Archive for the ‘Actors’ Category

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Death comes to Shangri-La

November 4, 2024

I’ve been using my writing on this blog to dodge oppressive current events and my bodily miseries. I’m also undergoing intensive video therapy, using re-runs (on dvd) of all six years of the tv series Major Crimes (details of the show in my 10/29 posting with that title). Today I report on one of my favorite episodes (S2 E9 “There’s No Place Like Home”, 1st aired 8/5/13), whose main story-line — every episode interleaves several story-lines, including at least one about the lives of the LAPD officers and their associates — has the squad investigating the death of a landlord despised by all his tenants, the residents of Shangri-La (a ramshackle apartment complex), all of them former performers on a ’70s tv medical examiner show. Further notes from the Wikipedia summary:

As in their show, Deputy Medical Examiner Morales comes up with the extra (beyond autopsy) evidence that solves the crime. [AZ: and then some side-story events, irrelevant here:] Provenza faces desk duty if he can’t improve his target practice results; Rusty tries to tell Kris he can’t date her.

Note: the retired television co-workers were played by a quintet of predominantly octogenarian actors from various popular television shows from the 1970s and 80s onward – Tim Conway, Paul Dooley, Ron Glass, Doris Roberts, and Marion Ross.

These five, in character, in a shot from the wonderfully comic episode:


Left to right: Glass, Dooley, Ross, Conway, Roberts; spoiler: they all did it (details to follow)

Now some details about the actors playing the Shangri-La Five.

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Posted in Actors, Homosexuality, Movies and tv, My life | Leave a Comment »

Major Crimes

October 29, 2024

Well, I fell into this. In this morning’s posting “Removed!”, I reported myself as at the end of several tethers, one of which I addressed in this observation:

I’m not sure whether I can bear watching the news any more, and I’m not sure whether I can bear not knowing about what’s happening. For the moment, I’ve retreated into letting all six seasons of Major Crimes (which I’ve seen several times) go past me in the background while I work.

Ellen Kaisse then wondered about the show, and I embarked on an appreciation of it. And ended up with something worth expanding on a bit and posting on this blog.


(#1) An early poster for the show (+ marks characters I’ll discuss below): +Sharon Raydor in the upper right; then in four rows, left-to-right: in each row — 1st row: Detective Lieutenant Andy Flynn (Tony Denison), Detective Lieutenant Louis Provenza (G. W. Bailey); 2nd row: +Rusty Beck, +Fernando Morales; 3rd row: Civilian Surveillance Coordinator (videographer for crime scenes and interrogations) Buzz Watson (Phillip P. Keene), Detective Amy Sykes (Kierran Giovanni), Detective Lieutenant Michael Tao (Michael Paul Chan); bottom right corner: Assistant Chief Russell Taylor (Robert Gossett)

I’m not going to give you an account of the whole show, which ran for six years in hourlong episodes, but just notes on a few of the characters and a few bits from some of the story lines.

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Posted in Actors, Gender and sexuality, Movies and tv, Narrative, Stories | 3 Comments »

The henchmen and the husband

October 11, 2024

🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍🌈 three rainbow flags celebrating National Coming Out Day, which is also the anniversary of my wedding-equivalent to my (alas, long-dead) husband-equivalent Jacques Transue (in those days, there were no same-sex marriages, so no same-sex wedding anniversaries either; queers had to invent their own practices and occasions, which most of the rest of society, with some honorable exceptions, simply dismissed as illegitimate — and, yes, that still fills me with white-hot rage). And then coming out, a process that proceeded slowly and painfully through the 1950s and 1960s, flowering publicly in the 1970s, but was still attended by shame and despair and near-suicidal depression, until I slowly embraced my inner fag and transformed, in steps, into some kind of warrior queer, ending up where I am now, known in some circles for being a Famous Fag (who used to teach linguistics, many years ago, and still writes some mostly fluffy stuff about language). An unexpected development, not at all how I expected to be remembered, but not an unpleasant one; I could have done much worse. Especially since my coming out was such a mess.

So if you’re queerly inclined, I passionately recommend coming out, but see if you can do it better than I did. Of course you’ll have to do it in a way that suits your own circumstances, which aren’t exactly like anyone else’s; but learn from others, be gentle with yourself, and cultivate friendships. (I know, such conventionally generic advice, but not entirely useless.)

I will have more to say about coming out and NCOD. But first, since most of life is random happenstance, I’ll have a few things to say about today’s Bizarro cartoon, which has nothing to do with NCOD or husbands (of any degree of legitimacy) or queerness, but instead is about henchmen (of a particularly thuggish sort). And, by the way, about language, because in the cartoon Wayno (a) commits a groan-worthy pun that (b) is about English vocabulary.

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Posted in Actors, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Homosexuality, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, My life, Puns | 3 Comments »

Tarzan of the Apex

October 7, 2024

From yesterday’s posting “Hot autumn morning”:

The torrid unpleasantness continues. Back on 10/2 the local temperature reached a brutal 102F; since then, it’s dropped into the 90s, but not by a whole lot. 96 yesterday, 96 today, 96 tomorrow, then maybe actual autumn.

In fact, yesterday in Palo Alto was 102 again, and today’s high is predicted to be 93, but relief is still predicted for tomorrow. Meanwhile, there’s a counteractive chill in today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, showing Tarzan and Cheeta(h) at the intensely cold summit of Mt. Everest, claiming the peak, the apex of the mountain, for the (see the flag) Banana Republic, the chimpanzee’s native land:


(#1) A pun on “Tarzan of the Apes” (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page)

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Posted in Actors, Language and animals, Language and the body, Movies and tv, My life, Puns | Leave a Comment »

Gavin Creel and his little wounded dude

October 2, 2024

In print in the NYT today, a story (by Michael Paulson) I’ll talk about here in its 9/30 on-line version, headed “Gavin Creel, Tony-Winning Musical Theater Actor, Dies at 48: He won the award playing a Yonkers feed store clerk in “Hello, Dolly!” and was also nominated for roles in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “Hair” and beginning:

Gavin Creel, a sly and charming musical theater actor who won a Tony Award as a wide-eyed adventure seeker in “Hello, Dolly!” and an Olivier Award as a preening missionary in “The Book of Mormon,” died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 48.

His death was confirmed by his partner [AZ: his male domestic partner], Alex Temple Ward, via a publicist, Matt Polk. The cause was metastatic melanotic peripheral nerve sheath sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, which Mr. Creel learned he had in July.

Mr. Creel was a well-liked member of the New York theater community whose death comes as a shock, given his age. He had been performing on Broadway for two decades, mostly in starring roles, and just last winter his physical and vocal agility, as well as his charisma and curiosity, were on display in a memoiristic show he wrote and performed Off Broadway called “Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice,” about learning to love the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The obit continues with a detailed account of his career, which springboarded from his amazing singing voice and his projection of energy and enthusiasm, wrapped up in a big smile. He was noted for working well with others, and as being supportive of other actors’ careers. In short, an immensely talented really nice guy. All of this is wonderful, and I’m sorry I never got a chance to see him perform live, but I’m here because he also talked publicly about his life as a gay man, and how gay men compose and manage their lives is one of my areas of academic (as well as personal) interest.

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Posted in Acting, Actors, Death notices, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality | 1 Comment »

Done with style

September 3, 2024

Back on 8/23, Benjamin Dreyer (long-time copy chief at Random House, now retired to the life of a pointedly opinionated public intellectual, and connecting with me on Facebook) celebrated the birthday of Gene Kelly, posting this portrait photo of the man:


(#1) AZ > BD: An especially fine photo. Do you know who the photographer was?

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Posted in Actors, Art, Dance, Dancers, Masculinity, Movies and tv, Photography | 1 Comment »

The Cumberbatch-birthday risonymic riff

July 24, 2024

Posted on Facebook on 7/19 by James Fell: a riff of 12 risonyms on the name Benedict Cumberbatch (on the occasion of his 48th birthday) — 12 risible names scattered over a factual, plainly told, account of BC’s life, which begins at the beginning:

Today in history, July 19, 1976, Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch was born in London, England.

and then immediately refers to BC with a preposterous risonym:

Both of Benzedrine Cloacalsplotch’s parents were actors, and his grandfather served as a submarine officer in both world wars.

I’ll reproduce the whole thing below. But first some context.

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Posted in Actors, Jokes, Language play, Names, Phonology, Poetic form, Spelling | 1 Comment »

A hell of a queen

June 15, 2024

(Some readers will find some of the material in this posting distasteful, but there’s nothing visual or verbal in it to merit keeping the kids away from it.)

I’ll blame this on the luminous Minnie Driver, playing Queen Elizabeth I in season 2 of the Starz tv period drama The Serpent Queen.


(#1) MD in one of her fabulous QEI costumes; the character invites extravagance in costuming and makeup (further examples to come)

Through an accident of dates, QEI will take us to “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” song and secret worlds hidden from everyday life (and, of course, gay bears). Then, through the excellent “hell of a queen” quotation, she will take us on a further wild ride to the Princeton Triangle Club in 1960 and, more generally, to queens in drag.

Buckle up.

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Posted in Actors, Costumes, Double entendres, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Movies and tv, Music, My life, Princeton, Quotations | 1 Comment »

Acting Corps: Robert Conrad

April 21, 2024

Viewed yesterday morning: S4 E7 of the tv show Columbo — “An Exercise in Fatality”, originally aired 9/15/74, with four members of the bank of reliable actors with prodigious portfolios that I’ve called the Acting Corps (four plus series star Peter Falk, playing Lt. Columbo) appearing in the early moments of the show, in which character Milo Janus is depicted as a cocky fraudster running a chain of gyms, confronted by one of his defrauded franchisees, Gene Stafford. It is quickly clear that one of these men will be murderer and one victim, but unclear which will be which: Janus richly deserves to get offed, but on the other hand, he’s bastard enough to dispose of Stafford as a mere obstacle in his path.

The plot is nicely balanced between these two possibilities, but I should have realized from the casting how the scene would play out; both characters were cast from the Acting Corps, but Janus is played by a high-recognition, star actor (Robert Conrad), while Stafford is played by character actor Phil(ip) Bruns, who had a supporting role, at one time or another, in virtually every American tv series there was then, so always seemed vaguely familiar but not identifiable.

The character Stafford was then doomed, because the actor playing him was dispensable. Not only was Robert Conrad a star, he was also an incandescent actor: body-proud (displaying his muscular torso and remarkable buttocks), high-masculinity (energetic and athletic, tough, frequently sweaty, giving off a whiff of testosterone), and intense. No director would kill off a property like that in the first few minutes of a 90-minute show.

I originally intended to post about four of the actors from this episode — Conrad, Bruns, Pat Harrington, Jr. (who I recognized and identified immediately), and Gretchen Corbett  (who was familiar but not identifiable) — but I quickly accumulated a lot of material about Conrad, so I’m giving him a posting all of this own; I’ll do the other three in a separate posting.

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Posted in Actors, Language and the body, Masculinity, Movies and tv | Leave a Comment »

It’s that actor again

April 18, 2024

If you watch television series — especially the dramatic series, like police procedurals and mysteries (which consume large numbers of cast members on a weekly basis) — you’ll see familiar actors again and again. Some of them are well-known (so you can enjoy celebrity spotting), but most are lesser-known working members of what I’ve called the Acting Corps. You might see them in dramatic film series and tv commercials as well, maybe also in off-Broadway productions or in Shakespeare in the Park or similar theatrical venues. Acting is what they do. They might also be comics or performing musicians or models, but they are likely to think of these jobs as just another kind of acting, of projecting a persona, role, or character for an audience.

In any case, one of these people will cross your field of vision, and you’ll find them familiar, but might not be able to place them, and unless you’re into the acting world or in this actor’s fan club — I’m pleased to say that there are such things — you won’t know their name. So you have the it’s that actor again experience. It happens to me a lot. Eventually, I’ll check to find out their names and learn something about their histories. If I have the time, post about them.

This is routine. In today’s posting, I’ll file a brief report on Rachel Dratch, notable for the goofy characters she portrays (in several different contexts). Her appearance in a recent American Home Shield commercial finally moved me to identify her.

While I was assembling these materials, my back-channel tv-watching brought me, in adjoining hours but in different programs on different channels, a familiar actor (whose name I didn’t know) playing a serial killer (a true monster) and then an FBI agent (with a good heart) — a juxtaposition that I found emotionally jarring, a whip-sawing of affect; during the second program, I kept fearing that the agent’s niceness would turn out to be mere cover for some grotesque and bloody obsession. But the experience did move me to identify Billy Burke and discover the huge body of his acting work (plus side gigs as a singer-songwriter).

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Posted in Actors, Masculinity, Movies and tv, Music, My life, Portmanteaus, Puns | 2 Comments »

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