"Puzzle" Pieces

Longtime readers of this blog, who are all too familiar with my Faye Dunaway obsession, will find it quite hard to believe that I only saw FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, her 1970 film Puzzle of a Downfall Child. The arty, before-its-time film, loosely inspired by one of the 1950s' premier fashion models, was never an easy one to locate after its release. It only played sporadically on television and wasn't released on VHS (nor, in fact, has there been a U.S. DVD release of it to date.) Quite by accident, I stumbled upon a good quality rendition of it on youtube and was able to snuggle in for a look at it at last.

The chief inspiration for the movie was a spectacular fashion model of the '50s and early-'60s, Anne St. Marie. The lithe, elegant, impossibly contortionistic and glamorous muse was closely associated with Vogue magazine and was photographed by Tom Palumbo, who she eventually married and bore two sons with. She paid a price for her contributions to posing, however, in that she suffered a breakdown when cast aside around age thirty and died of lung cancer, no doubt inched along by the endless chain of cigarettes she smoked to curb her appetite and remain reed thin for the camera.

Puzzle opens at a remote cabin on the beach where Dunaway, now a decade or so beyond her hey-day as a model, is sharing her life story with an old pal, photographer Barry Primus. In preparation for a movie about her life, the terribly insecure and emotionally fragile Dunaway relays information to Primus in a disjointed series of flashbacks that may or may not be completely factual and are often contradictory to one another.

We meet her as an aspiring model, being given the once-over by a brusque, tough agent who looks her over and sizes her up like she's a piece of meat about to go on sale in the deli case.

Things aren't any more comforting on her first big assignment wherein the designers and the photographer pick her apart and discuss her as if she isn't a human being standing before them. They're dissatisfied with her in several ways, her nerves becoming jangled.

It gets worse when her very own physical well-being is put in jeopardy by a falcon they attach to her arm, who swiftly takes a dive at her face! Naturally, for the people in charge of the campaign, the all-important shot takes precedence over anything so trivial as the model's health. It must be said that Dunaway looks stunning in her feathery headpiece and sparkling jewelry.

One of the photographer's assistants at the shoot is young Primus, who is an aspiring shutterbug himself. He acquaints himself with Dunaway and begins taking various early-morning photos of her in outdoor settings, paying her the sum of $10.00/hr (far below the industry standards at the time for a high fashion model.)

Though her agent is horrified by this extracurricular work, the photos do impress a prominent female photographer played by Viveca Lindfors. Lindfors is an eccentric, highly passionate artist (who provides the film's first real laugh when she hires Dunaway to fly off to Jamaica with her in her private plane.)

The specter of flying anywhere terrifies Dunaway, who tells Primus that her first love was killed in a crash. She (in what may or may not be the truth) was picked up at age fifteen by an older man who would take her to the airport and make love to her in a nearby field. He later died while flying.

In order to make herself take the plane to Jamaica, where a high-paying, high-profile assignment awaits, she has to drink heavily. She does make the trip and one of her photos lands her the cover of Vogue magazine.

Lindfors becomes a close friend of Dunaway, inviting her to frequent dinner parties where she ultimately meets advertising art director Roy Scheider. Much to Lindfors' discomfort, Scheider offers to take Dunaway home where he attempts to seduce her.

Thing is, Dunaway is rattled with Catholic guilt. In a dreamy flashback, we see her attempting to pass a love note to a priest at school, but stopped in the process by a (literally) whistle-blowing nun.

Lindfors (who is married to Barry Morse), wants to dissuade Dunaway from seeing Scheider and informs her that he had tried to seduce her as well previously. Scheider denies this, saying it was Lindfors who put the moves on him. We don't know for certain what the truth is, but at times Lindfors looks like she might want Dunaway for herself!

During the scene above, the camera zeroes in on Dunaway's eye...

...and lips.

Compare those to these shots from Mommie Dearest, eleven years later, during the film's opening when Joan Crawford is being readied for the cameras. It's not the only time when one can see the seeds being sewn of Dunaway's epic performance in the over-the-top biopic.

Take a look at this photo shoot with Dunaway and a handsome young model. So much of the way she looks and is holding herself and in the next shot from Puzzle are in accord with the Mommie Dearest sequence shown below!

The camera, operated by Primus, catches Dunaway being necked by her young love and the final result could almost be a promotional photo for one of Crawford's romantic melodramas (or perhaps even I Saw What You Did, 1965.)

Incidentally, this look of Dunaway's parallels a photo taken of Anne St. Marie, with similarly piled hair and the sheet pulled across her chest in lieu of a gown. Note that even the dressing room bulbs make their presence known in both pictures.

Anyway, Dunaway wants to become closer to Primus, but discovers that she is practically unable to make love to anyone she actually knows. She goes out of town with him for the night, but insists that he let her out of the car so that she may enter a bar and pretend not to know him when he comes in, both of them using assumed names. They proceed to an awkward sexual experience, which is never repeated.

Back in the present day, Dunaway models (literally!) her wedding dress to Scheider for Primus. It's crisp white, but when she flashes back to the big day (during which she departed in a taxi prior to making the union official), the dress and hat are funereal black. 

Scheider is infuriated by Dunaway's irrational behavior as she coolly casts him out of her life for no apparent reason. They engage in a scuffle that injures her face (which is presented in two ways, so that we're never quite sure how it happened.)

She thinks that perhaps things might rekindle with her pal Primus, but he's moved on with a new girlfriend (who he presumably marries.) In this scene, and many others in the film, red plays a vivid part. The otherwise fairly desaturated color scheme makes the scarlet tones jump off the screen.

Feeling the need to rejuvenate her look (and her slipping career), she alters her makeup style and dons a wig for a photo shoot, but discovers that she is no longer a top model. She has to stand by on the sidelines as a haughty new face (the ravishing Barbara Carrera) picks and chooses the clothing from the rack that she wishes to wear.

Dunaway turns to drugs and alcohol as coping mechanisms and has trouble separating fact from fiction and reality from fantasy. Already an exaggerator and fanciful storyteller, she becomes frantic from the drama in her life.

She becomes so despondent that her appearance suffers and she lives in an intoxicated haze. Finally, she is so unhinged and detached from reality that she's admitted to a sanitarium. (Scenes set there are filmed almost entirely in clinical white. Even the food she's served is as close to white as they could make it.) Here, the then twenty-nine year-old Dunaway allows herself to look about as bad as a person can, quite a contrast from the many other stunning images of her to be found in the film.

By the end, she and Primus have arrived at a certain sort of peace and understanding, though considering the emotional state of her character, it would be a stretch to describe the movie as having a "happy" ending.

This is on record as Faye Dunaway's favorite movie of the more than seventy in which she has appeared (not counting TV-movies.) No wonder! The entire film revolves around her and she's in every scene. It's a roller-coaster ride of looks, emotions, experiences and reactions. Fans of hers owe it to themselves to see it.

To me, she is always, always watchable, but I cannot deny that in this instance she was permitted to be a little bit indulgent with her pauses, tics and mannerisms in the company of a first-time feature director (Jerry Schatzberg, for whom Primus is a celluloid stand-in.) Nevertheless, her detailed, committed, at times searingly intimate performance is impressive, yet was ignored by every awards body imaginable except for the  Hollywood Foreign Press Association (Golden Globes.) Ali MacGraw won that year for Love Story.

Though she cites it as her personal favorite work, she never once acted again alongside any of the people who costarred with her in the piece. The film was not a hit and, as I said at the outset, was ahead of its time and more European in its structure and approach than most mainstream fare at the time. (This was a Universal Pictures release!) A screening at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, at which she and Schatzberg were present, was well-received and, in fact, her visage in a photo by Schatzberg adorned that year's festival poster.

Primus had been working in television since the early-'60s, but was segueing to film with 1968's The Brotherhood and this one. He proceeded to work frequently for Roger Corman in his films of varying quality. Now eighty, he still acts and has done so steadily for all these years, including roles in American Hustle (2013) and Joy (2015.)

Lindfors was imported from her native Sweden in 1948 by Warner Brothers to costar in Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Don Juan. She eventually morphed from a glamorous leading lady to a colorful supporting actress of note. Her 1989 guest role on Life Goes On earned her an Emmy Award (an earlier nomination for the 1978 TV-movie A Question of Guilt resulted in a win for Eva Le Gallienne for The Royal Family.) The still-acting Lindfors succumbed to complications from arthritis in 1995 at age seventy-four.

An English actor from the 1940s on, Morse was known in the U.S. for his continuing role on the top 1960s TV series The Fugitive, as the police detective endlessly hunting down David Janssen. Later he achieved another level of cult status as a costar on Space: 1999. Always an extremely busy actor on TV and in films, he worked practically right up until his death in 2008 of natural causes. He was eighty-nine.

Amateur boxer turned air force officer turned stage actor Scheider had been working on daytime soaps like Love of Life, The Secret Storm and Edge of Night as well as in some lesser-known features prior to this. He was blunt in his displeasure at having to work around Dunaway's need for detail in scenes during Puzzle. Much bigger things were to follow, however, and swiftly. He costarred in both 1971 smashes Klute and The French Connection and proceeded in 1975 to a little something called Jaws. Another busy actor with a varied resume including All That Jazz (1979), Still of the Night (1982) and Blue Thunder (1983), he was still acting when he died in 2008 of multiple myeloma at age seventy-five.

A curiosity in the cast is this young man Clark Burckhalter, who plays one of Dunaway's fellow models and lovers. A nice looking guy with a charming smile, he has only one other screen credit (a 1978 guest role on a sitcom) and absolutely nothing else! It's a shame because this movie left me wanting to see a bit more of him somewhere else.

La Dunaway is still kicking at age seventy-seven, recently appearing once more with Warren Beatty at the 90th Annual Oscar ceremony to properly present Best Picture after last year's debacle. She had four projects last year (of varying quality) after having failed to get her pet project "Master Class" off the ground as a film. (Parts of it were filmed with Al Pacino, Val Kilmer and others, but it will now go into the realm of other unrealized cinematic projects.) I wish that she could find one really good "capper" with which to end her film career after fifty years. I worry that, like her spirit animal Joan Crawford, if she doesn't, she's going to wind up in the equivalent of Trog before it's all over.

Let Me Give You Some "Space"

Most fans of sci-fi television know the drill when it comes to Star Trek (nowadays dubbed Star Trek: The Original Series in the wake of the many reincarnations and sequels that have since come forth.) The series ran for three seasons on NBC, always to dismal ratings and under the constant threat of cancellation. Only some significant letter writing campaigns kept it on the air for as long as it was. Then, in syndication in the early 70s, the show finally found its audience and became a pop culture phenomenon!

British husband and wife producing team Gerry and Sylvia Anderson had been making various entertaining TV shows for years including Thunderbirds (featuring big-headed marionette puppets on elaborate sets) and my own personal favorite, Captain Scarlet, whose puppets were far more proportionate and lifelike and, to be honest, sorta hot! They also did a live-action sci-fi series called UFO (famous now for the handsome, hairy men who wore funky, often sexy, costumes.) UFO was faltering in the ratings and was about to be retooled into a version that had people stationed on the moon. When, due to a variety of reasons and events, this didn’t pan out, the seed of the idea remained and the Andersons went on to produce Space: 1999.
Wishing to capitalize on the success that Star Trek enjoyed in its second run, while retaining the grandeur and immense style of the hit film 2001: A Space Odyssey, they formed a series called Space: 1999. Knowing that casting the principal roles with American actors would help ensure success in the United States, they went with husband and wife team Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. (This was over Sylvia’s protests, who would have preferred Robert Culp and Katherine Ross, if she’d have gotten her way.)

Landau and Bain had enjoyed great success on the U.S. series Mission: Impossible several years before (Bain won three consecutive Emmys for her role of Cinnamon Carter!) until exiting the show in a rather nasty contract dispute after three seasons. Landau had gotten the opportunity to flex his acting muscles by playing a variety of “types” while undercover on the show and was considered a key part of the series' success. Bain was unbelievably chic, stylish, sensuous and beguiling as the "distraction."

While the show was all business, the pair seemed to display some degree of levity, fun and amiability off screen. While the contract dispute did hurt them somewhat, especially Bain, they retained that sense of star quality they’d enjoyed from M.I. and landing them as the leads on Space: 1999 was considered quite desirable.

There were various concerns with Space: 1999 from the beginning whether it be the financing, the imminent closure of the studio in which it was to be chiefly filmed (Britain’s Elstree Studio) or conflicts regarding the tone and direction of the material. Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, who had worked together on so many projects, saw their marriage end before the second season (or, as they are referred to in the U.K., series) was filmed.

The show concerned a radioactive blast that knocks the moon out of earth’s orbit and sends it hurtling through space, encountering other planets as it goes. A facility with over three hundred employees, Moonbase Alpha, continues to run in its mostly self-sufficient way though the people know that they will eventually have to depart the moon for a habitable planet. The trouble is, there’s always something wrong with each planet they encounter whether it is the atmospheric conditions or hostile forces and so on.

Commander John Koenig, played by Martin Landau, was the head of Moonbase Alpha. Unlike Star Trek, in which most officers and crewmembers respected Captain Kirk and deferred to him in most cases, Landau faced, mostly at first, a disbelieving and, at times, hostile contingent of fellow survivors. Most did not hesitate to call his decisions into question or complain openly if they didn’t like his plans. Incidentally, Landau had actually been first choice to play Mr. Spock on Star Trek: TOS!

Doctor Helena Russell, played by Barbara Bain, was his chief ally and implied love interest. With all the problems the Alphans encountered and endured, she had her hands full trying to come up with cures, solutions and suggestions. These two figured prominently in most episodes, particularly the first season. Bain, who had been one of TV’s most sophisticated, chic beauties, was beginning to see the effects of a lifetime of heavy smoking, not helped by a muted makeup scheme.
For one reason or another, perhaps because the Andersons were used to dealing with puppets (!), the Landau’s posed in any number of awkward, stilted poses for publicity purposes (because you always sit like this on a buggy on the surface of the moon with your helmet off!) and continued, especially in the case of Bain, to deliver stiff, sedate, overly reverent types of performances that, again mostly in the case of Bain, have an almost hypnotic effect that can put less alert viewers to sleep against their will! Bain would whisper a great many of her lines and seemed to have something against blinking or moving hurriedly.

Professor Victor Bergman rounded out the top trio. Played by Barry Morse, he was the scientific expert who frequently came up with ways to solve the many issues that befell the moon as it found itself nearing other bodies in space. He was something like Mr. Spock, but with more charm and ease. (The actor chose some creative body language, sometimes practically lying on the furniture!) Morse was famous in the U.S. for his role of Agent Gerard, the man chasing David Janssen’s The Fugitive, many people never realizing that he was British all along and only used an American accent for that show!

Eagle (the small craft that were capable of flying away from the moon) pilot Alan Carter (portrayed by Australian Nick Tate) was another prominent crewmember whose rough and ready persona was a refreshing contrast from the other, mostly subdued, people around him. A virile man with an in-shape physique and a hairy chest, he was often shown in action sequences.

Like Trek, the series sought to populate itself with multinational and multiracial personnel. There were Asian and African cast members featured along with European ones from various countries, though the bulk of the people involved were British. One of the key people from season one was Paul Morrow, played by Prentiss Hancock. Handpicked without an audition by the Andersons, he affected an endlessly dour, “who farted?” expression that wore quite thin before long. A bit lighter in attitude was Zienia Merton as Sandra Benes, a shorthaired Burmese actress, who managed to inject a tad more humanity into her role. My favorite lady on the series was Suzanne Roquette as Tanya Alexander, though she hardly ever had anything to say or do. I called her “Greta Garbo,” for reasons that ought to be obvious from looking at this snap of her with some other crew people. The grey-haired gentleman above her was a prominently featured extra who I liked to look at, too. In a bit of sloppiness, they once cast him as someone else on a planet, hilariously doubting that anyone would know the difference even with that distinctive hair!

That first season had an opening credits sequence that recalled Mission: Impossible in some ways. While M:I began with a match being struck and lighting a fuse as scenes from the upcoming episode flashed before the viewer, Space’s credits commenced with an imposing drum roll followed by snippets of the episode to follow. Season one had a theme song that was majestic and funky all at once, perhaps disjointed, but entertaining all the same. Every episode ended with a simple, haunting series of notes played over the final bit of dialogue, giving the show an elegance and a feeling of eerie isolation.

There was a lot of money poured into the production. The main mission center was a spacious, two-tiered set with multitudinous equipment, screens, lights, etc… and was connected by sliding doors to Landau’s private office. The sets were a monochromatic scheme of white and taupe with limited lighting. (It was not rare to see Bain or Landau sitting at a desk writing or otherwise working as a Joan Crawford-esque beam of light hit part of their face while the rest was very dim!) Upon first glance now, it seems tacky in places (especially those awful blue viewing screens and some of the plastic furniture), but in its day, this was a sleek looking set up.

The aliens, as was the case for decades in film and on TV, were often campy and ludicrous looking, but Space: 1999 did tend to be pretty gruesome at times, surely more so than Trek ever was. One episode, more than any other, was downright unsettling. In Dragon's Domain, a tentacled, hideous monster keeps dragging people into it, swallowing them as they scream in fear, only to spit out their eviscerated remains a few moments later! Many fans recall this episode above any other as having scared the bejesus out of them as children.
Bain’s personal friend Rudi Gernreich (creator of the infamous topless women’s bathing suit!) was enlisted to create the Moonbase Alpha uniforms. The nearly colorless beige costumes, consisting of a pair of flared trousers and a scoop-necked tunic (Landau's had a collar) with one colored sleeve (usually yellow, red or blue) were clearly meant for tall, svelte astronauts, but too often wound up on paunchy, out of shape people. Bain, who always looked like a million bucks on Mission: Impossible was certainly done no favors by the uniform. It didn’t help that her beige hair looked like someone sculpted it out of modeling clay and formed it onto her scalp. The Alphans were also give cool little ray guns that fit, u-shaped, over the fingers.

The upside was that the pants were so clingy in the crotch area that any man who put them on ran the risk of showing his goods to the viewing audience at home. Tate was one of the primary actors who continually wound up letting everyone know precisely where his penis was resting during long shots (so to speak) on the show.

Another regular costume, that of the hospital patient, was a set of filmy, blue silk pajamas. These gave many a guest star the chance to show off his chest and, in some cases, his crotch. The backers of the series included an Italian firm and there was, in return, supposed to be a regular Italian character. However, the casting of Tate (in which that character’s name and nationality were altered) meant that, instead, there would be a series of Italian guest stars. These gentlemen had their voices dubbed by, typically, the same English-speaking man, lending an odd quality to their performances. (The voice-dubber did have an Italian accent, however.) The man shown here -bottom right- was one of the Italian featured guests. He had three nipples (!) and that was not part of the storyline, just a strange biological fact disclosed when he took off his shirt on camera.

The special effects eschewed the blue screen ones that were most popular at the time. Instead, miniatures were filmed against a black velvet backdrop and filmed in a way that was extremely polished and elegant, much like 2001: A Space Odyssey had been done. This was no coincidence as 1999 utilized some of the same effects crew as Kubrick’s film had employed. This meant that images would be sharper and more distinct, but that individual elements could not overlap (i.e. – a ship could be seen approaching a planet, but not on top of it, visually.)

Twenty-four episodes were shot before the series was put on the market for sale. This presented a problem because U.S. networks were reluctant to air a show of which they had zero creative control. The season was a done deal from the start and, thus, no changes (“retooling”) could be enforced the way things sometimes are done midstream with other network shows. It eventually became a programming debacle because the show was sold in syndication to individual stations, some network, most independent, so it aired all over the place time-wise and often in an unreliable fashion.

Due to various technical and logistical reasons, a couple of years passed before the show was seen on television! The austere, intellectual, often low-key, show was completely at odds with what was being shown on U.S. TV at that time. The show, like 2001, used gorgeous classical music such as Beethoven’s Adaggio or Mars, The Bringer of War, to underscore the more dramatic or awe-inspiring sequences. Compared to a lot of televison sci-fi from that general era, it was a class act and also quite serious.

When the first season underperformed in many of the international markets, it was decided to bring in a new producer and punch up the show. Fred Freiberger, an American TV writer and producer took the reins (as Sylvia Anderson departed the show and her husband) and the program was given an overhaul.

Morse’s Dr. Bergman was out, with no explanation given. Also, the bulk of the main mission crew was sent packing, replaced by actors and actresses who (in my opinion anyway) offered absolutely no noticeable improvement or dynamics to the proceedings. A new male second in command appeared in the form of Tony Anholt as Tony Verdeschi, a dark-haired, fiery-tempered guy who figured in many of the plotlines. Tate (as Alan Carter) was intended to be let go along with the majority of his costars, but it turned out that (with 5000 fan letters a week!) he was one of the few people involved with the show who had any sort of fan base or following. He was retained after all and appeared in all but about six episodes of the full run of the series.
Another new character was created in order to add a sense of excitement and mystique to the show. Maya, a shape-shifting alien, was introduced in the first episode of the second season and swiftly made a part of the Moonbase Alpha team. Played by Catherine Schell (who had guest-starred the prior year as someone else), she was given distinctive makeup touches in order to drive home her alien roots. Her eyebrows had little nubs in a row that stood out, her ears were brown and she had sideburns that came in close to the front of her face. Some of these elements were softened before long to where she had normal ears and reduced sideburns, but she kept the funky eyebrows.
Schell was very successful in the role and gleaned a lot of new fans. Unlike the stoic Mr. Spock of Star Trek, she was a science officer with lots of genuine emotion and feeling. While it’s true that her powers were never really utilized to the extent that they might have been (more often than not, she would be something like a chimp or a bird, something easy for the producers to wrangle!), she nonetheless became a highlight of that second year, with Schell’s sensitive and astute acting playing no small part in that success. An attractive lady with a good figure, she was also used to add some glamour and sex appeal to the show on occasion. She and Anholt were depicted as a burgeoning romantic couple.
The entire look of the show was tweaked, with the costumes being augmented to include turtlenecks, more color, jackets, optional skirts for the ladies (I must admit I kind of liked that) and softer hair for Barbara Bain. She now sported a feathered, more relaxed ‘do. The cavernous main mission set was reduced to a fraction of its former size (one online reviewer snarkily referred to the new set as a broom closet, though it wasn’t quite THAT bad!) In lieu of the mannequin-like poses in the opening credits, the Landaus were now shown in motion and a far more throbbing, fast-paced theme was introduced. (I have to say I do love the second theme song, perhaps even more than the original one.)

Due to the shift in focus, as well as for budgetary reasons, the Landaus, while still maintaining their star status, were not always the chief protagonists in the second year, (there were several times in which two episodes were filmed simultaneously, with Landau and Bain filming one show while also doing bits of another, in which they would be less featured.) By now, they were becoming more and more disenchanted with the whole enterprise anyway. Landau bemoaned this new direction of the show and found himself embarrassed by some of the scripts. Bain, according to some sources, had always been rather difficult to deal with whether it had been her tardiness to the set or her acting style conflicting with the material or just general displeasure. It must be said, however, that both leads were very much committed to the series and its success, often arguing to preserve its integrity. Freiberger (who, whether justified or not, had earned the nickname “The series killer” because he oversaw the final seasons of Star Trek: TOS and The Six Million Dollar Man and then this program) saw to it that Space: 1999 became a far more conventional series. It was more action-oriented, more colorful, easier to understand and even had uncharacteristic comic bumps at the end of each episode, with forced humor taking the place of the eerie musical ending that once was in place.

In many ways he can’t be blamed because in TV Land, you have to give the people want they want (or think they want) and sometimes, the fluff is more readily accepted than that which is more challenging or intellectually stimulating. (I will say that now, despite the preponderance of trash TV and all sorts of mindless programming, there is an audience for shows that are of a higher quality. They just tend to be on specialty cable networks. Even with that said, we see cable channel after cable channel drop the good stuff in order to fill their line-up with utter junk… And shows that once were stellar, like, say, Inside the Actors Studio, which once interviewed many tremendous talents like Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, Meryl Streep and others, eventually began featuring the casts of The Simpsons, Will and Grace and Everybody Loves Raymond and acting geniuses like Brooke Shields and Chris Rock.)

I was sort of mystified by Space: 1999 as a child. I found it very creepy and strange, especially since I was used to the more colorful and accessible Star Trek. My favorite toys on Earth were my Mego Star Trek figures and the accompanying bridge playset. Mattel tried to get in on the act by introducing action figures of Commander Koenig, Dr. Russell and Dr. Bergman. They even had their own (flimsy!) Moonbase Alpha playset. I had Koenig and Russell, but was disappointed that they didn’t mesh with my Trek figures as they were of a slightly different scale.

There was lots of merchandising, actually, from lunch boxes to comic books to coloring books to bubble gum cards as shown below.
One Christmas, I got a different type of Space: 1999 toy, this one a highly detailed model of one of the Eagle crafts. It came with three small figures representing Koenig, Russell and Bergman. Thing was, when I unwrapped it, the box looked like it had been kicked across the parking lot or damaged in a truck accident or something. When I opened the box, everything was fine except the Helena Russell figure had one arm detached! I hated the fact that the figures were so cheap that their faces weren’t even colored in, but just plain peach tone all over, hair and all! Within days, Helena’s other arm came off!! I don’t want to offend anybody, but I really was not into playing with handicapped action figures. The toy began to collect dust. In researching this post, I saw the toy for sale on eBay and would you believe that the one for sale ALSO has a virtually paraplegic Helena Russell?! WTF?! I am reminded of the movie Boxing Helena, in which a man keeps taking off the limbs of his girlfriend in order to keep her within his control. Jesus…

Over the course of the series, particularly during season one when the budget went further, there were a number of notable guest stars, the greatest number of them being British. Jeremy Kemp, Ian McShane, Brian Blessed, Judy Geeson, Leo McKern, Sarah Douglas and Stuart Damon all appeared on the show. More notable, though were the appearances of Margaret Leighton, Joan Collins and Christopher Lee. Each of them was given long, albino-like hair, making quite a contrast from what they typically looked like at the time. Margaret played one seriously old lady. It was just about the last thing she did before leaving this world in 1976. Joan, in a short, pink, tunic, was done up in all sorts of shimmery eye shadow and with a headpiece that looks like it may have broken off of one of Liz Taylor’s from Doctor Faustus or The Blue Bird. Christopher’s face was painted with geometric makeup, accentuating his already angular features.

The producers had planned a third, albeit shortened, season and also a spin-off series for Schell’s Maya, but neither project continued. The plug was pulled and the moon was left careening through space in search of a home. (Incidentally, a lot was made of Isaac Asimov’s proclamation that the science behind the moon’s departure from Earth’s orbit was not feasible and that all of this was impossible. Really? I think that’s why it’s called science FICTION. Consider the stark reality of such programs as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century or Jason of Star Command! What about Star Wars?! Give me a break…)

In the wake of the show, Landau struggled to keep himself with a viable career. He worked in supporting roles in TV films and features, but they were low-rung for the most part. Bain had it even worse, working far less frequently and rarely starring. Perhaps the nadir of their careers occurred in 1981 when they were the villains in a TV movie called The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island, a dire mess that they surely must hope is never made easily accessible to the world. Both of them bounced back in time, though, especially Landau who went on to win an Oscar for Ed Wood! Bain worked in James Coburn’s final film, American Gun, as his wife. They continue to act even now. The couple, married since 1957 and seemingly so connected, divorced in 1993.
Fans of the show, those present at a convention anyway, got some degree of closure to the story when actress Zienia Merton appeared in a short film in 1999, in character and costume as Sandra Benes. The film, called Message from Moonbase Alpha, was scripted by one of the series’ writers and had her relaying the info that the moon inhabitants had finally been able to evacuate and relocate on a new home planet. Recent DVD releases have included this short film as a special feature.
In spite of a really spotty history and a lot of issues along the way, Space: 1999 continues to have a loyal fan following. While many fans dream of a remake, I have to ask them if they have ever seen some of the vomitous remakes of classic TV shows that have come about. In order for it to not be a calamity, it would have to be produced by people who really care about the material. Also, the world we live in doesn’t allow for much in the way of austere, intellectual and understated science-fiction, so a remake would likely be taking its cue from the dumbed-down, ramped-up second incarnation.