This episode introduced Ian Wolfe as Mama Carlson's butler Hirsch. A wisecracking butler is not exactly an original type of character, but Wolfe, an American character actor who'd been around since the '30s, made something special of the character despite having very few lines of dialogue in this episode, and was brought back several times the following season. Wolfe was like Charles Lane, a character actor who just never seemed to stop working and never seemed to look any different; Loni Anderson had this to say about Wolfe in an interview last year:
He had been in every old movie that I ever loved, including a Sherlock Holmes movie. He never looked any older, I thought. He looked just as old in our show as he had like 30, 40, 50 years ago. So, with that, I will never forget that we got to work with him.
This version has all the original music, but I don't recognize the songs, although the last song in the bachelor-party scene is by Otis Redding. Also, two bits of continuity: Herb refers to his drinking problem (and promptly falls off the wagon) and one of the strippers Herb hires is the stripper who he tried to hire for the Ask Arlene job in "Ask Jennifer."
Teaser and Act 1
Act 2 and Tag
5 comments:
GrumpyBear has a nice cover of the theme on this:
http://www.peppermillrecords.com/pm010/
The song at the start of Act 1 is "I Can't Stand It" by Eric Clapton.
It saddens me that many of WKRP's original songs didn't make it to the DVD.
This sort of thing I guess is holding up the Wonder Years DVDs, and I'm told has totally ruined the Fugitive DVDs.
(Of course, you've probably discussed this issue already. I noticed this blog has been going for quite a while - although, I just found it and love it!)
I'm really burning up my evenings watching these posts. Fantastic! (And additive)
Another comment: Ian Wolfe is one of those people who seems to have been 'born old', like Mark Twain or George Bernard Shaw. I love it.
Post a Comment