So, apparently some took my Les Vampyres/LOL Cats mashup to be a quiz of some sort, whereas it was just me goofing around. This blog hasn’t done quizzes, largely because quizzes are kind of hard to think up—even those of the putatively basic “name that film” sort. But every now and again inspiration strikes; a challenge presents itself. And so I ask you, readers: what is the thread that connects the two screen caps below? (My friends Dave Kehr and The Commenter Known As Cadavra would no doubt get this in a second, and are thus discouraged from participating.) No prizes for this one. Baby steps, baby steps.
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UPDATE: Two possibilities suggest themselves: that this quiz is really, really hard…or that it’s just a stiff. In any case, I shall now provide information that makes it less of a quiz and more of a puzzle—that is, information that will enable anyone who’s got the time and inclination to dig can use to come up with the answer. First off, yes, the bottom grab is of Mr. Ed, Clint Eastwood, and the back of Alan Young’s head, from the April 22, 1962 episode of Mr. Ed, imaginatively titled “Clint Eastwood Meet Mr. Ed.” And the top frame grab is from 1937’s Charlie Chan at the Olympics, although obviously neither of the actors here are playing Chan. Happy search-engine-plugging!
UPDATE THE SECOND: In comments, Mr. Michael Grost—keeper of a formidable archive of film writings at his own site and also, I am compelled to note, a regular commenter at Mr. Kehr’s place, nails it: “The leading man in the top photo is Allan Lane, back in the days before he became a cowboy star. (My favorite of his early films is Maid’s Night Out [Ben Holmes], with Joan Fontaine in the title role. It’s a delightful screwball comedy.) At the end of his career, Lane was the voice of Mr. Ed.” My friend Mr. Joseph Failla, in a private e‑mail, complimented me on “a nice reminder Allan “Rocky” Lane had a career in films long before Mr. Ed.”
So here’s the deal.
We sat around the other night, me and the guys…well, it was in the waning hours of a wonderful Sunday afternoon birthday party organized for me by My Lovely Wife, and a couple of the guests, who are indicated above, were perusing the DVD shelves, and one of them noticed my The Best Of Mr. Ed Volume One set. I said, “Hey, you ever see the episode where Clint Eastwood guest-starred?” My friend looked at me as if I’d been dosed with magic mushrooms, and I knew that once things wound down I was gonna have to play the piece. This episode was not extraordinary on the face of things, apropos early-’60s television; it had been concocted to flog Rawhide, the series Eastwood starred in at the time. We watched it, marvelled at its many semiotic correspondences, and then one of us wondered, who the hell was it that provided the remarkably crotchety voice of the talking horse? Upon discovering that my DVD collection in fact contained at least one film in which said actor appeared in flesh-and-blood, we popped that in, and were rewarded in more ways than we had anticipated. (Charlie Chan on the Hindenburg. Then watching Jesse Owens. No, really.) So there you have it.
No clue, but that’s Clint Eastwood with Mr. Ed, isn’t it?
They both feature men who are smiling.
Yes, that is Eastwood and Mr. Ed. Recognizing the one is more crucial than recognizing the other. No, I’m not gonna tell you WHICH one…
Wait, I have an actual, shot-in-the-dark guess: Is the first image from “Tarantula”, which featured Eastwood as “Jet Squadron Leader”?
Say, I made an actual guess! Where’d it go?
Okay, I’m trying again: Is the first one from “Tarantula”, which features Eastwood as “Jet Squadron Leader”?
Sorry, Bill, no dice. Although he auditioned, Mr. Ed did not make it into “Tarantula”…
So I was wrong BOTH times? Well, crap. Mr. Ed would have made a great giant tarantula, though.
I have no idea, but my first thought on seeing the second still was that Clint was about to launch into Henry Fonda’s love scene from “The Lady Eve.”
The leading man in the top photo is Allan Lane, back in the days before he became a cowboy star. (My favorite of his early films is “Maid’s Night Out” (Ben Holmes), with Joan Fontaine in the title role. It’s a delightful screwball comedy.)
At the end of his career, Lane was the voice of Mr. Ed.
Nailed it. Nice going, Mike.
Eastwood’s appearance on “Mr. Ed” wasn’t just to plug “Rawhide,” but to do a favor for Arthur Lubin, the journeyman Universal director (“Buck Privates”) who discovered Clint among the young recruits in Universal’s talent program (they had such things in those days) and did a lot to promote his early career – not least by casting him in “Frances in the Navy” (1955), one of those annoying “Frances the Talking Mule” pictures that Lubin supervised and later plundered when he produced “Mr. Ed” for television.”
Allan “Rocky” Lane’s greatest moment was the 1940 Republic serial “King of the Royal Mounted,” directed by William Witney and John English.
Yours in rabid pedantry,
Dave
The Lubin/Eastwood/“Frances” connection flickered in the back of my mind as I rewatched the entirely delightfully inane episode—which also features future “Beverly Hillbillies” sex kitten Donna Douglas as Eastwood’s “girlfriend,” whose name is quite possibly “Baby Doll”—but I never followed through. I’ll have to give “KIng of the Royal Mounted” a look, Dave, after I’m through with those Green Archer and Dick Tracy serials you recently wrote up in the Times, and which are indeed a helluva lot of fun.
Dear Glenn Kenny,
Thank you very much for the kind words!
They are greatly appreciated.
Following Lane’s turns in two King of the Royal Mounted chapter plays, his home studio, Republic, staged a coronation. The erstwhile “Serial King” made just one more episodic epic, 1943’s DAREDEVILS OF THE WEST, before abdicating to become a star of six-day quickie Westerns. In this capacity, billed as “Rocky” Lane, he presided over the declining days of the series Western and enjoyed tremendous popularity during the late Forties and early Fifties. He even had his own comic book.
Unfortunately for him, Lane was by all accounts a humorless prig with a bad habit of alienating his co-workers. When his contract expired in 1953, Republic – which by then was phasing out “B”-Western production anyway – cheerfully bid him a not-so-fond farewell. Subsequently he starred in an unsold TV pilot as comic-strip cowboy Red Ryder (a role he had played in seven 1946–47 Republic feature films), but after that he went underground, surfacing briefly in the occasional bit role. The story I’ve always heard is that he was informally blacklisted as a result of his bad attitude and boorish behavior while at Republic. Lane was practically a nobody when he got the MISTER ED assignment, and that gig was perceived by many in Hollywood to be the perfect comeuppance for one of Tinseltown’s most notorious stuffed shirts.
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