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Chapter 10

Going Down?

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyone who followed the talk shows spawned by the trials of O.J. Simpson knows Gary Spence of Wyoming. He was the winningest lawyer in America. You could spot him immediately with his silver locks and trademark buckskin coat. Matlock substitutes a gray suit for the buckskin and a Southern drawl for Spence's Western drawl.

In Murder in Brentwood, Fuhrman describes meeting Spence when Spence and Court TV’s John Gibson stopped by to visit Fuhrman’s Lawyer. He quotes Spence on his observation that Fuhrman's performance on the stand had a "Zen" quality about it and explains it by telling him about his martial arts training. Zen rhymes with Ben. The martial arts are practiced on mats. Spence and Matlock had silver "locks," both practiced law and Fuhrman made a career out of locking people up.

With or without the personal contact and those Zen-practice-mat-lock-lockup associations all clumped together, you will see that Matlock had much to do with Fuhrman's thinking about himself, O.J. and Judge Lance Ito’s wife, Margaret (Peggy) York. You will see it better when you recall that the man Lana is pretending to be in "Revenge and Remorse/The Guilty Alibi" when she switches the judge’s gavel with one that explodes is Eddie Cassalis, a.k.a. Spence.

In Lightning Jack (’94) with Paul Hogan as Jack Kane and Cuba Gooding Jr. as Ben Doyle, Beverly D’Angilo is a prostitute named Lana Castel. In Jules Firthman’s screenplay To have and Have Not Walter Brennan is Bogie’s alcoholic buddy and shipmate Eddie. A huge difference between Matlock and Spence was in their drinking habits. Matlock didn’t drink. Spence drank like Eddie – and Fuhrman’s alcoholic "buddy" Ron Shipp.

The bomb threat that Fuhrman writes about in Murder in Brentwood comes when he is having lunch in a bar with a man named John, the city attorney who defended him in his shooting of Joseph Britton. Yes, Britton, as in Bonnie Britton, as in Lana who blows up the judge with an exploding gavel and the lawyer with a car bomb. The lawyer’s name is John, a former city attorney. When his car blows up, smoke fills the cab and the radio announcer chokes on it as he reads the traffic report. He reports a traffic jam. What does Fuhrman do when he hears about the bomb threat? He jumps in his car…. and he runs into a traffic jam.

Before we continue with this episode of Police Squad! let’s take a step back to the first chapter of The Smoking Gun…Movie Guide with Michael Caine as "The Great Detective" in Jack the Ripper (’88). Among the many parallels in that made-for-television movie to the Bundy murders and to the great detective that Mark Fuhrman would have us believe he was, is a carefully arranged set of items left by the killer. The placement of each item at the feet of the Ripper’s second victim Annie Chapman has a one to one connection of some kind to the items found at the feet of Ronald Goldman:

Where there was a knit cap at the feet of Goldman there is a comb at the feet of Chapman (hair). Where there was a dark brown leather glove at the feet of Goldman there is a dark brown leather purse at the feet of Chapman (dark brown leather). At Goldman’s feet was a white envelope containing Juditha Brown’s glasses. At Chapman’s feet is a white cloth folded in the shape of the envelope. At Goldman’s feet was a bloody heelprint. At Chapman’s feet is a pill envelope with a rounded open flap in the same shape and in the same orientation as the bloody heelprint. At Goldman’s feet were three distinct blood drops in three different sizes. At Chapman’s feet is an unidentified object with three shiny buttons in three sizes. The only leather gloves on the scene are the dark brown leather gloves worn by a policeman—the first detective on the scene.

The items at Goldman’s feet were the ones in the picture with Fuhrman pointing to the glove. All of the items were within an eight-inch radius of his hand. In Jack the Ripper all of the items are within an eight-inch radius of each other. On a table in the morgue with the Ripper’s next two victims, Elizabeth Stride and Kathy Eddowes, you see a handkerchief, six bars of soap, a tin of tea and sugar, two clay pipes, a purse with two coins (a copper one and a silver one) and a match box. But clustered in a corner within an eight-inch radius of each other and called out in order by a policeman is a pair of glasses, a red mitten (bloody glove), a ball of knitting yarn and a comb (hair in the knit cap). A 30-degree counterclockwise rotation puts the comb, the mitten and the glasses in the same relative position as the knit cap, the bloody glove and the glasses photographed on Bundy.

Remember the matchbox in Jack the Ripper? In "Revenge and Remorse/The Guilty Alibi" Peter Lupus as Norberg finds a book of matches on the curb next to where the lawyer’s car exploded. On the cover is Club Flamingo, the name of the bar and restaurant where Mimi de Jour blows Eddie’s alibi. In the Naked Gun 2 ½ the bomber leaves his wallet by a curb outside of a bar, which leads to the "some kind of bust" scene with Frank, Ed and the bomber’s busty girlfriend.

In the O.J. case the item left by the curb outside of a bar, which leads to the woman with "some kind of bust" (Nicole’s breast augmentation surgery) is a pair of glasses. In "The Abduction" episode of Matlock, a matchbook leads to a bar with a busty performer and the rescue of his statuesque partner Michelle. Other episodes of Matlock involving a blown-up building and a blown up car solidify the links between Spence Milligan as Eddie in Police Squad! and Gary Spence in the courtroom of Judge Lance Ito.

Judge Ito's wife introduces a birthday link (the King birthday poster) as well as a "French" connection, because of what Fuhrman said about her on the McKinny tapes. In A Problem of Evidence, Joe Bosco introduces another French connection into Ito’s courtroom by quoting what Garry Spence told a "statuesque" sheriff's deputy to do when she threatened to throw him out. Visualize Jane Spencer in The Naked Gun with Frank Drebin's finger in her mouth and you've got a good part of the picture.

To see the whole picture, you have to see Charlotte Rampling as Helen Grayle, a.k.a. Velma, descending the winding staircase in Farewell My Lovely (’75) the way Jane Spencer does in The Naked Gun (’88). That scene combines Barbara Stanwick’s character in Double Indemnity with Kathleen Turner’s in The Man With Two Brains (’84) and Rampling’s in Farewell My Lovely. It takes Frank Drebin's "Her hair was the color of gold in old paintings - She had a full set of curves…" lines verbatim from the mouth of Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlow in Farewell My Lovely.

Rampling’s birthday is the same as Fuhrman’s. Her character is married to a judge and she wears a jade necklace that she used to set up a homosexual man named Marriott to be murdered and Philip Marlowe to be framed for killing him. John O’Leary is Marriott. He appears in two link-rich episodes of Matlock.

For now, you should concentrate on the "French" connection implied by O’Leary’s character in Farewell My Lovely, which will be clear when we get to The Choirboys (’77). Just as Velma is a short hop away from Mike Hammer’s Velda (notice the "d" that makes the difference) Marriott is not that far from Margaret. When you add the "ear" in O’Leary, the only letter missing is the "g," as in Grayle. In I, The Jury (’53) Margaret Sheridan is Mike Hammer’s secretary Velda. In The Thing (’51) with Peter Graves’ brother James Arnes as a man-plant monster like Chris Durock in Swamp Thing she’s a secretary called Nickie.

Fuhrman must have had reasons for using the word "cocksucker" in his first recording session with Laura Hart other than testing the language that he could use in their screenplay project. The word simply isn’t used that often by most people and it doesn’t occur often enough in the movies to make a point of using it. I found it only in four movies, The Choirboys, Robocop(’86), Crimes of Passion (’84) and Serial Mom (’93) with Kathleen Turner. Why Fuhrman used it with Laura Hart, let alone so early in their collaboration, is the question. Think of what Laura Hart had already told him to set the stage for the screenplay project. She told him that she wanted it to be about a woman like Margaret York, someone he knew well. Someone he accused of giving head to get ahead. The c-word is what rounded out his picture of the judge’s wife.

In Murder in Brentwood, Mark Fuhrman said that Joe Wambaugh was his role model as a former cop-turned writer and that the language he used on the tape was consciously and subconsciously borrowed from Wambaugh's characters in The Choirboy (’77). Thus, Fuhrman's use of the n-word and the ten-letter c-word on the tapes – which can’t be true.

Only one character in The Choirboys uses both words. He’s a cop named Roscoe Rules. Tim McIntire as Roscoe is a dim-witted jerk and such a bigot that during an awards ceremony one of his fellow cops cracks, "he handed out towels at Auschwitz." Rules wears leather gloves all the time. In one encounter with a black man (Bob Minor) and a Hispanic man where he uses the n-word, he loses his hat and ends up on his left side – with his gloves on at the base of a stairway. In a scene in a public toilet, an undercover cop plays a joke on him by pretending to come on to him. He beats the man up. They call each other the c-word and have to be restrained by two other cops who observed the whole thing. The other cops are ex-marines. One of them is Don Stroud, the man who plays Pat Chambers in the Mike Hammer TV series.

"Mark" and "hammer" are inexorably linked to Jack Webb’s famous character Sergeant Joe Friday, badge 714. Old fans of the Dragnet TV series know where they come together. It’s in the sweaty hands of a man swinging a hammer at the end of Jack Webb’s television productions to stamp the Roman numerals VII into the screen. When the hands holding the stamp and the hammer come away you see the full name of Webb’s production company, Mark VII Limited (the name "Fuhrman" has seven letters). A tiny percentage of people can honestly claim to be ex-marines. Webb and Fuhrman were two of them.  Stacy Ketch’s Mike Hammer is an ex-marine. That’s why Don Stroud’s appearance as an ex-marine in The Choirboys is significant – if your name is Mark Fuhrman.

The Choirboys tells us that "French" is a word that Mark Fuhrman would have associated with fellatio because of a scene involving two prostitutes in a car with James Woods as a novice vice cop (James Woods is very big in the Fuhrman collection). He picks them up in front of a place called the Blue Velvet. He asks what he will get for his money. One of the women tells him that for $50 they will "French" him.

You can’t go from The Choirboys to Mark Fuhrman’s associations with O.J., Nicole, Laura Hart McKinny and Judge Ito’s wife without a solid connection between them. Don Stroud as an observer of the incident in the men’s room with Roscoe Rules is that connection. All of a sudden we’re back to Mike Hammer and the actors associated with Mike Hammer including Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Margaret Sheridan, Tanya Roberts and the other actresses who play Velda. Dekker and Velda link up in various ways to the image of a woman performing oral sex on a man. Like Velda, Mike Hammer’s girl Friday, Sally Dekker was involved in a con game. Kathryn Leigh Scott is Sally Dekker. Scott Fuhrman is Mark Fuhrman’s brother.

Tanya Roberts as Velda in the made-for-television movie Murder Me, Murder You (’83) brings in another name link to Fuhrman by way of Fuhrman’s partner Brad Roberts. The French connection comes from Tonya Roberts’ starring role in Night Eyes (’90) and in Sins of Desire (’93). Keeping in mind the con game that Mike Hammer and Velda play with couples getting divorced, watch what happens with Nikki Walker and "Friday." Remember that O.J. is Jack Walker in Capricorn One.

In Night Eyes, Tanya Roberts as Nikki Walker is involved in a con game during her divorce from a rich, possessive celebrity named Brian Walker. At a party, Nikki catches Brian having sex with another woman. That’s what the New Year’s Day incident was supposed to have been about with O.J. and Nicole starting with a comment at a party about an expensive set of earrings. In Night Eyes, Nikki appears to be wearing expensive earrings. She and her husband argue. She slaps him. He calls her a bitch and brings the Velda connection full circle when he says, "You were a bloody secretary when I met you. You’d still be doing dictation and going down on the boss on Fridays if I hadn’t rescued you."

Nikki sets up her rich, jealous, possessive, hot-tempered, husband for murder. At the same time, she sets up Andrew Stevens as Will Griffith, a security guard, to look like the murderer the way Kathleen Turner as Matty Walker (a.k.a. Marry Ann Simpson) sets up William Hurt as Ned Racine in Body Heat (’81). Her husband Brian hires Will and his brother to spy on her sexual activities. However, Will falls for her and she pretends to fall for him so that she can better manipulate him. Will goes out at night, looks up and sees her naked silhouette on her bedroom shade kissing her way down the naked body of Stephan Meadows as a lover named Michael. You know in that instant that her husband wasn’t lying about her job as a secretary when he said what he did about her Friday performances for her boss.

The window through which Will sees Nikki "going down" on Michael, gives you a sense that the producers borrowed the idea as much from Velda and Mike in Kiss Me Deadly as Matty and Ned in Body Heat. In Body Heat a young girl catches Matty going down on Ned. You get a stronger sense of the Velda connection in Night Eyes when you read the end credits and see that Tanya Roberts was an associate producer.

Few names are spelled with consecutive k’s like Nikki. Televangelist Jim Bakker, advisor to Presidents, husband of Tammy Faye and lover of his church secretary Jessica Hahn, is one. National exposure of his "ministry contribution" con game and his affair with Jessica Hahn made him a jailbird and her a Playboy playmate of the month. You’d notice the k’s in Nikki and Dekker if you had Mark Fuhrman’s view of Peggy York. Considering his run-in with her over the Martin Luther King birthday incident you might expect a birthday on a death day to go with the three k’s. In Diary of a Hit Man (’91) you get it with Forrest Whitaker as Dekker and the day Dekker is supposed to kill his client’s wife Jain (Sherilyn Fenn). The death day that Dekker’s client, Al Zidsyck, planned for Jain is Al’s birthday.

Another way you might notice the k’s is if you were looking for double letters in general like the g’s in Peggy for the creation of composite characters. If you were obsessed with Nastassia Kinski as well as Nicole Simpson and the sex sessions Nicole had with Faye Resnick and Keith Zlomsowitch, a combination of those elements in a movie would surely grab you. But to know about them, you’d have to have an informant like Faye Resnick, you’d have to do your own surveillance, or both.

In Sins of Desire (’93) Tonya Roberts is Kay (rhymes with Faye), the sister of a woman played by Carry Stevens who kills herself after being raped by a phony doctor named Scott Callister, as Jessica Hahn says she was raped by Jim Bakker. Jay (rhymes with Faye) Richardson as Scott Callister bears some physical resemblance to Bill Clinton and a striking resemblance in character to Jim Bakker. Delia Sheppard is his wife Jessica. When Nick Cassvetes, as an insurance adjuster named Barry Mitchum (as in "Bob" Mitchum, as in Philip Marlowe), tells Kay about his partner Monica Waldman, Kay gets inside of the doctor’s operation to win Jessica’s confidence. When Kay nearly gets caught spying, she has sex with Jessica (Faye had sex with Nicole).

Next to Crimes of Passion (’84) with Kathleen Turner and Night Eyes 3 (’93) with Shannon Tweed as Zoe and her sister Tracy as Dana, Sins of Desire with Tanya Roberts has the most French connections in the Fuhrman collection. We can see them only because we know of other Tanya Roberts French connections, we know what made Monica Lewinsky famous, and we know what Fuhrman had to do with it. The kitchen scene, for example, with Kay drinking from a long-necked bottle isn’t sexually suggestive in any way by itself. As Sigmund Freud would have said, "Sometimes a bottle is just a bottle." The thing that gives this bottle a sexual meaning is the subject of the conversation that Kay is having with Barry Mitchum — incriminating evidence left by his partner Monica Waldman. More about Tracy Tweed and Dana later. Meanwhile, notice how close DANA is to DNA… and think "Monica."

A French connection that goes all the way to the White House is in this movie. Monica Lewinsky’s "friend" Linda Tripp led her into revealing details of her sex sessions with Bill Clinton during their phone conversations while covertly taping them. Tripp, in turn, was taking advice from Lucien Goldberg, a publicist with Mark Fuhrman’s publisher. Goldberg claims that she went to Fuhrman to ask if DNA in semen was comparable, for identification, to DNA in blood. Fuhrman said that it was, and suggested that Lewinsky hold on to the dress.

In Sins of Desire, Monica Waldman secretly tapes a "therapy" session she has with Dr. Callister while she is incapacitated by a hypnotic drug. The drug begins to wear off before he is finished raping her. She comes to with a sense that she has been sexually violated and sees that her dress is ripped. All the while her hidden tape recorder is rolling but it stops here, before she struggles with Dr. Callister, falls, hits her head and dies. Jessica Callister walks in, sizes up the situation and tells her husband that he "blew it by staying in too long." Here again, an oral sex interpretation can be made only through the prism of Bill Clinton’s "private sessions" with Monica Lewinsky because a woman named Monica is involved. In an extended scene of simulated fellatio on Scott’s thumb, it’s the wife Jessica who does the honors.

In a universe of infinite possibilities, exact opposites count as hits because the odds of arriving at them by chance are equally remote. It is therefore highly probable that we’re looking at with the Callisters is a composite of the Clintons and the Bakkers that incorporate rumors about Hillary’s sexual preference for women.

Creating a composite of the Clintons and Bakkers is a better explanation for a lot of things. It’s a better explanation for the story featuring a corrupt man and wife in a position of authority, the screenplay involving so much oral sex (Bill’s favorite) and the casting of Jay Richardson and Delia Sheppard as Scott and Jessica Callister. It may not explain how Clinton’s semen got on Monica Lewinsky’s dress, but it certainly explains why her name triggered the response it did to her story in Linda Tripp, Lucien Goldberg and Mark Fuhrman. You can see how knowledge of a woman with a similar name to any principle in Sins of Desire in a similar relationship with Bill Clinton, would have triggered the same response in Tripp, Goldberg or Fuhrman. But the name Monica and her method of collecting semen had to be special to someone named Mark with ambitions to write a screenplay about a woman like Margaret (Peggy) York and to make a killing on a killing with blood.

Mark this page; you’ll be getting a hint of it in the rest of this book every time you see a woman in an elevator going up. In a scene with Barry, Kay and Lou Bonacki as a cop named Al Dolenz on a stakeout, Kay’s finger in her mouth reminds Dolenz of a joke…. "So this lady goes to the hospital to give blood. She’s getting on the elevator; this guy she knows is getting off the elevator. He says, ‘Sal, what ’cha doin’?’ She says, ‘I’m going downstairs to give blood.’ He says, ‘how much they give you for that?’ She says, ‘$25 a quart.’ She says, ‘What about you?" He says, ‘I just came from upstairs; donated some sperm." She says, "How much they give you for that. He says $250 dollars.’ A month later they run into each other in the hospital. He’s getting off the elevator she’s getting on. He says, ‘You going downstairs to give blood?’" For Sal’s answer, Dolenz puffs his cheeks and points up.

The next line is where a man named Mark with ambitions to win fame and fortune on Nicole’s blood and Clinton’s semen would have taken note…. Kay laughs, "You pig. Oh God, who writes your material?" One of the screenplay writers is Mark McGee. The other is Peter Liapis. Notice how close Peter Liapis is to Peter Lupus, a.k.a. Norberg in Police Squad!? You would if Sal reminded you of Lana Cassalis blowing up two men and leaving the book of matches that Norberg finds by the curb. And how can you not think of "Sal" and Police Squad! without thinking of elevators, a standing joke in the series, or Sally Dekker and her orthodontist Dr. Robert Zubatzky? That’s "D" as in Dairy, "R" as in Roberts, "Z" as in Zlomsowitch and "sky" as in Lewinsky. The Sins of Desire story comes from its director Jim Wynorski.

You don’t have to be much of a scrabble player to get Monica Lewinsky out of Monica Waldman and the name of her creator James Wynorski. While Tracy Tweed as Dana in Night Eyes 3 is fresh in your mind I want to get into her DNA link to Monica Lewinsky and Sal in Det. Dolenz’s elevator joke. While Dekker and Cassalis from Police Squad! are fresh in your mind, I want you to recall Sally Dekker the "hit man" sitting on a park bench and Lana Cassalis threatening to "blow the whole neighborhood sky high." Sherilyn Fenn’s character Jain Zidsyck in Diary of a Hit Man offers to give Dekker a "blowjob" to save her life and the life of her baby boy Billy. Her desperate offer serves only to convince Dekker that she is a whore who will "do it with anybody!" The man who lines up the hit on Jain is Seymor Cassal as Koenig.

This ought to tell you about the influence of Police Squad! on its fans who went on to write their own screenplays and teleplays. The right cues inevitably evoke the operative scenes. If the Cassal link in Diary of a Hit Man to Lana Cassales in episode four of Police Squad! isn’t enough for you, try the mime with a message in episode five where the art director is Seymour Klate. Diary of a Hit Man has a mime with a message. A smashed birthday cake? Diary of a Hit Man has that. Police Squad! has a reference to a train leaving Pittsburgh. Diary of a Hit Man has that, too.

The idea of "going down" to go up like "Sal" the female sperm donor in the elevator joke comes from Tracy Tweed as Dana in Night Eyes 3. Dana is a character on a top rated television show starring her hated rival Zoe (her real-life sister Shannon). On air, Dana as Rene and Zoe as Hillary are detective and best friends. Behind the scenes, Dana does all she can to advance her career at Zoe’s expense. In a scene where the producer is in bed talking to Zoe on the phone, you see a bulge in the blanket that looks like his knees are raised until he puts the phone down and you hear a woman’s muffled voice. If you had a question about what she was doing or why her words were muffled, the producer settles it just before Dana flips off the blanket by saying, "Don’t speak with your mouth full."

Mind you, the connection here to Monica Lewinsky and the stain containing Bill Clinton’s DNA exists only because the character’s name is DANA and we know what she has in her mouth. Dana, like Monica, is a dark-haired exhibitionist who puts on a flash show for the man she wants to seduce. Like Monica, Dana has unrealistic expectations about her future with the producer. Like Clinton, the producer is a powerful political figure with no illusions about Dana.

Shannon Tweed as Zoe, on the other hand, is a big star who does what she wants to do because she wants to do it. When you see her in Night Eyes 3 literally going down on the security guard Will Griffith, you know that she is doing it for his pleasure and her own. No strings. No power plays. No hidden agenda. If anything, she is putting her career at risk because of a morals clause in her contract with the studio that produces her show. What Will and Zoe don’t know is that their every intimate contact is being secretly observed and videotaped.

Dana sends a copy of one such tape to a tabloid television program. The tape is aired — censored, of course, like the videotapes of Nick Styles in Ricochet, but revealing enough to tell the story. Zoe loses her job and her reputation. When Dana rubs it in her face, Zoe knocks her flat with her fist. Yeah, you see Zoe deck her.

That’s what Nicole Simpson did to O.J.’s maid Michelle. Nancy Stafford as Ben Matlock’s law partner Michelle Thomas (’87-’92) is one of the few Michelle’s in the Mark Fuhrman movie collection. However, the collection is rich in "Nancys" (Nancy Reagan was accused of performing fellatio on Frank Sinatra in the White House) and in maids. Allie Sheedy is Jessica in Maid to Order with Beverly D’Angilo as Stella, her fairy godmother. This has more to do with Andrew Stevens and Shannon Tweed as Zoe than you might guess. It has more to do with them than you’d ever guess. You would have to know how much Shannon Tweed in Night Eyes 3 looked like Nancy Stafford and Andrew Stevens’ mother Stella Stevens in Slaughter (’72), and you would have to know that Stella and Shannon were Playboy Playmates of the Month like Jessica Hahn.

Here again we have so many intersecting names, roles and relationships that nobody could keep them separate in his mind at those points. They run together on the Bundy murder scene and everywhere Mark Fuhrman appeared on June 13^th 1994, in his trial testimony and in his 1996 book. You get them in the domino effect of movies and TV shows that you can set in motion with any of the six French connections to Mark Fuhrman.

One French connection, of course, is in his advice to Lucien Goldberg about the President’s DNA on Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress. Two of them are in the Laura Hart McKinney tapes where he uses the word "cocksucker" for no apparent reason and accuses Judge Lance Ito’s wife Margaret York of "fucking and sucking her way to the top." You see three others in Murder in Brentwood. The first of those is when he explains his language on the tapes in terms of the language in The Choirboys. The second is when he says that Popeye Doyle in the French Connection was a role model for his creation of a fictional character he was playing. The third is in the motive for murder he attributes to O.J.

Sally Kirkland as Lee in the low-budget thriller In the Heat of Passion (’92) performs oral sex on a man in an elevator going up. In another scene she puts on a show with food which clearly symbolizes her taking semen in her mouth. Kathleen Turner does likewise as China Blue in Crimes of Passion (’84). In Naked in New York (’94) Turner is DANA. In Peggy Sue Got Married (’86) she’s Peggy. She’s the voice of Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (’88) and the voice of Stacy (rhymes with Tracie) in a February, ’94 episode of The Simpsons. She’s Jane Blue in Undercover Blues (’93). Monica, Nicole, Laura Hart and Peggy York are thus linked to Fuhrman and, perhaps Tracie Savage, the TV journalist who was first to report Nicole’s blood on O.J.’s socks.

Tracie Savage need not have "gone down" on anyone to move up the way Fuhrman said Peggy York did, as long as he saw her that way. Her record of appearing to do anything to advance her career makes her a candidate for falling into that category. But there’s more — and I don’t mean Blythe Danner’s role as Tracie, a.k.a. Socks, in Future World. In the TV miniseries Once an Eagle (’76), Tracie Savage is Peggy.

If you’re uncertain about what I mean by "the domino effect," let me remind you of Tessa Richarde as Mitzi Fritz, the reluctant Wild West Show assistant in Bronco Billy (’81). Mitzi is a performer in a yellow outfit. The first time we see her she’s in her dressing room sitting nervously in front of her mirror ringed with lights. Next to her is a man named Lefty Le Bowe. The highpoint of her act is when she gets tied spread-eagle to a wheel and spun while Bronco Billy throws knives at balloons encircling her. In "Revenge and Remorse/The Guilty Alibi" (’82) Mimi de Jour is a performer in a yellow outfit. When we first see her she’s in here dressing room sitting nervously in front of her round mirror ringed with lights. Ditto Zoe as her TV character Hillary in Night Eyes 3 (’93).

You know that there’s a real connection between that dressing room scene and the one with Tessa Richarde in Bronco Billy when you see what Hillary does next. She goes to a desk drawer on the set of the show, pulls out a revolver and flips open the cylinder. As she reaches the center of a circle on the wall behind her, she gives the cylinder a spin. In Last Call (’91) you’ll see her spread-eagle on a spider web with a knife. You’ll see her throw the knife. You’ll also see her "going down" in an elevator that’s going up.