Hidden In The Amazon

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I was just watching a recording I'd made earlier in the week of an ep of the PBS series Secrets of the Dead. It's entitled Hidden In The Amazon and is about archeologists investigating sites in the Amazon Rain Forest. And you're probably asking yourself: What does that have to do with DS? Well, imagine my surprise when the South American city Liz had such trouble remembering in Ep #345, Belem, came up along the way in the investigation. Immediately I thought of Burke Devlin. Would they come across his remains during their investigations? Sadly, they didn't.    But maybe the show is saving that discovery for a completely different ep devoted entirely to it!    Fans can dream...

[dom]

I remember (?) a discussion about how Barnabas could have possibly downed Burke's plane. What I don't remember is if I imagined Barnabas flying as a bat to do so, or if someone else mentioned it in jest. Either way, the topic always reminds me of that silly image and makes me laugh.

[Gerard]

In fourth grade, I had to do a class report on Brazil (thankfully, my parents had just purchased the complete set of the World Book Encyclopedia), so I knew what Belem was when Liz mentioned it.  Too bad they didn't have Fourth Grade Jeopardy with Art Fleming back then.

Gerard

[Bob_the_Bartender]

I still wish that Dan Curtis and the DS writers had changed the location of where Burke’s plane had crashed from the Amazon jungle to that majestic and august South American body of water, Lake Titicaca!   

It would have been great fun to have seen/heard all of the DS actors, but especially Joan Bennett and Jonathan Frid, try to correctly enunciate that name! 

PS I love Dom’s suggestion that Barnabas, in his vespertilian form, had somehow sabotaged Burke’s plane! 

[Mysterious Benefactor]

As amusing as it would have been to have had Burke's plane go down in Lake Titicaca, even though it's a real place with that real name, something tells the ABC censors would have never let DC and the writers get away with it. If we can judge by their memos that have been shared in various DS publications, particularly the ones regarding Barnabas and Wilie's relationship, they were an extremely tight assed and exceedingly prudish lot! 

But yes, now I'll never be able to see that Liz scene again without thinking about how she might have stumbled over saying "Lake Titicaca" rather than "Belem"! 

[Bob_the_Bartender]

Yes, your comment about the ABC censors probably never allowing Dan Curtis to have Lake Titicaca mentioned on a DS episode is well taken.

I recall that KLS mentioned in her first DS book that the ABC censors discouraged DC and the DS writers from referring to Bangor, Maine, a city’s name which might lead to “rude interpretations.” 

Personally, I would have loved to have heard the late, great Dennis Patrick (as either Jason McGuire or Paul Stoddard) recite one of his wonderfully wicked limericks on an episode of DS. For all of the younger and new fans of DS, who never heard one of Mr. Patrick’s lascivious limericks, here goes:

There was a young lad named Willie, 

Who went after a goat that was pretty.

Said the goat, don’t be crass, stay away from my @ss,

My name isn’t Nan, it’s Billy!