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.