Why is Steve Austin's Boss in a Trench on the Western Front?

So I was watching an episode of the early 1960s TV Western Laramie and a familiar face appeared underneath the black hat of the villain for that episode.  It was an unnerving recognition.  I wanted to speak to him. I wanted to say, "Professor!  What are you doing here?  This is all wrong. Get back on your horse, ride out of town, trade those cowboy boots for the Keds we both know you ought to be wearing,  and go back to Gilligan's Island where you belong."

I wonder if this is a not-uncommon Boomer / X-er experience: that unsettling moment when you see an actor you grew up watching in his or her definitive TV role show up in a movie or TV role that predates the role you know them in.  You have a certain image of these people cemented in your head, and something from the past bubbles up to disrupt it.  It is like finding a picture of your parents in a previously unimaginable context, like the first time I saw my father's ROTC pictures in his high school yearbook.  Pop in a military uniform was jarring to see, but of course it was important to realize that he had a long past that was invisible to me.  Shouldn't the same principle have applied to the the TV actors I watched?  I mean, it was clear that Ron Howard hadn't sprung into existence as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days - I had seen him as Opie on Andy Griffith reruns – and so I should have known, even though I hadn’t seen visual evidence, that there must be earlier screen incarnations of, say, Fred MacMurray, the man I knew as kindly Steve Douglas in My Three Sons. And yet nothing could prepare me for seeing him in all those rat bastard roles he used to play in the 40s and 50s, such as J.D. Sheldrake in The Apartment.   Oh, Mr. Douglas, how can you be so mean to Shirley MacLaine?  What would Chip and Ernie say?

As a fan of old movies I’ve experienced these unnerving encounters quite a few times. These are ten that stand out to me: 

Lou Grant / El Dorado (1967). Mary Tyler Moore’s grouchy boss is a ruthless land baron in this John Wayne / Robert Mitchum vehicle. He was clearly more at home in a newsroom, though in both contexts he was afflicted with inept underlings. Ted Baxter would have been right at home as one of his cloddish henchmen in the Old West. 

Louise Jefferson / The New Centurions (1972). One’s first impulse is to exclaim, “Weezie, what are you doing here as a wisecracking LA streetwalker on chummy terms with tough cop George C. Scott?” Then you remember it is 1972 and the stereotyped, severely limited roles made available to black actors and go, “Oh, O.K. You do what you have to do. But trust me, a deeluxe apartment in the sky is in your future.” 

Archie Bunker / Lonely Are the Brave (1962). Having to live with the knowledge that he ran over outlaw Kirk Douglas’ highly meaningful horse on a rainy night in the Southwest explains a lot about Archie’s constant hostility. 

Col. Potter / Orchestra Wives (1942). You’re a soda jerk who has saved up all week to take Ann Rutherford to the big dance over in Dixon, only to get aced out by dreamy big band trumpeter George Montgomery. Experiences like this one prepare you to command a Korean War military hospital. 

Oscar Goldman / Paths of Glory (1957). As you watch him serve as sycophantic flunky to a bloodthirsty French General in WW1, Waylon Smithers in the trenches, you can already hear him saying, “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology . . .” 

Shirley Partridge / The Music Man (1962). Would Reuben Kincaid have signed Marian the Librarian to a contract? Doubtful.  

“Rocky” Rockford / The Fastest Gun Alive (1956). Jim Rockford’s charmingly crusty dad was almost always an exasperated sidekick, it seems, even when he was with the bad guys, in this case a surly Broderick Crawford.

Quincy / Twelve Angry Men (1957). The future medical examiner gets some early CSI practice, straightening out some fools about how one actually cuts a man with a switchblade. 

Officer Pete Malloy / The Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Is one of the squarest TV actors of all time really plausible as a famous jazz guitarist? Why is he in the Chico Hamilton Quintet instead of the Lawrence Welk Orchestra where he clearly belongs?  Thanks to the awesomeness of Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster in this film, we never have to dwell too much on this bit of discordant casting. Bonus points for Bewitched Darrin’s boss Larry Tate as a sleazy gossip columnist – much more believable. 

Master Po / Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937). Apparently the road to becoming a blind, wisdom-spouting Kung Fu master goes through a youthful period of being an overeager doofus. And the journey took 40 years! And yet even after those 40 years he still found himself opposite a white guy pretending to be a Chinese guy.  The more things change . . . 

EDIT:  Kudos to Marc for this contribution!   How the sight of these two Taxi cast members appearing in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest must have freaked out TV viewers a few years younger than myself.  

GOP Must Renounce the BS

In the aftermath of the violent coup attempt at the capitol there have been attempts to

analogize what happened there to violence at Black Lives Matter protests over the summer.  There may be some superficial parallels, but on the whole the analogy doesn’t stand up to any serious, good-faith scrutiny.  Others have made that case way better than I ever could.  For this observer, one of the most salient ways that the two situations differ is in law enforcement behavior.  Another - the one I'm concerned with here - is that that the core stated grievance of the capitol rioters – that the election was stolen – is rooted in NOTHING.  The big lie of consequential election fraud, a genie Republicans let out of the bottle long before Trump was ever on the political scene and that as our unhinged President he has invoked without shame to account for his loss, may be something that the rioters sincerely believe.  It may be, as Adam Serwer convincingly argues, that the rioters know there was no fraud but in their hearts believe that Democratic votes are illegitimate by definition.  Whatever the case, the wholly bogus contention that Trump was robbed must not be countenanced in any way or even viewed with indulgent pity.   It must be purged out of our political discourse if we are to move forward. 

 

And as Kevin McCarthy and other Republican leaders who don’t want to see Trump impeached try to pivot to kumbayah “better angels of our nature” “why can’t we all just get along” “it is time for national healing” talk, the reality that “stop the steal” is complete bullshit needs to be reiterated again and again and again.  The events of January 6 were not about a legitimate difference of opinion that we can put behind us now.  The Republican members of congress who voted against certifying electors were playing along with the highly toxic lie that motivated the rioters who took over the capital in a pathetic but bloody and very real coup attempt just a few hours before.  They endorsed the election fraud lie and voted to overturn the results of a free and fair election.  They participated in the coup attempt.  Now that they're reaping what they have sown it is understandable that so many of them want to "just move on."  That cannot be allowed to happen.  

 

It would be a great thing for our country for political leaders of both parties to reach a level of political amity where they can work together to solve the daunting problems that are before us.   But no truce of that kind can ever happen until Republicans loudly, forthrightly, unequivocally renounce the bullshit so many of them have perpetrated.