Year: 2007

Vince Beck

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Vincent Beck was a character actor who appeared on many TV shows in the 60’s. He also appeared live in our living room when I was a kid. Beck was a friend of my mother’s from her time at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Click the thumbnail pictures to see scans from her yearbook. Look for the name Joanne Waffle.

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I’ve placed thick double borders around the pictures of my mother and Vince Beck. A third picture I’ve highlighted has a thin outside border. That’s David Andrews, or “Tige” Andrews. He was on an episode of “Star Trek” and he was one of the principal actors on the unforgettable “The Mod Squad.” I remember my mother once making light of Tige’s toupee.

Vince Beck’s resume of 60’s TV shows includes:

  • Bonanza
  • Get Smart
  • Gilligan’s Island
  • Gunsmoke
  • Lost in Space
  • The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
  • The Monkees
  • The Time Tunnel

Vince excelled at playing broad comic villains, particularly Russians. He was cast in no fewer than three episodes of The Monkees, which is one of my all-time favorite childhood shows. A clip from the Monkees episode “Royal Flush” is at the top of this post. Beck played the chauffeur.

Vince Beck’s worst movie credit is undoubtedly “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” His best is perhaps “… And Justice for All,” despite the profanity the part called for, which you won’t hear in this clip.

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You can imagine what a kick it was for us kids, having Beck visit! He stopped by our house in Norwalk, CT on his way to spend the summer at a theatre in Boothbay, Maine. I think he had a financial interest in the place.

I don’t know if Beck was just a friend of my mother’s, or if he was a former boyfriend. Vince Beck was a character actor and not a star, yet in person he was decidedly larger than life, and his presence added to the aura that my mother’s past retains to this day.

Obit: Donald Murray

DonaldMurray.jpgNewspaperman Donald M. Murray has died at 82. I shy away from saying “writer” as that’s too generic a term. I feel that writers should be classified as being a poet, or screenwriter, or novelist. Donald Murray was a newspaperman.

I became familiar with Murray from his weekly “Over 60” columns in The Boston Globe. A WW2 combat vet, Murray didn’t appreciate anything florid or fancy in the presentation of an idea. Public relations work wouldn’t have suited him. Murray didn’t accept Tom Brokaw’s label of “The Greatest Generation.” In his 2001 book, My Twice-Lived Life, Murray told some war stories. Here is one of them:

Then a jeep with stretchers lashed to it raced in, and two medics started fighting over the pair of jump boots with the feet still in. I thought it funny but when I got near, one of the bodies on the stretchers spoke. “Hey, Murray. I’m going back to Chicago. I got the lucky wound. You poor bastard, going back to the front.”

He kept taunting me, and I saw his legs had no feet. It was his boots they were fighting over, but he kept taunting me, and when I leaned over I saw it was my friend, high on morphine. He wouldn’t let up, and I felt the hate and envy rise up in me, and I started to move to choke him to death, just holding myself back until I could turn and head back to the front, full of sulfa and rage and fear, and not so much of the enemy but of myself. Are you surprised we are so often silent?

Welcome 2007!

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HAPPY NEW YEAR! Here’s the countdown, with Dick Clark.

For decades Clark was the butt of jokes about being a perpetual teenager. No longer.

Two years ago Clark had a stroke, and I was one of the many who were surprised to see him make a New Year’s Eve appearance last year. This year his speech is still slurred, and once again he lost track of the countdown.

Clark’s clean-cut image belied the fact that in the late 50’s he was paid to promote records on “American Bandstand.” I assume he survived the payola scandal by having ABC-TV, and not just a local radio station, behind him.