davidd's A DOLL A DAY 2023

[davidd]

Yeah, I'm still finding stuff I forgot I had, and in keeping with my usual track record, not a single piece of anything is worth anything. No hidden treasures, no unex-pected windfalls, just a lot of junk.

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11 August - A Doll A Day 2023:
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More than a decade prior to the release of the campy 1980 sci-fi film Flash Gordon, another production team held the rights to the Alex Raymond comic strip characters, and pre-production was well under way until the leading actor's manager stepped in and, over the vigorous protests of the star, nixed the musical science fiction fantasy project.

The management team shunted the disappointed actor in to an unwatchable spy spoof involving harem girls... sounds like a winner, right? Think again. But due to the box office success of the secret agent genre at the time, and with the science fiction genre being at its nadir, largely dismissed as childish Saturday matinee program filler, the star was denied the opportunity to play against type as the arch-villain Ming the Merciless in a special effects laden action adventure film that would likely have reinvigorated both the star's flagging movie career and the struggling sci-fi genre as a whole.

Science Fiction would languish for several more years, until Planet of the Apes, with a big name cast, brought the genre back in to public favor. Motion picture history was denied the opportunity to to elevate an actor and a character to iconic status: King the Merciless, the Ming of Rock and Roll!

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NOTE – DISCLAIMER: Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental... you know the drill. The story you have just read is not true. I might have dreamed it, I don't remember.