Mrs Housewife

 

(1:33) Living chemistry through better.  If I do one of these every week, maybe we'll get enough for an Old Time Cutup Radio stream.  

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Speed of G

 (0:45) Continuing to play out the string of old bits while trying to establish a routine that delivers fresh audio every week.  This one was up a decade ago, might have made it onto the Bandcamp collections.  Or not.  Kind of running out of this stuff.  

No picture this week because Google's started asking for special cookie access, and I'm already a little weirded-out by their map change to The United States of Bonerland-- no, that was Bart Simpson.  Anyway, changes may be coming.  But you may rest assured that Cutupsound will continue to post, if not new audio, extremely unfamiliar audio, every Sunday around noon.  (Except for Old TV Guy Day, second Sunday.)  And now, this week's bit.

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Old TV: The Masonic Movie Rating System

 Hello and welcome to today's experiment.  Today we'll attempt to discover what, if any, use there may be for a movie rating system incorporating the number of times the actors appeared on the CBS Television series, Perry Mason (1957-1966).  271 episodes of this program were produced at the height of Network TVs glory years, ensuring a high-quality procession of the working actors of that time and, perhaps, turning into an indication of heretofore unrealized movie types and flavors.

I first noticed this while watching Earth Vs the Flying Saucers (1956), which has 13 Masonites.  (Their names are followed by the number of times they appeared on Mason.)

Morris Ankrum, 22
Larry Blake, 3
Donald Curtis, 1
Thomas Browne Henry, 3
Clark Howat, 6
Harry Lauter, 1
Hugh Marlowe, 6
Alan Reynolds, 1
Grandon Rhodes, 16
Bert Stevens, 1
Frank Wilcox, 8
John Zaremba, 5
Dale Van Sickel ("Man Crushed Beneath Wall"), 1

Ankrum and Rhodes were judges.  Thomas Browne Henry was that TS Eliot-looking guy who played generals.  Hugh Marlowe, Mr L-7 himself.  And Frank Wilcox was everywhere.   

So, some big names, and about 3/4's smaller fry.  What about other films from then?

 Classic Hollywood: The Caine Mutiny (1954) = 16

Claude Akins, 1
Don Anderson, 3
Herbert Anderson, 1 (aka, "Dennis the Menace's Dad")
James Best, 2
Whit Bissell, 4 (Yeah, name something he wasn't in.)
Robert Bray, 3 (he was the Angry Astronaut)
Steve Brodie, 3
Don Dillaway, 4
Don Dubbins, 7
Arthur Franz, 5
Roy Jenson, 1
Kenneth MacDonald, 32 (did you know he was in a 3 Stooges film?)
Steve Pendleton, 1
Bert Stevens, 1
Tom Tully, 2
May Wynn, 1


Western: Day of the Badman (1958) = 20

Chris Alcaide, 2
Edgar Buchanan, 2
Peggy Converse, 2
Christopher Dark, 1
Ann Doran, 3
Robert Foulk, 4
Don Haggerty, 1
Chuck Hamilton, 1
Skip Homeier, 2
I. Stanford Jolley, 2
Jess Kirkpatrick, 1
Tom London, 1
Kenneth MacDonald, 32 (yay!)
Robert Middleton, 1
Hank Patterson, 1
Jack Perrin, 1
Harry Tyler, 3
Lee Van Cleef, 1
Joan Weldon, 1
Marie Windsor, 5

Science-Fiction: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) = 13

Whit Bissell, 4
Virginia Christine, 3
Bobby Clark, 1
Richard Deacon, 1
Ralph Dumke, 2
Everett Glass, 1
Tom Fadden, 4
Dabbs Greer, 8
Frank Hagney, 3
Robert Osterloh, 2
Kenneth Patterson, 2
Guy Rennie, 1
Jean Willes, 2
and no Kenneth MacDonald

 

Conclusion: if these films are statistically average representations, we find that Masonites tend to congregate in westerns, instead of noirs as might have been expected. This is probably due to the fact that Hollywood quit making noirs by the late 50s, but they're always making westerns.  And the lunchbucket workaday yeoman actors who populated Mason ended up there.  It also looks like a steady dozen or so appear in your average sci-fi.

These conclusions might be undone by further research- I don't think anyone's considered it on this level, and I might, later.  I'll try to start writing it early enough to include some pictures next time.

 

 

William S Burroughs birthday, 2025

 

February 5, 1914.  This year's offering was originally created for late-nite radio.

Play (4:48)