Ann Prentiss - Weirdness Unravelling All Over Itself As We Speak

[JSngry]

So, I see this chick in an episode of Emergency! and I'm thinking, wow, Paula Prentiss, cool, but...why Emergency!? So, it's like, a big role, right, three segments, and she's funny as hell in all of them (Preston Wood script, and oh btw the other big running plot is that Boot is sick, and there is some crazyass ensemble work with that one as well, and as a show-business aside, have any of you ever met a dog's agent? What kind of a guy is that gonna be anyway?) only...the end credits roll and I see that it's Ann Prentiss, not Paula. I never heard of no Ann Prentiss, that would explain why Emergency!? because it's Ann Prentiss and not Paula Prentiss, but how was I to know that? I guess that's why there are credits offered to and for the discerning viewer, eh? So we can learn.

So, off to the internet (everybody else I know is asleep right now), and yes, Ann, not Paula, and guess what - Ann died in prison after being convicted of assault and for soliciting the murder of her father and her brother in law Richard Benjamin (not that Richard Benjamin hasn't gotten on my nerves over the years, but geez...otoh, he's not family so I don't see him regularly...still - not allowable by law, andd law trumps all, land of the free, nation of laws end of story, roll credits again, please).

Anyway, this is the kind of thing, like, SO glad it's not happening to me, and since it's not, let's pry a little further...internet, go do your thing fetch, internet, fetch...GOOD BOY!!!

And it did not take long at all to find this:http://mediafunhouse.blogspot.com/2010/07/sisterly-menace-deceased-artiste-ann.html with the great line:

Sometimes an obit’s juiciest, strangest details are contained at the end.

I know from my days of reading obituaries in search of unintentional humor that this is so often true. However, as if like life mirroring reality in internet form, the next click took me here: http://www.datalounge.com/cgi-bin/iowa/ajax.html?t=10104520#page:showThread,10104520 where it must be said that the blog's juiciest, strangest post is indeed contained at the very end, and I quote:

Ann was not mentally insane. She had a hard childhood. Her personal life is not one for me to share, but I can and will say that she made me laugh...cry...scream and yell on a daily basis! Beautiful heart of gold but lost and lonely. Her suster and brother in law visited but not often. Complicated relationship and not ours to judge! Ann is missed...when I left her as we were cell mates...I went to a program where I could not contact her until my release...by then 9 months later I was too late She was not insane...sad and troubled but not insane. She loved her sister and niece dearly and even looked up to her brother in law dearly. Unfortunately lots of people took advantage of her in there but she was smarter than them ...she was tough as hell and stubborn too! She had health issues and sometimes refused her medication. I pray she died peacefully!! Ann you are missed and thought of often...from your Angel!!

And that's where I said, ok internet, you've done your job and done it well, thanks. Here, have a biscuit and let's go to bed.

But still....DAMN.

[Dan Gould]

Not to hijack the thread but ... wait a second ... Emergency! ?? This is a show that holds the attention of an adult? I mean, I watched it as a kid, thought it was pretty cool ... and never thought about it after it went off the air. Or, at least I thought about Adam-12 a lot more. So ... where is Emergency! on nowadays, and what exactly went over my head when I was a kid?

Color me confused and curious, and mostly the former.

[mjzee]

Another weird little factoid: per Wikipedia, Paula Prentiss's real last name was Ragusa. So Ann changed her stage name to match her sister's.

[JSngry]

Emergency! is not a "good" show, but it's not a bad one by any stretch. I'm still in Season 2, but there's regularly the whole vignettes with the veteran THAT guy type character actors like on all the other Jack Webb shows, and the rescue scenes invoking high places are realistic enough to make me nervous (I get really freaked out by unattached, unenclosed heights). But mainly it's like Dragnet or Adam-12, teh fun of sitting there watching routine mundanely and waiting for the moment to happen where THAT guy is involved in some off the wall situation..Ann-Morgan Guilbert has already been on a couple of times, great bit roles executed to perfection, and of course, anything with Burt Mustin will be worth its weight in time spent.Stuff like that. Oh yeah, the stock footage is great too, and if you listen through headphones, you can hear all kinds of subliminal background dialogue going on, as well as some moments in the soundtrack where what the drummer is playing and what everybody else is playing are two different things altogether, and huh? where in the control room did they decide THAT was gonna happen?

I still prefer Adam-12 (and over that, I still prefer Dragnet), but after getting off to some really god-awful starts, Emergency is gelling pretty nicely by Season 2. Besides, hey, Julie London & Bobby Troup, and very attractive Lillian Lehman as Nurse Carrol giving everybody all kinds of looks for all kinds of situations. And best of all - one of the best shows ever for commentating while it runs, so many openings for so many jokes, and yes, they give you openings to sieze a them and carry it on out. They should market these things as Comedy Minus One joke-at-home records or something.

It's on Netflix. Not the kind of thing you want to watch regularly unless you have a reason to (but I did, I got into the whole Jack Webb 1960s870s TV thing, and this looks like Last Stop), but it's there, and if that's what you're looking for, then there big goobers of it all over here. I'm not into it as a"show" to watch, I'm into it as a ,"wow, look at THIS why doncha'" kind of production/direction buffet of life.

And the bystanders - every time there's a rescue scene, fuck the victims - watch the bystanders. That's where the real action is, the real acting. Trust me!

[paul secor]

Paula Prentiss also had some mental illness issues, though obviously not to Ann Prentiss' extent.

[JSngry]

One blog writer mentions that both Paula & Ann were victims of abuse by their father, which her blogging cell-mate does not deny.

Leaving the reality of it all out of it, the notion of a "Richard Benjamin type" having a hit put on him by a psycho sister-in-law on him seems like a great premise for a comedy.

[paul secor]

I guess we can leave the reality out of it. Richard Benjamin couldn't - no humor there for him.

[JSngry]

No...and it wouldn't make for a funny movie with him at his age now anyway.

So who plays the "younger Richard Benjamin type" these days? Who's working that circuit?

[GA Russell]

I had no idea that Paula Prentiss is Italian. I thought she was Jewish.

[Big Beat Steve]

Paula Prentiss was quite cute in that fishbait movie with Rock Hudson - though in a manner that would drive ANY man into "mental issues" if you'd ever come too close to such a gal for too long in real life.

Edited April 8, 2014 by Big Beat Steve

[Dave Garrett]

It's on Netflix.

Also on MeTV.

http://metvnetwork.com/