Jim the Jim

[Jim the Jim @jsbaker750]

This works up to a point, but I sometimes find watching shows in 4:3 that the physical closeness of characters can be unnatural - people standing much nearer one another than they would in real life, given their relationship.

[Adam Vian @SFBDim]

I thought about this a lot while recently watching all of Xena Warrior Princess. It feels tactile and human because the characters are constantly bumping into each other, pushing, touching, leaning on each other, etc - the 4:3 basically requires them to do that, in order to fit

[taoki @justalexoki]

i still think about this

[Rory McCarthy @roryisconfused]

Sophie laughed a lot at the fact that when she went off on a work trip for a few days I started reading this. She said it’s like something you’d find Gromit the dog reading if Wallace had to leave him alone for a few days.

[Finlay McLaren @fin_lay24]

The eternal tweet

[Kevin @caoimhinof]

We’re aware of too many Americans these days.

When I was a lad, you knew the President, pop stars, film stars, the A-Team and the girl your cousin was marrying to get his Green Card.

I don’t need to know who the Alabama State Senate Minority Deputy Leader is or their views.

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

By the time Woman of the Day Helen Gibson was 28, she had jumped off a railway station roof onto the top of a fast-moving train, jumped from a plane into a river, and chased a runaway train on a motorcycle in pursuit of bandits, bursting through a wooden gate onto a station platform straight through the open doors of a boxcar and onto the roof of another train.

She was an actress and the first professional stuntwoman.

Born OTD in 1892 in Ohio, Helen was 16 when she was captivated by a travelling Wild West show. “My father had wanted a son and encouraged me to be a tomboy.”

She’d never been on a horse before but determined to learn, she responded to an ad in Billboard magazine and joined the Miller Brothers who had a travelling rodeo and taught her to ride. Before long, she could pick a handkerchief off the ground from the back of a galloping horse. Her first public performance was in St Louis in April 1910 and when the rodeo ended its tour in California, Helen found work as a film extra before landing a named role in a silent film called Ranch Girls on a Rampage. (Relax, I’ve read the synopsis. They were cowgirls who went to a funfair and found it a bit boring so they decided to do it their way).

By 1913, Helen had a successful rodeo double act with another performer, Hoot Gibson, but life in a travelling show wasn’t all glamour. It was almost impossible to find B&Bs as a single woman and she was tired of sleeping in hallways so she married him. It wasn’t her best decision. Still, when he went to Los Angeles to work as a stunt double for Tom Mix, Helen went too - and found a new career.

The Hazards of Helen was a long-running film serial (119 episodes, each 12 minutes long) in which the intrepid heroine, a telegraph operator, found herself in perilous situations in pursuit of the bad guys but didn’t need a good guy to rescue her. She was perfectly capable of rescuing herself.

The original star, Helen Holmes, performed her own stunts but insurance companies were nervous about it and when they refused to cover some of the more hazardous ones, her namesake stepped in. This was quite extraordinary. Stunts were a male preserve. In fact, “wigging” - the practice of stuntmen dressing up in wigs, make-up and high heels to double up for women actors - still goes on today even though there are extraordinarily skilled stuntwomen perfectly capable of doing the work.

One of Helen’s first filmed stunts entailed jumping off a railway station roof onto the top of a fast-moving train. “I landed right, but the train’s motion made me roll toward the end of the car. I caught hold of an air vent and hung on, allowing my body to dangle over the edge to increase the effect on the screen…I suffered only a few bruises.”

When Helen Holmes fell ill after Episode 18, various actresses took over the role temporarily but the studio needed a permanent replacement. Helen Gibson was the obvious choice and when she took over in Episode 50, not was only she acclaimed as the new serial queen but she had the power to devise her own stunts and co-write the scripts. At a time when women didn’t have the vote, Health & Safety regs were non-existent and there was no association looking out for the welfare of actors (Equity wasn’t formed until 1930), Helen was jumping off a bridge onto a moving plane, out of a biplane into a river and off a motorcycle into a burning boxcar.

Her most daring stunt involved standing astride a pair of horses galloping towards a bridge where she would catch a dangling rope and swing onto a fast moving train to apprehend a gang of train robbers. No way, said the insurance company, which declared her “an unsound risk”. She did it anyway but landed hard on the train and really should have gone to hospital, but that meant she would have been replaced by a new actress. She carried on working. “Life is just cluttered up with perils.”

When The Hazards of Helen came to an end in 1917, Helen was put under contract by Universal Studios, appeared in Westerns and melodramas and also founded a production company, beginning work on her first picture, called No Man’s Woman.

Hoot returned from WW1 in 1918 but found it hard to deal with Helen’s fame. She was fed up of being referred to as Mrs Hoot Gibson anyway so they formally separated. He declared himself as married on the 1920 census. She wrote “Widowed”. They divorced that year.

Around that time, the film industry increasingly focused on action man films and relegated actresses to non-action roles. Leading ladies were invariably cast as romantic interests but even when stunt doubles were required, stuntmen were called upon to wig up.

Helen ran out of money before No Man’s Woman was completed and although she picked up work as an extra or in character roles, her star was fading. She returned to travelling shows but she did appear in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in 1962 driving a team of horses. She was nearly 70 then.

Helen died in 1977 at the age of 85, but for some time, she was dubbed “the most daring actress in pictures.”

“I certainly do get angry when I hear someone say, ‘I bet she didn’t do that herself.’”

[CharlesWynfordLodge @2hrTV]

@HXValley @hellothisisivan My favourite bit of all of One Foot In The Grave is the episode on the motorway, when after a good while of just Victor and Margaret's sat in the traffic jam, Mrs Warboys gets in having just been off having a wee somewhere.

[Toddington @HXValley]

@hellothisisivan The Portuguese coast guard shouting out "MRS WARBUOYS MRS WARBUOYS" remains one of my favourite minutes of television.

[Jim the Jim @jsbaker750]

solve THIS

[retroist @retroist]

Erno Rubik (1981)

[Rob Ritchie @Robritchie409]

I don’t understand the criticism aimed at the modern Doctor Who regeneration effects. Personally, I think they’re so effective they should be retroactively added to all classic stories as the standard.

[Jim the Jim @jsbaker750]

@NickBuckleyMBE @Suffragent_ you are a fascist collaborator then

[Jim the Jim @jsbaker750]

@TimLui8 @AmeliaERWood nazi

[amy @foxgrove_]

just seen this on a craft shaming group which it fully DUD JOT belong to and i just need to say this is the best thing i’ve ever seen

[Gareth @Cadmarch]

Archbishopy McArchbishopface

[Jim the Jim @jsbaker750]

also a friendly message to immigrants in a little box

[Karly Kingsley @karlykingsley]

The US Constitution has been removed from the White House website.

[The Lady of the Green Kirtle @ladygreenkirtle]

I bought wine and the 12 (?) year old at the till asked for my ID and when he saw it, he said "oh, wow, 1900s, sorry!" so I'm going to have to dress like this now, I suppose

[ringworm @prawn_meat]

T is basically the last great letter before the alphabet completely goes off the rails

[Troy Osinoff 🕺 @yo]

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