I Remember Susan Douglas Rubes

"Will you please stop phoning me about The Guiding Light," Susan Douglas begged in mock indignation.
I had the Toronto Star's crack telephone operators track her down to her Florida condominium where she was vacationing with her long time husband Jan Rubes.
And Douglas was right --every time another milestone was reached with The Guiding Light I'd phone her up to get background.
Douglas died this week, aged 87, a delightful friend to those who knew her and the founding mother of Toronto's YPT theater group.
Douglas debuted on the soap opera when it was still on radio. It had started on NBC in 1937 as a 15-minute daily dose of kindness, created by soap maven Irna Phillips.
Douglas who was a refugee from Hitler had started in 1944  (TGL had switched to CBS) when she was just 19 and she lasted a decade playing the same character all along --Kathy.
When the soap moved to TV as a daily live event Douglas was one of the radio veterans invited along.
In fact when she debuted her English was still tentative --she'd learned her English by watching three movies a day and on radio sometimes gave off  bizarre interpretations of words new to her.
One bizarre historical note: Douglas's acting partner on TGL was a dark haired, thin actor named James Lipton.
These days he's more famous as host of TV's  long running hit Inside The Actor's Studio.
And the last time I chatted with Douglas it was a sadder occasion.
The little blonde girl named Robin Lang  who was Kathy's daughter had been originally played by Zina Bethune. She died in a car crash in Los Angeles on Feb. 12 2012 and my chat with Douglas a few days later was very teary indeed.
Douglas also enjoyed a brief movie career starting in 1947 with the feature The Private Life Of Bel Ami opposite George Sanders and Angela Lansbury.
"I can only report my part was small and I hated working with George who was a very nasty man."
In 1949 she made the ground breaking film Lost Boundaries cast as Mel Ferrer's daughter. "It was about a family that passed for white and was a very controversial indictment about race discrimination. Many theater owners simply refused to book it."
In 1951 she starred in Arch Oboler's film Five cast as one of only five survivors of a nuclear holocaust. "I had shivers making it. Audiences were properly terrified. Even today most TV stations will not show it."
All the while Douglas continued her daily appearances on TGL.
Douglas met and married tenor Jan Rubes while working on TGL which irritated her mentor Irna Phillips to no end.
Her first pregnancy caused tension on the set with Phillips writing her out of the cast for a bit but the second caused real fireworks.
"Irna was very displeased. She said she had made me and now she was going to break me." And 10 days later the character of Kathy died when she fell under the wheels of a bus.
Douglas had already moved to Toronto with Rubes (she commuted to New York for her soap appearances) but expected parts on Canadian TV did not come easily. "I was considered the foreigner. And that really hurt me."
Eventually she did act on such  Canadian TV series as Royal Canadian Mounted Police (1960), Seaway ((1966), Norman Corwin Presents (1972) and in such Canadian films as Face-Off (1971) and Adderly (1987).
In 1965 she founded the Young People's Theater and in 1979 she became head of CBC Radio drama.
When I jumped from The Spectator to the Toronto Star in 1980  as TV critic she was the first to phone and congratulate me.
She remained married to Rubes until his death in 2009 and awards such as the Order of Canada (in 1977) came her way as well.
Warm and witty, she claimed I was the only one out there who remembered her Guiding Light stint. Not so I always used to say. A lot of us first met her on that long running soap which lasted a record 72 years on radio and TV.

Remembering Conrad Bain

In my 38 years as TV critic for three Canadian newspapers I was always after that elusive angle.
Shuttling to L.A. for the TV Critics' tour twice a year produced rare opportunities to chat up various Canadians who had made it big down there.
Let's see,  I caught up with B.C.'s Alexis Smith at her luxurious Hollywood home (with husband Craig "Peter Gun" Stevens in the background).
At one ABC Hollywood party I managed to sit next to Arthur Hill of Owen Marshall fame --he talked about why Canadians made the best Abraham Lincolns (sorry about that Daniel Day-Lewis).
And an accommodating NBC flack got me at Conrad Bain's table during one network salute to its stars.
Bain died this week at his L.A. home just short of his 90th birthday.
I found Conrad to be a delightful dinner companion and an actor who truly enjoyed his TV stardom.
"I had many years of anonymity before this," he joked. "Fame is better than being unknown I can tell you.
He was born Conrad Stafford Bain in Lethbridge, Alberta, on February 3, 1923.
"I was a twin --my identical brother is Bonar Bain who became a lawyer."
Indeed Bonar once appeared as Conrad's evil twin on an episode of SCTV and Bain joked "If ever I'm sick we can call on Bomar to come rescue me."
Bain said he caught the acting bug in high school "which I took in Calgary. Then I went to the Banff School of Fine Arts. But war duties with the Canadian army intervened. After I was discharged I studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts starting in 1945. There was no place for a young Canadian actor so I became a U.S. citizen in 1946."
In 1947 Bain made his professional debut in a touring version of the Broadway hit Dear Ruth. "I didn't get to Broadway until 1956 in a revival of The Iceman Cometh with Jason Robards. I 'went home' to the Canadian Stratford Festival in 1958 and appeared in A Winter's Tale and Much Ado About Nothing."
Bain's TV work began on the live New York based series Studio One in 1952. "I played a doctor and the cast of unknowns included Nancy Marchand . It was all live even the commercials with Betty Furness."
In 1966 Bain joined the original cast of Dark Shadows as Mr. Wells the hotel clerk at  the Collingsport Inn and in 1970 he joined the cast of the daytime soapera the Edge Of Night.
Bain explained the fate of Wells as "He was eaten by a werewolf, poor man."
After roles in such movie hits as I Never Sang For My Father (1970), Bananas (1971) and The Anderson Tapes (1971) he joined the original cast of Maude (1972-78) --and stayed for 118 episodes.
"I had to test with Bea Arthur as my character Dr. Arthur Harmon was to the the conservative opponent to her liberalism. She is a consummate comedienne and we got along wonderfully well."
Bain then jumped to another sitcom Diff'rent Strokes which  ran eight seasons (1978-86) and 179 episodes on NBC.
Bain had several seasons under his belt when I first met him. He was very careful to say he played with the three kid stars as actors only and never tried to usurp their parents' roles.
Well, maybe he should have --he later admitted as much to me and was shocked by their unhappy fates.
 Dana Pluto died of a drug overdose in 1999 aged only 34.
Star Gary Coleman whose growth was stunted by liver disease died of a brain hemorrhage in 2010.
Third kid star Todd Bridges wracked up arrest records before turning his life around.
Bain also played his character of Arthur Drummond on other series: Different Strokes in 1979 and Fresh Prince Of Bel Air in 1990.
And he tried for a third sitcom triumph on the series Mr. President (1987) opposite George C. Scott but it did not return for a second series.
Bain told me "My career is an example of trying and trying and only later succeeding. I thought I'd have a career in drama. But comedy made me a star. In short a lesson for all young actors to just keep at it."

David Tucker's One Way Ticket

I'm about to warn you never to sit beside David Tucker on the GO train going to and from Oakville.
For years Tucker has been telling me he actually enjoys the long commute --at one time he pretended to me he was reading Tolstoy to while away the 45-minute journey.
Now it appears he was into something else --observing fellow passengers.
And all this accumulated observation has resulted in a must read book of short stories called One Way Passage.
The best one and the last in the book concerns a hapless older salesman making futile call after call on his cell and talking so loud ever other  GO passenger can hear him.
The tale is deliciously rich in irony although the reader will also get involved in the plight of the man who can no longer even sell himself.
I don't think Tucker could have written it if he hadn't put in so many hours riding GO --the feel of the situation is pitch perfect.
Now let me back up and explain I first met David Tucker in those long ago days when I was the kid TV critic for The Hamilton Spectator, then (the early 1970's) the most profitable newspaper in Canada.
Radio was also tagged on to my beat and in the era before cassettes that meant I'd have to venture into CBC's crumbling Jarvis street building to listen to them and interview the talent.
Tucker had just been parachuted into the PR department to liven things up --he knew everything about new media but CBC was not a place where anybody ever lightened up.
A CBC co-worker was publicist Linda Litwack and she was promoting the latest radio documentary by Glenn Gould --Toronto critics and I got shuffled into a darkened room and told Gould might appear at the end or maybe he would not.
In the dark I thought I felt somebody breathing on my neck. When the curtains were raised there was a tossed chair behind me. Had I actually have been in the presence of Gould, I wondered. Nobody could tell me.
Tucker I would meet in a tiny room in one of the back turrets with a window that led out onto the gabled roof --he used this as a quick get away on some occasions.
So far Tucker has not fictionalized any of the stories I'm sure he heard about very odd CBC happenings. Some are so strange probably nobody outside the Corp would ever believe them.
Tucker went off to Sheridan College to teach the art of film making and become associate dean.
Later he switchedto Ryerson University as dean of TV Radio Arts and Media faculty.
He got a deserved sabbatical before returning to teaching duties and just to see if he could he turned out these stories.
Also along the way he had made a string of incisive documentaries mostly for CBC's The Nature Of Things that I wish were still available for public viewing.
Amanda's Choice examined the dilemma of a young woman who carries the gene for early Alzheimer's and her decision whether or not to have her son tested.
"I 'm still hearing from her on occasion," Tucker told me.
Another looked at four desperately ill heart patients at Toronto General Hospital as they await for transplants that may never take place.
It's strange but when I was watching these hours on cassette to preview I was involved in the human angle. I forgot the high editing and directing skills necessary to make the whole story seamless.
In a sense Tucker has always been a steady  story writer.
The first story in One Way Ticket, really it's a novella, is a look at a hapless guy born during Hurricane Hazel --the references are all Southern Ontario in the Fifties and Sixties.
Maybe that's why I couldn't stop reading this one. As one who remembers the horror the night Hazel struck --albeit from a little boy's perspective--I felt this one had real movement, texture.
And  that's why Tucker is already involved in drafting a screenplay, it's so cinematic the sparse use of dialogue is startling but effective.
But you don't have to wait for the film. One Way Ticket, published by Bookland Press, is best purchased from amazon.ca or a neighborhood book seller.
And, yes, Tucker, Litwack and I still meet for lunch.
At a restaurant very near Union Station where Tucker can sprint to the GO train and possibly plot the much needed sequel to One Way Ticket.

I'm Justified In Praising Justified

The talk among TV critics these days is all about how the best talent has migrated from old line TV networks to the cable weblets.
And the often sensational series Justified is a case in point.
Season Four starts up on Super Channel Wednesday January 23 at 9 p.m.
In fact I should have interviewed the executive producer Graham Yost when I met him last year at Toronto's Royal Theatre when we honored his father the late great Elwy Yost.
Graham Yost started off big in movies with the smash Smash (1994) followed by the equally fine Broken Arrow (1996).
He then migrated to TV for NBC's L.A. cop saga Boomtown (2002) and then was co-executive producer of the mini-series The Pacific (2010).
Which brings me to Justified (2010) which Yost created from Elmore Leonard books as executive producer and sometimes writer.
But when I chatted up Yost I had yet to screen Justified --it had fallen off my personal radar for some reason.
Having now spent several days playing catch up I'm very enthusiastic about this one.
Timothy Oliphant is merely sensational as the ironic U.S. marshal Raylan Givens.
Also appearing in the first two new episodes are Patton Oswalt as a pudgy and bumbling small town sheriff named Bob Sweeney.
Then there's Walton Groggins's Boyd Crowther as an over-the-top drug dealer whose rages are simply fascinating to listen to.
And there's the slightly creepy itinerant preacher Preacher Billy played wonderfully by Joe Mazzello.
In the second episode Billy and Boyd engage in an over-the-top rant as they match Biblical quotes --Boys is convinced the illegal demand for oxy among his customers is due to Billy's preachifying.
Yost actually wrote the season premiere and has an ear for catching the resonance of Leonard dialogue which can be menacing and comical all at the same time.
I have also met star Olyphant when he was in Toronto promoting his first great TV series: Deadwood which got an early cancellation slip simply because it was too expensive to make.
A modest guy Olyphant has that unique ability to sink right into a character. His Raylan with his stetson and accent is a fully realized character.
First of all there's the series title which suggests Raylan was sent back to Harlan County, Kentucky as punishment by the law for shooting the guy who tortured his partner. And indeed we saw the act which happened in Miami and ended his career there.
I really enjoy the tortured father-son relationship between chief deputy Art Mullen (played by Nick Searcy)  and Raylan. It works for me. And there's Rayan's relationship with his con father who is behind bars. But the central one it seems to me is Raylan and Boyd --both had gun toting fathers, absentee mothers and both graduated the same high school and originally worked in the mines.
Raylan chose law and order, Boyd theft and disorder. After a bullet from Raylan Boyd has turned  into this highly vopcal right wing Christian.
The first two new hours take their time in getting to the plot. I suspect Yost just plain likes these Kentucky people so much he dawdles wonderfully over the way they converse and view the world.
One small cavil: I thought I glimpsed the Santa Monica mountains between two Kentucky buildings, a slight hint the series is mainly filmed in L.A.
In a telephone interview with critics Olyphant explained he uses a subdued accent because his character has been away from Kentucky for a long time. One theme he said predominates: Leonard's insistence on a moral code among thieves.
And the fact Rayan is a becoming a father doesn't mean we'll ever see the child. Olyphant who has three children explained: "Little kids on the set, they tend to be a pain."
All the plot I'll reveal is that in the season opener Raylan wanders into a 30-year old murder mystery that just may be traceable back to father Arlo after all.
In Justified every Kentuckian around from U.S. marshals to hookers seems in an odd way interconnected by the struggle to simply survive.
SEASON FOUR OF JUSTIFIED PREMIERES ON SUPER CHANNEL WEDNESDAY JANUARY 23  AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

Bring Back The ACTRA Awards!

I'm being perfectly serious in suggesting all  Canadian TV viewers coalesce as a force to bring back the beloved ACTRA Awards!
But first you have to remember the ACTRAs.
They were Canadian TV's very first awards and first came out in 1972.
And I was there as a very young TV critic for The Hamilton Spectator then the most profitable newspaper in Canada.
I know it all seems crazy but there were no TV awards of any kind in Canada until the labour union, the Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists moved to present trophies or the Nellies as they were called.
In 1987 the Canadian academy of Film and Television moved in and revamped the whole thing into a competitive race that made no sense whatsoever.
I mean the winners of best TV actor and actress were frequently announced after their shows got cancelled. Because the commercial TV networks only did the bare minimum in terms of Canadian content.
So what good did it do to salute talented Michael Riley for Power Play when that wonderful series was already cancelled to make way for another U.S. import?
The Gemini nominations never did make sense.
Because the two executive producers of Queer as Folk were American the Gemini committee dictated no one from that Toronto made show could even get a nomination.
The series ran five seasons and 80 hour episodes and pumped over $100 million into the local economy. Dozens of brilliant Canadian designers, costume makers, cameramen, directors were excluded from consideration.
At the same time another imported show Nikita did get nominations because its executive producers were Canadian. Even Australian star Peta Wilson got a nomination while none of the exceptional Canadian actors on QAF were eligible.
I went to the very first ACTRA awards at the Park Plaza hotel's grand ballroom. I remember my table mates included announcer Bruce Marsh and acting veteran Jane Mallett.
And what a time we had. The party was wonderful, the dancing great --I did the twist with Adrienne Clarkson who kept calling me "Charles".
There was live TV coverage with Helen Hutchinson and Lorraine Thomson doing interviews.
Kowlton Nash I remember being there. Juliette was there and so was Al Waxman.
It was all very jolly, very glam, no tension about winners and losers.
Wish I could recall who won what. But that's the wonderful thing about the ACTRAs: it was a joyous celebration and not an Americanized.
One big award was the Earle Gey award for lifetime achievement. And do you know what --I even met Earle Grey who had flown over from Britain --he'd had a great Canadian career on both CBC radio and TV.
Plopping the Geminis and Genies together makes absolutely no sense.
Quick now! How many Canadian films have you trekked out to a local bijou to watch in the past year?
None is the count most people have been telling me.
In its last few TV outing the Gemini awards were all over this country and still nobody watched.
My remedy is simple: stop with the competition and turn the show back into a celebration of all that is great about Canadian TV.
 Only then will viewers turn away from their simulcasted American fare to watch with awe and delight.

Ripper Street: Must See TV

TV's latest hot  trend?
I'm saying it's nineteenth century detectives.
Like Inspector Murdoch as impersonated by Yannick Bisson on CBC-TV's Murdoch Mysteries just starting its sixth season.
Then there's another detective saga called Copper set in 1864 New York city and starring Tom Weston-Jones. It is also being filmed in Toronto.
And  now let's welcome Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) in the new eight-part BBC series Ripper Street.
As the title suggests here is the sort of slice of British history you'll never see on  Masterpiece Theatre which prefers its dramas to be of the teacup variety.
But in Ripper Street we are shown 1889 London as a sweet cesspool of poverty and prostitutes for hire.
The setting is East London just after Jack The Ripper's reign of terror. And as we see the tabloid press is given to promoting any murder as the expected return of Jack.
Denizens of Whitechapel are naturally nervous and then one night on a tour of Jack's haunts the guide stumbles upon the freshly mutilated corpse of a girl of the streets and the public frenzy begins again.
In sort order we are introduced to Inspector Reed (Matthew Macfadyen) who understands quick thinking is needed to avert scenes of mass public hysteria.
His sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn) is first glimpsed scoring a knockout in a boxing match.
And we see the medical backup is former Pinkerton detective and U.S. army surgeon Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg) who willingly performs autopsies with none of the modern tools to aid him.
I'm not the only critic who has noticed similarities between Copper and Ripper Street. In Copper a freed ex-slave (Ato Asandoh) proves forensic skills much like the army surgeon.
And both heroes feature taciturn heroes who have lost daughters and are haunted by memories.
In the case of Reid and wife Emily (Amanda Hale), their collective feelings of loss are slowly driving them apart.
The Victorianism of Ripper Street includes one of childhood poverty and outbreaks of cholera which ravaged whole sections of the population.
The lavishness of this production certainly the recreations in Murdoch and Copper. It's a surprise to learn the series was made in Ireland --apparently there are simply so many examples of urban Victorian architecture still standing in and around Dublin.
The seedier side of Victoriana has bare knuckle boxing and dens of prostitution to service wealthy clientele. In one scene (remember it's 1889) there's an attempt to record a violent sexual encounter between a dissolute toff and a poor girl who is almost strangled to death. And all in the same brothel frequented by Dr. Jackson.
Despite the title Ripper Street has nothing much to do with Jack. There were so many Whitechapel murders at the time that a fresh murder crops up every week.
RIPPER STREET PREMIERES ON SPACE SATURDAY JANUARY 19 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

Bachelor Canada Will Return --In 2014!

The news has been trickling out that Rogers Media has picked up The Bachelor Canada for another season.
But not next year! In 2014!
It's hardly a solid vote of confidence considering all the hoopla invented in this the latest Canadian spin off of an American hit.
Well, CTV once gave Canadian Idol the same treatment and that hunk of unreality TV has never come back at all.
CBC told me Hatching, Matching And Dispatching was going off for a spot of re-tinkering. It will never be seen again.
In the case of The Bachelor Canada one has merely too look at the ratings as the cause. Rogers plowed a lot of dough into this one and the average weekly audience was about 700,000.
Like all such series the show can't be rerun because we all know the outcome.
Foreign sales are dubious because many other countries have their own Bachelor franchise up and running.
Rogers is just discovering how expensive it is to make a Canadian series. After all a U.S. pickup can be purchased for something like $100,000 an episode --it is then simulcast for a double rating what with the Buffalo station blacked out and it also comes with tons of free publicity courtesy of all those U.S. entertainment series Canadians love to watch.
Cost is the reason Rogers already cancelled its dramatic hit Murdoch Mysteries --after five seasons this one found a second home on CBC. But that seems unlikely for The Bachelor Canada --CBC has its own reality outings like Dragon's Den.
And I'm willing to bet Rogers goes right out and purchases the next season of the American original --The Bachelor provided it gets an ABC pick up. Ratings are really drooping as the format becomes overly familiar.
Don't forget the Big Three commercial TV networks in Canada : Citytv, Global and CTV are all mere parts of larger conglomerates of various cable channels.
The ratings on the old line networks are slowly but surely ebbing away.
Talking to a Grade 6 class recently I was told they rarely watch TV anyhow --they download everything to other devices and watch later on with friends.
The TV universe I originally covered for The Hamilton Spectator starting in 1970 was a 10-channel universe.
Today there are hundreds of channels with the old networks experiencing the same problems print newspapers are having. Viewers are fleeing and so are advertisers.
I certainly wasn't among the admirers of The Bachelor Canada. It seemed so very pre-planned to me. Bachelor Brad Smith was very much in the mold of a nice, inoffensive guy and the long stemmed lovelies he supposedly romanced looked more than a little desperate at times.
But the accoutrements were lavish.  I'm not talking about the roses but the stretch limousines, the clothing, the makeup contingent, the luxurious  hotels. It's just that Canadians were watching American fare simulcasted on the competition, CTV and Global.
CBC is also sitting out Battle Of The Blades this year for financial reasons.
Times remain tough for all networks. And things certainly won't get better in the near future.
I can only wish Bachelor Canada's Brad Smith the best of luck. I hope he got to keep his wardrobe. And maybe he can get his job back in the CFL?