bye margaret cruickshank

Margaret Cruickshank's last Homicide episode was 'Don't Be Lonely', aired 30 September 1975 in which she played the supine Jennifer Marriott, who, spoiler, doesn't get out alive. The gentleman is I forget his name (he has several in the episode) played by Keith Lee if I'm not mistaken. 

I think I would have a soft spot for MC even if I didn't feel a slight, very slight connection to her as I semi- partially- kind of- knew her son James for a while. His last name was actually Watson (so was hers, I suppose?) and he took the stage name to be a musician, most famously in the Cruel Sea. I was under the impression he wrote the song 'Better Get a Lawyer', which I note is actually credited to many people and I also note, my memory is shitful, but I'll tell you what I recall just to have it written down and I can comprehensively forget it. 

I was visiting mutual friends in, I'm guessing, 1992? 1993? and James turned up unannounced, with a tape of a song that he'd recorded with the Cruel Sea - in my memory it was 'Better Get a Lawyer' and he was really enthused about it. After he left we all shook our heads because we thought it was so fucking awful and tryhard. Of course it became a big hit, probably played at weddings etc.  

on homicide walls

I have been passively regarding a few episodes of Homicide from early '67 but I don't want to bore you with the details, they're frankly not the most incredibly impressive or scintillating episodes either in terms of storylines or locations (though the episode called 'Keeper of Lions' has a lot of interesting stuff from Royal Park and the Zoo). I am pretty intrigued, as I think I've mentioned earlier, by the interior decoration in Homicide. The image below is from the episode I just mentioned; it's the kitchen of a woman who we only see in one scene (I think the character is Nora Padgett, played by Margaret Cruickshank, the mother of Cruel Sea/Widdershins member James Cruickshank nee James Watson) and know pretty much nothing about. 

The three images below are from an episode of a few weeks before, 'A Long Shadow'. This is the lounge room of a no-hoper mother, I wonder if the photographs on the wall are film stars or just 'ooh, I like the look of him'. 

(Donald Barker as Pat Rainsford)

(June Berry played by Amber Mae Cecil). But what on earth is the picture on the left? A chaise longue or something?! Did June Berry think 'Ooh, I like the look of that.'

I love thinking how these scenes are surely all the same wall with a few different props in front, or possibly shot in a corridor or something...