Simon alongside other actors

I’ve been pondering on what my next topic should be. I at last decided that perhaps I would highlight some of my favorite performances Simon made alongside other actors I especially like and/or actors who were quite in the big time—as well as bemoaning the lack of interaction between them in some cases where they appear in the same production but had no scenes together.

As mentioned repeatedly by both of us but especially by Crystal Rose, there is Simon and Darren McGavin. It would be sacrilege not to bring up their amazing chemistry! Crystal speaks of it so well I doubt I could ever hope to do better, but I want to add my voice to how wonderful their time together is. The strength, or at least one of the strengths, of Kolchak: The Night Stalker is their characters’ interaction. There must have been a reason why Simon was called back to play Tony again and again after the initial Night Stalker movie, first in The Night Strangler sequel and then in the TV series proper. No one else could bring that character to life as incredibly as did Simon.

I also greatly enjoy seeing Simon appear alongside Steve Ihnat, in their guest-spot from The F.B.I. Steve was an amazing actor we lost even sooner then we lost Simon. I first became acquainted with him through his performance in The Outer Limits and from there began to deliberately seek out other things he appeared in. I was excited to discover that he and Simon had worked together! Their characters are close friends and their scene, described in detail in my post for The Maze episode, is a joy to watch. Steve and Simon have appeared together other times too, including in the rare series The Name of the Game. I wish I could locate that series, for that reason among others!

In The Outer Limits Simon has several scenes of interaction with Don Gordon. Aside from this episode, I have only seen Don in another venture of The Outer Limits and in the movie Bullitt, which also featured Simon. He is a good actor and I enjoy stumbling across him while watching things.

Bullitt brought Simon in contact with two very well-known actors: Steve McQueen and Robert Vaughn. As the boss of Steve McQueen’s character, Simon portrays a gruff and serious police captain of the highest level of integrity. He trusts Frank Bullitt and tries to allow him the leeway he needs to bring the bad guys to justice. And he refuses to give Robert Vaughn’s character the time of the day when he’s tempted to play politics. Simon only has a handful of scenes in the film, but they’re very memorable. Simon was deliberately chosen for the role by the director, and it’s very easy to see why.

In West Side Story Simon has a scene where he interacts with both Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno. It’s one of my favorites, where we see his character Lieutenant Schrank doing a better job of keeping himself composed than he does when dealing with the teen gangs.

I wish there had been more of him interacting with his apparent police partner, Sergeant Krupke (played by William Bramley). Actually, he only addresses one or two lines to Krupke throughout the film and they have two silent scenes together. Interestingly enough, I think their first silent scene says more about both of them than it might have if they had spoken. It’s only a few seconds long, set during the Tonight Quintet sequence. Krupke is driving, looking for the gangs to try to stop the impending rumble. Schrank is going for a cigarette, agitated. Krupke gives him a worried glance. Their obvious concern shows how deeply they care about the kids and don’t want them to get hurt, a very different image than what they usually seem to project when they’re interacting with said kids. It takes really good actors to make a silent scene come off so well.

One of my earliest encounters with Simon is in Susan Hayward’s intense vehicle I Want to Live! Playing real-life reporter Ed Montgomery, he documents the arrest and trial of Barbara Graham. Although initially he believes her to be guilty of the murder she’s accused of committing, he comes to feel that she is instead innocent and works feverishly to undo the damage his previous stories caused.

He has many scenes with Susan Hayward. Their relationship is shown starting with the antagonistic and gradually developing. His sincere regret comes out very well later, although Barbara does not want to discuss it. By the end of the film she seems to have warmed up to him. She leaves him a last letter, which he reads in the final scene, after her execution. He then trudges back to his car, pulling out his hearing aid so as not to hear any of the busy sounds around him. It’s a very powerful and poignant scene.

Another favorite actor of mine appears in this film, but regrettably, he and Simon do not interact. At least, not that I recall. He is Wesley Lau, probably best remembered as Lieutenant Andy Anderson on Perry Mason. His role in I Want to Live! is small but important, as the deadbeat husband of Barbara Graham. I would have loved to have seen Wesley and Simon play off of each other.

They do both appear in the Gunsmoke episode Miguel’s Daughter, but I can’t remember the extent of their interaction. Wesley plays, I believe, one of the guys harassing Miguel’s daughter. I don’t know if he’s the one Miguel kills or if he’s the other one. I watched that episode before Wesley really meant anything to me. I need to watch it again.

And, according to IMDB.com, they also appear together in the TV movie Crosscurrent. I’ve been trying to get hold of that for some time. I have no idea if they actually have any scenes together in it or not. According to TCM.com, Crosscurrent was a failed TV series pilot that became a TV movie instead. Were it to have been a series, Simon would have been a regular as the police captain. What a shame it didn’t work out. Then again, if it had, perhaps we wouldn’t have Kolchak: The Night Stalker, as Crosscurrent was made around the same time.

When it comes to main Perry Mason actors, the only other one I can affirm as having interaction with Simon is Raymond Burr. Sadly, they did not interact in either of Simon’s Perry episodes, but on Ironside they did. In the Puzzlelock episode, which I believe Crystal has spoken of, Simon plays a former policeman who is a friend of Ironside’s. He is also the villain of the episode. We have since seen one of his other two Ironside appearances, Love Me in December, in which he plays a reporter. This character initially comes across as a slimeball, but in his last scene his strong reaction to the truth behind the crime suggests that he really is a good person. I don’t recall that he interacted with Ironside in that episode. His other appearance, Lesson in Terror, we have not found yet.

Richard Anderson, Lieutenant Drumm from Perry, played the bad guy in The Night Strangler. He did not interact with Simon. They both appear in an episode of Burt Reynolds’ series Dan August. I have no idea whether Simon interacts with either Richard or Burt in that episode.

I most lament over the fact that Simon never interacted with William Talman, my other most favorite actor right now. They had no scenes together in the one Perry episode in which they both appeared. But I like to think that they met off-screen, on the set. I wonder what they thought of each other.

~Lucky Ladybug

Captain Caldwell: A Victim of the Most Unnecessary Death

Out of all of Simon’s characters, and out of the few who have died, I have suddenly come to the very odd realization that it was his Perry Mason characters’ deaths that broke my heart the most of just about any of them.

While Howard Walters from The Frantic Flyer is most certainly a bad egg and really probably deserved what he got, Captain Mike Caldwell from The Misguided Missile is definitely not a villain and did not deserve death at all. He is, perhaps, not a complete pillar of virtue, but he is a multi-faceted and complex character. This is quite a trick considering he has only scant moments onscreen!

The Misguided Missile opens with a failed missile launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base. An investigation is promptly begun to discern the cause, and Captain Caldwell is the man they send. He is stern, serious, and determined to uncover the truth about what happened.

His dark side is that he has a grudge against Perry’s friend, Major Jerry Reynolds, and wants to prove that Jerry was responsible for the failed launch. It’s not an unfounded suspicion; it looks worse and worse for Jerry as the investigation proceeds. Captain Caldwell interviews others involved with the launch (and the very idea of Simon Oakland interacting with William Schallert is an epic thing of beauty) and finds evidence of the missile having been tampered with. But before he can do anything with this evidence, he is murdered on the test grounds the night before another launch. Jerry Reynolds is implicated and eventually tried for his murder.

Some of what happened comes out during the court-martial, as characters recall offscreen interaction with Caldwell. Jerry was almost the last person to see him alive, as they had a bad confrontation in the Officers’ Club that culminated with Caldwell insisting he knew Jerry wasn’t the great man everyone claimed and Jerry hauling off and punching him.

So what was the reason for Caldwell’s seeming obsession of proving Jerry guilty of sabotage? We don’t get the details; we never even hear the story from Caldwell’s point-of-view. It is only briefly mentioned by Jerry as he speaks with Perry and Paul. His explanation goes as follows: When they served together in the war, there was a time when Jerry gave an order and Caldwell did not carry it out. He was reprimanded and reassigned.

But it isn’t as simple at that. Caldwell always insisted that he never received the order. Did he or didn’t he? This mystery, sadly enough, was left unexplained. It’s possible that he was telling the truth. A messenger could have been at fault for Caldwell not receiving the order. Any number of possibilities could explain it. Caldwell could have been flying a plane and Jerry gave the order over the radio, but it was not received due to a faulty transmission. We simply do not have enough information on the incident to judge one way or the other.

It’s possible but unlikely that Caldwell received the order and simply ignored it. From the little we see of him, he is a dedicated officer seeking to locate the truth. He isn’t there to hurt anyone, he tells Helen Rand, the one in charge of public relations at the company responsible for creating the missile. Perhaps Caldwell is guilty of too much determination to prove Jerry’s guilt, but he isn’t focusing all of his time and energy into that one angle. He also investigates the two corporations that want the missile contract.

And who was responsible for the poor man’s death? As we finally learn, it was Dan Morgan, the rather batty inventor of the missile. Caldwell’s information would have stopped the second launch, and Morgan wanted his missile to fly. Ironically enough, by killing him on the test field, Morgan almost caused the launch to be stopped anyway. Such a pointless, senseless death.

In the end Caldwell may not have always made the best choices, and he did have bitter feelings towards Jerry which may or may not be founded, but over the course of the episode we saw, both firsthand and through others’ testimonies, Caldwell’s good side as well as his less favorable traits. Caldwell was, as it turns out, very human.

Rest in peace, Captain.

~Lucky Ladybug

The Frantic Flyer vs. The Fugitive Nurse: A Recycled Plot

We’ve all heard it said that there are only so many basic plots in the world and every story today is a reinvention of one or more of them. Sometimes, however, it occurs more times than at others, and hits closer to home than plots borrowed from ancient mythologies or fables. Some television shows recycle plots from other television shows. Some recycle their own plots. In any case, they change names, details, and various outcomes, while still keeping enough of the basic backbone that the similarities are recognizable.

Simon’s first Perry Mason episode, The Case of the Frantic Flyer, was a remake of an episode from the first season, The Case of the Fugitive Nurse. His character, Howard Walters, is a crooked employee of a corporation who is also guilty of infidelity. He plans to fake his own death and disappear with his mistress and a bundle of stolen money. To further ensure that people won’t look for him, he kills the company president’s son and leaves him in his airplane to crash and burn with it while he secretly bails out. The plan works, for a while; people believe that Walters was killed instead. But Walters broke his leg during the landing, forcing him to take cover at a cabin to heal. Later he returns, seeking the mistress with whom he has not yet reunited, and almost promptly is killed for real.

What are the differences between that plot and the plot of the earlier episode, The Fugitive Nurse? The answers are quite surprising.

In The Fugitive Nurse, the Howard Walters character is a doctor named Charles Morris. The titular nurse is the mistress. They still plan to run away together, with Charles allowing himself to disappear entirely. There is still an airplane, which crashes with another body in it, a body that is mistaken for Morris’s.

The similarities end there. While Morris is an adulterer, he is not actually a criminal. He did not steal any money, nor did he kill someone and place the body in his airplane. He had no involvement with the murder at all. All he really wants is to go to Mexico and get the divorce his wife won’t give him so he can marry his nurse. The nurse cares about him too, unlike Howard Walters’ mistress, who was hoping to get him out of the way. By the end of the episode their fate is not clear, but it is assumed they will live in Mexico, where their marriage is valid. Hence, another huge difference is observed: Morris is still alive at the end.

There are other major differences, mainly involving the poor man who was murdered. In The Fugitive Nurse, he was a trusted friend of Morris’s and is in several scenes. Compare that with The Frantic Flyer, where the deceased is barely, if ever, seen and did not appear to be especially close to Howard Walters. In The Fugitive Nurse, the decedent’s personal life is highly important to the plot. His family life is still important to the plot in The Frantic Flyer, as his widow is the murder suspect, but that is quite different from The Fugitive Nurse, where the widow is actually the murderer and never was a suspect (until Perry picked up on her big mistake).

In the end, Morris’s plan to disappear quite succeeded. Perhaps Walters’ would have too, had he not suffered that accident that required him to stay in a cabin and recover for seven weeks. Or vice versa: Maybe Morris’s would have failed drastically if his attempt had culminated the same way as Walters’.

Heaven knows why the writers chose to make the particular changes they did when working on The Frantic Flyer. I must confess that I would have preferred the Howard Walters’ character’s personality and eventual fate have been more like that of his prototype, Charles Morris. But the dark twists of the later episode are certainly intriguing and intense. And Simon displays his wonderful abilities to play a wretched villain and yet still make there be something about him that is sympathetic. I felt sorry for Howard Walters that he honestly cared about that woman when she wanted him gone. And I shall never forget my disappointment and devastation when he turned up dead—although I still believe my feelings were more because of Simon himself and not the character he was playing.

~Lucky Ladybug

The Dual Cases of the Frantic Flyer and the Fawning Fangirl

I decided that for my first official musing, it would be appropriate to go more in-depth on the first time I encountered Simon.

Perry Mason has long been a regular part of my life. Ever since our local PBS station started airing reruns many years ago, the familiar strains of the catchy and clever theme song, Park Avenue Beat, have echoed through both a previous and a current home nearly every night. Perry, as well as Della, Paul, Mr. Burger, and Lieutenant Tragg, are old friends of the family. I went through and out of my teenage years and into my twenties while watching them solve cases. I hope to continue visiting with them in the future.

Long ago, while randomly sitting on the living room floor perusing a book, my attention was captured by the episode The Case of the Frantic Flyer. While I often watched Perry when my mother or both parents did, I usually had my attention divided between it and a book. This time the episode gained my complete attention. In particular I found the airplane angle unique and different, as it kept the setting from being strictly in the city as it usually is. I was also interested by the criminals’ intricate plot to get away with the stolen money and play dead. I distinctly recall Howard Walters’ panicked call on his airplane radio, his descent to the ground with his parachute, and the plane crashing and bursting into flame. I also clearly remember Walters’ broken leg, the snow, and him being stranded in a cabin with a prospector for seven weeks.

That alone is all rather curious, as there are not many individual episodes I can recall such details about. But in addition, I remember that, in spite of the serious wrong that Howard did, there was something about him that I liked. When he was the one killed, I recall feeling very sad—far moreso than when most characters died in other episodes—and of course, someone dies in each one. Since the body was not shown, I kept hoping in vain that he would turn up alive again, with someone else having been killed in his place.

Isn’t it very strange, that I would feel so strongly about that particular character?

I do believe that was my first introduction to Simon Oakland. Of course, in years to come I forgot all about that. Each succeeding time I saw him in something, I didn’t remember having seen him in anything previous. I loved him in I Want to Live!; I was initially shocked by his character in West Side Story. Then, finally, when I watched Kolchak: The Night Stalker and loved him there, I looked up his other credits and was astounded. Certainly, I would never again forget something I had seen him in.

On July 29^th of this year, our PBS station replayed The Case of the Frantic Flyer. Naturally, I wanted to see it again and get it recorded. Over the days leading up to its airing, I thought long and hard about the first time I saw it so very many years ago. I remembered it anew when at last I watched it again. This time around, I felt more that Howard probably deserved what he received. But at the same time, I still did feel a bit sorry for him. And in any case, I saw that special Simon Oakland charm shining through.

Perhaps it never really was Howard himself I liked, but his actor. Perhaps whatever it was that attracted me as a young teenager was what continued to attract me up to earlier this year, when at last I realized that I am a Simon Oakland fan and fangirl—and proud of it.

~Lucky Ladybug