It’s strange to think about, but tomorrow marks
the one-year anniversary of this blog’s opening post. And it won’t be long
before we hit the 100 posts mark. Since Simon Oakland is a wonderful guest-star
on Perry, and rather directly responsible for this blog even existing, I
decided it was high-time to give Simon his own tribute post.
Simon was born August 28th, 1915, the
same year William Talman was born. Information about him is hard to come by;
Crystal and I have collected pretty much all that we could gather on our
website (which will be getting updated this week along with our Simon blog): http://sites.google.com/site/unofficialsimonoaklandtribute/home
I wrote the biography, piecing together bits that we’d found, and we both
contributed the articles we discovered.
Simon appeared on stage before moving to movies
and television, but we sadly have only very scant information on that point in
his life. It’s also been said that he was a violinist. I wish some footage
existed of that!
Concerning movies and television, he is often
remembered for playing the villains. However, while he did take on many roles
of that type, he also played many protagonists and misunderstood characters as
well. Even many of the villains are so three-dimensional, they still have good
in them. One of the articles we found outright mentions that Simon approached
his characters wanting to make them three-dimensional and human. He certainly
succeeded! He could play any part to perfection, making the viewers really
believe in the character.
On Perry Simon appeared twice, once as a
bad guy, once as a good guy, and both times ending up the murder victim. Poor
characters.
His first appearance was in season 3’s The
Frantic Flyer, which happened to be arguably the first time I ever saw
Simon anywhere. His character Howard Walters was certainly a wretched sort; as
if it wasn’t bad enough that he arranged for the robbery of the safe at the
company where he worked as the trusted general manager, he was having an affair
with his accomplice and killed the company president’s son so there would be a
body discovered and hopefully identified as his when his burned plane was
found.
It was such a tangled web all around. His
accomplice was a wicked little thing too. She was carrying on with someone
else, who planned with her to kill Howard and take the money for themselves.
And the guy who ended up being the murderer was the man who had nursed Howard
to health when he broke his leg parachuting from the plane. He wanted
the money.
In spite of everything, I did feel sorry for
Howard. He honestly loved that Janice witch and would have been crushed to
learn that she had planned to betray him. But on the other hand, I suppose he
really got what he deserved. He definitely was a horrid person, especially on
the matter of murdering the president’s ne’er-do-well son. (Whose name, by the
way, was Andy Taylor, something that amuses this Andy Griffith Show fan
every time.)
I also felt really sorry for Howard’s poor wife
in the mess. She honestly loved him and kept trying in vain to see that
their marriage stayed alive. But she was brushed off for whatever reason. We
weren’t told why the marriage went sour, and in the end, I imagine it’s not a
critical detail. But I hope she found someone decent after the episode’s
events.
Simon returned in season 4 for The Misguided
Missile, which, of course, I’ve talked of several times. Simon played
Captain Michael Caldwell, who really can’t be characterized as a bad guy just
because he has a grudge against Perry’s friend Major Jerry Reynolds. We don’t
even know if it wasn’t at least somewhat justified. He could have been telling
the truth about never receiving Jerry’s order, just as Jerry could be telling
the truth about sending it. If no one believed Caldwell, including Jerry (who
may or may not have been a friend), that would have definitely been enough to
make him bitter and wonder if Jerry was really the good man he was praised up
as being. When other characters talk about their last encounters with him, they
mention how he raved about having the proof that Jerry was not a great hero. I had
the feeling that he honestly believed what he said, rather than just pretending
to think Jerry was awful in order to cover his own irresponsibility.
By all appearances, Caldwell is a serious and
efficient man just trying to do his job—namely, investigating the failed launch
of the titular object. He even tells one of the parties involved that his job
isn’t to hurt people but to get at the truth—no matter who gets hurt when the truth
comes out. That sounds quite similar to what Perry tells his clients and their
families and friends.
Caldwell is murdered because he’s too close to
the truth. And because, according to the lunatic Dan Morgan, Caldwell “wouldn’t
let the missile fly.” The launch for the next one would have been stopped once
Caldwell’s investigatory findings about Morgan’s criminal activities became
known. And so Morgan murders him and then does the very stupid thing of leaving
the body right on the missile range, which nearly stops the launch in the
morning anyway.
Caldwell is one of the very few characters
murdered for trying to be honest and upright.
On the one hand I wish we’d been told more about
Caldwell and Jerry’s past. On the other, perhaps I prefer it the way it was
left, so extremely ambiguous and without proclaiming Caldwell a liar. That
opens the door for fan story explorations, as I did with both The Case of the Captain’s Ghost and the unrelated The Case of the Spectral Stalker.
It was my desire to look up Simon’s guest-spots
last year that led to a rekindling of my interest in Perry—this time a
much stronger interest than even before, although the seeds were certainly
planted those years earlier. And at least partially from my labor of love on
the Simon website and blog, the idea for a Perry blog emerged.
We
lost Simon on August 29th, 1983, another wonderful man and excellent
actor gone far too soon. We salute you, Simon. You and your amazing characters are still remembered and loved.
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