Soldier and Me (1974)

In 1974, Granada Television aired one of the most gripping afternoon adventure serials ever aimed at younger audiences, the nine-part thriller Soldier and Me. This unusually intelligent series plunged its viewers into a world of Cold War spies, urban grit, and genuine danger, proving that teenage drama could be every bit as tense and sophisticated as adult thrillers.

Its story begins in a rough northern schoolyard, where Jim Woolcott (Gerry Sundquist), a tough but fundamentally decent Manchester schoolboy, comes to the aid of a bespectacled Czech refugee named Istvan Szolda (Richard Willis). Jim jokingly shortens his awkward surname into “Soldier,” and from that moment the two boys, so different in temperament and background, are drawn into an uneasy friendship that soon becomes a desperate alliance when Soldier overhears a plot between Czech agents to eliminate a dissident - "an old crippled man." 

Soldier has a dickens of a time persuading Jim that what he heard was true, but when they do investigate they become unwilling witnesses to the murder of this man. The police don't believe the boys, especially when they go to visit the old man and he is very much alive ("Did anyone shoot you tonight?" the police ask him). However, the Czech agents know they witnessed the killing and before long the boys are racing across northern England pursued by these men who are determined to silence them forever.

This is when Soldier and Me veers away from city drama and turns into a breathless cross-country pursuit through the Pennines and the Lake District, with the boys fleeing through forests, scrambling over hillsides, hiding in an abandoned quarry, and even leaping from a moving train. Unlike many children’s serials of the period, this one never softens the reality of the boys’ plight. Hunger, exhaustion, fear, and the chilling realization that adults cannot be trusted all become part of their journey.

"It's a technical map....a technical map!!"

In many ways, Soldier and Me plays out like a parallel English version of The Secret of Boyne Castle (1969). In that serial, which aired on Walt Disney's The Wonderful World of Color, Kurt Russell and Patrick Dawson were the two boys being pursued by spies, only it was set in Ireland instead of England. There were 4-5 agents in that story as well who, like in Soldier and Me, appear to cover every road in all directions. In spite of the constant danger the lads were in, the chase seemed thrilling - almost fun - in the Disney version, even while the action was similar (being chased on a motorbike, jumping off a train, running across fields, being kidnapped, etc). Not so in this series. The boys are having anything but fun. It also doesn't help that Soldier gets on Jim's nerves so much that throughout the chase he is wishing the "twit" would get lost. 

The relationship between these two young leads is what makes this series especially memorable. Gerry Sundquist gives Jim a dry, deadpan resilience that perfectly suits the hard-edged realism of the production, while Richard Willis makes Soldier both impossibly "twit"ish and yet quietly courageous. At first, Jim regards the younger refugee boy as an annoyance who simply refuses to go away, but as the pursuit intensifies, their friendship deepens into one forged by fear, hunger, and survival. The gradual shift from irritation to mutual trust gives the serial its emotional ballast and keeps it from becoming merely a chase story. Jim's narration throughout the series also provides the humor the series required, as he makes his thoughts known to the audience. 

Like The Owl Service and The Intruder, two other great Brit series of the 1970s, Soldier and Me carries an almost documentary sense of realism, no doubt helped by its location filming and its no-nonsense direction. The script was based on the book "Run for Your Life" written by Lionel Davidson ("The Night of Wenceslas"), an adventure writer who took up the pseudonym of David Line for this young adult novel. After Soldier and Me's popularity on television, Line penned a similar spy-adventure thriller "Mike and Me" in 1974. 

Soldier and Me can be viewed on Youtube here. 

The Impossibly Difficult Name that Movie Game

This screenshot has such a beautiful coloring to it, so springlike, I just couldn't resist posting it as our monthly Impossibly Difficult Name that Movie Game entry.... although it really isn't impossibly difficult, especially if you know who this actress is! 

As always, if you are not familiar with the rules to the Impossibly Difficult Name that Movie game or the prize, click here.

Good luck! 

From the Archives: Father Brown (1954)

Alec Guinness, as Father Brown, is pictured with the beautiful 16th-century Benvenuto Cellini silver chess set that Flambeau attempts to steal in this rare still photo from The Detective (aka Father Brown), released in 1954. You can read our full review of this amusing mystery here. 

From the Archives is our latest series of posts where we share photos from the Silverbanks Pictures collection. Some of these may have been sold in the past, and others may still be available for purchase at our eBay store: http://stores.ebay.com/Silverbanks-Pictures 

Don DeFore's Barbeque Restaurant

Back in the early days of Disneyland, actor Don DeFore operated a chicken restaurant with his brother Vern for five years. It was called The Silver Banjo Barbecue and was located in Frontierland right next to Aunt Jemima's Pancake House. After enjoying a rollickin' good time watching the Golden Horseshow Revue, Disneyland guests could mosey to the Silver Banjo to have the DeFore brothers serve up a heaping of their famous barbeque chicken dinners for $1.70 a plate. 

Don and his brother Vern DeFore pictured outside the restaurant in July 1959

During the 1950s, Disneyland offered five-year leases to a number of restaurants. Frito-Lay, who had previously occupied the space with Casa de Fritos, had requested a better location closer to the front of Frontierland, so Don DeFore - who had met Disney through their mutual participation on the Board of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences - was asked if he wanted to open up a restaurant within the park. 

The Silver Banjo Barbecue opened its doors in the summer of 1957 and remained until its contract expired in March 1962. Barbeque chicken dinners were the specialty of the house and they included baked beans, french fries, cole slaw, and rolls and butter. Other options offered were spare ribs and Fish and Chips for $1.50.  

Aunt Jemima's Pancake House wanted to expand so the lease for The Silver Banjo Barbeque was not renewed in 1962. Instead, Vern took over as a manager of several other ventures within Disneyland while Don DeFore returned to acting starring as George "Mr. B" Baxter in the television series Hazel. 

This post is a part of our latest series entitled "Did You Know?".....sometimes we just feel like sharing interesting fragments of television and movie history and now we have a place to do just that. If you have a hot tip that you would like us to share on Silver Scenes, drop us a line!

I Love Lucy - "Off to Florida!" (1956)

Lucy and Travel equal Trouble... and in "Off to Florida," that's exactly what she finds herself in. Granted, Lucy isn't to blame for most of the trouble she and Ethel encounter in this episode, but that doesn't make it any less funny.

Ricky, Fred, and Little Ricky set off to Florida for a few days of fishing, with Lucy and Ethel planning to join them later via train. Naturally, Lucy loses the train tickets, so the only option (or rather, the cheapest) is for them to scour the classifieds for someone looking to share a ride. That someone is none other than Elsa Lanchester. Lucy and Ethel think the ride sharing will work great until they set off with this Mrs. Grundy. She insists on driving from 4 a.m. to midnight, avoids the main highways, won't stop at any restaurant along the way or at any hotel, so Lucy and Ethel are left hungry and frazzled after sleeping in the car.

They turn on the radio one night to lull themselves to sleep and hear about Evelyn Holmby, the hatchet murderess who escaped from prison. The gray-haired woman was last seen in a cream-colored convertible, just like the one Mrs. Grundy has, heading south from New York City. Lucy instantly puts two and two together ("only travels at night... on back roads... won't stop anywhere...") and jumps to the conclusion that Mrs. Grundy and Evelyn Holmby are one and the same—an idea that Ethel at first dismisses until she remembers seeing the hatchet in the trunk!

"Hatchet!" - Lucy and Ethel

"We're just jumping to conclusions. She brought that hatchet along to, uh...to, uh..." - Ethel

"To what? Chop watercress?!" - Lucy

"Off to Florida!" was aired on CBS on November 12, 1956, as episode 6 in the sixth season of I Love Lucy. Lucy and the gang had already been to California and to Europe, so a trip to Florida was a great addition. The crazy redhead had already encountered every kind of character imaginable in previous episodes, so having her and Ethel meet up with a potential killer was a new one for the books—and what a great basis for comedy it made!

The episode is chock-full of humorous scenes, and the laughs escalate the nearer they get to the Sunshine State. The best scene is when they stop at a roadside coffee shop in Florida and Lucy, Ethel, and Mrs. Grundy all rush inside to call the police. When they learn the phone is out of order, they decide to gesture signs of distress to the waiter (Struther Martin), who says, "Y'all must be from up north," after watching the looney birds in action. 

"We have to stop so I can call my landlady and tell her my tub is running over." - Lucy

"I thought you said she [pointing to Ethel] was your landlady?" - Mrs. Grundy

"Oh....[facing Ethel] Landlady, my tub is running over!" - Lucy

Elsa Lanchester was perfectly cast as the dotty driver. This was her first appearance on I Love Lucy and one of her rare television roles in a sitcom. She always played eccentric characters so it seemed perfectly natural that she'd be an escaped criminal, or so Lucy thought. 

"Off to Florida!" is slightly different from the usual I Love Lucy episodes in that Ricky and Fred are only seen in the introduction and closing scenes. I guess the writers couldn't imagine a scenario with all four of them hitching a ride with a killer. Normally, their presence would be missed but this one is filled with so many funny moments you wouldn't even notice their absence. Check it out some time, it's well worth a watch! 

This post is our contribution to the 12th Annual Favorite TV Show Episode Blogathon being hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts. Click here to check out other reviews of favorite Classic TV episodes written by other bloggers. 

The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady (1950)

In 1943, Betty Grable starred in the colorful Fox Technicolor musical Sweet Rosie O'Grady. Seven years later, her screen sister, June Haver, was featured in a sort of follow-up film, The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady, which was equally colorful and just as entertaining. 

In this film, "Junie Baby" (as Fred MacMurray would call her) played Patricia O'Grady, the daughter of Rosie O'Grady, a once-popular music hall entertainer. Along with her two sisters, Katie (Marcia Mae Jones) and Maureen (Debbie Reynolds), Patricia resides with her father, Dennis O'Grady (James Barton), a stern Irishman who works as a trolley conductor. He loves his daughters and wants to keep them by his side. He also wants them to go nowhere near the theater district for fear they will want to become performers themselves and, as Papa claims, "That's no life for anyone!" He and his dear departed Rosie spent years living out of a trunk and traveling from one town to the next. He wants his daughters to marry college-educated men and settle down.

Little does he know that his eldest daughter is already secretly married to a policeman and about to have a child, and that darlin' Patty has fallen in love with none other than Tony Pastor (Gordon MacRae), the owner of the local musical—and, saints preserve us!—wants to join his acting troupe!

You can guess that there is enough drama in the film to fill its 105-minute runtime. Nevertheless, squeezed in between the Irish fighting spirits are plenty of musical interludes, including a lovely rendition of the titular song. When Gordon MacRae isn't singing, Gene Nelson entertains the audience with his impressive dancing skills. June Haver was quite a dancer herself and does many a fancy step with Gene, while S.Z. Sakall adds some comic relief as Papa O'Grady's co-worker and family friend.

Overall, it's an entertaining entry from the Fox film factory, although not very memorable... Within a year of viewing, you'll probably get this title confused with Sweet Rosie O'Grady or When Irish Eyes are Smiling!

Rewind Review: Alive and Kicking (1958)

Every once in a while, you might come across a wonderful film and wonder why it is not more well-known than it is. At least, I do that.... and, unfortunately, it is quite rare to find hidden gems; but Alive and Kicking is one such movie. I saw it for the first time a few weeks ago and loved it instantly. Granted, its plot would not appeal to a large audience so I can understand why it is as obscure as it is. 

Sybil Thorndike, Estelle Winwood, and Kathleen Harrison star as three elderly women who escape from a nursing home when they learn that they will be relocated to other nursing homes and separated. They take what little belongings they have and hike out on foot. After an escapade at sea, they arrive on a small island off the coast of Ireland and discover an abandoned stone cottage. However, the cottage isn't empty for long. Shortly after they claim it, a gentleman (Stanley Holloway) arrives and tells them that he just purchased the cottage and plans to move in. Darn the luck! 

They hope to discuss renting one of the rooms of the cottage from him, but lo! he disappears from the cliffside where they left him. All they can find is his hat floating on the ocean waves below. Since no one in the village met the man yet, the three crafty dames decide to pretend that he is living in the house and that they are his nieces (!). Much of the film after this point deals with how these women settle into the village and make a new life for themselves in Ireland. 

Alive and Kicking was probably banned from being shown in nursing homes because of its uplifting message of independence for the elderly. These three women have only a few pounds in their purse but somehow manage to procure a house, furniture, and plenty of food (thanks to one of them being a good shot). Most impressive however, is the positive effect they have on the villagers, even going so far as to start a new industry for the sheep farmers and their wives. 

Among these villagers are some familiar faces including Marjorie Rhodes (who was excellent as the mother in The Family Way), a young Richard Harris, Paul Farrell, Liam Redmond and Colin Gordon as a bird watcher who decides to perch on their property.

The comedy has a definite "Irish air" to it...but shush, don't tell the Irish...the movie was actually filmed on Easdale, one of the Slate Islands of Scotland. Life on a small island in the 1950s centered around agriculture and the village people and, with a village of that size, the arrival of three strange women would not go unnoticed for long so our heroines must be given credit for coming up with so many delicate lies to fool the villagers as long as they did. 

Sybil Thorndike is the ringleader of the group and she boasts the most brains as well. It is her idea to start a sweater-making industry to earn money for themselves and for the village. Estelle Winwood is clever too, while Kathleen Harrison plays her usual kindly cockney character. All of the principal players went on to live long lives after this film with both Winwood and Harrison "alive and kicking" past the age of 100. 

Director Cyril Frankel does a wonderful job of keeping the movie entertaining from start to finish and composer Philip Green penned a delightful score with an especially lovely folksy tune "One I Truly Love" performed by Olive McFarland.