The Phil Silvers Show

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137: Doberman: Missing Heir

Two British aristocrats, Lord and Lady Rockford, have arrived in San Francisco to continue their search for their son who disappeared from his pram as a baby 35 years earlier on a visit to America. The lad stands to inherit a fortune (and a title) if he can be found.

Fortunately their son was born with a distinctive birthmark on his left arm, so validating his identity should be straightforward.

Bilko's ears prick up when he hears about a reward of $5,000. Lady Rockford bears a faint resemblance to Private Doberman.. and Doberman has the birthmark!

The overweight private slips into his new persona surprisingly quickly. So much so that Bilko's influence over his podgy subordinate starts to wane. Naturally, he comes up with a plan.

This is one of those ones where Bilko's own greedy deviousness makes him feel guilty. I like that.

Good one. A bit different.

Although it's implied that Doberman is 35 in this episode, Maurice Gosfield, who played him, was 45 when it was filmed. Sadly, he died six years later in 1964.

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138: Bilko's Casino

Bilko and the motor pool boys are running out of places to gamble. When the Colonel finds them playing blackjack in the dispensary, as a punishment he orders them to volunteer for some hard work at the local USO. They're to clean the building from top to bottom.

When they get there, they find a treasure trove of old gambling equipment gathering dust in the basement. It turns out that due to a legal technicality arising from an accident of history which we need not elaborate upon here, the USO is exempt from the California gambling laws.

This of course gives rise to a grand (and rather selfish) plan on Bilko's part. But he comes up against some rather shady characters - which of course necessitates another cunning plan.

Very good one.

I was quite intrigued by the actor who plays a smooth and urbane mobster boss. An Australian actor called Murray Matheson who was in his late 40s (looks older somehow) when this was made. He had a moderately successful career as a TV actor and died in 1985.

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139: The Colonel's Second Honeymoon

California is undergoing a heatwave and the boys in the motor pool barracks are suffering. The air conditioner in their sergeant's office has broken under the strain.

Bilko attempts, predictably, to get Colonel Hall to grant him a furlough so he can go somewhere cooler. He uses the usual dead relative pretext, but the old boy's having none of it.

Of course the devious motor pool sergeant doesn't give up lightly. Can he get the colonel to go away himself for a couple of weeks, leaving the more pliable Captain Barker in charge? An opportunity arises for Bilko to persuade his commanding officer to do just that, with the judicious application of a degree of conniving, of course.

It's largely successful, but there are unintended consequences.

There's an odd moment when I can't help thinking that Paul Ford must have misremembered his line .. he telephones his wife and greets her with the words "Nell .. this is Colonel Hall".

There's a bravura performance by a young actress called Zandu Scott in which she basically does an over-the-top Marilyn Monroe impression. I got an erection.

Really nice one. Cute story.

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140: Bilko in Outer Space

Grover and Ritzik win $600 at an illicit gambling event in the dynamite shed. The two lucky sergeants intend to spend their winnings on furlough in Hawaii in a week's time, so they make a firm resolution not to let Bilko take their winnings off them at cards.

He finds out about it soon enough, but not before they've gone into hiding. Of course there follows a (frankly preposterous) plan to get them into a card game, but it's not successful.

Surprisingly, it's Henshaw who comes up with an even better idea. It involves persuading Grover and Ritzik to volunteer for endurance testing in an isolation chamber, for research into human space travel.

Very good. This episode was first broadcast two years before Yuri Gagarin made the first human spaceflight, but it must have been a topic of interest even in 1959.

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141: The Bilko Boycott

It's pay day again, and Bilko has a scheme to part the men from their money shortly after they get paid. He has Henshaw tell them that a lingerie model called Lucy Lamont - I couldn't find a reference to her online so I don't think she's a "guest star" - is visiting Camp Fremont to pose for the camera club.

Of course Bilko runs the club, and there are charges. The men are basically parted from their hard-earned on the basis that she'll be wearing very little clothing. The model herself receives only a very small cut.

But it's too much for Henshaw. And when Bilko constructs a mobile casino out of a trolley so that he can fleece his victims more efficiently, the likeable corporal finally rebels against Bilko's greedy and mercenary ways. Well - it's taken until the second-last episode for his conscience to win him over, but better late than never! And he forms Camp Fremont's very own Gamblers Anonymous organisation.

Bilko's illicit income bottom line suffers dramatically. But of course - he thinks of a way round it.

I have to say that the way Bilko's victims are presented as poker zombies, who simply cannot resist playing cards with him even though they know they'll lose, is rather implausible.

Other than that though - it's a belter.

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142: Weekend Colonel

Finally, the very last instalment of The Phil Silvers Show.

Colonel Hall has had CCTV installed at Camp Fremont, and by an unfortunate coincidence, when he switches on the monitor in his office, he finds Bilko running a crap game.

To make matters worse, the old boy installs CCTV cameras in every building at the camp. The devious motor pool sergeant will not be able to evade his commanding officer's watchful eye.

But shortly after the colonel goes away for the weekend, Bilko runs into Hall's double. Somehow, a short order chef in a diner looks exactly like Colonel Hall. A solution begins to present itself..

It's a well worn trope for sitcoms of a farcical nature of course, the doppelgänger - in fact it's used at least three times over the four series of The Phil Silvers Show. But never to better effect than here.

A nice opportunity for Paul Ford to play a different character for once, and the deadbeat burger flipper certainly does have a very different personality from Colonel Hall. Absolutely hilarious.

Pure brilliance - toward the beginning of the last series I had an uncomfortable feeling that the shark had been jumped, but despite a few sub-par episodes the standard overall has been very high. And this last one of all is probably in the all-time Bilko top five.

I shall miss this. I doubt I'll ever watch the entire canon from start to finish again but I will dip into it again for sure, perhaps using this thread as a reference.

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I've missed my daily trip to Fort Baxter, or Camp Fremont, and the late '50s.

Bought this from eBay, and have just ripped it to my PC:




As far as I can tell it was given away with a copy of the Daily Mail who knows when, but I got it for less than £2 including postage.

Silvers plays Sergeant Nocker. Tempting to suppose that Nocker is based on Bilko, but supposedly the part was originally written for Sid James, who couldn't take part due to other commitments.

Silvers was billed as the star of the film and was paid substantially more than anyone else involved, which supposedly caused a bit of animosity.

I don't think I've ever seen this, but I could be wrong. Will give it a go over the weekend probably.

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I watched Follow That Camel. I had to watch it in two goes, because my attention span didn't stretch to the full 90 minutes. It's enjoyably daft in places, but not a great film. I don't think I'd ever seen it before.

All of the Arab characters are ridiculous caricatures. I don't mind that so much, because the English characters are as well, mostly. And of course they're played by browned-up white actors. Joan Sims plays a waitress called ZigZag who works at the local drinking den. Anita Harris plays a duplicitous belly dancer.

Best of all the browned-up brigade though is Bernard Bresslaw as a local Arab sheikh. I'd never thought of him as a particularly talented comic actor but he is brilliant in this, I must say. He chews the scenery delightfully.

Kenneth Williams puts in a brilliant shift as the Legionnaire commandant, complete with cod-German accent. Charles Hawtrey does what he does. Jim Dale is a perfectly adequate leading man. The lovely Angela Douglas delivers her lines with impeccable timing.

As for Sergeant Nocker, well - he's a pale facsimile of Bilko. He's a wisecracking blagger, like the motor pool sergeant. But there's very little of the energy or wit of The Phil Silvers Show, of course. It pained me to see Silvers delivering some really weak one-liners in this. But if you forget about Bilko, on its own merits, the part works well enough.

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By the way the young man at the top left in this pic is Pvt "Sugie" Sugarman, played by Terry Carter. Terry is now the only surviving member of the Bilko platoon cast. Pictured below at the Phil Silvers Museum in Coventry in 2020, and looking pretty good for 92.

Just heard that Terry died in April, sad news.