"Count Sheep" with Nancy Berg an inspiration for Phydeaux?
Hoodude
Nancy Berg who was quite attractive in the 1964 film.
I later performed some online searches to learn more about her and
discovered she was a well-known fashion model during the 1950's. I
then learned of a late night TV program called "Count Sheep" which
featured her and was some interesting programing at the time it aired.
Minutes ago I happened to find the blog entry below. "Count Sheep" and
Nancy Berg are even more interesting when similarity to FZ folklore is
added to them!
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http://home.no.net/marika75/log/2006/03/nancy-berg-counts-sheep.html
Monday, March 13, 2006
Nancy Berg counts sheep
"She emerges in a lavishly decorated bedroom clad in a peignoir, or
negligee, minces around the room stretches, yawns, jumps into bed, and
the wriggles out again for a final romp with her French poodle
[Phaedeaux, pronounced Fido]. Then she crawls under the covers,
cuddles up for the night, and composes herself for sleep."
Another webcam-girl sharing her bedtime routines for everyone to see?
Not quite. The quote is taken from Donald Horton and Richard Wohl's
eminent article from 1956 "Mass communication and para-social
interaction: observation on intimacy at a distance (re-printed in
Inter/Media. Interpersonal communication in a media world). Horton and
Wohl here describe the plot of a five-minute television spot called
Count Sheep, which was aired at 1. a.m. each weekday in 1955.
Wonderful concept for a late night show, isn't it? The concept
'para-social interaction' (what John B. Thompson calls mediated
quasi-interaction) describes the relations between media personas and
their audiences. It's a classic read.
I'd love to see just one episode of Count Sheep.
posted by Marika @ 1:57 PM
2 Comments:
Anonymous said...
I've been looking for it for years and even the museum of
broadcasting doesn't have any. There was an article in Esquire
magazine sometime around 1955-56 which had a cnterfold of her in the
neglige' that may be the last remains of te show.
her daughter
11:07 PM
Marika said...
Have really no tapes of the show been saved, that's too sad. I
can quite vividly picture it in my mind - not quite the same though.
========================================
An earlier discovery of mine regarding this program courtesy of Time
Magazine:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,807506,00.html
Beddy-Bye
Monday, Aug. 15, 1955
Americans are said to be lonely people, and they are loneliest of all
in the late watches of the night—when the inebriate becomes
sentimental, the salesman paces his hotel room, the insomniac looks
through his medicine cabinet. Radio fills the lonely time with
all-night music, but television has moved more uncertainly. It has the
brash irrelevancies of Steve Allen, the late late movies, the
fast-talking pitchman promising a better, lanolin-coated world for $1
down and $1 a week.
To cut itself a bigger slice of this audience, Manhattan's WRCA-TV,
flagship of the NBC network, moved right into the boudoir last week
with a silken five-minute sign-off spot called Count Sheep (weekdays,
1 a.m.). Its star is Nancy Berg, a 24-year-old, Wisconsin-born model,
who floats onscreen in filmy lace, stretches her bare arms, yawns
delicately, glances teasingly out of her cathode bedroom, pops into
bed and out again for a moment's play with her French poodle.
When she finally cuddles, beneath the covers, the camera moves in for
a gulping closeup. Nancy murmurs "good night" but makes it sound like
an invitation marked R.S.V.P. Her eyes close, her lips part gently and
she drifts off to slumberland to fadeout music and a cartoon of
fence-jumping sheep.
Miss Berg, who wants to be an actress ("Of course, I don't consider
that I act on this show—I'm being myself, which is harder than
acting"), earns $150 for each five-minute performance, will get $500
when she gets a sponsor. In her opening week, she wore a different
full-length nightie for each show, but now she feels comfortably at
home, henceforth will skip about in scanties.
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Transduce That Marimba
Hoodude
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,807506,00.html
> Beddy-Bye
> Monday, Aug. 15, 1955
> To cut itself a bigger slice of this audience, Manhattan's WRCA-TV,
> flagship of the NBC network, moved right into the boudoir last week with
> a silken five-minute sign-off spot called Count Sheep (weekdays, 1
> a.m.). Its star is Nancy Berg, a 24-year-old, Wisconsin-born model, who
> floats onscreen in filmy lace, stretches her bare arms, yawns
> delicately, glances teasingly out of her cathode bedroom, pops into bed
> and out again for a moment's play with her French poodle.
>
> When she finally cuddles, beneath the covers, the camera moves in for a
> gulping closeup. Nancy murmurs "good night" but makes it sound like an
> invitation marked R.S.V.P. Her eyes close, her lips part gently and she
> drifts off to slumberland to fadeout music and a cartoon of
> fence-jumping sheep.
For a sociological analysis of "Count Sheep", view the reprinted essay of:
Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, 'Mass Communication and Parasocial
Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance', Psychiatry 19:
215-29, 1956
located at:
http://www.participations.org/volume%203/issue%201/3_01_hortonwohl.htm
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Transduce That Marimba