Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

General goings on in the 1966 Batman World

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twint9
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Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

Post by twint9 »

I came across something interesting today. On the Nov 25/66 call sheet for the Sandman episode, Gypsy Rose Lee is listed as the TV commentator who is interviewing Catwoman in her nightgown. BUT - on the Daily Production Report for the same day she is not listed, instead there is a lady named Portia Nelson. I looked her up and the photos seem to in fact show that it is her and not Gypsy Rose Lee that performed the role. Here is a screen grab from the episode and also an image of Portia Nelson from the web....do you agree?
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clavierankh
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Re: Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

Post by clavierankh »

I assumed it was Gypsy. She had a daily talk show on ABC at the time.It was the kind of cross promotion they did at the time with their Cameos.

Could it have been a last minute change. Someone at the network said use Gypsy instead of Portia?
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twint9
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Re: Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

Post by twint9 »

But I'm saying the switch went the other way, from Portia instead of Gypsy since Gypsy did not show up on the Daily Production Report, and the screen grab photo looks like Portia to me...
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Jim Akin
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Re: Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

Post by Jim Akin »

From the supplied photos, I definitely think it's Portia Nelson. For comparison purposes, here's a roughly contemporary shot of Gypsy Rose Lee:
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This is taken from a publicity still for the 1966 movie "The Trouble with Angels."
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BatToys
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Re: Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

Post by BatToys »

Gypsy had a charismatic voice but I bet someone thought her stripper background was inappropriate for a children's tv show.
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Dr. Shimel
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Re: Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

Post by Dr. Shimel »

BatToys wrote: Sun Jul 30, 2017 4:01 pm Gypsy had a charismatic voice but I bet someone thought her stripper background was inappropriate for a children's tv show.
She had complained during the early days of her TAPED talk show that there was a double standard, citing how Virginia Graham's "Girl Talk," had plenty of double entendres that the censors ignored.

One article noted, "Gypsy's chief beef is that she's being discriminated against because of her background." Supposedly, anything that was deemed too racy was either bleeped or drowned out by a drum beat or music.
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epaddon
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Re: Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

Post by epaddon »

I have rewatched the scene and I have to say I agree completely, it's not Gypsy. I have to admit, for years I kept thinking it odd how frumped up she looked in contrast to how glamorous she still looked at the time and now I know better. Thanks to twint9 for piecing that together.

I seriously doubt Gypsy would have been blackballed from appearing. She had been a regular on the short-lived Phyllis Diller sitcom the previous season and also was a regular fixture of daytime TV by this point with her own talk show as well as being a frequent panelist on "Hollywood Squares". A more likely explanation would be she backed out at the last minute because of some other commitment (because keep in mind even a sequence as short as this would have taken up more than a few hours of her time).
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Ben Bentley
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Re: Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

Post by Ben Bentley »

Great observations all round, especially Ivan! Gotta love those Dozier-files
stoneageman4
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Re: Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

Post by stoneageman4 »

I thought perhaps she placed "Police Woman Mooney" who was put in Catwoman's maze. Am I wrong? In the credit's it didn't say who police offer Mooney was.
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dell
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Re: Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

Post by dell »

Catarina/Policewoman Mooney is listed as an actress named Jeanie Moore on IMDB. Batman was her first credited role. Interestingly, she did not have another credited role for 20 years.
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Mr.Freeze
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Re: Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

Post by Mr.Freeze »

Walken : "I started performing when I was 5 years old. We weren't child actors - we were used as furniture. But all my education came from that world and it was all good. You learned to conquer nerves. You learned to think on your feet. If you messed up, there was no correcting it. You dealt with the embarrassment. It was a completely unique apprenticeship." As a teenager, he trained as a dancer at the Professional Children's School in New York, which he later described as "being in that movie where the guy gets stranded on a planet of women", and on graduating he was presented with his diploma by the famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee"

lol.......
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Progress Pigment
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Re: Gypsy Rose Lee - did she actually appear on the show?

Post by Progress Pigment »

Policewoman Mooney was an interesting character. Certainly by 2nd season standards. Too bad she wasn't used again.

Image

But yes, that's not Gypsy Rose Lee.

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Next week, the Dynamic Duo meets the Clock King!
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