So this is literally the first time that I am hearing that Raymond Burr was gay.Originally Posted by GuitarGeek
So this is literally the first time that I am hearing that Raymond Burr was gay.
He played the rear admiral in Stratego.
no tunes, no dynamics, no nosebone
Same here. Puts a whole new spin on Rear Window...(no, not meant as any kind of double entendre)
Last edited by DocProgger; 08-28-2018 at 04:00 PM.
Yes! I forgot that he played the husband who offed his wife. When he saw Jimmy Stewart's girlfriend signalling him, and he (Burr) stares out the window straight at Stewart looking through his telephoto lens, that is such a chilling sensation. Zemeckis did the same thing in "What Lies Beneath". Michelle Pfieffer was looking at her neighbor's house one night and she sees him staring straight at her.
Nor do I, of course. I'm more thinking ahead to a possible future where we insist upon such things. As I said, I could be way off.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
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Yeah, I forgot how I found out about it, but some years back, I was reading about it on his Wikipedia page. His long time partner (33 years!) runs (or ran) a vineyard named in Burr's honor in California.
I don't know about this but I was a bellman in the early 80s in a downtown hotel and took Raymond Burr's luggage down. He was an imposing figure.
Burr's TV series after Perry Mason was Ironside , where in he played a police inspector paralysed by a bullit in a wheel chair. The reason his charator was written as wheelchair bound was he had attained such girth that the powers that be decided to hide the fat by having him sit in the chair.
I don't remember any outrage from the disabled community having a fake in the leading role.
The entire practice of "outrage" at anything not PC is exhausting and
irritating. I am 1/8 Native American and I don't give a s**t that Depp played Tonto. Simply put , no Depp , no movie. Where a line is crossed is ridiculing a race in a movie . This seems to be not being done anymore. As I said before , pick up a newspaper , theres plenty of stuff just on the front page that legitamatly warrents outrage. Save yourself for that and stop diluting the outrage pool with trivial nonsense.
though the ironsides remake did come under fire for just that reason.
I think there is definitely a point and I think mainly it is that for minority actors there are less opportunities in general so it hurts more when a role that is something that would be ideal for them still goes to a white person. what we really need is just more diverse movies in general and I think it is getting there so hopefully at that point we can stop worrying about little things and of course at that point a minority actor could be considered a major draw on their own so why not cast em in the role.
BITD when there were only a few channels to watch the local channel(later became Fox) showed Ultraman in the afternoon. You familiar with that show? If not check out some clips, it's so damned cheesy. Always ended up with the dude who became Ultraman, with this little flashlight-looking push button mechanism that turned him into Ultraman, being just far enough out of his reach to grab yet he always manages to grab it when he is finally needed to save them.
And, he shoots things from his elbows. It doesn't get much better than this.
Makes me think of the "I got it, I got it, I got it...... I don't got it" from High Anxiety but obviously in reverse.
Read the end of the thread just now. Interesting to find out that Daryl "Chill" Mitchell, who is now on Fear the Walking Dead, has been in a wheelchair for almost two decades now. I never knew that. I do remember him on Ed in a wheelchair but I never knew he'd been paralyzed in real life.
Last edited by TheLoony; 08-28-2018 at 07:34 PM.
Carry On My Blood-Ejaculating Son - JKL2000
Yes! He would hold it up to the sky and yell, "Hiyata! Ultraman!! "
A Comfort Zone is not a Life Sentence
Let me think now, because there's three different Japanese shows, and I always get them mixed up.
Spectreman is the early 70's show, with the extraterrestrial bad guys, led by the gorilla who was always making these ridiculous hand gestures when he talked, and every one his bed of global domination hinged in someway on destroying the environment. ALso, the theme song, at least on the English dubbed version, was this goofy pop song with a driving beat, acoustic rhythm guitar, and synthesizer.
Dynaman was six episodes of the long running Super Sentai series (same show that was the basis for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers), dubbed over with comedy dialog and a rock music soundtrack. It aired on Night Flight, and reputedly they only did six episodes because the rock music proved too expensive to continue licensing. If I'm not mistaken the guy who wrote the comedy dialog also was one of the writers on Sledge Hammer, one of my favorite 80's era sitcoms. Man, I loved that show! Wish they could have done more than just six! "Hey, Nigel! Your band sucks so bad, you couldn't even open for The Doors!"
Which means Ultraman is the one that I don't remember ever seeing. There's a lot of Japanese TV stuff I'd love to see more of. The Japanese seem to have a very unique take on how to handle matters of "entertainment", ya know what I mean?
I remember him on The John Larroquette show back in the early/mid 90's. I forget exactly when it happened, but sometime after the Laroquette show ended, I read an article about the incident in TV Guide.Read the end of the thread just now. Interesting to find out that Daryl "Chill" Mitchell, who is now on Fear the Walking Dead, has been in a wheelchair for almost two decades now. I never knew that. I do remember him on Ed in a wheelchair but I never knew he'd been paralyzed in real life.
Another actor who is wheelchair bound is Art Metrano, who played Mauser in the second and third Police Academy movies. In fact, that's the reason why he's not in any of the films after the third one, because of the accident that had injured him, which initially left him quadriplegic (also, the reason why G.W. Bailey was brought back as Harris, the role he played in the first movie).
Speaking of Police Academy, what was Sharon Stone's best movie? Tell me it isn't Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol.
I only tend to chafe when they miscast an actor of one race for another anachronistically. For instance, casting a black actor as Nick Fury in the Marvel films. He was a white dude with an eye patch in the 60s "Silver Age" comics, and that will only matter to those of us who read those comics in the 60s, but for authenticity's sake, it does. Likewise a black Heimdal in Asgard in the Thor movies. Really? We're talking Norse gods here, how is one African? Or the movies about Northern European mythology that always include a key black character. Not oriental or Indian. Who knew that Equatorial Africans were such world travelers in Ancient times? And they always seemed to travel alone. It's the damnedest thing.
What's really the damnedest thing is that we've reached a point in modern society that things are so tribal that it seems that no one can relate to the world unless they see themselves when they look outward. I think it's pretty fucking sad.
Edit: Not taking issue with your post, Progatron. Just using it as a springboard.
Man, Chris. I was early 70s and I don't remember Spectreman or Dynaman, in fact I've never even heard of them. The 2 Japanese offerings we watched regularly (apart from the Kimba and Speed Racer cartoons which I wasn't much of a fan of) were Ultraman and Johnny Sokko. Johnny Sokko was about a kid who controlled a giant robot that somewhat resembled an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh. I know you're thinking, "Man that shit happens all the time," but they really made a TV show about it and we ate it up.
I was absolutely crushed when Giant Robot sacrificed himself to save the world. I will never forget that
"Who would have thought a whale would be so heavy?" - Moe Sizlak
Dynaman aired Stateside circa 87 or 88, I think. Like I said, they only showed six episodes Stateside, but those six were rerun extensively for a year or two, toward the end of Night Flight's existence. The actual show was produced circa 83-84, though.
The Power Rangers franchise was also derived from Super Sentai. They basically took the action sequences from Super Sentai (where the actors all wear helmets concealing their faces, and fight an assortment of kaiju and giant robots and such) and edited in footage of American actors for all the sequences where their faces were seen. The reason the name of the show and the team costumes, etc kept changing was because every year, there'd be a change over in the Super Sentai, new title, new costumes, new actors, but essentially the same format.
Spectreman I remember being shown on channel 61, I believe, in the early 80's. Wikipedia says it also played on TBS, and first started airing Stateside in 1978. The theme song of the English language version was based off a song by a group called The Mystic Moods Orchestra, called The First Day Of Forever, but with lyrics pertaining to the show.
There was a lot of cool Japanese stuff on American TV back in the 80's, though it was mostly cartoons. Things like Battle Of The Planets, Star Blazers, Speed Racer, etc.
I heard about Raymond Burr being gay over a decade ago. I was as surprised as you guys.
Yeah, I was surprised to find out how many gay actors there were back in the day, Jim Nabors being another example.
You were surprised about Jim Nabors?
"Who would have thought a whale would be so heavy?" - Moe Sizlak
I wasn't...lol. I never saw him kiss Louanne. It was something we talked about in elementary school. We always suspected he was gay.
Man, I freaking loved Ultraman and Johnny Sokko. Never understood why Hollywood never made an Ultraman movie. I've heard that its ownership in Japan is complicated, but if they could make hundreds of Godzilla movies, why couldn't they figure out how to make one Ultraman film?
Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally
Was there an American version of Johnny Sokko? I seem to recall a giant robot cartoon from my extreme youth, but can't recall the name of it....
"And this is the chorus.....or perhaps it's a bridge...."
I recall Johnny Sokko being broadcast on KDOC 56 (Anaheim, CA) in the 70s.
It wasn't a cartoon. It was live-action.
Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally
I bet it was Gigantor.
Here is a fun clip
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