In hiatus: We don't need another hero
Our heroes are dying.
By heroes, I don't mean to include the likes of Sir Edmund, say. We can fete that great, towering edifice of an octogenarian until they deposit him gloriously along the track leading from Base Camp, or perhaps in west Auckland. And long after that.
By dying, of course, I mean being inconveniently closer to the inevitable quietening of their natural mortal coil. Closer than us, that is. By heroes I mean those who have been with us through our childhoods and teenaged years, who are becoming white of hair and stooped of back. I mean our heroes from TV.
It's hard to believe that Magnum PI is 61 years old. Tom Selleck, who shagged Monica fictively on Friends a few years back, is nearing the pension. Lee Majors, the Six Million Dollar Man, though probably somewhat cheaper these days, given technological advance, physiological decay and a generous depreciation scheme, is 67. He could be my father. Except that would mean my mother would have a weird mouth thing going on thanks to, um, those vitamin shots. Still, my stepmother would be Faith Majors, who looks younger than I do.
Lee Majors (height: 185m; birth name: Harvey Lee Yeary) has been busy. He's made a pile of, er, stuff since. His latest masterwork, apparently, is TV: The Movie. It's “a celebration of the ever increasing depravity of television in our society; a channel surfing adventure through the most utterly ridiculous spoofed television programming and commercials”. So probably most of his own oeuvre, then. His wife (height: 1.63m) is involved, as is Steve O from Jackass, probably the most talented man on TV.
Marilyn Monroe would have been 80 this year. I can hear the rest-home jackals: “Ooh, just look at the way she drapes herself over that walking frame. She’ll be getting a second helping of pudding. Hey, don’t let her go near that air vent – she’ll catch her death!” James Dean would have been 75. Though it is sad to think of the boy from Marion, Indiana inching slowly, painfully down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams with his bad hip, dragging his tatty coat on the sidewalk. Janet Leigh, she of Shower, Interrupted, sometimes also known as Psycho, died two years ago. She would have been 79 if the cosmic plughole hadn’t taken her away from us. The cardie-wearing, rocking-chair psycho himself, Anthony Perkins, would have been 74, if he hadn’t succumbed to the big disease with a little name.
But heroes are not always so … heroic. William Katt is 55. Don't know him? You do. “Believe it or not, I'm walking on air ...” Greatest American Hero? William Katt, who was in MASH, Kung Fu, Police Woman with Angie Dickinson (75), Gunsmoke, Ironside and Kojak, everything, in other words. You haven't lived. Or at least watched as much TV as some people in the 80s. You may not have seen him, but he's seen you. He's got super powers: x-ray eyes and telekinesis, awesome strength and the power to become invisible. It’s probably time he did.
Brideshead's Lady Marchmain is the same age as Angie. As is Boston Legal's Denny Crane – Captain Kirk from Star Trek. While we’re on the bridge, Captain Stubing from The Love Boat is 76. (The baby-faced Gopher's 58.) Ken Barlow's 74. James Spader, Denny Crane's alter-me-go on Boston Legal and who was so youthfully seduced by Susan Sarandon (60 this year) aged 30, when he should have known much better – well, probably not, really – is 46. David “Baywatch” Hasselhoff will be 54 soon. Mary Tyler Moore is 68. Babies, compared to Fantasy Island's Mr Roarke, Ricardo Montalban, who at 86 this year is a year younger than Sir Edmund. The tiny Tattoo, sadly, never benefited from syndication. Jonathan Harris, Lost in Space’s Zachary Smith – “Oh the pain. The pain” – is the very oldest of TV heroes. So old he died in 2002. He was a wonderfully antediluvian 88.
But don’t fret, It's safer, wiser, more mature to head down to your DVD shop, to buy up all those series of your impressionable youth, to make yourself the thickest cup of Milo you can remember, and to forget that anyone – anyone at all – ever gets old. No one dies on TV. Or if they do, there’s always Rewind.
By heroes, I don't mean to include the likes of Sir Edmund, say. We can fete that great, towering edifice of an octogenarian until they deposit him gloriously along the track leading from Base Camp, or perhaps in west Auckland. And long after that.
By dying, of course, I mean being inconveniently closer to the inevitable quietening of their natural mortal coil. Closer than us, that is. By heroes I mean those who have been with us through our childhoods and teenaged years, who are becoming white of hair and stooped of back. I mean our heroes from TV.
It's hard to believe that Magnum PI is 61 years old. Tom Selleck, who shagged Monica fictively on Friends a few years back, is nearing the pension. Lee Majors, the Six Million Dollar Man, though probably somewhat cheaper these days, given technological advance, physiological decay and a generous depreciation scheme, is 67. He could be my father. Except that would mean my mother would have a weird mouth thing going on thanks to, um, those vitamin shots. Still, my stepmother would be Faith Majors, who looks younger than I do.
Lee Majors (height: 185m; birth name: Harvey Lee Yeary) has been busy. He's made a pile of, er, stuff since. His latest masterwork, apparently, is TV: The Movie. It's “a celebration of the ever increasing depravity of television in our society; a channel surfing adventure through the most utterly ridiculous spoofed television programming and commercials”. So probably most of his own oeuvre, then. His wife (height: 1.63m) is involved, as is Steve O from Jackass, probably the most talented man on TV.
Marilyn Monroe would have been 80 this year. I can hear the rest-home jackals: “Ooh, just look at the way she drapes herself over that walking frame. She’ll be getting a second helping of pudding. Hey, don’t let her go near that air vent – she’ll catch her death!” James Dean would have been 75. Though it is sad to think of the boy from Marion, Indiana inching slowly, painfully down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams with his bad hip, dragging his tatty coat on the sidewalk. Janet Leigh, she of Shower, Interrupted, sometimes also known as Psycho, died two years ago. She would have been 79 if the cosmic plughole hadn’t taken her away from us. The cardie-wearing, rocking-chair psycho himself, Anthony Perkins, would have been 74, if he hadn’t succumbed to the big disease with a little name.
But heroes are not always so … heroic. William Katt is 55. Don't know him? You do. “Believe it or not, I'm walking on air ...” Greatest American Hero? William Katt, who was in MASH, Kung Fu, Police Woman with Angie Dickinson (75), Gunsmoke, Ironside and Kojak, everything, in other words. You haven't lived. Or at least watched as much TV as some people in the 80s. You may not have seen him, but he's seen you. He's got super powers: x-ray eyes and telekinesis, awesome strength and the power to become invisible. It’s probably time he did.
Brideshead's Lady Marchmain is the same age as Angie. As is Boston Legal's Denny Crane – Captain Kirk from Star Trek. While we’re on the bridge, Captain Stubing from The Love Boat is 76. (The baby-faced Gopher's 58.) Ken Barlow's 74. James Spader, Denny Crane's alter-me-go on Boston Legal and who was so youthfully seduced by Susan Sarandon (60 this year) aged 30, when he should have known much better – well, probably not, really – is 46. David “Baywatch” Hasselhoff will be 54 soon. Mary Tyler Moore is 68. Babies, compared to Fantasy Island's Mr Roarke, Ricardo Montalban, who at 86 this year is a year younger than Sir Edmund. The tiny Tattoo, sadly, never benefited from syndication. Jonathan Harris, Lost in Space’s Zachary Smith – “Oh the pain. The pain” – is the very oldest of TV heroes. So old he died in 2002. He was a wonderfully antediluvian 88.
But don’t fret, It's safer, wiser, more mature to head down to your DVD shop, to buy up all those series of your impressionable youth, to make yourself the thickest cup of Milo you can remember, and to forget that anyone – anyone at all – ever gets old. No one dies on TV. Or if they do, there’s always Rewind.
3 Comments:
Peter Sallis is still going, and getting regular work—I think he might be in the 85 region.
This is not so much our amazement at how old our heroes are. But how old we now must be.
William Katt was in Perry Mason, but close enough. Same big dude.
He were in both, Jack.
Sallis can hardly walk, sadly. But when you only have to talk...
I didn’t know that, Mark, but thanks for correcting me.
Shame about Peter—I guess this also means he is not on Last of the Summer Wine now? Still, Wallace will outlive the show’s cast members—kids’ shows and movies have a way of lasting a very long time.
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