Last night, I listened to the Manhattan Shadows Technical Panel. Another fascinating snapshot of DS history, and I'm very grateful to the Doctor and K9 for sharing it with us!
Ironically there was one major technical difficulty with the panel, which seemed mainly to be caused by the fact that there was nobody in the room (so far as I could tell) in charge of either moderating the panel or handling microphone issues. Poor Jonathan Frid was left on his own to struggle with this, and he was obviously quite uncomfortable with the mike. (It should be said that he had great enthusiasm for the topic and was quite chatty throughout.) It seemed odd to me that none of the event organizers appeared to be present either to take charge or at least provide backup for Frid. At one point, he mentioned that another event was occurring elsewhere in the space so perhaps all the organizers were involved with that.
If so, they missed a really fascinating discussion. Frid begins by telling his audience that every day of his first year on DS was "absolute hell" for him, mainly due to his struggle to learn his lines. Later on (around the 30 minute mark) he shared his surprise when he finally viewed his first full episode in 1967. He was delighted to see that his work in that, which he had thought was a disaster during the taping, "was actually the best performance I'd ever given." He also goes into detail about his first day on the set and his process with getting into the work of doing the shows.
Among the line-up was one gentleman I'd never heard of. His name was something like Max Youngham (definitely Max--Frid only said the surname once, and the tape is not good quality). Incidentally, listening to the tape with headphones is a MUST. Earbuds don't work. Max handled the boom and as a result, heard all the director's comments in the control room. Apparently, the director was often having some kind of meltdown while the taping was going on due to all the technical issues, not to mention whenever one of the actors had a problem in the middle of taping.
The other guests are Ross Skipper, who had a beautiful clear speaking voice and a very down to earth manner. Ken McEwan, the "stage manager," who as you will all remember appeared in a few episodes during PT1970 as Larry Chase (he didn't discuss this). He did talk about his responsibilities which were primarily to the network to make sure the show never ran over, or ran short. Ron Sproat, whose own appearance on the other tape is more interesting, was part of this discussion.
I think Ross Skipper towards the end told what may have been my favorite story on the tape. He mentioned that somebody would run through all the medical accomplishments Julia had as a joke with Grayson and wind up with "and you're Barnabas's proctologist, too." It would make her rather exasperated. Some ingenue actress overheard this banter and asked Grayson, "What's a proctologist?" (She had a sheltered upbringing, no doubt.) Grayson swiveled and snapped, "It's an ASS DOCTOR. Now shut up!"
Great fun...
G.
