The Flaws of Fictional Characters, and Why We Love Them

Try as we might to attain perfection in everything we do, the truth of the matter is that we have our flaws.  Perhaps this is why when we see flaws in fictional characters, it can end up making us pity or even adore them.  Simon Oakland has played countless characters during his time as an actor; no single character, whether good or bad, is without flaws.  These flaws are essential to their characterization.

For Simon’s villain characters, the flaws are pretty easy to see: Mel Barnes’ general nastiness, William Poole’s madness, Seth Tabor’s greed, Bolivar Jagger’s ingratitude, Mandee’s treacherous nature, Nick’s scheming and so on.  Of course, these flaws don’t make these characters endearing in anyway, but Nick’s sheer misfortune in how spectacularly his plans fail make him a laughable villain, at best.

Then there are the characters who are not quite villains, but aren’t exactly getting along with the main characters, either.  It is these characters’ flaws who actually do allow them to earn some pity, despite their standing.  Sancho Fernandez and Frank Epstein are both bitter, vengeful men, yet after the viewer realizes that their bitterness is not unfounded, the viewer nonetheless ends up siding with them, or, at the very least, giving them their pity.  Vern St. Cloud, for all his boisterousness and loud mouth, one can’t help but pity how his insistence to act like a tough guy sometimes get him into trouble.  And Lt. Schrank, despite saying a great deal of nasty things, earns a bit of pity after one takes a step back and realizes how jaded he has become after years of trying—and failing—to get rival street gangs to stop their fighting.

And yes, even the characters who are good guys all around have their flaws.  Alonzo Galezio’s flaw may be that he’s just too nice for his own good; he still longs and hopes that Donna Fuller will somehow see past his winemaking occupation and accept him for what he is, despite being insulted and verbally brought down by her.  And even after her mob wrecks his personal property and, in doing so, his potential livelihood, he can’t bring himself to press charges and instead tries to pick up the pieces and move on.  General Moore, despite being the tough-but-fair commanding officer of the Marines at Esprito Marcos, is revealed to put his instincts as a father first when he makes a somewhat unprofessional—albeit understandable—attempt to transfer his Navy nurse daughter to a safer place (this attempt fails upon her reminding him that he is obligated not to do so).  And Tony Vincenzo is an interesting mix of a temper to be reckoned with plus a person too nice for his own good; while a good portion of his dialogues with Carl Kolchak are often at a considerably loud volume, the truth of the matter is that he would do anything to help his sometimes-unfortunate employee, even at the risk of his own job security (as The Night Strangler movie showed).  And all of those threats to fire Carl?  All talk, and nothing more.  And Carl knows it.

It is important for fictional characters to have believable flaws; it is these flaws that make them more real and easier to relate to, particularly regarding the non-villain characters.  It makes them more human (even the characters who aren’t human, such as the Empyrian, who acknowledges his own mistakes after the humans he shanghais prove his mindset wrong).  And it’s another way that Simon, as an actor, reached out to us to remind us of what makes us human ourselves: the fact that we’re not perfect… and how that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, as long as we’re inherently good people.

~Crystal Rose

A Golden Voice

A lot of an actor’s appeal comes from not only what you see, but by what you hear.  I’ve always thought Simon had a marvelous voice, and his voice has always been an integral part to his characters.  There are some roles where his voice is everything; the Empyrian from The Outer Limits episode “Second Chance” comes to mind.  As many have described, if you were going by appearances alone, you would never recognize that the Empyrian is, in fact, the same man who would go on to play Tony Vincenzo.  But all you need to do is merely listen, and it soon becomes clear.

Simon’s natural Brooklyn accent has always been very appealing to me; it’s part of what gives Tony Vincenzo his tough exterior, and, at the same time, also lets slip Tony’s softer side, given the right opportunity.  Initially, I was surprised to find out that Simon’s Brooklyn accent was, in fact, his natural one; the first time I saw him was in “The Day Smart Turned Chicken” in Get Smart, where his character as the Cowboy had no accent at all.  That is the hallmark of a good actor, of course: to be able to work his voice in such a way that the viewer believes it.

Brooklyn is not the only accent that I’ve heard Simon speak in, of course; he was able to work his voice to a number of accents that were believable each and every time—from Stawski’s Jersey accent in The Sand Pebbles to Colonel Vasily’s Russian accent and Alonzo Galezio’s Italian accent in Wagon Train.  The accents don’t seem forced at all; they sound natural, as though he had been speaking that way for years.  The accent also helps to make the character more endearing; how can anyone not like Alonzo, with his almost boyish enthusiasm and joie de vivre that are so plainly evident in his words alone?

All accents aside, there is the sheer quality of Simon’s voice itself: a strong, golden baritone that exudes an aura of both charm and even reassurance.  Yes, reassurance; most of Simon’s characters—the good guys, at least—are the ones you’d want to hide behind if there was something scary out there.  I, for one, would have no hesitation in asking Lt. Schrank to be a police escort if I was traversing Manhattan at night.  If monsters were crawling around Chicago, I’d sooner stay in the INS building knowing that Tony Vincenzo was holding the fort.  Simon’s paternal characters, like Daniel Gorman from Tucker’s Witch and General Moore from Black Sheep Squadron, pretty much live and breathe this aura of security when they speak.

And even some of the villain characters haven’t lost everything in the reassurance department; why else would so many people trust someone like William Poole?  It’s because Poole talks with a comforting, sympathetic vibe, cheerfully singing and whistling his signature song, that people are automatically put at ease by his words.  As much as I’d hate to admit it, I probably would’ve believed that he was a harmless traveling man like the rest of Virginia City did.

Of course, Simon also used his voice to showcase how disturbing the villain characters could get, as well.  Once Poole’s charade is unmasked, his voice turns to a low, almost pseudo-growl before he strikes—and then, later, an all-out roar as he yells at Little Joe.  And then there’s Joshua Broom, from the Cimarron Strip episode “The Beast Who Walks Like a Man.”  Joshua Broom is a role unlike any other that Simon has played, and it’s his voice (low and gravelly, and he does indeed really growl and roar this time) as much as his appearance (a bizarre combination of Hagrid and Wolverine) that seals the character and makes him utterly unforgettable.

Perhaps another testament to Simon’s wonderful voice is that he has done his share of voiceovers, able to have a presence without actually being seen.  No matter what the role or what the accent, it’s always a joy to hear his wonderful golden voice.  And it seems so fitting to remember the voice and the man today, on what would’ve been his 96th birthday.

Happy Birthday, Simon.  You are greatly missed.

~Crystal Rose

Teardrops: the Tear-Jerking Roles of Simon Oakland

A good actor is one who is able to instill a variety of emotions in those who see his work.  Simon Oakland definitely fits that description; he brought to life so many characters that evoked adoration, anger, shock, laughter, and tears.

A good tear-jerking role can be a wonderful catharsis for the viewer, and I have been moved to tears by some of Simon’s roles.  I mentioned in an earlier entry about Adam Howard, from “The Secret” episode of The Big Valley.  It was Adam’s heartfelt and heartbreaking speech where he lamented about his dream of having a son being all a lie—as he was certain that the son he had been raising wasn’t his—that made me feel for him and cry for him, despite whatever cruelties he was doing.  The interaction with the child in question was also very tear-jerking; Adam genuinely cares for the child, even despite all of his doubts that he is not the boy’s real father.  Adam himself seems torn up about it, too, his voice cracking up when the boy presents him with a hand-made wallet.

Two more of Simon’s tear-jerking roles can be found in two separate episodes of Hawaii Five-O: “Strangers in Our Own Land” and “The Reunion.”  In the former, Simon’s character, Benny Kalua, seems absolutely broken and devastated upon hearing about the death of a friend with whom he had a love-hate relationship. Though we find out later that he has things to hide, one cannot help but feel for him initially.  And one can’t help but feel even more for his character in “The Reunion,” Frank Epstein.  Frank is a veteran of the Second World War, who had been interred in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp with two other companions.  Tortured by the cruel and calculating commandant, Frank eventually lost his leg before it was all over.  Bitter and vengeful after all of these years, Frank is shocked and enraged to see the very same commandant in Hawaii, though the man insists he is mistaken.  Eventually, though, it’s revealed that Frank was right, and that the commandant—still as cruel and calculating as ever—has led him right into a trap.  Thankfully, he’s able to hold his own against the commandant until Steve and Danny arrive, but the commandant taunts Frank, hoping to get him to kill him while Steve is desperately trying to convince him not to.  As the commandant cruelly reminds Frank of all he had inflicted upon him, poor Frank can do little more than stare into his worst enemy’s face and blink back tears of rage—and the viewers can do little more than wish they could help him.  Alas, the version of this episode I saw cuts off before we see what Frank’s final decision was (and if anyone reading this happens to know what that is, by all means, please tell me!).

But, by far, my favorite of Simon’s tear-jerking roles was the Wagon Train episode, “The Donna Fuller Story.”  Simon plays what must be one of the most adorable roles of his career: Alonzo Galezio, a cheerful and animated winemaker from Sicily, looking to make a fresh start in the United States, bringing barrels of his best wine and grape plants.  He falls head-over-heels for Donna Fuller, a prim and proper widow, who happens to be the head of a group of ladies determined to see the consumption of alcohol eradicated.  Initially, Alonzo is unaware of her stance on this, and she is unaware of his career, and she is initially attracted to him.  However, once she finds out that he is a winemaker, she drops him cold, and you can see the poor man’s heart just shattering to pieces, unable to fathom why she does this.  Even after she reveals her reasons, he desperately tries to get her to see that he is a good man, even if he does make wine, but she will hear none of it.  And then, it gets worse; in her group’s crusade to eradicate all alcohol on the wagon train, they end up getting to and destroying all of the barrels of wine that Alonzo had brought, and a good number of the grape plants.  Simon plays the role with such believability as Alonzo breaks down and narrates his tale of how being terrorized by the mafia had forced him to flee to America, and now he finds himself ruined again at the hands of a mob, his dreams all but shattered.  By the end of it, you just want to hug him and tell him that it’ll somehow be okay (and, thankfully, it is).

It’s just another testament to how powerful an actor Simon was—that a young lady such as myself can cry for an angry and bitter man or an adorable winemaker whose world has been turned upside-down.  But they are good tears, most definitely, each one an appreciation of an actor who was the master of his craft.

~Crystal Rose

Colonel Vasily: A Two-Faced Scoundrel or a Victim of Bad Writing?

While Simon has always been marvelous and magnificent at stepping into his roles, I suppose I do have to admit that there was one villain that I didn’t quite find believable. However, the reason for that was because Simon played him so believably before the sudden reveal that he was a villain!

I am speaking of Colonel Vasily from the Wagon Train episode The Countess Baronoff Story. For the first half of the episode, Colonel Vasily is a very loyal servant of the Countess, growing absolutely incensed when others don’t seem to pay her the proper respect. His inability to understand that things are done differently in the United States, and his blustering as a result, is somehow adorably sweet and endearing. He also finally admits that he loves the Countess, but she rejects him, saying that she doesn’t love any man yet. Of course, they also feel that getting together would be impossible anyway, due to their different social stations.

About halfway through the episode, Vasily abruptly changes gears once it looks as though the Countess is coming to care for Flint McCullough, one of the show’s main characters. He storms into the Countess’s wagon with a weapon and threatens her, revealing himself to be a revolutionary who wants the money she is traveling to get hold of in Alaska. He also says that he had hoped to get her to care about him rather than to have to go about his plans in this way. Hence, it seems he never loved her at all.

The rest of the episode plays out in that manner, with Vasily as a very dangerous, merciless force with which to be reckoned. Eventually he leads the protagonists into a situation where there is no choice but to shoot him down.

The switch was so jarring that I had a difficult time accepting it. By the episode’s end, I still hadn’t fully done so. He came across as so very sincere in the first half. His longing looks at the Countess all but broke my heart. It was very hard to comprehend that it was all a fraud.

I’m still not sure I have determined that. No one saw him looking at the Countess those times, and no one but she knew his feelings for her, anyway; he wouldn’t have needed to keep up appearances. Part of me continues trying to decide whether he did love her and her rejection made him snap and decide to enact his dark motives, which he might not have otherwise done. The other part wonders if it was just bad writing that caused the switch to him being a villain. A third part wonders if it is just the silly fantasies of an enamored fangirl that makes it so hard to accept that Colonel Vasily was intended to be a villain all along.

Perhaps I never shall know the answer. I only know that, even after the reveal in the middle, cynical, romance-scoffing me kept longing for something to work out so that he and the Countess could be together. It was quite disheartening when things worked out so completely opposite.

~Lucky Ladybug