Why is Pontius Pilate at the Overlook Hotel? - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

    Too many years of television and movies, shuffled together from different eras, out of sequence,  often finds me suddenly spotting a familiar face in an odd place. As I'm mostly about the characters and stories, rather than primarily about the actors, my first impulse is often to think of each as a character crossing over from one story to another. At extremes it can send me down a weird path, where I carry that other character over from one story to the one I'm watching. Certainly, if it's a main character then there's much more mileage to be gotten from it, because it could mean a radical change to the arc of the story.

    Possibly more fun is when this happens with supporting characters in something I'm watching, making someone who's just above the level of prop suddenly pop to my attention. It often doesn't have legs as new entertainment, because the characters and their eras are too jarringly distinct, but nonetheless it catches my attention.
   Most times, unless what I'm watching is of poor quality and is barely holding my attention in a positive way, I won't let it go much farther than a quick IMDB search to verify that I'm seeing who I think I'm seeing, particularly if it's an actor who never made it truly big.
  I've come to see, again and again over the years, that actors can be cruelly boxed into a role by an inflexible audience and a cheap sense of humor. People who become known for a single role and have a hellish time shedding it well enough to get better work, even if they had an impressive resume before getting the role they became too well-known for.

Ray Walston is one who comes to mind when I think of a long-term, hard-fought success story in overcoming a flypaper role. See, Ray had established himself on the stage, starring in Cleveland before getting to both Broadway and the London stage. He played Mr. Applegate (Satan) in Damn Yankees, a role that won him a Tony Award. In 1951 he starred as Luthor Billis in the London production of South Pacific, and was one of only two cast members who was also cast in the highly-successful 1958 film version -- the same year he reprised his stage role for the motion picture version of Damn Yankees, too. An impressive resume by any standards.

From 1963-'66, he played "Uncle Martin" a stranded traveler from Mars in the sitcom My Favorite Martian, working with co-star Bill Bixby. It was a less than mentally taxing sitcom - so, par for the course - and neither of the stars thought at the outset it was going to last long, but it hit well enough to last three seasons. The role stuck to him, though, after which he found it impossible for quite a while to land a serious part. He took to character roles in tv and films from the late '60s through the '70s and '80s. Articles and interviews with him almost always defaulted to joking

references to his Martian character.
  His part as the teacher Mr. Hand in Fast Times At Ridgemont High (both the film and the subsequent tv version) finally gave him a new character to be identified as by younger fans. This made it a relief when people would call out to him as Mr. Hand, or do some other shtick associated with the character, because at least the earlier role was finally sloughing off.
  Rolling into the '90s, he managed to turn a recurring part on Picket Fences into a starring role, and also got to play Glen Bateman in the tv adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. It took a great, great many roles to scrape the Martian off him.
   Some never do manage to shed those character associations, though, and so end up quitting the business, developing their talents behind the camera, or waste energy uselessly fuming over how some lowly part has eclipsed a broad career with many successes. (This is a big topic all on its own, so I'll leave that for another piece.)

Returning (at last!) to the header question: Early in The Shining (1980), Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson) is being interviewed - and then again during the final orientation before everyone leaves the Torrance family trio to their fun winter's isolation at the Overlook Hotel - by Ullman (very recognizable character actor Barry Nelson), the manager of the hotel (Seen to the left). At a couple points Ullman calls on Watson (seen here below), who is a second banana in the management structure, to sit in or walk along. Whereas Ullman gets a fair chunk of lines, and is the one who gets to tell Jack about the brutal incident of Mr. Grady during the winter of

1970, Watson doesn't get a single line worth quoting. He's there as an extension of Ullman's authority.
  When I first saw the film I didn't make the connection with his face, as the other people in each scene were what we were all concentrating on. At some point during a rewatching years later, though, something clicked as I finally took a moment to notice him. A quick check (oh, this wondrous age of ready information!) told me Watson was played by Barry Dennan, and a clickthrough from that quickly confirmed I was right, this was Pontius Pilate from 1973's Jesus Christ Superstar. His brief song about the dream he'd had of meeting Jesus is one of my very favorite songs from that production, though I'd never before bothered to notice the performer's name.

   I guess that once you've been handed the blame for offing the Son of God it would make sense to flee to a different continent and get a nondescript job at a remote location.

  As mentioned, Watson's so much not the center of attention, not much above the level of prop, in those scenes.
  One good example is here, where he's one of six actors in the frame, where the audience is understandably fixed on four of them, while the fifth one is center screen and doing most of the speaking. Poor Watson's over there on the right, practically begging for a pan and scan edit to mercifully remove him from the frame for a network TV showing.

  There's not much time to indulge any of this while watching the film -- unless you're watching it solo, as I do these days, and can pause it for as long as I want. Still, there's not much to be done with it unless one really goes for it and tries to turn The Shining into a musical. As poor Shelly Duvall had just been part of a less-than-celebrated musical that same year, I'm not sure the poor woman should be pulled into any such plan.

  Though if I get sufficiently goofy from lack of sleep, the possibility of bringing Popeye in to cop some spinach and de-spook the Overlook might get some self-entertained approval from me some odd 3 AM. Earlier if I started back in on the screwdrivers.
 Before closing for the week, I'll switch gears to remind you of Turner Classic Movies' Summer Under the Stars, running through August.
   Today they're already into a day of Steve McQueen movies, and then for the following seven days the daily spotlight goes as follows:

• Sat.: Nina Foch
• Sun: Cary Grant (including Arsenic and Old Lace, which is always worth the time.)
• Mon: Maureen O'Hara
• Tues: Warren Beatty
• Wed: Dolores Del Rio
• Thurs: William Powell (Including Life With Father, which Garbo has mentioned several times in blog entries in recent months.)
• Fri: Diana Dors (Including the 1973 horror anthology film From Beyond the Grave.)

  Oh! I also did want to mention the new series about to start Sunday on HBO: Lovecraft Country.

  There's talent involved, but I'll need to watch before knowing if it's applied well or not. At this point I've nothing to assure me that the mission of flipping the racist themes of early 20th century horror fiction didn't become the priority, at the expense of character development and storytelling. I'll most likely watch the 10-part series as it rolls out over the ten weeks - if I suddenly find myself holding off in order to let it build up for a binge-watch, that'll be a bad sign.
  At the moment, the thing that's striking me as the most directly bizarre is that when this series wraps we'll have stepped into the back half of October. 2020 continues to unfold as an odd, unplanned bit of replacement programming, where too many of the signposts are gone.
  Next week will likely see me trying to catch up on mentions of everything else I've been watching of late, along with some heads-up for things soon to arrive.
    In the meantime, do what you must to keep cool and sane.   -Mike