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Route 66: Where Is Chick Lorimer, Where Has She Gone? (1962)
Did Carl Sandburg ever see his poem-namesake episode?
I was an Education Park Ranger at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, NC, 1987-92, teaching all things Sandburg. He was not known to watch much TV as he was busy writing there at his home from 1945 until he died in 1967. (He didn't know who Bob Dylan was when the singer came to call, but Sandburg was a collector and singer of old folk songs which might have prompted the visit.)
So I wonder if someone told Sandburg about the use of the Chick Lorimer poem on tv in 1962, or if perhaps CBS asked his permission to have it quoted in full in the show. And then I wonder how many viewers went hunting a copy of "Chick Lorimer" when the poem is actually titled "Gone", and one of many in Sandburg's book, Complete Poems - which won him a Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1951. Just another example of the literary value of the Route 66 tv series.
I wish I had known about this episode in 1992. I'd have asked Sandburg's daughter Helga all about it. She was a fireball writer herself and liked to talk about her activist father and his work. And like Silliphant (and born the same year) she was cutting edge and would have surely known the use of her father's work in a groundbreaking 60's tv show. Helga was 44 when this show aired and I just bet she heard about it soon after, if in fact she didn't see it firsthand.
RIP Carl and Helga Sandburg....and Chick Lorimer, wherever you've gone.
Route 66: Welcome to the Wedding (1962)
Where'd the hubcap come from?
The first time we see Todd driving the 56 Chevy with Justin in the back seat in a full length shot, the car has no drivers side front wheel hubcap, but there is one on the back drivers side wheel. The next time we see the car moving from that same angle, there are hubcaps on the front and back wheels. Where and when did they get one for the front wheel?
Perhaps the second scene was shot first and they lost the hubcap along the way before they shot the first scene, but no one on scene noticed. Very obvious for those of us that know vehicles of that era. I learned to drive in a 56 Chevy like that one and went with my Dad in it to get my daylight license at age 14 in South Carolina in 1962.
Route 66: Burning for Burning (1961)
Mother should have been a grandmother
The story, setting and acting are Route 66 quality, but most of the credibility is lost the first time Beulah Bondi is said to be the recently deceased 25 year-old Mark's Mother. She is 72 years old and played Jimmy Stewart's mother in It's a Wonderful Life! What happened casting director? Did you have some debts to pay? Pat Hingle could be her son and he could be the deceased Mark's father. But no way Bondi is a mother to that Mark. I'm totally puzzled on this one. It ruined the episode for me.
I've acted in movies and TV so know that stretches in age are made. But this was way out of bounds.
Route 66: The Mud Nest (1961)
Where's the mud nest?
I've searched everywhere for clues to why it is named "The Mud Nest". We're lines cut from Buzz's dream tale so that he felt he was alone in a mud nest? Or was Dorthea the one who abandoned her mud nest after her son's death? Ideas?