Thursday, July 27, 2017

Disastrous Demise: Martin Landau, 1928-2017

We've spoken before about the group of actors who belong to a certain distinguished club (which exists only in my own mind!) due to their having appeared in one or more big-screen disaster movies between 1970 and 1980. Dubbed the (oh so creative) Disaster Movie Club, or DMC, these performers nearly always hold a special place in my heart, though in today's subject, Martin Landau, the interest level extends even beyond that. So today we supply a photo essay on a man who enjoyed a more than 60-year career before the camera and saw his share of career highs and lows.
Landau, who was born on June 28th, 1928 in Brooklyn, NY, was initially a young editorial cartoonist for the New York Daily News until he opted to devote his attention to acting. A member of The Actor's Studio from 1955 on, he learned his craft alongside James Dean and Steve McQueen, among others. After appearing on TV in several 1950s series (including more than a few westerns), he landed on the big-screen in 1959 with a supporting role in Gregory Peck's Korean War drama, Pork Chop Hill.
That same year he made a rather indelible impression in Alfred Hitchcock's wildly successful chase drama North by Northwest. As chief henchman to the movie's villain James Mason, Landau's piercing eyes and sneering demeanor contained an element of simmering homosexuality and even jealousy of the leading lady Eva Marie Saint's relationship with Mason.
Surprisingly enough, he wasn't utilized in the cinema again for three years despite his (perhaps too creepily) effective performance in Northwest. Instead, he was relegated to television, busily playing a variety of guest roles until he was granted a co-starring role in the low-budget 1962 western Stagecoach to Dancer's Rock. He then became part of the imbroglio that was 1963's Cleopatra, whose adulterous stars made the movie an international sensation (even as it lost money thanks to the extraordinary waste of money during production.)
Regardless of his searing blue eyes, Landau often found himself cast as various ethnic types from Mexicans to Apache Indians. After working on still more episodic television, he was cast as Chief Walks-Stooped-Over in the unwieldy (and unfunny) big-screen action comedy western The Hallelujah Trail (1965.) That same year he played a rather understated Caiaphas in George Stevens equally bloated The Greatest Story Ever Told.
In 1966, he guest-starred on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as Count Ladislaus Zark, a Dracula-like enemy agent working out of Transylvania. No one, not even Landau, could have known what this otherwise run-of-the-mill job was actually foreshadowing with regards to his career.
Still active in movies, Landau portrayed one of Steve McQueen's vicious enemies in 1966's Nevada Smith. As one of three men who killed McQueen's parents over some gold, he was hunted down and cornered in the movie's climax.
Next for Landau was a role on what would become a legendarily iconic TV series, Mission: Impossible. He'd very nearly been cast in Desilu Studios' Star Trek as Mr. Spock, but when Leonard Nimoy wound up in that role, he took part in Mission as part of a secret agent team who foiled various enemy plots each week, usually through elaborate schemes that kept viewers glued to their set in curiosity or fascination.
Also on board Mission as the team's principle device of feminine distraction was Landau's real-life wife (since 1957) Barbara Bain. Landau was initially meant to be a featured guest star, but wound up appearing as a regular, albeit on a year-to-year contract rather than for five years like his costars. For her part, Bain was a breakout star from the show and won three consecutive Emmy awards. (Landau was nominated each year, too, but never won.)
While appearing on Mission, Landau was a "master of disguise" and portrayed all sorts of characters in his efforts to thwart various dictators and evildoers. He and Bain had stayed through the axing of the series' initial star Stephen Hill, but when his replacement Peter Graves was to get a substantial raise in the fourth season and Landau wasn't, he walked and Bain walked with him. Ironically, his replacement on the show was Leonard Nimoy.
Landau had intended to do movies during his stint on Mission, but had little to no time to do that, so his first Hollywood film in four years was 1970's They Call Me Mister Tibbs! with Sidney Poitier, a follow-up to the superior In the Heat of the Night. Forthcoming offers were slim after the ugly parting with Mission and he found himself in low-rung fare like A Town Called Hell and the Jim Brown Blaxploitation movie Black Gunn.
He and his wife next moved to England in order to take part in what was intended to be a significant sci-fi program, riding the wave of increased interest in Star Trek, which took off in syndication. The 1975 show was Space: 1999. Expensive, elaborate, but troubled, the series was considered a bit too erudite and subdued in its first season, so it was revamped for its second, but thanks to jumbled distribution rights in the U.S., it never quite caught on enough to stay in production any further.
Among the projects he worked on during this lean time was the Canadian-made exploitation thriller Shadows in an Empty Room (which starred Stuart Whitman, seen here, along with John Saxon.)
Then, along with a couple of TV-movies, came the film that earned him a spot in the DMC, 1979's Meteor. Meteor starred Sean Connery and Natalie Wood as two folks attempting to deal with the title object, which is on a collision course with Earth and which keeps sending bits of debris down ahead of time, wreaking havoc. Landau chewed the scenery as an aggressive general with his own ideas of how to proceed. The movie tanked at the box office and was an embarrassment to most of the folks involved with it.
Now Landau was being hired to ham it up in low-budget horror and sci-fi flicks with titles like Without Warning, The Return, Alone in the Dark and The Being.
An unquestionable nadir, however, came when he and Bain appeared as bad guys in a television movie called The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island, one of several TV-movies reuniting most of the cast of Bob Denver and Alan Hale's silly, but enduring, sitcom which had proven a big hit in syndication. This was one hell of a long way from Alfred Hitchcock.
Plenty of middling fare followed, be it TV-movies or straight-to-video clunkers along with occasional episodic TV. Another low-point came when he (with "prestige-billing" if you can have such a thing on a project like this) played the villain in a 1987 s-t-v movie called Cyclone, which starred The Fall Guy bimbo Heather Thomas.
All was not lost, however. in 1988, Francis Ford Coppola selected Landau for a key supporting role in his auto industry drama Tucker: The Man and his Dream, starring Jeff Bridges and Joan Allen. It was the first outright Jewish part that the real-life Jewish-born Landau had ever been cast in. But more importantly it earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor! Kevin Kline won that year for A Fish Called Wanda, but at least it was a shot of much-needed industry recognition of his talent. 
Next Landau, who'd also been working as an acting teacher to the likes of Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston among many others, was cast in the 1989 Woody Allen ensemble film Crimes and Misdemeanors. He was working alongside Huston and others including Claire Bloom. Again, Landau found himself among the Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominees, though this time he saw the statuette go to Denzel Washington for his heartfelt work in Glory.
Now on the way back up after more than a few lean, questionable years career-wise, Landau and his wife Bain stunned everyone by divorcing after 36 years of marriage, much of which was spent working together in various projects. Their two daughters also worked in the industry; one, Susan Landau Finch, behind the scenes and the other, Juliet Landau, as an actress.
When Tim Burton was looking to cast the role of down-on-his-luck Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi, most famous for having played Dracula, in his upcoming biopic Ed Wood (1994), he could scarcely have found anyone better than Landau. Landau knew firsthand what it was like to enjoy success in movies only to fall out of favor and wind up in cheap drek. Only Landau had the great fortune (and talent to back it up) to emerge from the wreckage and reestablish a viable, remarkable career as an actor again. He received a third Best Supporting Actor nomination for his heavily-researched portrayal.
This time he was not denied the coveted statuette. Having stepped before the TV cameras as far back as 1953, he had worked for and with many of Hollywood's most notable names, yet fallen to having to earn a buck against some of its least-talented fly-by-nights. To come back and earn the industry's top accolade was a highly satisfying event. Landau continued to act as recently as this year, though he was eighty-eight years old. He even racked up three Emmy nominations as Outstanding Guest Actor in a variety of shows in the 2000s, having never been nominated as a guest before during all the decades prior. 
A heart attack claimed Mr. Landau just a few weeks after his eighty-ninth birthday. His series Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999 both still retain substantial cult followings while his movie roles endure, earning him new fans with every viewing.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Still Quoting What You Said Last Summer...

Yep. One more in a long series of celebrity quotes with pics to go with as we wend our way through a cherished book on the subject. As we're now well into the S-es, it won't be long until we run out of these tidbits, but I hope you enjoy them in the meantime!
"I like very much Cybill Shepherd and Peter Bogdanovich. The problems grew when Peter wished to prove that he was right and the critics wrong when he pushed Cybill. All I hope now is that he won't use his next three films to prove that she's the equal of Anne Bancroft. That might perhaps be a mistake." - BURT REYNOLDS on CYBILL SHEPHERD & PETER BOGDANOVICH (with whom he worked on At Long Last Love, a considerable flop. The follow-up between Reynolds and Bogdanovich, Nickelodeon, was done without Shepherd. She claimed she turned it down, though it was also suggested that the project would only be green-lit if she didn't appear in it!)
"The leading lady of Angels with Dirty Faces was that lovely, talented gal, Ann Sheridan. So much to offer-and a three-pack-a-day smoker ... Years later when the lung cancer hit, she didn't have much of a chance, and what a powerful shame that was. A mighty nice gal, Annie." - JAMES CAGNEY on ANN SHERIDAN, his costar in said film as well as City for Conquest and Torrid Zone.
"I suppose it is fair to say that I fell hopelessly in love with Simone Signoret the very first time I clapped eyes on her in a modest Easling film called Against the Wind ... I placed her then on the very peak of her profession, and as far as I'm concerned she has never budged from it and I still love her dearly." - DIRK BOGARDE on SIMONE SIGNORET, with whom he never appeared on screen.
"She was one of the most undemanding, professional actresses I've ever worked with, but I could imagine what it must have been like to be married to tigresses like Crawford or Davis." - STEWART GRANGER on JEAN SIMMONS (who he was married to from 1950-1960 and with whom he costarred in Adam and Evalyn, Young Bess, Footsteps in the Fog, among other projects. Despite these protestations and the happy pics, their union was noted for many fiery conflicts, mostly stemming from Granger.)
"I'm just one of those who thought they could direct Sinatra. It's like being one of the girls who thought they'd get Howard Hughes to marry them ... Burt Lancaster is impossible and Kirk [Douglas] a pain in the neck, but when they argue their aim is to make a better picture, and I'm for that. Sinatra, on the other hand, only argues about how to shoot the scene quicker so he can get away." - ROBERT ALDRICH on FRANK SINATRA, who he "directed" in 4 for Texas.
"He's the kind of guy that, when he dies, he's going up to heaven and give God a bad time for making him bald." - MARLON BRANDO on FRANK SINATRA, with whom he costarred in Guys and Dolls.
"I enjoyed the film [Travels With My Aunt]. I think Maggie is a brilliant actress and was marvelous in parts. And if they had left in the footage that was needed to cover the eccentricity of the performance ... she would have been great. She can act and she can overdo. It is becoming the style, you know, to attack the overdoers; so we overdoers have to stick together. But she hadn't the script she needed to protect her." - KATHARINE HEPBURN on MAGGIE SMITH. (Hepburn was hired for the film, but refused to report to the set and finally quit 10 days before filming and after rewriting the script herself, most of which was retained in the finished film. She was denied on-screen credit, however, because she was not a member of the Screen Writers Guild.)
"Breathtakingly sinister. I was so lucky she was cast in the part [in The Letter] - BETTE DAVIS on GALE SONDERGAARD, who worked with her on said film. (Sondergaard also appeared in a prior Davis' film, Juarez.)
"Sly is a kisser-the best. I had to go home and lie to my husband and tell him that it's really hard to kiss people in the movies, that it was really embarrassing and uncomfortable. Sly is a great kisser." - DOLLY PARTON on SYLVESTER STALLONE (her costar in the unsuccessful Rhinestone.)
"I was lucky enough to make four pictures with Barbara. In the first I turned her in, in the second I killed her, in the third I left her for another woman and in the fourth I pushed her over a waterfall. The one thing all these pictures had in common was that I fell in love with Barbara Stanwyckm and I did, too." FRED MACMURRAY on BARBARA STANWYCK, who he costarred with in Remember the Night, Double Indemnity, The Moonlighter and There's Always Tomorrow.)
"I have never worked with an actress who was more cooperative, less temperamental, and a better workman, to use my term of the highest compliment, than Barbara Stanwyck. When I count over those actresses of whom my memories are unmarred by any unpleasant recollection of friction on the set, or unwillingness to do whatever the role required, or squalls of temperament or temper, Barbara's is the first name that comes to mind." - CECIL B. DEMILLE on BARBARA STANWYCK, her director on Union Pacific.)
"...nor did I find her sympathetic. Barbara Stanwyck, I mean. She was always so popular and everybody adored her, but I found her a cold person, and she was the only actress in my working experience who ever went home leaving me to do the close-ups ... with the script girl, which I thought was the most unprofessional. I was quite surprised. There, that's the only unkind thing that's ever been said about Barbara Stanwyck." - MAUREEN O'SULLIVAN on BARBARA STANWYCK, with whom she worked on All I Desire.
"But working with Rod Steiger was, well, different. He was into himself a lot. He was really W.C. Fields. I mean, really. And after the film was finished I just decided I didn't like the business anymore. I thought it wasn't fun and I don't believe in working if you don't enjoy it." - VALERIE PERRINE on ROD STEIGER, with whom with worked on W.C. Fields and Me.)
"Working with Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life was very demanding. He's so natural, so realistic, that I never knew whether he was talking to me or doing the scene. He's the most demanding of all the actors I've ever worked with." - DONNA REED on JAMES STEWART, with whom she costarred on said film.
"I adored working with Jimmy. He's such an endearing character, a perfectionist at his job, but with a droll sense of humor and a shy way of watching you to see if you react to that humor." - JOAN CRAWFORD on JAMES STEWART, her costar in The Gorgeous Hussy and Ice Follies of 1939, the latter of which would have required a considerable sense of humor...!)

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Glamorous Strangers

Thanks to a recent comment on a post that contained info on Ava Gardner, I was inspired to come up with this one, all about how prime-time TV soap operas of the 1980s seemed to draw from Hollywood's collection of once-bright movie stars to fill out their cast & guest rosters. In 1987, I snapped up the book shown below, TV Sirens, because I couldn't get enough of Dynasty and The Colbys at the time (and was thrilled that 3 of the 4 gals adorning the cover came from those two shows.) The book featured practically all television actresses of note, but there was one chapter called "Glamorous Strangers," which focused on ladies who only came to TV every so often. I've pilfered that chapter title for this post.
To those in the know, these ladies who dotted the prime-time soap landscape weren't "strangers," many having once been considerable names in the cinema, but to youngsters (as I was way back then), they were indeed only vaguely known and, in fact, in several cases this was the first exposure some of us ever had to them. We had to backtrack with the help of UHF stations and VHS cassettes to discover these gals in their former glory.

Most soaps, prime-time or not, provided some sort of matriarchal anchor among the cast. Dallas, of course, had the estimable Barbara Bel Geddes as Miss Ellie. Bel Geddes radiated warmth and caring while not being above an occasional shut-down if the squabbling Ewings went too far. The short-lived Flamingo Road gave us Barbara Rush as a well-to-do, but suffering wife and mother. Knots Landing added Julie Harris to the mix, as the alternately troublesome and supportive mother of Joan Van Ark. The period-set Beacon Hill (which didn't make it past 13 episodes) featured Nancy Marchand and Beatrice Straight, in contrasting degrees of social standing. Then there's Oscar-winner Donna Reed, who took over for Bel Geddes on Dallas after illness had interfered with her work.

Reed was a still-lovely woman known not only for her Academy Award-winning role in From Here to Eternity, but also her long-running, which made her a favorite TV mom to many a viewer. However, she was altogether different (in elegant looks and lithe carriage) from the very down-to-earth Bel Geddes and it wasn't long before viewers were balking and the producers knew they'd made a fatal error in (re)casting. Reed was ousted (not before crafty efforts were made to make her quit), winning a $1 million settlement in the process (but reportedly at the cost of her health), and Bel Geddes suddenly found the will to work again, having watched her cherished role go up in flames from home!
Miss Donna Reed
Dynasty didn't really have a "matriarch" in that sense, but it did install 1950s movie actress Joan Collins as John Forsythe's formerly ostracized wife and the mother of his children who eventually rose to a position of considerable wealth and power (after marrying Forsythe's business rival on his deathbed and inheriting his legacy.) Collins' Alexis Colby was generally more of a front and center figure than a mother character. Diahann Carroll was another established stage and movie actress who joined the series and made a great adversary for her real-life friend Collins.
Miss Diahann Carroll (Carroll sought out Aaron Spelling, requesting to become TV first "black bitch," though she ultimately emerged as a warm and sympathetic character -- unless crossed by Collins!)
Of course, when it comes to matriarchs, it's tough to top Miss Jane Wyman as the steely Angela Channing of Falcon Crest. The powerful owner of a successful vineyard (among other enterprises), Channing tried to control her family and assortment of enemies while in real life Wyman ran herd on most of the rest of the cast and made things either comfortable or uncomfortable based upon her assessment of the coworker's talent and work ethic.
Miss Jane Wyman
Falcon Crest is one of the 1980s prime-time soaps that featured a bevy of guest stars who'd previously made his or her mark on the big screen. Among the ladies who stopped in for a visit were Eve Arden, Leslie Caron and Ursula Andress. Then there was Miss Kim Novak. Novak had heretofore only popped up sporadically on television in two TV-movies, a miniseries and the pilot of the revamped The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She played a mysterious woman masquerading as another, a nod to her Vertigo success, and whose name was "Kit Marlowe," the moniker that Columbia Studios chief Harry Cohn tried to saddle her with at the dawn of her career.
Miss Kim Novak
Crest's producers wanted Sophia Loren to come on board as Wyman's half-sister (!) and planned a dazzling wardrobe and a 13-episode story arc. Ultimately, negotiations fell apart and instead Loren's longtime cinematic rival Gina Lollobrigida was signed to the part. Lollo worked on only five episodes (but did score a Golden Globe nomination in the process! Faye Dunaway took the statuette for the miniseries Ellis Island.)
Miss Gina Lollobrigida
Another golden age star given a stint on the show was Oscar-winner Celeste Holm. Holm was given the meaty part of a vengeful widow who'd been sent to an asylum after trying to burn Wyman to death in a fire years before (for allegedly driving her husband to suicide.) For six episodes, she appeared as the mother of the also-calculating Anne Archer (herself a victim of 1980s boxy fashions.)
Miss Celeste Holm
Of course the ne plus ultra of Hollywood guest stars on Falcon Crest was Miss Lana Turner. Turner and Wyman, never particular friends even back in the 1940s, were playing bitter rivals on-screen and thanks to some wildly different personalities and backstage methods, soon became rather antagonistic with one another in real life, at least on Wyman's behalf. What might have emerged as a battle of the titans on the show was cut short when Turner was soon sent packing, reportedly with a firm nudge by Wyman who balked at the Tinseltown trappings that Turner encouraged during her stay.
Miss Lana Turner
Turner had once starred in her very own prime-time soap, an expensive failure (that is screaming for a DVD release thanks to its cast and fancy settings!) called Harold Robbins' The Survivors. It only lasted 15 episodes before being cancelled in mid-storyline.

Back to the matter at hand, Dallas didn't indulge too, too heavily in the exhumation of old Hollywood gals, but there was the participation of Martha Scott on ten occasions as the haughty, status-obsessed mother of Linda Gray. After a few initial appearances, she returned a few seasons later as the bee Bel Geddes' bonnet. Scott had played Charlton Heston's mother in two Biblical epics, The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur.
Miss Martha Scott
There was also the casting of former Warner Brothers leading lady Alexis Smith as the titled sister (Lady Jessica Montford) of Howard Keel. Her appearances on the show came in two sections, six years apart, and saw her swanky character come unhinged and become dangerous even!
Miss Alexis Smith
Dallas' successful spin-off Knots Landing provided safe haven for several Hollywood ladies of a certain age. One of these was Ruth Roman, of Strangers on a Train and Three Secrets to name just two. She clocked seventeen episodes as the (alleged) mother of Hunt Block (as Peter Hollister, one of the show's more memorably slimy bad guys.)
Miss Ruth Roman
Another vintage name to appear on the show (for close to 30 episodes) was Betsy Palmer.  Palmer had been a 1950s starlet in movies like Queen Bee (with Joan Crawford) and The Tin Star (with Anthony Perkins) and was a hit on the TV game show I've Got a Secret. Here she portrayed Joan Van Ark's aunt, on hand to help with Van Ark's twins (and to fill the void left when Julie Harris departed the series.)
Miss Betsy Palmer
The biggest name to guest star, though, and the one greeted with the greatest amount of press fanfare, was Miss Ava Gardner. Breezing in as the devious mother of William Devane, her stay was a mercilessly brief 7 episodes, but it did get plenty of attention. (Incidentally, she's shown in the inset with Doug Sheehan.)
Miss Ava Gardner
The writers put Gardner in cahoots with the show's resident villainess Donna Mills. It also had her working opposite Howard Duff as her husband. Though the two had never acted together, they had once been a splashy romantic item, so this served as a belated reunion for them.
A few other names to toss in the hat... The short-lived soap opera Berrenger's, all about a glitzy department store and the machinations behind it, starred Sam Wanamaker, Ben Murphy and Yvette Mimieux among several others. For a 4-episode period, 1950s actress Neva Patterson (who many may know from An Affair to Remember as Cary Grant's society squeeze) played a duplicitous, and a bit racist, employee who is involved in corporate espionage.
Miss Neva Patterson (and her eyebrows)
Then on another soap, The Yellow Rose, which only lasted one season, Jane Russell was brought back to on-screen acting after a fifteen-year hiatus.  She's seen here with one of the series' stars, Sam Elliott (along with Sam's horse and Sam's other horse - LOL!) Russell only wound up in three episodes before the show (which also featured Cybill Shepherd, David Soul and Edward Albert) met its demise.
Miss Jane Russell
Paper Dolls was yet another attempt at prime-time soap that wasn't able to cut it. It was cancelled after 13 gloss-filled episodes. Morgan Fairchild and Dack Rambo were among the stars, but the show also had Nancy Olson (of Sunset Boulevard and Battle Cry, among others) on board as Lloyd Bridges' wife.

Dynasty's spin-off The Colbys brought Barbara Stanwyck back regularly into TV viewer's living rooms for the first time since the late-1960s, though she found herself dissatisfied with the storylines (one of them being that she didn't retain a solid love interest!) and fled the show (and show business) after only 24 episodes. At least she got to dress in some lovely Nolan Miller clothes, reunite briefly with her old costar from The Big Valley Linda Evans (during a Dynasty cross-over) and create some utterly delicious verbal fireworks with Stephanie Beacham prior to exiting.
Miss Barbara Stanwyck (who truly was credited on The Big Valley as "Miss Barbara Stanwyck!")
Now, when Hotel (which, like The Love Boat and Fantasy Island and, later, Murder, She Wrote, provided loads of old-time guest stars) premiered, it was intended for Oscar-winner Bette Davis to be a regular character. She'd filmed the pilot with principles James Brolin and Connie Selleca and was heavily promoted in all the press materials. (Davis had tried a number of times to get a series off the ground, but never had.) Finally, we were due for a weekly dose of Davis when she was stricken not only with cancer, but four strokes as well! She was forced to drop the show (which she later, from her sickbed, watched on TV and declared that it should have been called "Brothel!")
Miss Bette Davis
Who better to step in for the sidelined Davis than her old All About Eve nemesis Anne Baxter?! Oscar-winning Baxter swiftly joined the series as Davis' sister-in-law and made the show her home until she herself passed away a few years in. At that point, the once contained program, with each hour remaining mostly unto itself story-wise, because a continuing drama (with the leads finally admitting their love for one another and bedding down.)
Miss Anne Baxter
This was also when our recently deceased Underworld favorite Dina Merrill came on board for two episodes as one of three members of Baxter's family (the other two being Efrem Zimbalist Jr and Ralph Bellamy) squabbling over who ought to run the hotel of the title. Naturally, Brolin emerged victorious in the end, though the series was only able to limp along in this new, soapy format for another season after this.
Miss Dina Merrill
As the '80s drew to a close, most of the once-hot prime-time soaps began to peel off the screen one at a time as well. There were still many attempts, some successful (Beverly Hills, 90210, which begat Melrose Place, which begat Models, Inc., the latter unable to last very long), but most not (2000 Malibu Road, Pacific Palisades.) One show that almost made it was Central Park West (later revamped to CPW.) In a last ditch effort to save the flagging show, 1960s icon Raquel Welch was brought on.
Miss Raquel Welch
Amid a flurry of publicity, she and Gerald McRaney came on board. She was pitted against series regular Lauren Hutton and the two even found themselves involved in a fountain-splashing catfight, much like the ones that were done on Dynasty in its hey-dey. (Don't miss the stunt doubles visible in these behind-the-scenes shots! Egads!) But apparently the animosity was only for the cameras and the flailing was all in fun, as I hope this post was for you!