FANBAR: SMK 40th Anniversary with Jeanette Valliere

Welcome to Eighties TV Ladies, part of the weirding Way Media network, Biessy and So Pretty to the City. Here are your hosts, Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert Tadam. Thank you, Melissa. I am Susan and I'm Sharon. Welcome to Eighties TV Ladies, where we explore female driven television shows from the nineteen eighties and celebrate the people who made them.

As we've been enjoying all these shows and looking back at nineteen eighties television, we are really enjoying how much people love these shows even now, and we here at Eighties TV Ladies are really enjoying your feedback. We're reading all the responses, questions and comments. Thank you listeners, keep them coming. It gives us a lot of inspiration for the next show. Now, we want to dive a little further into how some of these shows still resonate that even though they're dated in some ways, in other ways, they still have an impact.

So we're starting a little treat we're currently calling fan bar And if you've got a better name for this segment, let us know you know. It's the Eighties TV Ladies fan Bar. I like sidebar or like Belly Up to the Bar. I don't know we're working on it anyway. It's where we're going to look at the love these fans have for these eighties shows, and so today a special guest is a fan of Scarecrow and Missus King, the action spy comedy that premiered in nineteen eighty two starring Kate Jackson and Bruce Boxleitner.

We cover Scarecrow Missus King in our first five episodes of season one. I'm a huge fan of it, so is our guest. Jeanette Bellier has been organizing Scarecrow and Missus King anniversary events every five years since two thousand and three. The next one will be this year in October. Welcome Jeannette.

We're so happy to have you on Eighties TeV Ladies. Thank you so much for having me. It's so great to have you join us, because because we've been communicating a little bit used into some emails, we've been doing all this stuff. Martha Smith loves you and said basically we needed to dock to you, and so we do whatever Martha Smith tells us to do here at Eighties t Also, you were one of our early supporters and listeners, So I really appreciate that. Where are you zooming in today from Knoxville, Tennessee, USA?

Yeah, and sort of what's your what's your story, Jeanette? Like, how did you get to Knoxville, Tennessee? Actually, originally I transferred with the company I worked for to Raleigh, North Carolina, and then the tech market dropped, you know, the whole bottom dropped out of the tech market, so pretty much everything where I was closed, so everybody was out of work and looking for a job. And I got hired by a company here in Boxville and I've been here ever since. And what do you get here?

What do you do? I'm in it technical technically, I'm listed as a business process analyst, but I do a lot of programming and business design and reporting. So you keep things of the company. Yeah, yeah, well you are. It's like I ten training some people on how to do what I do so I don't have to do it all the time.

Oh that's cool, that's cool. And where are you from? Originally New Hampshire, New Hampshire. All right, so you've been around you've been kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, well East Coast haven't made it across in Mississippi. Well, someday'll have to come Mount to count Well, you've been out to California.

You have fans at play. I just don't live there. I just don't live and I have family in Arizona for sure, for sure. So tell us how you came to be involved in Scarecrow and Missus King fandom got into How did you get into that world? Well, it was nineteen I don't know, eighty nine, nineteen eighty nine, I guess.

And I was up late one night flipping channels and on Lifetime they were rerunning Scarecrow, and I said, well, I had watched it. It was my senior college. When it came on. It's like, oh good, you know I liked the show. Let's let's get into it.

So I was watching it, recorded it on good old VHS back then, and so I had the episodes. And I moved to North Carolina and kind of lost some of that there, and then it came back on again and it was on packs, which I think might be I on now that Gabot Now it's I I don't know. It's kind of a strange thing, and I thought, oh, I wonder if this is out on tape so I got on the Internet, which was in its infancy kind of, I guess in nineteen ninety and started searching and found the fandom and really got talking to people. And even back then we were on you know, IRC chats. Okay, somebody knows what that is, and so yeah, and then of course when a well came on and we had instant Messenger and Yahoo groups, so there were fandoms and I really started hooking up a certain people got involved in fan fiction reading, and then somebody convinced me to write some so there was that and they so I've written quite a bit.

Actually, you could probably find it if I gave you my name. It's still out there. And so we made a lot of friends. A lot of fans did have informal gatherings. There was one lady who's passed away now, but she did groups in DC.

She'd have a few people and it was only a small group, five or ten people, but we would go up there and once a year, and then it expanded a little bit over time, and then more people got involved and the fandom was really really active then, I think, because yeah, I think it was a lot to do with it wasn't being shown anywhere, and then when it went came back on, everybody was really involved again. And then when it came out on VHS, people got involved again, and then it came on DVD. It just kind of every time there was a release of something or it shows up, there's a group that they get together and they do zoom viewings in different parts of the world. They're all on and they zoom an episode. So the technology has caught up with us.

Yeah, we were doing it the old way. So that's one of the nice things about technology. It's made it easier to meet and keep in touch with people around the world who enjoy the same things that you do, which I think is really great. Yeah. And you wouldn't you wouldn't meet those people otherwise, Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, going back a little bit further, do you remember how it was you came to watch the show initially? I was a senior in college when it came on, and you know, eight o'clock it was you just finished all your homework, you were done with everything. That was when you were crashing, you know, early in the week. And I lived off campus the last year with a friend, the friend who lives and lived more and so by eight o'clock and we were just turn on something, let's zone out. We're done with everything we need to do for the day.

And it was a great it's a fun show. It's it's not too heavy for you know, it's an eight o'clock show in the eighties. They weren't going to do anything too crazy, and it was fun. And we both knew Kate Jackson from The Rookies and Scared Charlie's Angels. We knew Bruce from How the West was one even Bring Them Back Alive.

We remember Bring Them Back Alive, so we knew who he was. So I thought, well, these are two great people we like. Let's watch the show. And it was fun, and so it was a good hour to just kind of distress, get away from the craziness of senior year of college. Oh that's fantastic.

I was and still am an avid TV watcher, and as I think all three of us recalled back then, it was very easy, relatively speaking, to keep track of all the shows that were on at any given times. So while I remember this show, I honestly don't remember watching it, but for the podcast, I went back and rewatched and said, how why did I I'm assuming I didn't watch it, since all this seems new and fresh to me, But why didn't I? This is really a lot of fun. I mean, it's when you think about all the shows that were on in the eighties that were this, you know, the Pair, the Couple and I'm a sucker. I was a thin man junkie from way back, so that kind of that always appealed to me.

That type of kind of screwball comedy mystery. Selenas that even though he was a spy and you would think seemed to be kind of serious in the Cold War with the Russians, it really wasn't. Whereas you had the Remonton Steel was more serious in terms of the It certainly started off a little more serious. It gets pretty spoofy in it, does you know when they get into more of the Yeah, I think some of the writing go. But then you had Moonlighting, which was just completely completely off the wall, right, So there was all you had three completely different things to watch, and I think I like them all, no doubt, but I kind of gravitated Twist, Scarecrow Missus King more because I could just it seemed possible in the eighties that somebody would walk up to you at a train station and hand you a package and you would take it, and it could it could just happen.

And again, you know, remed and Steel, you had a person who studied to do something right and you could see yourself doing that as well. But there was something really appealing about the fact that this complete housewife, middle of America type person who had no business doing any of this could become involved in it and you could kind of see that maybe you could do it. Yeah, And I think they did a really good job in those that first season in particular to sort of ease her into things. It wasn't like she was thrown into the deep end of cases, and it always seemed to be something that was, for lack of a better word, at her level, something she could either offer some insight into because of her her personal life, and that that did, You're right, that did make it more relatable in that way.

Yeah, it's kind in me. Yeah, the everyday person is saying to this person who's completely lost touch with the reality of how real real life works, like, Hey, we're going to go set up in this house. We have to be a normal couple, so don't worry about all these people are going to show up and welcome must to the neighborhood. You don't have to worry about meeting the neighbors. So I think that was the point of the writing with with Juanita and some of the earlier I'm not Juanita with them Eugenie, Eugenie and Brad saying we have to find a way into these things where something happens where they need her expertise as a normal person, and so it dovetails into the story so that he has to he has to use her.

Yeah. I thought that that was very cleverly done in a lot of the first season for sure, in that she had something to bring to the table, and it was her knowledge as a person and a mom and a and a woman, and but in a as a normal person, right right, as opposed to the Francine who's a woman, yes in a man's world, who was you know, obviously very good at her job that she didn't really understand normal life. Yeah, it was all spies and embassies and and high government right princes and yeah, I mean she was you know, dating royalty. So yeah, so to keep that balance, he didn't understand her and she didn't understand him, but somehow they worked together to get things done, although he was very disdainful at them.

Yes, yes, you know, I'm not sure he'd be able to pull that off these days. It's like you gonna be nice to me, That's true. And she always pointed out that she didn't know what she was doing. She was not saying, hey, I'm good at this. It's hey, I don't know how to punch.

I need training. I thought that because we you know, we looked at Scarecrow and looked at Remington Steel right after. They're such unique characters, both of them, and I think, really really powerful in their own way women. But it was so clear that, you know, Amanda King is not adept and would never have gone I'm going to be a spy in her, in her world and in her worldview, whereas Laura Holt from you know, from early days, clearly was like I want to be a detective and I'm going to do it, and I'm going to do it as well as any man, and I'm going to do it with without a man, right Yeah, And I think you like with Laura, she knew she was good, she knew she but she also knew she had to prove herself, and she was constantly having to prove herself, which I understand that I'm in it.

I'm a woman in it. Okay, this is that's my was my life for early years. A lot of people who had been in the company forty years, these men, you know, old rednecks, who were like, oh, there's a woman. What You're not going to tell me what to do kind of thing. So I understand Laura's perspective.

I don't understand a man. You know, I'm not married, I have no kids, but I know a lot of people like Amanda, and so I can see both sides. And she was perfectly happy being a housewife. Yeah. I think she loved being a mom and she you know, I think that's part of what I liked so much, is that her personal life.

You saw her interact with her mother, her kids. There was no she just I'm a mom, I'm gonna go home, I'm going to take care of this kind of stuff, and then, oh, by the way, I'm going to go off and chase down Russians. She could separate it very easily, and I don't think most people would be able to do that. I really liked the way she as we're talking about. She evolved too because when she realized that she did have something to offer in this spy world because of her personal situation that was very different from what everybody else was used to, and saw that she had something off her and then asked to be trained and wanted to be trained and wanted to get more involved and took advantage of the opportunity because she felt she had something to give to the situation.

I really liked that. I really liked that a lot because she did she had, she did have and develop skills that were really useful in what they were doing. She had the people skills where she could look at somebody say, you know that person, there's something wrong there, where they were always looking for the bad guy and she was looking at the person. So she had that level that they just didn't. They hadn't developed well.

And I think they give her superpower is in some ways being a mom, right, So like she's coming from a place of we all got to get along, and I've got a broker peace between my two sons and between you know, my mom and myself, and and for school and neighborhood and everything, and all the Chinese spies and the Chinese and the Russian spies. We're all going to get along. We have to do this together. So hey, I don't care if you're a Russian and you're a Chinese. We're going to figure this out together.

And I that was just like again a very lovely and you know, as we know now, like that's one of the things that women are really good at typically if you want to give them you know, usually not always, but can be you know, better at negotiating, negotiating. Yeah, let's let's all try to work this out. And that was clearly what Amanda King was able to take those personal skills that she had and had developed and used them in a particular way in this sort of high octane career, you know. And again it's pretty goofy that the whole show is pretty goofy, but there's something really there was something really empowering that that her ability to change and to adapt to the circumstance of I need a job, and this job's right in front of me and it's kind of fun.

Like she she asked for she asked for the job. What a day after she met the guy, it was, you know, I'm looking for a job, you know, and she was willing to be every She's like, I can type, you know, she wasn't looking to be a spy. She was just saying, hey, I can help here, and I need a job. Yeah, So she wasn't angling for something out of her reach, just hey, this was interesting and this would be a cool place to work kind of vibe. And I think discovers that she's good at it, right, that the puzzle making and the you know, the figuring things out is something that she is clearly very adept at.

But also the I'm going to look from a different perspective. And I think that's one of the things I've always you know, you need different people in the room to understand different perspectives, because it doesn't matter what job you're in. Yes, if you have everybody who's exactly alike, nothing ever gets done. Yeah, And I think it's yeah, stagnant. Yeah, And I think that was a lot of what we were beginning to see in the seventies and eighties television.

Is at least women were stepping into the rooms or rooms where they weren't before typically, and and that made that made a big difference in outcomes, Right, It makes a big difference in what happened to let's let's say, you know, and I'm tired of hearing the world word representation because everybody in the world is saying representation right now. But think about, you know, a little girl growing up in the seventies seeing Charlie's Angels was oh my god, women. I mean, it was the come on. It wasn't exactly high crime and crazy, but there are three women. They all the work.

Yeah, sure, they they reported to a guy behind a phone, but they're not the They were the ones out there kicking button, taking down the bad guys. So for me, because that came out when I was in elementary, junior, high or whatever, so I was like, wow, that's that's more action I've seen from a woman in pretty much any show. Yeah, and then you had a couple other things like there was a female police officer on T Joker, there was a female stunt woman on The Fall Guy there, you know. I mean, so there were women starting to appear in roles that you didn't expect to see them as often because you saw men in most of those roles. And although I mean you look at Moonlighting, she was a model, so okay, she was a model who wound up in this because she just happened to buy the business.

It's one of her investments. But she tried to fit in and do the job sort of. But she came from a whole different environment and in this case, same thing. We got a housewife who suddenly dropped into a spy world. Whereas in Remington Steel, all right, he was a con man, but he had the skills to be a detective, well because because he knew how to con so, yeah, he knew how he was good at reading people and doing those things.

Whereas and this one was more oil and water to begin with, they're two completely different like lives going on and had to figure out how to work together. Yeah, it's interesting because they're both conning each other. At the beginning of Remington Steel, right, she's pretending there's a boss she's she's kind of lying, and he's lying and somehow you know it sort of. It does make them in some ways equals and kind of equally complicit to a degree. One of the things I liked about that show, as opposed to a lot of other male female lead shows, was they immediately said there's attraction here.

I mean, it's right off the bat and the pilot. There we there's an attraction, but we're not doing anything. We're not doing anything about it because if you're going to be in this role and I have to put up with you, I can't do that. So there was always the will they won't, you know, there's that tension, but they were really upfront about it, which you never saw. Yeah, yeah, still really don't see.

I think I was. I was surprised in going back to watch Remington Steel how up front, because I'd forgotten how just the front they were in conversations between Laura and Steel about that very subject and her saying very clearly, I don't trust you, so nothing is going to happen until I do, not for his lack of trying exactly, and she didn't want to, but she just you know, she just didn't want to take that leap until she knew more about him. Well, and also again because it was a very adult decision, right, So much of television as people acting my children, right, that's true. People went there in high school, you know when you see a show. Well, I think that's maybe one of the positives I hadn't really thought about with Scarecrow is that there were children, so they had she had to be the adult.

Dodi was more of a child than Amanda was, so, you know, because you know, mom was off dating the ropotist and doing you know things, learning to fly oddball stuff. So, yeah, Amanda was the adult in the in the home, brokering between her mother as a child and the two children who really were children. So she's going off to the adult world. But half the time you see her treating Lee like he is a child. She knows how to deal with that, so she treats him in that manner, and he responds to it.

Yes, because in his backstory he has not been raised, but his parents were died so young. Yeah, so he didn't have that. He's working through some some some evolving issues, right what you see when you know in the ACM kid when he's taking care, he's got the kid there and he's buying him all this, you know, and she says, what are you trying to do when father of the Year, I mean, this is ridiculous all these things that you've done. But he's basically saying, well, this is what I wish had happened. But she's saying, this is not how you treat it this is he's a young adult kind of here, that's not right?

Yeah? Yeah, all right? Well so what all right? We we We could talk about scarecram asking all day clearly, but keep showing me. I'm a TV jucking.

I'm a jucking myself too. So what you know you were you were sort of part of this fan group. How did it end up? Basically because you're running these anniversary events now? Yeah, so can you tell us a little bit about that?

Well, it had been bandied about for a long time. People were always saying, oh, we should try to do this, but nobody ever really did anything. And a lot of people always had the ideas like, oh we should do it in DC, or hey, I live in Texas, let's do one, you know, let's have them all come to Texas. And most of us like, yeah, you do. Do you realize how expensive something like that would pay to, you know, bring people to Texas?

And so one girl had it was on the packs form. I think she got talking to some people and said, I'd really like it would be fun to do this, but I have no knowledge. How would we do it? Are there is there anybody out there who would be interested? And another girl had said, sure, you know, I'll be I'll give it a stab.

I'll try to reach out to some people, and so a few of us got on board because I said, well, you know, you got to pay for it. You you got to have a place to have it. It's not going to be in somebody's backyard because I really don't. Well, actually knowing Bruce and Martha, they would show up, but typically you're not. You probably need a venue, and so you have to pay for something, and you have to pay for guests to come.

And she was all over the impression, Oh no, they'll all come for free. Everybody will just show up. I'll be a big party. And it's like, I think you've got the wrong idea. So as this time went on and we realized that only one of us really knew what we were doing, so I kind of wound up producing it all.

It was co coordinator when we started, and then it my shirt says cord and my friend actually gave me the start. So yeah, she did it for me for the twentieth because you're really yeah, you're really the coordinator. So it kind of started there, and that first one was quite the learning experience, and so the first one I went to three two thousand and three. It was the twenty twentieth anniversary of the show. And I first called Beverly.

I was like, you know, she's at the hotel, and they called Beverly, so I called and left. I just called the hotel and said, you know, basically, it's like, well, I'd like to speak to her about potentially doing this, and we would we would use the hotel. Why not, it's convenient, she owns it. It seems like a good idea. And they put me through to Beverly.

So, oh my god, you're You're my superhero now. And I was like, okay, well, I wasn't expecting to talk to her. So I was a little time and we chatted and she's lovely, and I said, well, I'm gonna she I would love this, This would be fantastic. Let's do it. You know, you know my daughter and her daughter in law at the time was the head of hospitality or whatever she was.

We'll get you hooked up. So I went out there and I met with Beverly, and Martha came down and we went head lunch and discussed things and said, okay, let's do this, and so That's how we kind of got into the hotel and we got things, and we've been to a couple of where Bruce was. So I talked to him at one of the cons because have you heard about this from your fan club president? And he said, no, I haven't. She hasn't mentioned it.

So I said, well, I'm not sure did she get the message or what. So here's the information. Are you interested? Yes? Okay.

So we had Bruce and Martha and Beverly on board, and I had already I had met Martha and Greg. They had gone to a fan club event for Bruce, so they were surprised guests. He didn't know they were coming. His fan club president had or whatever she was, had sprung this and oh here's a surprise. Here are Martha and Greg.

So I had met them, and I was seated next to Martha's husband, Keith, So Keith and I chatted throughout that. So when I pulled Martha and say, hey, you know, we met back at this thing. So that's how I knew Martha and we just all we got along grade we had a great time. I'm telling you, I'm so happy I got to meet and spend time at Beverly Land. Oh yeah, she is what you know, was one of the most amazing woman I've ever met.

She's just wonderful. She was a mom to everybody. I'll tell you the first event we said, well we had you know, it was held in October, and saw was in October. The we got big birthday cakes for Martha and Beverly because their birthdays were just a couple of days apart in October, and Beverly insisted on cutting the cake and handing it out to everyone. Literally sliced the cake and walked around and handed everybody a slice of cake, and just just she's just wonderful.

I said, she's my definition of a Hollywood broad. She's just she's out there. She's very real, down to earth. Nothing seems to phase her. The book about her so happy she was there.

I'm glad to hear that that is true in real life. Oh yeah, absolutely, she and she did. She was happy to do anything we wanted to do. She was all for it. She just loved the show, She loved working with them.

She had a great time discussing it at the Q and A. She told some fun stories that they're on the DVD. But I don't remember all of them. I would, but it's been a long time. Yeah, long time since two thousand and three.

Yeah, but she had she was wonderful. I'm so glad I got the chance to have her at the event. She came to the first two and then of course she was ill. Also, that's fantastic and so then so two thousand and three success, and you're like, oh, we should do this again when you're like, I need a break for five years. Yeah, well yes.

Before the thing was even over, people were saying, are we going to do it next year? And I said, you've got to be out of your mind to do this again next year. Most people don't understand what goes into planning an event, especially when you're doing it from the other side of the country and it's not cheap and trying to pull everything together and you know, get the people there, get the commitments, you know, get a good goodie bag, you know, all sorts of things that go into it, dealing with the hotels. So you just you don't want to do some fundraising in between if you can, so I said, well, we'll do it again, but let's do five years, because it'll be the twenty fifth so it'll be the silver anniversary.

So that's kind of a big deal for most people. Let's do it five years. So of course when the twenty fifth came around, it's like, we're going to do it again five years, right, So so it's become an every five year thing. Well maybe I'll be done in the fiftieth as the as the organizer coordinator, Are you able to enjoy any of the events or any of the Yeah, I, well, you know, I because I've been dealing with these folks for so long. I you know, it's not I'm not in the oh my god, I got to see him and get an autograph thing, So I don't have that pressure on me.

Like a lot of fans, it's like their first time meeting them, so I get to observe them being so excited to meet them. The day before the event, we always do a Warner Brothers tour and that's always fun from moust because they get to see filming locations on site. We usually stop by stage twenty five to see it's their names on the plaque, you know, the show name is there pictures. One year we were able to go to the ranch. One year we were able to go to the Disney ranch.

So we've done other things for the fans, and then on Saturday, the day of the event, I'm pretty busy. But really, once everybody's signing autographs and people are in line, I can kind of back off. You're kind of like, okay, yeah, the train is, that's the station. It's time for It's time for everybody. You know, I don't have to do anything because it's self regulating.

As people just get in line and get their autographs. People are coming up and asking questions just you know, when are you going to do the drawing or what are we doing after lunch kind of things. But I can kind of just sit back and assess at that point, and then I can under around and see what's going on. But the nighttime, yeah, I can really enjoy that because we sit for dinner and then we have the Q and A, which I just walk around with the microphone, handing it to people to ask questions. So everybody's enjoying that.

That is fantastic. And so how many have you had? So twos? I'd have to do some math. What's twenty?

What what's the next one? This is the this is the fortieth, so it'll be the fifth one we'd started with twenty okay, all right, all right, so this is twenty years. This next year will be twenty years since the first one. Yeah. Does it seem like a well oiled machine at this point in terms of the events and things on your play well knowing what needs to be done?

Yeah, I mean there's a list we know, you know, what we need from the hotel, what we need to get the guests and everything. And this year, because we knew ahead of time a few things, and we already had the complete dossier from what we did last year of what we needed at the hotel in a PD file, we just sent that to hotels and said, this is what we need and these are the dates we want are can you do it? You know? So last time we took a vote with the fans and said, would you prefer going back to the Beverly because now with Beverly gone and her name's not on the hotel anymore, or would you like a hotel closer to the airport so you don't have to rent a car? And the response was, let's let's be closer to an airport.

So most of the people didn't rent anything, and so we said well, if we're gonna do that, then let's get a bus and we'll everybody can pay to take the bus, and we'll go to the Warner Brothers tour on the bus. So everybody hopped on the bus and went to Warner Brothers. So that was an added wrinkle. We never did that before. So there's always something new when you're producing, sure, I mean, something always comes up you don't expect.

And so how many people were involved last time you did it? I think last time we had sixty fans. We had uh, Bruce, Martha and Greg and Myron and of the main cast the for them, Dennis Stockwall, who's one of the producers. And we had guest stars usually Richard Hatch is Richard Richard Hurd, Sorry Richard Hatch, wrong show about a Stark gaticize that one too. No, no, but you know I have met Dirk Benedict and Richard has the Dirk Benedict was on my bucket list, on my list, and I have met him too.

It was fantastic. We can said stories later. I just have to get to the Shan Shan Cassidy concert, because I said, I told Eric Astrata I had met Dirk Benedict and I met Eric and I said, you know, if I could just beat Sean Cassidy, I'll have met elder posters that were on my wall. So yeah, I'm working. I'm working toward it anyway.

So we had so Richard used to come because he's a friend of Myron's. And Myron said, at the very first one, the twentieth, he said, are you inviting guest stars because I know Richard. Sure, let's bring Richard. So Richard Hurt has came to everyone. He couldn't come last time he was ill, he had had and then of course he's he passed away not long after the thirty fifth.

But last year we had Stephen mos came. He was one of the guest stars. Andrea, Oh good god, I can't remember our last name. It's going right out of my head. She played Davis Banelli and oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll remember or it's her last name is dropped right out of my head.

So and Paul Paul Stout actually was there for the first couple, then Greg was the last two were like, we're trying to get the two of them. Yeah, and Paul just he didn't see the email, and yeah, he doesn't check his email. He's terrible about it, so we're trying to get them both there. We've got a couple of the people that we've invited. Peter Jurassic came a few years back.

He was a guest star and the woman who played his wife in the episode was his real life girlfriend during the episode. So he said, you know, she lives in la Let's see if she can come. So he got her to come. She's a lawyer now, so she's not got nothing to do with it, but she came just to come and for the afternoon and she didn't know what to expect, but she had She had a good time. So yeah, it's kind of snow But one person says, oh, I know this person.

We had a crew member come last time popped in. Martha had run into him and said come on buy so he showed up and yeah, so we've we've kind of just networking through Kurt Galveo, who he was one also producer. He he came for the first one, might have been there for the second, he was busy. We've Brad and Eugenie. I hit him up last time, but they were busy that weekend.

So I'm hoping that we're going to get him this time. So every year, we were probably still working on Supernatural at that time, and October is yeah, well they had they actually had an event that day at that evening that was pre planned because it was last year. It was the sixteenth, It was right before Halloween, so they had some event that was that Saturday, so they couldn't be there. So I'm hoping we're I didn't give enough advanced notice that maybe they can one or both of them can come this time, because God knows, I would love to pick their brains and would be a lot more. It would be so much fun.

And and again we got to inter talk with Eugenie and she's just delightful. Yeah, and there are some people I spoke to. Yeah, I'm blanking on her name, but she she actually was in How the West was One with Bruce's well, she played his girlfriend for a couple episodes and then she was brought on to kind of be his love interest. But she only lasted one episode of course, because that was because it was like a hardy boy, I wasn't going to end well, she no, she just she was there for an episode and then they just she didn't get mentioned again, but she was stating him at the time, and so I I didn't have a way to reach her. She's not doing anything thing, So I her daughter is an actress.

So I literally sent a message to her daughter's agent and said, this is a long shot, but I'm trying to reach her mother. And I got a phone call from my mother. Oh that's awesome. Yeah, and we had we had a wonderful but she said, no, I'm just so out of the industry. You know, I just it would I would feel like I don't be along.

I said, no, trust me. With these fans, they would be so happy to see you. It's like, no, I just feel like I've been out of it too much. So you know, I understand that I'm going to work on her again. I'll send her another message and say come on, all right.

So your first event, do you remember how many people were there for that one? Fifty? No, it's it's actually kind of been in the fifty to sixty range every time because it's a different mix of people. We've only had their act a matter of fact, at the last one, we had four people who've been to had been to all four. That's cool.

So so they got a little extra hey for four time attendee on their on their little name tag at dinner. But it's been like there is one a woman and her mom who came to the first one and they said, yeah, we're only going to come every ten, so she came to the twenty of them the thirties. So they may show up. They just might, all right, can you tell us a little bit about where and when and how people can come? Sure you have the website.

I'm pretty sure. I sent you the website and we have a Facebook page. And it will be in La. It's going to actually be at the same hotel we were last time, in the lax Hilton, which is right near the airport. So they have a shuttle so you don't need a car.

If you do have a car, they do have on site parking, which is helpful in LA. And it will be on October fourteenth, twenty twenty three, so that's the Saturday of the day long event, the Friday we usually organize our Warner Brothers tour. That is so fantastic. I'm really excited. You know, I don't know, maybe maybe eightes TV LAS to come for well, maybe you should come into a podcast, right there.

We might have to do a special podcast that would be fun, that would be super welcome. Oh my god, absolutely welcome to come. We've got a haul all your equipment down there. I'm sure the little portable. I'm sure we've got some portable portable ways to do stuff.

I'm looking at Kevin. It's given me the to to interview you know you just you know, well, yeah, like I said, Andrea was there last time. I don't know she'll make She just happened to be in town. She doesn't live in La. She just happened to be there, and she said, oh I'm about to be there.

Sure I come, but only for the afternoon evening. I couldn't do the morning, so she came for part of the day. And So you run a Martha Smith's website and Facebook page. It's our Facebook page. It was a website.

We did have a website, and then when Facebook came on, they had groups. I said, you know, I'm paying for I'm paying her website and this, and we can do everything on Facebook. So I switched it all to Facebook. So it's the Martha Smith Official usually because I've shared your posts on there, and I share it on our Scarecrow page, the Scarecrow Anniversary page as well. All right, well, Martha Smith seems like a delightful person, so I'm excited to hear that she is as well.

She's not anything like Fancy, No, she is not, I got that for sure. She is definitely a Midwesterner, you know, her sensibility is very very much rooted in her Midwestern you know. And she's a friend. All yeah, she's just she's just absolutely lovely. And Bruce is the most on too earth guy you'll ever meet.

Paul and greg Or Gray, you know. All everybody in the cast is really very nice to guest stars. And I have Matt Kate on numerous occasions. She's always been very nice to me. You know, we've we keep hoping that she'll she'll come, but forty one.

She doesn't like crowds much. So it's I understand if you're that's not your thing. But we would love to have her, yea, if she could, she could come, So we keep hoping. Well, we keep hoping too. You never know when someone's going to show up.

It's somewhere. Yeah, she showed up once when Bruce could he had to drop out of his fan club event because he got a role, so he couldn't be there. She came up and took a spot, came in his dad Yeah, because her his fan club president, wasn't really her fan club or she did something with her, so she nowhere. So she said, well, can you Bruce can't be here? Can you come because all these fans are here, so she she stopped for him.

Oh that's great, that's really we would like the two of them to get in the same room together. Some people who would love that. I think, Hey, so I know we talked about your fan fiction. Will you tell us what your nom the plum is that it's my yeah or my pseudonym or whatever you call. It's Bohemian Fling.

That's the email address that I created because I got into I was online. I needed my original email, which a lot of people's screen name, the old timers who recognize it, it was SMK Junkie, and my mother said, I don't like that. I don't like Junkie, So so I took Bohemian Fling. And if you want to know where it came from, it's from an episode, so you have to pay attention. It's the it's she makes a drink called the Bohemian Fling.

So I took the name of a drink. That's fantastic. It sounds like something my husband would do. Why not take the name of the drink. Yeah, that is awesome because we talk about fan fiction on the show, because I think it's one of the things that's really very special to the fandoms of television.

Shows are unique, I think in their own way. I mean, I think we're starting to see the franchises, certainly with starting to become like that. Yeah, there's a little bit more of it, but it's just really spectacular how inspiring these shows are to people and that they want to continue with those characters and continue with those stories and just expand the world for themselves. In our kids who was continuing the series, there really was. There was a group that put together Season five.

There's a season five fan fiction. A group of a group of people said Okay, yeah, let's get together and let's let's let's make season five. So I love that instead of doing an alternate universe or just a story within a story, they said, well, let's let's see if we can extend the series. Because that didn't happen, so let's you just tell me, do you keep the secret marriage or oh, I don't remember. It's a lot, but no, that's you know, pretty much universal.

Everybody hates the secret marriage. I don't know too many people whole of the secret marriage. And come on, if you're gonna get marriage, he's come on. And it wasn't a let's say it wasn't a secret at the office. I think everybody there knew what was good.

But yeah, just keeping it from mom and the kids was kind of silly. Sure, yeah, all right, Well this has been fantastic. We could talk all day, but unfortunately we can't today, but we can. We can have you back on and we can definitely I'd love to. I really think we should be there or part of the anniversary event because it's right up our wheelhouse.

Oh yeah, it's a great place to talk to fans and get their opinions. Like you know, you'd ask, you know what Martha saying, you know, what is it about the show that people keep coming back to? You're gonna get a hundred different answers. I mean, I don't know. For me, I thought about that because we were talking about it, and you know, I think it's just there's heart to the show that isn't in other shows.

There's that. It's something that give a long time ago. It's like every character has chemistry with every character. I mean Lee even has. He has chemistry with Dottie.

Yeah, he has chemistry with the kids. Joe shows up, he's fine. You know, they do fine. It's not that it again, unlike many shows of the the ex husband isn't the jerk. He's just he's there.

He's just the ex husband, no problem, he's part of the life. Things move on. Dottie has chemistry with Francine when she shows up out of the or with the dogs. The dogs she was a monkey. She had a pet monkey.

Yes, of course she did, you know so. But every you know, Billie has chemistry with all the different people, even when he showed up, when he has to talk to them, there's just there's no division in there. So there's just these little sparks of everybody somehow melts together even though they're all in completely different worlds. I think for me, because it's it seems to be the patterns most of the shows that I like. Most of the shows that I watch, I like the characters and I want to spend time with them.

So I'm happy to go on whatever journey the writers are taking them on this week because I'm I'm I'm very much enjoying spending time with these these these characters because certainly the plot with plots were not yeah anything, yeah, which is fine, deep yeah, And even Bruce said, you know, you're an eight o'clock show, and he'd say things like, can't I just shoot him? I mean, I got a gun, I have a gun. I have a gun, and he's a run Why wouldn't I just shoot? You can't do that at eight o'clock TV. So you know, there were things.

There's some latitude there because it was back then it was Family Hour. So the plots, yeah, they were a little goofy sometimes, and it had to be because of the time, the time we were in. Yeah, that's why Moonlighting was so different, because he was doing things on that show that yeah, yeah, we took a left turn somewhere. You're not fitting the norm, and that's why people liked it so much. I think you know that, boy, this is different, but there's something familiar about the silliness of the Like I said, I was a huge Nick and Nora fan, So the Finman I loved it.

My mother, you know, introduced me to that. It's like, boy, I love this stuff. These are great type things. So when this came up, it reminded me of that for sure, for sure, no doubt. And I think I don't know if we talked to Eugenie about this, but but but definitely influenced heavily Scarecrowmisus King and Remington Steel, no doubt.

Yeah, I wish I had. I'm a little behind sometimes on where you are, and because I don't know when you're actually doing the interview to ask Eugenie, because Bruce has said a few times that he seems to remember, but he doesn't know if it If it's true that Eugenie would write his part and Brad would write Amanda, that's how you got that weird juxtaposition of how they behaved. That is really interesting. We I'm sure we didn't ask her about that, but that's really interesting. And I had thought about it too late to send it to you before you were actually going to be interviewing her.

But it was a question that It's come up many times. I keep thinking I probably should just email Brad and say, hey, this came up, tell me. But it's one of those things. It's like, maybe that's why some of this stuff worked the way it did because she was thinking in a different way. I'm thinking like a woman, but I'm acting like a man.

So how is he going to behave in the situation. Well, we did talk about in our interview with Robin Bernheim for Remington Steel, like the idea of like, how you know, who gets to create characters? Do you have to be the gender that you're writing for or not? I mean that seems unwieldy and not possible. How would you do that?

As I how would you do that? But how do you put yourself into those other shoes? Like? And it was in the you know, Michael Gleason and bub Butler created a very feminist character. Yes, and they may not even have known they were creating.

They were just creating a Yeah, I think that was more of the point in that regard. This is something that we haven't seen on TV. So we're spending it, we're taking it, spinning it on its head. We're gonna have the female detective who's just frustrated by the man who's walked into her life as opposed to the other way around. But yeah, Laura was very you know, you talk about feminists and I don't know what my real definition of feminism is.

For me, it's more I'm a woman, I can do anything a man can do. It basically a poison down to that. And so with Laura, she was like, I'm taking the reins. That's why I had said Murphy Brown Designing Women. Those were the two shows for me that were like, Hey, these they're in charge and they're taking any guff and they don't care if they're single.

They don't care if somebody says you should have kids, It's like, no, I don't care. Laura didn't care about that. She had a sister who was doing that. Yeah, and of course you know there's there's Beverly Garland telling her you should be doing it too, But that, to me, that part of her was very feminist. I'm in charge, this is my agency and yeah, you had mentioned it on the first one for that was you know, yeah, it got watered down.

She wasn't written as strongly. As the seasons went on, they became more partners instead of her being in charge. And I think she was bristling at it to begin with. Yeah, because he came into her world and getting the way and so that I like that. I think they probably could have done more with that, but I think they found their niche with the banter and now it got into that.

Yeah that's what happens. But yeah, I think when you're a writer of anything, books, movie scripts, if you're going to be the writer, you got to figure out how to write from a child, an adult, an old man. You haven't been any of those things. I haven't. I was a child, but it was a long time ago.

How do you put yourself in that role to write? I mean, Philip and Jamie actually were pretty good characters for kids on TV. They were they weren't brats, they weren't Yeah, they were actually I loved I love that, and you sort of wanted more of them, I think, which is weird. I mean usually for kids stuff, particularly when it's kids in a not kids show, right, it's not the party. But it wasn't about that.

It was a flavor. But I was very because they felt like real kids. They really did right. They were often when they were they were going to school, they were falling off their skateboards, they were going to baseball, and she was involved in those things. So you saw them as a family unit, and they weren't just screaming bratty children who just ran in, screamed something and ran out.

Yeah. Yeah, so they well they participated. Yes, well, Jeanette, it's been so fantastic to have you on. I mean, this is great. So we're gonna stay in touch.

Thank you for you know. I'm so glad Martha put us together. And it knows everybody. Martha does know everybody. She is like one of that.

She's the connector, like she is really remember, I mean there are other people that, like the other fans are going to talk to ye. Here's the thing. It's like, I've been involved in the fandom since the early nineties, late eighties. Some of these people have just kind of popped up over the years. It's like, wow, they where do you come from?

I knew the well, yeah, it's kind of funny. It's like yeah, it's like well, and then it's like oooh, now we're we're the experts. Where the thing it's like like I don't care about any of that. I guess I've reached you know, when it was new and it's fun to go do these things, and now it's more I've kind of backed off the online stuff because it got really it was a lot of drama. Can yes, So it's like, you know, I just don't I don't need that in my life.

So I'm happy to do the anniversary events and keep my hand in and I'm on the you know pages, and I hear stuff, but I don't care about you know, the day and day at all that kind of stuff. So I'm just kind of taking that step. Yeah, we're gonna try to talk to the podcast folks, and yeah, Casey and and also David David. Yeah, so we're we're excited because it's it's it is. You guys are really robust.

You're you're keeping the love alive. I love the you know, I'm finding out things I don't know, so that's great. Oh yeah, we know all sorts. You guys know every story. I've been hearing stories from Bruce and Martha and Beverly for a long time.

Thinks I don't repeat. Okay, we might have to have you on with Martha, and then I think we can just start telling tales. Get Bruce on, forget about get Bruce and Martha together. Bruce will tell you all about everybody Martha's ever dated. I know, we want to hear about the Germans.

Oh in the Italian, you know about the Italian, the Italian. Oh my god. All right, she was in Europe. She had fun. Let's just say that I love her.

Well, she's good for her. Oh my god? Thank you? Why yeah, thank you very much. Thanks talking to you.

Take care, Thanks, have a good night. First, in today's audioography, you can find Jeanette at Facebook dot com and we'll drop the links to her fanfiction and the SMK anniversary site on the Eighties TV Ladies website. But you can also find info on the fortieth anniversary at Facebook dot com slash Scarecrow and missus King Anniversary. Don't forget For ad free versions of Eighties TV Ladies, go to patreon dot com slash Eighties tv Ladies. As always, thank you for listening to Eighties TV Ladies.

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