This deceased foreign actor starred in a short lived but iconic cult TV show that was highly influential. He also starred several times on this very famous detective show where he played different adversaries of the protagonist. He did act in movies as well sometimes as the villain. The village not in America where he shot his iconic show (and also an episode of an earlier TV show he starred in) was helped by him throughout his life. He worked to get them used as the location for other TV shows and films and financially helped individual families of this rural location. An annual convention for the iconic TV show used to be held there which was also a boost for the local economy. This was also arranged by the star.
Patrick McGooghan?
ReplyDeleteYes I want to say The Prisoner
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner#Filming
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ReplyDelete+1 Sandybrook
ReplyDeleteThe Prisoner for the cult TV show, shot in Port Merrion, North Wales.
Lots of stuff filmed there:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmeirion#In_popular_culture
He was on Columbo as several different characters.
ReplyDeleteHe was also the star of Secret Agent.
ReplyDeleteEnty's reference to "the village" is a dead giveaway.
ReplyDeleteIn The Prisoner, the locale where all the action takes place is referred to only as "The Village."
The city of Portmeiron was used in one episode of Patrick McGoohan's "Secret Agent", then used as the main location in "The Prisoner"
ReplyDeleteSo are reader blinds just somebody reading some obscure Wikipedia page and turning it into a blind for Enty? I don't get it. What does the reader get out of this?
ReplyDeleteSome people obviously want to help the site and so far are doing a good job of keeping gossip flowing...away from more contentious things.
ReplyDeleteI'm liking them.
Except that it's not gossip at all. It's facts. None of this is secret. McGoohan was involved in conventions and commemorations of The Prisoner in its original village.
ReplyDeleteAlso, McGoohan wasn't just a guest star in several Columbo episodes. He also directed five of them, in the original run and in the nineties follow-up. Peter Falk had the most trusted friends. He loved doing arthouse films with John Cassavetes, who was also a murderer in an episode (the conductor who kills his mistress during a concert).
Sure it's facts, but it's something I didn't know before. What can I say? I like new info.
ReplyDeleteHmm these blinds are older than me I think I have no clue about anyone today 🤣😂🤣😂
ReplyDeleteYou're not alone. I'm almost 50 and I've never heard of the actor nor the show.
DeleteNot really gossip, but I like seeing the great Patrick McGoohan get a shoutout.
ReplyDeleteIt's like a puzzle you have to work out. Less an actual blind and more of a little mystery to solve. I like them too, and there's the added payoff of having it confirmed somewhere, so they can be very satisfying, as well as telling you something you didn't know before.
ReplyDeleteYou want new info?
ReplyDeleteHere are three blind items. One of them is totally fake, the other two are based on something I've heard repeatedly.
Blind Item 1 - The regal dickhead
This aging foreign born actor is permanent A+ in his home country and B+ in the rest of the world. Let's call him TR. TR got his first big break in another country, as he was the lover of this foreign male director, who cast him as one of the stars of an epic movie that all feline lovers may have heard about. That may be one of the reasons he now spouts homophobic nonsense to kill these old rumors. TR also impregnated this statuesque model/singer/actress, that we'll call SS, but never acknowledged that the child was his. TR worked with a bunch of famous directors. TR is also quite a bit of a cunt. He suspected that his bodyguard was having an affair with his then wife? He had the bodyguard killed, but he got away with it due to having dirt on the then leader of his country.
Later, people started to realize how full of himself TR was, despite a filmography and a list of female conquests that he could legitimately be proud of. When he has dinner at a restaurant, he will complain about everybody and everything, just because he's an attention hog. Once, I got wind of him sulking around in one restaurant, and I talked to one waiter, who had been the butt of his anger.
'He was so rude to you that I don't know how you were able to do your job without spitting in his soup.'
'I don't know either, because I actually spitted in his soup.'
Blind Item 2 - Mr. Scrooge
ReplyDeleteAs we talk about permanent aging A+ in their country, this guy is undisputed. A+ songwriter all over the world, B+ performer in the US and A+ everywhere else. Let's call him TD. TD's career spans more than half a century. He also overcame awful circumstances as half his family was killed in a genocide. Then, he struggled as an artist to find an audience until this A+ performer took him under her wing and recorded his songs. Is it why he is so stingy? He may have made millions, but he's the kind of guy who will insist on splitting the bill in a restaurant, then spend minutes about making his guests pay a few more cents. But it's with his own band that he's the worst. On a video from one of his shows, you'll never see a close-up on one of his musicians. So, you'll never notice that their shirts are grey. They were initially white, but one of his rules is to never pay for the laundry bill during a tour. His musicians, as a consequence, wear the same shirt night after night. Fortunately, you can't smell them either.
Blind Item 3 - He had them killed
Let's leave permanent A+ and move on to permanent A++, RZ. This guy secured his status in this category two years ago with a major win, but the bulk of his fame comes from many decades ago. And he's also a big fan of TD. At the time, he was dating MANY women, famous or not, and every one of them assumed that she was the one, including SS from the first blind item. One of these girls, CM, was the epitome of the "It girl". Wealthy family, muse of another A++ artist, and one of the most beautiful women on the planet at the time. RZ wrote one of his most famous works because of her.
One day, CM got pregnant. There was no dispute about who the father was. But RZ wouldn't admit the truth. When she refused to have an abortion, RZ and his well connected manager gaslighted her and had her committed to an asylum. They paid some shady doctor who gave her a few pills. A few days later, she miscarried.
CM was never the same, and suffered from brain damage. RZ had the other A+ artist blamed for the situation, and managed to stay out of the picture. Still mentally unstable, CM was determined to reveal the truth about the nature of their relationship. That's when she "overdosed".
If you think that her life would make a great movie, there was almost one. It was a beautiful scripts that actresses would dream to star in. "Almost" because as soon as RZ got wind of the project, he sued the production and forced them to change the entire story. The film was poorly received and just got a very limited release. But it wasn't enough for RZ. Just a couple of years later, the director of the movie also "overdosed". And the guy whose role was based on him? His career was killed.
Edie Sedgwick as CM and Bob Dylan as RZ Robert Zimmerman feline show maybe Garfield?
DeleteCM is Ciao Manhattan!
DeleteAnakin Skywalker played him in Factory Girl
DeletePatrick McGoohan is worthy of many blinds about kindness. He had integrity deep in his soul. We miss you, No. 6!!
ReplyDeleteHe is not a number; he is a free man! ;-)
DeleteSo glad to hear about the good things he did; I hadn't known.
I used to work at an indie video store and a customer told me I needed to roll a huge joint and watch all The Prisoner. I wish I could find him and thank him. :)
ReplyDeleteLove Patrick McGoohan! Braveheart too, right? Or some Mel Gibson movie. Secret AAAAgent Man!
ReplyDelete#3 is supposed to be about Bob Dylan and Edie Sedgwick. RZ = Robert Zimmerman. CM = Ciao Manhattan.
ReplyDeletePatrick McGooghan - The Prisoner - Port Merrion.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe one of The Quatermass actors -
Reginald Tate/John Robinson/André Morell
#2: Charles Aznavour, older singer Edith Piaf. #3: Bob Dylan, Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol, Dylan's manager Albert Grossman, Hayden Christensen, director George Hickenlooper.
ReplyDeleteEveryone who hasn't watched The Prisoner should do so. That's the original version, not the AMC remake with Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen from 2009. The only thing the latter version has going for it is Hayley Atwell's magnificent decolletage.
ReplyDeletePatrick McGoohan. The Prisoner is one show I always meant to go back and see when I had time to savor it.
ReplyDeleteDon't use the Holy Weed but I will try and find the original.
This kind of blind is the kind I enjoy.
ReplyDelete+1 💛✨
DeleteIn Canada and Britain Secret Agent Man was known by its true name, Danger Man. I loved Patrick McGoohan and the Prisoner growing up, and I'm not surprised he was a good human being.
ReplyDeleteYes he played a pretty good villain in Silver Streak
ReplyDeleteThe answers to my "blind items" are:
ReplyDelete#1
TR=Alain Delon (Tom Ripley, as Delon starred in Purple Noon, the first version of The Talented Mr. Ripley)
Foreign male director=Luchino Visconti
Film=The Leopard
SS=Nico (none of this is secret, Delon has repeatedly denied being the father of her son)
Death of the bodyguard : Stefan Markovic. This part is pure speculation, but the Markovic affair was quite the scandal in 1969, in relation with a political change when Georges Pompidou took over General de Gaulle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markovic_affair
Delon, who has been great friends with producer Robert Evans, and acted opposite Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson and Burt Lancaster also developed a tendency to speak of himself in the third person, which has become a source for constant mockery. I heard about the restaurant story through a conversation on the internet.
#2
TD=Charles Aznavour (The Tin Drum, in which he has a minor part). The family on his mother's side (except his mother) was killed during the Armenian genocide. He did a duet with Frank Sinatra, wrote songs such as "She" (later covered by Elvis Costello), but never broke through as a performer in the US. But when he sang in New York around 1963, the first person in line to get tickets was Bob Dylan.
Singer=Edith Piaf
I've heard a lot of stories over the years from people complaining about what a mean asshole Aznavour has been to them. These people usually don't talk gossip, so the fact they would single out Aznavour is some kind of achievement.
#3
The easiest one. And the mostly fake one.
RZ=Bob Dylan. He grew up in Minnesota, where the winters were full of snow. It made him particularly receptive to the François Truffaut film Shoot the Piano Player, starring Aznavour, where the finale takes place in the Alps in winter. That's how he became a fan of Aznavour's work.
He gave a song to Nico (SS) on her first solo album, but didn't want to be the target of rumors about a relationship. It's unlikely that they ever dated, as Nico, confused as she was, had a fascination with nazism (she grew up in Germany during the war) and would spout racist and anti-semitic insults at various times.
CM=Edie Sedgwick
Other A++ artist=Andy Warhol
Manager=Albert Grossmann
Director=George Hickenlooper
Actor=Hayden Christensen
What's fake? I actually made up the gaslighting and the murder charges (or the cause of death for Christensen's career, which was definitely natural). Edie Sedgwick was a self-destructive person, who had various eating disorders and mental issues long before landing in New York. Spending time with Warhol, who was very manipulative didn't help. I almost nicknamed Warhol LB, as he was actually a guest on a very special episode of... The Love Boat (he loved that show).
After I wrote the story about the abortion, which I thought was totally fictional, I read Segwick's Wikipedia entry, the section on her meltdown. She claimed that she had to abort a baby in a mental hospital and that it was Dylan's, even if there's no documentation of any of it. Talk about educated guesses. Anyway, Dylan would have been in no condition to gaslight her, as he was at the time on tour, and had developed an addiction to speed.
Of course, when Sedgwick died, Dylan had zero involvement with it.
I also made up the claim that Factory Girl was a great script until Dylan's lawyers requested changes. The film was crap, and they just changed the name of the singer for legal reasons.
And Dylan also had nothing to do with Hickenlooper's death, which took place three years later.
Now, you can see how it's quite possible to put together a fake blind item. All you need is some intel (but not too much), and then you just extrapolate from actual elements to change the tone and the perspective. The blind described Dylan as the manipulative one compared to Warhol, while it's more likely that Dylan, at some point, realized that Sedgwick was damaged goods, and tried to take her away from the Factory and the impeding doom it meant for her, which Sedgwick mistook for love. The pregnancy and abortion claims were revealed decades later, around the release of Factory Girl, by Edie's brother (who's presumably still alive...), and, as I said, I didn't know about them.
ReplyDeleteThen, I took two people connected with Dylan who had died from an overdose without any kind of relation (40 years apart), and painted it as an actual pattern in the way Bob Dylan would deal with problems.
I have very little in the way of actual Dylan gossip, but it looks like he makes a big chunk of his revenues through iron works, even more than album sales or performing. That's a hobby of his, and there are a lot of wealthy people who are ready to pay a huge sum of money to get one of his ugly art pieces in their garden or their living room, as you can't really pay millions for a song or an album.
Patrick McGoohan was in a few episodes of Murder She Wrote I think. A lovely man. I think I read somewhere that he would not kiss leading ladies in any productions. Portmeirion has benefited greatly from this connection. I still get the heebie jeebies when I see that ball bouncing across the water.
ReplyDeleteRover! Rover scared me so much when I was little. I totally bought that the ball was sentient and was strangling him. I mean, I knew that tv/movies were made up and that inanimate objects were not sentient, but at that age the "but what if they could" as shown on the show scared me.
Delete@Angela
ReplyDeleteLOVE IT ALL!
I read a lot about The Factory, including Jean Stein's biography of Edie when I was a teenager (and loved it.) Edie had a whole feast of mental issues if not directly related to her screwed up family then of the organic chemical variety. The last was obviously the fake but a damn good fake for which the crowd in this parts would be prepared to pillory Dylan for years as a murderer. Enty encourages them to do as much, feeding the flames and tending the Outrage!
Really fine example of Enty's method.
1&2 are exactly the kinds of things I can sink my teeth into for an afternoon. Thanks!
I don't think that Dylan's ironworks are ugly exactly. Vaguely steam punk, I guess, but typical of many backyard welders in suburbia.
ReplyDeleteWhat are really awful are Dylan's paintings and drawings. Take a look. They sell too!
About Delon, not much of an actor but what a pretty face. His meteoric rise was not predicated on talent especially but how much Visconti and Lancaster (and others) loved having him around.
Delon worked with Visconti, Antonioni, Louis Malle, René Clément, Jean-Pierre Melville (The Samurai, The Red Circle), Joseph Losey, and even Godard. He was the lead in the (fortunately) final Airport movie. He wasn't just a pretty face. The guy oozed charisma and coolness at his prime. He was iconic enough for The Smiths to use his face as the artwork for The Queen Is Dead. But he also indulged a lot in the tough guy posture, and now has a holier-than-thou attitude that is very tiresome.
ReplyDeleteIt's still a mystery to me why Patrick McGoohan never really tried his hand harder at writing and directing after The Prisoner. He never came up with a follow-up show, he never really moved to filmmaking, he seemed to be happy taking supporting parts in major productions, and contributing to some Columbo episodes.
I thought Patrick McGooghan and Port Merrion straight away. It is a beautiful place. I went there 4 years ago after watching the boxset of the prisoner. Patrick was trying to tell us all something. Way ahead of his time.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteAngela said...
It's still a mystery to me why Patrick McGoohan never really tried his hand harder at writing and directing after The Prisoner. He never came up with a follow-up show, he never really moved to filmmaking, he seemed to be happy taking supporting parts in major productions, and contributing to some Columbo episodes.
No mystery to me, Patrick was Irish and family came first as is the way of us.
McGoohan did have another TV series, AnnieRoo, a doctor show called "Rafferty" that only lasted half a season.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth noting he was very selective in his screen choices, working with other iconoclasts like Clint Eastwood ("Alcatraz") and Mel Gibson ("Braveheart").
He also played in Disney's The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, which scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid.
ReplyDelete