mattbaume patreon

Bonus video! The man on Raymond Burr's lap, and a lesbian vampire mystery

🕑 Added 2022-09-25 17:01:01 +0000 UTC

Comments

Matt Baume

Oh wow thanks for digging this up! I don't want to impose on their privacy -- but if I start work on a video about Raymond Burr I might ask you for those numbers. I appreciate it!

James Bigwood

Hello Matt-- You asked if anybody had any leads on Frank Vitti. I realize that you initially posted this two years ago, but I may be able to help you out. Frank James Vitti died on February 7, 1983 in Los Angeles. He was 51 (born May 29, 1932). However, one of the photos that you included in your post shows him hanging out with Burr and Burr's "niece" Phyllis Zillo, implying that Frank and Phyllis were brother and sister. Well, Phyllis was actually Frank Vitti's niece! She was the eldest daughter of Frank's older sister, Esther and her husband James. Phyllis eventually married 1) Donald Robert Hayes and later 2) John E. Rowlands. Her son, Jeffrey Michael Hayes (9/12/1965 - 6/9/2013), was the owner of Habitat Hanalei, an interior design firm, and was married to Greg Sovey who currently lives in Wisconsin and can be reached at 512-XXX-XXXX. BUT, more importantly, Phyllis Hayes Rowlands is still with us at age 82. Her number is 512-XXX-XXXX. She would certainly know all the details of her Uncle Frank since she was actually living with him and Raymond Burr for a stretch in the late 50's. If you would like the full phone numbers, reach out to me and I can pass them on to you privately.

claire bee

Yay! A couple of morsels of extra context for when you have a look at it: Aubrey is described as regarding Ruthven as "a hero of romance"; that's not quiiiite as suggestive as it might appear, as at the time, "romance" meant action-adventure stories, not what we would now see as a romantic tale; but romance heroes tended to be super-studly, so it's at least a bit suggestive. Aubrey is also described as having "paid him [ie, Lord Ruthven] attentions" and that is actually more suggestive than it looks at first. At the time, a man wooing a woman could have been described as "paying her attentions", but I have personally never, not once, seen that phrase used about a man making friends with a man... except in The Vampyre. So, yeah. Something's going on there.

Matt Baume

Oh wow that's fascinating, I'd never heard of Polidori before! Will definitely check out The Vampyre, that predates Carmilla by quite a few decades and seems to have a lot in common with Anne Rice's whole vibe.

claire bee

Hi again! Okay, first I want to say I've been very restrained while going through these; I made myself a promise I wouldn't make any comments unless I had something to say that had a reasonably strong likelihood of being genuinely useful/interesting to you, but here there are a couple of things that fit that particular bill, so... here goes! First, the main actor in that clip was Al Murray, playing his famous (in the UK at least) Pub Landlord character, who is intended to be a satire on right-wing, sexist, racist, homophobic Englishmen. So there's a reason you laughed even though it was homophobic: it was deliberately written to make homophobia seem laughable. Second, you didn't mention Polidori's The Vampyre in your run-down of early vampire stuff; I don't know if that's because you didn't have space or just didn't know about it, but on the assumption that it might be the latter: The Vampyre is about a guy called Lord Ruthven, who is super sexy! But evil! But sexy! Another man, Aubrey, makes friends (or maybe "friends") with Ruthven, they go travelling around Europe together, and Ruthven ultimately ends up seducing and marrying Aubrey's sister, who is utterly destroyed by him (Ruthven). The sister barely exists as a character, and to be honest is probably just there so that the final seduction can be presented as hetero not homo. Oh, and Polidori was friends (or maybe "friends") with the famously sexually experimental Lord Byron, and The Vampyre was written on the same holiday with the Shelleys that resulted in Mary writing Frankenstein. So a single holiday resulted in a narrative that is often seen as being about how oppressed and poorly treated people will rise up against their oppressors, and also one of the earliest queer-coded romances in Europe; perhaps the very oldest, if you discount that one Viking myth where Loki turns into a girl horse and has sex with a boy horse.

Irisarc

I loved that show. So awful and campy. They showed the whole series through one time on BBC America 10 or 12 years ago, but I haven't seen it since. The opening theme tune is priceless.

Justin

It's a great time for learning about Network TV™! (P.S. James came on Conan O'Brien's podcast to talk about it and went into a deep dive into his career, if you're interested as well.)

Vicky Carmichael

Speaking of British sitcoms: check out Gimme Gimme Gimme if you don't know it. Pilot episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e0IwxOEtCU

Matt Baume

Adding this to my to-read list immediately!!!

Justin

Bit late, but speaking of books about TV history, have you heard about James Burrows' book? https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/directed-by-james-burrows-review-making-tv-with-friends-11654038256

Kris Olsen

I read Carmilla many years ago and liked it a LOT more than most of Anne Rice's later books.

Chris Weakley

My husband actually has a CD of soundtrack music from the Italian Lesbian Vampire movies: "Vampyros Lesbos: Sexadelic Dance Party". It contains a booklet that talks about the history of the movies. And as you might have guessed from the CD's title, it's full of gah-roovy 60's and 70's music.

Eric Baysinger

You have an impressive ability to ad lib without (any?) edits. Congrats!

Bryan Cybershaman(X) Logie

Darn it. Why does Carmella sounds so familiar... Maybe that story made the name become one of the "default" names for those FemVamps that craved the blood of maidens and I just heard it before? I don't know. At any rate, since the vampire legend is obviously chock full of sexual connotations...nervousness over the "monstrous power" of the animal nature of sex in general, regardless of who's doing the biting/sexing to whom...it's not too surprising to see that a vampy fem that nips at the neck of other women made its way into the vampire legendarium at an early date. 😉

TBoneSF

BTW, is your book title in reference to the most infamous sitcom of all time "Heil Honey, I'm Home"? If you're not familiar with it, then you're in for a real rabbit trail of "what were they thinking?".