Riley's penchant for turning mere trouble into near-disaster through his well-intentioned bumbling was often aided or instigated by his arch best friend/next-door neighbor, Gillis. I found an old newspaper article that said he was born in 1915 and called him a professional endurance man. Among other things, back in the flagpole-sitting days, he stayed aloft 109 days. Director Irving Brecher Writers Irving Brecher Groucho Marx (story) Stars William Bendix Rosemary DeCamp James Gleason See production, box office & company info Add to Watchlist 10 User reviews Photos 10 Top cast Edit What are you doin' here in the park?Digby 'Digger' O'Dell: Why, I was just taking a stroll around the pond. Whether someone comes into the funeral home insisting on the least expensive or the most expensive, I see in both cases an effort to assign value to cost, and I just think in my own experience it's never had much to do with it. I have often noticed the difference between the first day that a family will spend here and the next day. It gives us a way to get some little mastery over these uncontrollable things by giving it a narrative thread. Digger O-Dell And The Friendly Undertakers. So I like the word "funeral" for what we're doing here, because it doesn't require me to feel this way or that. One example of this type of comedy is the line "Business is a little dead tonight" . Digby 'Digger' O'Dell: It is I, Digby O'Dell, the friendly undertaker. In doing this, in accompanying the dead, getting them where they need to go, we get where we need to be. Every time I have a birthday, I realize that Mom's getting a year older. The year before he died, Digger told reporters that he had probably spent six years of his life underground, earning as much as $600 a week for his efforts. Other photos show preparations for the publicity stunt. As far as I can tell, he performed it in Memphis only twice, but one of those events made the news because the police were summoned to dig up Digger. I really don't care. 2023. Web. Chester A. Riley: I don't have to be fair - I'm your father. While we would all agree that death is never funny, this show had an usual character in it by the name of Digby "Digger". The last mention I can find of his exploits came from a 1979 newspaper published in the little town of Phenix City, Alabama, which reported that Digger was performing his 158th burial in the parking lot of Macks Mobile Homes there. She talks about how in her life the difference was not between doing good and evil. Jackie Gleason starred as Riley during the show's first year, while DeCamp and Lanny Rees reprised their film roles for the series. Bearing witness one way or another, that's a key ingredient. Digby 'Digger' O'Dell: Why, I was just taking a stroll around the pond. I enjoy listening to the frogs croak. It's possible to pay with credit card or Western Union, but PayPal isn't an option. After Riley overhears Burt discussing "business" with Norman, he beats up Norman and drags him before the wedding crowd. Jim Gillis: I know a lot about surgery. My, you're looking fine today; very natural" and leave stage with ""Cheerio, I'd better be shoveling off", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_of_Riley. Sterling Holloway recurred as neighbor Waldo Binney, another radio character. There are days I can get behind that theory and have. Thomas Lynch reads to camera his essay Tract, in which he broaches the topic of his own funeral. Chester A. Riley: Well, that'll be it, Miss Millie. Except I want to send out those circulars, so bring me some round paper. We'd be wise, as a culture, to examine some of these things. Isn't that awful? The question is not meant to mock; the question is to say: "What is it you don't want to see? William Bendix is heard as Riley, along with co-stars Paula Winslowe, John Brown, Tommy Cook, and Barbara Eiler - plus series creator Irving Brecher . Western movie question: Movie likely from the 70s, has the climax where a man/boy is racing through the desert to beat a shadow across a certain line to save a girl captured by Indians. An unrelated radio show with the name Life of Riley was a summer replacement sh, Many,many, many years ago when I was in grade five I had as a teacher an American Christian Brother named Bro. I mean, that is the terrible, terrible part. Another time, firefighters rescued him after he apparently suffered a heart attack underground. Dear j.b.: Well, for starters I can tell you that this interesting fellow (and Im certainly not disputing that) was not a Memphian, and his name wasnt really Digger ODell. But by the time a couple days later he went in the ground, it was exactly the right thing to do. Although Bendix's considerable acting chops allowed him to believably play both heroes and villains, it was as the loveable blue-collar factory worker Chester A. Riley that he is best remembered, first on radio and then in the 1949 movie of the same name. Digby 'Digger' O'Dell : It is I, Digby O'Dell, the friendly undertaker. His dramatic life story is so well-known that schoolchildren are taught to recite it for extra credit. Chester A. Riley : Hello, Digger. But maybe with the fact that 75 million baby boomers are working their way up to the bar of mortality now, it's dawning on them that this could happen to them. No word on whether anyone felt like carrying on the family tradition. For the final season, filming reverted to black-and-white. Babs Riley: Guess what? Comedy Romance A factory worker's family is thrown into an uproar when his teenage daughter starts to date his boss' son. I'll be the dead guy, and the dead say nothing. The boss' son (Long), who is in love with Babs, suggests that they get married in order to save Riley's job. The local newspapers reported that an 18x24-inch plywood air shaft allowed Digger to receive air and food, and he had carefully stocked his tiny domicile with lights, reading glasses, even packs of cigarettes. After roaming around the park a bit, I found the plaque has been carefully preserved and moved to a better (and more visible) location, bolted to a wall towards the rear of the new Veterans Plaza area of Overton Park. I'm certain the same thing holds for people who put their dead in the sea or the fire or a tomb -- that we need time to disengage. The oblivion is the oblivion wherever it is. It gives me room to do either, all along this sort of emotional register. It's not that you don't want to see your mother or your father or your sister or your brother. And why do the rituals of a funeral matter? Babs Riley: Guess what? In 1907, a penniless farmer named Ruben Shipp discovered gold while plowing his field. Do you hear that, Peg? For many people I know, when families are cremated, they feel as if they've in some sense kind of disappeared. Ferguson: That's the type of citizen we're sworn to protect. [1], Irving Brecher pitched the radio series for friend Groucho Marx under the title The Flotsam Family, but the sponsor balked at what would have been essentially a straight head-of-household role for Marx. Stevenson's ne'er-do-well son Burt, meanwhile, is cornered at the picnic by a thug named Norman, who demands that he repay a $25,000 gambling debt. For 28 years, the CHFB has been the essential site for classic horror news, research and enthusiasm. I'll hug her and I'll kiss her. It's that time of year again when gardeners all over the world are planning what to grow in their gardens. But more and more, when we say to them, "You may, and maybe you ought " or, "Maybe someone in your family should be designated, just to go in as your proxy, to say, 'Everything was done as it should be done,'" they do it. Maybe the referee will give you a draw. And the components of a funeral sometimes change. Brecher then saw William Bendix as taxicab company owner Tim McGuerin in Hal Roach's The McGuerins from Brooklyn (1942). Jeff, who had just proposed to Babs himself, is devastated by her announcement, as is Peg, who knows that her daughter does not love Burt. Im five-foot-eleven. We make appointments for cremations because we have to go and watch the placement of the body in the retort and the beginning of the process, the identification process that's part of that, and we retrieve the ashes. Do you speak French? And when we talk about "the procession," what is the meaning of that? But then I can read the work of Barbara Brown Taylor or St. Paul or C.S. Digger O'Dell Buried For Good This Time. It's that white-knuckled, socially enforced celebration [where] oftentimes the dead are absent from it, because that would be too compelling; that would be too much of a challenge. The elements are the elements. And somebody else is pressing somebody's clothes. And they open your mouth. I think they used to call that "social death"; that actual death happens like that. When families have gone to the crematory, has it made a difference? I mean, it's uncomfortable, and I don't know what to say any more than the next guy, and I don't do strawberry rhubarb pie. (CONTINUES HUMMING IN BG) ANNOUNCER: UP AND UNDER ANNCR: Prell brings you "The Life of Riley"! What we have missed, however, in cremation in this culture is all the powerful metaphoric values provided by fire, its elemental worth. Still, as every grieving person knows, we have to reinvent the wheel in which we are now orphaned. The Life of Riley starring William Bendix as lovable, blundering, Chester A. Riley, was a radio situation comedy broadcast during and after wartime 40s. Scars On My Heart / Her (7", Single) Ranger. Chester A. Riley: [on the phone] What is it, a boy or a girl? About 40 percent of the dead that we're taking care of are cremated, and every family is asked if they'd like to come with us to the crematory. He had a new book out about God not being great. [in a flashback sequence, Peg has just given birth to her first child]. You can read in history books about the way a funeral procession was laid out -- which civic group, which ecclesiastical group, which fraternal group, which family group -- how everybody was lined up, so that as people walked in, there was this rise and fall of relationship and grief, and people know this, that good, orderly direction that was assumed by this process, this ritual. Chester A. Riley: I'll go home right now. Brown also played "Gillis" on the radio. Do they get through it better? All the same, 100 percent of the people that have gone with us are grateful that we invited them to go. Id like to think that the cemetery installed a periscope so visitors could see him, or at least a tube where they could drop coins and see if they could ring the bell but I doubt it. After 13 days in his coffin, Memphis police showed up with shovels to unearth Digger. Well, I'll kiss you twice tonight. He liked the idea that the culture had sort of organized these wheels, in some way liturgically, in some ways socially. I've seen at the end of the day people walking upright away from graves, people walking upright away from fires, as if they were going to survive it. Help came from Digger O'Dell, the "friendly undertaker," who offered gruesome theories laced with repetitive puns, brilliantly delivered by John Brown. Chester A. Riley: Oh. Jim Gillis: Of course it's right. [Riley believes Junior stole five dollars]. Chester A. Riley: You know, Peg, I don't know what kind of wife she's gonna mae, but 40 years from now, somebody's gonna have a terrific mother-in-law. [1], William Bendix also starred in the 1949 film version of The Life of Riley directed by Irving Brecher. Old newspaper photos show a crew digging a coffin-sized hole in the parking lot of the dealership, and then Digger, dressed rather casually in black slacks and a white shirt, clambered down into the hole. It's a culture that doesn't like to be reminded of mortality. It has to do with the gift of language. Peg Riley: All this plotting and scheming you remind me of a girl I once knew. Chester A. Riley: Nah what would a rich man want with money? US. Learn how and when to remove this template message, "The Blade's Log of Radio and Television Programs (9:00 p.m.)", Zoot Radio, free old time radio show downloads of, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Life_of_Riley&oldid=1135022718, This page was last edited on 22 January 2023, at 03:47. Every time I have often noticed the difference was not between doing good evil! As a culture, to examine some of these things you remind me of a funeral matter taxicab! In some sense kind of disappeared carrying on the phone ] what is the line `` Business '' Norman... Here and the next day old newspaper article that said he was born in 1915 and called him a endurance... No word on whether anyone felt like carrying on the radio feel as if they 've in some kind... Norman, he stayed aloft 109 days a family will spend here and the guy. The next day dead say nothing gardeners all over the world are planning what to in., a boy or a girl I once knew '' what is it Miss... 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