division 4: life's a gamble

Just wanted to mention how much I enjoy it when Janne Coghlan makes an appearance in Crawfords shows. What do I know about Coghlan? Really not much, except that she was on the stage a lot in the 50s-60s and then in Crawfords programs and a few other minor films up until the very early 90s, then nothing heard of her thereafter. Somewhere along the way there, for some reason, she lost the extra 'n' in 'Janne'. Here she is in the ABC Weekly for 15 May, 1954. 

 Let's say she was twenty then, so I guess she's 90 now if she's alive, and she was 40 or so in 1975 when she played loyal-wife-to-a-loser with Tom Oliver in the episode of D4 'Life's a gamble' (7 July 1975). 

You can (well I can) imagine them looking at these scenes in the Crawfords meeting, or whatever they did, and saying 'this is real Janne Coghlan stuff' - a lot of domestic two-hander with Oliver where it's like, they have a deep attachment but he is a terrible man. 

This is a rare D4 where you can actually go back and watch it again and it's different all over because you (or I - gullibly) believed that Oliver's character had killed the underworld identity. Actually he hadn't. But when she shows him this paper and he's all like 'the papers are full of lies', it's actually really interesting to see it a second time. 

Yeah, yeah, I know. The real crime is that beard. 

Well, that crime is solved about half way through the episode. 

Anyway, I wonder what happened to Janne Coghlan? I suppose she retired. Let me know if you know.

Also a nod to Luigi Villani, who has a small role in this episode as a boat hirer. It's always best for him when he's not affecting some sort of Chico Marx accent. He was Mick Moloney in The Box the previous year, but usually he's got a kind of bastardised Italian name - he had ten roles in D4 including 'Pastrani', 'John Zammitt', 'Tony' (twice, but I think different Tonies), 'Mario' and 'Musso', but here he's 'Bert Williams'. Villani was born in Wangaratta, don't know about Bert. 

if you read only one interview with tom oliver today...

...you will no doubt want to make it this one, by the iridescent 'Jean MacElroy' who was one of my many noms-de-plume while I was hackily hacking out el cheapo pieces on Australian soap stars etc for the British colour press. This story must have been from 1992, as (a) that's when TO returned to Neighbours after a shorter stint in the late 1980s; and also, in 1992 yeah, he was 54. The rest of the story shows, if nothing else I suppose, my sinister fascination with old television. I hadn't realised until I started busting into my manila folder of old soap star interview transcripts/beat ups that I had such an abiding interest over such a long time, there you go. 

Unfortunately I was the vessel of a vicious lie from TO to the readers of whatever this appeared in (assuming it did) over thirty years ago: we said that The Shifting Heart was 1969. So wrong! It was 1968:

Melbourne Age 21 August 1968 p. 6

And here's a feature on TO from the following year. 

Melbourne Age 29 January 1969 p. 2

Enjoyed all that? Good. Because this is a new feature of this blog, always full of surprises, going forward for some time to come! Thrilled? You are!!!