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Today's unintentional cutup

Yahoo News.

TV's JFK

The Tuscaloosa News

Since it's November and some of us still remember when they killed the President, it seems like a good time to combine that with our monthly focus on Old TV Guys, and look at the best and worst JFKs through the years.

The IMDB has a list of 23, but it's not complete.  And because his wife was a historic character in her own right, John Fitzgerald Kennedy (perhaps our most show-biz president) has a couple dozen+ portrayals popping up here and there.  

 

I can't pretend to have seen most of them.  But I am a lifelong fan, both of Old TV Guys and JFK, so without further ado, here's the ones I have seen.

 

 

Sam Groom, Blood Feud (1983)

20th Century Fox TV

   

Strictly two-dimensional.  In the championship bout between Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, Groom's sing-songy lightweight won't even enter the ring.  "But Bobby- what will Dad say?"  He'll say, forget it.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cliff Robertson, PT 109 (1963)

Warner Bros

Robertson's genial Shafty seems off-hand, but he captures Kennedy's essential opacity, hidden as it is beneath the charming veneer.  He really was a detached kind of person.  The interesting thing about this film is the legend that it was shot in the Caribbean while the anti-Castro Cubans were practicing their invasion. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

William Jordan, King (1978) 

Filmways Television

 

They don't give him much to do except sit in his rocking chair and look Presidential.  But Jordan's pretty good at sitting there like a trustworthy authority of some kind, deputy sheriff, president, whatever. 

 

(To put a finer point on this post, he and Gordon Pinsent are the only actors on this page I'd consider in the Old TV Guy group- the rest are just stars.)

  

 

 

 

 

Martin Sheen, Kennedy (1983) 

Alan Landsburg Productions

 

He was President Bartlet, and Bobby in The Missiles of October (mentioned below).    Sheen played the big guy himself in this 3-part epic, hitting all the Cliff's Notes, and throwing in a lot of color- I didn't know J Edgar Hoover made him wiretap Martin Luther King by threatening to expose Kennedy's extramarital affairs.  That's pretty frank. 

 

But the genius casting in this film is Blair Brown's note-perfect Jackie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, Vincent Gardenia as J Edgar Hoover, who goes around with a Sinister Light shining up into his face, in a satisfactorily scary way.  "Both men pursued the Swedish woman...the father and the son!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of Jackie, there were two bios of her in 1981, which gives you an idea of the demand for JFK as a supporting character.  The Presidential hubbies (to use a word of the era) were James Franciscus-

ABC Circle Films

(Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, with Jaclyn Smith)

 

 

 

                                                                          

  

 

                                                 

 

Lester Persky Productions

 

 

                                       

                                                      -and Stephen Collins.

 

                  (A Woman Named Jackie, with Roma Downey) 

  

These are two films I have not seen, so I don't know how they were in the role.  But they seem appropriately Kennedyesque; Franciscus was even one of the clean-cut Kennedy-Looking Guys running around Hollywood in the late 50s-early 60s, with Roberts Redford & Culp, Tab Hunter, Doug McClure, etc. 

 

 

 

William Devane, The Missiles of October (1974) 

Maljack/Viacom Productions

 

 

 

Devane's best and strongest feature is his close resemblance to Herblock's JFK.

 

 I have a problem sitting through this one, even though it's loaded with Those Guys- John Dehner as Dean Acheson, James Hong as U Thant, Howard da Silva as Khrushchev, even perennial military-guy Andrew Duggan as General Maxwell Taylor.

   

I should love it.  But Martin Sheen seems to think RFK was perpetually angry, with a hair-trigger temper (when it was actually RFK's calm suggestion that solved the crisis).   He really needs to take a Miltown or something. 

 

 

 

Gordon Pinsent as "The President", Colossus, the Forbin Project (1970)

 

Universal Pictures

My personal favorite, even though he's not exactly JFK- but who is?  

Pinsent's commanding squint, his ability to project a steely (though misinformed) calm, resonates well with memory.  In fact, the eerie resemblance gives this film an alternate-history sort of vibe; what if there'd been no Dallas?  Would Fate have found a more suitable trap for the New Frontier?  

The road not taken, and all that.  Lost but for image, and falling flakes of sound. 

Dueling Presidents

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if those two crazy knucklehead Presidents in Fail Safe and Dr Strangelove had got each other on the phone, instead of the Soviet premier?  It might have gone something like this...

 Play (1:38) 

Winston Churchill on rebuilding the House of Commons

Mr Churchill has some thoughts on why the British House of Commons might be a superior venue for democracy: it's not round, and there's not enough room.  I think he might be right.

Earl Holliman + Back on the Air?

A couple offerings this week-  

"The Four Stages of Earl Holliman" is a leftover from "The F Production", which ended up being a brief meditation-- going from the customary statements of Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis, to what might be called Whatisthis- the overwhelming acknowledgment of Self. 

 

Play (0:15) 

Very brief.  But that FBI announcer guy might turn up with something else sometime.

 

 

"Back On the Air?" refers to the transitory nature of this form of art.  It's inspired by the old-time radio of Arthur Haversham Nockley, American broadcaster and mystic.  I always find comfort in the wise sounds of those who have gone before.  

 

Oh, okay.  What are some of those tracks?  You may hear 

- Mel Blanc saying "Wait a minute!" from Fibber McGee and Molly.

- Benny Goodman and His Orchestra, playing "Let's Dance".

- The Double-Talker Guy on the Jack Benny Show in 1941 or 42.

- Arthur Godfrey doing the morning show at WJSV, Sept 21, 1939.  

 

 Play (4:07)

Echo Poem

A setting for a telephone call-in poem, many years ago on the radio.  (Radio Free Oz, KRLA, August 1966, with Peter Bergman and Paul Robbins, and people on the phone.)

play (2:54)

AI is Ruining the Art of Character-Actor Spotting

I originally dropped some polemical comments with this post.  But the post itself wasn't sitting right.  A blog can be a soapbox.  But like we say, No Soap Radio.  People can think what they want.

 

The impetus was Google's response to a search:

 

It should be obvious what something like this does to the info stream.  Wholesale BS.  It's actually going beyond the inquiry to spew out more crap.  My point was, and is, some person is making it do this.  Computers can't do anything without instructions.  I guess they simply want it to shoot out false info like a firehose.  Oh well.  We just make sounds at this site.  

Don Keefer in Soylent Green?

Soylent Green (1973), 55m12s

This how it happens.  You're watching a movie for the 10th or 20th time, and something sets off a flash of recognition.  I think it's those blue eyes this time, and the jowls.  But no verification in the credits.  Is it him?  Is it really him?

Some of these guys and gals were in so many shows, it's like "try to not recognize them".  They were working actors, their agents would call, and boom, a few bucks for 5 minutes on Rockford or Petticoat Junction.  

Meet Don Keefer: about 4 gigs a year in TV and movies, for 50 years.  Mission Impossible, Gunsmoke, Columbo, The Waltons, Green Acres, The FBI, Bewitched, etc.

One of those competent, anonymous background guys, in the next level down from the star.

Actors such as Harlan Warde, HM Wynant, Doodles Weaver...wait a minute, how'd he get in there-

Mr Keefer's name is easy to remember, because he was the court stenographer in The Caine Mutiny, 

where Fred MacMurray plays a character named Keefer.
Unfortunately, they're not in the same shot, so we have to imagine it with the help of this re-creation.

Don Keefer did a lot of shows, yet can be pretty hard to spot (thus fufilling the two main criteria for Old TV Guy-dom).  For example, it took years for me to recognize him as the brakeman in Butch Cassidy-

but again the eyes are a giveaway.  And he usually had a mustache.  

Looks a little like Warren Oates.

Mr Keefer lived to be 98, making him one of the oldest Old TV Guys.  
He was married to Catherine MacLeod, a noted Masonite.

 

He wrapped up his career as one of those guys in the 1997 film Liar, Liar, as a panhandler. 
But his main claim to fame (I think you Twilight Zone fans might already know-)

He was Jack-in-the-Box Guy on Twilight Zone: "It's a Good Life"!  Beat that, Harlan Warde! 

 

 

As for this week's recognition-call:  

 

First, let's appreciate that it's a true unconfirmed sighting; Soylent Green isn't in his IMDB credits, and googling "Don Keefer Soylent Green" turns up something for the notes*.  But no known association between him and the film.  We're starting totally in the dark.  

 

If he was in Soylent Green, maybe he just wandered onto the set that day.  (More likely, an old buddy gave him the tip-- Brock Peters?  Edward G Robinson?)  But if, if...let's go to the tape.

 

Similar nose, lower lip, similar expression on mouth, blue eyes.  Unknown Guy has bushier eyebrows.

Here's the profile.  Ears are loaded with character.

Mr Keefer seems to have a distinctive structure in his upper ear, a kind of cartilaginous mass in the inferior crus where it joins the helix.  (Those two little ridges in the upper left.)  So does Unknown Guy.  That's pretty close.  Their ears, in fact, seem to be identical.  And the nose and chin are pretty similar.  And if those are Unknown Guy's real eyebrows, I'm David Ferrie.

Well, it ain't William Demarest.  It's just, in this game, one should always err on the side of caution.  But I think the similarities are strong enough to say, good possibility it's him.  Working actor and all.  There'd have to be a Don-Keefer-looking-guy I'm not aware of.  (We'll discuss look-alike Old TV Guys at another time.)  I'll give it a strong "possible".  

-----
* While writing up this post, I was confronted with a gross example of AI erroneously identifying character actors.  Will have more to say about that later, too.

Best Tracks of the Year

It's the Cutupsound Dancers!

Time for our first annual Oct-Sep Year in Review.  (This blog actually started in September of 2008, and found its voice again a year ago, so we're on a fiscal year.  Besides, I used to be a bookkeeper.)

Our 60 posts this year have included 37 audio posts, appearing with the help of Box.com.  This isn't a commercial, but I do want to mention my appreciation for Box's reliability and (lack of) cost.  I've been using it here for 17 years, and it's always worked- a rarity in the tech world.  

A year ago, I resumed regular posts with the idea of three audio per month, and one commentary on movie/TV "character actors" of the Minor Arcana.  With the idea of trying to see if I could ultimately do three new audio bits per month.  How's that gone?

37 posts / 12 months = 3+ every month.  So, the basic goal was met.  How many of them were "new", as in, "appearing here for the first time"?  

The stats: 

14 new 

15 created previously (sometimes, very previously), maybe posted earlier

3 made for a CD that wasn't done, posted earlier and removed

2 extracted from podcasts elsewhere on the site

3 unaltered audio by other people

 

I've been thinking about the proportion of new bits.  Can we get it higher this year?  It's going to take some kind of cognitive framework.  We'll continue to experiment.  The results are all that matter.  Giving it another year.

 

And now...Cutupsound's Best Bits of the Year, October 2025!  Here in one handy spot.

 

Oct 2024: Killers Car Race (9:28)

Nov: The 1812 Overdub (4:38)

Dec: D-Day Trout (4:21)

Jan 2025: Auf Der Hop (2:29)

Mar: The F Production (1:51), and 

     American Fantasy (5:23) 

Jun: Broken Record Sale 2014 (16:35)

 

7 tracks,  45 minutes.  The 3 made for the never-did CD, plus the rest all new.  

This is kind of a CD-y thing, almost.  Are we still doing those?  

Ya got me- I'm just trying to dig into this mass of audio before it dissolves back into vanilla electrons.  

Next week: our monthly Old TV Guy feature.  Audio resumes on October 19.  

Ads from CD #2

 

Submitted for your approval.  I guess we're on re-runs, or something, while we get around to finding a new sound editor.  

Crimes (one)  (0:36)

Smokin' (0:49)

Sleep U Sleeping (0:51)

CD 2 on Bandcamp (I'm not really asking you to purchase a copy of CD 2.  You can play the tracks for free, and "tape" them, as we kids used to say, off the computer.  And I'm thinking of closing down the Bandcamp site anyway, and moving everything to the Internet Archive; it is, after all, the great retirement home for old Audio.  First, though, we really got to get back to making new stuff.)  

 

June Foray's birthday

 

Voice One

#108 was last Thursday, Sept 18.  The task of going through the immense quantity of her work for a representative sample was beyond us this year, so I merely compiled some items from Jay Ward Productions, mostly Fractured Fairy Tales.  

Although I could have started with what she was doing 20 years before that.  One of the treats of listening to Old Time Radio is hearing voices you recognize, and you can hear Ralphy Phillips' sincere and earnest young mom doing radio back in the day.  

Her work on FFT is basically four voices- Witch Hazel, the Nice Lady, the New York Gal and Ma Kettle.  You'll also hear her as Rocket J Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, the Newsboy, Nell Fenwick, and probably others.  She's assisted by Paul Frees, Bill Conrad, Bill Scott, Daws Butler and Edward Everett Horton.  

I closed it with the outro for Bullwinkle's Corner, which was part of the show she was usually not on.  But I realized, a little while ago, it's the musical equivalent to a vaudeville curtain coming down: screaming pullies, the double-thump.  Seemed appropriate (but if I do a bit for Bill Scott, he's out of luck).

Happy Birthday, June (4:15)

My last project on Audacity

What a weird logo.  Is it supposed to look like an ugly mouth full of yellow fangs?  I mean, sound waves are symmetrical, above and below the line; the tips should be matching each other, not all jagged.  Also, they're usually not a sequence of little triangles.  And why is it red if it's not a mouth?  It really is a beast.

It's a beast I've been using to make audio since I was knee-high to a Klipsch corner horn.  It wasn't the first or second visual sound file editor I ever used. But it's been the warp and woof of my warped woofs for some time.  Heck, it's free!  

 

I've been using less than the latest version for the last few years, because the new one introduced drop-outs into the playback, where the sound disappears for a second.  It was discussed on the internet at the time.   

 

Audacity was very good for clipping sound files and re-arranging the pieces, which is about all we do here (well, and write up about Old TV Guys).  But Audacity and I are at the breakup.  I just can't get it to quit ultra-zooming down to the micro level.  Why would I even want a control that allows me to select and examine an interval << 1 micro-second?  I'm trying to get it to zoom out to the whole file, and every time I click the mouse, the selection gets teenier and teenier.  

 

O-kay, that's about enough of this.  I will finish the project for next Sunday, if I can.  But I can't put up with this crap.  

Dick Van Dyke is 100 in (checks notes)

 

There's a new Dick Van Dyke documentary.  He's not 100 until December 13, but the news item made it sound like it's any day now, and I basically wrote today's post before checking, so this is what we got. 

Maybe it's a little premature.  Still, he is 99, although spry as a normal 60 year old.  The others are all gone- Laura and Sally and Buddy, Mel and Alan and (I guess) Marge, Jerry and Millie.  His brother Stacy, too.  

The Sandwich Guy is still around- 

Jamie Farr

but no one else outlived the Dancer.  More power to doing things that are fun for a living.

One of the most cherished items in my humble video stash is the complete Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-66).  It's the ultimate comfort TV; can be totally in the background for household chores, a (generally) happy sight/sound, lighting up its little box with uniquely comedic situations.
 

 

There are however, episodes I'll never watch.  I don't want to step on the toes of any other hard-core DVD fans  (the SNL skit about the Joey Bishop fans comes to mind).  But really- it's like watching your parents' friends trying to act silly.  

Sitcoms of the early 60s were still close enough to Vaudeville to throw in a little of the old soft-shoe-and-moxie.

(Oh my god, what did they do to his head?  It's like half of a gigantic cheese wheel!)

And the Dick Van Dyke Show was a show about show biz.  They even brought back a few Old Time Radio folks to play characters now and then.  

And of course there was (wheep-boom!) Rose Marie, who was about as show-busy as they got!

  

The brief interaction of these two distinct periods- kick-in-the-slats vaudeville and buttoned-down entertainment television- created some historic moments of Cringe, as the artists struggled to adapt strategies that worked better on stage.  This generally resulted in kind of half-baked "impromptu" song and dance routines that were silly without being particularly charming.

There is one Dick Van Dyke episode, however, that blows apart any restraint, a dive into full Holiday Season Cringe: the 1963 Christmas Show. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I take it the apparatus on the right is supposed to represent a Fella.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Well, pa-rump-a-pum-PUM!", as motivational speaker Matt Foley would say. 

 

 

 

  

 

 

"My tuba, my tuba, they love to hear my tuba!  BRA-BRA, BRABRABRA!"

It's like watching your parents and the neighbors put on a talent show.  For your friends.

 

 

 

There was also emotional awkwardness, usually involving Sally or Richie.  For instance, Rob's uncle making a play for Sally was depicted in all its poignant embarrassingness. 

 (Although I will say, Denver Pyle is the guy who should have been playing Rob's Dad.  Not only does he look like Rob and Stacy, he's a nut.  

It would have filled out Rob's character like George's parents on Seinfeld.  As it was, Rob had 3 dads, including a couple little bald guys.

As if.)

Finally, there were awkward episodes where they would, essentially, go off-character for the sake of the plot.  Rob would inexplicably turn nit-picky or adopt an adolescent attitude about his marriage, thus, pathos.  But the strength of the characters was in how they applied their innate good sense; they were pretty bright folks, and when the plot twist depended on one or both being childish, it never rang true.  

On the good side, though, with all the intentional awkwardness, there were times when it kind of sparked and turned meta.  Such as the show biz debut of Little Mel.

Shut up, Little Mel!

 And Fred Blassie 

(5-times former world's heavyweight wrestling champeen, and sworn enemy of Pencilnecks everywhere), who gets curious about why Rob picked the hottest day of the summer to button up his collar all the way.  (There's also some Cringe in this episode, when they launch a new dance sensation.)

 (Not this part.)

Further fun may be found at the Internet Archive.  At least for the time being.