Two 'Babes' for the price of one - DIANA
RIGG and LINDA THORSON. Diana wasn't in
Linda's original AVENGERS debut episode, but was
recalled to shoot new scenes when it was judged to be
below par. (This was the only occasion any assistants
met - they're on Steed's apartment stairs, hence
the seeming discrepancy in their height.)
Linda Thorson is the only Avengers girl I know nothing about. Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg and Joanna Lumley are all really famous...but Linda Thorson ? So was she actually any good in The Avengers, Kid ?
ReplyDeleteI'd say she was better than Joanna 'Plumley', but when it came to Avengers girls, who was paying attention to the acting?
ReplyDeleteLinda seemed petite, and Diana seemed statuesque, but they are actually about the same height (5'8" or 5'9"). Linda may even be a little taller.
ReplyDeleteI remember them meeting on the stairs as Emma was leaving, and she told Tara something like, "He likes his tea stirred anti-clockwise." Maybe a spoof of James Bond's "shaken, not stirred" martinis.
Emma Peel had a cameo in a New Avengers episode (I think it was "K Is For Kill," or something similar), but it was stock footage of her talking on a phone, and she did not appear in the same scene with Purdey or with any other characters.
The Pretenders' rock video "Don't Get Me Wrong" uses footage from an Avengers episode, and it looks like it might be from "The Forget-Me-Knot."
Also, in one of the new episodes, Steed refers to all three previous Avengerettes, and there's a photo of each of them in his apartment.
ReplyDeleteAll I know is Linda continued acting and did very well on the stage. Macnee retired to Palm Springs and became a US citizen in the 1950s! So all that time we think of him as the ultimate Brit he was already a Yank. Such is life.
ReplyDeleteHonor Blackman turned down a title because she is a republican who believes in abolishing the monarchy.
The only thing I recall seeing Linda in after the Avengers was one of those celebrity sports challenge shows, Phil, but I forget the name of it. My view of the monarchy is if they don't bother me, then I won't bother them.
ReplyDeleteWell, Kid - if the acting was terrible it would spoil the show, don't you think ? Anyway, I'm not old enough to remember the original Avengers so it's the New Avengers that I have fond memories of. Joanna Lumley's Purdey hairstyle became very fashionable for a while (but Princess Leia's didn't...lol). I knew about Honor Blackman turning down a damehood - there was an entire list published of people who'd turned down honours. Alan Bennett was another. Good for them I say. The next honours list will be full of Olympic athletes who nobody will remember in ten years time. Plus the usual tax dodgers and senior civil servants who get rewarded for doing the jobs they are already paid to do. What a racket.
ReplyDeleteOnly if you were paying attention to the acting, CJ. As a kid, I was only interested in the Avengerettes' 'charms', not their acting abilities. Never liked Plumley's hairstyle, or her plummy delivery. I also turned down an honour - they wanted to imprison me at her majesty's 'pleasure' (which is surely an honour?), but I dissuaded them. I hope no Olympic athletes get awarded an honour, because, quite frankly, I don't think any of them deserve one.
ReplyDeleteBesides the short-lived sitcom Marblehead Manor, the only thing I remember seeing Linda Thorson in after The Avengers was a made-for-TV suspense movie, Lady Killer (1973), with Barbara Feldon as a bride who suspects that her husband plans to murder her.
ReplyDeleteDiana Rigg had a short-lived American sitcom of her own at about that same time (1973), called "Diana." She later hosted the anthology series "Mystery" on PBS.
Honor Blackman was in Shalako, a Western with Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot. It was kind of unusual for a Western to star a Scottish actor, a French actress, and an English actress. Most Westerns at the time starred Italians, and were filmed in Spain.
Joanna Lumley has a following in America for Absolutely Fabulous. That show would probably have been hilarious if only I could have understood what they were saying. Talk about the US and Great Britain being two countries separated by a common language.
What's that about language, TC? I could barely understand a word you wrote. (Hee hee!) Thanks for the info.
ReplyDeleteSir Arthur Conan Doyle wanted to turn down his knighthood, but accepted it after his mother asked him not to insult the monarch. He may have gotten some vicarious satisfaction from having Sherlock Holmes turn down the honor.
ReplyDeleteIn Ian Fleming's last James Bond novel, The Man With the Golden Gun, Bond turns down a knighthood, saying, "I am a Scottish peasant."
Apparently, at first Ian Fleming didn't want Sean Connery to play Bond, but he was so impressed by his performance that he made Bond of Scottish ancestry (his father was a Scot, his mother was Swiss) in his next book. A knighted 'secret' agent doesn't bear thinking about.
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