homicide - the golden thread

This episode of Homicide, 'The Golden Thread', (S5 E26) was first shown on 23 July 1968. 

I'm tired of Homicide stories about women/girls getting murdered. But this is a show from over fifty years ago so not much point in complaining I suppose. You have to look at it as something that happened in the distant past, and only get annoyed about the more recent stuff. A few interesting bits:

This is an artist called Sharp (played by Paul Karo, who got a lot of roles in Homicide over the years) reviewing a line-up. The police line-ups are held in the Homicide offices and the witnesses are face to face with the accused. It's all a bit primitive. 

This was an interesting scene in 'the rubbity' (as Sharp calls the pub) where he was getting friendly with  a 17-year old girl called Becky (Linda Burd) who's drinking in there alone. Bert bundles Becky off and Mack finds this drawing amongst Sharp's sketchbooks: 

Someone went to town on this picture and it's really awful, although I like the spiderweb detail on the bike wheels and the horrendous mad faces behind her. Anyway, I'm tired of Homicides about murdered children/women, although perhaps when someone says that they are tired of Homicide itself. Perhaps I should try doing something else for a while. 

(Of course I say that and instantly the next one comes on and it's got Ken Shorter in it - who did a lot of this kind of thing, I gather, before Stone, though he was only in two Homicides). 

Here's Linda Burd on p. 6 of the Australian Jewish News for 1 July 1960. 

She's in the AJN again on 12 December 1969 p. 12 where they say she left school at around 16 and was quickly asked to audition for Homicide and Division 4 (she did two episodes each) and then she played Concetta in Bellbird in late 1969 after which, nothing. She is listed in IMDB as being a wardrobe supervisor on a 2021 film called 616 Wilford Lane (after 52 years of no activity) but you know what? I doubt it's the same person. My guess is she either got married (so had a different name than 'Burd', which probably caused her a bit of grief in any case), quit acting, or both. If she's still with us she's 72 now. 

Update 24/8 Here she is again in S5E44, 'The Joy Ride'. Here she plays Ina Lehmann, the daughter of a service station owner. Her role is fairly passive but at least she doesn't get killed - her boyfriend (of sorts), seen here, does. The most interesting thing about this episode IMO is that everyone calls her Ina to rhyme with meaner, but the boyfriend - an upstanding, ordinary bloke - calls her Ina to rhyme with diner. 

It didn't even strike me until I saw this screenshot but I now appreciate that the Passiona (?) poster on the wall is arbitrarily cut at the sides, making it meaningless. 

it's still kind of night time, well, early morning really

Went to sleep so early last night it an early wake up was almost inevitable. It's just me and Nancy in the sitting room waiting for the day to begin. 

I actually like the night time, so I don't know why this stupid song by Russell Morris got in my head, called 'I Don't Like the Night'. When I was 15 I did my work experience at Richmond Recorders, which you'd think would somehow be formative but it didn't feel formative at all. It felt dull and annoying. There was nothing to do and Russell Morris and the Rubes were recording 'demos for Japan', like, really. One of the songs they were doing was called 'I Don't Like the Night'. This was ultimately released on an album they put out that year, but it wasn't the Richmond Recorders version. Intriguing. Anyway I don't even know why I'm telling you this.

Russell Morris and the Rubes only existed in I guess 1980-81 and I suppose they were an attempt to update Russell Morris from late 60s-early 70s balladeer (which as far as I'm concerned is what he was best at) to a hot act for the 80s. Morris was 32 and, so, not in the least bit old. It still seemed like a bit of a stretch. I recall the guys in the control room saying of Russell while he was laying down his vocal things like, 'geez mate fuckin' give up you has been'. About ten years later I saw him in the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar taking much less of a role than Farnesy, but you know, still battling away and then he went on to have some actual hit albums of new material in the last ten or so years. 

These are my early morning thoughts, I bet yours are more interesting. 

lionel long in homicide, and phoenix

https://m.facebook.com/ThirroulHistoryInPhotos/ 

So I know you mainly tune into my show to hear about where I'm up to in Homicide and I apologise that other important work has got in the way. A few episodes ago (S5 E21) Les Dayman's character Bill Hudson suddenly got all sad and reflective (no mention of the fiancee Tink though, his back story i.e. she has completely disappeared) and when he had to shoot a madman out for revenge, he went on leave. In S5 E22 Lionel Long joins the cast as Bert Costello and in S5 E24 most recent episode seen, there is a very offhand discussion about Bill going back to forensic or something like that.

Lionel Long is not Italian or of Italian heritage, but he can do a decent couple of sentences in Italian, despite constantly insisting he was born in, I can't remember, Gundagai or somewhere. Anyway, I'll miss Bill but so far so great. New opening credits too which are very exciting. 

Long was a singer as well as an actor. Here he is post-Homicide using his Homicide fame to get a gig at the Ainslie Rex Hotel Cabaret. 

Canberra Times 2 May 1970 p. 16

Meanwhile, 

as per Richard's recommendation I'm watching Phoenix which is actually pretty freakin' amazing (there's Paul Sonkkila above, love to know his story). Obviously in one sense or another made in the light of Homicide and similar but 25 years later and by the ABC. A lot of very believable stuff here. Unlike Homicide a lot of glances and asides, no-one's out and out saying what they think for rapid exposition, but then, this is a long series story not 50 minute episodes. Well I don't like being distracted from Homicide which is a distraction in itself, but it's fascinating. 

...and like most of the best shows it has Peter Cummins in it. Can't wait till he shows up in Homicide (S7 E36 apparently). 

august 1952 flook

I'd like to draw some connection between the Australian-ness of the author and the Australian references in the 20/8 and 21/8 strips but nah. Also note that in the 22/8 episode, the word 'information' has been inserted into the last panel, presumably for the North American audience. I wonder what it replaced. 'Intelligence'? 

How come Flook and Rufus are allowed to compete as two members of a team, when the other countries only have one team member each? 

rabbit rabbit

 

give yourself a pat on the back

...you can if you want but actually that's just me talking to myself. A 31 July deadline for four academic papers (three conference papers, two of which were co-authored and which admittedly are constructed only to a 'this will get past the referees even if they will have objections' standard) and a book chapter. All that stuff in parentheses actually makes it all seem a little like, well, it's not as good as all that but really, perhaps counterintuitively I don't know as I have no intuition on this any longer, it takes a lot out of you to do these things. 

It was a humbling experience earlier this year when we received referee reports on an ARC application wherein one referee suggested I didn't have a high publication rate for someone at my level. Fuck's sake! I have a hundred journal article-conference paper-book chapter publications and there are ten books with my name on them, give or take, sometimes as editor and sometimes as author or co-author. It's not something I dwell on (except when someone says something like that) and I suppose ultimately it just leaves me completely baffled as to what they meant, the only explanations I can think are either that they're in one of those STEM fields where papers all have seventy authors often added without their knowledge (either that, or half the effort of writing the paper is contacting all the authors and saying 'you OK to be on this? We'll let you know when it comes out') so twenty years into your career you have ten thousand publications, or they weren't paying attention to my publications, or they were trolling me. I don't really know.

An academic I encountered early in my career, to whom I took an unreasonable dislike very early because he was clearly predatory of the young girls in a way that surely has had the powers that be at his university periodically tut-tutting and hoping that no-one complains or that if they do it'll somehow be manageable (for all I know it's been 'managed' many times) published one book, that's it, one book. That was the basis for a career. It still gets mentioned periodically, and it leaps out at me from time to time in other contexts, so I know he has yet to be cancelled. I mean I also liked the book when I read it, and I suppose the author has to be detached from the text eg Lewis Carroll. But my point is not (I had to remind myself what my point was) that he was a predator but that some people, admittedly people who made their mark in the twentieth century when things were different, can sustain a career off one freakin' book. I guess I have yet to write the career-defining book! Probably never will and in fact would prefer not to, not that I haven't tried in the past. 

Anyway, all I really wanted to say was that finalising (let's say) 20 000 words of text on three different topics in a week isn't easy. I am pleased with myself, even if at the same time I am very cognisant that the two sole-authored ones in particular are very flawed, in a way that only their author would really know, there's no mystery to them, and that's what a good piece of writing needs I think, a bit of artifice, I can't enjoy that when I know what happened on this side of the curtain. 

Here's a goat I met yesterday. Actually, one and two thirds of two goats. 

ottawa citizen comics page

I know you're hankering for another month of Flook particularly now Rufus and Flook are in Helsinki, but I thought you might enjoy seeing a full comics section from the Ottawa Citizen, which is where I'm sourcing the Flooks from lately. These two pages were presented this way pretty regularly throughout the week in the Citizen in 1952, but not in any regular part of the paper - sometimes it's closer to the front (this is pp. 21-22 of the 11 Aug 1952 edition) but sometimes it is almost the last page. I have no idea how newspapers were figured out at this time. I mean I've seen a 'flat plan' as we used to call them in the magazine trade, but I seriously don't know how much the layout of the newspaper was even written down. I guess somehow they had to make sure that everything was in it. Not quite a lost art but I bet a lot of people dedicated their life to this kind of thing and far fewer do now. 

They had some great strips. King Aroo is particularly delightful.