Episode 625: Murder by Decree (1979)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Old years. It should die.People pay good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas hof hoofcorn
in No Masters. In the ProjectionBooth, everyone for ten. Podcasting isn't
boring? Turn it off. Somethingstalks the streets, something possessed of animal

(00:45):
cunning and fury. I understand youknow something. I'm the White Shapel matter.
I have seen the man Jack theRipper. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson
plunge into the Victorian underworld seeking theanswers to the most puzzling case in the
annals of crime. Who is Jackthe Rivers? Why does he let them

(01:14):
keep you? A story that atlast and reveals the identity of history's most
elusive murderer. A stunning cast routtogether with an astonishing story, one of
the great screen entertainments in the classictradition, murder my decree. Welcome to

(01:42):
the Projective Booth. I'm your host, Mike White joined me once again,
is mister Aaron Peterson. Hello.Also back in the booth is mister David
McGregor, And once again it's adelight to be here. We conclude our
month of discussions around the nineteen seventiesinterpretations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's consulting detective
Sherlock Holmes. We wrap up withnineteen seventy ninth Murder by Decree, directed

(02:07):
by Bob Clark. The film isa mix of British and Canadian actors,
including Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes andJames Mason as Doctor Watson. The fictional
pair are put on the path ofthe very real Jack the Ripper, one
of Britain's most famous serial killers.We are going to be spoiling the film
as well as probably from Hell andStudy and Terror. So if you don't

(02:30):
want those movies ruined to just goahead and turn off the podcast, go
watch those and come back after youhave we will still be here. So,
Aaron, when was the first timeyou saw Murder by Decree and what
did you think, Sir? Idon't remember it. I was a kid.
I don't know that. But Iwent to seek this one out because
I remember seeing Black Christmas and goingthat's a crazy movie, and wanted to

(02:53):
find other films that Bob Clark haddirected. Didn't realize un till many many
years later, that he also didChristmas story guys had an eclectic career.
Porkys too, right, he didPorky's. I don't know if he did
Porky's too, but he did Porky's. Also. I saw Black Christmas,
Love Black Christmas, and then someonetold me he did at Sherlock Holmes,

(03:13):
which of course I'm a Sherlock Holmesbuff. So I went nuts and went
to seek this out. And thisis probably of the four we've done,
this is probably my favorite, tobe perfectly honest and to Eva, how
about yourself. I would have seenthis most likely in the late nineteen eighties,
coming to it after kind of gettingmore interested in Sherlock Holmes with a
Jeremy Brett TV series that came outin nineteen eighty four, and I was

(03:38):
looking for other interpretations of the character. And you know, I've heard good
things about this, and so yeah, probably late nineteen eighties, because I'm
coming to it out of the JeremyBrett series and the Jeremy Brett series.
He is very heroic, he's brilliant, he's very capable, a little bit

(03:59):
trickly, and so for me,as much as I like the ambiance and
the photography and the story, TheHomes of Christopher Plumber kind of fell flat
because he's just not a very gooddetective. He's a better human being.
I mean, he's crusading around London, crying and feeling sorry for people,

(04:19):
but he's just really, really badat his job. It was kind of
hit and this for me, Iliked everything about it, but the new
humanized homes did not, you know, exactly set the world on fire as
far as I was concerned. Andhow do you feel about it today?
I we watched it for this podcast, and because of the kind of cultural

(04:40):
weight that the Rathbone Bruce films had. I mean, even in the reviews
for this film, people were still, you know, they were comparing Christopher
Plumber to Basil Rathbone. And youknow Rathbone his last film as Sherlock Holmes
was nineteen forty six. And JamesMason's Watson is compared to Nigel Bruce.
It's like, oh, well,how great. He's not Nigel Bruce.

(05:00):
He's very Nigel Bruce. Like heis a little bit dottering. You know
the famous scene in the movie withhim and his pa, that's right out
of Nigel Bruce. He is akind of almost petulant child worried about his
pet. Yeah, what are youdoing. I'm trying to corner the last

(05:23):
pe on my plate squashed, mape. Now you've got to corner.
Yeah, it was squashing it fromhis pa. I'm just trying to help.
I didn't want it squashed. Itdidn't like it that way squashed.

(05:46):
And I get who says, Judanfeeled pop when you writing down at it.
I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking.Do I like the film, Yeah,
I do. I just personally,I'm not a huge fan of the
idol smashing versions of Sherlock Holmes.I like him to be competent, and

(06:09):
he's just not in any of thefilms that we're considering, except, oddly
enough, The Adventure of Sherlock Holmesis a smarter brother. Yeah, Holmes
is in good form in that,but he's not the focus. He's barely
in the movie. The other threefilms that we're considering, private life seven
percent solution. In this film,he's pretty pretty broken and not very effective

(06:32):
at his ostensible job. I reallywonder if that again. We talked at
the end of the last episode aboutthe seventies and taking those idols and smashing
them and how the seventies affected stuff. I mean the way that this movie
plays out, and I'm just goingto jump right into it. This whole
idea of the Freemason's being responsible fora cover up of the murders of these

(06:58):
people. It is so much aconspiracy, paranoid thriller type of thing that
I just really see this fitting invery well, Like to your point,
maybe not in the Sherlock Holmes cannon, but in nineteen seventy nine. This
was perfect for nineteen seventy nine.And it matches up with Ripper Laura too.
I mean Ripper. There's a lotof freemasony and conspiracy theory there two

(07:23):
and they're just trying to tie itwith Sherlock Holmes. And I like the
humanistic portrayal that Plumber has here.It's very much the more relatable homes,
not necessarily the homes of the books, but it's still a Sherlock Holmes and
he makes it his own, andI really I loved his approach. I
really really did. Even though it'snot true, it's not true to the

(07:44):
books. I will agree with Davidon that it's not true to the character
of Holms. I don't agree thathe's not good at his job. I
just think because of the nature ofthe crime he's solving, he can't really
do anything publicly without I mean,it's Jack the Ripper. It's an unsolvable
case. Everything has to me behindclosed doors. Well, as is quite
out in the film. Though he'sworking for the bad guys. He's working

(08:05):
for the government. They're trying tofind this you know, this missing woman,
and he's also working for the radicals, and much like in seven Percent
Solution, he's the hog being usedto find truffles. He doesn't even realize
what he's doing. He gets knockedout twice and as he says at one
point, I led the killers writeto Mary Kelly. I led them write

(08:26):
to their final victim, and yeshe did. I like my heroes to
be at least somewhat heroic. Imean, he isn't worked human absolutely,
because he starts the film and heis, you know, the kind of
stereotypical, completely out of touch,upper class tough. He's attending you know,
the opera with Watson in his ownprivate booth. They both have white

(08:48):
ties on, and when he's calledupon by the merchants of Whitechapel, you
know, we've got these women beingslaughtered in the streets. It'd be nice
if you could help us. He'snot interested at all at all. He's
just, you know, he's obsessedwith cleaning his pipe out. I didn't
read it that way. The waythat I'm reading it is it's it's Holmes
playing with them like he doesn't hedoesn't know if he wants to work for

(09:09):
them specifically, but he's intrigued bythe case. That's the way that I
took it. Okay, Well,even Watson says, you were really rude.
So it was those people, Yeah, which is more of the Sherlock
Holmes I'm used to, you know, more of that Benedict cumber badge.
I'm not paying attention, but Iactually am paying attention kind of thing,
or I'm just putting you off typeof thing. Yeah, I'm not going

(09:31):
to try to pile onto the movie. I find it kind of interesting that
one of the main characters, andhere ish is Donald Sutherland as Robert Lee's
a psychic, and that Holmes goesalong with this. I'm just like,
it feels like Sherlock Holmes would neverlisten to somebody who purports to be a

(09:52):
psychic. No, not to thisdegree. No. I found it interesting
though that when you watch those scenes, there's a kind of a like a
dreamy effect to show what Sutherland seesand his psychic powers. And then there's
another one, but that's more ofa flashback, and I think he actually
gets like two flashbacks. So hegets two flashbacks and a psychic vision,

(10:16):
but they're all kind of treated thesame, so they're treated almost like the
truth. Holmes is just like okay, yeah, I'll go along with this.
Gets some of his best clues froma psychic vision. I think he
was fascinated by it is the waythat it's basically laid out. You're right,
schlock. Holmes would never take theword of a psychic, but he
would be intrigued by He was alwaysintrigued by odd teas, so that would

(10:39):
he would listen, He would hearhim out. He would listen. But
I think it would be more tofigure out if he's actually complicit in some
respect. Yeah, yeah, Iwould put him on the suspect list if
he came to be and said,oh I had this psychic vision or somehow
sure Lack would have to kind ofundermine him and be like well, good,
my good man, you actually sawthis person here and then he implanted

(11:01):
into your dreams. Blah blah blah. You know, my good friend Sigmund
Freud would tell you all about itagain. With the nineteen seventies, the
nineteen seventies were just rife. Youknow, we talked about the Freemasons,
and this really implicates the Freemasons asbeing complicit in the Jack the Ripper case,
and that goes back to while itgoes back a long ways, but

(11:22):
it was really kind of formalized bya couple of writers who wrote The Ripper
File. They had also worked ona Jack the Ripper miniseries from nineteen seventy
three. And then there was alsoI can't remember it was those writers or
another one who was part of theepisode on In Search Of In Search of

(11:46):
Arthur C. Clark's Mysterious World,and it feels like there was one other
one. I mean, the nineteenseventies were really a golden time for conspiracy
theories, like before we came towhere we're at here twenty twenty three.
But when I was a kid,I was just glue to the TV when
In Search Of was on, becausealmost everything was presented not necessarily as just

(12:11):
a mystery, but it was reallyvery creepy the way that they would lay
these things out. During the autumnof eighteen eighty eight, there occurred one
of the most baffling crimes in thefiles of Scotland Yard. In a White
Chapel area of London's East End,women walked in fear of their lives.

(12:33):
A wave of terror had been causedby an elusive murderer known as Jack the
River. It was very much likewatching Lights Out or some sort of spook
show from the nineteen fifties, orlistening to the radio and getting the Bejesus
scared out of you In Search ofdid that for me? I don't know

(12:54):
if I went back and I watchedIn Search of Now if I would be
as freaked out. But man,oh man, when I was watching when
I was a kid, just theopening credits were enough to make my skin
crawl. And then when you getsomething like you know, the Jack the
Rippers story being told in that formatthat they had with Leonard Nimoy narrating it,

(13:16):
man, it was a really damnscary show and this kind of fits
right in there. And it's greatthat Clark, I mean Clark at this
point he directed one kind of likea revenge type thriller type thing, but
really so much of his work tothis point was horror movies. We talked
on Mark Beagley's Wake Up Heavy.He had me on there for an episode

(13:41):
about Deranged about death, dream aboutwell, actually he came onto the projection
booth about Black Christmas and there wasone other one, Oh, children shouldn't
play with dead things. And sohaving Clark be a director of this Jack
the Ripper story, I mean he'susing a lot of tricks that he used

(14:03):
from Black Christmas idea of this slasher. Yeah, this is right there,
Like I was expecting the Ripper toask how Billy's doing. It's like,
um, Sherlock Holmes gets his ownPG rated horror movie with really how it
works out? Yeah, this wasPG rated. A lot of people thought
it should have been R rated kindof with him on that, honestly,

(14:24):
But it was the era of Chariotsof the Gods, im Pyramid Power,
you know, all those had avogue. One point I would make about
inserting supernatural elements into a Sherlock Holmesstory, it's it's worth noting that was
a real concern of Sherlock Holmes fans, especially in the nineteen twenties when Arthur
Conandra was still writing stories. Hepersonally was deeply, deeply invested in spiritualism.

(14:52):
He wrote a book about fairies.He was pretty credulous. But he
drew the line at Sherlock Holmes,as he he said in one of the
stories, uh, you know,at Homes talking to Watson, this agency
stands flat footed on you know,solid ground, on the earth. No
ghosts need apply. And so thatwas kind of a relief to fans of
the rigidly logical Sherlock Holmes. Butother people have certainly tried to invest,

(15:18):
uh, you know, supernatural themesinto the stories, and there weren't the
original stories. You know, thepotential was there in The Hound of the
Baskervilles, in The Sussex Vampire,there were was the potential for supernatural elements,
but there was always a perfectly logical, very down to earth, rationalist
human reason that we had been dressedup to look supernatural sco as it were.

(15:41):
Yeah. Well, Arthur Connon Doyle'sfather was a very talented artist who
wound up in an asylum. Hedied in an asylum, and a lot
of people felt Arthur Connon Doyle washeaded down the same path. And his
was a case in which, asyou can see more recently with George Lucas
and Star Wars or JK. Rowlingand Harry Potter, the fans to a

(16:03):
certain extent kind of took Sherlock Holmesaway because you know, Arthur Condrell was
maybe not one hundred percent trustworthy withthis thing that they really valued because of
his I mean, he opened upa bookstore, a spiritualism bookstore in Westminster,
and he was spending hundreds of thousandsof pounds. When he came to
the United States, he came todo a tour of lectures on spiritualism.

(16:26):
So it was a real concern offans of Sherlock Holmes that he was going
to eventually fall prey to wanting toinsert more spiritualistic themes into the Sherlock Holmes
stories. But he never did.A lot of where you fall on a
lot of these particular films are wheredo you sit as a Sherlock Holmes,
as a Holmesian, so to speak. If you're a purist, you don't

(16:49):
want to dva too far from thebooks, right, you don't want to
get too far from the written word. But when something's been reincorporated over two
hundred times by two hundred plus differentwriters, at some point, you know,
is it really the same work anymore? Or is it something? Is
it? Is it really owned bymore by the public than it is the

(17:11):
original written word, Because that samecharacter can be utilized in supernatural and horror
and different elements. If someone appreciatesthe substance of the character, it's it's
a tricky thing. I think ifyou are an absolute purist, If you
are if you are very beholden tothe original written text, a lot of
these films are not going to workfor you in general. But if you're

(17:32):
open to expanding the world, tryingnew things, seeing where it fits,
I think you're more open to alot of these. And that's really a
lot of these are. They're justtaking a lot of license with the character
itself. I am one of thosewriters. I've written three Sherlock Holmes plays
and I adapted them into novels.And yeah, there's people that would say
to me, why can't you dolike a straight Sherlock Holmes story. You
know, doctor Watson, Sherlock Holmesmystery the end, And yeah, one

(17:59):
of the problems with at is mysteriesdon't translate in the same way that some
genres do to film or stage,because it's not especially if you're watching a
play. The audience doesn't want tobe sitting there trying to remember clues.
You know. They want action,they want humor, they want romance.
Yeah, they want mystery, butit can't be just an armchair detective sitting

(18:22):
in his rooms. That's for mostpeople, that's not going to be enough.
So you add other elements. Andin my case, I tried to
remain very true to what I thoughtwas the spirit of Sherlock Holmes, which
was this is somebody who is basicinstinct is to help people and to use
his ability to use his skill.Doesn't matter what strata of society you come
from. He wants to help people, and he's a good guy and his

(18:47):
friendship with Watson is part of theappeal of the stories. And so,
yeah, you riff on it,but at least for me anyway, I
wanted to be faithful in many waysto the general thrust of the story.
In the last movie, we talkedabout how both Freud and Homes were contemporaries,

(19:07):
and in this they really explore thisidea. And we'll talk about some
other interpretations of Holmes meets the Jackthe Ripper later on, but you know,
here again we've got a contemporary ofSherlock Holmes, and I think,
David, you also deal with contemporariesof homes and that's what I've read in
the rest of the Nick Meyers stuff. It's apart from well, I guess

(19:30):
even in The Canary Trainer, whichis kind of Holmes meets the Phantom of
the Opera, But again there arestill real character, real people that he's
injecting into this. And then they'reyou know, I mentioned either last week
or the week before, this wholeidea of Holmes and George Bernard Shaw or
Oscar Wilde or even brom Stoker,all of them are in London at the

(19:55):
same time kind of thing. Andwith this, you've got world's greatest detect
versus one of the world's greedious quoteunquote serial killers, one of the best
unsolved cases that there's ever been.And like I was saying, you've got
all of these things going on inthe seventies where you've got different books being
written about Jack the Ripper or allthis happening, I guess because maybe it

(20:19):
was ninety years or I don't knowexactly what was in the air. But
really, Jack the Ripper has beenin movies, probably not as many times
as Sherlock Holmes, but I wouldsay he probably gives him a good run
for his money. Even the sameyear that this movie came out, we
had another Nick Myer property. Itwas Jack the Ripper Versus H. G.

(20:41):
Wells in Time after Time, oneof my most favorite movies. And
yeah, it was amazing to seehow often Jack the Ripper showed up in
movies. I mean, I wouldbe curious if there's a list out there
of how many times he's shown upor people that are very much like the
Jack the Ripper. I mean,it's really kind of wild, but I

(21:03):
thought it was very smart that theysay, Okay, how would Sherlock Holmes
saw this case and get into yourguys's earlier points. It's interesting that they
start off with three people already beingmurdered, and Sherlock Holmes doesn't seem to
give a toss about these people beingmurdered. It isn't until he is approached
by these merchants and kind of getsthe taste for it and says, oh,

(21:26):
maybe I will take this case on. I saw I still saw that
definitely than you guys did, though. I saw that as he was intrigued
by it, but he wasn't requestedon it. And then when he got
the direct request and he was morefascinated about it, you know, he
didn't want to overstep. And thenyou kind of like see the gradual increasing
humanistic qualities of him as he getsmore and more involved in the case,

(21:48):
and it's it's probably the most relatableSherlock Holmes I can actually think of,
Like he's very, very normal,every day Joe in this. So I
saw that a little differently than youguys did. Well, there were people
that wrote to Arthur Connon Doyle.You know, you're the creator of Sherlock
Holmes, here's a mystery, andhe was asked about. As far as

(22:10):
I know, he never made anyserious inquiries into Jack the Ripper, But
there were other cases. There wasa guy named Oscar Slater, there was
another guy named George at Dalgey whowere charged with crimes or suspective of crimes,
and Conon Doyle took up the cudgelon their behalf because people felt the
creator of Sherlock Holmes as somebody whocan help me. He was a very

(22:33):
kind of a crusading guy in hisown right. He had a strong sense
of what was right and wrong.And you know, as you mentioned George
Bernard Shaw. You know, oneof the famous quotes about Arthur Conan Doyle
is people would rather be wrong withConon Doyle than right with Bernard Shaw,
because he was an everyman. Hewas beloved. He was the author of

(22:55):
Sherlock Holmes. He was a sportsman, he was a patriot. He was
very, very highly regarded by mostof British society. Mike, you were
just talking about Jack the Ripper andall the films, and I remember seeing
it everywhere as a kid, youknow, just Jack the Ripper is everywhere.
How do you how do you guysfeel about the idea that this seems

(23:15):
to be really the only serial killerin history that is grotesquely treated almost as
a fictional property. I don't feelthat the gravity of what occurred at that
time is really taken into account inalmost anything that's based on that Jack the
Ripper appears in. Yeah, aftera while, you start to think that

(23:37):
Jack the Ripper is as equally fictionalas Sherlock Holmes. Isn't it a little
disturbing? But I mean in somerespects, Yeah, even thinking about I
was just thinking about Jack the Rippermovies, and I think, you know,
even going back to you know,The Lodger, the Hitchcock film,
obviously the movie you're familiar with,that one with your your Hitchcock podcast.

(23:59):
Well he's basically stand in for Jackthe Ripper. And that's how many years
after these crimes actually take place innineteen twenty seven, so yeah, forty
stand and that's an early that wasstill in the silent era. Well,
he was never caught. He's theperfect mythic bogey man, I mean his

(24:22):
historically. Yeah, there's some reallydark characters out there. I mean,
you know, Elizabeth Bathy, theCountess from Hungary, I believe was a
nasty piece of work, but withthe tabloids that they had at that time,
in the newspaper coverage that the killing'sgot, and it just had a
mythic quality to it almost from theoutset, the alleys of Whitechapel, the

(24:47):
slums of London, the fog,this you know, remorseless killer going after
helpless women. Um, it kindof ticked off all the marks of this
is obviously horrific, beyond her rific, but it's a great story and it's
gotten you know, a lot ofattention in part because of that. It's
it's almost timeless, and I don'tthink you're gonna see Jack the Ripper stories

(25:10):
or you know, tames kind ofgenerated from that disappearing in any time soon.
It's just something that's always astounded meto and I'm guilty. I've watched
a ton of these movies. I'veI've watched so many of them. Can't
keep drag. It's it's way whatfive women that occurred over three and a
half months, right, And it'sit's captured the cinema escape for ever since,

(25:33):
ever since, the entire the entiretyof cinema has had Jack the Ripper
in it, almost creating this thiswhole fictional aura and no other There's there's
tons of unknown serial killer cases outthere, none on the Zodiac. How
many Zodiac killer movies that are thatseem fictional are out there, Probably none,
they're the ones based on the case. There might be a couple out

(25:55):
there that are like Great b orsomething okay kind of movies, but nothing
like Jack the Ripper. And Idon't understand why we've done that with this
particular case, probably because, likeDavid's said, it's just so fascinating in
terms of the dynamics of it.But it's it's wild how we just basically
treat it like it is a workof fiction. Well, just the idea
too, of the supernatural. Andthere's movies. There was what a James

(26:18):
Spader movie called Jack's Back, whereit's the idea of and I think Scotty
on Star Trek got possessed by thespirit or Jack the Ripper on one episode
as well. And you know therewas when I wrote about William Freakin's Cruising,
I was talking about how, morethan anything, it feels like the
spirit of a killer gets inside andpasses from one person to the other.

(26:41):
And I made comparisons between you know, the killer that's in Cruising that just
kind of moves from person to person, you know, because you never see
how hot, you know, theheight changes, the body shape, change
all this stuff. And I'm justlike, well, what if it actually
is just moving from person to person, Well, if it's the spirit of
Jack the Ripper and even you know, we'll talk a little bit more about

(27:02):
Dust and Shadow, but there's talkingthere about, oh there were other famous
killers in London, how about theLondon Monster and how about this? And
I'm just like, is she gonnago the author? Is she going to
go into like this happens every fortyyears or something like that. It's like
a Victor Toombs type of thing,where you know, the evil goes into
hibernation and that comes out. Butyeah, it was this whole idea of

(27:25):
the killer that comes out of thefog and goes back and then disappears after
these five horrific killings. Whatever happenedto this guy. Yeah, it just
kind of lends itself to that supernaturalflayer. So having a psychic in here
kind of makes sense. But youknow, at the same time, it's
it is interesting, like you weresaying, David, that we didn't have
the supernatural in homes, which Ikind of appreciate. And then I noticed

(27:49):
that so many movies will try tomove into that, I mean, or
they'll give us a nice logical explanation. I mean, we talked way back
for weeks ago about Young Trilock,Holmes, and that seems like there's a
lot of supernatural stuff in it untilyou realize, oh no, somebody's being
drugged and that's why they're seeing allof these hallucinations. Well, there's a

(28:11):
big market for that particular slice ofany kind of narrative. I have students
that I don't know if it's stillon. They were big fans of the
show ghost Hunters. All iways askthem, have you ever wondered why the
show wasn't called ghost Finders. Youdon't have to find anything to make it
a good show and for it tobe an entertaining narrative. And I think

(28:32):
part of the appeal of Jack theRipper as well as I want to say,
it's like what every twenty years,twenty five years, there's a big
splash, I know who it is, here's the killer and here's the proof,
and everybody gets all excited, Ohmy god, it's this, it's
that. In this case, it'sPrince Eddie. And then it's like that
gets you know, gradually debunked bypeople actually looking at actual data. The

(28:55):
Ripper keeps on getting, you know, brought up because it's money, you
can monetize it, and people youlove that story. Clark shows us pretty
early on parts of the face ofthe killer, so it doesn't keep him
in shadow and POV shots and allthis for too long. I mean,
pretty early on in the movie.You know, I talked about how when

(29:18):
we see Nicole Williamson's eye in theseven Percent Solution, that we see that
first and he's got that, youknow, the super wide pupil that he's
all strung out in this movie prettyearly on, and we get a shot
at the ripper's eyes and we'll talkabout from how later on, but it's
very similar where it's almost pure blackand then just this tiny pin prick of

(29:40):
a pupil. So we're kind ofgetting parts of the face and we just
don't know exactly whose face it is. And then once it's revealed, it's
like, I don't know who theseguys are. Like it takes until this
theory protracted explanation at the end ofthis where you know, I mean,
I think it's fifteen minutes of kindof like Simon Oakland in Psycho where they

(30:06):
realized they had to Sherlock Holmes this. Yes, yes, well they had
John Gilgood for one day, damnit. And we are going to film
John Gilgood all freaking days, seeDavid, That's where he Sherlock Holmes the
hell out of that though, likehe just saved it all until the very
very end. But by the sametoken, it's like, Okay, the

(30:26):
British government is sanctioning the murder ofwomen and children and I'm going to give
you guys a jolly good talking toand then I am going to keep it
a secret because we don't want tomake any ways. It's like, that's
weak, that's weak. Yeah,I think they had Gilgood for a day.
They ran with it. If anything, I think this movie really would

(30:48):
have benefited from having microft in hereand having this whole thing of like,
hey, brother man, you reallyneed to keep the lid on this.
And yeah, it goes all theway up to the animals of power and
all this, but you really needto you know, my job's in jeopardy.
The whole British government's in jeopardy.You really need to put the lid
on this. I'm surprised they didn'tgo that route. And by his even

(31:12):
his own admission, he's not he'snot saying Eddie was involved in the murders.
Per se. It was some devotedmeets of his and that they're just
basically covering it up. I mean, I could see that happen in pretty
much every government, so I don'tthink it's it's too far fetched, especially
you know these days it's Jack theRipper and then it's like, oh,

(31:34):
it's two guys. That's not justone guy. It's like a kind of
tag team effort. Because that isthe conspiracy driven by the Freemasons that are
trying to protect the monarchy from scandaland the potential that there's a Catholic child
that has been fathered by Prince Eddie, who, to clarify, Prince Edward,

(31:55):
the Duke of Clarence, was thegrandson of Queen Victoria, and so
his father, who became Edward andseventh he was in direct line for the
throne, and so it would havebeen a huge deal if Eddie had fathered
a child out of wedlock with thea prostitute. And then yeah, the
whole Catholic thing too, I guessthat's because of the Engludican Church that they're

(32:19):
all members of, and so justeven the religion or I mean, I'm
so whatever about religion. I mean, okay, the kid was baptized Catholic.
One just re baptized. But Iguess it doesn't work. I don't
know. You can't do that,Okay, you you are so going to
hell boy, just by even thinkingit. Really listens, My grandfather got

(32:46):
my grandmother regnant and then they hadto get married. This is in Scotland,
and he was Protestant and she wasCatholic and they had to get married
so that they could have my mom, and her family stopped speaking to her.
You can look at things in retrospectand say that's insane, but when
people get self righteous, they getrationality goes right out the window. Well,

(33:09):
and I forget about things like thetroubles over in Ireland and that being
Catholic and Protestant were super big dealsfor a long day time, and so
many people lost their lives. Wellthey had, you know, Elizabeth the
First and Mary, Queen of Scots, and the whole issue of was England
going to be a Catholic or aProtestant country was a point of contention for

(33:30):
a long long time. I totallycan understand that, No you can't,
but you're just saying it's not rightno matter what The movie itself. I
think it's a very wonderfully shot.I think a lot of this works.
And we're talking before as far asthe relationships go, I think that the

(33:51):
relationship between Holmes and Watson is reallythe reason why I come back to this
movie time and again just to see, well, it's Holmes and Watson,
but moreover it's Plumber and Mason,and just to watch how these guys act
around each other. And even thatfunny pe scene. And that's pea by

(34:12):
the way, ladies and gentlemen,if you haven't seen this movie, there's
no golden showers in this It isa p on. That's the director's cut.
I love that. I love thep scene. It's a very it's
a very charming scene. And yeah, I agree they work. They work
really well together. It's part ofthe you know, the humanized homes that
you see homes laughing it up withWatson, I mean sometimes kind of inappropriately,

(34:36):
you know, near the end whenthey discover the eviscerated Mary Kelly.
You know, Holmes and Watson havea bit of a smile. You know,
here have my gun, old man, you might need it, and
it's like, why man, youguys know what's happened like five feet behind
you. It's in the frame.So I found that a little little disturbing.
I've got some friends where I couldsee us being that ridiculous in those

(34:58):
moments. It's just like moment oflightness. It's almost like the back of
the world disappears and the horror andthey're just trying to find motivation to continue
on. You know, maybe I'moverthinking it, maybe just because I like
I like those two away. Everybodyin this cast is fantastic. I was
very surprised. I also forget thatDavid Hemmings is in this, and his

(35:20):
role is interesting because he one he'sbasically there to be a red herring,
and two he's there to be partof the mystery as well. And he
and those shopkeepers allegedly like they areall in cahoots and they are all these
revolutionaries I want to do away withthe monarchy. Holmes is kind of a
dupe for these guys as well.It takes a long durn time before he

(35:44):
figures out that Hemmings is working withthose guys, but he's great to see
on screen, and every time heshows up and just like, oh,
okay, cool, this is prettygood. Because he basically is he's a
superfluous character of quite often he's basicallyjust another version of Lestrade, but more
of playing clothes men. I suppose, but Lestrade in here. I really

(36:06):
liked him in this movie. Butin Lestrade is I mean, I don't
think we've seen other than that oneof the deleted scenes from the Private Lives
of Sherlock Holmes. I don't thinkwe've seen the Strade this entire month until
this episode. No, but Imean, weirdly enough, the guy that
plays Lestrade, Frank Finley. Heplays Lestrade in the study in Terror as

(36:30):
well, which is the nineteen sixtyfive version of Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the
Ripper. Well, and the guythat plays Sir is a Sir Charles.
I think he's also in that movie. A yes, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yes, he and hisfacial hair are treasures. I love it.
I love it. Yeah, they'reworth the price of admission. I

(36:51):
should mention. I don't know ifyou guys know, but John Gielgood was
He did play Sherlock Holmes on radioin the BBC, and then I might
say nineteen fifty four he was Holmesand Sir Ralph Richardson was his Watson.
When I was listening to the storiesthat the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes's smarter brother
were based on Gielgood. It wasredio versions of at least two of those,

(37:13):
so that was kind of nice tohear. So those are available either
for free or for pretty there andcheap over on Audible, So yeah,
definitely check it out. It's likewe talked about, if you're a British
actor, you have to have playedSherlock Holmes or Watson at some point.
I will mention one thing that Irealized why I was watching this one again
that it jars me a little bit. Like every film that we've talked about,

(37:35):
Sherlock Holmes is running around and hisdeer stalker and his Inverness cape,
which he would never do in London. Never. That's for when you're out
in the countryside. And that wasone of the things I liked best about
the Jeremy Brett series is when he'sin London, he dresses like a gentleman
and it's only he puts on,you know, the deer stalker when he
goes to Dartmoor for The Hound ofthe Baskervilles. But every Holmes that we've

(37:58):
seen. He's charging about Holmes andthis kind of as actually Robert Stephens says
in the Private Life, this improbablecostume that Watson has foisted upon him.
So Hollywood wants to They love that. Look, that's the Sherlock Holmes.
Look, that's a silhouette. That'sit's almost like you know the Hitchcock silhouette.
You just you know it when yousee it. Well, even before

(38:19):
we see Christopher Plumber, we seethe pipe, and it's the pipe that
leads us up to Christopher Plumber's face. So again he's kind of this symbol.
You know, we talked about howthe pipe in a smarter brother like
sometimes you didn't even see the actor, you just saw the pipe. It's
like you could have gotten anybody theneven just hold that pipe a little bit
off screen and there you have SherlockHolmes looking over things. I always find

(38:44):
that's to me, one of themost interesting things about any incarnation of Holmes
is how did they first present him? When you first see him, Like
in the Basil Rathmone, how tothe Basketball's you just see his torso pacing
back and forth, and you seeWatson sitting down and you know it's Sherlock
Holmes, but all you see isin pacing back and forth. And then
they cut to Rathbone in profile,and he had that, as somebody once

(39:07):
described it, two profiles pasted together. Look, I mean, he had
a great silhouette to him, andI always find that interesting. How are
we going to first show this iconichero for his first appearance in this particular
film. I wanted to go backto something you were talking about earlier eron
as far as the fictionality of Jackthe Ripper. This is going to sound

(39:28):
like a weird analogy, but Jackthe Ripper kind of reminds me of Santa
Claus. Sometimes you get those likeSanta Clauses coming to town where it's like,
Okay, here's how he got thehat, here's how he got the
laugh, here's why he's named ChrisKringle, and Jack the Ripper is very
similar in that. Okay, weknow that this was the order of victims.
We know these and like every becauseby now by the time we're recording

(39:50):
this, I've listened to Dustin Shadow, I've looked at the last Sherlock Holmes
story. I believe it's called WatchedStudy and terror watch this one several times
and then also watch from Hell.So right now, it's like, okay,
it's just the same pieces being movedaround slightly. Like I said,

(40:13):
it's interesting that he starts after thethird murder already takes place in this one,
so we don't have to have allfive of the murders being shown,
you know, And you've got like, all right, well, Mary Kelly
as the ALUs the final victim,and she's done worse than anybody else is.
And it's just all of these differenttrappings that you have, and then

(40:35):
you get the whole thing of thenote the Jews are the ones who will
not be blatant whatever that whole thingand or Jews ju Wes. That's a
real clue. I mean, that'sa real jector. If it's a real
thing, it's a real thing.So that it's just like, Okay,
we've got all these pieces on ourchessboard here, how do we rearrange them
in order to weave Sherlock Holmes inthere? Or Johnny Depp as a detective,

(41:00):
like, how do we now explainthese things in this particular way?
And sometimes that arrow of clues canlead to Prince Edward. Sometimes it goes
over here to anonymous doctor over here. You know, my favorite one is
kind of goes back to private lifeof Sherlock Holmes. The whole idea that
it's actually the Lockdesk monster is theone that is Jack the Ripper? Is

(41:25):
this the way it happened? Itwas Jack the Ripper in fact, a
sixty foot sea serpent from Scotland.Did I take this job for a christ
Block? We may never know theanswer to these questions. Where do these
clues lead to all the way upto lock Nest? Possibly so, but
these it's it's very fascinating to seehow they wind Sherlock Holmes in amongst these

(41:50):
clues and then also make him avery humanistic character. You know, that's
kind of a little bit of thebone of contention with this up. So
it is just Holmes as a humanist, Holmes as more of the traditional story.
How does that work out? Becauseyou know, I was listening to
one of the audio commentaries and somebodysaid, oh, Holmes cries through like

(42:12):
a third of this movie, andI'm like, it seems a little much,
but he definitely does ships and tears, especially in the uh Genevieve Boujeold
scene where she just again great cast. She just kind of comes in and
steals the show for probably about fiveto ten minutes. She wasn't she captivating
unless she was absolutely captivating. Yeah, she was great, and she fit

(42:32):
in with the whole we're gonna castCanadians and English people. That's it,
that's our cast. He got meone of those, so she fit in
really well. And I think Ithink I believe I've read some place she
cut her own hair for for thisfilm, and she's, yeah, well
she's just fabulous. She's just offthe off the charts fabulous. Then it
made me go and look up heroriginal scenes and Voyager and watch those.

(42:57):
And then hear Kate Melbo through justtalking so much trash about how bouge Old
pronounced things. I'm like, wow, you're kind of a see you next
Tuesday lady, I mean a bigfan of you anymore. Kate melgrew So
it's a good turn. Boujeold wouldhave made a good Janeway is all I'm
saying, because she can definitely act, and this was another great time for

(43:21):
Genevie Boujeold. I grew up withGenevie bougeold in movies and to see your
back in this and again freaking DonaldSutherland, you know, small part,
but very powerful and great, youknow, to your point, David another
great Canadian actor and the seventies manlike to me, Gould and Sutherland just

(43:43):
own the seventies and these two kindof odd looking characters that just were in
all of these different films. Thoughwith this one, every time I saw
Donald Sutherland in this Victorian garb,I was just like, I mean,
it looks like he's about to goon a great train robbery, because he
was so great in that movie.And I think that was just the year

(44:04):
prior. It's like he was startingto corner the I can be a weirdo
Victorian person. Susan Clark was greattoo. I really thought the acting across
the board was it was just phenomenal, or at least it looked very strong,
very strong. Anybody who's been marriedto Alex Carris is okay. In
my book Obscured Detroit lyons anecdote therebig timeline. Well for me, he'll

(44:29):
he'll always be Mango more at firstthan always in my heart. Mongo only
pun in Game of life, buta great football player too. Yeah,
so with that Jewess clue, Ithink that's really what puts this into the
whole idea of the Masons in this. So it's interesting because it's it's Mason's

(44:51):
covering up the crime, but thenyou still have Prince Edward at the heart
of it, and it's really fromhow is various much to that? But
I have heard the Prince Edward thingbefore, but I didn't necessarily associate with
the Mason's kind of protecting him.So this was, you know, in
these two unquote misguided guys that aremurdering all of the people that knew about

(45:16):
the wedding and looking for this child. It makes more an interesting story.
Hasn't been discredited? Yeah do Icare now? Not really? I mean
the Masons to me, and hopefullywe'll hear from Mason later on in the
show. The Mason's arrows kind ofa little bit mythological as well, because
they're so secretive, so you canattribute anything to Mason's I suppose. Yeah.

(45:40):
I don't think they ever had anythingto do with this, but for
a long time they were attributed justbecause of that one clue. Just that's
the big conspiracy theory because of thatone clue, and I'm like, couldn't
that have been Jack the Ripper throwingthat clue in there? Just a three
year office trail. I'm just saying, well, they're they're reminiscent to me,
and no offense to all the Freemasonsout there, but it's it's like

(46:02):
the Ku Klux Klan and the GrandWizard and secret handshakes. It's it's stuffed.
Most people abandoned once they turned twelve. It's just stilliness. It's just
stilliness. But for a lot ofpeople, you know the trappings of it,
it's very weird and mysterious and exciting, exotic. There's oftentimes kind of

(46:22):
sexual nuances associated with it, andit makes good fiction. But in real
life, having a secret ring anda secret handshake and you know I'm the
Prime Minister, I mean, comeon, that's just it's it's sad.
Yeah, it's said, these aresupposed to be grown men. And although
you know, I was in BigBoy a couple of weeks ago when the

(46:43):
guy in front of me in lineto pay was filling me in on the
international banking conspiracy led by the Rothschilds, just out of the blue. I
don't even know this guy, andhe's wand impart the secret New World Order
that was taking place beneath my verynotes. So I think his brother actually
drives cat in Vegas because I gotthe same speech. Well, for the
record, God bless the rothschilds.Yes, this play is really big and

(47:07):
the Rothschild sector. So I actuallyhave all my Facebook ads targeted just to
that. There's a special checkbox,but you have to know the secret to
get in. They're gonna be pointingat their laptops. They're talking about us.
They're talking. It's they're talking aboutus. Did you feel like Sherlock
Holmes was secretly a Freemason or justknew the secrets of their handshake and their

(47:30):
ring. He just knew he's notgoing to join any little boys club.
He's an adult. Anyway, that'smy take. I don't know. I'm
like, what do you think?Well, it's my take too, But
my take was that he just knewit, not that he was a Mason.
And to your point, David,I think he already laughs at his
brother for being in the dietch andhis club and all those silly rules that

(47:52):
they have. So I can seehim not wanting to join in any sort
of society, especially to be beholdento somebody else that doesn't feel like other
than Watson and missus Hudson. Itfeels like he wants nothing to do with
any person in the world. Peoplelove that stuff, whether it's the Illuminati
or what is it called the Skulland Bones Club at Yale, the stone

(48:14):
Cutters. I guess it's important toa certain kind of mentality, which apparently
I do not possess me either.Well, and you even get into things
that are more open, but alsothese clubs like Elks and these guys where
they usually do good things for theneighborhood, those kind of things. But
it's more than anything, it's anexcuse to hang around with guys your age

(48:37):
and park cards and drink. Yeah, exactly, it's all about drinking.
All comes back to that. Well, like the Great Groucho Mark said,
I would never want to belong toa club that would have someone like me
as a member. I honestly thoughtI was exaggerating, But then when I
was listening to the Bob Clark commentary, I was like, Oh, the

(48:58):
final scene is starting. I needto watch what time it is. It
literally takes fifteen minutes, this wholething of what is it four people in
one room and shooting that, AndI had to say, brob Rura,
Bob Clark does his best to makethis interesting, but I just feel like
it goes on for too long.Listening to these books and watching these movies.

(49:22):
She like Holmes can come into aroom and say, oh, how
was your time in Dorchester? Whatwas your wife doing? Blah blah blah
you and just like give all ofthese things about somebody, and then inevitably
they or doctor Watson will have tosay, how did you know that?
And then it gives the whole thing, well, you know, the dander

(49:44):
around his coat and the dirt atthe bottom of his hem and he'll just
give this whole thing and explain awayeverything. That's an interesting thing. And
I like that, but the explanationslike this where he's just going through point
by point I did like to theClerk used alternate takes. Most of the

(50:05):
time. It wasn't the same thingsthat we saw, so we got a
slightly different perspective, but still justfor him to sum up this movie,
and Jacques over to the Prime Ministerand they really get into the masonry stuff
and it just it was a littlebit long in the tooth for me,
especially the second time I watched thisthis week, I was like, oh

(50:25):
my god, can I fast forwardthrough this? Sure? Could? Yeah,
it's my house, I can dowhat I wanted. I thought,
same as you. It felt protracted, and you know, it's it's not
as you said, It's not simplya case of strlock Holmes explaining his deductive
process. He's basically spends fifteen minuteschastising and shaking his finger. You naughty

(50:51):
boys. You shouldn't be doing this, but I'm not going to tell anybody,
And you know, the power ofit is considerably diminished. I mean
it's supposed to be again, partof the humanized homes. He's emotional,
he's getting, you know, weepyeyed thinking about what these horrible, powerful
men are doing. But in theend he doesn't. Actually, all he
wants to do is extract the promisefrom them that the bastard child, the

(51:15):
little girl, will not be harmed. And if he has that guarantee,
he'll keep mom about the whole sordidaffair. And that's what that scene resolves
itself down too. I do thinkit's the most Sherlock Holmes that Sherlock Holmes
has ever Holmes. It's very mucha hey, I'm gonna tell you everything
I learned in this entire movie righthere. Welcome to your exposition. And

(51:37):
I do think it goes on alittle bit too long. I do like
the scene overall. I feel likeit's the culmination of the growing humanistic qualities
we've seen in homes throughout this film. You've got Sherlock Holmes at the end
of his career kind of in manyrespects. So he absolutely formed some kind

(51:59):
of an emotional bond with her atthe sanitarium, and now you know,
and he lost Mary and now it'scome to this, So it's this just
outward explosion of emotion. I thinkChristopher Plummer delivers it masterfully. In my
opinion. I feel like he captivatesthe screen in this scene. Even though

(52:21):
it does go on too long.It is a little bit too expedition heavy,
but I still enjoy it, andI really enjoy his performance, Like
I thought his performance was captivating personally. One thing that kind of struck me
is the whole notion of Genevieve Boujolt'scharacter. He gets all worked up he
has a bit of a cry,he attacks the doctor, and then he's
subsequently told, oh, well,you know, she committed suicide next day,

(52:45):
and there's no question from him.I mean, it's like, you
know, Jeffrey Epstein, Oh hejust died this cell, yep, that
those things happen. He's not gonna, you know, suggest at all that.
Maybe. No, he makes areference to it in that scene,
remember what the wording was, Buthe does make a reference to I'm supposed
to take your word or I'm supposedto take you it. I don't remember

(53:05):
how I said it. I reallydon't, but I'm fairly certain does I
could be wrong. I could bewrong. It happens. Yeah, I
thought he just kind of swallowed thatthat particular story hole, or maybe you
know, pragmatically, it's like,well, that's not, at this point
in the film a direction that wewant to go in and open up that
can of worms. So, Imean, she was right there teetering on
suicide, so it wouldn't probably surprisedhim either. Yeah, that's true.

(53:29):
All right, let's go ahead.We're going to take a break, and
we'll return with a pair of interviews. For a step, we'll hear from
Brent Morris, the author of TheComplete Idiot's Guide to Freemasonry. And after
that we'll hear from Mary Keller yourselfSusan Clark, and we'll be back with
both of those right after these briefmessages. Hello everyone, this is Malcolm

(53:54):
McDowell. I just want to saythat this is a request to listeners of
the Projection Booth podcast to become patronsof the show via patrion dot com,
pat e o n dot com slashProjection Booth. That's pretty simple. I

(54:17):
think you can do that. It'sa great show and Mike he provides hours
of great entertainment. So now it'stime to give back my little drugs.
Settle down and take a listen andhave a sip of the old molocco,
and then you'll be ready for alittle of the old in out, in
out real horror show. Bye bye, mister Morris. When was the first

(54:45):
time you even heard about freemasonry?My grandfather was a Freemason and I knew
that he wore a Masonic rate.That was about all I knew about freemasonry
at that time. So term whereI was in lace school, I'm sixteen,
seventeen years old, I'm talking.I was a member of the local

(55:06):
Magic Club, this chapter of theSociety of American Magicians, and I was
talking to one of the older membersand I had seen an ad in the
back of Popular Science magazine, andat that time they used to have hundreds
of these little bitty ads. Oneof the ads to caught my attention is
all the secrets of the thirty threedegrees of Freemasonry for a dollar ninety nine.

(55:30):
You know. I said to myfriend, what do you know about
the Masons. Well, I wasin DeMolay, which is a boys group
that sponsored by the Masons. Hesaid, but I'm not a Mason myself,
and we started speculating outcome. They'reselling all the degrees at once,
why didn't they sell them for tensons apiece or whatever. Then when I
was in college, the same typeof conversation happened with one of my fraternity

(55:54):
brothers. His uncle was a Mason, and when you're in a dormitory for
churnity house setting, talk about anythingand in the conversation just bounces around wildly
from one topic to another. Andhe and I had passing interest in freemason
I was just curious, what arethe Secrets of the Lace, and his

(56:15):
uncle was a Mason. We wereboth at Southern Methodist University. So I
went to the SMU library and Ichecked out the books that they happened to
have a freemas drag, and Ijust started reading them. We continued the
discussion, and in January of oursenior year, we both came back from
Christmas break and he says, Prent, you know what I'm gonna do.

(56:36):
I just turned twenty one. Iwant to join my Elson's Masonic munch.
But we've been talking about this fora semester or two or whatever. And
I thought for half a second andI said, huh, if you will
wait till rch, I will turntwenty one and I'll join with you.
He said, deal. So weboth put in our petitions. On my
birthday, March twenty eight, wewere both elected members and our initiation was

(57:00):
I think June twenty something like that, and I became a Mason, was
made a Master Mason. On MondayFriday, I packed van and drove to
during North Carolina to start grad schoolto Duke University. Duke kappen to have
a very large collection of books andfreemasonry. I had just joined, so

(57:22):
I had dozens of questions. SoI would check out as a stack of
books, take it home and readit over the weekend, and check out
another stack of books. And Ijust found that it appealed to me.
It clipped. I enjoyed the peopleI met, I enjoyed the symbolism of
the ritual. And Boy Scouts doesnot appeal to me. I remember that

(57:44):
I did in the Cup Scouts andthey wanted us to move up Boy Scouts
and I went on a camping tripwith them, and I thought to myself,
I don't like this camping. It'swarumpy and it's cold. And then
they were going to teach us howto do more code and I had a
hard time doing that, and Isaid, this is the type of activities
they do, play with Morris Covidand sleep on the hard ground in the

(58:07):
cold weather. This ain't for me. So so boy Scouts didn't lick.
Freemasons did go figure, So whatkind of activities do the Freemasons do?
What appeal to you about them?I think what I like the most were
the people that I met. Well. I was in grad school. I
was caught up in a ghetto ofmathematicians with a few theoretical physicists hanging around,

(58:31):
and those are the only people Isaw. When I was at a
Masonic lodge meeting. I saw therewas an optometrist who was my optometrist,
and so he was a member ofthe lodge. The lieutenant sheriff and town
was a member, The fire chiefwas a member. Small shop owner that
I became buddies was a members.So I met all different kinds of people.

(58:54):
In fact, I post something postedsomething over my Facebook page and I
said, instead of this a theoreticalphysicist, a medic, a research mathematician,
and I'm a medieval scholar in alot and walk into a book.
That's it. Lodge meeting was over. We wanted to finish our conversation and
share a pint before we blow.I find that kind to cool that I

(59:15):
can show up in a meeting andthere is a research mathematician by training.
There, there's a nuclear physicist whohave to be working on his master's degree
in a theology talk about a change. There was a scholar of medieval Latin,
and we were not talking about anyof our academic special meetings. I
don't even remember what the topic wasbut let's go across the street get a

(59:37):
pipe before go home. So Ienjoyed the people we meet. I enjoy
the intellectual background. I suspect thatI went to a rotary meeting or a
Learning's club meeting and a member ofneither. So I'm just speculating here,
But I doubt if people would betalking about what the Routarians, I know,

(59:58):
they would be talking about the Routarianswe're doing three hundred years. They
would not be talking about what theLions Club did in the community three hundred
years ago, or how they couldhave an influence on the officials in the
government and so on, and anyway, that's guess. The thing that appealed
to me was the depth of thehistory and the broad range of people that

(01:00:19):
I met. How did the Masonseven start, Now that's a good question.
It's a little fuzzy, and Ican tell you what we know about
the concept of a guild originated inFrance about twelve hundred. Norman conquest is
ten sixty, So some time aftertwelve hundred, the invading Norman's brought over
the concept of a guild the workers. It's a trade union, an apprenticeship

(01:00:45):
program. Then you have membership andthere is this quid pro quel the crown
or the owners, whatever the businessis, promise of fair wage and in
return with the guild guarantee he's equalitya certain quality. So the earliest document
we have on the Mason's Guild isabout thirteen running, so the Masons are

(01:01:07):
abandoned. In fact, it's interestingif you look at the laws. The
King made it illegal for Masons toassemble together in a group because they were
negotiating wage and the King didn't likethat, didn't like that at all.
So you have this idea of builddeveloping and then somewhere around sixteen hundred and

(01:01:30):
Scotland appears they had a practical problemto solve. And here's the problem.
If you're going to have a tradeunion and you want it to be a
closed shop, so you can't justwalk up and start growing master's wages unless
you have been through the apprenticeship andso on. If you want to maintain
that, and you want to giveyour members the ability to travel. So

(01:01:54):
they finished the bridge in Aberdeen andthey hear they're starting a new church in
Glasgow. We're going to travel andget some work, and that was one
thing that made Masons differed from othergills, is you could be a baker,
a miller, a brewer and spendyour entire life in one village and
never leave. If you were aFreemason, when you finished the extension to

(01:02:16):
the town hall, when you preparethe bridge, when your job was finished,
there might not be mason work intown for ten or twenty years,
so you add to move. Now. When you go to the altered English
Dictionary and it looks at the definitionof Freemason, it says they're two origins.
Are two possible origins. One isthese were the skilled stone curbs that

(01:02:38):
worked in something called freestone, andfreestone didn't have a grain to it,
so you could easily curve it inany shape or direction. The other possible
explanation is that the Freemasons were freeto travel, unlike the other occupations.
So about sixteen hundred, because theywere free to and they wanted to be

(01:03:00):
able to prove their membership, theyinvented the Mason word. Now, the
first written evidence we have of theMason word is sixteen thirty seven and a
guy writes in his diary and Iknow this is going to be a heart
to believe but the Scots Nobles werehaving conflict with the English King, Scots
in English getting into dispute. Theydidn't think the Irish would be involved also,

(01:03:23):
So in this first reference, aguy's trying to play both sides of
the fence, trying to be loyalto the king, trying to make nice
with the Scots nobles. One ofthe Scots Nobles accuses term of having the
Mason word that he just said,okay, thank you, I'm all through.
And the reason for that is theking at this time was James,

(01:03:44):
the first of England, who isresponsible for the King James Bible. He
was also a fanatic against witches.All of the witch trials that we had
in New England, all of thehundreds of witches burned at the stake in
England and Scotland were due to KingJames. This obsession and the Mason's word
secretly identify other Masons, and accordingto written a legend, it let you

(01:04:09):
secretly summon a Mason to do yourbidding. There are two ways you could
do that. I could know thesecret side. Hey, Mike, you
know what you do with this afternoon? And you say, oh, would
you like me to come help youwith something, you got it. The
other explanation is that I was inleague with the devil when I was sending
little demons over to whispering your ear. And that's what James anyway, the

(01:04:31):
whole reason I go into that detail. That is the first mention of the
Mason words sixteen thirty seven. Andthere are two things that are significant about
the first. One that's significant isit's scary to be accused of having the
mason work. The second thing,the guy that writes this down doesn't have
to explain what the Mason word is. He just says, Sir Mike was

(01:04:55):
accused of adding the Mason word,and he dropped out of activity in any
further negotiations. That's a very subtlething. But to think about it,
he didn't have to tell anybody whathe was talking about. They already knew.
And what this reminds me of.There's another reference to the Mason word.
They're about fifteen or twenty references priorto seventeen thirty and about the first

(01:05:18):
century sixteen thirty seven, the firstrecorded non instance to about seventeen thirty.
They're only about a dozen or twentyreferences. One of them is a sermon
given by a Reverend William Guthrie athis church in Scotland, and his sermons
are all recorded a big book andthey're in the University of Edinburgh a library,
and he says to the congregation,Christ has a way of knowing his

(01:05:42):
followers, just like the Masons knowwho each other are. I don't understand
how the Masons do it, andI don't know how Christ does it either,
but they can identify each other's secretand that's all he said. He
didn't have to elaborate his way.I look at it back in the nineteenth
the Flash Gorrible movie series, andhe probably have covered this. But perhaps

(01:06:04):
in some of your discussions had whatthe ming the merciless I think was the
bad guy. And in nineteen thirties, if you were giving a sermon anywhere
and you said a really bad guylike me the merciless, and the audience
would all not because they knew whomean merciless was. Today, you'd say
a bad guy like Darth Vader,and everyone would not. They know who

(01:06:24):
Darth Vaders. He's a bad guy. In the same way, William Guthrie
could talk about the secret way thatMason's identified each other and just as casual
throwaway sentence, and every one ofthe congregations nodding you. Okay. So
the first ripple reference is sixteen thirtyseven. I'll give him twenty five years
just to have a nice real number. Let's pick sixteen hundred. So about

(01:06:47):
sixteen hundred the Masons developed the firstsecret and it's a secret word. They
started admitting more honorary members. Okay. Now fast forward to sixteen sixty six.
W we're travel south from scott Oneto England, and that's when you
have the Great Fire of One.Now, the head of the organization that

(01:07:11):
run the Masons and Lundon was theLondon Mason Company it still exists today,
was one of the guills that electsthe Lord Mayor and run the city of
One. And they used to havea royal monopoly owned building with stone no.
In fact, some twenty or thirtyyears ago someone found a stone that
had been intended for the Tower ofLondon had fallen into the tims and they

(01:07:35):
dug it out of the Tower Timsand they cleaned it off and they were
going to bring it in and makea presentation to the Tower of London,
and the London Company of Mason steppedup and said, no stone for building
Burtons can enter the city without ourapproval, because we have to check to
make sure it's square and it's goingto fit. So the English had a
grand chance for a ceremony. Sothey bring the stone up to the city

(01:08:00):
walls. The Mason's company comes output. The Mason's company is unrelated to
the freemason it's independent from the socialfraternity, and so they checked the stone
to make sure it was suitable andthey allowed it about it to go in.
So what happens in sixteen sixty sixLondon is burned to the ground.
They I think Christopher Wren designed secondaryeighty churches and the Saint Falls and the

(01:08:24):
King. I don't know how politehe was when he said, but he
said to the Royal Company, tothe company of Masons, you guys have
done a great job for the lastcouple hundred years building the stone. We
have an immersions. Any man that'sstrong enough to pick up a stone in
one hand and curia trial on theother is a mason. Thank you very
much. You don't have the Royallopany. Now what does mirror is that

(01:08:45):
the London Company of Masons no longerhad a source of income. They were
no longer apprentice fees. So whatdo they do? I mean, you
always hear the advice fall of themoney. The London Company of Masons had
a private ceremony called the Exception,and you could be accepted as a Mason

(01:09:08):
for a pretty high fee. Andif you looked at the list of men
who were made accepted Masons prior tothe Great Fire of London, there were
middle class businessmen that the petty bourgeoisiethat didn't exist one hundred years prior to
that. They had now reached thepoint of economic strength, at economic health.

(01:09:30):
I guess that they had idle richso for some reason. And truly
do not know what happened at theceremony of the Exception, except me what
occasions In a minute Bret Morris paidtwenty pounds fifty pounds whatever it is,
walket dinner for everybody, and wentthrough the exception. All of a sudden,
the number of men being accepted intothe London Company of Masons, skywrites

(01:09:54):
shoots up. The fees shoot up. Okay, it makes sense. The
King has taken away the apprenticeship fees. There is no longer an apprenticeship.
You are put immediately to work.The London Company of Masons needs more income,
so they start making honorary members andthey're made accepted Masons. Why this
was a cool thing to do,I'm not sure it was. So the

(01:10:15):
number of Masons increases, that thenumber of non operatuite we call them today
speculative Masons, because they speculate allthe symbol on symbolism as opposed to building
the stone. The number increases.Now we get up to seventeen seventeen.
And this is part of what appealedto me. This is not just a
group where Mike and Brett got togetherwith a bear with their buddy Steve and

(01:10:39):
they decided to make a club ofmovie lovers, or if we do that,
we better throw Monica and do so. It's going to be a co
ed club of the movie lovers.And we said, yea, let's do
it. Doesn't it seem prove halfof the Masons. It was up more
of a gradual evolution, and atsome point the honorary Masons outnumbered the real
Masons. The activity of a lodgemoved from actually building with stone becoming more

(01:11:04):
of a social organization. This isat the same time that the coffee houses
are being created in London. Thisis the time when the clubs are being
created in London. You know,a London is famous for their various social
qubs, of various levels of exclusivity. So in seventeen seventeen, the Masons

(01:11:25):
of the London are having a problem. The problem is they have no one
to guide them. They're falling apartin their activities. And they say,
if we had a central authority,if we had someone in charge that would
send out a monthly newsletter remind usto keep more of our toathes, who'd
come around and check up on us, we could get our act together.
So they invented the idea of what'scalled a Grand Lodge, that is a

(01:11:47):
regional head of the Masons. Originallythe Grand Lodge of Westminster in London,
and then it expanded to England andthen they picked up Whales and here they
are today. Seventeen seventeen they formedthe first Grand Lodge and one of the
things they weren't doing. One ofthe complaints that was made is they were

(01:12:09):
not folding the lodges. We weren'tfold in the Annual Assembly at feast.
So I would like to say theywere party animals and wanted to get together
and drink and toast and eat.So now the Grand Lodgers want to do
it now. An interesting side noteto this Grand Lodge of Scotland is not
formed from seventeen thirty seven. Hesaid to himself, wait a minute.

(01:12:30):
If you guys are older than theEnglish Mason, and if many of the
important things like the Mason word camefrom Scotland, how come it took you
so long in the form of grandLook and they will respond in the flesh
because we weren't falling apart like theEnglish. We had our act together.
Our lodges function perfectly well without oversight. We would get together occasionally and have

(01:12:54):
a dinner hosted the dinner last year, we'll do it this time. And
it wasn't until seventeen thirty seven thatthey finally and pressure from England from their
own Grand Ledge, and they wereformed after Massachusetts, and I think the
order was England, Ireland, Massachusettsand then Scottwell. And at some point

(01:13:15):
shortly after being four, they taughta member of the nobility to joy and
so the Duke became grand Master andonce that happened, this is a cool
route. That means that here Iam a little shop older and I can
join the group. The Duke ofMontague his head out. He might even
come to the meeting. Will knowit wouldn't that be cool that I get

(01:13:38):
the dinner with the Duke. Soit was the first game in Terren.
It was the only game of down, and it spread like wildfire. So
the Masons didn't actually build the Templeof Solomon then were massacred afterwards. That's
the story that I tend to hear. That is the guild ledger. Every
guild had some leg for how theyformed, who their patron saints were.

(01:14:03):
Everyone wanted to trace themselves back justa little bit further. We go back
to King Solomon's temple. Oh,we go back to Hey Braham, we
go back to Adam, and wego back to the candy can't push back.
And much further than that. There'salso the stories I hear that,
oh, it was the Masons thatbuilt the pyramids. The Basons were building

(01:14:24):
King Solomon's temple, and surely theybuilt anything that came after it. And
in fact, there was one branchof the Masons that said, we go
back the Tower of Babel, whichis older than solom Step. Everyone's looking
for something old and honorable that theycan claim that makes them more special than
everyone else. And so when youguys have your meetings, do you just

(01:14:44):
talk about how to control all themembers of government? Correct? Given the
state of the government today, wetake a heads off approach. Actually,
one of the things the Masons didvery smart, very very smart, back
in maybe seven I'm sure it wasadeen seventeen, right after the Forum,
they said there are two things thatcannot be discussed at a lodge meeting.

(01:15:05):
Cannot discuss politics. You cannot discussreligion full stock what else you've invite about
your favorite soccer team. This wholething of opening it up to people that
just aren't Masons themselves, that's howit's been for a few hundred years now.
That's actually probably how you manage tobe because I don't imagine you're not

(01:15:26):
cutting stone, you're a mathematician.In my lodge, we do have a
real Stonemason. He does general contractwork, but he also does find morrible
cutting. So if you order tomath of the state of Michigan, he's
the guy that you would hire totake the morrible cutting into shape, use
mortar and foot into plays on thefloor of the wall, and then put

(01:15:47):
the mosaic who rend So we happento have a real Stonemason, the boy
Wach And we also live in.My lodge in particular, is very close
to Fort Meade, maryl So wehave an unusually large number of employees of
the National Security Agency in one place. And that's just because we are geographically

(01:16:09):
the nearest lodge. And anyone thatworks at ANSA who's a major employer in
Maryland and wants to join the lodgeprobably lives near our lodge for some reason.
And there have been honorary members goingback centuries, and you can imagine
it makes sense that you make inScotland, you make the vocal laird a
honorary member, and maybe he willsponsor around the drinks at the Christmas banquet,

(01:16:33):
you invite him to preside at theannual banquet or whatever. Doesn't hurt
to have friends like that. Sothe idea of honorary Mason's honorary members goes
back some time, and it pickedup steam as it moved forward. After
sixteen hundred, there are enough honorarymembers in London that they took over in

(01:16:53):
seventeen seven. And one of thequestions it's always raised, just how gradual
was the process. Did each yearyou get a few more honorary members until
they finally squeezed out the older members, or did the old guild system just
collapse and someone say, hey,here's a pretty cool organization. Let's take

(01:17:15):
it over and really ourselves. Andto be honest, we don't know.
I kind of like the gradual evolutiontheory, but there's not a move evidence
that there wasn't a radical shift,a radical table, but good a bit,
I don't know. And some peopleprefer the radical takeover idea that the

(01:17:38):
old Guild organization was just crumbling andmaybe to even going down to business.
All of its left was the nameThey said, you know that the Masons
used to meet here on this tavern, Well why couldn't we do it?
Oh cool? You want to bethe worst for master or the right worst
deputy grand master? Oh wow,Hoods you mentioned the idea of degrees earlier.

(01:17:58):
It's that kind of like going backto your tep scout days. Is
that kind of like Tenderfoot, youknow, like all the different stations like
with Boy Scouts. Of course yougot the Eagle Scouts and all these kind
of things. Is that a thirtythird degree was the person that's gone through
all of this. Here's what yougot at its most basic level. You
had two levels of membership. Youwere an apprentice and then you were a

(01:18:20):
fellow of the graft. And soafter you finished your apprenticeship, I think
it was a seven year apprenticeship.It was the typical apprenticeship, and you
worked for the master and there wasthis quid pro quo. He would teach
you the skills necessary to be anindependent worker, and you would provide him

(01:18:40):
with faithful service during the training period, and then you would be a mason,
a fellow of the graft. Now, during this period when you had
two levels of membership, they hadmasters, but the master was the guy
that had He was like the generalcontract. He was the guy that had
the contract. And so for theschool that we're building, you might get

(01:19:01):
the contract and you would be themaster mason, and so you would be
in charge and I would report toyou. Next contract, when we're going
to build a small chapel, Imight win the contract and then I would
be the master mason and you'd reportto me. The other way you could
be a master is you could beelected Master of lodge. It was a
presiding position, so it was aposition of responsibility and people took turns pulling

(01:19:28):
it. Now, something odd happensin seventeen twenty five, and we don't
know what it is because all ofa sudden there is a new level of
membership called Master Mason. So nowthere are three levels of membership entered,
apprentice, and Fellow of the craft. And now there's a new third one
called master Mason. And we're prettysure that it stirred in Scotland. We

(01:19:55):
think we know what date it waspicked up by English Masons and made it
back to England, but we don'tknow why it started. We don't know.
We suspect that it was started bythe joel and Masons because it involves
a guild legend. But it's aguild legend that had never been heard of
before. Just like a lightning bolt, it suddenly appears. It's a pretty

(01:20:19):
entertaining story, morals in it andloss of symbolism. You can see where
it would be much more interesting thanthe very simple welcome to the Lodge type
of ceremonies that existed for an apprenticein a philograph, So that starts in
seventeen twenty five, and then eightyears later, in seven bout thirty three,

(01:20:41):
we have the first evidence of afourth degree of membership, and this
is called the scott Semester and hadnothing to do with Scott. Then they
started coming fast and furious, andso you had dozens of them, hundreds
of them appearing as near as wecan tell. Friends, really what gaga
over these extra degrees? So theystarted producing them by the handfuls, then

(01:21:06):
by the armloads, and by theend of the eighteenth century you have one
of the branches, it's familiar withthe United States, is the Scottish rite
with thirty three degrees. But thenyou add the Royal Large Masons, the
mark Master Masons, the Knights Templewhere the Royal or Scotland the mistress goes.

(01:21:26):
And they were all connected and gluedtogether in different ways, all overlapping
degrees. I would borrow or plagiarizeyour degree, you would borrow and plagiarize
my degree. And I think whathappened is that the most organizational successful groups
through the ones that prevailed for whateverreason, you were a better organizer than

(01:21:49):
I was. So your system ofthirteen levels of membership worked better than my
system of fifteen levels of membership,not because thirteen or fifteen were important,
but because you were a better administrator, Dalia. And so you were charismatic,
you organized. You belong to enoughorganizations in your life that you've seen

(01:22:12):
well run organizations and poorty run organizationsreally doesn't have anything to do with the
mission of the organization. So whathas happened in the United States, And
this is one of the things thattripped up to the script writers all and
murdered by decree. They assumed thatthe thirty third degree, but it was
the pelicle. No, the thirtythird degree is the peinicle, or a

(01:22:34):
branch of Masonry called the Scottish writer. There is another branch of Nasonry that
in the United States we call theYork. They don't call it the York
right at all. In England it'skind of what's the York? But there
are all kinds of other organizations youcan join. And that's one of I
think the lasting strengths of freemasonry isthat every twenty five years, maybe a

(01:22:59):
new organization is created sometimes you'll havea whole flurry of activity and it will
create a dozen organizations within ten yearsor something. And these often turn out
to be young guys that join theorganization and they find out that all the
leadership positions are taken again the otherbranches. Okay, spark, I said,

(01:23:19):
we'll start our own group, andthey start their own group, and
then they fill up the leadership positionsand someone comes up. And I think
a good way to think about itis think about a university community. Everybody
is a student and is going toget a bachelor's degree. Oh, here's
assuming we finished college. Some peoplewant to play football, and they want

(01:23:42):
to play serious football, so theycome out of school's NCA team. Other
guys want to play football, butnot at that level of competition, so
they joined the intramural game where thedorms play against each other, the fraternities
play against each other. You havethe same thing with music organizations, marching
band, the jazz band. Youhave there's a chemistry club, there's their

(01:24:04):
singing groups. So you can joina lot of these organizations. And these
organizations are all built upon the foundationof the college, the college years,
the base level, and actually inwhile it is the bottom, it is
the most powerful piece. Five betaKappa may be an important honor. People

(01:24:25):
may gas when you say I'm aKappa gradual, Oh wow, But being
five beta Kappa doesn't give you anykind of privileges at the budget. It
doesn't give you any kind of authorityto assign professors to teach topics. It
just happens to be an honor thatacknowledges at one point you achieve a certain
level of academic bascheles, and soall of the other brand of masonry.

(01:24:48):
The Scottish Rite, the York Right, and the Shrine are probably the three
biggest one. Then the Eastern Starthat that's the code for men of their
wives. Those are probably the fourbig organizations. There are dozens of groups.
If you're interested in Massonic history,the chick will are interstood. There
are two large national groups. Oneis called the Fellow Leathies Society that means

(01:25:12):
lovers of truth, it's the Greekword. And the other one is just
called the Masonic Society, and theypublish a quarterly journals with Masonic history artist.
So now if you like Masonic history, why you won't remember one of
these groups or both of them.If massonic history isn't quite your thing,
maybe it'd be happy, happier beinga Shriner. And they're the ones that

(01:25:33):
were marching the parades, they werethe fezes, and they have this breathtaking
network. I think it's twenty fourchildren's hospitals around the United States. They
were created at the time of thepolio epidemic back in the early nineteen twenties,
and so they were originally orthopedic hospitals. And now something interesting has happened.

(01:25:56):
A medicine is moving away from impatientcare and it's outpatient care. It
is only the most serious of operationsthat they'll have you stay overnight in the
hospital. They want to get youout of there as fast as they can,
and so previously, back in thenineteen twenties, when a child with
the polio might spend weeks or monthsin the hospital getting treatment, they just

(01:26:18):
do an an outpatient basis. Anotherinteresting thing that happened, and this factoid
sticks in my mind. Back inhow to say that forties or fifties,
in the Twin Cities area Minneapolis SaintPaul, there was exactly one pediatric hospital
and that was the Shrinder's Hospital inpatrolling, so they do not They specialize

(01:26:40):
in orthopedic medicine for children, butthey also provide other childhood services. Today
there are eight pediatric hospitals in thearea. And the Shreders went from having
a monopoly who being worn. Theymay move to a competitor because they are
ten miles further away, So there'san evolution of what they offer. Yeah,

(01:27:01):
they're they're all kinds of branches ofmasonry. And the big Cahuna is
the president of the universe, thegrand Master of the Grand Lodge. Everybody
else, no matter how important youthink the president of five betacap is,
no matter how important you think thethirty third degree is. When you get
down to it is the grand Masterof the president of the university that pulls

(01:27:23):
the strings. So what was itabout the nineteen seventies And it might have
gone back even earlier. I knowthere is the book The Ripper Files,
and then that kind of lit afire to suddenly recast the Masons as protecting
perhaps one of their fellow members whohas Jack the Ripper. How does all

(01:27:44):
of this stuff happen? Why areyou guys the bad guys? All of
a sudden, it's not just us. You take any societal institution and you
conclind that they have ups and downs. And Stephen Knight, a curious thing
is in England all the bad pressto the Masons is about helping each other
socially, or the police are allMasons. They give special treatment to their

(01:28:08):
brothers. In the United States,it's all that the Masons are the anti
Christ, that they are secretly paganreligious worshippers, and no particular concern about
government corruption. It's all religious corruption. I guess a social historian familiar with
English history and American history would beable to explain why one black beast is

(01:28:35):
anti religion and the other black beastis helping insiders. But for whatever reason,
Stephen Knight writes this book in nineteenseventy six, I believe that was
the date in England, and hecomes up with this fairly convoluted story that
has massive holes, but it appealedto the public and in particular the Masons.

(01:28:59):
The night guys that have been aroundall the time, but you know,
they always get the other drinks afterwork, and it always seems you
ever know is that the Masons nearlyalways hire another Mason to work for them,
there's something going on. I'm notin the Masons, and they've got
an edge that I don't know,just like the And I think he gets
back to the social structure in England, where you've got landed gentry, where

(01:29:24):
you have nobility, where you havethe bourgeoisie that is above the working class,
and you have this very small classseparation in England. So there's some
jealousy. So Knight's book came out. When you read the details, they're
huge holes in the story. Wikipediaas a pretty good summer and it became

(01:29:46):
popular and it went through twenty editions, I think, and then ten twelve
years later, I think it wasnineteen eighty eight, Stephen Knight came out
with his book The Brotherhood, wherehe learned to demonstrate that the may Masons,
especially Masons and the police were doingfavors to their friends and buddies and
wash my back and I'll wash youa back type of thing. Now,

(01:30:09):
while that's going on England, inthe United States and now I want to
say this was about nineteen ninety aguy in the Southern Baptist conventional, James
Larry Ollie I believe was his name. He was a physician down in Dawn,
Texas. He got it in hismind that the reason that the Southern

(01:30:32):
Baptists losing members was because we allowedthose satanic devil worshiping freemasons to be members
of the church and to have positionsof authority. It had nothing to do
that every other denomination in the UnitedStates was losing membership. The Baptists were
special and the Baptists were different.And the I mean, you would expect

(01:30:55):
the Presbyterians of the Catholics to gobecause they're not Baptists, the Baptists.
And so what he does is hewrites this book on Freemasonry and Baptists and
then the Southern Baptist Church. Andthen he is a I think they're called
messengers. He's a voting member ofthe Annual Convention of the Southern Baptist Church.

(01:31:17):
And he puts emotional floor that theSouthern Baptists are willing to dis fellowship
all Freemasons. And it is likeslapping the side of the head with the
two before. No one expected thisto come. He just decided to do
it. And then all of asudden there is this wild scramble as churches.
There's some churches there's saying, waita minute, are the Masons really

(01:31:38):
a problem. Let's check into thisanother. Churches are saying, wait a
minute, three fourths of our decountsthen, and the associate pastor and the
principle of the superintendent of the SunnySchool are all Masons. They're not a
problem. What kind of idiot isthis? So there's this for some reason.
On both sides of the Atlantic,there are these attack on freemason for

(01:32:00):
internally different reasons. And then DanBrown comes out with his book The Da
Vinci Code, and that is nowtwo thousand and five maybe, so you
know, you've got seventy six.You have the Jack the Ripper things that
the Masons are up committing these horriblemurders to cover up the one of their

(01:32:20):
own who with the Prince of waleO Deserver which was air apparent to the
throne. And then you have theattack Night continues his attack that the Masons
are now helping each other in anunethical way. And then you shift across
the Atlantic and now all of asudden, the Masons are being attacked.
They're the anti Christ. And thenten years after that, fifteen years after

(01:32:45):
that, Dan Brown comes out withthe Da Vinci Code eighteen million copies.
I think it's home nineteen million copies. No one expected them. They're like
two or three sentences about the Masonsin there. They say something nice about
the Mason, but all of us, so of the Masons are good guys.
And then you have national Preasure,National pressure, the worldly successful movie,

(01:33:08):
and that there's a secret message onthe back of the deco region of
Independence. And it's just a it'sa carnival ride. It don't pay too
much attention to the plot. Andnow the Masons and the good guys go
figure for the Catholics. The goodguys or are they child boets? These
various groups have ups and downs.How did you come to rate the Complete

(01:33:28):
Idiots Guide to Freemasonry? Chris Hodappwrote the Dummies and so you have Freemasons
for Dummies done, then you haveto completed its guide. And he came
to that's why. I was workingfor the Supreme Council the Scottish headquarters in
Washington, and he showed up whenwe do some research. I met him
for the first time. I helpedhim and I said, one nice project,
good luck, I'm looking forward toreading it. And then four or

(01:33:51):
five months later, I get acall for a buddy of Marine and he
said, I was just asked towrite the Complete Idiots Guy to Freemasonry.
I don't have time. I didn'tlike agent they sound. I told him
you might be interested. I said, oh yeah, let me talk to
him. And so this is aroundthe time the Da Vinci code is coming

(01:34:11):
out of the meaning everyone that toldmany people are lead crumbs off at Dan
Brown's table any day. My book, which was not as successful as Chris's
book, The Dummies, were notas successful with the Idiots, were not
as successful with the drumbies. Isold over fifty thousand copies of my book.
That's That's not bad at all.Published a math book by the Mathematic

(01:34:34):
Association of America, and I thinkI sold six thousand copies, which were
a math book. The two thumbsup fifty thousand, though the real world
is pretty impressive. So they gaveme the assignment. And I started teaching
at the college level back in seventysix. So I've done a fair amount

(01:34:54):
of teaching. It's early. Allbeen as an agile factory mom. But
I said to myself, Okay,what if I'm teaching a course in history
American sociology something like this, andthe term paper is to describe an American
organization in detail, how it originated, how it functions, what impact it

(01:35:16):
has on the community, what itdoes. Okay, yeah, I could
see that as being an interesting topic, and I said, now let's do
it for freemasonry. So I said, how wouldn't put that information together?
Now? Just isn't as an FI. The dummies have a fairly specific format

(01:35:38):
that you have to follow. Thebook must have at least five and no
more than nine chapters. Each chaptermust have at least three parts and no
more than five parts. You musthave at least every other page a sidebar
that's going to say a neat fact, a little more detail of the background.
As you read these books, theyhave these sidebars all through it,

(01:36:00):
and east sideboards is formulate. Youcan't go more than two pages without putting
in a sidebar. You have tohave at least three kinds of sideboard.
One is just a factual historical theSchreider's work was formed in nineteen twenty seven
or twenty four whatever it is,so that you're just a factual sidebar.
And then another one we're going toexpand and explain that a thirty third degree

(01:36:24):
mason has no more authority than amaster mason and a local watch. And
so you have these little sideboarders,and it's a pretty successful formula. Now
you need to have someone that hasa pretty broad background topic if they're going
to write this beginner's and production,because having that broad topic means you know

(01:36:46):
what has to be included, andmore important than that, what can be
exclude. So how many different coedorganizations do we want to talk about in
the book. There's the Eastern Store, there's the Order of the Ambulances,
the boy Shwine at Jerusalem. Theirlist, those aren't known, and so
I knew enough to list the twobiggest ones. And then I said,

(01:37:06):
in addition to these, here aresome others that existed in their even chocolate
block. I had enough knowledge thatI knew what to put it in,
what to keep out. So Iput together the book and it was reasonably
successful. Penwin is the parent companyof Alpha, which publishes the Completities guides.

(01:37:30):
They are not as aggressive about translatingand putting their additions in other countries,
whiley who handles the Dummies, isvery aggressive about translating and getting other
dishes out around. So I'm veryenvious of Chris that he had a more
aggressive publisher. That's how I becamethe editor that completed Its Guide, and

(01:37:57):
I also had the advantage at thatpoint I was the editor of the Scottish
Rite Journal, which was the largestcirculation with sonic magazine in the world and
one of the things and I'm amusedby this to know if you look at
the cover of the completed Its Guideto Freemasonry by Esprit Morris Kama, PhD.
I have given up my major writingand editorial duties simply because I got

(01:38:23):
some health issues that make really fatigue. With the meds I'm taking and the
health issues I take lots of naps. Nice thing about naps is the side
effects of naps are well understood andthey're pretty benign, so I don't worry
about that. But I just didn'twant to have the pressure hanging over me

(01:38:43):
of grinding something else. I haven'tstopped attending meetings. I am working on
some projects that particularly interest me.I remember that I told you earlier that
I was Charles Warren's successor and QuadrudCoronati Lodge Quadru Coronati was the first lodge
of historians, or the first lodgeof we call ourselves the Authentic school as

(01:39:06):
opposed to the Romantic school, andpublish something by Quadrucornati. They want a
footnote. You can't just say,yeah, the English like orange, mormal
ad better than strawberry. No,you've got to say production records turn into
the ministry of whatever show so manytons versus so it has to be factual.

(01:39:30):
So one of the things I findthat I enjoy is type setting,
because it's the mathematical way of layingout these objects that look appealing, that
fit into a regular grid, andthey are simul clorously mathematically organized, and
they're also visually appealing. And soif you what is the rule. I've

(01:39:55):
seen the chart, but if youhave, I think it's twenty words.
Is the op with the paragraph?Your eye can fall twenty words, get
to it, drop down and startthe next line, and you don't lose
the one if you have an enormouslylong line with eighty words that you get
so far down to the end ofthe line and you go back, you
try to go to the next lineand your loss your eye can't fall.

(01:40:18):
So there's an example of a rulethat makes reading easier. As a mathematician,
I can apply that mathematical rule andyet it produces something that is esthetically
pleasing. I helped the editors ofboth the Scottish Rite Research Society in the
United States and Quadrum for a NATILodge in England. I helped the way

(01:40:40):
out in design books. And thenone of the things that I enjoy doing
is indexing. And indexing is deeplymathematical to me and one of the things
we want to do that a QuadricordatiLodge is. Since eighty six the Foundation
found the lodge, we have producedan annual transactions, so papers that were

(01:41:02):
delivered to the lodger or submitted fromresearch and they were indexed every year.
We want to merge the indexes together, but that becomes very interesting. Are
you going to be indexed as whiteComma Mike. Okay, that's cool.
We could also index you as whiteComma Michael. We could index you as
white Comma m period. We couldindex you as White Comma Captain Michael,

(01:41:28):
Comma USA or USM or whatever.It did. The thing that is most
important about building an index take astyle and stick to it. You can
and in fact, it's good advicefrom a book. You can argue about
whether you need an Oxford comma orat the end of the day, make
a decision and stick to it.And so what I've been doing is my

(01:41:53):
goal is to take the one hundredand thirty existing indexes merge them together in
such a way that you can lookup peanut butter and you're really interested in
crunchy peanut butter, so you lookunder peanut butter might be a category of
nut butters. And so when yougo to peanut butter and say seed nut

(01:42:14):
butters, and it'll list all littlebutter, peanut butter, cashew butter,
and then under peanut buttered it'll havesmooth and creamy like that. So that's
a long term project that I'm lookingat. Mister Morris, thank you so
much for your time today. Thiswas so great talking with you. Absolutely,

(01:42:50):
I'd like to start with how youdecided to become an actress. I'm
always curious about how people decide tobecome that profession that they stick with for
so long. I grew up inthe nineteen fifties in a very provincial then
provincial city, Toronto, Ontario,and there weren't a lot of options for
women. You could be a librarianor a nurse or a teacher, but

(01:43:14):
nothing creative, and I just alwayswanted to do it. My mother said
I was irritatingly dedicated, and thatfrom the age of five I wanted to
do this to have fun and toplay dress up, because those are pretv
days and we had to entertain ourselves. And then when I was twelve,
I joined an organization called the TorontoChildren Players, run by Raymond Massey's sister,

(01:43:42):
whose named Dorothy Goulding, and wegathered in a church basement every Saturday
for our two and a half hoursand did improvisation and pantomime, and then
once a year we presented at abig auditorium in the city. And I
like the people. They were fun. They was so constrained and so uptight

(01:44:08):
in the fifties that this was liberating. If this is what it's all about,
this is what I wanted to do. My mother was very supportive,
my father not so much. Butmy mother found that there was an apprentice
scholarship in Niagara on the Lake,where the Shaw Festival was close to,

(01:44:30):
and so I went for six weeksand got nothing but rent and food and
swept the floor and ironed the clothesand did that for six weeks. And
again it was in Iowa. LouisZarig, I don't remember that name.
We did a lot of movies too, but he played cat on a hot

(01:44:53):
tin roof, and about halfway intothe show it did burned, literally burned
down. So the next year NateGoodwin and his wife impended me and somebody
else to go back again, andthis time they were in Flint, Michigan.
How that has changed, Oh boya. But we had a wonderful time,

(01:45:15):
and they were musicals. And thenI was in my middle teens and
I would stayed in these actors fromNew York. If you had the chance
to study in London, England,or in New York, where would you
go? Oh London, for sure, because it was just a better education
all around. And so I auditionedand got into a school and went off

(01:45:38):
around seventeen years of age to Londonand studied the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
and then got into the rep system. And the education was good, but
what was great was being in thatcity of fifteen hundred, two thousand years
where we could go from fifty centsto see any opera, any ballet,

(01:45:59):
any play, whether it was theRoyal Shakespeare Company, the National hadn't been
formed yet, so it was awonderful place to grow up. So I
stayed with it. Did I readthat you worked with Donna Michi when you're
young? I did. He wascharming that at that was at the Flint
Musical Tent, and I think Flintwas at that point very wealthy white suburb.

(01:46:28):
Its employees and executives came from GeneralMotors so they could afford to support
fifteen hundred tent. So yes,Donna Michi, lots of wonderful, interesting
people. Yeah, So what happenedafter you graduate from RATA? I'm a
Canadian, so I could get intothe repertory system there. So I found

(01:46:51):
an agent and I did a weeklyrep for seven months. That's every show
every other week except for the Christmasspecial. And then I did the Northeast
Shakespeare Festival, which was amazing.It was a twenty five hundred seat theater
and the Beatles nobody had ever heardof. These four kids were jumping around

(01:47:15):
on the stage on an off nightwhen I know it wasn't It was a
Saturday night and we were in rehearsal. I can't make this up and we
said. The older people said,oh rubbish, but there was something fun
about for us younger members of thecompany. And then I was lucky enough
to get a job in the WestEnd with Donald Pleasants and Charles Gray for

(01:47:39):
Beetles and that ran for six monthsin the West End, and then I
had to go back and forth.My father was dying of cancer and Donald
Pleasance was the producer and he said, I will give you a compassionate leave
of absence for three weeks if yougive me a fortnight two weeks to find
a placement, and when you comeback, you have a job. Can

(01:48:02):
you imagine anybody saying that in thiscountry. No, no, so I
did. He actually gave me amonth. I stake for a month,
basically said goodbye to my father,went back, came back into the company
and we continued for another few months. And then it was bouncing back and
forth and then starting to work intelevision, which was considered they looked on

(01:48:27):
their nose as you're doing television.That was in the sixties. And then
I came back to Canada and gota lot of work at the Canadian brought
scorporation. In those days, theywere doing classics, so I did Shakespeare
and all kinds of different plays,during which I was discovered quote unquote by

(01:48:51):
Eleanor Kilgallen at Universal Studios, andso that was a back and forth,
and then I ended up in Hollywood, never unpacked a bag, always had
my passport ready because I didn't thinkit was going to last. And here
we are sixty years later. I'mstill here and loving Los Angeles, especially

(01:49:12):
now that I'm not in the businesssights. It's a wonderful city, really
quite extraordinary. Once you got toHollywood. What were someone really rolls like
for you? I Pink Madigan wasone of the first with Henry Fonda,
who was just a prince. Whata lovely man, wonderful man. And
I later in the late seventies andten years later I did another movie with

(01:49:34):
him in Montreal City on Fire,which what's interesting, but he was always
charming and he and his then wifetook me out for dinner in New York
and I was really tongue tied fora while. Don SEAgel did both Madigan
and Coovid's Block Yeah, which isanother location in New York, which is
great fun, great fun in thelate sixties was all under all this energy

(01:49:59):
coming in from the young people andlots of change in and it was good.
Don't single didn't like actors. Heonly liked movie stars because actors asked
too many questions. Henry Vonda wasboth a theater actor and a film actor,
big star, and he just wouldgive me a wink and say come
and let's have a coffee, andhe would answer questions and Lend Eastwood really

(01:50:25):
understood what movies were about. Andhe kept saying to the seagull, I
don't really need to say this.Why didn't she say it? Oh,
I don't need to And I thought, why is he giving away all the
style of because the camera was onhim and he was just listening. So
he was very interesting. It wasa great shoot. I remember going to

(01:50:45):
the Cloisters and standing on the topof the t W Way building for the
final shot coming up. It wasa great time to be in New York
and working and we stayed in afabuinous luxury hotel and Clint knew everybody from
the series Raw Hide. I metRay Charles. It was really fun and

(01:51:06):
it was a good film. Ithink it was a good film. Don
Stroud and I were both under contract, and as was the young woman whose
name I don't remember because I thinkshe left the business shortly after. But
the three of us would like stareat each other and saying, oh my
god, this food is fantastic.Whoa hey, three young kids just having

(01:51:31):
a ball with all this time andenergy and money and all of that coming
in. So it was fun.It was good. You were in one
that is just a bizarre film,Skullduggery. What were your memories of her?
Kid bad? My memories of allthese movies that I'm looking at in
your list are the place is anothercharacter. So the place for Skullduggery was

(01:51:57):
Jamaica, beautiful and beautiful. Theyhad just become independent from Britain. We
walked into a civil war. Therewas the blue stripes and the red stripes,
and we went through three directors.It was very difficult, so I'm
not sure nobody really understood it.I was under contract still, and I

(01:52:18):
did I think, four different voiceovernarrations to try and explain what was going
on, which even I didn't understand. And I was there. Bert Relolds
was a pretty good director. Hehad to take over because we were spending
I don't know how many thousands aday waiting for the studio to send the

(01:52:39):
next director. We had lovely youngpeople from Indonesia who played the trophies,
the monkeys in these absurd suits andthis heat, and they were lovely.
But there was a lot of financialshenanigans behind the scenes. It was a
mess. But on camera, EdwardFox and I stayed friends for a long

(01:53:01):
time. Hans Gude August became abig soap star and never really saw it
much of him later, and itwas fun. That island itself is so
beautiful. Remember going to location andseeing a sign at six o'clock in the
morning as we drove up into theBlue Mountains, you are now entering Martha

(01:53:23):
Bray, who says, entering MarthaBray, who was at Martha Break But
it was a famous Jamaican who heldthe line against the British. And it
was a very political time in theUnited States. The Vietnam War was going
on. It was tense. Itwas tense because of people stealing money from

(01:53:44):
the show. The directors were replacedfor I have no idea why so the
solid part of it was the story, which this one time producer really loved.
It was a French novel called TheseAnimal Pinitive and it was an interesting
thing. But the script didn't work. Sometimes changing from a novel or a

(01:54:10):
short story or whatever to a scriptto a film just dies. Somehow it's
lost in the translation of one modalityto the next. So it didn't work.
But it was Yeah, it wasnice. Memories. My memories happy
memories were of Jamaica and Bob Marley. Hello. There was Bob Marley seeing

(01:54:31):
a little club in the town thatwe were all billeted in. So that
was fun. Get Ray Charles onone movie and Bob Marley on the next.
Yes, a little bit in between. But please tell me that Forben,
the Colossus project was not the messthat sculptor gery was. Though it
wasn't. It was very organized.It was very boring to do because they

(01:54:55):
had tape doing the machines the Colossus. The actors had to wait until all
its technology at very early times,and so all of this technology had to
fit hand and glove, and ofcourse it didn't. So we were lucky
to get I don't know, threefour minutes a day, but most of
us were under contract or had adeal with the studio, so they didn't

(01:55:16):
seem to mind that it was costinga fortune. But again I was not
the right generation to appreciate what wascoming with internet and computers. One funny
aside was that about a year lateror two, I was in Seattle at
the Seattle rep playing Lady Macbeth ina wonderful production. And we had to

(01:55:40):
do to get the money from thegovernment, state and federal, you had
to do three shows for kids,teenagers, high school, and of course
it had to be at nine o'clockin the morning. And I had no
idea that they would I didn't quiteunderstand. They were restless and whispering and
all that when we were doing Michelle. But there would be like eighteen young

(01:56:02):
people standing at the stage store,and I thought, that's weird. They
didn't want to talk about Macbeth.They wanted to talk about Colossus, the
Forbin project, and they wanted toknow how we did it, and what
the computers and where we eat inthe Lawrence Livermore Lab. Yes we were,
and we have to take our clothesoff, Yes we did, and
what was as machine like? Itwas great, So it was interesting I

(01:56:25):
don't think we got it really whyit was so popular and it's now I
guess, become a cult film.I do know was there ever any talk
of a sequel to that? BecauseI know there were three books and you
just made the first one. Idon't remember. I don't think it made
enough money like or it to reallyflow into a series. And maybe it

(01:56:46):
was ahead of its tone, verymuch ahead of its time. They said,
oh, I didn't make any money. So then we went to Airport
seventy five, total opposite direction thatwas universal in those days. Well,
speaking of universal, do you menhave to ask you about your Colombo experience?
Oh? I loved it. Iloved it. Oh good, because
I had heard that Peter Falk hasbeen a little difficult at that time.

(01:57:10):
He was very difficult, but hewasn't never difficult with actors. He was
difficult with what is called you knowwhat the Black Tower was. Peter was
great and he said, you reallywant to say this ship? I said,
jer shoe, what do you wantto say? He said, let's
just figure out what we want todo. When do we have And then
he'd look up at Norman Loyd,who was directing wonderful became a lifelong friend.

(01:57:32):
He just died at one hundred andsix a year ago. It's a
Norman's he what do we have todo? Whatever you want, dear boy,
whatever you want, he said,We're going to go for a walk.
So it's Mutton Jeff here we arewalking around and he said, okay,
as I think, and we hadour scene in front of us.
This is the what's important. Therest of it's just I said, Okay,

(01:57:54):
what do you want to do?I said, He said, let's
try this, and we improvised.He was all good and all of that,
and it was a lot of fun. That part was fun. Peter
did apologize one day. He said, the Black Tower executives at Universal promised
that I could direct five episodes,and now they're rerenegging. So he said,

(01:58:16):
I want to take a walk.Do you mind if I take a
walk today and you do your closeups on your own? I said,
no, I'm fine with that.Stand up to yourself. Absolutely. Years
before, I did a movie calledBeldez Is Coming with Burt Lancaster and Spain
and we were sitting in the mountainsoutside the famed city of Avila as in

(01:58:40):
Teresa, and he said, andHe was a very tense, difficult person.
He didn't chat up Bert he was, but he said come here,
sit down, okay, all right? So I sat and we were looking
at this beautiful vista over the mountainsearly in the morning, and he said,

(01:59:00):
just want to tell you, don'tlet the bastards grind you down.
And I said, you mean thestudio. Yeah. So I got a
lot of backgrounds from Wander Lancaster,Richard Widmark. These men, not so
much the women. They didn't seemto They weren't considered to be important enough

(01:59:24):
to beat last long. There wasthis quick turnover because it was a very
male dominated business. Thank god itisn't any more. That led into the
next one, which is Night Loves, which was Arthur Pennon, amazing director
and Gene Hackman again difficult, hurtby the business here and manipulated and all

(01:59:49):
of that. The Harvey Weinstein's existedin those days. But I was protected
from all of a lot of themost of that by having two women as
my bosses. It was Eleanor Kilgallenin New York and Minique James on the
West Coast. And when it occurred, depending on the time of day,

(02:00:09):
I would call collect California and theywould put me through and I would tell
Minique what was going on. Shesaid, not to worry, dear,
just go and have a nice meal. The next day, that person was
gone absent, But many of mycontemporaries were not so lucky. They've been
hired by other people. But NightMoves, Arthur Penn was great with women.

(02:00:33):
He was a wonderful director, andI like the script. I remember
that Shirley Bernstein was my manager atthat point, and she sent me from
I was doing a play at theWilliamstown Theater Festival, and she said,
you're going to have to drive tomeet Arthur Penn. He'll see you.
So I got into this car onmy day off and drove I don't know

(02:00:55):
where through the Berkshires and found Arthurpan And he didn't ever ask people to
read. He just wanted to talkgreat and so I enjoyed that too.
That was I didn't get to goon. Most of my work was either
the airport or once the sound stage. But he was a theater and film

(02:01:17):
director, and he rehearsed with thewhole cast for two weeks, including Melanie
Griffith, who was I don't know, fifteen or something. I was lucky
enough to be to learn the classicsat the Royal Academy, and then also
lucky enough from about seventy to workwith Stella Adler in Los Angeles, who

(02:01:41):
famously said to me, I'm goingto break your English jaw, meaning that
it's not in the words, it'sin the intention. So what a movie
is not You can say, don'tforget the milk, or I like cream
cheese with my potato. It doesn'tmean anything thing until you understand beneath it,

(02:02:01):
what's the intention? Where is thisgoing? So she was able to,
with exercises and going once or twicea week, two classes when she
was out she'd be out maybe threefour months in the summer, understand what
that meant. So I looked aroundand I thought, there are a lot
of women who are conflicted, whoare in terrible marriages, who want to

(02:02:26):
have kids, are they want tohave a career, and their husbands are
wandering or messed up or whatever.So it was easy to just watch and
read. It was all in mismagazine, and all those women's the good
ones, not the ones that areselling ads for makeup and facelifts, but

(02:02:46):
the other really good writing was happening, So that's I think that was how
it was fun. Also, Jeanhad been a theater actor, so he
also liked to improvise, and Arthurwanted us to take the script and play
with it. So when we didthe big fight in the kitchen, I

(02:03:06):
reached up and smacked all the pots, made a horrendous noise and got a
great reaction from Markman, and helater said, I wanted to do that.
You beat me to it. Iliked that. I went to New
York, I met Ded Allen,the editor. I watched her cut in
the old fashioned way, actual film. I went to observer Arthur teaching a

(02:03:30):
class at the Actor Studio. Thesewere fun days. A couple of the
other things you wrote to philm thetwo films North Avenue are Regulars and The
Apple Dumpling Gang. That was likeconnecting the dots. Disney was so structured,

(02:03:51):
and the director he actually had aboard and this is in the middle
seventies, late seventies for the secondone, he know, you actually moved
here and that line and over hereyou look what. Yes. I also
had a really good company of actorswho just told me said yes, and

(02:04:11):
ignored and went on it did whateverthey wanted to do. But he framed
his shot and he knew what itwas. It was like working with a
computer. But I don't think theydo that anymore. I think that was
then North Avenue of Regulars, allthose crazy women of Cloris Leachman used to
tell everybody that she was a vegetarianat that point, bless her soul.

(02:04:34):
And she would go around and she'dsay, do you know what you're putting
in your body? All that meat, all that fat, It's disgusting.
Then she decided to go and lockherself in her trailer, and mister Disney
himself had to come down and persuadeher that the showmen to go on.
And the crew was so mad,and the director was so pissed off that

(02:04:56):
just said thank you, Claris,just so were there till we're ready.
So that night we were working late. It was a night shot, and
in those days you just didn't thinkabout it. You drove to the studio
at midnight and you bartchigar and newshot all night. And I was coming
back in a break and I seeChlorus coming with a huge container of soup

(02:05:19):
that was obviously full of meat,and I said, whoa are you working
tonight? Oh no, I'm justbringing a little apology to the crew.
Karen Valentine was a sweetheart. Shewas lovely. All of those women were
fun. That was fun. Ispoke with Bruce Bilson and Edward Herman a

(02:05:40):
few years ago. Hobby said,before mister Hermann passed and nobody really has
anything good to say about Corse Light. It was horrendous. I think some
of these guys, I think Hermannone. I think he was married.
I think he wanted he had afamily. Hello, it's a job,
it's not a religion. So forsomebody to every day be late with set

(02:06:04):
and we're all standing around, orhave a problem with the food, or
have a problem with some there wasalways a problem. And I understand.
She was the mother of eight kids, and I have such respect for her
talent, amazing talent, and Ithink she's bored. So when she got

(02:06:24):
bored, she just misbehaved. Therest of us just went home to our
partners with babe. Was that thefirst time that you met Alex Carris?
Yep, Yeah, buzz Culiko isthe director hired me six months before and
persuade at MGM to have me trainin hurdling and running and throwing the javelin

(02:06:48):
and golf. So I had beenworking out for six months with a wonderful
young man who was on the tourgolf tour, Mickey Shoulder, and I
had fun and Buzz said, youhave to come and meet Alex Carris.
In fact, you have to comean audition. It's Sunday's Day before Valentine's

(02:07:08):
Day. And so we went toCBS in Los Angeles and there were three
guys and they were all big andfootball players. But Alex was the one
who made up his own dialogue.He didn't like the dialogue, so he
made it up and when I triedto respond, he just put his hand
in front of my face and said, Smith, I don't know. And

(02:07:30):
that was a little kind of strange. But apparently what Buzz and the other
the producers and the writer saw achemistry that I didn't particularly see at that
poet. But then Alex would sneakover to the golf Force nine whole golf
course in Studio City, Weddington,the Weddington Golf and Mickey would say,

(02:07:54):
oh, that actor's there again.He's hiding in the bushes and come he
is. He wanted to make surethat his big moment in television was not
going to be messed up by somewoman who did not know how to do
anything as far as athlete lads wereconcerned. And Mickey doubled me in all
the great lull golf shots. Ohhe was teased mercilessly to put on the

(02:08:20):
wig and the dress, and ohit was really funny. But he was
a good egg. Lots of fun. But it changed my life because that
we started living together about eight monthslater and had a child and got married
and I had thirty seven years ofa wonderful relationship. So Babe is probably

(02:08:41):
my favorite. Buzz Kulick. Hejust had a knack with actors, and
that is the sign of a director, somebody who listens, who doesn't talk
a lot, whom doesn't push aroundor redetermined where everything there's another guy that
wanted to rehearse. And so Alexand I and maybe three or four other

(02:09:05):
actors would go to his house,to Buzz Kulick's house and sit around the
dining table and his wife and servicecoffee in Danish or whatever, and we
would just keep reading and reading,and the screenwriter was there and she would
change stuff. It's a work inprogress always, and so when somebody sets
it installed and it makes it veryhard. It's a dialogue going back and

(02:09:28):
forth with the director and the writerand the other actors, and then in
the theater it's a dialogue with theaudience. There. You don't improvise,
you do not change anything that's writtenin stone. But how you do it
is not where the pauses are.That's not an issue. So the directors
that really came from theater, camefrom New York, had done early television

(02:09:54):
where it was all theater people.They had a much better time. When
was the first time you met BobClark? He wanted me for a movie
I think at Warner Brothers and WarderBrunners wouldn't accept me, and I was
devastated. Oh my god. Iknow our manager. We had a business
manager that we shared and it wasthis guy that introduced the two of us.

(02:10:18):
And he'd just done a movie inToronto, so that's where I'm from,
and so we had lots to shareabout that, and he said,
don't worry. I know it's veryhurtful and all of that, but we're
going to work together. So thefirst thing we did, murdered by Dequipitis
had a lot of other names tobut he was great. And then I

(02:10:41):
did Poor Kies later and he said, I'm the only director at Hollywood that
keeps casting you as a hooker.So murder by decree. Oh my god,
James Mason, I just was thumbstruck. He's one of my favorite actors
ever. That voice is like velvet. Christopher Plumber was naughty. We would
be shooting at night in Southolk,which is on the other side of the

(02:11:05):
river and dark, and he'd gooseme, just just try and get a
reaction. We had to have themiddle of the week off. I remember
we shot Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday Monday and had two cy Wednesday
as the weekend. So again I'dbeen to school, I had friends there,
I got to see theater. Itwas a magical job. And we

(02:11:28):
stayed at the annex of the hotel, so we had little apartments. It
was great. I loved it.We were in London. I cannot remember
the name of the hotel. IfI could, you would recognize it immediately.
We were in the West End,in Annex, which is a little
part on Albemarle Street and everything wasthere, Green Park and the West End

(02:11:54):
and fantastic restaurants, and we couldwalk to work some days and then other
days we were picked up. Yeah, so it was no. We didn't
do anything in Murder by Decree inToronto. It was all shot in London.
There was another actress, Genevie Bougeau. Yes, she was lovely.

(02:12:16):
We went to we went to rockconcerts. It was fun. I don't
think films today are fun. Ithink everybody wants too much money up front.
Maybe I don't know. It wasa company of actors and I forget
which with it told them they builtthe Thames and James Mason has come by

(02:12:37):
on his way from the makeup room. Have they thrown you in the drink
yet? Dude, No they haven't, No, not yet. It was
everybody. Frank Finnay was on hisway to becoming a major theater actor and
did a lot of film as well. But no, it was again being
in those places and when Jack theRipper was running around killing all these people,

(02:13:01):
which of course it wasn't. Itwas the head of the Mason's,
the Masonic Order, and they werelooking for the child out up wedlock with
an Irish Catholic girl and they wantedher dead. So it was a lot
of offscreen violence, but interesting,very good play, very good script,

(02:13:24):
and lots of fun to do.Yeah, the cast is phenomenal. I
couldn't believe when the cast list comesup, and just and David Hemmings,
a and Donald it's just so manypeople. John Gilgood another. All of
these actors were huge for me becauseI'd gone to school and they were at
top of their game twenty years before. And also it was a very good

(02:13:46):
script. I later did a televisionshow with that same playwright and it was
fun. Good writer. What wasmister Clark like to work with? Oh,
he was great, he was great. He said, what do you
want to do? He had tobe a little stricter because it was nice,
dangerous on that part of London,on the other side of the Thames,

(02:14:07):
but he'd say, whatever you wantto do, let's try it.
Just come prepared to do it sowe don't waste a lot of time.
And that's fair enough. That's theactor having to do their own homework.
So then the parties was later andthat was great fun. That was again
mostly at night and It was inthe jungles of Florida. But it was

(02:14:28):
great fun. He liked actors,He had a good time. That's so
important, I think for the directorto be enjoying himself as opposed to feeling
this heavy weight on their shoulders ofhaving to do X number of pages or
x number of takes, or reversethis and over the shoulder this, and

(02:14:48):
it doesn't work. It just burnseverybody out. I think you mentioned Babs
being one of your favorite roles.I'm curious what other roles you really enjoyed
doing over the years. I'd liketo and Amelia Earhart, that was fun.
I liked doing. It. Wasan interesting movie called The Choice,

(02:15:09):
and it was about abortion. Andas we were shooting it in Los Angeles,
Ronald Reagan was elected and of coursethat was Approach, not pro choice
constituency that elected him. And thisdirector was David Greene, wonderful television director,
who said, we better bloody finishedthis quickly because it'sn't gred to be

(02:15:31):
on the air. So yeah,that was interesting. It It doesn't say
one way or the other, butI think it wouldn't be done today because
it showed the clinics where they dissuadedwomen if they could not determinate a pregnancy.
Not anything that anybody ever wants todo, but sometimes have to for

(02:15:52):
a lot of religion and guilt.That was one thing I've always appreciated you
as an actress and as a woman, and as you always seem to be
conscious of those roles, even justthe way that you wore your hair throughout
the years, and just like you'veseemed to be making a statement with that.
You seemed like a very powerful character. Whether you were in Webster or

(02:16:13):
wherever, you always seem to havelike your shit together. Thank you.
That's a lovely compliment. Thank you. I think that's the Stella Addler.
She would say, don't come incomplaining. If you need therapy, God
to a therapist. Your job isto find the history, the social aspect,
what's going on in the country orcity or wherever you are. You

(02:16:35):
have to be part of this wholeor you have nothing really to contribute,
You're just saying lines. So thatwas fun. That was fun. I
remember spending time in jail when wedid The Midnight Man in with Burt Lancaster
again in South Carolina. That wasa weird place in the seventies, but

(02:16:56):
it was my first real time inthe South, and it was terrifunny.
They had cells from the nineteenth centurywhere no average person could stand up,
and that informed why my character waspretending to be so concerned where she was
a thief and ull kinds of bearerhad a nefarious past which our storm mister

(02:17:22):
Lancaster helped unravel. But yeah,the place is it? I remember Henry
Hathaway, Alex and I met JohnWayne before he passed at a big thing
for babe, and he had saidin many interviews to Henry Hathaway, Henry,
what are he got working for metoday? Which meant, what are

(02:17:45):
you shooting behind me? What arethe audience going to see? Is it
mountains? Is it desert? Isit forest? Is it a whole bunch
of other people? Am I alone? So we asked him if he'd said
that. He said, oh,damn straight. And that's a big thing,
the character of the place. Andnow they're doing it. They're doing

(02:18:07):
it in these wonderful mini series ontelevision. They never did that in television
or sixties, seventies and eighties.It was all close up and backed black
lat And now the place is acharacter and so you're drawn into it in
a magical way as an actor andas an audience hopefully. Yeah, it's

(02:18:28):
funny how you're talking about the specialeffects of Colossus, and now I think
about entire sets are just either greenscreen or wrap around. So do you
feel like you're in another place?Do you do? We the President of
the United States and all of thesescientists sitting around and they built this fantastic
set at Universal and then they wouldhave the video for Colossus and then the

(02:18:54):
film filming us with Colossus very complicatedand for those didn't understand film, and
I was one at that point inthe sixties, I thought this so boring?
Is anybody we're going to watch this? But I was wrong. I
was wrong. It was it isa very interesting film. What have you
been up too lately? I'm stilla member of the Threshold Foundation and they

(02:19:18):
know absolutely nothing about show business,which is fine, but it's working.
For over forty years, I've beenan environmental activist, peace and social justice,
so working with that kept me groundedfor forty years in Hollywood. And
now I don't see plays or muchtelevision coming to me that would indicate where

(02:19:43):
we are now. As a planetas a country, and so reality is
much more interesting and much more frightening. Hello, the end of the planet
nuclear war. You can't just sitthere and complain. You've got to get
up and do something. Planning aretreat. And one of the questions that
you had, do I have somethingto say that I believe in? And

(02:20:09):
I would say yes, let's all. If you pray, or if you
don't, that's okay too, butlet's work toward kindness, generosity, harmony,
hope and peace. Miss Clark,thank you so much. I've had
such a great time talking with youtoday. You're welcome. Good. If

(02:20:31):
you are a woman, you walkthese streets at your peril. For this
is London's Whitechapel in the time ofJack the Ripper, one of the world's
most infamous killers. Hello, DarlingBlack A bit of fan ray ray.

(02:20:56):
The dense black Hog of London hidesa multitude would have synth. It shields
a murderer whose urged to kill isconceived in cunning born in the maniac's hill.
Here are the body, spit andsaw dost haunts the Ripper knew?

(02:21:20):
But who was the Ripper? Onlyone man thought he knew The answer his
address two to one by bakstry FeaceCabin. His name was Sherlock Holmes.
It's through these murders of the workof a madman, but a madman with
certain medical skills, considerable intelligence andeducation that if you are right, mister
Holmes, it brings us back tothe doctors. Sherlock Holmes, the original

(02:21:45):
special agent, forerunner of today's thrillmakers. Sherlock Holmes, a genius at detecting
the improbable and solving the impossible.Incredible elementary, My dear Watson. Watson,
the other half of this fantastic partnership. This is Comfax, who helped

(02:22:09):
Holmes more than he knew. AndMurray, the doctor whose tongue was as
sharp as his scalpel. This butcherboy has the government has all of us
on the edge of a knife.Only this morning, three more men were
detected in the streets of London.These were the women who lived in the
shadow of the Ripper. The redheadonce famed for her beauty, the gay
bosom little Block, the provocative ofBrunette. These were the kind of women

(02:22:37):
the Ripper loved till murder did thempart. You'll never see anything like it

(02:23:13):
this side of Hell. All right, we are back and we were talking
about murder by Decree, and Ithink all of us have made references to
some of the previous and subsequent pairingsof Homes and Jack the Ripper. Let's
talk a little bit about study andterror. I like John Neville. I'm
not sure if I liked his interpretationof Homes, but you know, we're

(02:23:35):
talking about the whole pieces on thechessboard and stuff. This one just felt
the most linear, just like Holmesalways felt like he was one step behind
The Ripper until right at the end, is how I was seeing it.
And it just felt like kind oflike subpar Hammer, almost like I know
it's not a Hammer film, butit feels like Hammer so cheesy. I

(02:23:56):
did not like this at all.I wanted to like it. I liked
Neville in Houston as Watson to adegree. I didn't think they were awful,
but every time they weren't there,I didn't like anything about it.
It just felt like this, whatkind of movie are we doing here?
Like? Do you I feel likethey couldn't nailed out what totally they were
even going for. That's I thinkthat's completely accurate. They're trying to make

(02:24:20):
a period Sherlock Holmes film in nineteensixty five, and you know, you're
in the middle of Swinging London,the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and
it just felt and especially when theygot to the advertising campaign for that film
in the US and they tried toequate it with the Batman TV show and
play up the camp qualities of it. You know, the posters literally were

(02:24:43):
saying the original camp Crusader in acape and it was they were frantically trying
to figure out what the film was. I think holistically Murdered by the Cree
works better. And what distinguishes thatfrom most Sherlock Holmes films is that Sherlock
Holmes has an arc in this film. He goes on a transformative odyssey from

(02:25:05):
kind of a man in the highCastle, separate from the Mob, to
becoming their crusading advocate. And youdon't get that, I mean you certainly
don't get that in any of theRathbone films. You know, there's no
journey for Sherlock Holmes. He's SherlockHolmes when the film starts, He's Sherlock
Holmes when it does. And thatis one of the aspects of this film
that I did like is it standsout for being a Sherlock Holmes story in

(02:25:26):
which the character does have an arcand does transform in some way. Going
back to studying Terror, I mentionedthe lack of Microft this month, and
here we've got Microft in this playedby Robert Morley, who just what an
incredible face. It feels again likehe's an actor I grew up with watching
all the time, and just lookingat the number of credits and things that

(02:25:50):
he was in, it was like, yeah, I could see why he
was probably on television just a ton, so great to see him show up.
And this tried to do a goodthing to pull Moraley in there and
talk about how this Ripper case iskind of shaking in the halls of power,
but yeah, I just didn't pullit off. And then the other

(02:26:11):
thing that really bothered me was someof the lady's voices. There's one who's
like super squeaky, and then somany of them that just felt like they
fell off the Eliza do Little Truckwhere it's just like because I think we
start with a POV shot again,and as soon as the lady turned around,
I was just like and out Dearie, I just knew it was coming.
Gave me a headache. It reallygave me an ache. That blond

(02:26:35):
lady, especially her voice, andit's she talks for so long. It's
yeah, that was rough Man.That's real prop well in that in a
Snunty and Terror. All the prostitutesthey're gorgeous. They got all their teeth,
perfect complexions, really nice clothes,and that's you know, in murder
by decree, they at least makean effort. The women of the night

(02:26:58):
do look a little bit downtrodden.They're not, you know, shining beauties
by by any stretch of the imagination. What was the one that seduced Watson?
And I got all my teeth andoh, there goes one. The
look on her face was great becauseshe was just like, oh shit,
there it goes. So I wantedto also talk a little bit about dustin

(02:27:20):
Shadow, an account of the Ripperkillings by doctor John Watson actually being written
by another person, Lindsay Faye.Great, great book. It really worked
very well for me, and itwas kind of weird having all of this,
all of these different versions of Holmesand Jack the Ripper and how all

(02:27:43):
the pieces met and she actually wentin a different direction than I wasn't expecting,
so it actually surprised me. Sothere were a couple of good red
herrings in the book, and Iwould say, yeah, definitely check it
out if you like Sherlock Holmes stories. And of all of these things that
we're talking about studying Terred Murdered byDecree, we'll talk about From Hell in

(02:28:05):
a minute. I think that herbook is probably the best of the lot.
Well, Lindsay Faye is a verywell regarded and very knowledgeable Sherlock Holmes
fan, and that's a major figurein the Sherlockian community. So yeah,
she knows her stuff backwards and forwards. So going back to very pretty prostitutes,

(02:28:28):
Heather Graham looking really good in FromHell and does not look like she
lives on the streets and not atall. Know some of her companions don't
look that way either. They're veryvery pretty, very well put together.
And I mean the setting for thisfilm it really you know, they went

(02:28:48):
all out when it came to thesqualor and all that. But what I
saw from how the very first time, way back when in two thousand and
one at the Toronto Film Festival funny. I was talking with my friends Skizz
and he actually saw From Hell themorning of nine to eleven, and when

(02:29:09):
the movie was over, they camein and said, that's a festival's canceled
because of nine to eleven. Butwhen I saw at the first time,
not a big fan. When Isaw it again all these years later,
twenty two years later, still nota big fan. I liked the graphic
novel a lot more, but yeah, this movie, I was not feeling
it. I kind of agree withyou. It was okay, It was

(02:29:31):
okay. I only saw it once. It's not like I didn't like it
enough to watch it again. AndI mean, I like that period.
I liked my Ripper stories at onepoint, you know, when there was
all the Hulla balloon about was itPrince Eddie? I had, you know,
three or four Sherlock Holmes books thatI read. But for whatever reason

(02:29:52):
it did, that particular film didn'tgrab me. I don't look the way
it shot. I feel like it'schaotic. It's trying to be more style
lies and it needs to be.And forgetting the substance portion. I don't
necessarily like the story end of it. I really don't like the ending that
kind of oh, oh yeah,she didn't. I mean, oh,
you're wrong. I'm okay with changinga real life ending and making it more

(02:30:16):
of a fictional account. I mean, hey, once upon a time in
Hollywood, I kind of like howthat ended, But this I just didn't
like. I just didn't like.So Mary's okay, so somebody else just
died in her place. That persondoesn't matter, I don't know, And
I just didn't like that twist.I wasn't feeling the whole thing of Johnny
Depp being psychic because we it's it'svery late in the game before we start

(02:30:39):
to see the flashes that he gets. I guess it's you're taking your Donald
Sutherland and making the main character inthis one. But there's so many times
at first where he's just like,oh, yeah, I had a vision.
Oh I saw that in a vision, And I'm just like, are
you actually having visions? Are youjust bullshitting? I'd say the only thing
I liked about from how I likedit the first time, I think I

(02:31:03):
like it even more the second time. Robbie Coltrane. Yeah, I love
his character. I love when hemakes Shakespeare references and nobody gets that he's
making Shakespeare references. I like thathe got a lot of pleasure of punching
Johnny Depp to wake him up.Johnny Depp to me, I kept mixing
this movie up with Sleepy Hollow,and I was like, Oh, yeah,

(02:31:24):
this is the one. It's kindof like The Alienist, where you
know he's going to come in andhe's gonna put on like scientific equipment and
figure the case out. And I'mlike, I think my mashup is better
than either one of those films individually. I would like to see Ichabod Crane
in from Hell. I think thatmight actually make it a little bit more
interesting. I would watch that.Yeah, that sounds great. That's what

(02:31:46):
this should have been. Is hereally is a gysthematic? Does he really
have envisions? I mean, Ireally don't know what. I just don't
like this movie. I just don't. I tried so hard. This is
everything about this movie was right upmy wheelhouse, especially when it came out,
and it does not perform at anylevel for me. Well, it's
funny. It kind of goes backto what you were saying I think earlier,

(02:32:07):
David, where it's the whole ideaof like these cycles and here we
are again. Here's now Jack theRipper again, all these years later,
Like, what's the next major Rippermovie? When is that going to be
out there? But yeah, herewe are again with the same thing.
And here we are again with theMasons. And I mean the similarities between

(02:32:28):
this movie and Murder by Decree.I mean, the Hughes brothers must have
seen Murder by Decree. You've gotthe whole black eyes that Ian Holmes gets
when he gets really into his personaof Jack the Ripper. You've got all
this Masonic stuff that's going on.And here, I mean it's it's really

(02:32:50):
kind of wild to see the similarities. And they saw Murder by Decree and
that just pushed it ever so slightlyinto a different way. I'd like to
like the title. I like thatfrom Hell. I mean that's uh,
that's one of the letters that youknow, Jack the Ripper ostensibly sent to
the Central News Agency. And youcan see, you know, the letters,

(02:33:11):
you know, just pipe in Jackthe Ripper and you can see the
letter itself on Wikipedia and it's reallycreepy to look at because it goes on,
you know, from Hell, misterLusk, that's who it's addressed to
and the just the penmanship itself andthe misspelled words. It's disturbing to look
at, even if it appears tohave been uh, you know, not

(02:33:35):
legitimate kind of a hoax, notclearly from the Ripper, you know,
the guy actually doing the Ripper killings. Um. And I'm always a sucker
for a good title from hell.That's a great title. By the way,
don't make the mistake that I madeand look up killing pictures of Mary
Kelly, that good Man. Yeah, they're available, and they're pretty awful.

(02:33:56):
They are absolutely terrible. I meanwhen they say he mutilated his vic
comes, they weren't exaggerating. Well, Mary Kelly's the one that he had
a lot of time. A lotof the other killings were rushed and outdoors.
It's amazing what human beings are willingto do to other human beings.
One two he did on one nightright, like um right, yeah,

(02:34:18):
same day, the double event asit was called, Yeah, in the
whole sheet of Heather Graham. No, it wasn't really her, it was
this other one. I'm like,okay, this kind of like silence of
the lambs going to the door withthe flowers kind of thing. No,
no, the like it wasn't thehobbits in here, it was actually pillows.
You stab pillows, you silly nascual. Here you've got that, and

(02:34:39):
then you've got like basically the minorityreport ending of her and the baby or
the little girl out in this beautifulcottage that you know, in this completely
make believe type land where it's likeI almost feel like, are they dead
because it doesn't feel like they're youknow, it feels like they're in of

(02:35:00):
it rather than actually on an island. But no, she's all good.
And then poor Jenny Depp spoilers justsmokes too by jopium and floats away so
he doesn't get the happy ending.Well, that's one thing I appreciate about
this about Murder by Decree was thereis no emphasis on drug use. I

(02:35:20):
mean they make a joke of it. You know, they show homes with
a syringe in a needle, buthe's using it to clean out his pipe.
I like that. That was afun check and I believe I believe
they ran the script past the TrelockHolmes Society of London and that was why
they gave it their mark up approval. They liked the fact that there was
not an emphasis on Trlock Holmes's druguse and murder by de Create. I

(02:35:43):
would say it's it's worth watching.A lot of the cinematography is very cool.
A lot of the location shooting isvery cool. They used the Tate
Gallery in the beginning as the operahouse, and then there's a track shot
traveling shot of Buckingham Palace and notthat you know they've got permission, they

(02:36:05):
just put a camera in a carriageor a card or moving and they just
shot it and they included it intothe picture. And the sets themselves,
I mean this was shot at SheppertonStudios the same time they were shooting Alien
there. And the set that they'vebuilt just of the wharf and the Thames,
it's just magnificent. I mean thefilm has like seventeen major sets and

(02:36:28):
you know, they were really reallymeticulous about trying to capture eighteen eighty eight
Victorian London and it looks great.It's just a great looking film. A
little bit preachy at the end,but other than that, I think it's
well worth watching. Yeah. Ilove the cinematography, especially how fog is
almost a secondary character here, whichyou would almost expect from this particular storyline,

(02:36:52):
but I just I really liked theway Bob Clark captured it. And
again it amazes me that this isthe Bob Clark of poor Key in a
Christmas story and baby Geniuses. Imean, it's wild to even think that.
But I love the cinematography. Ilove the look and the feel of
the film. I think the musicreally compliments everything that's in it. The
performances are strong. I realize it'snot very purist Sherlock Holmes and they don't

(02:37:16):
disagree with David that he doesn't doa lot until the end. But I
feel like he's building towards the end, so I can in my mind,
I can justify it. He's buildingtoward that finale where he explains everything and
he's been on the trail and he'stracking him down and he's figuring it out.
When you said the end, Ithought you were talking about the scarf

(02:37:37):
in the Big Fight. I'd lovehow it's like Chekhov's scarf, Like we
get that in the first act andthen and I really appreciate how once the
fight is completely over and he's hungand everything else, that's when he collapses.
I mean, basically, just hewas going on. I'm pure adrenaline
up until that point. I lovethe wild reveal of finding Mary. It

(02:37:58):
was the crew epious reveal. Ithought, I had just a very ominous
and just horribly dour reveal of herdeath and they're just sitting there almost ogling
the body. It's just it's veryunnerving. So Bob Clark, I think
it was a very talented horror director. I felt like, and you know,

(02:38:18):
Black Christmas, I'm a big fanof that film. I like what
he does here. He does someintriguing shots. I'm very surprised as PG.
I really love the Jaws homage atthe beginning that you talked about with
the Black Eyes and I, yeah, there's a lot here that I like.
I got a real charge out ofthat. I'd forgotten it. Like
watching the scenes with the psychic,you know, Donald Sutherland and realizing that

(02:38:41):
his sister is Ralphie's teacher in aChristmas story. It's like, oh my
god, that's her. Yeah,that was great. I like that a
lot. Yeah, he definitely likedto work with the same people very often,
which was nice. And then tohear his commentary on the keynote disc
and just he sounds like he wasa kid in the candy store. When
it came to these actors, Ilove the idea of it originally being Peter

(02:39:05):
O'Toole and Laurence Olivier, and thatwould have been a little weird since we
just saw Laurence Olivier being Moriarty inseven Percent Solution. But yeah, to
your point, errand if you're ifyou're British, you're probably gonna play yeah,
Sherlock Holms. I mean even Plumberhad played Sherlock Holms the year before,
and I think I can't remember whatthat one was called the Silver Flame

(02:39:28):
or something, silver Blaze, silverBlaze, thank you. Yeah. And
the Watson in that is that theSaint Watson is from Smarter Brother. Uh
yeah, yeah, okay, thatis Yeah, that's wild because as soon
as I saw him, I waslike, I've seen this Watson before now,
so he was Watson four times.He just had he just had a

(02:39:50):
good Watson look to you. Ireally feel like you can't get into the
British Academy unless you play Sherlock Holmesor John Watson. At some point,
I think it's it's just legally required. It's a part of citizenship. What
a scandal. I have a littlepuny Robert Downey Junior coming over and stealing
British roles. What the first thatand then breaks it and he takes black

(02:40:13):
roles. He takes British roles.He just doesn't care. He doesn't care.
Downey can do anything but Canny doJimmy Stewart and Vertigo. We'll have
to see. Well. Peter PeterO'Toole did make an appearance as homes in
a cartoon. Unfortunately. My understandingis that Peter o'tool and Lawrence Olivier both
agreed to be in the film,but then they backed out because of I

(02:40:37):
mean, I think it was likeLawrence Olivier was having dalliances with other actresses
while he was married to Vivian Lee, and Peter O'Toole took advantage of that
to have a dalliance with Vivian Lee. And so the two gentlemen were not
on the best of terms because you'remaking merry with my wife, old man.
So they couldn't put they couldn't putthe personal differences inside, which is

(02:40:58):
unfortunate because they would have been areally interesting pairing as homes and watch respect
to Peter O'Toole for a season anopportunity though, well I think, I
think, he said at one point. The only disconcerting thing was there were
pictures of Laurence Olivier all over herbedroom while he was with her, But
that didn't put him off apparently.So all right, guys, let's go
ahead and take another break and playa preview for next week's show. Why

(02:41:20):
don't you just go home? I'vebeen asking myself that one all night long?
So what happened? Why can't you? I met this girl tonight,
okay, in a coffee shop.I like something incredible was really going to
happen here. So when I gothome, I gave her a call on
the cab. On the way downhere, all my money flew out the
window. I didn't really get alongwith her that Well, what's the matter?

(02:41:46):
I said? I want to seea plaster of pairs, bagel and
cream cheese, paperweight, now coughit up. So I left. So
I haven't got enough money to gethome until I meet this bartender who wanted
to lend me the money. That'sall that's right, I forget it,
get it? Sorry, you're aboy. So I go back to the
girl's apartment. But her roommate's reallypissed off at me for the way I

(02:42:07):
treated her friend to go. SoI marched right in there to apologize,
but she'd already killed herself. Iwas too late. Oh wow, lighting
up, what is this? I'min big trouble. I mean big trouble.
Now this part you're gonna say,Oh, you're lying to me.
Don't lie to me. But it'strue. This guy whever I couldn't believe

(02:42:31):
that. Tell him, tell himit's not my fault. I didn't do
it. I gotta tell who youdidn't do? What do call? Lee?
What's with you? Are you nutsor something? Luckily, Oh there
was this girl and so the wholething. So now she's the one in
the mister soft gay stream truckers tryingto kill me. They're all trying to

(02:42:54):
kill me. I mean, Ijust wanted to leave. You know,
my apartment made me meet a nicegirl, and now I've got to die.
Hi, you know what do youwant from me? What have I
done? I'm just a word processor? Damnit? Is that after hours when
anything can happen and usually does.Is that unbelievable or what does? That's?

(02:43:24):
All right? We are switching gearsnext month and talking about some comedic
films. First up, we'll betalking about Martin scor says these after hours.
Until then, what is the latestwith you? Aaron? Well?
As I've talked about in the previousepisodes, I am the host of the
Hollywood Outsider podcast, a weekly awardwinning podcast for film and television. We

(02:43:45):
have a topic each week. Wedo reviews and anything big in entertainment news
on a weekly basis. That's thatthe Hollywood Outsider dot com. That's the
Hollywood Outsider dot com. And Ido a monthly podcast on Alfred Hitchcock films
where we re go through each andevery single one of them. We're almost
to the end. Actually, it'scalled Presenting Hitchcock. You can also find

(02:44:05):
that at the Hollywoo Outsider dot comas well, but the podcast itself is
called Presenting Hitchcock and David, Whatis happening with you? Sir? I
found out earlier this week that mynext new play will premiere at the Purple
Rose Theater and Lovely Chelsea, Michiganon March twenty ninth, twenty twenty four.
The Anti Christ Cometh, a blackcomedy and I got two screenplays.

(02:44:30):
I'm hawking one on street soccer,one on a Middle Eastern banker. And
I've got to if anybody wants tomake a great movie with the actress Chay,
I blosh you, she's attached toplay the lead. Now we just
need a wee bit of money toget it made. So if any of
your well healed listeners want to makea film, the script is complete.

(02:44:54):
Got an Oscar nominated, Amy winningactress attached. Every once in a while
I'll get sort of a hot shotdirector, producer, writer, guy that's
just like, oh yeah, I'ma big fan of the show. So
come on, you guys, putsome money behind this project. If anybody's
ever heard of the Athenal List,which is an award given to best screenplays

(02:45:16):
featuring female protagonists, my screenplay inthe Land of Fire and Ice won that
and Ray liked it and I mether in Toronto to talk about it and
she's very geeked about it. Butyeah, you know, movies are hard
to get, you know, made, So we'll see, we'll see what
happens. Thank you guys so muchfor being on this journey of us talking
about Sherlock Holmes for a month.I think we might have to come back

(02:45:39):
and we'd look at some eighties incarnationsor two thousands, pick another decade.
You know that we can finally talkabout young Sherlock Holmes thereon that you tease
me, don't tease. I'm onboard if you guys, I'm a right
absolutely might become a tradition. Younever know. So thank you so much
guys for being able to show Thankseverybody for listening. If you want to

(02:46:01):
hear more of me shooting off mymouth, check out some of the other
shows I work on. They areall available at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks
especially to our Patreon community. Ifyou want to join the community, visit
patreon dot com slash Projection Booth.Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth
take Her for the world. M

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Episode 625: Murder by Decree (1979)

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