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A place could not be thinner for such an undertaking
I did not approve of concluding our break-fast to discover that David McCallum had died. I saw him first in The Great Escape (1963), which always seemed to be playing somewhere in my childhood. My brother was almost named Ilya until my father remonstrated with my mother that their children would sound like a Russian vaudeville act. Every headline I've seen mentions The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964–68) and NCIS (2003–), but he will always look to me like something even more enigmatic than a slim, blond-mopped Russian agent, because at least Kuryakin was human. In the same way that Sapphire & Steel (1979–82) left its final assignment suspended in stars and narrative, I imagine McCallum like Steel disappearing out of time like a video cut, itself the kind of ghost that would have fit seamlessly into his medium atomic weight's store of exasperation with the human carelessness of time and its traces, our deliberate preservation of lost moments that opens up cracks in the world as flimsy as a filmstrip and as engulfing as centuries, but these deaths twenty-four times a second are the only way I have ever known him, even when he was alive, like every actor trailing roles behind him like freeze-frames. I will find a new one for his memory. I assume the integrity of time is pretty much a dead loss in our TV.
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Thank you!
I've only ever really seen him as Steel, too (barring a so-so WWII film I was watching for Suzanne Neve content).
I have seen him in a handful of movies and other television, including one of the wobblier first-season episodes of Babylon 5—I don't hold it against him, the same thing happened to David Warner—and he's even great in some of them, but he clicked for me with Steel, just as I think he will always look to my mother like Illya Kuryakin and my father turns out to associate him with the peculiar time-tilting episode of The Outer Limits which generated Steel's inexpressible origins. I never saw him in another role which asked him to be so uncanny with nothing more than a plain suit and an irritated expression.
But farewell, Steel, yes. What will we do now? Break the corridor and take the consequences, I suppose.
What more human thing to do?
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And since I have seen all of B5 at least twice, then I definitely have seen him in that as well. No doubt a couple of other things I've forgotten.
What more human thing to do?
We'll never learn!
Best I could do at short notice without expending, like, extra effort (not optional today): https://www.tumblr.com/thisbluespirit/729545312965935104/farewell-steel?source=share <3
(I may have sounded grumbly earlier, but he has such a dedicated fanbase, deservedly by all accounts, that when he appears in a thing, everyone else around him disappears. When I first got into S&S, there were about 6 works with Silver and he was evil/disapproved of, and there was even one - beautifully written!! - where on top of that Sapphire was Unworthy Of Steel just for liking Silver. She had to learn the error of her ways. Looking at the bounty of works on AO3 now, and how little of that is left, it must be hard to imagine.)
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I think I may have to watch it, if only to see his first brush with the weirdness of time.
And since I have seen all of B5 at least twice, then I definitely have seen him in that as well. No doubt a couple of other things I've forgotten.
It was not a memorable episode of Babylon 5! The other films in which I've seen him are A Night to Remember (1958), Violent Playground (1958), and Billy Budd (1962), all of which provided much more enduring characterizations, which I say even though I managed to forget for years that the enduring characterization of Harold Bride in A Night to Remember was his. He's also somewhere in Hell Drivers (1957), which
Best I could do at short notice without expending, like, extra effort (not optional today)
That's elegantly done, and good luck with conserving your energy for the rest of the day. *hugs*
I may have sounded grumbly earlier, but he has such a dedicated fanbase, deservedly by all accounts, that when he appears in a thing, everyone else around him disappears.
I figured it didn't have much to do with me, since I had not expected you to be prostrate with grief for David McCallum! Just from the perspective of having, you know, watched the show, that version of Sapphire & Steel fandom sounds wild. I'm glad it's changed.
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I do sort of vaguely recall that he was in it and that I think it was early on, but, yeah.
Did you at least get decent gifs out of the so-so WWII film with Suzanne Neve?
Yes, I did! Of Suzanne, of course. :-)
Someone on tumblr reblogged some nice gifs of him as Harold Bride yesterday, in tribute: https://www.tumblr.com/mariocki/729528785806950400/napoleonandillya-a-night-to-remember-1958?source=share
Just from the perspective of having, you know, watched the show, that version of Sapphire & Steel fandom sounds wild.
I mean, the writers of the worst stories weren't around at that point and it wasn't that many (there just wasn't much Silver-fic, so it was a huge % of that), but I think the LJ S&S fandom had mostly come over en masse from MUNCLE and though they were in general very sweet and welcoming, the sheer weight of every POV in every fanwork Steel-wards, and the above-mentioned stories, and the fact that I legit multiple times had to attempt to explain the apparently unthinkable concept that I preferred David Collings to disbelieving McCallum fans, made me very contrary indeed and it's never quite worn off. I'm not happy about it. I liked him, I like Steel! *shakes fist at my contrariness*
However, I left the fandom much more Silvery than I found it. XD (Not just me, of course - a lot of it was the shift to AO3 which made it easier to find out where all the fic actually was, plus a friend of mine who arrived a little later and shared my OT3, OC element loving brain cells, but... I did write, request and receive a lot of fic. ahem, ahem. XD)
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He plays an avuncularly unethical archaeologist who gets his assistant turned into an alien bioweapon. I believe it contained some important early character beats for the main cast and was otherwise pretty awkward.
Someone on tumblr reblogged some nice gifs of him as Harold Bride yesterday, in tribute
That is nice! Thank you for the link. I remembered for years that I had seen Michael Goodliffe first as Thomas Andrews, but despite my fondness for the historical Harold Bride, I completely forgot about McCallum until 2017. He did turn up in Hell Drivers, by the way, incredibly young and thin and white-blond. And I could watch The Great Escape on TCM if I felt like it, doing nothing to dispel my childhood impression that it is always playing somewhere.
and the fact that I legit multiple times had to attempt to explain the apparently unthinkable concept that I preferred David Collings to disbelieving McCallum fans
That's the part where I continue to feel it should be uncontroversial and indeed to be expected that different people should have different favorite characters and favorite actors and people who behave otherwise confuse me.
made me very contrary indeed and it's never quite worn off. I'm not happy about it. I liked him, I like Steel!
I never actually got the impression you didn't! I'm sorry the other stuff is mixed in there, too.
Not just me, of course - a lot of it was the shift to AO3 which made it easier to find out where all the fic actually was, plus a friend of mine who arrived a little later and shared my OT3, OC element loving brain cells, but... I did write, request and receive a lot of fic. ahem, ahem.
Your service is appreciated.
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I mean, that is a lot of s1, but it's generally all perfectly okay, apart from that bit where they have way too many eps without G'kar all in a row. (I'm always: "oh, I like everyone in B5." B5 s1: "have 5-7 eps without G'kar!" Me: *implodes entirely*)
it should be uncontroversial and indeed to be expected that different people should have different favorite characters and favorite actors and people who behave otherwise confuse me.
They were very nice! I think it had just been a bit of mass David McCallum group for so long, they had trouble adjusting for a moment or two. XD And, tbf, I am contrary like that. It's why I can't follow many people on tumblr - if I see too many posts on one thing/the same post repeated too many times, I start automatically disliking whatever/whoever it is, even if actually it/they are my fave.
Btw, on a more random note, I did finally write a bit (or blather some more, might be more accurate in this case) about the films I watched over the summer that I enjoyed. I know I did already blather to you about some of them, and that you've been both very ill and occupied, so just in case you missed it. If you hadn't, that's fine, obviously. I just know that you do like to be made aware of things that are usually heading in the direction of your interests if you may have not seen. (like, er, film! *waves hand grandly*)
The above brought to you by me getting around to watching the commmentary on the 1999 Winslow Boy this week, and I thought I should say, that obv while I still can't talk about the play and 1948 film I have not seen, it does sound as if they are both very much adaptations that lean in opposite directions from the play in the middle - David Mamet was evidently determined to make it even more low-key and intimate and cut out bits and pieces and muted more dramatic things, and downplayed stage-comedy elements. One of the things that they talked about, that they ended up keeping was that when Arthur Winslow asks Ronnie twice if he did it, David Mamet cut out part of the line, but also originally the whole second question, but Nigel Hawthorne insisted on keeping it (David Mamet agrees with him it was right, it was too important). They also talked about similar things in the scene where Sir Robert questions Ronnie, in that Jeremy Northam, having gone and read the play, was using the stage directions in it (anger, sarcasm), but David Mamet was all, no, no, and they tone it done to a very chilly calm line of questioning. It all works really well, with this quiet confidence that the audience will find the family's growth and dynamics compelling and in the cast's performances, but, yeah, very much its own take, I sounds like - in a good way!
(They had almost a full house for the main cast on the commentary, saving only that Gemma Jones hadn't made it over from the UK.)
On a more amusing note, Jeremy Northam also said that he made the Winslow Boy first, then went back to do An Ideal Husband, and it turned out that they bought the House of Commons set off the Winslow Boy, took him to the same location, put him on the same set, and sat him in the exact same seat and asked him to play another Sir Robert, and he was left being... which Sir Robert, please send help. XD
ETA: And the other thing, I said it used a lot of contemporary cartoons and articles and it does (and apparently some of the articles have the Archer-Shee name in), but it turns out that the cartoons weren't based on the originals - they actually got an artist in and made them up from all kinds of places. They looked utterly plausible, though!
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(Not really very odd, given the tiny number and the fact that I did it in order of importance in my mind, but hey. It is S&S-appropriate and makes it even eerier.)
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It's always worth noting when the world goes a little weird around Sapphire & Steel.