened a new shop called Barris Brothers Custom Shop on Compton Ave in 1946. Sam concentrated on metal craftsmanship, while George devoted his time to design, painting, and promoting.

In 1947 George dipped into racing at the Saugus Speedway, but the business was expanding and soon all his time was focused on customizing cars. George and Sam received a request from Robert Petersen, founder of Hot Rod magazine to exhibit at his first Hot Rod Show.

The Munsters’ cars Photo: carmagazine.com

Several magazines devoted to customizing cars debuted, and George took on the role of writer and photographer for several of the publications. The business was promoted in his “how to” articles.

From 1949-1950 the brothers were back in Bell before moving to a new shop that they found in Lynwood. Sam bought a two-door Mercury to renovate. Bob Hirohata loved the new style and brought his 1951 Mercury to the business for a full custom job. The car was exhibited at the 1952 Motorama. In August of 1951, George traveled to Europe to study automotive styling there. He visited Italy, Germany, and France. He returned home with plenty of new inspiration.

Sam left the business 1956. He had grown tired of the hectic pace of LA. He went back to Sacramento and married his childhood sweetheart. He worked as a firefighter and was later Fire Commissioner for Carmichael. He passed away from cancer in 1967.

George took on a new partner–his wife Shirley. They produced a couple of creations of their own: Joji and Brett. In addition to supporting George, Shirley spent a lot of her time raising money for Child Help USA, The Boys & Girls Clubs of Pasadena, St. Jude Hospital, and the Jerry Lewis Telethon.

George ramped up his promotion traveling the country, appearing on talk shows, attending car shows, and working with Revell to manufacture car model kits based on his cars.

George’s business continued to expand. He brought in some of the best fabricators and craftsmen in the business: Bill Hines, Lloyd Bakan, Dick Dean, Dean Jeffries (creator of the Monkeemobile and the Black Beauty in The Green Hornet), Von Dutch, Larry Watson, Herschel “Junior” Conway, John and Ralph Manok, Bill De Carr, Richard Korkes, Frank Sonzogni, Jacko Johnson, Lyle Lake, Curley Hurlbert and Tom McMullen.

He moved his business to a larger shop in North Hollywood in the early sixties. It occupied most of an entire block on Riverside Drive. His daughter Joji continues as a partner in Barris Kustom Industries with her husband Barry, son Jared, and brother Brett. The building went up for sale in 2021.

In addition to private customers, the movie studios took notice of the work the Barris brothers were doing. In North by Northwest, Cary Grant’s Mercedes Benz is hit by a police car. Barris made soft aluminum fenders for the police car to prevent serious damage to the Mercedes. Barris made a car for High School Confidential and his work for movies and television only skyrocketed.

In 1966, George was asked by ABC to design a car for the upcoming Batman series. There was not a lot of time to design and build a car, weeks actually. Barris had purchased a Lincoln Futura built in Italy and it was in his collection. He hired Bill Cushenbery to modify the car, and it was ready in three weeks. The parachutes on the back really worked. At one point, George tested them on the Hollywood Freeway and was pulled over. Where was Commissioner Gordon when you needed him? Barris retained ownership of the car which was sold at auction in 2013 for $4,620,000.

In an interview with the Television Academy, Barris discussed making the car for Batman. He wanted the scoop to be the nose, the grill the mouth, the lights eyes. He incorporated sprinkler heads from his lawn system. He made long, aerodynamic bat fins. He designed rocket tubes coming out the back. He had to build it so quickly so he turned to some of his concept cars. Concept cars were sent to car shows to gauge people’s interest in them for future designs. He decided that the Futura would be a good one to modify. He put Indianapolis speed tires on the car to film it blasting out of the bat cave. The tires didn’t work, so he had to run to the local Goodrich plant to buy tires. He included anti-theft and smoke control to make it 20^th-century-crime-fighter worthy. He said they spit nails out to get the Riddler and poured out oil to get Cesar Romero as the Joker. Barris was paid $15,000 to make the car and $150 a day when he was on set to film special effects.

George then went on to build the 18-foot-long Munster Koach, which was built from three Model Ts for The Munsters. He included blood red velvet interior and hand-scrolled details. He also designed the casket-turned-dragster, the Drug-U-La, Grandpa’s car on the show.

He customized two 1920s cars for television. The Beverly Hillbillies had a 1922 Ford. He said that he found it at a feed store near LA. The farmer had cut the back off and made it into a bed to haul hay. Barris decided that would be the perfect place to put Granny’s rocking chair. Barris was also asked to design the 1928 Porter for My Mother the Car. There were only a handful of Porters made, so he used a Model T Touring Car with a Chevy 8 engine.

Hirohata Mercury Photo: AutoEvolution.com

He later updated KITT for later seasons of Knight Rider; Michael Scheffe was responsible for the original design. George also created the 1914 Stutz Bearcats replicas for Bearcats!

In addition to these well-known automobiles, Barris also designed a car for the Banana Splits in 1968, the Oldsmobile Toronado for the roadster on Mannix, the Torino for Starsky and Hutch in the late seventies, and modified a car for The Dukes of Hazzard in 1979.

George also continued with his private customer work including a Rolls Royce for Zsa Zsa Gabor that included butterflies, roses, and hummingbirds.

The star requests kept coming in, so he worked on cars for Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Ann Margret, Glen Campbell, Redd Foxx, Frank Sinatra, and Elton John. He made a Cadillac for Elvis Presley’s limousine, stations wagons for John Wayne and Dean Martin, and his and her Mustangs for Sonny and Cher.

Fire Bug from The Banana Splits Photo: justacarguy.com

Even NASA reached out to him about a Moonscope vehicle he had designed in 1966 which became a model car for collectors. The six-wheel spider suspension and large wedged tires intrigued engineers working on the Martian rovers.

In 1960 during the National Roadster Show, nine pioneers in creative auto building were inducted into a new National Roadster Hall of Fame. The nine members were Joe Bailon, Ezra Ehrhardt, Romeo Palamides, Gordon Vann, Harold Casuaurang, Robert Petersen, George Barris, Wally Parks, and Walt Moron.

In 2005, The New York Times recruited Barris to customize a Toyota Prius for $10,000.

Shirley passed away in 2001, and George died in his sleep in 2015, a couple weeks before turning 90.

I so enjoyed getting to know a bit more about George Barris and his incredible career. Let me know which television car is your favorite; I have to go with the Batmobile.

Stefanie Powers Has a Hart for Acting

April 24, 2023November 19, 2022 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Today in our Supportive Women blog series, today we are delving into the career of Stefanie Powers.

Stefania Zofya Paul was born in 1942 in Hollywood, California, Her parents divorced when she was little, and she rarely saw her father again. At age fifteen, she began dancing for Jerome Robbins. During her career she has appeared on the stage many times, the first time in 1964 in “Under The Yum-Yum Tree.” She also appeared on the British stage in several productions including “The King and I.”

She graduated from Hollywood High, although she was given her first contract at age 16 with Columbia Pictures. She made 15 films in those early years with some of the great stars including James Caan, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis, Ava Gardner, Maureen O’Hara, Roger Moore, Lana Turner, and John Wayne.

Her first role was in the made-for-tv movie Now is Tomorrow in 1958. Out of her 118 acting credits, 25 would be big-screen movies with 37 made-for-tv movies. The other half of her appearances were on television series.

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. Photo: pinterest.com

In the 1960s she showed up in many shows including the sitcoms The Ann Sothern Show and Please Don’t Eat the Daisies and dramas including Bonanza and Route 66.

In the middle of the decade, she was cast in her first starring television role as April Dancer on The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. Although it would only last one season, she became well known for her spy missions on the series.

In 1966 Stefanie married Gary Lockwood, another actor; with 95 credits, he also had a long and successful career. They divorced in 1972. Shortly after her divorce, she met William Holden and they were together until his death in 1981; Powers described them as soul mates.

Powers was kept busy in the seventies, making appearances on a variety of shows including Love American Style; The FBI; Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law; The Mod Squad; Barnaby Jones; McCloud; Marcus Welby, MD; Medical Center; Cannon; The Rockford Files; and McMillan and Wife.

Although she made a few random appearances on small screen series, her last three major roles were as a regular cast member on three shows: The Feather and Father Gang, Hart to Hart, and The Doctors.

The Feather and the Father Gang is not a show I remember at all. She starred with Harold Gould as a con man and she was his daughter, a lawyer, who helped him solve crimes.

Jennifer Hart is the role that Powers was best known for. She starred with Robert Wagner as her husband Jonathan on Hart to Hart. They are a wealthy married couple similar to Nick and Nora Charles on The Thin Man who continued to get mixed up in murders wherever they go. The show was on the air for five years from 1979 to 1984. Stefanie received two Emmy nominations for her role of Jennifer Hart. In 1981 she was beat out by Barbara Babcock for Hill Street Blues and in 1982 she was beat out by Michael Learned for Nurse.

Wagner lobbied for Powers to be cast as his wife because she had worked with him in an earlier show of his in 1968, To Catch a Thief.

Several other actresses who were being considered for the role were Lindsay Wagner and Suzanne Pleshette. Fun fact, if you watch Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman, you will see him wearing a red, sequenced dress that was worn by Powers as Jennifer two years earlier in the episode “Color Jennifer Dead” in 1980.

After the show was canceled, they paired up again for eight made-for-tv movies about the Harts. The couple also starred in a stage production of “Love Letters” at the Chicago Theater in 1993.

Ironically, Powers was in the same ballet class with Natalie Wood and Jill St. John. While Powers played Robert Wagner’s wife on the show, Wood and St. John were married to him in real life.

In 1993 she tried marriage again with Patrick Houitte de La Chesnais. They were together for six years before divorcing.

Powers has kept busy in the last two decades. In 2003, she released a CD, “On the Same Page,” songs from the great composers. She is a polo player and was one of the first foreign members of the Royal County of Berkshire Polo Club; in 2005 she competed in the Joules United Kingdom National Women’s Championship which was held in Ascot.

In 1982, Stefanie founded the William Holden Wildlife Foundation and became a director of the Mount Kenya Game Ranch and Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya. She and Holden were passionate about wildlife conservation. She also works with the Cincinnati and Atlanta zoos.

Powers spends her time in residences in Los Angeles, London, and Kenya. She apparently speaks six different languages.

With Soulmate William Holden Photo:tumblr.com

After smoking for twenty years, Powers was diagnosed with alveolar carcinoma, a type of lung cancer. She underwent surgery to remove part of her lung in 2009.

She was cast in a movie, Prism, that is in pre-production currently. It was apparently inspired by true events—as imdb describes it, “the infiltration of the Sinaloa Cartel and the inner sanctum of Joaquin El-Chapo Guzman by a US task force detective who goes deep undercover to expose Chapo and his criminal empire.”

Powers has had an amazing career and an even more amazing life. She is able to live on three different continents, enjoys a variety of activities, has a purpose in her life, and found her soul mate. Her life could easily become a movie script but if she was not available, I’m not sure who they would get to play her.

Morgan Fairchild: Queen of the Soap Operas

April 17, 2023November 11, 2022 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This week we are finishing up our “Supportive Women” blog series. If you watched a lot of television in the sixties and seventies, you will remember today’s blog star very well: Morgan Fairchild.

Morgan Fairchild was born Patsy Ann McClenny in 1950 in Dallas, Texas. In grade school, she was too shy to read her book report in class, so her mother, an English teacher, signed her up for drama lessons. At age ten, she began performing in dinner theater and stock productions in Dallas which led to several local commercials.

In 1967 she married Jack Calmes; they would divorce in 1973.

In 1967, a young Morgan was hired as a double for Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde. At age 20 she was cast in her first movie where we could see her face, A Bullet for a Pretty Boy. She would receive roles for another 35 big-screen features during her career.

However, most of her work was on the small screen. Her first role was Jennifer Pace on Search for Tomorrow. She stayed with that show for four years but she would come back to soap operas on and off throughout her acting time and could be seen on The Bold and The Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, and most recently as Sydney Chase in The City in 1996. Most of her roles were the stereotype of an elegant and wealthy woman who will do whatever it takes to get what she wants.

In between work on soap operas, Morgan showed up on many of the most popular shows as a guest star or regular cast member. In 1976 she was on Kojak. After her time on Search for Tomorrow, during the 1970s she appeared on other dramas including Police Woman, Barnaby Jones, and Dallas and on sitcoms like The Bob Newhart Show, Happy Days, and Mork and Mindy.

During the 1980s she did make a few guest appearances on The Love Boat, Simon and Simon, Magnum PI, and Hotel. Morgan received an Emmy nomination for her appearance on Murphy Brown in 1989. However, it was during this decade that Fairchild was a regular cast member on three different shows: Flamingo Road, Paper Dolls, and Falcon Crest (attorney Jordan Roberts), all night-time soap operas.

Flamingo Road was based on a novel written in 1949. It features the small town of Truro, Florida. The wealthy citizens live on Flamingo Road in their mansions, while the lower classes do what they have to do to make that street their address. Morgan played a woman with one of the longest names on television: Constance Weldon Semple Carlyle. After two years, the show was done.

Paper Dolls was about the modeling world. Fairchild played Racine, an agent, and the show is about the jobs that her models take on including a perfume company that uses her models exclusively. The series only lasted for thirteen episodes.

Morgan played Jordan Roberts, an attorney, on Falcon Crest. This long-running drama from 1981-90 featured the Gioberti family who operates the Falcon Crest Winery in California.

In the nineties, she appeared on a variety of shows including Roseanne, Empty Nest, Murder She Wrote, Diagnosis Murder, Cybill, and Home Improvement.

Her career continued during the 2000s where you could see her on Dharma and Greg and Hot in Cleveland, as well as five appearances on Friends as Chandler Bing’s mother Nora. She also had another series, Fashion House, in 2006 as Sophia Blakely. The concept of the show was another fashion-themed one where a ruthless executive played by Bo Derek defends her company against a hostile takeover.

With so many movie channels, we forget today that for a few decades we could not watch movies on television. The networks came up with a solution: made-for-tv movies, and Morgan was a queen of the genre with thirty movies and six miniseries.

Morgan has continued to stay busy. She has two finished productions listed on imdb that have not been released yet.

Fairchild has used her platform as a celebrity to advocate for AIDS research, the pro-choice movement, and many environmental issues. She collects movie memorabilia, especially Marilyn Monroe items, and antique clothing. She seems to have had a long-lasting career. It would have been fun to see her star in a sitcom instead of just playing ruthless women who just care about fame and money.

Linda Evans’ Destiny was Working with John Forsythe

April 10, 2023November 11, 2022 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are looking at some of our favorite “Supportive Women.” Today we are taking a closer look at the career of Linda Evans.

Born Linda Evenstad in 1942 in Hartford, Connecticut, she was the middle child of three sisters. Both her parents were professional dancers. When she was six months old, the family moved to North Hollywood. Linda graduated from Hollywood High School with Stefanie Powers, who we will be talking about next week. Like Morgan Fairchild, who we will be discussing in two weeks, Linda took drama classes to help her deal with shyness.

Linda was engaged to Patrick Curtis, but they never married. He later became a press agent and married Raquel Welch.

Linda’s first two roles were on two of my favorite sitcoms. In 1960, she guest starred on Bachelor Father where Bentley Greg (John Forsythe) raised his niece Kelly (Noreen Corcoran) with the help of his houseboy Peter (Sammee Tong). Her second appearance was on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. During the sixties, she would appear on a variety of shows including Dr. Kildare, Wagon Train, and My Favorite Martian.

Her first made-for-tv movie was 1962’s Buttons with Beaus, and her first big screen feature came a year later in Twilight of Honor; her second movie was Beach Blanket Bingo in 1965 where she played Sugar Kane.

It was in 1965 that Evans began dating film director John Derek. They would marry in 1968 and separate in 1973 when Linda learned he was dating the actress who became known as Bo Derek.

1965 was also the year she was offered her first role as a regular cast member of a series. She became Audra Barkley from 1965-1969 on The Big Valley. The western was very popular. Similar to Bonanza, in this show, Victoria Barkley managed to raise her family and keep the villains at bay.

She and Barbara Stanwyck, who played her mother Victoria on the show, became very close. Stanwyck continued to refer to her as Audra after the show ended. Linda says Barbara was a great mentor and friend to her.

In 1967 when Derek was filming Evel Knievel’s famous motorcycle jump over the fountains at Caesar’s Place in Las Vegas, he asked Linda to take over one of the cameras, and she shot the famous footage of Knievel’s devastating crash.

During the 1970s she kept busy with television appearances on dramas including McCloud, Banacek, Harry O, McMillan and Wife, and The Rockford Files.

With “mom” Barbara Stanwyck Photo: imdb.com

In 1975, she married Stan Herman, a real estate tycoon. They were married four years before splitting up. She never married again.

From 1976-1977 she again accepted a role as a regular on the show Hunter. The series only lasted fourteen episodes before being canceled. Not to be confused with the show from the 1980s, in this one, US government special agents James Hunter (Tony Franciscus) and Marty Shaw (Evans) take on missions around the world. He posed as a bookstore owner, and her cover was a model. I admit I have never seen this show, but it sounds like a seventies version of I Spy.

During the 1980s, her career was split between two primary shows: The Love Boat and Dynasty. Dynasty was on the air from 1981-1989. When Dallas became extremely popular, ABC commissioned Aaron Spelling to come up with a primetime soap opera of its own. Evans was back on the air working with John Forsythe again as Blake Carrington, her wealthy husband. The basic premise of the show was that it was an upper-class version of the Hatfields and the McCoys with the Carringtons and the Colbys feuding in the oil business in Denver, Colorado.

Dynasty with Forsythe and Collins Photo: imdb.com

Evans and Forsythe remained close friends for the rest of his life. She said he was “so magical. This show was so serious and he was funny personally. We’d be fighting and people would be strangling each other and he made me laugh all day long, I’ll be forever grateful to him for that.” The person Linda was often strangling was Joan Collins who played Alexis Carrington Colby, Blake’s first wife.

By 1984 the show had reached number one in the rankings. Linda was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1983. She was beat out by Tyne Daly from Cagney and Lacey.

After the show was canceled, Evans stepped out of the limelight for the most part. She did film five made-for-tv movies during the 1990s and guest starred on Germany’s version of The Love Boat, Das Traumschiff, in 2020. In 2021, she was in a big-screen feature, Swan Song.

In 2011 Evans published a book, Recipes for Life: My Memories, a combination of candid memoir and inspirational cookbook. Despite her perfect figure, one of her weaknesses is pizza. On premierspeakers.com on April 10, 2018, she was quoted as saying “I love pizza so much, that if you wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me if I’d like to eat a slice, I’ll say YES. Kenny Rogers used to have it delivered to me while I was filming The Gambler.

Linda seemed to enjoy her career. She is remembered for several well-known characters in Audra Barkley and Crystal Carrington. While she has given up acting for the most part, I would not be surprised to see her back on the big screen for another part or two if it’s the right offer.

Barbara Feldon Did Not Have to Get Smart: She Was Born That Way

April 3, 2023November 11, 2022 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month’s blog is taking a look at some Supportive Women. First up is Barbara Feldon, costar with Don Adams in Get Smart.

Feldon was born Barbara Anne Hall in 1933 in Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. During an interview with Emerson College, Barbara talked about the ecstasy of performing in a little band in first grade. When things stopped, she got to play her triangle, and the thought that everyone was watching her, and her mother’s pride in seeing her made her want to perform more. In sixth grade she went into the gym to watch her friend doing her ballet lessons. The teacher invited Barbara to join them and played Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker music; that combination of music and movement took her away to another place. She was hooked at that point, and she knew that she wanted to dance.

She trained at the Pittsburgh Playhouse and then graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BA in drama in 1955. They didn’t have a dance program, and her mother thought Bennington, where she wanted to go for dance, was too expensive and too liberal. While she enjoyed acting, it never had the enchantment for her that dance did.

Feldon made her way to New York and studied at the HB Studio. She briefly had a career as a showgirl at the Copacabana. She said “that was my first professional job in New York and it was probably the highlight of my whole career. We got to dance with Jimmy Durante. Oh, my God, it was a thrill.” They replaced the girls every three months so, then she went on to appear in The Ziegfield Follies. She landed one job that never made it to Broadway. A friend of hers who was a model talked her into exploring a modeling career.

She worked as a model and was in a Revlon commercial about a hair pomade for men, Top Brass. Feldon said commercials were excellent training to get experience in acting. You do the same scene over and over, maybe more than forty times, but you have to keep that spontaneity. “You must remember to stress each word properly and come in on a split-second when that camera rolls.”

Like several actresses that we have discussed in this blog, before Feldon got her first big break, she appeared on a game show. In this instance, she was on The $64,000 Question in 1955, and she won the grand prize of $64,000 in the category of Shakespeare.

She didn’t use her winnings to buy a mansion or live the typical party life. She opened an art gallery with a man who was a photographer and ad man who was no longer interested in advertising named Lucien Verdoux Feldon. Barbara would be the subject of a Warhol pop art painting in 1965.

In 1958 Barbara married Lucien Feldon. They divorced nine years later. She had a longer relationship with one of the Get Smart producers, Burt Nodella and when that ended, she moved back to New York City.

After her commercial debut, she received offers for several television roles in the early sixties including The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Flipper. She was also offered a chance to appear on East Side/West Side with George C. Scott. Colleen Dewhurst was her mentor and Scott’s wife. He asked her to play his girlfriend in the next episode. Talent Associates which produced the show was working with Mel Brooks and Buck Henry on a potential spy spoof called Get Smart. Her second television role was as a spy. So, when Talent Associates was casting for a spy on Get Smart, she was an obvious choice.

She turned down the role at first because she didn’t want to move from New York to California, but she did love the script. They agreed to offer her a two-year contract instead of a five-year contract, and she accepted. Her first review was in TV Guide which compared her to the dog and concluded that the dog came off better. She was devastated and humiliated. In later years, the reviewer rated her performance much better.

From 1965 till 1970, Feldon was known as Agent 99 working with Maxwell Smart for CONTROL. In both 1968 and 1969, she was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. Lucille Ball won for The Lucy Show in 1968 and Hope Lange won for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir in 1969.

Women at the time looked at Feldon as an example of a powerful woman; Feldon commented that young women said “she was a role model for them because she was smart and always got the right answer.” If you look closely in the early seasons, you will typically see Feldon sitting and Adams standing because she was taller than he was. Once she even had to bury her feet in the sand. While Adams was the blundering, awkward Smart, it was Agent 99 who was really the “smart” one, getting him out of trouble during their spy missions.

Feldon said that she is not a comedienne; she is an actress who can play comedy. She said that she is the worst person to tell a joke to because she doesn’t always get it. She never enjoyed drama much because the actual acting on camera was wonderful but the long, boring hours waiting were very tedious, and if you have a tearful scene, you have to be able to keep the momentum.

During the run of Get Smart, Feldon also appeared on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In and The Dean Martin Show.

After the show ended, she would appear on 20 additional television series including Cheers and Mad About You. She made fifteen made-for-tv movies, one of which was a 1989 movie, Get Smart, Again. She also could be found in six big-screen films including The Last Request, her last acting role, in 2006.

During my research, I read an article where pop culture historian Geoffre Mark commented on one of her movies, Fitzwilly, which I admit I have never seen. He said that it was a gem of a movie and that “Dick Van Dyke is brilliant in it and Barbara plays his love interest and she’s brilliant in it. She was playing a version of herself: a beautiful, sensual, highly intelligent woman with a strong moral compass and a loving heart. That’s what the character is and that’s who Barbara is.” According to imdb.com, the plot of the 1967 movie is that a butler and the staff of an eccentric aged philanthropist whose family wealth is exhausted engage in larceny and crimes to maintain her lifestyle and provide funds for her charitable activities.

Feldon was offered a cameo in the Get Smart movie with Anne Hathaway and Steve Carrell in 2008, but she declined. She said that “times have changed too much. The psychology of the writers and the audience has changed radically. Get Smart belongs in the 1960s, or it’s not going to be Get Smart.”

Despite her comment of Get Smart staying in the sixties, in 1995 Feldon took on the role of Agent 99 again in a brief reboot of Get Smart. Feldon discussed that series with The (Westchester County NY) Journal News reporter Karen Croke in 2017. She said that she and Adams never became friends after the original Get Smart. She said he was a lovely man and very funny, but they had their jobs to do and did their acting and then parted ways for the day. After they worked together on this series, they became very close friends in a way they could not have in their original show. She said once Don Adams died, Max also died and she can’t do any work as 99 without Max now. That might be the real reason she turned down the cameo in the Carrell-Hathaway film.

Barbara said it’s hard to make friendships on a set because it’s more like a factory and when you’re not acting, you might be resting or talking to your agent. The only person she said she was able to maintain a good relationship with after acting with him, was Alan Alda.

Apparently, she still enjoyed games shows and she appeared regularly in several of them including Hollywood Squares and The $20,000 Pyramid.

Feldon lost interest in acting, but she did numerous television and radio commercials and documentaries. In 1977, Barbara hosted a news show called Special Edition. In the 1990s she had a one-woman show she took around the country. She has also taken up writing and had two of her pieces published in Metropolitan Magazine. She wrote a book about living as a single person in 2003 called Living Alone and Loving It. She also enjoys writing poetry. In talking about her book, Barbara said, “I had been in relationships my whole life. I’d been married, then had lived with someone for several years. After those, I just assumed I would find another relationship. But it didn’t happen. As time went on with some good guidance, I learned how to live alone really happily. I’ve met a number of people—men and women—who feel living by themselves is a second-rate life. I thought that was sad, and since I had this technique of living alone, I decided to write a book. And I’m really glad I did.”

Feldon said that she has nothing but gratitude for Get Smart. She said acting is not a kind career and you only have a few years to be able to find your place, and she is grateful for being in the right place at the right time. I think after learning about Barbara Feldon, she manages to put herself in the right place at the right time often.

Now, her life sounds almost perfect. She lives where she wants to, is open to meeting a lot of people, attends concerts, advocates for the arts, and travels and writes whenever she wants to. During her life, she has managed to learn from so many experiences and during her life journey she definitely “got smart.”

No One Can Get Too Much “Data” These Days

March 27, 2023November 11, 2022 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Today we are winding up our “I Robot” blog series. We began our journey with Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century, an outer space drama that was not that successful. Today we are at the other end of the universe spectrum, discussing Star Trek: The Next Generation. You will be very familiar with this show if you were a teen or young adult in the late eighties and early nineties or if you were a devoted fan of The Big Bang Theory.

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, brought Star Trek: The Next Generation to the small screen two decades later; this show would stay on the air for seven seasons, producing 178 episodes. The series is set in the 24^th century; the original show was set in the 23^rd. Earth belongs to the United Federation of Planets, and this show features a Starfleet ship, the USS Enterprise, as it explores the Milky Way.

Roddenberry served as executive producer, as did Maurice Hurley, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Jen Taylor. The show focuses on the mission and the personal lives of the crew members: Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), William Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Worf (Michael Dorn), Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton), Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby), Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton), Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), and our major concern today, Data (Brent Spiner).

The show was very popular, and by its fifth season, reached 12 million viewers. The show would go on to spur other Star Trek series and movies, as well as novels and comic books.

Critics also liked the show, and it received 19 Emmy Awards and a Peabody. In 1994 it became the first syndication show to be nominated for an Outstanding Drama Series Emmy.

The theme was also a nod to the original series, combining Alexander Courage’s original piece with Jerry Goldsmith’s theme for Star Trek: The Motion Picture released in 1979.

In an unusual deal, Paramount decided to broadcast the show in first-run syndication on independent networks. As a “barter syndication,” the show was offered to local stations for free. The station got five minutes of commercial time to sell to local businesses, and Paramount sold seven minutes to national advertisers. Stations had to agree to purchase reruns in the future, and only those stations that participated in this deal were able to purchase reruns of the original series which was still extremely popular.

Some sites stated that Paramount received $1 million for advertising for every episode; by 1992 the studio received $90 million a year and the episodes cost $2 million each to produce.

The show debuted in 1987. The first season did not start off so well. The show had a $1.3 million per episode budget. The staff had a lot of creative freedom, but many of the writers had disagreements with Roddenberry and left the show. They felt that Roddenberry was too strict with the themes and the characterizations. It’s hard to argue with his vision too much because it won several Emmys and was extremely popular.

Season two brought some critical changes to the series. Beverly Crusher was replaced by Chief Medical Officer Katherine Pulaski (Diana Muldaur). Whoopi Goldberg guest starred in her first episode. The plots were more sophisticated and there were some comic elements sprinkled throughout the drama.

Personnel changes were made for season three. Head writer Hurley was let go. Roddenberry suffered from some health issues which necessitated his stepping back and Berman took over more production chores. Season four had eight episodes nominated for Emmys. The episode “Family” was the only one that did not feature Data. Crusher left the show in season four as well.

Roddenberry passed away during season five. During season six, astronaut Mae Jemison came on board as Lt. Palmer, and Stephen Hawking appeared in the season six cliffhanger.

The final season introduced themes that would carry into Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. The finale of the show was filmed in Toronto where thousands of people watched in person.

The cast was surprised that the seventh season was the last one, because they had contracted for eight seasons. Paramount wanted to make several films and felt that the movies would be less successful if the television show was still airing. The cast must have been close because they claimed to be life-long friends, and in 1992 when Burton married, Spiner was best man and Stewart, Frakes, and Dorn were ushers.

Data was an android who served as lieutenant commander. Data’s perspective on humanity was similar to Spock’s in the original show. Spiner would also be cast as Data in 2020 in Picard. Data was found by Starfleet in 2338. He was the sole survivor on Omicron Theta in the rubble of a colony left after an attack from the Crystalline Entity.

Dr. Noonian Soong built Data on Omicron Theta. He had an evil twin, (who doesn’t have one on television?), named Lore. Eventually, Data dismantled Lore. One resource I read said that Data was destroyed during the Enterprise E’s battle with the Scimitar in 2378. I have to take their word for that because my Star Trek trivia is not advanced enough to confirm or deny it.

In 1974 Roddenberry created a project for television called The Questor Tapes. The show centered around an android who was studying humanity. When The Next Generation was proposed, Roddenberry reinvented this android and combined it with Xon, the curious Vulcan from Star Trek: Phase II and came up with Data. However, Spiner said he modeled Data after Disney’s Pinocchio.

Fun fact, since we started with Buck Rogers in this month’s blog, Data has a positronic brain—in 1981, Buck Rogers used this same term in one of their episodes. They both were honoring Isaac Asimov who first used the term in his story “Runaround” in 1942.

According to Spiner, Data was pronounced “dat-uh” but Stewart, being British, said “day-tah.” On the show Data has a pet cat named Spot. Spiner was not fond of that idea because he was not a cat fan at all.

Data was supposed to be the Chief Science Officer, the same position Spock had on the original show. The uniform for that position was blue. Unfortunately, the blue clashed with his make-up. He was transferred to the Chief Operations Officer with a gold uniform. I never really understood why the Chief Science Officer could not wear a gold uniform. This was a new generation and I did not think that there were other shows from that century that made it impossible to portray that officer in gold? I mean, sports teams change their colors from time to time. However, if I am missing something, please feel free to enlighten me.

Obviously, comparing Buck Rogers to Star Trek: The Next Generation, it is easy to see why the Next Generation was on the air so much longer and attracted so many more fans.

Data was a fun character. While he can blink and age, we are reminded that he is not human. His duties with the crew included navigation and systems control. Because androids don’t sleep, he was able to take the night shift. Data was interested in literature and the humanities. He likes mysteries. Like Spock, with his lack of emotions, love is very hard, if not impossible, for him. He does make many friends though. He can’t get sick which is convenient if the rest of the crew is affected, but computer viruses can damage him. While he can process data in a millisecond, his inability to read human emotions is troubling for him. Although he does feel a bit arrogant; as he said “I am superior, sir, but I would gladly give it up to be human.” I can’t argue with his claim of superiority when I look around at some of the things humans have been doing the past three or four years.

If I had to go through life with a robot, based on the four we discussed this month, Data would definitely be my choice. I hope you had fun with this series.

Not Many of Us Can Compute Small Wonder

March 20, 2023November 11, 2022 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

We are in the midst of our blog series “I Robot.” If you read last week’s blog, you will remember we were discussing My Living Doll, a science fiction comedy from the mid-sixties created by Howard Leeds.

Today we are moving ahead two decades to look at another Howard Leeds’ show from the mid-eighties called Small Wonder, another science fiction sitcom.

The concept of the show is that Ted Lawson (Dick Christie) and his family–wife Joan (Marla Pennington) and son Jamie (Jerry Supiran)–live in a typical residential area. Lawson has created V.I.C.I., an android that contains Voice Input Child Indenticant whom he calls Vicki (Tiffany Brissette). Lawson created the robot to help handicapped children, and she looks like a ten-year-old girl. Lawson has to take her home to learn about family environments and be “trained” for home service. Similar to Rhoda on My Living Doll, Vicki has an outlet under her right arm, a data port under her left arm, and an access panel in her back. She possesses superhuman strength and speed. Seth Green auditioned for the role of Jamie and, Candace Cameron Bure was up for the role of Vicki, along with 398 other girls.

The Lawsons have to keep her identity a secret and pass her off for a daughter they adopted. Their neighbor, ten-year-old Harriet (Emily Schulman), a la Gladys Kravitz, was very nosy and made the secret hard to maintain. Jamie works hard to scheme and find ways to get Vicki to make his life easier.

Rounding out the cast were Brandon and Bonnie Brindle (William Bogert and Edie McClurg) who were Harriet’s parents; Brandon was also Ted’s boss; Reggie (Paul C. Scott), Jessica (Lihann Jones), and Warren (Daryl Bartley), Jamie’s friends.

The show was on for four seasons and, of course, Brissette continued to grow and age, so in season three Ted gives Vicki an upgrade which allows her to wear current fashions, eat, and drink, making it easier to conceal her identity.

Unfortunately for Leeds, this show has also been dubbed one of the worst sitcoms of all time, despite the fact that it was on for four years. Robert Bianco, TV critic for USA Today, wrote in 2002 that it was a contender for one of the worst TV shows of all time, and the BBC described it as the worst low-budget sitcom of all time (as an aside, the first season provided $300,000 per episode). Lest you think Leeds could not come up with a successful show; know that he also produced The Brady Bunch, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Silver Spoons, and The Facts of Life. He also wrote scripts for forty-two different shows.

Although it was not popular with critics, viewers seemed to enjoy it. The show was later sold to more than twenty countries, including Brazil, France, India, and Italy.

In 2015, Dave Nemetz spoke with Marla Pennington Rowan and Emily Schulman Webster about their time on the show. They both felt sorry for Brissette. She had a lot of skills such as singing, dancing, gymnastics, and piano playing, but all she could do on the show was to be a robot. She had to talk in a monotone while showing no emotions. Webster said it was so challenging for her but she was a pro. She mentioned that “she had to bite the inside of her cheeks to keep from smiling. That was tough. My heart sort of broke for her.”

Both stars mentioned how hard the special effect filming was for Tiffany. It might be her head spinning around and around or lifting the couch with one arm to clean under it. Those scenes were filmed on Thursdays with the use of green screen technology. Webster said it was not easy and that “Tiffany had to endure it, it would take a lot of trial and error.” In addition to these talents, Vicki could shrink down to the size of a doll, extend to ten feet tall, channel electricity through her hands, and she possessed unlimited learning ability to improve products.

Rowan and Webster said the cast got along great, just like one big family. However, the parents of the minor stars surely did not. Three tutors were employed on the set because the parents could not agree on choosing the same one. Rowan mentioned that apparently, the parents thought they were the stars of the show.

The show was very popular with kids especially. However, power struggles were not confined to overbearing parents; the corporate level had plenty of controversy as well. I’m not sure why, but the show was owned by five different companies, and they did not agree on much either. Once they knew there were enough shows to put it into syndication the show was done. No one knew if they were going to be picked up for the next season or not; they weren’t, so there was never any finale produced.

One of the most memorable parts of the show might be the theme song. It’s lyrics are:

She’s a small wonder; pretty and bright with soft curls.

She’s a small wonder; a girl unlike other girls.

She’s a miracle and I grant you, she’ll enchant you at first sight.

She’s a small wonder, and she’ll make your heart take flight.

She’s fantastic, made of plastic; microchips here and there.

She’s a small wonder, brings love and laughter everywhere.

We understand her pain at watching the show. Photo:smallwonderrevisited.blogspot.com

So how did it work out for the trying parent/managers? None of the three children are actors any longer. Brissette is a nurse in Colorado, Supiran was broke and homeless in 2012 but is in a better place today, and Schulman Rowan writes cookbooks and is considering acting again. Her last role was in the show Christy in the mid-nineties.

If you watch Antenna TV you might be very familiar with the show. It’s no longer in the rotation, but I have watched it several times on the network in the past. It definitely is not anything I would clear my schedule for. I’m not sure I would classify it as the worst sitcom of all time; it seems in the past 40 years, we have come up with some pretty bad options. However, I certainly would not spend my time watching this one. I’m just going to chalk it up to fulfilling a need in the eighties on Saturdays that does not age well.

How My Living Doll Became Cat Woman

March 13, 2023March 13, 2023 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are learning more about some of our favorite robots in this blog series called “I Robot.” Today we go back to the mid-sixties for My Living Doll.

This was both a science fiction and comedy show that debuted in September of 1964. Jack Chertok produced it for Television Productions with CBS. The show was filmed at Desilu studios. Chertok had been the creative force behind My Favorite Martian. James Aubrey, president of CBS, approached Chertok about doing another show. He did not even require a pilot to be made. Chertok’s writers from My Favorite Martian, Bill Kelsay and Al Martin, created the show from an idea proposed by Leo Guild. Kelsay wrote many of the episodes for Date with the Angels starring Betty White and several My Three Sons plots. Martin wrote for many earlier shows and screenplays including Roy Rogers.

The plot they created was that Dr. Bob McDonald (Bob Cummings), a psychiatrist for the Air Force, was given Rhoda Miller (Julie Newmar), a lifelike robot to protect. He was trying to keep her out of the hands of the military. Rhoda’s formal name was AF709. Dr. Carl Miller (Henry Beckman) built her for the US Air Force but she eventually lands in McDonald’s care when Miller is transferred to Pakistan. His job is to help educate her to be the perfect woman while keeping her true identity a secret. Beauty marks on her back were the control buttons. Her main power switch was on her right elbow. Her eyes could be covered to prompt a system relaxation. Rhoda’s memory bank contained 50 million pieces of information. Bob told his coworkers Rhoda was Dr. Miller’s niece, and she took on the role of his secretary at the office, typing 240 words a minute. On other episodes, she learned to calculate where dice would fall and how to make trick shots playing pool.

In one episode, Rhoda is asked to play Chopin’s “Fantasie Impromptu” on the piano. Newmar actually played the piece herself. She had studied under concert pianist Dr. MacIntyre, and she said that scene is the only one she’s done with her playing the piano which had been her career choice before acting.

Like I Dream of Jeanne, many of the episodes deal with Bob trying to keep Rhoda out of trouble while she is learning what society and the current culture is like. Rhoda learns human emotions throughout the first season; perhaps this would have led to a romantic relationship between the robot and the doctor.

Rounding out the cast was Peter Robinson (Jack Mullaney), Bob’s neighbor and coworker who thinks Rhoda is someone he wants to date. Irene Adams (Doris Dowling) plays Bob’s sister who moves in to act as housekeeper and chaperone so the neighbors are not suspicious of a single woman living there. On Love That Bob, Rosemary DeCamp played Bob’s sister who moves in to take care of the household for him. Mrs. Moffat was added later on as Peter’s housekeeper.

The show never really found its viewer base. The New York Times reviewer Jack Gould noted that it “very probably had the makings of a popular novelty hit . . . with Miss Newmar giving a light and amusing performance as the automated dish, the premise could work out . . . Bob Cummings, an old hand at chaperoning pretty girls, again is cast in his familiar assignment.”

Newmar didn’t feel that Cummings was the right actor for the role. She said that “They originally wanted Efrem Zimbalist Jr. It was not a flip part—it needed a straight actor who could play opposite this bizarre creature so the comedy would come off. That quality was lost when they hired Bob. The show could have been wonderful. I think it would have run for many seasons had they hired Efrem because he had the right qualities.”

The ratings were not good; however, another issue was the fact that it was on Sunday nights against Bonanza, one of the most popular shows ever. In December, CBS moved the show to Wednesday nights but the ratings did not improve. In January, Cummings asked to be written off the show. CBS agreed but never got a replacement for him. He was said to have been transferred to Pakistan, and Robinson took over caring for Rhoda with his housekeeper living in his house again to keep the neighbors from talking.

Apparently, Cummings and Newmar never hit it off. She complained that he had tried to teach her to act and that he seemed unhappy that she was getting more press attention. Later Newmar stated that the real trouble on the set was Cumming’s addiction to methamphetamines. She said he had erratic behavior and became increasingly more depressed and insecure.

After Cummings left the show, another five episodes were aired, and then the show was canceled. The show ended up ranking 79^th out of 96 shows. Two decades later, producer Howard Leeds would go on to create the show we will discuss next week, Small Wonder.

I was not able to confirm it, but I read several sources that said this show coined the term, That does not compute” which is what Rhoda said when she was asked something she did not understand.

During the summer of 1965, CBS aired repeats of the show. After that, the show was never seen on television again in the United States. Rumors were rampant about whether the 26 episodes had been damaged in a fire, hidden by Chertok, or destroyed. Two episodes seemed to have survived, but there were also reports that six or ten existed in all. CBS was able to obtain about half the episodes somewhere and released a DVD with them on it. We will have to see if the additional episodes ever show up or not.

Transitioning to Cat Woman Photo:designyoutrust.com

This was another of those shows that seemed to suffer from an identity complex. Cummings was known as a ladies’ man to viewers from his seasons on Love That Bob. If the show was not going for romance, then it seems that Newmar was correct in her assessment of Cummings being the wrong person for the role. With Bewitched debuting the same year and I Dream of Jeanne coming right on the heels of My Living Doll, it seems like one of the shows might not obtain enough viewers. Cummings’ addiction problems certainly did not help the show. Newmar should probably be happy the show ended when it did, allowing her to step into the role of Cat Woman on Batman. Like My Living Doll, Cat Woman had all the qualities Batman admired and wanted in a romantic partner, but unlike Rhoda who was not human, Cat Woman was all too human and too much of a villain to allow Batman to act on his passion for her.

Although the show debuted almost sixty years ago, many of the issues of working with a robot are still with us today as scientists work on giving robots a sense of humor and some empathy. We are seeing more of them in the workplace, and it will be interesting to see if any new shows take up the subject in the near future.

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