Cookie, Balak, and Bob the Goon
Sunday, June 19th, 2011
This guy – this Tracey Walter – is everywhere. My first recollection of him came from his role as Cookie in City Slickers. But I knew that he had been in other things that I couldn’t recall: for instance, as Balak in Conan the Destroyer, Bob the Goon in Batman, and Lamar the coronor in Silence of the Lambs. Oh, and there were over 100 others: Philadelphia, Duplex, Midnight Run, Wild at Heart, and Erin Brockovich, for example. Plus on TV: WKRP in Cincinnati, Taxi, Moonlighting, Wings, Monk, etcetera, etcetera. Read the rest of this entry »
Having only recently getting into watching the TV classic Barney Miller, my exposure to the first three seasons has help me draw the conclusion that the special ingredient in the ensemble cast was the character of Barney Miller himself. Barney was portrayed by Hal Linden, and it was his subtle, sensitive handling of the role that gave the show the extra boost to make it the classic that it was. I can’t think of any other straight-man in the history of television who could be both such a respected and moral man, while having some of the funniest comic reactions to the crazy events going on around him in TV history. 
Meeting June Lockhart was a long time coming. After having met the bulk of her fellow cast members from the science fiction TV classic Lost in Space (see 
Yep, there were three of them altogether. It began when Mrs. Edna Garrett was assigned the task of cleaning the soiled underwear of Willis and Arnold Jackson in the first episode of the series. She lasted a full season and a half before moving on from the penthouse apartment of Diff’rent Strokes to the Eastland School for Girls on The Facts of Life. Then came Adelaide Brubaker. She was older than dirt when she took on the role for the next year and a half. Finally, Pearl Gallagher came to the rescue and remained with the Drummond family as long as they had a TV show and young Arnold managed to keep his lip shaved. Then, most likely, she slew them. 
It was most certainly pricey, but there wasn’t much of chance that I was going to drop Louis Gossett, Jr. off my list of celebrities to give money to when he appeared at the October 9, 2010, Hollywood Show in Burbank. Afterall, he was an Academy Award winner – having earned his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman. He had also starred in the mini-series Roots – for which he won an Emmy award, and the films Iron Eagle, A Raisin in the Sun, Enemy Mine, and Jaws 3-D.