Naturally there are a few words missing as I scrambled for the digital recorder and tried to start it again, so I will pick up where it does and apologize for the missing words. I must also apologize for the two or three times when the nature of the recording did not allow me to hear a word here and there. I’m just thankful it was an occasional word and not the whole conversation, as is the case with really bad connections!
We seemed to have been talking about how Christopher’s father reacted to Christopher’s acting.
EC: . . . to work in [unintelligible] with him. And here’s this kid who wants to run around and pretend he’s not who he is. His father didn’t want it.
Lucky_Ladybug: That’s too bad.
EC: Yeah . . . yeah. He was a very rigid kind of guy. But he eventually saw that this was Christopher’s passion, Christopher’s very good at it, and that he was succeeding at it. He had the ability to finally lighten up on it.
Lucky_Ladybug: That’s good.
EC: But it didn’t go well at the beginning. And maybe that’s another reason why Christopher decided to come to New York rather than trying to stay in his England home, if you know what I mean. Pajama Game is where he met his first wife.
Lucky_Ladybug: Oh, that’s interesting.
EC: Her name was Chele Graham. Chele went on the tour in Africa together with Christopher, and when they got back, they decided to get married. They weren’t married for very long because they were very young, too young to be married. So they got divorced, but they stayed friends for years and years after they parted, really.
Lucky_Ladybug: That’s neat!
EC: I met Chele when I was 17. She was 36, so Christopher would have been around 36, already living in Australia. And one day she said, “Oh, my friend Christopher is on a trip home from Australia and we should meet up with him for dinner.” And I met Christopher and I liked him very, very much. He was very charming, and very handsome. But I had a boyfriend, I had Richard. And then he went back to Australia. Chele moved to California and I followed soon after and we got apartments next-door to one another in a courtyard in Hollywood, where they have little bungalow apartments. Everyone has their own bungalow in this courtyard. So we had adjacent bungalows.
And one day she said, “Oh, Christopher, my friend Christopher has come back from Australia and his wife and child and he have an apartment down on La Brea Avenue and why don’t we go visit them.” So I did, and that was when we started folding him into our circle of friends. The rest I wrote out. That’s the story of how we met. So we knew each other . . . we met in 1971, we married in 1997.
Lucky_Ladybug: Wow.
EC: That’s how long I knew him.
Lucky_Ladybug: How did he get interested in directing?
EC: I think it was just in his nature. I think it was a combination of the newspaper reporting that he had done, the acting that he had done, his [unintelligible] to project to people. Not sure how it started. It might have been theatrical. I think he was a stage manager too, at some point along the line. He just decided he would like to take a shot at it. He did very well; he directed Judy Garland at the Hollywood Palace. He was one of the people who could actually get her out of her dressing room. She was in very bad shape. She was drinking a lot. But here, this was his big shot, his big variety show, and he wasn’t going to let her wreck it. So he just charmed her until she came out and did the show.
Lucky_Ladybug: That’s interesting.
EC: And I’m not . . . I’ve never seen that. She’s done a couple of them, and I’ve looked on the Internet to see, and I can only find clips here and there of her performances, never the full credits, so I don’t know which one it was.
Lucky_Ladybug: How did he become interested in doing nature shows?
EC: I think through his love as a gardener.
Lucky_Ladybug: That makes sense.
EC: Now, nature shows . . . I’m not too sure what you mean by nature shows.
Lucky_Ladybug: Uh . . . I’m not sure either, because I haven’t been able to find much information on those things. I heard that he did.
EC: I don’t think he did any.
Lucky_Ladybug: That’s interesting.
EC: You mean like narrating?
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah, like shows like Nature, the show Nature or something, like narrating it. I don’t know; I’d heard that he did some of those.
EC: It wouldn’t surprise me if he did, but I don’t know of any examples where he was hired as a narrator for something. I know that he did a lot of . . . he did a film about . . . well, one of the ones I did where he narrated was about Saudi Arabia and about the desert. It was actually about the oil production there, a film produced by Mobile Oil. They made a film about . . . actually, they made five films. One was just about Saudi Arabia and the culture and the desert and that sort of thing. But that’s as close as I can think of.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah, I wish the credit list on IMDB was more complete. I bet there’s a lot of things he’s done that they don’t have there.
EC: Well, you could contribute to it, add them.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah, I’ve added the ones that I’ve found. Added a couple of early ones that I found out about. There’s probably a lot of material out there that we still don’t know about, like early anthology shows and that sort of thing.
EC: Anthologies, I believe, were dramas.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah, and IMDB doesn’t list a whole lot of episodes of those.
EC: Oh boy, I’m thinking way, way back in my memory. Anthology . . . anthology was biographies, I think.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah, some of them were.
EC: Various shows about various things. I would be very surprised if they were available for viewing anywhere.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah, a lot of them are lost now. It’s really a shame. Christopher might have done some of those at some point that we don’t know about.
EC: Better programming.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yep.
EC: But some of it just doesn’t stand the test of time. It’s too dated, too boring. Now it would be more interesting than it would have been 20 years ago.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah.
EC: When we look at these . . . well, look how it is now. We look back at shows from the ’90’s and go, “Whoo, look at our hair! Oh, the shoulder pads! How did they wear their hair like . . . what did they do to their hair to get it to do that?!” But that was the style of the times. And we looked back when we were in the ’60’s and we looked back at the ’50’s and we went, “Their hair is dreadful and their costumes . . .” And now it’s Mad Men, you know, it’s all the rage. And furnish your house in 1950s furniture. No, don’t bring that back! It’s awful. You never know. People run out of space in film vaults and they have to get rid of the old stuff and there it goes. Boom! “No one’s ever gonna wanna see that again.”
Lucky_Ladybug: Yep. And so a lot of stuff with the old actors is lost to the ages. Unfortunately.
Well, how would you like to see Christopher remembered?
EC: The great humanitarian that he was. He was one of the kindest, gentlest people on the planet. He was unassuming; he never walked around with a [unintelligible], even though he could throw his weight around. He was able to work with developmentally disabled people because he saw them as just another kind of people, not . . . he didn’t pity them. He just accepted them. He accepted everybody. He did not like people who mistreated other people, and he could throw a royal tantrum if somebody behaved badly towards somebody else. So I would like him to be remembered as a great specimen of a human being and you know, the quality, a human being has potential, he tried to make the most out of all the potential that he had. He worked very hard. He was not lazy, although he liked to relax. He never just sat around doing nothing. So he was always improving the house, or himself, or other people.
Lucky_Ladybug: He sounds like a really special person.
EC: Yeah. Yeah, he was. And he was also, coincidentally, an actor.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah. Well, thank you. This has been really a great interview.
EC: Well, you’re welcome. I’m going to search something now; I’m back in front of my computer. And I’m going to look for his obituary.
Lucky_Ladybug: I’m not sure. . . . I’ve seen some articles that reported on his death, but I don’t know that I saw the actual obituary.
EC: Here’s the actual obituary. It’s from Variety. I wrote it along with a friend of ours who was very close to him.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah, I’m not sure if I’ve seen that or not.
EC: Oh, this looks a lot shorter than the one we wrote. They cut it down. And it had a beautiful photo of him. One of my favorite pictures of him. He’s in his garden. He looks like . . . perfect blond, cheeks of tan, kind of guy. And I’d like to look and see what they have online. Oh, look at all those pictures! Wonder Woman.
Lucky_Ladybug: Ah yes, those were fun.
EC: But in this one, he looks the most like himself. And I’m looking at one where he's on a beach, and he’s got sort of a blazer, and an ascot, and his hair is long. . . . Ah, I wonder what that was from.
Lucky_Ladybug: Sounds kind of like his second Rockford Files appearance. Maybe.
EC: Maybe. It’s on Pinterest. I can snap a picture of this photo that I’m talking about, and he has the same look as he has in this beach photo.
Lucky_Ladybug: Cool.
EC: I hope I’ve told you everything that you need, and if you have any more questions, I don’t know if I can answer them, but they might lead to other information that you’re looking for, so ask away. I’m glad that you’re interested in this fine person. He’s going to be remembered all the more for your work. So thank you.
Lucky_Ladybug: Well, I hope he will be. I hope a lot of people will see the website. I have a Tumblr; I post a lot of pictures I find of his guest appearances on shows. I have like a ton of Rockford Files pictures on there and other stuff that he’s been in.
EC: I don’t know what Tumblr actually is.
Lucky_Ladybug: It’s basically a website where people post pictures.
EC: What is the site called?
Lucky_Ladybug: My site is kind of a long name, so maybe I should email you the link.
EC: Okay.
Lucky_Ladybug: I post a lot of stuff there, although I’ve slacked off lately; it’s been really busy around here.
EC: Oh, I see Raid on Rommel here, on something that’s aveleyman.com. I don’t know what that is.
Lucky_Ladybug: It’s a website where they list people’s credits. They sometimes have some unique pictures there.
EC: He did some films—I forgot about this, it just came to me—for a producer named Alan Sandler. Sandler Films. And they were sci-fi. And they were kind of B pictures, but he had some juicy roles in them and he enjoyed working on them.
Lucky_Ladybug: Was that the guy who made the movie called Lifepod?
EC: Lifepod. . . . Yes.
Lucky_Ladybug: I love that one. Christopher has such a good part in it.
EC: Boy, I haven’t seen that since 1983 . . . something through there. Online, can you see it?
Lucky_Ladybug: Um, I don’t know if it’s online. I just got the DVD. I bought the DVD from . . . I think it was half.com or something.
EC: Wow. Lifepod. I’m writing that down.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah, and then there’s another movie called Lifepod, so you have to be careful that you get the right one for sure.
EC: Ah. I don’t even remember Planet Earth. I’m looking at Wild West . . . Batman. Time Tunnel. Time Tunnel was where he played Merlin the first time. High Chapparel . . . that was a big, famous, old Western TV series.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah, he played a Scottish character in that.
EC: That’d be funny.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yep.
EC: Well, I see he did more Wild Wests than I thought he did.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah, he did one in season 2 and a two-parter in season 4.
EC: Now, I don’t know what Voyagers! was. Somebody listed him in a thing called Voyagers!.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yeah, it’s another time-travel show.
EC: It’s all very interesting. I think I’m in a unique position, because a lot of people, you know, after they’re gone the people might see their photos, they might see a home movie or something, but there’s not this wealth of stuff to look at.
Okay, I’m here if you need me.
Lucky_Ladybug: Okay, well, thanks so much! I’ll send you that link to my Tumblr thing.
EC: Thank you. And I’ll send you that picture.
Lucky_Ladybug: Great.
EC: I’m sure you will enjoy this casual photo.
Lucky_Ladybug: Yes, I’m sure I will.
EC: Have a good evening.
Lucky_Ladybug: Thank you. You too.
And I must once again thank Elen for all her time and her wonderful stories! As a parting, here is an interesting anecdote she told me through email:
Just note that he never let anyone use his name as "Chris." I never called him Chris, since I knew he didn't like it. He shortened his last name, in fact, because his entire name was too long. The story goes that he was in New York, and Camelot was about to open with him in it. He saw that they had put his name on the marquee as "Chris Carysfort." When he complained to the stage manager about this, they said, "Your contract states that you get letters of a certain size, and your full name is too long to fit on the marquee." So he said, "Well, fine then, make it Christopher Cary." And so they did.