Still, as every grieving person knows, we have to reinvent the wheel in which we are now orphaned. Chester A. Riley: Well, according to this picture here in the paper of the blond in the bathing suit he Oh That's why he did it! It is the ridiculous and the sublime. So yeah, I enjoyed writing that piece. I cant even blame my wife too much. Once he had to be pulled from his apartment after the dirt sides turned to mud and caved in after a thunderstorm. Radio historian Gerald Nachman quotes Brecher as stating, "He was a Brooklyn guy and there was something about him. The till still rings. At the end of that column, in my lackadaisical way weary from all that writing and typing I said I didn't know what happened to Digger after his misadventures in Memphis. Riley's catch phrase in the series and the film was "what a revolting development this turned out to be." O'Dell was a character hastily written into the long-running radio (and, later, television) show, "The Life of Riley," which had its debut on radio in 1944, while Americans were dying by the thousands in Europe and the Far East. 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. Simon Vanderhopper: Well, you can't call it off! Jim Gillis: So by her leavin', I'm getting away without goin' out of the house. And you have mentioned the range of feelings and emotions at a funeral. I just gave him a sedative. Peg Riley: You certainly are, Dear. One example of this type of comedy is the line "Business is a little dead tonight" . Up until a couple generations ago, humans were the species that dealt with death, the idea of the thing, by dealing with their dead, the thing itself, so that the way we processed mortality was by processing mortals from one place to the other, one station to the next in this little pilgrimage between as they were to how they are to what we hope they'll be. Chester A. Riley: What do you mean the baby announcements? The crematory we use is impeccably run by ethical people, people we inspect, unannounced, a couple times every year. [Riley believes Junior stole five dollars]. : Commissioned in 1932 by Memphis Chapter 1 of the American War Mothers, this large bronze plaque carried the names of 27 Memphians who had lost their lives in World War I. he must have stuck eith me, because I will go as Digger to a neighborhood "post Halloween" block party this afternoon. . Chester A. Riley: You mean I'm going to live? Give me a sense of the changes in attitudes toward death in America. There is a comfort when you don't have to reinvent that wheel, when we know we have to be at church at a certain time and that these prayers will be said and not those, and that this is accustomed behavior and this is outside the pale, and this is where we go. Maybe because it's happening to their parents or their siblings and some of their friends now, suddenly I see the cultural conversation changing from "how much?" Although Hollywood Reporter announced in January and February 1949 that the film would have its premiere in March 1949 in Cincinnati, no definite information about the premiere was found. And most good customs allow for some wiggle room, you know. Chester A. Riley, a riveter at Stevenson Aircraft in Los Angeles, works hard but is always behind in his bills. Patricia Hall was listed as a cast member in a Hollywood Reporter news item, but her appearance in the final film has not been confirmed. With William Bendix the protagonist, as Riley and among others John Brown, who portrayed the friendly undertaker "Digger" O'Dell. But we are much more willing to go stand next to the hole in the ground than we are willing to stand next to the fire. He liked the idea that the culture had sort of organized these wheels, in some way liturgically, in some ways socially. But when people go with us, it's at the back end of an industrial park in Lavonia, near a railroad track, so it's unlike the kind of commemorative surroundings that we have in our local cemeteries -- more is the pity. in Literary Quotes in Movie Quotes in TV Shows Chester A. Riley: Yeah, but that ain't right. Executives, who immediately began production on a television series, did not share Crowther's opinion, but because Bendix's movie contract barred him from doing television (a not uncommon ban in the early days of the medium when studios wanted to discourage audiences from staying home and watching TV), Jackie Gleason played Riley for one unsuccessful season in 1950. CONTINUES IN BG SINGERS: Riley, Riley, what a pal! 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. We bid you welcome. The dirt on Herbert ODell Smith. I cant say what finally happened to Digger. I never felt better. By Lorraine LoBianco. After 13 days in his coffin, Memphis police showed up with shovels to unearth Digger. It earned $1.6 million in the U.S. and Canada,[4] preventing him from starring in the TV series that began in the same year. The show was canceled after its first season, but was revived in 1953, then ran on the NBC network until August 1958. But I find that if you just show up, if you just walk in the door, people think you're a hero. I'd have to say yeah, they do. In 1949, Universal Studios released a Life of Riley motion picture, and later that same year NBC produced a TV version with Jackie Gleason playing Riley (Bendix was unable to play the role . If you havent visited this area of the park, you should. Everything is going on, and here we are. Too often Bendix was cast as a mental case who enjoyed smashing skulls, or his roles would take his gentle giant exterior to the extreme and he would be cast as an overgrown child as in "The Babe Ruth Story". All the same, 100 percent of the people that have gone with us are grateful that we invited them to go. "Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60-minute radio adaptation of the movie on May 8, 1950 with William Bendix, Rosemary DeCamp, Meg Randall . I remember it hitting me there in the house: She actually died; we actually buried her today; she's actually not coming back here; she's actually gone. Chester A. Riley: I don't have to be fair - I'm your father. William Bendix is heard as Riley, along with co-stars Paula Winslowe, John Brown, Tommy Cook, and Barbara Eiler - plus series creator Irving Brecher . And something is. So this pilgrimage, this journey that we go on, replicates in many ways other journeys that we see in life, from infancy to toddlerhood, from toddlerhood to teenagers to adulthood, the journeys we take in life in our heart, in the life of our mind, the life of our spirit. He made the news by being buried alive. So yes, the hurt is there, but the hurt does not overwhelm. The Life of Riley starring William Bendix as lovable, blundering, Chester A. Riley, was a radio situation comedy broadcast during and after wartime 40s. Peg Riley: Maybe he's sick or something. But when the entire conversation circles around and around about how much it's going to cost or how can you prevent this charge, I just find it silly after a while. And that's unfortunate. It's something handled by "them" offsite, elsewhere, and I think that's problematical. On any given day, it's up for grabs. He is best-known in Memphis for agreeing to be "buried alive" as a promotion that took place in September 1959 for Bluff City Buick. Today he is just living the life of RileyThis is the story of Chester A. Rileywho is just livingin Los Angeles California." 2023. For more and more people it's a trip to the crematory and some variation on the wake where people pay different types of witness. But at some point it becomes more than a job, and I can see this happening to the young people who have come here to work as high school students on work-study programs. It's an easy target; it always is -- you know, the Digger O'Dell [the "friendly undertaker" character in the 1950s television series Life of Riley]. He has been buried in a concrete vault for 36 days, sealed in glass 33 days, and spent 26 days underwater., But somewhere along the way, he decided to concentrate on burying himself in the worlds smallest apartment, as the various promotions called it. started calling him "Digger". [in a flashback sequence, Peg has just given birth to her first child]. "[2], The reworked script cast Bendix as blundering Chester A. Riley, a wing riveter at the fictional Cunningham Aircraft plant in California. But he said, "When a death occurs, people feel so helpless, it's good to have some of these things already invented." Thomas Lynch reads to camera his essay Tract, in which he broaches the topic of his own funeral. Everything assumes its natural order. Digger O'Dell Buried For Good This Time. Vance Lauderdale is the history columnist for Memphis magazine and Inside Memphis Business. Everything seems to fall into place. But there's no question that cremation has become normative in a way that it used to be exceptional. "The Life of Riley" The Billboard Magazine Dec 6, 1947 Well, I'll kiss you twice tonight. But don't go there searching for a tombstone marked Digger O'Dell. He never acted this way before. If I'm an Italian Catholic or an Orthodox Jew or a Baptist African American, I don't have to wonder what's going to happen, because I know that my community of co-religionists, of ethnic fellows, my neighborhood, whatever, they've organized a plan so that I don't have to spend the first several hours or days or weeks trying to figure out what to do next because it's already been told by tradition, by custom, by culture, by form. And it works; it does work. He would have probably had a difficult way of managing some of the changes that we see nowadays. Bendix's delivery and the spin he put on his lines made it work. Peg Riley: Oh? Digger: Every good undertaker has his ear to the ground - we pick up a lot of dirt that way. What we don't want to see is our mother or our father dead, and that is the part we need to see. He was Herbert ODell Smith, and he conducted this buried alive stunt, along with countless other feats of endurance, across the South. I enjoy listening to the frogs croak. And particularly when you see the transaction which involves this rather impressive life-or-death event with the rather mundane mercantility of it all. Banners asked customers and anyone driving past the Buick showroom on Union Avenue, "HOW LONG CAN HE STAY BURIED ALIVE?" It seemed like an appropriate time for this sainted woman. One option is organic fertilizer made from chicken manure, which can be found at Menard's for a reasonable price of $10.99 per 25-pound bag. I'll be the dead guy, and the dead say nothing. Jim Gillis: Yeah, well, he oughta shampoo more often - with kerosene! But I have graves at Oak Grove; I have graves in West Clare [County, Ireland]. See production, box office & company info, Universal Studios - 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, California, USA. That they do it for themselves I think is very important. Buried alive? I have children at home; my wife had taken them home from the luncheon. I mean, there are good funerals. What can you tell me about this interesting fellow? Babs: Well, I think he ought to get a fair trial. Down your throat it goes. It is that everything changes and nothing changes. I think it's always been the case that funerals in general, and funeral directors in particular, provide an easy target for cartooning, because there is so much about what we do that can be held up for ridicule. What is missing is the corpse: the thing itself, not the idea of the thing. DIGGER, Digby O'Dell, the Friendly Undertaker MOTHER, Irish and obnoxious ANNOUNCER SINGERS MUSIC: THEME . Her testimony is like all testimony -- it is a combination of gratitude and grief, and that the gratitude does not trump the grief, nor does the grief undo the gratitude. So it's easy enough. Simon Vanderhopper: Mr. Riley, you're not angry? I think we're among the first couple generations for whom the presence of the dead at their funerals has become optional, and I see that as probably not good news for the culture at large. I think we're all complicit in the banishment of the dead to the peripheries. . Peg Riley: Then I've been in love with you the whole time. 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. A factory worker's family is thrown into an uproar when his teenage daughter starts to date his boss' son. Another time, firefighters rescued him after he apparently suffered a heart attack underground. Chester A. Riley: Do I have a hole in my neck? Peg Riley: Chester Riley! In many ways they're all replicated by this journey that we take between the living and the dead when someone dies, this procession. We do have a charge for our caskets. Vance Lauderdale is the history columnist for Memphis magazine and Inside Memphis Business. What are you doin' here in the park? I think they used to call that "social death"; that actual death happens like that. Aware that he can use his grandfather's trust money if he marries with the approval of his father, Burt decides to pursue the wholesome Babs. When my father died, I was not prepared to put him in the ground then. Henry Morgan voiced Riley's father in one episode. Chester A. Riley is back, with long-suffering wife Peg, trouble-prone kids Junior and Babs, moochy pal Gillis, and Digger O'Dell, The Friendly Undertaker in sixteen hilarious half-hour episodes. Dunning, John On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio The Internet Movie Database So what I find is that before people bring their expertise as an embalmer or as a manager or as an executive or as a director, before any expertise, you ante up your humanity, you know? For the second run, Bendix returned as Riley, while Marjorie Reynolds appeared as Peg. Irving Brecher, who would direct the film adaptation of Life of Riley, had seen William Bendix in a film called The McGuerins of Brooklyn (1942) and knew he'd found his man. Bareiss, Warren "The Life of Riley" Encyclopedia of Television At the mobile home park, a local reporter didnt have a very high opinion of the aging stuntman, writing, He has the flushed face and shaking hand of a man who has seen the sun rise over many an empty bottle. Digger showed up at the park wearing only a bathrobe. And yet you write that beautiful essay Tract in your book, The Undertaking, which is in some way a map, is it? [citation needed] Mel Blanc provided some voices as well, including that of Junior's dog Tiger as well as that of a dog catcher who claimed to have a special bond with dogs. Chester A. Riley: Oh, you're gonna count my blood? People will sometimes ask me about the connections between poetry and funerals, and I do see this huge connection between the use of language in the two of them and how both rely on ritual and symbol and metaphor. Searching for Herbert ODell Smith took me nowhere, and youd be surprised how many people in America are named Digger ODell. Why, theres Edwin Digger Odell of Abilene, Texas; Allen Digger ODell of Malvern, Iowa; Charles Wayne Digger ODell of Lebanon, Tennessee; Loren Digger ODell of Brookfield, Missouri you get the picture. It's the people who, in many ways, try to put on the smiley face, that brittle grin you see so often that says, "We're going to be happy." To Babs's delight, Jeff, who has just moved in next door with his aunt, is a dedicated pre-med student. Chester A. Riley: You know, it's funny. Details Select delivery location Used: Like New | Details Sold by ral Add to Cart New & Used (2) from FREE Shipping Have one to sell? I really think my people will know what to do when the time comes, and these are details I won't have to worry about. I figure once a year, every married man should get away from his wife for a few days. At weddings people are forever weeping at what is supposed to be a joyous event. I think he was keenly aware of the fact that a good funeral is not about what we buy or what we spend; that a good funeral is very much about what we do when someone dies. 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 think the national rate now is right around 38 percent. I guess he likes this blond's cooking. [citation needed], Bendix and Rosemary DeCamp reprised the roles in an hour-long radio adaptation of the feature film that was presented on Lux Radio Theater on May 8, 1950. Just as all appears lost, Riley learns from Burt that he has been promoted to a high-paying executive position. I've really come to the point where I can see in a fire all that release; I can see the Holy Spirit in it, you know. None of us knew what reference was being made here.In grade five very few people here NL (Canada) were familiar with American radio.When the "Life Of Reilly" came to TV my appreciation of "Digger" was finally launched. Maybe bigger. His frequent exclamation of indignation"What a revoltin' development this is! Chester A. Riley: Do you need any help with the dishes? FRONTLINE series home|wgbh|pbs, FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of wgbh educational foundation. Bearing witness one way or another, that's a key ingredient. In October 1949, the NBC network began broadcasting a television series inspired by the radio program, also titled The Life of Riley. It was during this period that Gleason played Riley on one episode of the radio series. For that matter, a popular plant nursery just outside of town on Highway 64 is called Digger ODells, but thats yet another Digger (real name: Dennis). But then I can read the work of Barbara Brown Taylor or St. Paul or C.S. It's not always the same thing, and for everyone it's different. [after Riley discovers the man he accused of bank robbery is a policeman]. During a burial in California, a sudden earthquake caved in the sides of his "apartment" and he had to be rescued. I enjoy listening to the frogs croak. Chester A. Riley: No. Is he in some of of trouble or something? Barbara 'Babs' Riley: It's just not fair! By what name was The Life of Riley (1949) officially released in Canada in English? If you don't pay attention Peg Riley: Well, I'm trying to tell ya, he just moons around the house! Riley, Riley, what a guy! Web. In terms of the practical details, what are some of the things you learned from your dad? And we laugh sometimes at all those good memories and all those silly things the person said and all those wise things that that person said and all their foibles. They can coexist. After all, the people whose names are on these markers dont have that luxury. And I have found that, whether I'm walking in the door with a stretcher and one of my own to help carry their dead out, or if I'm going to the hospital to visit a sick relative or friend, or if I show up for a funeral at another place, you know, at a distance, they thank you for that. 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