Tributes To Your Favorite Classic TV Stars (4 Viewers)

[The 1960's]

In Memory Diana Rigg (July 30, 1938 – September 10, 2020)​

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[ScottRE]

The Avengers (In Color)
“The Forget-Me-Knot”
US Airdate: March 20, 1968

Starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. Introducing Linda Thorson as Tara King​

An agent with information on a Ministry spy turns up at Steed’s flat with amnesia. Steed and Mrs. Peel split up to get to the bottom of it, but the opposition shoots both of them with the same amnesia drug. Along the way, agent trainee Tara King meets Steed and assists in foiling the diabolical plan. At the end, Mrs. Peel’s husband returns from being lost in the Amazon and Emma departs leaving Tara as her replacement.

This is not the best of the series by a long shot. I considered doing “A Touch of Brimstone” for the awesome (banned in the 60’s US run) Queen of Sin outfit for Emma, but I knew Neal would be happy to take that one on and did so with greater skill than I. I wanted to get one with an emotional component and Emma’s departure was my choice.

This, like many episodes at this point, is just a lighthearted farce but it is more interesting than some. Diana Rigg is charming as an amnesiac Emma but this episode is memorable for her final scenes. No other partner of Steed’s had an exit episode, but Emma and Diana were so popular, her performance so indelible, it was necessary. "The Forget-Me-Knot" was not originally part of the planned sixth season of The Avengers. Having decided to cast Linda Thorson as Steed's new sidekick Tara King, producer John Bryce had started filming episodes with the character already in place and - as with her predecessors - no introduction. However Bryce was fired midway through production of the third episode, and the previous series producers, Albert Fennell and Brian Clemens, were re-hired. Clemens decided that there needed to be a continuity explanation for the replacement of Mrs. Peel by Tara King, and set about hastily developing a storyline which would account for this. Diana Rigg's scenes were shot in four days in December 1967 with production completed the following month. The passing of the Steed Baton (haha) featuring both characters was filmed on the last day of Rigg's contract with ABC Television (Associated British Studios).

Rigg didn’t sleepwalk her way through this. She’s charming, fun and when it’s time for her to go, extremely heartbreaking. Her final scenes, which were literally her last scenes with Macnee, are filled with emotion as they say goodbye. The capper to the sadness is a sweet moment when Steed glimpses Emma’s husband – a dead ringer for Steed himself. The two actors played off each other perfectly, with a friendly and often flirty banter that added subtext even though Mrs. Peel was married. So they never hinted there was anything more than platonic love… except…

When Emma and Steed meet up at the climax of this case, Emma says “tell me, are you the man who…” and whispers the rest in his ear. Her face is a picture of innuendo and Steed smiles, replying “I’m afraid I am.” What did she say? The theories are out there, so watch for yourself.

Emma’s final look back is crushing. We don’t want her to go. Even though the series went on for a time (and Linda Thorson was really very sweet in her novice role), Emma and Diana was irreplaceable.

Diana Rigg was a charming, beautiful, intelligent and extremely classy lady. She is not only my favorite Avengers lady, she is my favorite Bond girl (which deserves a post of its own).

 

[ScottRE]

 

[ScottRE]

Sorry for the quality but in case you want to see the last moments yourself...

 

[The 1960's]

The Avengers (1961-1969)​

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S04E26 Honey for the Prince (Mar.26.1966)
Stars Patrick Macnee Diana Rigg Ron Moody Zia Mohyeddin George Pastell Roland Curram Bruno Barnabe Ken Parry Jon Laurimore Reg Pritchard Peter Diamond Carmen Dene Richard Graydon Charles Rayford​

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Two undercover agents are shot at Q.Q.F. Incorporated but one survives long enough to clue in Steed and Peel. So, Steed visits the Quite Quite Fantastic office (where fantasies are made to come true) while Emma looks into B. Bumble's honey shop. They soon surmise that someone is aiming for Prince Ali of Barabia, who is visiting London with his harem of 320 wives.​

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Color Introduction​

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[Jeff Flugel]

Awesome job, Neal and Scott! You did the beautiful, irreplaceable Dame Diana proud.

 

[The 1960's]

Awesome job, Neal and Scott! You did the beautiful, irreplaceable Dame Diana proud.

Jeff thanks for the kind words.

You know it’s one thing to copy and paste text from Wikipedia or IMDb or snap a few screenshots but it’s another thing to write a beautiful and heartfelt commentary like Scott did. Thank you Scott!

Below is the closing clip in HD. I’d strongly recommend not watching it and instead purchasing the BluRay or Stream it on Amazon Prime. It’s worth the entire watch.

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... Rest in Peace Dame Diana, never to be forgotten!!​

 

[The 1960's]

Diana (1973-1974)
NBC Fall Season Spots (1973) ​

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Stars Diana Rigg Richard B. Shull Barbara Barrie​

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[Purple Wig]

Been revisiting the Emma Peel megaset. Great thread!

 

[Flashgear]

Good ol' Marty Milner was one of those guys we grew up with and felt as though we'd known him for our whole life...here's one of his earliest TV appearances...

West Point S1E1 The Mystery Of Cadet Layton (Oct. 5, 1956) W: Jerome Lawrence, Robert E. Lee. D: Leon Benson. Starring Martin Milner, Don Eitner and Carolyn Craig. Donald May, Ray Montgomery, Frank Fenton and Tom Pittman.

West Point (1956-57) is one of those great ZIV shows of early TV syndication. Authentically filmed on location at the famed US Army's Academy for the training of generations of the officer class, throughout the Hudson River valley, Lake Champlain, Cayuga and the Poconos! A beautiful area of Up-State New York surprisingly seldom seen in Hollywood productions, TV or movies. Star Trek's Gene Roddenberry wrote 8 episodes, E. Jack Neuman (Mr. Novak) and Stirling Silliphant wrote others. Regular directors included Ted Post and James Sheldon. As for young stars...just name your favorites, they're here! Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, Chuck Connors, Barbara Eden, Larry Hagman, Gloria Talbot, Leonard Nimoy, William Campbell, Robert Vaughn, Roger Smith, Henry Silva, Karen Sharpe, Clu Gulager, Stuart Whitman, Peter Brown, Barbara Lord etc.

In the series' premiere episode, Marty Milner plays upper-classman Layton, a hard driving cadet and section leader. He's particularly hard on plebe cadet Townsend (Don Eitner), citing him repeatedly for disciplinary infractions. Townsend over-reacts and threatens to resign his commission, despite the admission appointment to the academy being a highly sought after and prestigious opportunity for young men in those old (and better) days. Cadet Layton is only hard on Townsend because he knows that Townsend has the 'stuff' to be a great officer and leader. Layton tries to convince Townsend to hold back on resigning, and is then involved in a confounding turnabout when Layton himself mysteriously threatens to resign his own commission! Layton has received a troubling guest at West Point's Hotel Thayer...his girlfriend and hoped-for fiancée Judy (Carolyn Craig)...she's travelled all the way from Oregon to deliver an ultimatum, and their future together is at stake, with Townsend feeling at fault for Layton's troubles...Just when you think that West Point is only a finishing school for sadists, humanity and self-sacrificing kindness and true comradery save the day...

There seems to be some dispute about how many episodes were originally produced, but good ol' Timeless Media released 39 episodes on DVD in 2013, derived from the MGM/UA 35mm film vault elements. My screen caps from that set...

A sad postscript...young actress Carolyn Craig, who would soon appear in the classic Oscar winning best picture of 1956, Giant, playing Elizabeth Taylor's younger sister, would also go on to appear in The House On Haunted Hill (1959) and Studs Lonigan (1960)...but she sadly shot herself in 1970, aged 36. It's often a sad postscript when you read bios on IMDB.

Next up...Marty Milner in a 1966 episode of Rat Patrol,

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[Flashgear]

Another good appearance by Marty Milner in his post-Route 66, pre-Adam 12 period is seen in Rat Patrol S1E25 The Wild Goose Raid (Feb. 27, 1967) W: Tom Gries, Harry Kronman. D: Leon Benson. Guest starring Martin Milner, William Bryant, Socrates Ballis.

Jeff has already done a fine review for this episode in the 'Tributes to your favorite stars' thread, but this two-fisted, action packed series is big, big, big on teeth-clenched action, wild stunts and desert chases filmed in Andalusia Spain and occasionally in the Mojave at Lone Pine and Vasquez Rocks State Park...it looks fabulous, though I loved it in B+W as a ten to eleven year old knucklehead boy! You've got to love a show produced by guys named 'Brick' (Marquard) and 'Dink' (Templeton), Ha, Ha!

The Rat Patrol guys (the wonderful quartet of Christopher George, Gary Raymond, Lawrence Kelly and Justin Tarr) have been detailed to provide security for a joint USA-British top secret conference by the high command...also present (not a spoiler, as it's revealed early) is an undercover Nazi assassin impersonating an American soldier, Sgt. Roberts (Marty Milner). The Nazi is determined to place a bomb in the conference room and kill all of the 'Brass' that have gathered there. He also employs a couple of Arab assassins as an expendable diversion, one of whom (Socrates Ballis) the cold-blooded Nazi kills...The conference is hosted by a hidebound Major Reese (the very familiar William Bryant), and the Rat Patrol themselves are duped into a staged diversion (the 'Wild Goose Raid') that takes them miles away just as the conference is about to begin!

My screen caps from the MGM/UA DVD set...

Not sure that I like to see Marty as a villain, but he does make for a memorably arrogant and cold-blooded killer...self assured and disdainful for a Nazi who would undoubtedly be headed for the gallows or perhaps a firing squad!

Thank goodness, Marty would make-up for this awful villain by playing a heroic LAPD officer for the next 7 years!

In the real life WW2 battleground of Tunisia (Nov. 1942-May 1943), like the British SAS and SIG, the Germans did have a special forces unit that specialized in 'commando' style operations in which their multilingual soldiers sometimes donned the enemies' uniforms and went undercover to surveil or attack an allied target...the renowned 'Brandenburger Kommando'. But as far as is known (many secrets still remain from WW2), nothing like this ever happened...nevertheless, it makes for a typically exciting story in this crackerjack 1960s war series. As a 10 to 12 year old boy, I couldn't get enough of Rat Patrol!

 

[The 1960's]

Roddy McDowall (September 17, 1928– October 3, 1998)

Today is the birthdate of Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall. He’d have been 94 years old. He was both a film and television actor of gigantic proportion. His biography is incredibly extensive. I’ve chosen to highlight two of his motion picture and two of his television appearances throughout the day so we can remember him and celebrate his performance.

Roddy McDowall was born in Herne Hill, London, England, to Winifriede Lucinda (Corcoran), an Irish-born aspiring actress, and Thomas Andrew McDowall, a merchant seaman. Roddy was enrolled in elocution courses at age five and by ten had appeared in his first film, Murder in the Family (1938), playing Peter Osborne, the younger brother of sisters played by Jessica Tandy and Glynis Johns. His mother brought Roddy and his sister to the U.S. at the beginning of World War II, and he soon got the part of Huw, youngest child in a family of Welsh coal miners, in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941), acting alongside Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara and Donald Crisp in the film that won that year's best film Oscar. He went on to many other child roles, in films like My Friend Flicka (1943) and Lassie Come Home (1943) until, at age eighteen, he moved to New York, where he played a long series of successful stage roles, both on Broadway and in such venues as Connecticut's Stratford Festival, where he did Shakespeare. He became a U.S. citizen in 1949. In addition to making many more movies (over 150), McDowall acted in television, developed an extensive collection of movies and Hollywood memorabilia, and published five acclaimed books of his own photography. (IMDb)​

 

[The 1960's]

My Friend Flicka (1943)
Stars Roddy McDowall Preston Foster Rita Johnson James Bell Patti Hale Jeff Corey Arthur Loft Jimmy Aubrey​

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Ken McLaughlin struggles to please his family in any way. He comes back from boarding school boasting poor grades and facing going through the fifth grade again, much to his fathers dismay. Ken's mother, Nell, manages to persuade his father Rob to let him choose a colt from the herd for himself. He instead chooses a sorrel chestnut filly, who becomes injured soon after.​

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[The 1960's]

Lassie Come Home (1943)
Stars Roddy McDowall Donald Crisp May Whitty Edmund Gwenn Nigel Bruce Elsa Lanchester Elizabeth Taylor Ben Webster J. Pat O'Malley Alan Napier Arthur Shields John Rogers Alec Craig Lassie​

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After her destitute family is forced to sell her, a collie named Lassie escapes from her new owner and begins the long trek from Scotland to her Yorkshire home.​

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[The 1960's]

The Twilight Zone (1959-1964)
Stars Rod Serling Robert McCord Jay Overholts​

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S01E25 - People Are Alike All Over (Mar.25.1960) (BluRay Edition)
Stars Roddy McDowall Susan Oliver Paul Comi Byron Morrow Vic Perrin Vernon Gray Rod SerlingHerbert Winters​

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Fearing the worst, the lone survivor of a crash-landing on Mars finds the native inhabitants, to his relief, very hospitable indeed, but there's a catch.​

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[The 1960's]

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[The 1960's]

Naked City (1958-1963)
Stars John McIntire James Franciscus Suzanne Storrs Harry Bellaver Horace McMahon Paul BurkeNancy Malone

S02E20 The Fault in Our Stars (Mar.22.1961)
Stars Paul Burke Horace McMahon Nancy Malone Harry Bellaver Roddy McDowall Mary Fickett Louise Larabee Alvin Epstein Patricia Bosworth Victor Thorley Florence Anglin Jessica Levy Marc Alan Austen Bruce Dern Lawrence Dobkin Robert Dryden Chris Gampel Harvey Jason Teno Pollick​

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An actor, down on his luck, resorts to murder in order to raise the cash needed to pay his rent. Bruce Dern as Hollis appears (uncredited) in his 4th appearance.​

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[The 1960's]

 

[The 1960's]

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This concludes the Roddy McDowall Birthday Tribute
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A special thanks to Randall aka Flashgear for his wonderful contribution to our Martin Milner Tribute and to Alan aka Purple Wig who inadvertently brought to my attention Roddy McDowall’s birthdate.​

 

[ScottRE]

Thanks gents for the great retrospective and reminder of Roddy's birthdate.

For me, Roddy McDowall will always remembered primarily as the focal point of the Planet of the Apes franchise, which is in my top 3 sci-fi media series. As Cornelius in the first film, he was a little further down the character ladder, below Charlton Heston and Kim Hunter. He missed the second chapter, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (replaced by sound-alike David Watson) due to a conflict in schedule (he was directing the film Tam Lin). However, starting with Escape from the Planet of the Apes, he began to take the top spot. It was Cornelius' swan gong, but he returned for the final two films as the son of Cornelius and Zira, Caesar in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and then Battle for the Planet of the Apes.

Then, in 1975, CBS commissioned a weekly series based on the premise (again simply called Planet of the Apes) where McDowall played Galen. Even though the makeup was grueling, he enjoyed portraying Galen even more than the prior two characters because of Galen's disposition and sense of humor. While the series was cancelled after only 15 episodes, McDowall had very fond memories of the series and always spoke highly of it. He hosted the superb documentary on the series, Behind the Planet of the Apes, while suffering from cancer. He succumbed to his illness shortly following.

I discovered the Apes series early in life and it took me years to actually find out what he looked like, and it was his distinctive voice which gave it away. Always youthful and a seemingly sweet person to the end, his passing hit me harder than most celebrities.

Interesting post script: I won a CD compilation of Hugo Friedhofer film score re-recordings that I was looking for over a long time. The seller claimed it was from the estate of Roddy McDowall. I don't have any proof, but it was a cool thought and I prefer to believe it.