A long-sought-after treasure of Careyana has been found! It’s Timothy’s Halloween commercial for Sambo’s restaurants, first aired on NBC-TV on October 29, 1980. Who is that at the very beginning, appearing from behind a newspaper as Frankenstein’s monster? I think we all know who! Happy Halloween, everybody!
In honor of the imminent release of Steve De Jarnatt’s gem of a short film Tarzana (1978) on video (yes, finally! Watch this space!), here is the director recalling his experience of working with Timothy on that film to Paul Rowlands of the Money Into Light film blog.
*********
It’s Wednesday, and you may or may not remember what that means around here: it’s time for the Video of the Week! This week we bring you another of Timothy’s very early appearances on the small screen. It’s the Death Valley Days episode “Cynthy’s Dream Dress,” first airing on March 3, 1953. Tim’s very small part as a bartender begins at about the 10:35 mark. Don’t blink!
The episode also stars Virginia Lee (D.O.A. [1950]); Brad Johnson (Bedtime for Bonzo [1951]); and Helen Brown (Shane [1953]). Also appearing are two of Ed Wood‘s favorite character players, Lyle Talbot and Kenne Duncan. Enjoy!
Set those DVRs, you Super Human Beings – Timothy’s mad masterpiece returns to TCM Underground tomorrow night, October 29! 11:30 PM PST, 2:30 AM EST! Check your local listings!
Well look what I found on Dailymotion! The full length CHiPs episode “Kidnap,” first broadcast on January 26, 1980. Most definitely one of Timothy’s most eccentric performances.
Tim’s cohort in crime here is Warren Berlinger, another venerable character actor born in Brooklyn (with the same birthday as me!). He’s been all over the big and small screens since the late 1950s. He is also Milton Berle‘s nephew!
This week’s video accompanies the wonderful article by filmmaker Andre Perkowski (and was also created by him) that provided our Quote of the Week last Sunday. It comprises scenes from Timothy’s last television appearance in the Airwolf episode “Tracks” (3.22.1986) overlaid with the audio from Morgan Morgan’s near-soliloquy from Minnie and Moskowitz (1971). The result is surrealism at its finest. Enjoy!
Timothy Carey. The face. The jowls. The unshaven stubble. Those teeth. How he stood. How he walked… and fuckin’ hell, how the man talked! Oozing his way across screens, TV, and drive-in… big movies, tiny oddities, TV appearances.
Was Ernest Borgnine gunning him down in “Airwolf” once? I’m pretty sure that happened. He gave off the impression of smelling like an egg and pepper sandwich, or even a chain-smoking gravedigger in the words of one onlooker to his crazed career.
His appearances in Kubrick films always fascinated me as this was clearly a character who played by his own highly idiosyncratic, possibly hypocritical rules — who operated from a revised script that existed only in his head, occupying a parallel film universe to characters he’d share the screen with.
Drawing attention to himself with little twitches and odd ticks — you couldn’t help but stare at him. He stole every scene he was in just by breathing heavily… Then came his work with Cassavetes, another genuine celluloid crazy who did things his way. Obviously they got on great for a while and sweated through several films together.
I’d heard about The World’s Greatest Sinner for years without getting hold of a copy. In the interim, his other acting roles and interview in Psychotronic were fetishized to a terrifying degree… Then: a breakthrough. My chance finally came when his son Romeo presented a print at the Egyptian Theater. I was inexplicably sitting behind Poison Ivy and Lux Interior of The Cramps when the film began to go through the projector and without a doubt it changed my life. Or were they there a little later at a Maria Montez night?
These life-changing, namedropping experiences happen thick and fast in retrospect and begin to stick to each other like filthy magazine fragments in the gutter.
All of us here at The Timothy Carey Experience (me, the hubby, and Cirrus the cat) wish you all the best for 2016! Thank you so much for your enthusiasm for the blog; it means the world to us. Here’s to another fabulous year! Have a wonderful celebration tonight; stay safe and, like Loxie here, party like it’s 1929!
We have a theme this week, and it’s “Timothy in color.” So let’s get the ball rolling with “Ambush,” the episode of Kung Fu that was first aired on April 4, 1975. Grumpy outlaw Bix Courtney is, well, grumpy.
This episode was one of the earliest instances in which Tim is billed as Timothy Agoglia Carey. Agoglia was his mother’s maiden name. Her father, Rocco M. Agoglia, was proprietor of the Bank of Agoglia in Brooklyn. He is buried there in a beautiful mausoleum in Green-Wood Cemetery.
The Timothy Carey Experience 