Guest Who: Suddenly Songbird?

One of the previously unseen TV shows that I watched during the Covid-19 lock-down was Thriller, a British anthology typically featuring some sort of mystery and/or mayhem. It ran from 1973-1976. As the run developed, an effort was made to include an American name or two within each installment, the idea being that there could be better chances at re-run success in the States if familiar faces were included. This could sometimes be a little clunky story-wise (explaining why a "yank" was in the mix), but the show did indeed air in U.S. syndication. I just somehow missed it. It was fun discovering these eps, especially when one featured an utterly unexpected guest appearance. Take this one, for instance...

A world-famous opera singer is in the midst of a tour and has currently landed in London. We're always all-in whenever a hairdo like this is at play. But who is this songbird? (The episode's proper title is "Nightmare for a Nightingale.")

Fellow guest Stuart Damon (of the 1965 Cinderella and decades on General Hospital) watches the lady ply her trade.

"New York is where I'd raaather stay...!" (I'm kidding. It's not Eva Gabor...)

All sorts of folks want to toast her performances... But who's the singer? Would you believe...

Susan Flannery!?

The Golden Globe winner for New Star of the Year - Actress of 1975 is the Special Guest Star. Flannery had been on TV for well over a decade before being crowned "New" Star of the Year.

After guesting on Burke's Law, Death Valley Days and Ben Casey, she landed on Days of Our Lives in the key role of Laura Horton. She spent a decade there, winning a Daytime Emmy in 1975, the same year as her Golden Globe. The reason for her Golden Globe was a featured part as the doomed secretary Lorri in the mega-hit The Towering Inferno (1974.) Her association with producer Irwin Allen, on whose shows Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Time Tunnel she'd been a guest, had aided her in winning that part.

Some of the patented loving looks and smooching she gave boss Robert Wagner in Inferno can be detected here in her relationship with Damon.

She also finds herself having to contend with stage actor and fellow guest star Keith Baxter. You may have seen him in Ash Wednesday (1973) with Elizabeth Taylor. (He'd been cast as Octavian in her Cleopatra (1963) and filmed much of his role before her lingering illness shut the movie down and many of the parts had to be recast due to timing.)

Flannery goes through a variety of personal turmoils in the show, often draped in chiffon and with her hair piled high as seen here. It's a very unaccustomed look for the actress who mostly wore shorter, simpler looks.

And she does, in fact, return to her freer, lighter locks at other points in the episode.

Naturally at bedtime (in this atrocious confection) she opts for the easy look.

Still, we prefer the stiff, big, intricate way. LOL

Also check out these eyelashes! She had the big-time peepers to pull the look off, but I must say they are ginorous when you really begin to look them over.

But a gal need a little help when belting out an aria on stage.

This was but one year before Damon would create his iconic daytime role of the devious Dr. Alan Quartermaine on General Hospital. He was nominated for seven Daytime Emmys, winning once.

It was fun to see these two soap opera stalwarts work together on Thriller.

Flannery later made a triumphant return to daytime TV as the matriarch Stephanie Forrester on The Bold and the Beautiful. She was nominated nine times for the Emmy, winning three. She worked on the show from 1987-2012. (On-screen hubby John McCook remains on the show even now! A recent story line had him grappling with ED.....)

In real life, Flannery had little interest in long (or big!) hair as she grew older and kept a close-cropped style. She wore wigs for a while as Stephanie, but eventually abandoned those for her own short, silver strands. During her time on Bold, she developed into a skilled director as well, but since departing the screen a decade ago, she now lives out of the limelight and is currently 83. As you may or may not be aware, she was the lover of Fannie Flagg for a while, cohabiting for eight years in the late-'60s and early-'70s.

It's been suggested that her sexuality hampered her standing with some producers & directors back in the 1970s and that is why all that promise withered on the vine and she was soon back on TV. In any case, I don't know of any case in which she phoned in a performance. She was committed and charismatic in everything I ever saw her in. (And, to this day, I keep a VHS tape of her on Bold, going at it with gusto against one of her enemies.)

This episode of Thriller, with all the chiffon, polyester, Aqua Net and eyelashes one can handle, may be seen here, free with limited ads on Tubi. Other eps are there, too, with everyone from Donna Mills to Bradford Dillman to Gary Collins to Carol Lynley (and a fascinating one with Helen Mirren), among others!