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countesspetofi · 1 day

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Today in the Department of Before They Were Star Trek Stars, DeForest Kelley guest stars in "No Amnesty for Death," episode 25 of the third season of Bat Masterson (original air date March 30, 1961).

Kelley plays one of three men who are about to be hanged for their participation in the Lincoln County War when Bat Masterson arrives with a last-minute pardon, to the horror of the local sheriff, whose sons were killed in the conflict. As soon as the prisoners are released, they immediately rob a stagecoach and Kelley kills the driver. Masterson helps track them down, but instead of arresting them the sheriff starts a gunfight in which he and Kelley are both killed. Another perfectly good saloon floor ruined.

#star trek #star trek tos #star trek the original series #bat masterson #1960s tv #tv sci fi #tv western #deforest kelley #r.g. armstrong #james anderson #billy wells #gene barry

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20th-century-man · 6 months

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Elizabeth Montgomery / on the set of Bewitched (ABC 1964-72) in 1967.

#Elizabeth Montgomery #Bewitched #1967 #tv #1960s tv #1960s

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fibula-rasa · 7 months

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Cosplay the Classics: Elizabeth Montgomery in “Two”

“Two” first aired on 15 September 1961 and is the first episode of the third season of The Twilight Zone. Sadly, “Two” is the only episode that features Elizabeth Montgomery.

Montgomery was nearly ten years into her professional career in 1961. She had already carved out a solid resume in television, appearing prolifically on anthology and episodic shows and occasionally stretched her legs on the New York stage. Samantha Stephens was still three years away when Montgomery took her voyage through The Twilight Zone.

In its five seasons, The Twilight Zone was a crossroads of up-and-coming and well-established performers. “Two” paired the rising star Montgomery with Charles Bronson, who had a decade more acting experience in TV and film than Montgomery. Though Bronson was the more established star, “Two” is Montgomery’s showcase.

Read on below the jump!

“Two” relies on minimal dialogue throughout and notably Montgomery only has a single line spoken. The role relies almost entirely on Montgomery’s action/reaction, expression, and styling. The episode begins on Montgomery as The Woman wandering an abandoned city. The first nine minutes of the episode pass with no dialogue, with context given by visual elements and Serling’s opening narration. The entire episode takes place on a small section of city street (at the old Hal Roach studios, conveniently already in disrepair).

We learn through newspapers and magazines that this city is in The Man’s homeland, invaded by The Woman’s nation’s army. Signs of the city’s long five-year abandonment are everywhere, including full skeletons left where they fell. (The macabre element of skeletons is used sparingly across the Twilight Zone and usually in circumstances less grounded in reality than “Two,” such as “Long Live Walter Jameson” and “Queen of the Nile.”) As The Man mulls over his first encounter with The Woman a dove flies up behind him as a symbol of his genuine desire for peace. Through a variety of posters and advertisements, we learn that The Man’s homeland had a culture heavily invested in war.

Collage of the war-related paraphernalia in “Two”

All of that is solid storytelling, but Montgomery’s acting adds an extra something. When The Woman first encounters The Man, Montgomery performs hair-trigger reactivity. Despite The Woman’s dire situation—a stranded foreigner in a decimated country with seemingly no chance to ever return home—her reluctance to trust The Man is significant. Pairing Montgomery’s wordless portrayal of these responses with the jingoistic quality of The Man’s homeland and the notable length of time that the city has been abandoned makes me feel that her feelings might not be a simple holdover of wartime hostility on her part but potentially extended trauma. Perhaps The Woman had previous awful experiences with other straggling remnants of The Man’s military, who may not have been as ready as The Man to give up wartime attitudes in spite of the war clearly being over.

The Woman is understandably acting like a cornered animal. As the episode progresses, The Man tries to be as calculated as possible in communicating to The Woman that he doesn’t want a fight through his actions, turning his back to her, and not retaliating the third time she launches an attack on him. Montgomery, in turn, does a great job of drawing out the cornered animal characterization—alternating between curiosity, hope, mistrust, and open hostility. Montgomery’s characterization gives the role the added dimension that saves the episode from feeling too much like an overly simple fable.

Unfortunately, it’s in executing the fabular aspect of the story where “Two” falters. The opening narration by Serling specifies:

“It’s been five years since a human being walked these streets. This is the first day of the sixth year as man used to measure time. “The time: perhaps a hundred years from now, or sooner, or perhaps it’s already happened two-million years ago. The place: The signposts are in English so that we may read them more easily, but the place is The Twilight Zone.”

It’s established here that the location is meant to be a stand-in for any city in any country, and that the use of English is merely a storytelling convenience. So, even though “Two” is intended as a Cold-War era anti-war statement, they are intentionally distancing the fiction from the contemporary real-world conflict. To create further distance from a contemporary place/time, they establish that the rifles are laser guns.

But, then, that one line that Montgomery speaks in “Two,” seventeen minutes in, is “Prekrasny” or “прекрасны,” a Russian word for beautiful or pretty. This pretty much grinds to a halt the concept that this is a cautionary fable and not a vision of a dark future where the Soviet Union and the United States moved to open warfare. While I’ll admit that the conventions used to establish “Two” as a fable are cheeky and a little on the corny side, the episode itself would have been stronger without the suggestion that The Woman is Russian.

I’m not sure who made the call to use a Russian word. I wonder if perhaps Serling wrote his introduction and he had a different read on the story than its writer, Montgomery Pittman. Maybe Pittman intended “Two” to be more of a dark premonition with a twist of optimism and Serling thought of it more as a fable and the two approaches hampered each other in the final product? This is pure speculation on my part of course, but it’s a black mark on what I think could have been an even better episode than it is.

Regardless, I think “Two” is a strong episode and a fine example of a Serling-esque story written by someone brought on to lighten the load of Serling, who worked himself to the bone on Twilight Zone. I also appreciate Pittman’s confidence to rely so heavily on visual storytelling techniques, taking into account that the high quality at which we watch the show now does not reflect the quality home viewers would have had in 1961. It reflects both Serling and the producers belief that viewers would be fully engaged in watching the show as it aired rather than just passively having it on in the family room while unwinding after dinner.

Elizabeth Montgomery’s performance heightens the whole affair considerably. That’s no shade on Charles Bronson, in fact I think the monologuing he’s given could have come off as unbearably hokey if delivered by a lesser actor.

If you can believe it, this is my very first time cosplaying The Twilight Zone! (Though I did play Rod Serling in a set of sketches in high school. I was as weird as a teenager as I am an adult, okay?) If you didn’t already know, I run another blog called Twilight Zone in Close-ups, examining the powerful use of close-up shots on the show by testing out how much of each episode’s story can be communicated solely by its close-up shots.

☕ Buy me a coffee! ☕

#1960s #1961 #elizabeth montgomery #the twilight zone #Twilight Zone #rod serling #classic television #television #closet cosplay #cosplay #television history #OTD #science fiction #speculative fiction #horror #1960s tv #tv

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peachesodell · 8 months

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Classic Kirk...

#star trek #captain kirk #william shatner #1960s #1960s tv #sci fi and fantasy #space travel #space

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thatgirltvshow · 27 days

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Marlo Thomas and Ted Bessell in That Girl 2.11 Thanksgiving Comes But Once A Year, Hopefully

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firstofficernims · 6 months

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Leonard Nimoy and Kathryn Hays in Dr. Kildare s2 e31 “An Island Like a Peacock” 1963. He plays an adorable, gentle soul who looks after his blind neighbor. 😁🖖

#leonard nimoy #nimoy #spock #mr. spock #dr.kildare #cast before star trek #1960s tv #black and white tv #Kathryn hays #Island like a peacock #leonard nimoy is so handsome it hurts #leonard nimoy is so sexy #firstofficernims

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franciegummstarstruck · 5 months

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Judy singing, "Stepping Out With My Baby" on The Judy Garland Show 💖🎼

#judy garland #the judy garland show #1960s tv #the concert years #diva

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gifs-of-puppets · 7 months

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The Jack Paar Program (1962-1965)

#the muppets #kermit the frog #glow worm #big v #monster #eat #muppet #muppets #jim henson #the jack paar program #vintage tv #1960s tv #gif #muppet gif #muppets gif #gifs of puppets

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dismemberment-on-a-tuesday-night · 10 months

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Dark Shadows 1966 meme dump

#Abraham original: Hot off the press #Dark Shadows 1966 #Dark Shadows #Jason Mcguire #Roger Collins #Sam Evans #Elizabeth Stoddard #Willie Loomis #Barnabas Collins #Victoria Winters #1960s #1960s tv #Memes #Meme dump

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mannymuc · 5 months

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Classic Swinging Sixties Music TV

The Rolling Stones at a rehearsal for a British TV show in late 1965.

They will mime to their new single "Get Off Of My Cloud "

#the rolling stones #brian jones #1960s music #young mick jagger #1960s tv #1960s style

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larsisfrommars · 3 days

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The Wild Wild West: S01x01, The Night of The Inferno

Directed by: Richard C. Sarafian Starring: Robert Conrad, Ross Martin, Lady of The Week: Suzanne Pleshette Villains of The Week: Nehemiah Persoff, and Victor Buono

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countesspetofi · 2 months

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Today in the departmtent of Before They Were Star Trek Stars, DeForest Kelley guest stars in WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE, season 2, episode 7, "The Empty Cell" (original air date October 17, 1959). De plays a telegraph operator who aids in a train robbery, and is then hunted by Steve McQueen's bounty hunter Josh Randall as well as a local sheriff played by Lon Chaney, Jr. (who he impersonates at one point).

I was there for De, but I enjoyed Chaney's scenes with McQueen a lot. It's an interesting moment; Chaney was at a point in his career where he was transitioning from films to mostly TV appearances, and McQueen was just about to break out of TV and into movie stardom.

#deforest kelley #star trek #star trek tos #star trek the original series #wanted dead or alive #1950s tv #1960s tv #tv sci fi #tv westerns #steve mcqueen #lon chaney jr

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20th-century-man · 3 months

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Burt Ward, Adam West, Van Williams, Bruce Lee, with the Batmobile and Black Beauty / production stills from the Green Hornet and Kato’s appearance on Batman in the two-part second-season episodes “A Piece of the Action” and “Batman’s Satisfaction” (originally broadcast March 1 & 2, 1967.)

#Burt Ward #Adam West #Van Williams #Bruce Lee #Batman #The Green Hornet #Robin #Kato #1967 #tv #1960s tv #1960s

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kekwcomics · 2 years

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BEWITCHED (Dell, 1968)

"A wacky, way-out world of witches!"

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banemmanan · 6 months

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U.N.C.L.E. statistics graphs

Part 2 of 3

[part 1] * [part 3]

All Man from U.N.C.L.E. data was compiled by @commander-kiranerys :

Series 1 * Series 2 * Series 3 * Series 4

Girl from U.N.C.L.E. data was compiled by myself and my sister:

* GFU *

Original graphs created by commander-kiranerys:

* :1: * :2: * :3: * :4: *

(more info and analysis under the cut)

Disclaimer:

As you can see from the data attributes, the mfu and gfu stats have been compiled by two different people. As such, results should be taken with a grain of salt as our views on what exactly constitutes 'torture' or a 'failed escape' may vary.

A word on graphs:

I felt that having compiling the separate info in one place in the form of bar charts was ideal for visual comparisons of the data, rather than jumping between posts. However, I cannot recommend enough commander-kiranerys's original graphs enough due to them being in the form of line graphs, thus giving a good view of change over time for the individual results of her statistics. This was not possible here due to gfu being part of a separate show.

Analysis:

Tied up: so if you're into bondage then MFU Season 3 is for you. Specifically Illya... (I see you Season 3 writers, I see you). As you can see from these graphs and the next two, the GFU villains weren't really very kinky. A shame tbh (who said that?).

Chained or handcuffed: I had combined these two separate categories into just the one in my data set and so I added together commander-kiranerys' results to create some compatible data. The MFU stats here remain very consistent before that good ol' Season 4 drop, they didn't get that same significant increase that being tied up saw.

Tortured: sad to see that Napoleon and Illya have never been tortured together. As the old saying goes, partners who get tortured together, stay together. Very tragic.

Drugged: a lot of the cynics out there will say that it's no surprise at all that GFU was on the most drugs of the series. But to that I say, just look at that MFU Season 3 stat! The least by a long shot!

Knocked out: the most impressive thing here is that if you removed all of April's stats, GFU would still be leading on getting knocked out. I'm more than a little worried about Mark; has anyone checked him for post-concussion syndrome?

Shot: my findings? Bullet wound Mark is an outlier and should not be counted. He is one gunshot away in his single series from equalling Illya in the entire run of MFU. The consistency of those MFU results is very satisfying to me, and then Mark has to ruin it! Someone get this man a touriquet or smth idc. Also April is bullet proof, aparently.

Wet: although I was too British and prude to tally-up instances of partial nudity (idk why I found that too embarrassing ok), I am not imune to fanservice and was more than happy to count instances of getting wet. Now, if you like your agents soaking wet, then aparently GFU is the show for you (yes this is a propaganda post). Though on average it ties with MFU Season 4; in terms of raw numbers it cannot be beat. Interestingly though, Season 1 Napoleon is tied with Mark for soggiest individual character.

I will freely admit that the analysis here is strongly skewed towards comparing the GFU results with the MFU results. Mainly due to commander-kiranerys having already created a set of graphs and gone over the MFU data there. I didn't want these posts to replace those in any way and instead to add to them. Please check out those posts (linked above) for a more MFU-oriented approach!

I hope you found this data useful or at least interesting! I would love to have discussions about these!

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thatgirltvshow · 1 month

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Marlo Thomas as Ann Marie That Girl - 4.01 Mission Improbable part 1

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