As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
There has always been a troubling feeling in me about beloved actor Charles Durning and it is due to a performance he made on television, which was so troubling that no one ever wrote or produced a script like it ever again........and that was way back in September of 1975 AD in the year of our Lord.
I actually only remembered the scene and the actress, and thought it was Durning who was engaged in the part, so I took the time to look it up tonight and I believe I found the episode.
It was a Quinn Martin Production of the private investigator Frank Cannon, played by the original Marshall Matt Dillon on radio. I forget what the program was about, but it starred Sharon Acker, who many will remember as the woman on Star Trek who was on the crowded planet, and her people kidnapped Captain Kirk to give her a disease he had been exposed to.
Whatever the scene was, it was Charles Durning playing the character of Dan Coccoran, in a two part episode which was completed on Buddy Ebsen's Barnaby Jones.
The scene involved Lynette Mettey who has starred in numerous programs from Hogan's Heroes MASH to Quincey ME below. Yes she is hot.
The scene with Durning as it was written had the two characters and it was shockingly brutal. In writing about it, it does not convey what happened, as Durning projected just pure malevolence toward women. This was not a scene of slapping Kitty Russell around and raping her. No this was Durning surprising a woman, punching her in the gut, so hard she can not breathe, and then he murders her.
Yes Lynette Mettey deserves a great deal of credit in portraying a woman helpless, surprised with the wind knocked out of her, but that scene was so troubling that no one has ever repeated it. Durning deserves the credit too as he was so vile, but what took place on CBS network television was never attempted ever again.
It was amazing how punching a woman like that could be so shocking even to an industry which does Bradley Cooper anal scenes over a counter with his trusting girlfriend.
I doubt anyone is searching for that scene as the one in the opening credits of Mannix, as I still get a search for that explanation featured on this blog. It troubled me though that scene to track it down. I have never watched anything with Charles Durning in it, not matter how beloved he is, without recalling that horrific scene. It is not as well known as Psycho in the shower scene, but it is even more horrid as Hollywood never did it again. Even Monica Bellucci raped in an alley for what seemed a half hour, was not as brutal as Durning in a few minutes on screen.
Nuff Said
agtG