Saturday, May 10, 2014

"Juvenile DR-35" or "Fat Donna Halpern"


"This is the city-- Los Angles, California.
It's a magnet that seems to attract the young.
Outdoor restaurants along Sunset Boulevard all cater to would-be movie stars of the future at one time or another. Los Angeles is also the center of the pop music world.
Thousands of youngsters come out here with guitars in hand to try to crack the shell of success.
It's also a city in which to bury one's identity. Teenage runaways from all over the country end up here,  on the Sunset Strip. A life free from parents, schools, responsibility. The hippie life.
A world of psychedelic posters and faddish outfits. 
To the hippies, the rest of the world is square. They're young people looking to change the future.
Like others, sometimes they get a little overanxious, and when they do, I go to work. I carry a badge."


Punchbug!


Alfie's. Red curb painted to read "Bus Zone."



Capitol Records building. So famous!


Paramount Recording Studios

Galaxy.


There's that Senator McCarthy clip again:


See? Hippies sit to the side and Squares cross the street.


Here's our familiar establisher of Parker Center:


And our familiar establisher of Georgia Street:







JOE, TELL SUZY TO GET BACK ON TRACK
THIS IS DRAGNET BLOG, NOT ALKA-SELTZER BLOG


HOLD THE PHONE


Well, okay. Speedy Zapata (cool) cancels out Virginia Vincent (annoying).


Just incredible.



Joe and Bill relay some typical abandoned-baby facts.


Glad you can safe drop them nowadays. Still, what a way to start a life.


SOMEBODY PLEASE GET ME OUT OF THIS FUCKING TRASH CAN
DAMN IT ALL


It seems as if this may be the first time we've been to a hospital that wasn't Central Receiving.


Oh! And Dr. Stacy Harris is running the show.






VIRGINIA VINCENT YOU ARE SO ANNOYING

But her set is nice - check out that brown fridge! She's got some nice plastic flowers on the table and those tall, striped chairs are back. Great chairs.



This lady is in very hep paisley dress and I have a cardigan like that…
She used to live in Joe's apartment house, but I guess she broke off with Mister Kettledrum Man and lives here, now.


Her kid is a jerk!!


Next up - Fat Donna, playing innocent in a coral chenille housecoat.

Look - they also used the boat tapestry in her apartment:


BUT ADMITTEDLY THE BLUE LAMP IS THE BEST THING IN THERE


We'll go to Colonial Street at Universal, but not really.
This is a recycled shot of them walking from the exterior of Beaver Cleaver's house.


Then, we get recycled footage of chatting with the gardener outside Uncle Elwood's.


We will visit this Colonial Soda  set twice, so everybody worked on it really hard and it looks great.

Blue and white striped wallpaper, gingham cafe curtains, red booths, red countertops, red naugahyde.
A sign touts the deliciousness of the menu offerings, while an oppressive one at the back hangs above the jukebox - NO DANCING ALLOWED. What is this, Footloose?


Heather Menzies is back again. Yellow is totally her color. Great hair styling, as well.


Here's the (recycled, of course) footage of driving by the William Mulholland Memorial Fountain


(I'm so glad I know what that is, now!)


Here's an excruciatingly easy soundstage set for Peggy Webber - 
Topiary, doorbell, door, porch light, house numbers, a single table, a single table lamp.


That is seriously minimal, you guys! Loving it!

Oh yeah, Sissy Tucker is said to be in hospital with Hong Kong Flu.


Let's check in with Don Ross, formerly of Latent Prints, to figure out where this so-called baby blanket came from.


NO IDEA
SORRY GUYS, JUST HANGING OUT IN MY LAB


We've seen this pan many times - here it is married together.


The Fairlane is traveling from right to the left.


Now, Jack Sheldon is running a cleaner's. They put a fair amount of energy into his set as well.
The advertising posters are especially nice, what we can see of them.


Lovable Dragnet scamp Jack Sheldon!


I AM LOVABLE AND ALSO A SCAMP

At last! A fresher driving sequence. Check out the rotating '76 station ball - they were almost all gone when I was growing up in the eighties & nineties. Boing Boing has observed their passing.


How's this for a twist?
Back at the Colonial Soda Shop set, but it turns out that the red picnic table in the back room was actually red and white striped. 




WELL I DID BUT THEY LET ME OUT SO I COULD FINK ON FAT DONNA'S EX- BOYFRIEND


WELL IT'S A GOOD THING YOU DID
WE HAVE A HAMMER OF JUSTICE WAITING FOR HER

Banana splits fit for a king - just 45c. 


YES SUNDAES ARE FANTASTIC

Donna Halpern's apartment always caught my eye - not so much because of the bowl of plastic fruit, but because that amazing blue and white glass pendant lamp. That is the most exciting thing in her set.


GREAT find by John McCarthy and/or Sturtevant.
Seriously everything else in her set (except the blue broadloom) is totally lackluster.


I DON'T WANNA GO TO THE LOONEY BIN AND LEAVE BEHIND MY COOL LAMP


LOOK LADY 
YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR COOL WALL ART AND DRUM LAMP SHADES AS WELL


DAMN IT ALL


Here's some more hospital footage:




Whelp, that about wraps 'er up.


I REGRET NOTHING



Donna A. Halpern

Now serving her term in the 
California Institution for Women,
Frontera, California.

S3e25

Starred
Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday
Harry Morgan as Officer Bill Gannon
Michele Grumet as Donna Halpern
Virginia Vincent as Sylvia Crystal
Peggy Webber as Mrs. Mary Tucker
Jack Sheldon as Ted Patterson
Mickey Sholdar as Paul Sutherland
Heather Menzies as Lisa Bogart
Speedy Zapata as Rudy Herrera
Stacy Harris as Dr. Robert Corley
Dee Carroll as Diane Conway
Don Ross as Don Hale

Additional Cast
______ as Hospital Nurse
______ as Abandoned Baby

Additional Notes

Art Direction - John E. Chilberg, II
Set Decor - John McCarthy & John Sturtevant
Costumes - Vincent Dee

Written by Burt Prelutsky

Aired 3 April 1969

It's not right what you're trying to make me do here,
Suzy Dragnet

22 comments:

  1. Suzy - The reference to the Hong Kong Flu is very timely for that Dragnet season three which was Sept. 68 to June 69. I was a sophomore in high school that year and so many students were sick ( not me luckily) that there were days in Dec, or Jan, of that year when about half the student body was home recuperating. So the reference about Peggy Webers daughter being home from school is pretty accurate. But why is she dressed like a hooker? Kenny P

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    1. I guess because if your daughter "dates" a lot and is on the pill, it must be that her mother is a floozy?
      That doesn't seem very fair. Who knows. Maybe it's an early embrace of feminism by Vincent Dee.
      -SD

      Delete
  2. Apparently Michele Grumet suffers from some substantial mental health issues, which is very sad. There's some rather disturbing footage of her on youtube taken while she was in a homeless shelter a few years ago.

    I don't know where I'm going with this exactly, other than I hope the poor woman finds some peace of mind and a safe place to live.

    -CVH


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree. I wish that people with problems had access to all the help they need.

      SD

      Delete
    2. Michele had a few other TV roles aside from 2 eps of Dragnet. one was as "Arlene" in the short-lived sitcom "Make Room For Granddaddy" and as "Brenda" in "Mayberry RFD" in which she was at her sweetest....eyes and smile that just melted my aerospace-grade titanium structure! i just can,t understand why her acting career was so brief....? if she and the person in that YT vid are one and the same,it,s just heartbreaking. i was "crushed" by her "Doris Tucker" character in "Burglary-MISTER" and did a fan-fic continuation where she met a US Air Force F-4 Phantom pilot who was home after a rough tour of duty in SE Asia.......one thing led to another,and a better,happier epilog that included her Knight Of The Air taking Doris for the ride of a lifetime in that 25-ton flying stick of dynamite{with her name painted on the side!} and proposing to her at the edge of space.... :)

      Delete
  3. Fat Donna looked pretty hot by the end of episode. If she could combine that glare with some better-fitting, non-linebacker looking clothes, she might meet a nice boy who will allow her to use birth control. That coral bathroom rug she wore did nothing for her figure. NOTHING!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree, I always thought Michelle Grumet was in pretty cute. In her handful of Dragnet appearances, she was always portrayed as being horrifyingly fat and ugly.
      I also dig Peggy Webber as a drunken slattern in this episode.

      Delete
    2. Right? By “fat,” we apparently mean “not super skinny also she is wearing a carpet for clothing.”

      Delete
  4. We had that same exact brown refrigerator when I was growing up. You see the silver rectangle up in the corner? That had the brand name of the fridge and it wasn't screwed into or bolted on to the door. It was slid into a metal frame and you could slide it out and flash it around like a business card. I don't remember the brand name (I was only 7 or 8 years old at the time) but it wasn't a famous brand like Westinghouse or GE or Frigidaire. You got the fridge either free or at a big discount if you signed up for some kind of grocery service for two years where the groceries were delivered to your house instead of you going shopping. I remember my mother filling out a long yellow form every week where you checked off boxes for the groceries you wanted, and on Friday afternoon a big refrigerated truck used to come around and load parcels of meat wrapped up in white paper into the freezer and all your other groceries would be neatly packed in cardboard boxes and left on the counter or floor. After the delivery, you'd walk into your kitchen at home and it looked like the supermarket. Talk about cool. We had five kids in our family, so we always had a big order and my mother loved it, but my father didn't. He said it was a rip off. We got a free fridge, but for two years had to pay twice as much for our groceries, and Mom still had to run out to the supermarket every week to buy things we didn't get from the delivery service. I guess you can never really get a bargain.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow, that's amazing. I filed it under 'things I learned today.'
      Thanks!!

      SD

      Delete
  5. Well remember Michele at The Hollywood Studio Club. She was 3 years younger then me hope she had good life after Hollywood rat race FW Forbes

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  6. You do such good work Suzy I hate to point out a mistake. You should have linked Senator McCarthy to Eugene McCarthy, not Joseph McCarthy.

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  7. Donna Halpern(Michelle Grumet) looks a lot like Ricki Lake in this episode.

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  8. Michele Grumet looks a lot like Ricki Lake in this episode.

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  9. Driving sequence: Sadly I can't recognize that street. Tiny Naylors was a Googie restaurant chain. It's not the one that was at Sunset and LaBrea, torn down in 1984 and replaced with a craptastic mini mall:
    http://martinostimemachine.blogspot.com/2009/09/drive-in-on-sunset-blvd-with-girls-on.html

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  10. Hi! I was the abandoned baby! Found your site showing my kids. Love your commentary! That part is me perfectly! Damn it all! 😁

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  11. The Alfie's building is still around, it has been updated, the outside sign is the same, they enclosed the patio. 8768 Sunset Blvd.

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    Replies
    1. Apparently Michele Grumet died July 22nd, 2018. She graduated from East Palo Alto High School in 1965, so presumably she was born in 1946 or 1947.

      Are you single, Suzy? Maybe we could have a virtual date during this time of crisis, or an in-person one afterwards.

      Delete
  12. I wonder if Michele is the same one in this 2018 obituary:
    https://www.everhere.com/us/obituaries/ca/orange/michele-grumet-7740839

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  13. I figured the father would be that cad Daniel Loomis, I mean Mr Daniel Loomis. Not the first time he got a girl knocked up and split.

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  14. What's this? Stacy Harris not the bad guy??? A doctor is it?

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  15. My God, this is the greatest tv blog. Thanks for all the hard work.

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