Chuck Cunningham Syndrome

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by JozefK, Nov 26, 2019.

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  1. the pope ondine

    the pope ondine Forum Resident

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    Virginia

    beat me to it!

    also bob newhart show, bob had a sister that was nearly a regular for a while then kind of fazed out.....'sister roles' i guess are pretty risky!
     
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  2. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    Soaps are rife with this sort of thing. On DOOL, the once very popular Don Craig went out to mail a letter and has yet to return. Then we have Josh Taylor who played Chris Kositchek for years, disappeared, then returned as Roman Brady who, coincidentally, replaced Don Craig in Dr. Marlena Evan's heart. Synchronicity!
     
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  3. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Dixie
    Probably, although in this case payment presumably would have been nominal.

    This is definitely the reason you never see Brando 's face on the Corleone crime family chart at the Senate hearing in GFII. Instead there is simply a blank space.
     
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  4. uzn007

    uzn007 Watcher of the Skis

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    Raleigh, N.C.
    By feeding it to a shark.
     
  5. James Slattery

    James Slattery Forum Resident

    Location:
    Long Island
    On Mad About You, in the first 13 episodes, Paul's best friend was Jay Selby, who then disappeared, essentially replaced by Ira, Paul's cousin. I think they referred to Selby once after that.

    Kate on Petticoat Junction was explained as being out of town when Bea Benaderet died.

    When Mr. Wilson on Dennis The Menace and Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched died, they were simply recast.

    On Life With Bonnie, after the first season, her daughter, who was in every scene in the house, just vanished as if she was abducted by aliens, and never mentioned again. That was maybe the strangest one as she was prominent in the entire first season of the show and then poof, gone.
     
  6. Big Jimbo

    Big Jimbo Forum Resident

    Location:
    NY
    In the last season of “Hogan’s Heroes” Sgt Kinchloe (Ivan Dixon) was gone. Must have been transferred to another Luft Stalag or perhaps a medical parole because Colonel Klink never had a successful escape from Stalag 13
     
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  7. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    Re DtM: I believe technically Gale Gordon played Mr Wilson's brother
     
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  8. Kyle B

    Kyle B Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago
    They did the same thing for Eight is Enough during their summer reruns after season 1. Diana Hyland, who played the mother, missed five episodes during the first season due to illness and later her death. ABC reran only the episodes in which she did not appeared during the summer of 1977, with new opening titles that removed her. They even re-edited A few episodes where she originally had voiceovers as her character made phone calls to the family. Unfortunately, it is those re-edited episodes that are now distributed in syndication and on DVD. So it’s a strange effect, because the mother disappears halfway through the first season and no one even mentions it. It’s not until the second season premier that her death is acknowledged.
     
  9. Kyle B

    Kyle B Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago
    Yeah, those episodes with the adopted son were part of the “Lost Episodes” package, so you didn’t see them in the 70s and early 80s reruns. And I have to say - I could never figure out why they cast that particular actor. To put it nicely, he didn’t have that “candy-coated” TV look.
     
  10. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    Hollywood, USA
    Yeah, the actor had problems with the show producers and opted to leave. I think it was kind of a mutual thing.

    I think she was "taking care of a sick sister" when she departed, and they had several scenes where the sisters spoke to "Kate" on the phone, and we might have heard a little bit of her voice. Some episodes later, the pregnant daughter gave birth and Kate "returned" in the final scene to visit her in the hospital, but it was a stand-in, clumsily shot from the back so you never saw her face. After that, they basically never referred to her again, which is about all you can do. And of course, suddenly the Shady Rest Hotel was now "run by Uncle Joe," despite movin' kinda slow.
     
  11. Kyle B

    Kyle B Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago
    Even as a kid, I knew that the writers of “Petticoat Junction” were struggling to deal with the death of their lead actress. Having Kate on camera but shot from the back (with Bea Benaderet’s voice badly added to the soundtrack in post production) was just strange.

    I wanted them to mention the character’s death explicitly, but of course, that was considered too upsetting for the audience back then. The most we got was one of the daughters sadly mentioning how their mom taught them how to swim in the water tower when they were younger, and Uncle Joe talking about the girls potentially losing the hotel (as opposed to Kate losing it) in another episode.
     
  12. Scooterpiety

    Scooterpiety Ars Gratia Artis

    Location:
    Oregon
    Though Roy only appeared during the first season, he was referred to a few times later on.
     
  13. vinnie

    vinnie Senior Member

    Location:
    New Jersey
    Really? I know Speed and Vinnie returned but I cant think of Roy mention.
     
  14. JohnO

    JohnO Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    Ellie on The Andy Griffith Show.
     
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  15. JFS3

    JFS3 Senior Member

    Location:
    Hooterville
    Chuck Cunningham was a bit of a whammy, in more ways than one. Not only did he disappear without a trace part way into the second season, but to add insult to injury, he was portrayed by a completely different actor, Randolph Roberts, in the character's final two appearances. And topping it all off, the fact that Roberts bore absolutely no resemblance to his successor, Gavin O'Herlihy, only added further insult to the injury.

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    Last edited: Nov 30, 2019
  16. JFS3

    JFS3 Senior Member

    Location:
    Hooterville
    Don't forget Simone (The Partridge Family's dog), who also did a disappearing act part way through that show's second season.
     
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  17. Mylene

    Mylene Senior Member

    He was in a later episode as Dobie's cousin. He has to ask Herbert T. for some money to become a rock 'n' roll star.
     
  18. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    Vidiot wrote the following as part of a post:

    It sounds like they tried to do a Fake Shemp with Bea Bernadette to make it appear that she was still there. I think a factor in how the departure in a show is handled depends on a number of factors (please correct me if I'm wrong):
    • The Type Of Show: It seems the more serious the show the more likely it is that a departure will be explained in-show. In Ally McBeal the character Larry Paul (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) was a new love interest for Ally. However, after only a small number of episodes he was suddenly gone due to (IIRC) some problems that Downey had that caused him to have to leave the show. They explained it in-show that Larry Paul had returned to his ex-wife.
    • How major the character is and how many characters in the series: A minor character disappearing from a large cast might be not even be mentioned, while a major character might have to be (think of Gilligan's Island where they'd have to explain why one of the castaways is gone). However, the setting of some shows allows an easy way to explain the departures of characters. With M*A*S*H since it was an Army unit people leaving is a normal part of life. With Doctor Who characters coming and going (and The Doctor himself changing) is a normal part of the show, although sometimes the departure is abrupt and truly sad (Sarah Jane Smith was literally just dropped off and then The Doctor was gone, and she still had bad feelings about it years later).
    • How tight the continuity is: If the series has a very tight continuity you would likely have to explain any departures in-show. An example of this is the anime series Bleach where continuity is so tight that each episode has a title card that contains the episode number since you must watch the episodes in order. Any departures of significant characters would have to be explained. Of course, considering the nature of Bleach it could be as simple as someone dying during a fight.
     
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  19. DaveySR

    DaveySR Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    Another character from the book/film, that I don't believe had any lines in the TV show, was Painless Pole. I believe Hawkeye said something to the character in an early episode using the name "Painless".
     
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  20. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Yeah, "Fake Shemp" is one way to look at it, but bear in mind they only shot the double from the back, and dubbed her lines in. I think Ms. Benaderet actually looped her lines from the hospital, on the presumption that she might survive and make it back... which did not happen.

    Ironically, almost a decade earlier, veteran cartoon voice actor Mel Blanc had a serious car wreck in January of 1961, which prevented him from doing his voices for The Flintstones (and other cartoon shows). He eventually recovered and was able to do "Barney Rubble" and others from his hospital bed, and Hanna-Barbera publicized what a trouper he was in doing so. But it's a lot easier to replace a voice than a living, breathing human being.

    There is an entire book out there about actors who had to be replaced on TV shows (because they were fired, abruptly quit, died, had a scandal, or were incapacitated). [I can't for the life of me remember the title of it, but if anybody has it, let me know.]

    It's even weirder when a character seems to be a major part of a show, but then suddenly their role diminishes to the point where they're barely in the series, and then they're gone by the next season. I worked on a now-obscure Fred Savage NBC series called Working from 1997-1999, and in the second year, new producers came in and changed up the show, firing four or five of the main supporting characters and replacing them with no explanation other than "we're making some changes." To their credit, the first new episode showed a wide shot with all the old cast, then there was a flash, a cut to a snow globe of the office, a hand reaches in and shakes it up, then another flash, and we see the set again, only now it's all new characters. So literally, they "shook up" the show. I don't think it got any better, but it was a novel idea to wink at the audience and admit that all these people were gone and new actors were doing new characters... except for Fred and one or two others.
     
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  21. JohnO

    JohnO Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    Married With Children added a kid, who was disappeared. Peg Bundy in the show was pregnant for a while, then she wasn't, a sad real-life matter.
     
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  22. smilin ed

    smilin ed Senior Member

    Location:
    Durham
    Either that or he refers to the character. Can't remember right now.
     
  23. vamborules

    vamborules Forum Resident

    Location:
    CT
    Everybody always talks about Chuck...but what about Spike? The original (and far cooler) Chachi!


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  24. Squealy

    Squealy Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Vancouver
    I think they must have just been finding that the juice of the show was in Christie and Bonnie’s interactions with each other and with their support group friends... and not the stories with Christie’s kids. So they just gradually diminished the kids’ roles until they were essentially gone. They didn’t disappear with no explanation though.

    The daughter shows up every now and then but the son hasn’t appeared in the last three seasons!
     
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  25. Big Jimbo

    Big Jimbo Forum Resident

    Location:
    NY
    They did make at least one allusion to the passing of Smiley Burnette (engineer Charley Pratt) although the way they worded it, Rufe Davis (conductor Floyd Smoot) might have meant that Homer Bedloe got him downsized. Floyd pretty much disappeared aseason later although he came back for a couple episodes late in the series.
     
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