Boris Karloff’s Thriller 01x34: The Prisoner in the Mirror

I mentioned this episode in passing during the Mummy overview, and then I was like: “Hey me, you should recap that thing. Get back on the horse and so forth.”

Also, as I write this, my internet connection is once again down (I’m pretty sure that every single tree that could fall on a service line has fallen on a service line this year, and there was an actual blizzard last week, and I’m just furious about it), so if there are mistakes, I’m very sorry, I live in the woods and a bear stole my Google.

Thriller is a horror anthology series that’s seen something of a revival in recent years, and rightly so. It’s damn good television. Hosted by an elderly Boris Karloff, it was actually Karloff’s second attempt at getting a show like this off the ground. He did half a season of a “true paranormal” series called The Veil in 1958. Because of production troubles, The Veil was never picked up by a network. It’s not bad, but it’s not Thriller. Even the terrible episodes of Thriller are worth watching.

Today’s story is about notorious magician Cagliostro, played by Henry Daniell, a classic guy-who-was-in-everything of the 30’s and 40’s. He’ll be joined by a guy-who-was-in-everything of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, Lloyd Bochner, along with Mrs. Cunningham herself, Marion Ross, and Patricia Michon.

We begin in Paris, 1910, where a lovely young couple in evening clothes are toasting one another with champagne. The girl is a glittering, smiling blonde who makes you think she’s used to getting diamond bracelets as presents, but there’s no use being angry at her for it. Her date is… off somehow. His face is open and young, and he’s got the look of the earnest sidekick in a teen beach comedy, but his manner is slick, hungry, and crackling at the edges with something sinister. He tries to impress her with magic tricks, first producing a silver coin to her great delight, and then wowing her with a small bouquet of live flowers he seemingly plucks from thin air.

Night Gallery 01x00: Eyes

This is my post for the Joan Crawford Blogathon, celebrating the life and work of one of Old Hollywood’s most legendary actresses. It’s an event well worth checking out, full of great entries looking at all aspects of her career, hosted by the wonderful In The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.

Steven Spielberg was only twenty-one years old when he was hired to direct a segment for Rod Serling’s new series, Night Gallery. It was Spielberg’s very first paid directing gig, and he was going to be working with Joan Crawford on the story of a blind woman receiving an ocular nerve transplant.

Joan Crawford.

The grande dame of the classic era. Mildred Pierce. Sadie Thompson. Daisy Kenyon. The woman F. Scott Fitzgerald had once written about as “the best example of the flapper.” The legendary rival of Bette Davis and chairwoman of the Pepsi Cola board of directors.

It was a little intimidating.

Sid Sheinberg, head of Universal’s television division at the time and the guy who’d given Spielberg the assignment, suggested it might be a good idea for the young director to take his star to dinner. So, Spielberg, under-dressed and fresh-faced, found himself ringing the doorbell of a bona fide legend.

A voice called to him from inside, telling him the door was open and he could come right in. So that’s what he did, and he found Joan Crawford with bandages around her eyes, getting a feeling for how a blind woman would work her way around a room. Neither producer William Sackheim (producer of Night Gallery) nor Sheinberg had told Crawford her director was going to be a guy who, according to Spielberg, “looked like he was fourteen.”

“She was hoping they would hire George Marshall, Henry King, or Henry Hathaway, or King Vidor,” he told TheHollywood Reporter.

“She finally walked over to me,” Spielberg remembered in a 1982 interview with Gene Shalit, “Undid her wrappings, and she looked at me, and she almost screamed, and she said: ‘My god! We can’t go out for dinner! People will think you’re my son!’”

By this point in her career, Crawford was taking fewer and fewer acting jobs. She was mostly focused on her work at Pepsi, and she’d had an absolutely terrible experience on Hush… Hush Sweet Charlotte, which resulted in her being replaced by newly minted centenarian Olivia de Havilland. She’d experienced illness and personal turmoil through the 60’s, and now in 1969, she was willing (and excited) to take the part of Miss Menlo for the Night Gallery pilot.

By all accounts, she was the consummate professional on set, treating Spielberg with respect and encouraging the crew to do the same. Also by all accounts, she had tried in vain up to the eleventh hour to get him replaced with someone more experienced.

“I think he’ll be great someday,” she told Universal, in most versions of the story, “But can’t we get somebody who’s great right now?”

When all was said and done, she was pleased enough that she did a small cameo for him on his episode of The Name of the Game, and the two of them corresponded on and off until Crawford’s death in 1977.

I Dream of Jeannie 04x10: How to Marry an Astronaut

I got an email request to do a recap of this specific episode of  I Dream of Jeannie, and of course I was stoked! If there’s ever an episode of something you’d like me to recap, then feel free to email me at jvonhalsing@gmail.com. I might not have access to what you want, but I’ll certainly try!

The last time we checked in on Jeannie, she was squaring off against her sinister lookalike sister, Jeannie II. Major Nelson was oblivious to subtle details, Roger was being blinked to every corner of the earth, and Dr. Bellows was convinced that he was hallucinating James Bond outfits on the people at work. Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff for Cocoa Beach.

We’re now into season four, and there’ve been a few changes worth mentioning: Jeannie II has appeared a couple of times since her last visit, so some of the grudges you might expect to resurface are water under the bridge; Dr. Bellows’ wife, Amanda, is now a regular feature on the show; and Roger’s character has been turned into a cartoonish playboy instead of a realistically girl-crazy astronaut. It’s all the usual characterization fatigue you see on sitcoms. The really bizarre changes start in season five.

And, even though a genie and an astronaut almost get married in this episode, this isn’t the one where Major Nelson and Jeannie tie the knot. The title, “How to Marry an Astronaut”, is a take-off on How to Marry a Millionaire, the classic Lauren Bacall film that was turned into a TV series in 1957, with none other than Barbara Eden in the role originated by Betty Grable.

One day, I’ll subject you to an episode of that, but right now we’re sticking with Jeannie. Or Jeannies, as the case may be.

The pink and gold bottle that Jeannie calls home is resting in its usual place on the desk, and we see that inside, Jeannie is rocking out to some ragtime on her Victrola while she reads Brides Magazine. Her Victrola is very cute, painted with pink and red flowers that match her outfit, but it’s also a weird choice. She lives in the 1960’s and was trapped in a bottle for a hundred and fifty years, so where’d she get it and why doesn’t she want a record player instead?

These urgent questions are swept aside, when the living room fills with a distorted version of Jeannie’s blink sound, and Jeannie II appears. She calls a few times for her sister, pacing the room with a hip-swishing sashay that sets her harem pants rippling like water. Barbara Eden changes the whole vibe of that costume just by altering her body language. It’s really impressive.

Jeannie II notices the open bottle, the stopper sitting right next to it, and raises an eyebrow at the universe.

“Oh…” she smirks, “That’d almost be too easy.”

Still, you can’t take the spots off a leopard. Jeannie II pops the stopper in, and as her trapped sister realizes what’s going on and starts to stomp her feet and call for help, she advises getting some kind of alarm system. After all, she notes, Jeannie gets stuck in there an awful lot.

The Big Valley 03x04: Time After Midnight

Lloyd Bochner always cheers me up. When describing him, a lot of people use words like “interchangeable” or “bland” or “that one guy.” I prefer to go with “Canadian” and “perfectly modulated voice” or sometimes I just yell: “It’s a cookbook!”

That last one is because after a long career of guest starring roles and small parts in movies, Bochner remains best known for his episode of The Twilight Zone, “To Serve Man.” But did you know he also made TV history with his recurring role on Dynasty? He played the first television character to die while doing the horizontal mambo, when Joan Collins’ Alexis overwhelmed him with a heart attack in the sack. Never say I don’t teach you things.

Today we’re watching him in an episode of The Big Valley. It’s the one where Jarrod goes blind, and I’m honestly so happy because it’s the best character-goes-temporarily-blind episode ever, with the possible exception of the Happy Days where it happens to The Fonz and they make him put his motorcycle back together as therapy. And by the best, I kind of mean the worst.

Temporary blindness used to be on the trope list right after amnesia. (There’s also an episode of Big Valley where Jarrod gets amnesia, it’s called “The Man from Nowhere” and two seasons later, Victoria – that’s Jarrod’s mother if this is your first visit – has her own case of amnesia. It’s a show that never lets you down.) By the mid-70’s, most primetime dramas figured out that blindness shouldn’t be a gimmick, and we start seeing more accurate and interesting portrayals of blind characters like in Little House on the Prairie or Longstreet.

What stops the whole thing from being offensive, most times, is that the trope had its heart in the right place. It was usually trying to teach us about loss, or perseverance, or the things we take for granted. The results were usually more cheesy than insensitive, as we’ll see shortly.

‘Way Out 01x06: The Croaker

Nowadays, Roald Dahl is best remembered for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach and his other novels for children, but there was a time when he was known exclusively for his creepy little fables. Stories like “Lamb to the Slaughter” and “Man From the South” and “Dip in the Pool” were all highly regarded for their bitingly ironic endings.

In 1961, this reputation made Dahl an interesting fit for a horror anthology show called ‘Way Out (with the apostrophe, not sure why). The show was a quick-fix replacement for a Jackie Gleason gameshow, You’re in the Picture, which was such a disaster that Gleason apologized to the American public and it was cancelled after a single episode. Anthology shows were relatively easy to put together – you didn’t need to negotiate with a recurring star, you could change gears on a weekly basis, and you could crib sets on the backlots. Plus, people really liked The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, so it was a good solution for that unsightly gap on Friday nights.

Dahl would host in the hands-off manner of Alfred Hitchcock, as well as contribute some of his stories for adaptation, most notably “William and Mary” for the premiere.

The series ran for sixteen episodes, but it wasn’t a hit with audiences. It’s not hard to see why, it’s a really weird show. It’s not bad, but it’s weird. In the late ‘70s, Dahl would work on a more successful television vehicle for his stories, ITV’s Tales of the Unexpected. (Not to be confused with the American Quinn Martin Production of the same name.) Meanwhile, ‘Way Out would become an oddity, and a bit of a holy grail for a certain kind of television fan.

I Dream of Jeannie 03x02: Jeannie or the Tiger

Why not follow up last month’s double bill of doppelgängers and this month’s Bewitched entry with the episode of I Dream of Jeannie that introduces her lookalike sister? Sounds fun, right?

Yes it does, don’t be difficult.

I Dream of Jeannie is a 1966 sitcom about an astronaut (very chic at the time) finding a genie in a bottle on a remote island in the Pacific. He’s a handsome astronaut played by Larry Hagman, and she’s a warm-blooded young genie played by Barbara Eden, so she’s constantly making moves on him that – for some baffling reason – he turns down. We establish pretty quickly that he’s straight, btw, so that torpedoes the usual theory.

Jeannie uses her powers to try and improve her beloved Major Nelson’s life, but it never goes well. Nine times out of ten, it’s Major Nelson’s fault because he never adequately explains why she shouldn’t just use her cosmic powers to fix things.

(What is your actual deal, Major Nelson? How can you be trying to go to the moon while ignoring the possibilities this type of magic can bring to mankind?)

Rounding out the cast was Bill Daily as Major Nelson’s best bud, the reasonably greedy and excitable Roger Healy. Roger is also an astronaut, and the only person who seems to grasp that Jeannie is a magical super-being. He’s a pretty good guy, but he tends to use Jeannie’s powers for personal financial gain like anybody would, let’s be real. Everyone is a Roger.

Their chief nemesis was Hayden Rorke as NASA psychiatrist Dr. Bellows, an uptight and rigid professional who has no time for everyone bending the laws of physics when there’s a moon to land on. He usually thinks the boys are going insane, or that some kind of Russian sabotage is in play, but he never does anything about it except shout and look confused.

Bewitched 02x18: And Then There Were Three

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than watching Bewitched. I watched it with my mother, she watched it with her mother, and one of the central relationships is – despite them having fantastical powers – one of the best TV depictions of a relationship between an adult daughter and her mom.

It’s not mired in remorse or resentment like you always see in dramas, the mother isn’t ditzy or sweetly old fashioned like in sentimental comedies. Samantha and Endora are both fully realized characters as individuals, and their personalities dictate the style of the frustrations and joys that come with their love for each other. In the later seasons of the show, both of them were painted with pretty broad strokes and a lot of the stories were rehashed from earlier episodes, but in the first two seasons, both witches and the business of being a mother and daughter were wonderfully nuanced.

The episode we’re watching today introduces two new characters to the Bewitched universe. The first is Cousin Serena, a dual-role for Elizabeth Montgomery, and a fun addition to her extended witchy family. The second is baby Tabitha, who transforms the mothering dynamics in a pretty significant way.

For all of the second season so far, Samantha has been pregnant. It’s been pretty smooth sailing, apart from briefly losing her powers thanks to a black Peruvian rose, and that time Endora gave Darrin all the discomforts of pregnancy because he wasn’t being sympathetic. (He deserved it.) It all coincided with Elizabeth Montgomery’s real life pregnancy with her second child. Her first pregnancy had also been while she was filming Bewitched, but the network thought it was inappropriate for newlyweds to have a baby in the first year. I don’t know why.

But this is it.

The big day for a lot of people.

Twilight Zone 01x21: Mirror Image

This is one of the more understated episodes of The Twilight Zone, especially of the ones that were penned by Rod Serling. There’s no grand soapbox moment at the end where twist and narration combine to tell you what’s what, and maybe that’s why it’s so effective and timeless.

Sometimes on TZ, the morality got in the way of the story. Sometimes the brilliant twist closed too many doors. In “Mirror Image” the point is in the wondering, and it’s that wondering that wakes people up at 2:05 in the morning, just to listen to the wind and make sure that they’re still who they think they are.

And there’s a tremendous cast! Our leading lady is Vera Miles, enigmatic and cool as always. She’s probably best remembered today for her supporting role in Psycho (even though she crushed it in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance). Plus, we’ve got TV legend Martin Milner, who somehow hasn’t been in a recap yet, which makes me think I’ve been falling down on the job.

The episode opens with a dark and stormy night. Lightning cracks across a deluging sky. But it’s not the couple who finds the bridge washed out, or the once-wealthy residents of a Gothic manor house we’re concerning ourselves with. It’s a young woman – Millicent Barnes, played by Miles – waiting in a dreary bus depot in upstate New York.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents 07x39: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

There’s an old urban legend about an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that was so gruesome – so disturbing – that it was never aired on network television. Of course, we all know that urban legends are blown out of proportion, and whatever kernel of truth they were based on is buried under years and years of exaggeration.

But this urban legend is true.

By 1962, Robert Bloch had a nice sideline as a screenwriter. As a teenager, he had become the youngest member of the Lovecraft Circle, and had since published countless short stories and novels. One of those novels, Psycho, had been adapted by Alfred Hitchcock in 1960, and it made quite the splash. After that, Hollywood came calling and Bloch quickly established himself as a reliable source of spine-chilling scripts.

A good number of those scripts were adaptations of his own short stories, so when he was asked to pen an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents based on his 1942 tale “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” it didn’t seem like it was going to be anything but another paycheck for a job well done.

The Big Valley 01x14: The Brawlers

I’m kind of sad. I wanted the first episode of The Big Valley we recapped to be the one where Jarrod goes temporarily blind and has to try a case against Lloyd Bochner. In fact, it was on my to-recap schedule along with episodes of Ghost Story and Kolchak: The Night Stalker when I got sick.

But when life gives you lemons, do the Irish immigrant episode for St. Patrick’s Day instead! (And also something about lemonade?)

The Big Valley, like Lancer or Bonanza, is about a wealthy ranch family full of scorpion sons. Handsome and intriguing, to love them is certain death. But, also like Lancer and Bonanza, this is never openly acknowledged. And, in the case of The Big Valley, there’s one really fun difference: living women who are part of the family.

East Side/West Side

In 1963, CBS has several problems.

The big one is George C. Scott, a Broadway actor turned electrifying film sensation. For some baffling reason, somebody at CBS decides to try and get Scott to commit to doing a TV show. Under normal circumstances, getting a solid character actor to make a show for you isn’t a bad idea, but Scott has been very vocal about his derision for TV. And he is what is euphemistically known as “difficult.”

They send him a series overview about a war correspondent having dramatic adventures.

He hates it.

Meanwhile, there’s James T. Aubrey, a man nicknamed The Smiling Cobra, and president of CBS from 1959 to 1965. Aubrey is the man who thinks busty country girls falling in streams is the best thing ever. His shows include Petticoat Junction, Gomer Pyle USMC, and The Beverly Hillbillies. His motto is: “broads, bosoms, and fun.” And that is an actual quote.

Unfortunately for Aubrey, it can’t all be talking horses and exploding toilets. CBS is still holding on to a reputation for high quality, intelligent programming. A reputation that goes all the way back to its radio days, and one that’s guarded by network chairman William Paley. (Picture the old knight at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade faced with the undeniable ratings crush of Gilligan’s Island.) Paley’s tenure has brought us Perry Mason, The Defenders and Route 66.

It usually goes something like this: William Paley happily greenlights The Twilight Zone. Jim Aubrey, noticing the lack of jiggling mountain girls, takes away all of its money and gives it to Andy Griffith, who doesn’t need it because nobody ever leaves Mayberry and all the sets are already built. Everybody thinks Andy is happy as a clam, but they don’t know that he’s started going to all of the production meetings to make sure his show isn’t hijacked by Ellie May 2.0 moving into town and holding a beauty contest to raise funds for a water tower. Rod Serling is bitter, Andy Griffith is working seventeen hour days, and nobody is doing what they really want.

And now, into the mix, comes the potential for a serious legal case with George C. Scott, if they don’t figure out something – anything – to fulfill the terms of this contract.

A show is put together. It’s like Naked City, but with social workers instead of cops. Social workers in Harlem. Scott’s character answers to a female boss and shares and office with a black co-worker, played by none other than Cicely Tyson. (This was the first time a black actress was co-starring in an hour long drama. She’s magnificent, of course, but she’s Cicely Tyson, so obvs.)

Scott wants realism. He wants it so badly, he’s being as obnoxious as possible at all turns. Aubrey wants a harem of beautiful women and Park Avenue mysteries. The pilot script is written in five minutes flat, and looks like a pretty conventional social drama, with a courtroom scene and a tidy finish. It’s called East Side/West Side. It gets the go-ahead, despite not really having a plan for a full season, or a functional production team.

Other scripts don’t come in. The people assigned to write them are, uh, I don’t want to say flake-tastic beatniks, but history implies that that’s what they were. The only solution CBS has time for is to just film whatever script they get, with almost no revisions.

This was the collision of reckless mistakes, strange clashes of personality, and desperate scrambling that allowed this show to twice make episodes that were masterpieces. And, almost impossibly given the realities of the era, both stories are about black lives.

“Who Do You Kill?” is upsetting and raw. It stars James Earl Jones, then unknown outside of theatrical circles, and Diana Sands. Sands had played Cicely Tyson’s role in the pilot episode of the series, but had quickly dropped out because of all the backstage drama. They play Joe and Ruth Goodwin, a couple doing their best to get by with limited job opportunities for Joe. Their struggle is intensified when a rat bites their sleeping infant. They can’t get her to the hospital, and the bulk of the story concerns the aftermath of their loss.

The cut of the episode available on YouTube is missing the section that actually contains the rat, but it’s the best anybody can do. MGM has yet to release the series on DVD.

In “No Hiding Place”, Ruby Dee and Earle Hyman play a couple who have made it out of the slums, only to face a different set of problems. They move in to Maple Gardens – “A Friendly Community” – to find mistrust and cruelty from their white neighbours. Not only that, they become the center of a blockbusting scheme. (I feel like it would be responsible to warn you that this one has a more depressing ending than the above episode about a dead baby, so you are now warned.)

These high points couldn’t last, of course. In an era of limited channel selection and fervent letter writers, the worst of humanity alerted Jim Aubrey to his biggest fear. He had accidentally created edgy, controversial television that unflinchingly tackled social issues. This had to be stopped.

The hounds were released in the form of directors from the rural comedies taking out all of the serious content, finally moving George C. Scott’s character to Park Avenue, and having giggling debutants turn up for no reason. Some people weren’t comfortable with Cicely Tyson’s character being so prominent, so Aubrey’s people demanded she be turned into a hat stand. No longer a professional equal, no longer the kind of character who places autistic children in specialized education programs, she was now a token. Ten episodes in, there was talk of renewal only if Tyson was replaced with a white actress.

By episode nineteen, they were all out of Harlem.

In a twist that sounds like it came from a Simpson’s episode about cynical television executives, George C. Scott’s character gets a job with a congressman. The show becomes about how a hotheaded cynic has to conform to bureaucracy and learn to appreciate Kennedy era political optimism.

It should come as little surprise that there was no second season.

Artemus Gordon: Master of Disguise

By 1965, Ross Martin had already been a scene-stealing sidekick. As Andamo in Blake Edward’s Mr. Lucky, he’d proven that not only could he handle the comedic timing necessary to counterpoint a smooth, ladies’ man hero, he could also lend an unexpected credibility to fantastic situations.

He was just the man Michael Garrison would need to balance the high rolling Easterner in his new twist on the super spy craze. Garrison had bought the rights to James Bond’s first television appearance in a Climax! adaptation of Casino Royale, and since then had been toying with ideas for bringing the Bond ethos to primetime. His solution was a breezier take on spies, without going to the full-on spoofs that would begin emerging in 1966, and he wanted it set in the 1870’s. Combining the fading Western with the latest trend.

Robert Conrad would be James West, originally seen as a more undercover operative complete with secret identity and false backstory, and Ross Martin would be Artemus Gordon. Gordon was to be the gadget man, the brains of the operation, and a master of disguise.

Artie was not a typical or stock character for Westerns, and that presented a problem. Especially when Garrison proved that he had a hard time staying on budget, and a revolving door of producers provided a notoriously uneven first season. (For four episodes, the central duo suddenly have a butler named Tennyson who disappears as uneventfully as he arrives.)

Martin told the Newark Evening News in May of 1966 that he’d tried to quit three times during that hectic first season. “Each producer tried to put his stamp on the show and I had a terrible struggle,” he recalled, “I fought them line by line in every script. They knew they couldn’t change the James West role very much, but it was open season on Artemus Gordon because they had never seen anything like him before.”

But by the second season, the behind-the-scenes stress had levelled out and a consistent voice was found in producer Bruce Lansbury, who was more than happy to emphasize the differing skills of the two leads. Particularly the idea of a weekly disguise for Artemus Gordon.

Ross Martin told TV Guide in 1966 that role had become a “show-off’s showcase” – and now, instead of being slumped over in a corner while West finished off twenty goons single-handedly, he was part of the story. In fact, he became so integral, that when he suffered a heart-attack during the show’s fourth season and was temporarily replaced, it was… not so great. The show really suffered in his absence.

Artie’s disguises usually started with a bare bones idea in the script. Then Ross Martin would make a sketch of what he wanted to do for the character’s look, and discuss the performance quirks with the director. Once it was all hashed out, he’d get together with the costume department, his makeup artist, a wig maker, and even a cobbler to polish off the finer details. 

And it really paid off, as we’ll see as we count down his top five disguises:

5. The Grand Elector of Saxony

“Everybody knows the Grand Elector of Saxony! In all the capitals of the world, I come and go as I please!”

That’s how you get into a party at the Albanian Embassy without an invitation.

In the season one episode “The Night of the Dancing Death” there’s a lot going on. There’s a sinister prince who is obsessed with literally fighting a bear in hand-to-hand combat, there’s a giant hole in the floor that opens up directly over a ballroom full of dignitaries, there’s a pretty lady switcheroo and a newfangled typewriter, and yet somehow the first thing everybody talks about is Artie’s disguise as a pompous dignitary.

It’s the little things in this one, like did you know that you address the Grand Elector as “Your Highness” and not “Your Grace?” And that the Grand Elector is never too busy to steal hors d’oeuvres?

It’s just fun.

4. Lt. Jonathan Greely

This is the best example of an Artemus Gordon disguise being more interesting than the episode it happens in. In “The Night of the Arrow,” West and Gordon are tasked with investigating a genocidal General’s recent successes. They come at it from opposite directions, with West trying to broker a truce with the Cheyenne while Artie goes undercover as a cavalryman.

He becomes proud Southerner and notable alcoholic Lt. Greely, who likes to remind people that the Civil War is over and that a true officer is never sober. It’s all part of a plan to get thrown in the stocks, but I would easily watch a whole show about this guy.

It’s also one of the few times he goes blond for a disguise, and his eyebrows look weird.

3. Hassan Amir Ortuglo

In “The Night of the Doomsday Formula” we’re treated to two separate disguises. The first is simply an impersonation of a missing scientist who’s invented an unstoppable chemical weapon. Pretty straightforward for the Secret Service’s man of many faces.

Next up, in order to infiltrate the Hadrian Club and face off against a dastardly arms dealer played by Kevin McCarthy, Artemus overreaches. It’s a pretty good sign that a disguise which is supposed to be a failure in the story itself has grown to be a fan favourite. The dastardly arms dealer isn’t falling for any of it when Artie tries to buy his way into the inner circle of doomsday device shoppers, but he keeps him around.

The best part is a sitar performance that goes awry when Artie’s pre-recorded music starts to skip.

2. Beldon Scoville Jr.

Ah, Beldon Scoville Jr., a Russian doll of identities.

In the final act of “The Night of the Undead,” phrenologist Phala recognizes the bumps on the head of Major Brainard, a bombastic Teddy Roosevelt type, as the same as the bumps she found on meek Beldon Scoville Jr.

Beldon had tumbled into a waterfront dive seemingly by accident, looking for a voodoo medallion to match one he’d already happened to find. He wanted to have a pair of earrings made for his Aunt Maude, despite the fact that those earrings would be hideously unwearable. What Phala thinks is that Beldon Scoville has disguised himself as Major Brainard – what she doesn’t know is that it’s all Artemus Gordon.

1. Sir Ian Jellicoe Cooper-Featherstone

“The Night of the Colonel’s Ghost” is a taut, creepy episode soaked in atmosphere and whodunit tension. As the body count rises in a haunted town, it’s only a matter of time before Artemus Gordon shows up to make sure Jim West doesn’t wind up with the next broken neck.

Of course, he couldn’t just show up as anybody, because even though there’s no way for the people of Gibsonville to recognize him, he has his job description. He dons his ultimate disguise as British big game hunter and tin star enthusiast Ian Jellicoe Cooper-Featherstone, a man who is absolute chuffed to be in a cursed town.

“It’s Sir Ian Jellicoe Cooper-Featherstone,” he cheerfully tells everybody gathered in the parlour after the most recent murder, “You may call me Sir.”

He manages to convince everybody except a green-feathered parrot who delights in chirping out: “Fraud! Fraud!” whenever he’s in the room. West is probably more amused by this than a good friend should be...

So that’s my top five! I’m sure I missed some favourites, because with over a hundred disguises under his belt, it’s a really tough thing to narrow down.

And don’t forget to check out the other fun and fabulous entries in the Classic TV Sidekicks Blogathon! It's been a great event with a ton of wonderful articles highlighting the finest supporting players in a century of great TV. I've really enjoyed participating in my first blogathan!

The Twilight Zone 05x23: Queen of the Nile

Today’s the anniversary of the opening of King Tut’s burial chamber by Howard Carter and George Herbert in 1923, and there’s no better way to celebrate random historical events than with thematically appropriate episodes of The Twilight Zone!

This time, we’re checking out a Season Five number called “Queen of the Nile,” with a script attributed to Charles Beaumont. Beaumont was a tragic, fascinating figure who helped shape the elements that are often best remembered about the series. Though Rod Serling tends to take up most of the conversations about TZ, many of the strongest episodes were penned by Beaumont.

But this is an episode from 1964, and by then the illness that would kill him at age 38 had begun to manifest. It’s widely known that while Beaumont was still pitching ideas for The Twilight Zone, as well as other anthology shows, he was beginning to rely on his writer friends to ghost the scripts and get them done in time for production. The general consensus is that the heavy lifting for this one was done by Jerry Sohl.

“He was, and remains in his work today, a writer of ideas, notions, fancies. You can tell his ideas to your friends in a few crisp lines,” Ray Bradbury said of Beaumont. “He is a storyteller who weaves his stories out of those ideas, some large, or, you may claim, predominantly small.”

My Living Doll

Have you ever let Amazon talk you into buying something? Like it keeps coming up in your recommendations, probably because you bought My Favourite Martian and Bewitched? And it seems so weird and also kind of like it might be terrible, but terrible in a way you want to discover? This is going to come as a surprise, but I’m asking these questions because of a recent personal experience where I bought a weird old show. It was all because of recommendation list trickery and the fact that Julie Newmar is in it, and who doesn’t like Julie Newmar?

It’s called My Living Doll and it’s really… not good.

And I now own every available episode on DVD! And I will tell you all about it so that you never have to watch it!

In 1964, CBS was very big on half-hour comedies, and they were looking for a new project for Jack Chertok, who had produced My Favourite Martian. Desilu, Lucille Ball’s company (she was always big on genre shows), got involved, and they wound up with the idea of a feminine robot learning how to be human. Julie Newmar, fresh off a Broadway success and impossibly good looking, would be the fembot. (This was the same season Bewitched debuted, and a year ahead of I Dream of Jeannie. They called the genre “novelty sitcoms” because science fiction and fantasy were for nerds. Same problem as today.) The show would be called The Living Doll, and it would have lots of zany mix-ups and Atomic Age humour. So far, we’re doing okay. This could be a lot worse, right?

Well, the fembot needed a supporting cast. There were a lot of names being kicked around, but they settled on Bob Cummings. Cummings had been the star of his own show (called The Bob Cummings Show – this is foreshadowing for a problem) back in the 1950’s. When that was over, he got a second show (called The New Bob Cummings Show) that flopped. Hard. And it flopped because it was just The Bob Cummings Show all over again and everyone had already seen that.

But, on his second show, he’d had a zany flying car, and he was hugely into aeronautics in his real life, and CBS liked him, and they thought he’d be a good fit and not oppose the sci-fi elements.

Problem Number One: The show was called THE Living Doll, like it wasn’t about Bob Cummings, and it had to be about Bob Cummings if Bob Cummings was in it. So, shouldn’t it be HIS Living Doll, or BOB’S Living Doll, so that people would know who the main character really was?

Hence the small but not-so-small change to My Living Doll.

Next up, all the press was about Julie Newmar having a TV show and not about Bob Cummings – noted and tested TV star – returning to America’s living rooms. Besides which, he really needs more screen time, don’t you think? I mean, who is this show really about? Who’s going to bring the audience, you know?

The story becomes about a Space Center psychiatrist who gets saddled with a secretly built android when the android's creator is unexpectedly transferred to Pakistan. Because the robot is patterned after a woman, the psychiatrist takes it upon himself to make certain that her emerging personality is docile, obedient and servile. Thankfully, the android doesn't really care about gender politics, and does whatever she wants, even though the 60's anti-feminism undertones remain disturbingly present throughout. (According to Julie Newmar, the Galatea and Pygmalion themes were much more obvious in the original concept. You can't build a perfect woman, because there's no real definition of perfection in human beings.)

Once the reviews started coming in, they all said that Bob and Julie had zero chemistry, and that he seemed too old for her, and his character was creepy, and the show should be more about the robot lady because everyone likes her. So Bob Cummings decided to write his own episode. Back on The Bob Cummings Show, the audience had always reacted really well to the episodes where he played his own grandfather – in the script he wrote, his ninety-three year old grandfather from Missouri, who was a veterinarian back home, would fly himself in with his 37 horsepower Taylor Cub. The robot would be at the beginning of the episode to meet “Grandpa,” and at the end of the episode to wave goodbye to him. The rest of the story would be, basically, Bob Cummings playing two characters talking to each other.

Jack Chertok said that this wasn’t going to happen. (Rightly so, because that idea was terrible.)

Bob Cummings quit and announced his intentions to sue CBS.

It was a step in the right direction for the show, but by then timeslot issues had struggled to find it viewers – at first it was on at the same time as Bonanza, and you can’t fight season five of Bonanza, that was like the best season. Then they moved it to Wednesdays to lead in to The Beverly Hillbillies, but it followed Mr. Ed, so the lineup went: talking horse with weirdly amazing chemistry with its co-stars, lady robot show being wrecked by male lead, surprisingly beloved redneck ensemble. See where the flow is breaking?

It wasn’t renewed for a second season.

The 35mm negatives of the series were destroyed in a 1994 earthquake, and the DVD collection available has only eleven episodes recovered from 16mm copies recovered from private collectors. (Always keep old tapes of weird things, history might call on you one day.) The Chertok Estate is searching for any other available episodes, so if by some freak chance you know of any, give them a call!

Oh! And Star Trek: Voyager fans might be interested in knowing that Julie Newmar’s character begins the series without a name, only a number. And that number is 709.