Tuesday, February 26, 2008

PORT SIDE

This week's episode of 'Burke's Law' shown on American Life TV was "Who Killed Cassandra Cass?". As usual, the guest cast was a feast for fans of old time stars: Lola Albright, William Bendix, Shelley Berman, Louis Nye, Elsa Lanchester, Nehemiah Persoff, Nancy Malone.

There was a moment early on that serves as a bit of "Serendipiteevee", and this time not a personal one. It's not an in-joke, but more of a nice connection to a different TV series.
Sgt. Les Hart stuck to his dependable theory that the butler did it, which he felt was confirmed by the fact that Hooper was now drunk on port wine. As far as Captain Amos Burke was concerned, this just served to confirm that old adage - any port in the storm.

Along with Detective Tim Tilson, the trio had a good laugh over the bad joke.

Tim Tilson was played by Gary Conway, who would later become the star of 'The Land Of The Giants'. And the last role I can associate with him was that of the murder victim in an episode of 'Columbo'.

His character was Ric Carsini, a playboy who was intent on selling the family vineyards for the money, which angered his older half-brother Adrian. And that led to Ric's murder.

And the name of that episode? "Any Old Port In The Storm".

Like I said, there was no deliberate connection between the two uses of the phrase. Just one of those bits of tele-magical fluff.

BCnU!
Toby OB

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