
MARGARET FIELD. Perhaps most famous for being the mother of Sally Field, Margaret Field did lots of television work, appearing in all the important shows of the '50s and '60s, including The Twilight Zone, The Untouchables, Wagon Train, Perry Mason and Adam-12, to name a few.
Her film work was more limited, but her most notable role has to be Enid in Edgar G. Ulmer's cult classic The Man from Planet X (1951). Shot in six days for $41,000, it nevertheless has its ardent admirers. One of the earliest, if not the earliest, alien invasion stories, the speed with which it was produced enabled it to beat Invaders from Mars, War of the Worlds and The Thing from Another World into theaters, though they all went into production at about the same time.

Sadly, her music career burned out pretty quickly, and a goiter on her vocal cords eliminated any chance of a comeback. And, at age 40, she was too old to get back into porn. She ended up doing psychic readings in Florida.

I always remember him as the cop guarding Hannibal Lecter in the makeshift cage set up in the gymnasium in Silence of the Lambs, and the way he screamed/snarled defiantly when the madman went in for the kill. But he also appeared in such first video generation favorites as Rambo: First Blood Part II, Something Wild, Maniac Cop 2—even Ruggero Deodato's 1987 slasher Camping Del Terror!

He really didn't work that much to earn such recognition, but what the heck. Like Paul Lynde, he was one of the pioneers of flamboyant characters in '60s television, even though he never came out publicly.

The stinkers always seemed to come about when he was being dictated to by a studio or other financers. After the success of Tommy, it's clear that the studio wanted him to shape one of his musical biographies to fit then-hot Who frontman Roger Daltrey. The result was Lizstomania—and it's a mess. And seven years after Crimes of Passion, Trimark—a low-budget film and video distribution company—financed Whore, a similarly-themed film starring Theresa Russell—and it's dreadful.
My favorite Russell films are the aforementioned three as well as Tommy, Lair of the White Worm and Crimes of Passion. And I would rather watch a bad Ken Russell film than anything by Michael Bay.

Morgan was part of the M*A*S*H cast that I liked best. McLean Stevenson's dipshit Colonel Blake didn't really do it for me, and I preferred Mike Farrell over Wayne Rogers, who always seemed like an unctuous used car salesman to me.
Morgan's first name was originally Henry, but he changed it in deference to the comedian and perpetual game show guest who had the same name but nowhere near the legendary status this guy achieved.
And he was quite liberal. A lifelong Democrat, he fought McCarthy's blacklist in the 1950s and appeared in plays for the Group Theatre, whose talents included Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan, Karl Malden and Lee J. Cobb.

McKinney's debut was David F. Friedman's 1967 She Freak but otherwise his filmography is pretty straight—lots of villains and other character parts in westerns, crime dramas and tons of television.
When I was about 14, I was visiting my family in Texas (I lived with my father in Indiana) and we went to a second-run house to see a double bill of Deliverance and Jeremiah Johnson. It was a strange combination, but it satisfied the weird movie lover in me.
1 comment:
Kudos to Weird Movie Village for once again remembering the unsung performers who made our dreams and nightmares come true!
Post a Comment