homicide: 'a girl who liked beads'

This episode of Homicide, called 'A Girl Who Liked Beads' but - get this! - advertised in the papers when it screened on 25 October 1966 as 'The Girl Who Liked Beads', was a bit too grim for me and I didn't enjoy much of it, but I was intrigued to know what this shopping arcade was:

It ends in a department store or supermarket. It's not identified and weirdly I kind of semi-remember it, though the memory might be false. 

Bead shop where a girl who liked beads is likely to go (and steal a big bagful of them in a very 'cry for help' kind of way. OK, time for the opening credits:

IMDB suggests this is the last Homicide to feature policewoman Helen Hopgood as played by Derani Scarr. There is a half-arsed attempt to suggest that Bill's girlfriend Tink is jealous or somehow disconcerted by Helen (who she describes as 'glamorous'). 

Poor Di Chamberlain has to get through the line 'I'm known as Tink', whereas surely anyone known as Tink would know not to let an S get before their name in a sentence. This is her second-last appearance in the program, so I look forward to seeing whether her departure is written into the show in the way Helen Hopgood's appears not to be - presumably Helen will just never be mentioned again - I certainly hope there is no dramatic ending for Tink. Mind you the way that people seem to respond to the death of loved ones in Homicide I'll be the only one upset. 

Lynette Curren is Karen, the girl who liked beads in question. As mentioned her story is grim and while she doesn't actually get murdered, her mother does. This is her with her boyfriend, Phil, who is determined to get her out of this situation as they both feel something is wrong. Phil is played by 'John Chatteris', I am putting his name in inverted commas because I wonder if it's a spelling error given that it doesn't seem to be a last name and this name has never been applied to someone who ever acted on screen, or anywhere, again, though he's not at all bad at it. Maybe he just didn't enjoy it. Lynette Curran was 21 in 1966 and had already had some screen roles and went on to many more, most recently the Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021). 

The weakest parts of Homicide are often the little things. Bill has just announced he's got two days off, but when Helen has an inkling that all is not well domestically for Karen (who she just arrested for shoplifting beads), suddenly the Homicide team swing into action. Mac has to pick up Bill from hanging around with Tink and take him off to investigate Helen's hunch, in Springvale. So there are only three people investigating all murders - including random suspicions that something's not right - in Melbourne?  

I'm not going in deep on this storyline because I just find it depressing, particularly because of the second weak element in the story - that Karen's mother has been murdered by her stepfather but this happened so early in the story (and off-screen, but incidentally the whole story takes place over two days) that no-one seems to think Karen is likely to be bothered by it and she's fine now. Anyway, there are a few scenes in the pet shop which the stepfather is landlord to. The proprietor of the pet shop is played by Betty Randall, yet another Melbourne actor with decades of experience in live theatre, radio and television, here in the bittiest of bit parts. The pet shop thing is a whole extra bit of strangeness because this is the most we see of it:

There are, for instance, no animals though we hear a lot of sounds of them. There is no external establishing shot either. Although Karen and her family live in Springvale, the closest we get to seeing the road where the pet shop is, is here: 

The above is 150 High Street East Malvern, and the business was called Eddie Thomas Speed Shop. 

Above is that building today - you can see the arched window and the window above it correspond. This (below) is the building on the opposite corner of the side street, and yes, it has suffered particular indignities since 1966 as you will see:

I mean wtf am I right? 

So then there's the usual chase down a lane, 

A dramatic capture of the stepfather (great performance by Peter Aanensen by the way) who was in all things absolutely no good...

And a celebratory beer with Helen Hopgood

Who we will never see in Homicide again.

'Shit happens'

homicide march 1966: 'chain reaction'

On Tuesday 15 March 1966 at 7:30 pm in Melbourne you could have watched The Avengers (the 'Cybernauts' episode); The Dick Van Dyke Show ('Remember the Alimony'); Lost in Space ('My Friend, Mr. Nobody') or the latest episode of Homicide, the last I think in the second series, called 'Chain Reaction'. 

Of course you would want to pick the show with not just a Scarr but also a Scurr in it... what are the odds! Anyway Helen Hopgood is once again centre stage, kicking off with a bunch of flirts with McKay (Leonard Teale was 44 at this time, far too old to play the kind of scallywag playboy McKay, however appealing he is; he replaced Lex Mitchell, who was at least ten years younger but probably more, who was more suited to that kind of thing but was more of a clean skin. There's plainly meant to be some chemistry between Helen and 'Mac' but the characters aren't realised enough to make that stick properly). 

In this instance after knocking off work Helen accidentally encounters a runaway, Judy (Julie Costello), who she had just seen in court the day before. Judy is a schoolgirl who is meant to be back in Seymour, and instead she's wandering around Armidale with a friend. Helen arrests her and calls the Toorak police to tell them she is bringing her in. 

My memory of phone boxes back then is you couldn't really fit two people so easily into them but that's not important. So, Judy runs away with her friend down a back lane and Helen pursues them but is hit and knocked out. The Homicide team investigate murders, not missing persons even if they are policewomen they like to have sexy conversations with, however, in this case they are assigned to try and find the missing Helen. 

Judy's mother comes in to be interviewed - one scene if I remember rightly, with Christine Calcutt as Mrs. Power. There was a small feature on her in the Age on 30 July 1960 (p. 7) which described her as 'building up a reputation... for well handled, small character parts.' That's what this is (it also says she was born and raised in China!). 

Helen is taken out bush somewhere (references made later to 'off the Bendigo road' )and dumped, where she wakes up and stumbles around looking kind of new romantic:

Meanwhile the detectives are pursuing a lead i.e. the boarding house run by Mrs Logan, in St Kilda. Pretty great house:

Mrs Logan is played by the aforementioned Hilda Scurr. Scurr was a stage actress (with the Allan Wilkie Shakespearian Company) then on radio in a soap opera called Mary Livingstone, M.D., and much later in the famous Blue Hills. She was not enamoured of television apparently though she did appear in a few Homicides. Though we never really learn why Mrs Logan is ready to do whatever is required for the evil Eric Morton, she is very obliging. This is her preparing to lie to the detectives about how well she knew Julie and how she didn't know Julie's friend Carol (who is in the other room).  Soon afterwards when Carol reveals she saw Morton knock Helen out, Mrs Logan makes it her business to keep Carol in the living room until Morton gets there to deal with her.

Morton is the proprietor of a cafe, called The Yellow Door. We see the detectives drive up to it very briefly and I think someone has daubed the words 'The Yellow Door' on the front window but it's hard to tell. We don't see any chairs or tables or anything but, note cappuccino machine, which is interesting perhaps. And all the product placement. 

Another bit of flirty behaviour from Mac which gets results in this instance (the cafe girl - Patty, played by Jill McKay - reveals Morton lied when he said he didn't know Judy or Carol). Mac by the way orders a cappuccino but then has to go in a hurry so says he'll have it another time. 

I mean they must have had to say to these actresses, 'when he acts this way you have to go all mushy'. Not that he's an unattractive man but he's just too old to be acting the lothario with young women. Anyway doesn't matter. 

Spoiler: Judy is dead, Morton ran her over. Morton tries to take Carol somewhere presumably to finish her off but the detectives get to the boarding house just in time and save her, notwithstanding that Morton throws a pitchfork at them, as the devil might. Carol puts the finger on Mrs Logan and there is an excellent shot...

Of her just standing there, knowing the jig is up, and ready to be led to the car to take her to the police station (along with Carol and Morton - what kind of conversations went on in the vehicle with them all in it together?). 

Julie Costello would be back in Homicide in November the same year in an episode called 'The Hostage'.  She became a bit of a mainstay in Division 4 later in the decade/into the next. She must have been annoyed when Murder One named a character after her in the mid-90s. Or maybe it was homage.

* In August 1967 viewers of Granada television in Merseyside had the pleasure of watching this show. 

(Liverpool Echo 29 August 1967 p. 2). 

I'd love to know what Where Did That Come From? was like. George Melly was writing Flook by this time. I had formed somewhere in the back of my mind that Cyril Fletcher was one of those horrendous Savile-style pedophiles hiding in plain sight for decades but looking at him on wikipedia I see I have wronged him in that regard. But he was a freemason. 

derani scarr

When Derani Scarr appeared as 'Woman' in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in 2017, everyone was wondering where this actress had been since 1967 and You Can't See Around Corners. Obviously I'm being sarcastic and an idiot. I am sure she had a career. She is in the episode of Homicide called 'Witch Hunt', however, (alongside Sheila Florance and David Spurling) playing the ostensibly foxy Helen Hopgood. At one point Bronson asks her why she wasn't at home getting her beauty sleep and she says 'do you think I need it?' and he says something approving. 

They make so much of her, it's surprising that even though this was a recurring role (she was to be in six episodes between 1965-6), she wasn't even more of a regular.