Reilly - Ace of Spies and Hunt for Red October it is tonight…
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Some comments from Spielberg on Sam Neill:
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My mother loved Reilly Ace of spies tv series (in The Netherlands known as Reilly Meesterspion)
She even owned the vinyl single with the maintheme.
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Came across this…
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I recall reading (and please correct me if I’m wrong about this) that originally the stars of the show were supposed to be the Rampart General Hospital medical staff, played by Robert Fuller, Julie London and Bobby Troup. But, when the popularity of the paramedics became clear, Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto were moved front and center.
Kevin Tighe (who played family man DeSoto) has maintained a long career as a character actor. But maybe because of his heartthrob status on Emergency!, Mantooth didn’t achieve the same kind of success in his acting career. I confess to having a huge crush on him in junior high and high school, as did many other girls my age. May he rest in peace.
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Hal Williams…
R.I.P.
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The ‘ultimate all-round sportsman’ - Sobers could do it all Sir Garfield Sobers obituary: West Indies legendary all-rounder remembered - BBC Sport
RIP
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I’m not an expert on the behind-the-scenes history of the show, but the way I always heard it the original intent was to do for firefighters what Adam-12 had done for policemen, but someone realized early on that the variety of stories and situations would be a lot more limited, so they hit upon the idea of focusing on the still fairly new paramedics program. Add in the medical team at Rampart Hospital, and now you’ve got lots of possibilities: daring rescues, medical emergencies, four-alarm fires, House-like mysteries for the doctors to solve, high-stakes surgeries, etc. And it was nice that it gave a picture of how interconnected the whole system was; it made you feel like there was a real safety net of emergency services out there if you were ever unlucky enough to need them.
I think you’re right that the hospital team may have been envisioned as the anchors for the show from an acting standpoint; Fuller had been on TV for a long time already and had a following, and Julie London had been in some movies. In comparison, Tighe and Mantooth seemed like real newbies, and some of the other firefighters often seemed not to be actors at all. In the pilot episode, Fuller’s character has a lot bigger part than the rest of the series, with an arc where starts out skeptical of the “paramedic” idea but ends up making an impassioned plea for it to the California legislature, resulting in the needed funding. But I don’t interpret that as evidence the show itself was originally intended to focus primarily on Dr Brackett.
Kevin Tighe (who played family man DeSoto) has maintained a long career as a character actor. But maybe because of his heartthrob status on Emergency!, Mantooth didn’t achieve the same kind of success in his acting career. I confess to having a huge crush on him in junior high and high school, as did many other girls my age. May he rest in peace.
Mantooth showed up here and there in bit parts on TV and had a long run on a soap opera. It helped that he kept his good looks up to the end.
But yeah, Tighe definitely stayed busier with films, including Roadhouse and last year’s One Battle After Another. I know everyone likes to talk about “movie star looks” but generally speaking, there’s more job security in looking “likable” than “pretty” if you’re a guy. The “leading man” business is pretty cutthroat and, with a few exceptions like Tom Cruise, generally short-lived, whereas character actors keep going and going. I think of that every time I see “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and realize Alan Hale played Little John three times: in 1922, 1938 and 1950! When you need a lead, you say “Get me the next Errol Flynn” but when you need the lovable sidekick you say, “Get me Alan Hale.” That’s job security.
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A childhood hero…
R.I.P.
Addendum: He even had his own comic strip (briefly) in Germany’s Zack Magazine (and I think 2000 A.D. in the UK).
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Earle Dumler, renowned oboist and English horn player, passed away:
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His Body Worlds exhibition was the setting for CRs Miami museum scenes, and he also had a blink and you’ll miss him cameo in the movie.
I’d say R.I.P., but that clearly is not what he wanted.
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“Every deceased body I have seen has shown me the absence of the soul. I don’t believe anything is left of us after we die.”
I don’t think he’d get much argument from the religious faithful that a corpse is the wrong place to look for a soul. Not sure how not spotting one in his subjects “proves” anything, especially since you can’t pinpoint or scientifically measure a soul in life, either.
Also, I don’t know how he can say nothing is left after we die, or else what did all his customers pay tickets to view?
But whatever, I guess it takes all kinds. Or as my grandma used to say, “It doesn’t take all kinds, but we’ve got ‘em all anyway.”
That said, it’s hard to imagine a more Flemingesque backdrop for a Bond film scene. If this had been around when Fleming was alive, I’m sure he’d have worked it into a novel.
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Have to say the Body Worlds was even wasted as a brief backdrop in CASINO ROYALE. I would have expected something like it decorating the villain‘s lair. Fleming would likely have been equal parts fascinated and appalled by the exposition and might have included it as hobby - fetish? - of Smersh General G or one of the various Nazis in Spectre. It’s the materialist creed boiled down to the bone and symbolises the nihilism Bond battles.
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A dear friend who encouraged me to be exacting, careful, and most of all, fearless in my film writing. A kind man who encouraged disagreement as intellectually healthy, and was never less than supportive, no matter where we stood. He was also a great and pioneering scholar of the films of Robert Aldrich.
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