Steve wrote:I'm thinking that those like myself that are Boomers now in our sixties are just getting to that age and are starting to die more frequently. I really get a wake up when we lose those in music and entertainment that go before seventy and actually think to myself that those like a Mr. Hillerman that made it to their eighties had a pretty good life (of course it sounded as though he may have been fairly sick that last few)...As a side note, my 45 year High School reunion was this past summer, I haven't made one yet but at least was able to watch via facebook and YouTube.Most shocking was when they had a In Memoriam video of all of my classmates that have died over the years. The dog gone thing went on for almost twenty minutes!!!Now , we had over 1,200 in my class but come on!
I hear ya, man! Just keep treasuring every day you have on this earth. Life is so precious! I'm "only" at my 30th HS reunion (and, like you, I've never been to one of them), and almost all of the people I was close with have died. It's so depressing. Many of them died quite young, but virtually all of them were in the "high risk" group (if you know what I mean). I wish things could have turned out different for all of them. I'm very fortunate to be alive myself, which I always remind myself every day.
Re: The John Hillerman Thread
Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2018 4:04 am
by K Hale
And then I found these on YouTube. All 14 episodes of The Betty White Show. She's an actress, JH is her director, and they're divorced -- or are they?
I have no idea why this was only one season long, it's hilarious!
I couldn't pass that up...I hunted around and found it's from "At Long Last Love," from 1975. Which seems to be very hard to find, but I did...so for those who are interested, you can download it from extafilm (http://www.extafilm.com/). For a modest fee
(or for those who know where it can be found in better quality, please share...)
At any rate--the movie didn't get great ratings, but I for one found it delightful. Fluffy romantic comedy, and Mr. Hillerman's delivery is superb. Warning: the songs are catchy, you'll end up humming them...
~Amanda
I found this last night and could not believe how delightfully fun it was. I had never heard of it before very recently and I guess it got terrible reviews back in the day due to a troubled production and perhaps for being a bit ambitious for its time. It's fantastic... a lighthearted romantic comedy (the ONLY one I've ever seen that I enjoyed) full of kicky Cole Porter songs and interestingly creative cinematography/sets/costume design, most of which is done in black and white even though the film itself is in color. Hillerman, Eileen Brennan and Madeline Kahn are the standouts; Burt Reynolds and Cybil Shepherd do pretty good too. Interestingly, I read that all of the singing is done "in real time" as the cameras rolled; there is no lip syncing to a recorded track as you would usually see in a modern musical. Plus the shots are usually very long in duration, with very few cuts midscene, so that you can see that the dialogue, singing, and dancing is all done in one continuous take, like they did it back in the glory days of the Hollywood musical. This movie is really really enjoyable to watch. I saw it on YouTube; the movie is uploaded twice and the beginning is cut off of one copy while the very end is cut off of the other, and the image quality isn't great on either one. However, there is no DVD, and the BluRay costs $100... plus I don't have a BluRay player.
The clip of JH and Brennan singing their duet has been removed from YouTube but I've downloaded the movie and will put it up on Vimeo later. JH can absolutely sing! Unfortunately he doesn't get to dance.
Re: At Long Last Love
Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 4:20 am
by K Hale
K Hale wrote:The clip of JH and Brennan singing their duet has been removed from YouTube but I've downloaded the movie and will put it up on Vimeo later. JH can absolutely sing! Unfortunately he doesn't get to dance.
(Backstory: all the characters are hung over after one of an endless round of parties, and she was coming on to him the night before, to no avail!)
These two are gold... they should've been in a dozen movies together.
Re: The John Hillerman Thread
Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 12:35 am
by Rembrandt's Girl
This may have been posted before, but I can't find it so thought I'd post. I really love this pic of him sitting in his chair on the grounds of Pahonu, shades on, an old-fashioned sand ashtray next to him, with his beverage and cane by his side...
Re: The John Hillerman Thread
Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 1:20 am
by K Hale
That is a great picture. In his book, Larry Manetti mentioned that cane that converted into a little chair. He said JH carried it around with him so he would have it ready "should he desire to sit." He also had a battery powered electric fan that accompanied him on hot days, but that didn't make it into the pic.
He was just so damn real.
Re: The John Hillerman Thread
Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 3:55 pm
by K Hale
So my next journey into DVD land featured a pretty awful movie called "Lucky Lady." It stars Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds, and Gene Hackman as bootleggers. It's kind of a comedy and kind of serious, and I am not sure what went wrong with this film but it's just really jumbled and uncertain about what kind of movie it is, plus it's peppered with bad dialogue and very strange, blurry lighting that apparently was done on purpose for artsy reasons. However, John Hillerman is the lone bright spot; he plays with great glee the movie's villain, a mobster named Christy McTeague. He really ate this role up and did a terrific job, even though he too is sometimes given ridiculous dialogue but manages somehow to deliver it better and more believably than the three stars. He even has his own theme music. Plus there's lots of tommy gun action...
JH's role is described here beautifully by Roger Ebert: "The mob is determined to organize bootlegging in southern California, by force if necessary, and has sent a sinister little man in a homberg (John Hillerman) to see to things. He's the most interesting character in the movie, even though it shouldn't really be that way; he has a nice, prissy, cold perfectionism, as if he were a particularly violent accountant. He and his men use bulletproof, high-powered boats, but our heroes hold them off with Molotov cocktails."
Re: The John Hillerman Thread
Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 9:51 pm
by Rembrandt's Girl
There's a little repetition in topics in these but each one has other interesting parts as well.
J.J. Walters wrote:Caught part of an episode of The Love Boat the other day on MeTV and guess who was in it? That's right, John Hillerman! According to the IMDb it was from 1983, right in the middle of his Magnum run. He had the full on Higgy Baby accent working. I mean, dead on Higgins accent. If I didn't know better, it was Higgins taking a vacation on the Pacific Princess! But alas, he was some sort of inspector named Manfred Benusse. He solved the crime and got the girl in the end. Good for him! Claude Akins, Tony Dow and Didi Conn were in it. It was fun. Outside of Tales of the Gold Monkey and the Simon & Simon crossover, I believe this is the only TV show guest appearance he did during the Magnum run.
Does anyone have a source for this episode? That season of The Love Boat doesn't seem to be available on DVD and not on YouTube, either.
Re: The John Hillerman Thread
Posted: Thu May 03, 2018 5:22 pm
by K Hale
Caught this last night. Very funny. I used to watch "One Day at a Time" back when I was a kid but never remembered JH being in it. He played Ann Romano's boss. There's some backstory here that I haven't come across yet because he calls her "M.S. Romano" instead of "Ms. Romano."
Also found this, an episode of a short lived show called "Tenspeed and Brown Shoe," starring an extremely young-looking Jeff Goldblum playing a private investigator. Hillerman plays his dad, and Dana "Velma Troubshaw" Wynter plays his mother! I don't know what kind of accent Wynter was trying to pull off but it's terrible. This looks like it would have been a pretty good show, but I guess it didn't last long.
K Hale wrote:Caught this last night. Very funny. I used to watch "One Day at a Time" back when I was a kid but never remembered JH being in it. He played Ann Romano's boss. There's some backstory here that I haven't come across yet because he calls her "M.S. Romano" instead of "Ms. Romano."
The comment seems like a joke about women's lib. and the ERA from the 70's. My guess is Ann Romano asked to be called Ms. at the office instead Mrs. or Miss, so he calls her M S.
Re: The John Hillerman Thread
Posted: Thu May 03, 2018 11:38 pm
by Pahonu
K Hale wrote:Also found this, an episode of a short lived show called "Tenspeed and Brown Shoe," starring an extremely young-looking Jeff Goldblum playing a private investigator. Hillerman plays his dad, and Dana "Velma Troubshaw" Wynter plays his mother! I don't know what kind of accent Wynter was trying to pull off but it's terrible. This looks like it would have been a pretty good show, but I guess it didn't last long.
I have this whole series on DVD and it is pretty good. I don't know why it didn't make it.
Re: The John Hillerman Thread
Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 2:40 am
by K Hale
Pahonu wrote:
K Hale wrote:Caught this last night. Very funny. I used to watch "One Day at a Time" back when I was a kid but never remembered JH being in it. He played Ann Romano's boss. There's some backstory here that I haven't come across yet because he calls her "M.S. Romano" instead of "Ms. Romano."
The comment seems like a joke about women's lib. and the ERA from the 70's. My guess is Ann Romano asked to be called Ms. at the office instead Mrs. or Miss, so he calls her M S.
Yes, I figured that. I just didn't see an ep where it got started. His character is not the jerk one might expect him to be from knowing that, though.
Many of them died quite young, but virtually all of them were in the "high risk" group (if you know what I mean). I wish things could have turned out different for all of them. I'm very fortunate to be alive myself, which I always remind myself every day.
