#poor cow 1967

[sesiondemadrugada]

Poor Cow (Ken Loach, 1967).

[dangeroustyphoondefendor]

[cannedbluesblog]

Carol White and Terence Stamp in Poor Cow (1967)

[the-nosy-neighbor]

A Cricket on the Hearth

The Cricket on the Hearth, a fairy tale of Home

In an effort to see if I could find any references to other codes, I went back once again to commercials.  During the segment on Mrs. Beagle’s chunky eggnog (narsty) there was a reference to all the things you need to have: 

 MAMA BEAGLE: Oh, Barnaby, you silly pooch, I think you’re missing something special.

BARNABY: What’s that, Ma? I got the milk in the stockin’, a cricket on the hearth, and a ham in the tree just for Santy Claus!

So, seeing as milk in the stocking and ham in the tree is invented, I have ignored the cricket on the hearth.  Seeing as it stands out, I looked it up, and lo and behold, it is a real reference.  This is a reference to a story written by Charles Dickens, truly the Mariah Carey of his day.  You see, he had a lot of success with A Christmas Carol, so cashed in on that by writing other Christmas stories.  That being said, given the multidimensional references to Poe, it might be worth viewing the Homewarming material with an eye to finding more references to Dickens.  

The milk is ringing a bell, but like in a weird reference.  Like, Futurama or something, but I can’t find a reference online.  I did find a lot of stockings with cows on them, so there is that.  

In searching “Cricket on the Hearth” I found a 60’s (1967) cartoon holiday special that I had never heard of, featuring a TV guy I’d never heard of.  It was strange, as I watch a lot of cartoons, and as an 80’s kids, holiday specials were life.  

The show is hosted by Danny Thomas, who was on Make Room for Daddy, but also had a variety show called The Danny Thomas Show.  As a part of this show, he provided the voice for the father in this cartoon special based on Dickens’s story.  Interestingly, his daughter in the show was played by his IRL daughter, MARLO Thomas.  This is the first instance of seeing Marlo in the wild for me.  

Here is a frame of the cartoon dad and daughter.  The story (cartoon version) goes:

Father and daughter, Caleb Plummer and Bertha Plummer, run a toy shop in their town.  Dad builds the toys, and the daughter paints them.  They do OK.  Bertha is engaged to a navy sailor (idk there are more types of sailor), Edward, who is getting shipped out.  They hug and she cries and they sing a very 60’s cartoon song about love.  She is painting one of the wooden dolls and saying something about this one smiling because she is waiting for her love to come back.  Edward is supposed to come back soon, it was 2 years or so in between scenes. Some guy comes to tell her that Edward died at sea, and she is so shocked that she goes blind.  

Wait, rewind rewind, the cricket is very Jiminy Cricket coded and he is looking for a family to adopt and adopts them.  His name is Cricket Crocket (surely a reference to Dickens’s famous characters).  He brings good luck a la Mulan.

So she goes blind.  Dad spends all his time and money on doctors looking to heal her, and eventually the money runs out and he has no toys to sell, so they are out on the street.  Why her dad decided her sight was more important than giving a blind girl a place to live, I don’t get.  Pauper’s prisons were a thing back then.  In their wanderings, they find a toy factory run by a skinflint named Tackleton, no first name as far as I can see, and he tells Caleb he can live on the property and work at the factory, catch is he is the only one working there, so he cranks out shoddy toys.  Also, Tackleton has an evil pet crow as a pet.  Very in line with specials at the time.

So, Dad decides to gaslight this poor thing and tells her that he has been made the manager of this factory and it is a great job and it comes with this house.  The house is old and busted, but he tells her it is very fancy and she believes it.  Dad runs into a homeless man, and offers him a place to stay, because it is Christmas, and he generally helps out.  

Tackleton decides he wants to marry the pretty young woman, and he proposes to her.  It is a very odd scene.  Not that this is an odd scene for the time, because there are hundreds of years of literature of old men trying to marry young women, and it is generally portrayed as a negative thing, and yet men have been doing it for a long time.  Anyway, Tackleton offers to marry her and give her a really nice life.  Dad is put off by it, because he has been lying and she thinks the guy is handsome and nice and asks if she’s sure and she is like Dad, I’m a blind woman in the 1800’s.  If he’s ugly, I won’t be able to see it. And honestly, it’s a big age gap, and he has a crow, but otherwise, he just has a wart on his nose.

Now, I watched this last weekend, but this next bit I honestly don’t remember, so perhaps I saw an edited version or perhaps I was bored by then, but Tackleton wants the cricket kidnapped so he can marry Bertha. Oh, also, the cricket tries to sabotage their tea date so she won’t say yes.  The crow, a monkey, and a dog kidnap the cricket and sell him to a sea captain who is in the illicit cricket trade (listen, I didn’t write this.)  He plays dead and the captain throws him overboard as he can’t be sold, and the cricket makes it back home through some whales and birds and stuff.  

When cricket arrives, it is midnight on Christmas Eve, which is the only time in the year that toys come alive.  Let me just make a side note, this is the 3rd or 4th time I have come across this type of storyline.  I watched The Christmas Toy last year, and that was wild.  If you haven’t seen it, it is a Henson joint, but IIRC it wasn’t fully his concept or something.  If you are looking for a WTF Christmas special besides this one, give it a watch.  The toys take Cricket to see the homeless guy and remove his disguise, and OMG it is Edward.  He hid his identity because he felt bad about Bertha going blind because he died, and he just wanted to see how she was doing without killing her this time, but decided not to since she seemed to be happy about getting married and the cricket tells him he has to fess up and she is going to be very happy that he is actually alive.

They get married right away, and Tackleton shows up to get hitched and it’s too late.  She tells him she will always love him in a way, and he’s happy with that I guess.  I want to say she got her sight back when she sees Edward, but it isn’t in this summary.  Happily ever after, the end.

This eye thing is Caleb thinking about his daughter and she is vaguely that shape. It is very reminiscent of something Clown would do, and kind of does in Eddie's freakout.

What is the point of this?  Who can say.  It is a bastardization of the original story, which is much more convoluted, in true Dickens style (I have always said he was paid by the word and you can tell).  More in the next post, I don’t want to wear you guys out.

[thislovintime]

Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz with William James Metzelaar (of the radio station KFRO) in San Francisco, January 1967; and the poster advertising the sold out show at the Cow Palace on January 22, 1967.

From a review of the Cow Palace show:

“Finally Davy Jones, [Micky] Dolenz, Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith — the Monkees — came on… in vivid technicolor, each leaping onstage in a wild display of psychedelic lighting with a recording of an unintelligible Monkees hit blaring in the background. Screams of thousands sounded like millions as Davy Jones — resembling a cross between Dorian Gray and Little Lord Fauntleroy — led off the first number, which was drowned in the inevitable ocean of screams. […] Shortly after this, the fruit began to fly. Peter Tork was soloing as half an orange — with citrus strands bristling in the flashing lights — caught poor Peter right in the eye. It didn’t hurt him but settled, once and for all, the big question. The Monkees did their own singing. Peter stopped, and so did the sound of his voice.” - Peggy King, Oakland Tribune, January 25, 1967

And, in 1995, Peter recalled...

“We were just doing the Cow Palace — I remember that concert, I got hit in the face with a banana [laughs].” - Mike & Maty, November 1995

[georgefairbrother]

Remembering British-South African actress, model and dancer, Anna Karen, who passed away February 22nd, 2022, as a result of a fire at her home, aged 85.

She worked as an exotic dancer and model to pay her way through drama school, appeared in Ken Loach's first feature, Poor Cow (1967), and alongside Barbara Windsor in Carry On Camping (1969), with whom she remained lifelong friends.

As a result of a role in a short-lived sitcom, Wild Wild Women, Anna Karen was cast as Olive in On the Buses in 1969. In a later interview, she recalled that the brief she was given for the character was simply 'always ill and sex mad'. She came up with the look herself, apparently based on a relative.

She appeared in all 74 episodes and three feature films. In an interview with Rabbit and Snail Films for On The Buses at the Movies, she said, leading up to the first film, the producers told the cast, "There's no money, the entire cast budget is 7 500 pounds, so don't be stroppy about it!"

The first On the Buses movie was brought in for well under 100 000 pounds and made back around 28 times its production budget. She also recalled that her favourite of the three feature films was Holiday on the Buses, with happy memories of filming at Pontin's holiday camp, Prestatyn, in amongst the camp's guests.

She later revived Olive for a reboot of The Rag Trade, appeared in The Bill, and as Aunt Sal in 54 episodes of Eastenders between 1996 and 2017.

Anna Karen was married to variety comedian, actor and stuntman, Terry Duggan (below left), from 1967 until his death in 2008.

She was the last surviving principal cast-member of On the Buses, after Stephen Lewis (Blakey) passed away in 2015.

[pacingmusings]

Seen in 2024:

Poor Cow (Ken Loach), 1967

[hymnsofheresy]

Bobbie Gentry "I Wonder As I Wander" on The Ed Sullivan Show on December 24, 1967

I wonder as I wander out under the sky, How Jesus the Savior did come for to die. For poor on'ry people like you and like I... I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

When Mary birthed Jesus, all in a cow's stall, Came wise men and farmers and shepherds and all, And high from the heavens a star's light did fall; The promise of the ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing, A star in the sky or a bird on the wing, Or all of God's angels in heaven for to sing, He surely could have had it, 'cause he was the king

[70s80sandbeyond]

Carol White in Poor Cow (1967)

[mentallystill]

[id= A series of images of the same comic, where Martin Luther King Jr is standing at a podium, and one of his quotes is in a speech box above him. Standing nearby are two white people, a man and a woman. The white man says "I prefer the guy who talks about dreams and stuff." They both look bored. The following are quotes by MLK that are placed in the speech box above him, the first is the original: There are literally two Americas... One America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity... but there is another America. In this America, people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on the lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. -MLK 1967 Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or ignored economic injustice. Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. We are perhaps the only nation that tried, as a matter of national policy, to wipe out its Indigenous population. To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it. Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them. I am sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans are racists. Either consciously or unconsciously. Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language. They made everything black ugly and evil. Look in your dictionary and see the synonyms for the word black. It's always something degrading, low, and sinister. Look at the word white. It's always something pure, high, and clean. Well I wanna get the language right, tonight. I want to get the language so right that everybody here will cry out, "Yes, I am black and I'm proud of it! I'm black and beautiful!" The republican party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill biewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right. /end id]

to be clear the first one is the original. i just riffed on it because it’s a powerful message.

[imoim36news]

Đạo diễn 87 tuổi từng đoạt hai Cành Cọ Vàng - Ken Loach - nói tác phẩm "The Old Oak" có thể là bộ phim cuối cùng của ông. Tác phẩm mới nhất của đạo diễn người Anh tranh giải Cành Cọ Vàng tại Liên hoan phim Cannes 2023. Trong cuộc phỏng v���n với Hollywood Reporter, Loach cho biết ông gặp khó khăn trong việc làm phim, khi đã gần 90 tuổi. Bối cảnh trong phim "The Old Oak". Ảnh: StudioCanal Loach nói tác phẩm gặp một số trục trặc vì ông phải làm việc trong khoảng thời gian dài, quá trình sản xuất trở nên phức tạp khiến cơ thể khó thích nghi. "Các bộ phim thường mất vài năm để thực hiện. Cơ thể của tôi dần suy giảm, trí nhớ ngắn hạn và thị lực đang khá tệ", đạo diễn cho biết.Tuy vậy, biên kịch Paul Laverty tin Ken Loach có thể chuẩn bị thực hiện một dự án phim tài liệu. "Tôi sẽ rất ngạc nhiên nếu Loach không làm gì. Làm phim là đam mê của anh ấy, Loach vẫn còn nhiều điều để kể với khán giả", Laverty nói.Trước đó, ông nhiều lần tuyên bố nghỉ làm phim nhưng vẫn tiếp tục thực hiện. Năm 2013, nhà sản xuất Rebecca O'Brien từng nói Jimmy's Hall là tác phẩm cuối trong sự nghiệp Loach. Năm 2015, cuộc bầu cử của Đảng Bảo thủ diễn ra, dẫn đến việc cắt giảm trợ cấp chăm sóc xã hội đã thôi thúc Loach thực hiện I, Daniel Blake (2016). Tác phẩm mang về giải Cành Cọ Vàng thứ hai trong sự nghiệp điện ảnh, sau The Wind That Shakes the Barley năm 2006. Guardian nhận định phim đã trở thành lời kêu gọi sự công bằng xã hội trên khắp thế giới.Với Sorry We Missed You (2019), Loach lên án gig economy (xu hướng thuê lao động tự do thay cho nhân công dài hạn), thông qua câu chuyện về người đàn ông làm việc cho một công ty giao hàng. Khi tác phẩm ra mắt tại Cannes, Loach cũng nói đây sẽ là bộ phim cuối của ông. Đạo diễn Ken Loach tại Liên hoan phim Cannes 2019. Ảnh: Reuters Ken Loach sinh ngày 17/6/1936 tại Warwickshire, Anh. Sự nghiệp đạo diễn của ông kéo dài gần 60 năm. Năm 1967, ông ra mắt phim điện ảnh đầu tay Poor Cow. Một số tác phẩm nổi tiếng thuộc trào lưu hiện thực xã hội của nghệ sĩ gồm Kes (1969), Land and Freedom (1995), Raining...

[falsenote]

Poor Cow (1967)

[terre-des-h0mmes]

Poor Cow (1967), directed by Ken Loach

[asinglemanpdf]

Poor Cow, Ken Loach, 1967

[clarabowlover]

Happy Birthday To Gorgeous British Actress Carol White

(Born 1st April 1943)

Pics Sources: Listal.com - Getty Images - Bing Images