The Third Miracle

Rob wrote:

  Then there was Katy Kurtzmann playing the young Caroline, as well as Anna, the girl with the stutter.  Though she wasn't a regular character.  It's odd that the Ingalls girls didn't have ongoing friendships on the show; just kids who appeared when the writers needed conflict.

So now you gotta a little problem with Matthew reincarnating as Albert.....You talkin behind my back! Don't go there turncoat!

Gotta problem with actors having different roles..........LHOTP wasn't the place to be!

Eddie Quillan Only Had SEVEN!

Hersha Parady Had TWO!

John McLiam had THREE

EJ Andre had FIVE

Ike Eisenmann had TWO

Don Red Barry had TWO

And the Lord only knows how many  parts this ding dong had on that thing Andy Griffith called a show!


And You Dare To Go There With Matthew!

  

LOL!!!

Multiple roles on the same show for character actors back in the 50's, 60's, and 70's was not uncommon. As dramas, and even comedies to a certain extent, have become more serialized, actors have mostly had to settle for playing one character on a show and that's it. It is not as common nowadays as it was 30+ years ago. Imagine watching Lost or Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad and seeing the same actor showing up every 10 or 15 epis as another character. It would confuse the viewer and ruin the story line. Some serials, notably the Sopranos, have broken the "rule" when they added the Vito Spatafore (aka Johnny Cakes) character. Joseph Gannascoli had a small role in an early epi of the series and came back later as a regular.

Yeah, and it becomes all the more obvious now that the reruns often run several times a day as opposed to once a week during their original run.  One good example is Allan Melvin on the Andy Griffith Show.  He later became known as Sam the Butcher on the Brady Bunch and as Barney Hefner on All in the Family/Archie Bunker's Place.  But on Andy, he played eight (I believe) different roles, all of them bad guys, except one.   When you spotted Allan, you knew there was gonna be trouble in Mayberry.

 

Then of course there was Richard Stahl on maybe 10 epis of The Odd Couple.



And George Petrie on seemingly every episode of The Honeymooners.

Ha! Allan Melvin and Richard Stahl were two guys who proved you could have a successful TV career without ever becoming a big name. I bet they had a lot of people coming up to them in the street and saying, "You look familiar... did we go to school together?"  

Rob... if you like this character actor trivia , which it appears you do, you'll really like a documentary that's been on Showtime recently. It's called, "That Guy... Who Was In That Thing" and it's all about the nameless character actors who we all recognize but never know their names. They interview a bunch of them and they tell their stories and how they've managed to make a living in Hollywood. Great documentary.

Sounds good.  Love the title!  I don't get Showtime, though.

I hate saying this, but I think this was a waste of an episode. Reading Melissa Sue's memoir, sounds like one of the camera people came up with the idea for this episode. I thought it was another excuse to give Mary a senseless tragedy to play. It just wasn't a good story idea at all. Though I understand they were trying to show Providence's hand in helping people during an accident, I didn't like that they were making Mary and Adam the victims of an accident again instead of writing something positive for them to play. Could have done away with the accident altogether and made an positive episode about an educator winning an award and REALLY making a speech! And dealing with possible prejudices against blind people as educators. That might have been a more interesting episode! So frustrating!

I only saw part of this episode today but I thought that it was not good at all for Laura and Albert to have the Olesons take the log with the bees in it.....if the bees had startled the horses or stung up the horses, and the horses then take off and upset the wagon, then we could have had not one, but two, tragic accidents involving horse-drawn vehicles in a single episode. I didn't watch long enough to see what actually did happen in regards to the bees.

Watched this one tonight - the whole episode minus whatever all COZI-TV cuts out. Mrs. Oleson was pretty snotty about the honey, but I still don't think that Laura and Albert should have let her and Nellie handle the bee hive / log. Also, I found it odd that Charles didn't ask the townspeople for help for Mary and Adam to go to the awards dinner. I think Harriet Oleson would have wanted to go, since the award was associated with "her" blind school. She would have probably paid for the whole trip and of course gone along herself! Maybe that was what Charles wanted to avoid, though.

I also thought the cost seemed rather high. Would it really have cost that much money for that trip? They were not even leaving Minnesota!

reneerose wrote:

I hate saying this, but I think this was a waste of an episode.  Reading Melissa Sue's memoir, sounds like one of the camera people came up with the idea for this episode.  I thought it was another excuse to give Mary a senseless tragedy to play.  It just wasn't a good story idea at all.  Though I understand they were trying to show Providence's hand in helping people during an accident, I didn't like that they were making Mary and Adam the victims of an accident again instead of writing something positive for them to play.  Could have done away with the accident altogether and made an positive episode about an educator winning an award and REALLY making a speech!  And dealing with possible prejudices against blind people as educators.  That might have been a more interesting episode! So frustrating!

It does seem like almost every episode which featured Mary after she went blind had some huge tragedy happening to her and/or Adam!

One thing I do like about this episode is that Mrs. Foster had a fairly large role - I'm not sure I even knew Walnut Grove had a telegraph, let alone that Mrs. Foster was the one who was running it!