Frank Gorshin: Batman’s Most Puzzling Villain

March 18, 2024March 18, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month, our theme is Bam! Pow! Batman Villains. We have learned a bit about the careers of the Joker and Cat Woman, and today we are spending some time with the Riddler, portrayed by Frank Gorshin.

Gorshin started out as an impressionist and comedian before transitioning into acting.

Frank was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 into a blue-collar, middle-class family. His mom was a seamstress, and his father was a railroad worker. His paternal grandparents arrived in the US from Slovenia and his mother was born in Slovenia, coming to the Pittsburgh area as a young girl; his parents were very involved in the Slovenian community, both singing with the Preseren, a Slovenian singing society.

When he was 15, Gorshin got a part-time job as an usher at the Sheridan Square Theatre. He studied the mannerisms of the actors he watched in those movies and developed an impressionist act. Some of his favorite actors to mimic included James Cagney, Cary Grant, Al Jolson, and Edward Robinson. After entering a talent contest in 1951, he won a week-long engagement at the Carousel nightclub in New York.

Sadly, Gorshin’s older brother was hit by a car two days before and died. His parents convinced him to keep his performance schedule and sent him to New York.

After high school, Gorshin enrolled at the Carnegie Tech School of Drama (now Carnegie Mellon University).

At age 20, Frank was drafted into the US Army and sent to Germany. He was an entertainer in Special Services for a year and a half. When Gorshin left the Army, he began his acting career, appearing in four movies and on television in Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

I can’t imagine the horror Gorshin’s parents felt when getting a call in 1957 that their son had fallen asleep while driving from Pittsburgh to Hollywood, a 39-hour trip for a screen test. With their other son passing away from a car crash six years earlier, now they had to deal with the fact that their other son was in a coma with a fractured skull. Luckily, he made a full recovery.

Another big event occurring in 1957 was his marriage to Christina Randazzo. They had a son and separated later in life, but they never did divorce as far as I could tell.

Until his death, Gorshin would appear in more than sixty big-screen films. During the fifties, he only appeared in a handful of television series, but that would change in the 1960s. Some of the most memorable shows included The Defenders, The Munsters, Star Trek, and The High Chapparal. With his comedy act, he visited The Ed Sullivan Show four times. The first time he did his impressionist act on the series, he would be scheduled with this new band called The Beatles.

The sixties also found him on Batman, his reason for being in this month’s blog series. He said that he developed a fiendish laugh at Hollywood parties. “I listened to myself laugh and discovered that the funniest jokes brought out the high-pitched giggle that I use on the show. With further study, I came to realize that it wasn’t so much how I laughed as what I laughed at that created the sense of the menace.”

He did not love the unitards that many of the comic book villains wore, so he asked for a green business suit and bowler hat, covered with question marks since he always left riddles for Batman and Robin to solve. He often said “Riddle me this, Batman” which became a catchphrase of the mid-sixties.

Gorshin said “When I was first approached to play the Riddler, I thought it was a joke. Then I discovered the show had a good script and agreed to do the role. Now I am in love with the character.”

Gorshin was the only villain to be nominated for an Emmy. He got the nod in 1966 for the episode “Hi Diddle Riddle.” He had some tough competition, going against Werner Klemperer as Colonel Klink on Hogan’s Heroes, Morey Amsterdam on The Dick Van Dyke Show, and winner Don Knotts on The Andy Griffith Show.

Gorshin was in ten episodes of the show, but after appearing numerous times, he was unavailable, and the producers replaced him with John Astin. I realized hindsight is 20/20 as they say, so the producers were never considering the effect the show would have on pop culture and the decades it would be a fan favorite, but that switch seems extreme. However, they did it with Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt as well, so maybe they figured if you have to replace a villain, let’s replace them with someone very different from the original. Gorshin, however, was not a fan of being replaced but did get over it enough to accept his tenth episode role in season three and appeared as Riddler in the 1979 made-for-television movie Legends of the Superheroes.

Frank made his Broadway debut in 1969 in the musical biography, “Jimmy” which was about the controversial life of New York mayor Jimmy Walker.

Gorshin was very busy in the seventies and eighties. Among the twenty plus shows he appeared on were The Virginian, Martin and Rowan’s Laugh In, Ironside, Hawaii Five-0, Charlie’s Angels, and Murder She Wrote.

In the last three decades of his life, he spent more time making big-screen films. One thing I found surprising is that Gorshin appeared in three soap operas, all at different times in his career: General Hospital in 1963, The Edge of Night in 1982, and The Bold and the Beautiful in 1999.

In the early 2000s, Gorshin did a one-man Broadway show, portraying George Burns. He was reunited with his Batman cast in a made-for-tv movie, Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt. His last appearance was on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on “Grave Danger” on which he played himself. The episode was directed by Quentin Tarantino and was dedicated to Gorshin.

Unfortunately, Gorshin was a heavy smoker throughout his life. Adam West once said that “Frank could reduce a cigarette to ash with one draw” and his nightclub performances warned patrons they would be exposed to a lot of second-hand smoke if they attended. Not surprisingly, he died from lung cancer, complicated by emphysema and pneumonia.

I enjoyed getting to know Frank Gorshin in this blog. While I was much more familiar with the careers of Burgess Meredith and Julie Newmar, Gorshin and Cesar Romero are actors I knew very little about. I hope you are also enjoying getting to know these fun “villains.”

The Young and the Restless Does Not Include The Innocent Years

June 26, 2023November 18, 2022 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Today we are winding up our soap opera blog series titled “I Met My Twin When I Married My Mother’s Neighbor’s Uncle’s Grocer’s Best Friend’s Attorney Who is Also My Fourth Cousin Once Removed.” We are ending with a soap that I knew a bit about before researching this series. When I was twelve, getting ready to enter the junior high years of my life, my best friend Bonnie and I heard about a new soap opera beginning that summer. We checked it out and were fans for the first couple of years. I quit watching when I was busy with high school activities, but I would tune in on and off just to see if I knew anyone anymore. I’m not sure how long Bonnie watched it or maybe still does. This soap seemed much more realistic to me than the crazy antics on Days of Our Lives, although I admit some of the plot twists are a stretch.

First Cast: Fosters, Brooks, Chancellors Photo: dailysoapdish.com

The Young and The Restless was set in Genoa City, Wisconsin; little did I know when I watched that first episode in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, that I would be living in Wisconsin by September. Genoa City really does exist, and the creators of the show drove through the town when they traveled from Chicago to their lake home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

This soap features the wealthy Katherine Chancellor (Jeanne Cooper); her companion is Jill Foster (Brenda Dickson/Jess Walton) who then becomes involved with her husband; we also meet Jill’s brothers David (David Hasselhoff) and Greg (Wings Hauser). The Brook four girls (Leslie-Janice Lynde; Lorie-Jamie Lyn Bauer; Chris-Trish Stewart; Peggy-Pamela Peters Solow) intertwine with all the other families in one way or another. Later two wealthy families who both happen to be in the cosmetic business were added to the cast: the Newmans and the Abbots. Victor Newman (Eric Braeden) is a billionaire and heads Newman Enterprises and has been married to Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott) most of the history; Jack (Peter Bergman) and Ashley Abbot (Eileen Davidson) oversee Jabot Cosmetics with advice from their father John (Jerry Douglas).

Nikki and Victor Photo: celebsdirtylaundry.com

CBS created this soap opera to appeal to younger viewers. The network hired married couple William J. and Lee Phillip Bell to create the show in 1972 titled “The Innocent Years.” Most soap operas of the sixties and seventies focused on dialogue and story. The Young and The Restless used unique lighting techniques and camera angles; they filmed in more of a Hollywood movie style than current television shows. The lighting effects could create dark, shadowy, moody sets or brightly lit close-ups. This soap was also the first one to be broadcast in high definition.

Bell and executive producer John Conboy auditioned 540 actors for the 13 major characters in the first season. The cast was the youngest ever assembled. They looked for glamorous model types instead of known actors. Up until this point, love stories were part of the plots but not sexuality. Some of the plots dealt with premarital intercourse, incest, rape, and impotence. Social issues also were featured including alcoholism, bulimia, and controversial cancer treatments.

Two decades into the show, the first major black characters were introduced in the Winters and Barber families; Neil was a CEO for Jabot. Neil was played by Kristoff St. John. St. John died from hypertrophic heart disease last February at age 52. The cast was devastated. The crew has been together a long time and considers themselves a family.

The theme song originally was titled “Cotton’s Dream” from the film Bless the Beasts & Children, but became “Nadia’s Theme” after Nadia Comaneci’s gymnastic routines from the 1976 Olympics were set to the song by the Wide World of Sports. Perry Botkin Jr. who had composed the piece for the theatrical film arranged a version specifically for the show. A few years a jazzier remix of the song was used, but the original theme has never changed much.

The show has won an amazing eleven Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series. Directors picked up 15 wins and writers garnered 18. Another 42 awards were given out to actors and actresses with 3 Lifetime Achievements delivered.

At the end of 2019, The Young and The Restless had held the number one rating for 32 years; however, as of March 2020, The Bold and the Beautiful has taken over the number one spot. The Young and The Restless has been renewed through 2024.

Like many of the shows on television, Covid took a toll on the show. By April 23, 2020, the show was out of new episodes. Production shut down in March of 2020 and resumed in July of that year, with new episodes airing in August.

Fun Facts: (1) Eric Braeden who plays Victor Newman was in The Rat Patrol. (2) When Jeanne Cooper decided to get a facelift, instead of taking a leave of absence from the show, her procedure was written into the plot in 1984. (3) One of the show’s biggest fans is Cal Ripken Jr. (4) Jeanne Cooper as Katherine Chancellor was on the show from the beginning in 1973. When she passed away in 2013, her real son, Corbin Bernson, was brought in to play the priest who officiated at her funeral.

It’s funny how you remember certain things. When I think back to the debut of The Young and the Restless, I remember the Brooks sisters and how beautiful I thought Lorie Brooks was, played by Jamie Lyn Bauer. I remember romantic and colorful episodes. However, recently I watched that first episode. Two of the Brooks sisters were on the show, Leslie and Chris. It was very dark and had more of the atmosphere of Dark Shadows; there was very little for any of the characters to be happy about. I guess it appealed to us enough that we kept watching that summer. And almost fifty years later, people are still watching.

Regardless of what I think about the average soap opera, you have to give the cast and crew a lot of credit. I cannot imagine how much hard work they have accomplished. To be in a show twenty to fifty years is incredible on its own; then to realize that this is a show that is on every weekday and requires a huge amount of dialogue that must be memorized very quickly with long hours of filming. It truly is amazing that so many of these series retain their favorite characters for decades. Many of these actors have to spend more time with their television family than their actual family. It’s not an easy way to make a living but it must be very fulfilling since so many actors and actresses continue to develop these careers. I hope you enjoyed getting to know a bit more about some of these shows. Please feel free to share your favorites and what made them your favorites.

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.

The White Stuff

March 27, 2017March 27, 2017 / thewritelife61 / 4 Comments

It’s hard to imagine anyone with a more versatile or longer-lasting occupation than Betty White. During her career, she’s starred in 12 sitcoms, had recurring roles on 17 shows, and appeared in another 45 series. In addition, she was in 14 movies; 18 movies made for television; and 305 different shows as herself, including 326 episodes of Match Game, 85 guest spots on the $10,000 Pyramid, 52 appearances on Entertainment Tonight, and 40 times on To Tell the Truth.

Born January 17, 1922 in Oak Park, Illinois, Betty was an only child. Her family moved to California when she was quite young. Her original goal was to become a Park Ranger, but that career was closed to women at that time. She started her entertainment career in radio, because she was told she was not photogenic. When World War II broke out, she joined the American Women’s Voluntary Services. She was briefly married to Dick Barker, a pilot; they married and divorced in 1945. In 1947 she married Lane Allan, an agent, but they divorced in 1949.

Her career took a major leap in 1952 when Life with Elizabeth was picked up by the network. Betty was the star and producer of the show from 1952-1955. Her show gave her total control both behind and in front of the camera. She was the first woman to produce a sitcom. She was only 28 years old and living with her parents when this opportunity presented itself.

During the 1950s Betty would also star in the sitcom Date with the Angels, as Vickie Angel. Vickie and her husband, an insurance salesmen, involved their friends and neighbors in a variety of comic situations. She also appeared on variety shows such as Jack Paar Tonight, as well as The Betty White Show, a talk show. In 1956, she began an alliance with the Tournament of Roses parade which she co-hosted for 19 years.

The 1960s found her starring in her first movie, Advise and Consent in 1962, portraying Kansas senator Elizabeth Ames Adams. She also began her long partnership with game shows, earning the title, “First Lady of Game Shows.” It was when she appeared on Password that she met her third husband, Allen Ludden, who was the host. They married in 1963 and were happily living life until his death in 1981. (Note: Wisconsin claims Allen Ludden because he was born in Mineral Point in 1917.)

LOS ANGELES, CA – MAY 17, 1976: (L-R) “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” co-stars – Ed Asner, Betty White, Mary Tyler Moore and Ted Knight – all won awards at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences 28th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards held at the Shubert Theatre on May 17, 1976 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by TVA/PictureGroup/Invision for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences/AP Images)

In the 1970s, Betty re-entered the television series realm. She guest-starred on the Mary Tyler Moore Show during its fourth season as television host Sue Ann Nivens, the Happy Homemaker. She was such a hit that she became a regular for the rest of the series’ run. In 1977, she and Georgia Engel starred in The Betty White Show (not to be confused with the talk show in the 1950s) which only lasted one season. Because of her affiliation with the Mary Tyler Moore Show, the Tournament of Roses replaced her as host, and she then took on the task of co-hosting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade for ten years.

In the 1980s, at age 60, Betty’s career continued to steamroll. She became a regular on Mama’s Family, which aired from 1983-86. In 1985, she accepted the role of Rose Nyland on The Golden Girls. Originally slated for the part of Blanche, it was suggested that Rue McClanahan and Betty switch roles to keep from becoming typecast. The role of Rose Nyland kept her busy through 1993. Golden Girls ended production in 1992; the next season, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan, and Betty White reprised their roles for one season on Golden Palace.

Rue McClanahan, Vicki Lawrence, and Betty White in Mama’s Family.

During the 1990s, Betty continued her television work. She had a regular role on Maybe This Time where she played Shirley Wallace, a much-married woman, who pushes her daughter, recently divorced, into a relationship, when she just wants to run the family coffee shop and avoid dating altogether. She also was in all 30 episodes of Ladies Man, where she again plays the mother of the main character. He is trying to raise a daughter from his first marriage and a daughter from his current marriage while dealing with a wife, and ex-wife, and a mother.

As the new century turned over in 2000, at 78, Betty just continued to add to her acting credits. She had regular roles on Boston Legal and The Bold and the Beautiful. She also starred in Hot in Cleveland for its entire five-year run. She continued appearing on a variety of television shows during that decade.

During her career, she was nominated for 21 primetime Emmys and won five. She also won 2 daytime Emmys. She is the only woman to be nominated in every comedy category. She was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995 and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Betty loves animals and is an advocate for many animal associations including the Los Angeles Zoo, the Morris Animal Foundation, and the African Wildlife Foundation. She received the Humane Award in 1987 and had a plaque installed near the gorilla exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo to commemorate her work there.

It’s hard to know what she will attempt next. She was the oldest person to host Saturday Night Live which she did in 2010. She appeared on the original Tonight Show with Jack Paar and has appeared with Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon. She has been on the Howard Stern Show, the Simpsons, and one of my favorites, Madame’s Place. She has guest starred in both comedies and dramas. She produced Betty White’s Off Their Rockers, where senior citizens played pranks on younger people.

Considering her real name is Betty, not Elizabeth, it’s ironic that her first television role was in Life with Elizabeth and her first movie was portraying Elizabeth Ames Adams.

At 95, how has she kept so young? If you ask her co-stars from Hot in Cleveland, they will tell you that she survives on hot dogs, French fries, Diet Coke, and red licorice. Who am I to argue?

One of her best awards came in 2010 when she was made an Honorary Forest Ranger. Considering that in 1940 that field was closed to her, when she received her honorary title, one-third of forest rangers were women.

When asked about why she loves performing, Betty said, “To be able to talk to that camera—the camera became your best friend. You’re looking into that little camera lens and they’re looking into your soul, because they’re right into your eyes. You can’t be phony. You can’t fake it.”

No one has ever accused Betty White of being a fake or a phony. Everyone she comes in contact with seems to love her. The camera was her best friend, but we all became her friends through those camera portrayals.

What a wonderful personality. What a wonderful career. What a wonderful legacy.