Thursday, February 11, 2016

PETER FALK at the Trial?

I was recently looking at a biographical video of Doris Day. The subject turned to Terry Melcher, and of course the Manson connection. At 2:46 in the video there is a shot of Melcher entering the courthouse. The figure at the bottom of the screen looking at TM is unmistakably Peter Falk, star of the hit detective series "Columbo".



You might remember this post from 2012. In the featured letter, Manson writes (among other things):
"That ass Peter Falk & guy that played James West, in WILD WILD WEST, propositioned me. James West also came to the car. I don't fuck with closet queens. There is more but I can't spell. Like one night a girl took me to Elvis' pad... with big iron gates & she was begging to suck on my ice cream."

The other person he refers to is Robert Conrad. That very entertaining post is worth another (or a first) read!

Here's a more readable copy of that letter:




The full video:







61 comments:

orwhut said...

If Columbo couldn't get to the real motive, nobody can.

CarolMR said...

Maybe Manson meant Peter Sellers, not Peter Falk. Sellers really was an ass.

Chris B said...

Is all this messing about with Manson's 'ice cream' supposed to have taken place when he was working at Universal as a script consultant of some sort?

Shorty's pistols said...

Falk looks like he's about to walk up to Terry and say, "Just one more thing Terry..."

Mr. Humphrat said...

REading the comments on the old post from 2012 Farflungs grammatical corrections are some of the funniest comments I ever read on this site.

grimtraveller said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Patty is Dead said...

Farf is a longtime favorite poster of Patty's. The rest of you ain't too shabby either!

grimtraveller said...

Now isn't that weird. I came across that letter Charlie wrote to the columnist guy just last night. I'd never seen it before but I'd read of some of the allusions contained within before. I kind of wondered where the thoughts had come from.
I wonder if he really did get it on with Doris Day or if he was just trying to get back at Terry Melcher in the most effective way possible ~ rumours.
Not for nothing was it once said that the pen is mightier than the sword....
It also makes me wonder whether or not much of the substance of Nuel Emmons book is true because I keep running into things that seem to hint at or corroborate stuff that I read in there.
Columbo is probably my favourite TV cop, with the possible exception of Spender. I have to say, there's been a long line of great TV cops over the years and not many of them have come from the UK ! America does many things well and one of those things is TV cops. The thing with Columbo is that when the movie is good, it's really good, great even {there's been lots}. When it's average it's the epitome of 'blah~dom' {unfortunately, there's been a few} and when it's bad {like the one with Billy Connolly} it sucks harder than a thousand new born babies at feeding time in the maternity unit at Northwick Park.

CarolMR said...

I saw Peter Falk on Bill O'Reilly's show a few years before Peter's death. He said he loved playing Columbo because he was such a "delicious" character to play. Falk actually reminded me of Columbo in that interview - sweet and smart.

ColScott said...

FWIW, in his MY LIFE book Watkins goes into detail on the BJ that he did on Manson in front of the group. Sounds a pretty common thing at Spahn. Considering that, the homophobia of the letter is pretty strange.

AustinAnn74 said...

Hmmm, one must ponder...Who in the world would of begged Manson to suck his ice cream, if Elvis's cone was available?

ColScott said...

Supposedly, and George could confirm this perhaps, Charlie is priapic- I def read that somewhere and what I took it to mean is he is permanently hard. I have seen cases of this usually due to an operation soon after birth. In such a case there is little surprise that Manson would be fascinating to young women of that time.

orwhut said...

Where was it that Charlie said he used dick and didn't know much about guns?
Where was it Charlie said it didn't go down until he told it to go down?
Charlie and Little Charlie must have quite a time together.

Patty is Dead said...

Wouldn't we always see the bulge in photos? Opfg

Chris B said...

Perhaps because of the permanent erection is why he never learned to ride a bicycle?

Matt said...

And you can always carry that one last grocery bag...

Robert Hendrickson said...

Back when Bugliosi was on a talk show promoting his book Peter Falk was a guest and boy did Falk jump in with a diatribe against Charles Manson. I always wondered why HE took it so personally.
Some more research could turn up the volume.

AND what a week ! - First Beyoncé breaks the Black Muslim / Panther silence and then the LA County "Sheriff" Lee Baca pleads guilty to lying to the F.B.I. But what a deal HE got, instead of the vast corruption permeating the penal system being exposed, it's back to normal - murder, etc in Brown shirt city.

Then there was Sirhan Sirhan parole denied AGAIN and with PAUL S. (man right behind Kennedy) again saying there was a 2nd gunman who shot Bobby in the back. BUT what the fuck does HE know ?

Good Moorniiinnngg Helter Skelter !

FrankM said...

I'd not heard [or read] anyway about CM suffering from priapism but I have heard it said of Denis Wilson. See e.g. "Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young" by Barney Hoskins, page 94 or "Neil Young: Zero to Sixty : a Critical Biography" by Johnny Rogan, page 168. Similar claims have been made for Warren Beatty. Could this factoid have in some way transferred itself to CM?

I do agree with the Col: there was a reason that CM was popular with the girl: either that he was well-endowed, had exceptional stamina or his own biological, hard-wired viagra supply.

FrankM

FrankM said...

Whoops - above, for 'girl' read 'girls' - I was not thinking of CM as having had sex with just one partner (as if)!

FrankM

CieloDrive.com said...

In early August of 1970, Linda Deutsch mentioned Falk attending the trial. This photo, however, is particularly interesting because Terry Melcher didn't look like that when he testified against Manson and/or Watson. He had a full beard by then. Judging by Terry's appearance, this photo had to be taken on December 5, 1969, when Terry was going to go testify before the Grand Jury. Falk wouldn't have been able to attend the Grand Jury hearing so you have to wonder, why was Falk there? And given, Deutsch's article in 1970, you'd have to assume he attended the trial itself.

Robert Hendrickson said...

I find it strange, but predictable that man would THINK women ONLY need / want and live for a hard rod. "Little Paul" thought that because HE could "satisfy" the entire Family all in one day, so that was the extent of HIS comprehension. BUT most women actually pretend to love the rod, simply to NOT expose THEIR embarassment for a man's child-like "mental" ignorance.

Men, especially the cops, hated Manson because THEY "thought" with THEIR guns strapped to their waists ALL women should be lov'in THEM.

BUT it was Manson's brain that actually turned women on.

Unknown said...

grimtraveller,

Way off topic, but here goes.

IMO, there were a few really good TV police shows from the UK. A few of the series that streamed here in the U.S. that I really liked include:

Prime Suspect (Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison), Cracker, Broadchurch, The Avengers

My favorite U.S. cop shows would be Hill Street Blues, Barney Miller, Cagney & Lacey, The Killing, Fargo, McMillan & Wife, The Mod Squad (OK, I was really young and loved the "hippy" cops), Night Court, NYPD Blue, Wild Wild West. My partner LOVED Columbo and we watched so many of those shows, so many times that I really learned to hate it.

Suze said...

I guess Manson then didn't need to "know nuthin about no guns". Yikes!

Logan said...

I wonder where the lady who did it with jimi hendrix & handsome chuck is still around. I've always found this letter & the whole "secret hollywood insider" aspect of the manson story incredibly fascinating, because so much of that story will never be known to anyone. Idk if y'all have seen this photo, but this xmas card of peter falk's always makes me laugh:
http://www.peterfalk.com/JustOneMoreThingPHOTOS.htm

Anonymous said...

There are Manson biographies that also show Robert Conrad in a trial! And he also played a short role in Columbo.

Logan said...

*I wonder IF, i should have said. I'm not worth much before 11 am...

CarolMR said...

Didn't a lot of Hollywood stars attend the trial? I think several celebs also attended the OJ trial. If you're famous and live in LA, why not?

Anonymous said...

Which kind of relations did Charles Manson have to Jane Fonda?

Chris B said...

I guess it's one of those situations where if you are on the outside looking in you occassionally (in LA) will come upon 'stars' of the entertainment world.

But there was a time (summer 1968) when the family were inside looking out. So it's not that surprising that they would have crossed paths with all manner of 'stars'.

The known are:
The Beach Boys
Neil Young
The Doors
The daughter of Angela Lansbury
The daughter of Dean Martin
The son of Doris Day
Frank Zappa

Add in to this associates of Wilson, Melcher, kaufman and the numbers are quite impressive. Take into account anyone Manson bumped into when he had access to Universal studios, or the Laurel Canyon scene, and it's getting into a lifetime of anecdotes about meeting famous people.

So, bearing in mind the burgeoning folk rock scene and LA as the centre of where movie stars are based and Manson being on the inside of the scene (however peripheral or temporary) I consider it a bit of a distraction that they ran into famous folk.

Robert Hendrickson said...

Tonight on 20/20 Diane Sawyer talks to Dylan Klebold's mother. Remember HE was a Columbine shooter who also wrote about Manson.

Even more significant Tuesday night on PBS SoCal there will be a doc on the "Black Panthers"
Maybe they will mention the Manson / Helter Skelter connection ?

Matt said...

From Bill Dakota, via email:

"Manson's Christmas card was returned as undeliverable? It is the same address I have always used. The Corcoran prison said to check with the post office there. A few weeks ago they gave me another prison phone number to see what address they now have for him. I sent him a copy of my book over a year ago. I hope he got it. They have screwed over him too long."


DebS said...

Great, you heard from Bill Dakota! Manson has a relatively new address, maybe 4 or 5 months, due to him being transferred to the acute care facility at the prison. Though it's kind of BS that the prison would not forward the mail to him.

He has COPD plus he's getting pretty darned old.

Charles Manson B-33920
PO Box 3456
ACH HUB-14
Corcoran CA 93212

grimtraveller said...

christopher butche said...

But there was a time (summer 1968) when the family were inside looking out. So it's not that surprising that they would have crossed paths with all manner of 'stars'.

The known are:
The Beach Boys
Neil Young
The Doors
The daughter of Angela Lansbury
The daughter of Dean Martin
The son of Doris Day
Frank Zappa


And you could add to that the members of Love and It's A Beautiful Day {through Bobby}, not to mention Alex Chilton {The Boxtops & Big Star}, Cass Elliot {according to Michael Caine} and John Phillips. I recall also, VB saying in "HS" how amazed he was at the number of stars Manson had had contact with or words to that effect.

AustinAnn74 said...

I saw a band one time at a club way back in the early 90s called "Mansons Bulge." Patty, your comment reminded me of that night.

grimtraveller said...

Robert Hendrickson said...

BUT most women actually pretend to love the rod

I don't know about that !
In TLB, associated films like "Ramrodder" haven't helped dispel the notion of the primacy of the rod that endlessly gets jiggy wid it ! I thought it was an interesting comment that Charles Watson made when he said there has been a lot more written about sex in the Family than was actually going on. On the other hand, when the Hollywood free clinic people did that study on the Family under the guise of the "Group marriage" thingy, back in 1968, they said stories of Charlie's sexual prowess assumed pretty much legendary status within the Family {interestingly referred to as a family in it} or words to that effect.

BUT it was Manson's brain that actually turned women on

I partially agree with that. In Bugliosi's book he refers to Gregg Jakobson being fascinated by the "whole Charlie Manson package" and I think that he was a package and that package was made up of different facets in such a way that different people could get into him on different levels. For example, Leslie told a psychiatrist that she couldn't really get it on with Charlie sexually, yet it was obvious from her interview with Marvin Part that she was sparked off by other aspects of the package.
On the other hand, there was a certain amount of jealousy and competitiveness among the ladies for his attentions. Juanita Wildebush says that he had all these young women falling over him. Then you have Linda Kasabian saying that while Charlie made love to as opposed to with her, he would expound his philosophy so there seems to have been an area in his mind in which the two coalesced {you could make the same point about his use of sex coupled with LSD}. But then Juanita stated he was the most phenomenal lover she'd ever had and when asked what his qualities were, she said he was very tender. When she was checking him out, she says she asked one of the men about him and he had told her that he was powerful and wonderful.
So it seems to me that he was versatile and multi faceted.

Patty is Dead said...

Ann that's a riot! Hey. Wasn't Cappy a Buffalo Springfield groupie?

orwhut said...

I've only ever read that "Cappy was a Buffalo Springfield groupie" and never seen any details. Cappy should write a book.

Robert Hendrickson said...

"Hippies and Liberals and up-tight piggies .....big civil war....
and they would kill each other off.... A few white people left who supposedly won."

"Then the Black Muslims would come out of hiding and wipe them all out."

So Does anyone SEE how Bugliosi turned "a big civil war" between liberals and conservatives into a BLACK and WHITE race WAR?

Sorry Charlie - time is running out.

grimtraveller said...

Robert Hendrickson said...

So Does anyone SEE how Bugliosi turned "a big civil war" between liberals and conservatives into a BLACK and WHITE race WAR?

But it wasn't really Bugliosi. For some reason, we seem to focus on Helter Skelter as a Black and White race war rather than seeing it as the Family tended to describe it, in which the race part was but one aspect of it. A major component of HS was the battle between the liberals and the conservatives who would so decimate each other that the "Black race" that hadn't been wiped out in "Whitey's revenge" over the TLB killings and what it led to, would then finish them off.
It seems to me that Charlie, a southern man, was "putting right" {ie, reversing} the result of the actual civil war in which much of what the South espoused was overturned and led to America as he saw and had disdain for.
Helter skelter settles the hash of of all the groups {Blacks, women, Dads, conservatives, liberals, authority.....} Charlie had an axe to grind with and rewrites America's history as I suspect he feels it should have turned out in the first place.
It's fascinating how encounters with LSD could drag people way back into the past, either their childhoods and babyhoods or actual historical episodes or characters. I guess that's partly why mind doctors at one point thought of it as a drug that could be of real benefit to those suffering mentally.

AustinAnn74 said...

The only place I've read about Cappy being a Buffalo Springfield groupie is on Cielo's site. Too bad Mansons Bulge wasn't together back then, she could of been a groupie for them. Haha....

Robert Hendrickson said...

Well, last night Diane Sawyer, in her first TV interview with Dyland Klebold's mother brought out the subject of Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" movie, BUT left out what Dyland thought was Charles Manson's CONNECTION to that story.

Maybe the MAN (a coinel in the Manson Blog Army) WHO put the actual movie together, can explain for us just how Natural Born killers / Charles Manson / Dyland Klebold and a sea full of fish all relate to each other.

BTW: Natural Born Killers is as significant to the Manson Story as Helter Skelter.

Mr. Humphrat said...

I hadn't heard anything about Robert Conrad being gay or Peter Falk so of course I had to google it and was surprised there were gay rumors about Conrad but didn't see any about Falk.
It is fascinating to read about all Manson's contacts and supposed contacts. The list continues to grow: Alex Chilton?, It's A Beautiful Day?, Doris Day's lover?. I hope that one's not true please.

Anonymous said...

1. I sent the text with Conrad, Falk and the other information first to Eviliz.
We were not sure about some of the grammar (if the text is authentic).

2. Anita Hoffman, the wife of Abbie Hoffman, was at the ranch, too.
But she found the women there too Aryan.
And Meat Loaf was a driver for Mansonites, at least for a short time.
The case of Cass Elliot at the ranch is likely, but not confirmed.

3. It is difficult to say if Manson also had contact to Sharon Tate.
There are different sources. DER SPIEGEL says yes.

orwhut said...

Humph,
I had to google Peter Falk + gay for the same reason you did. Some how I came up with his height, 5'6" which puts him on nearly the same plane as Charley. I doubt that had anything to do with Falk being there though.

orwhut said...

Robert,
I thought Natural Born Killers was inspired by another Charlie, Charlie Starkweather. I enjoyed that nightmare on film.

grimtraveller said...

ColScott said...

Supposedly Charlie is priapic- I def read that somewhere and what I took it to mean is he is permanently hard

On the face of it, being priapic sounds wonderful and possibly many guys would love to have the condition but in reality it {and it's female first cousin, twice removed, PGAD} is anything but wonderful to many that have spoken out about having the condition. I once heard a Doctor describe it as the equivalent of constantly wanting to urinate but not being able to.

Cybot said...


The case of Cass Elliot at the ranch is likely, but not confirmed.

It is difficult to say if Manson also had contact to Sharon Tate


In Michael Caine's autobiog, he says that Charlie turned up at one of Cass Elliot's parties and he was introduced. He said Sharon Tate had been there earlier but left before he arrived.
Either way, it's a red herring.

Patty is Dead said...

Happy VD punks!

CarolMR said...

"On the face of it, being priapic sounds wonderful and possibly many guys would love to have the condition but in reality it {and it's female first cousin, twice removed, PGAD} is anything but wonderful to many that have spoken out about having the condition. I once heard a Doctor describe it as the equivalent of constantly wanting to urinate but not being able to." - grimtraveller

Priapism is an extremely painful condition.

Matt said...

Until this thread I had never heard of priapism. Columbine and priapism in the same thread... then Patty brings up VD. I'm going back to bed!


Mr. Humphrat said...

Yeah I'd never heard of it either. And I did find one writing that mentioned Manson and priapic but the word was used in the broader meaning of sexual rather than the medical condition.

rshep said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rshep said...

PGAD, I thought it was (Progressive Gonorrhea Attention Disorder).

grimtraveller said...

Mr. Humphrat said...

And I did find one writing that mentioned Manson and priapic but the word was used in the broader meaning of sexual rather than the medical condition

That was kind of my point, because priapism involves erections and PGDA involves the feeling of being permanently sexually aroused, the natural inclination is for many of us to apply it sexually. And as such, it appeals to that side of us that can see sex purely in terms of rock hard dicks and women howling orgasmically. But it's medical, not sexual {which is not to say that the sexual dimension is non existent}.
Real life rarely compares with fantasy.

rshep said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chris B said...

What a dreadful thread, you do all release now that when I go back to youtube to rewatch the original news footage from 1969/70 I will be constantly drawn to examining Manson's crotch for obvious permanent trouser tenting.

Thank God his prison issue jeans were a couple of sizes too large.

TomG said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mr. Humphrat said...

Well Grim, the impression I got from the definitions I saw was that one meaning of priapic is "sexual" Here it is: of or relating to male sexuality and sexual activity.
Here is the passage from a google book Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius:
"It is unclear how many names on the LA music scene participated in Manson's priapic rites..." The rites referred to involved handing out drugs, tantric breathing, Manson directing an orgy, with no mention of his erection.

DebS said...

Yes, Mr. Humphrat, that was my understanding of the word, too. As well as describing a medical condition it is an adjective whose origin is from the Latin word Priapus meaning lecher.

Mr. Humphrat said...

Lecher! How appropriate thanks Deb.

grimtraveller said...

Mr. Humphrat said...

the impression I got from the definitions I saw was that one meaning of priapic is "sexual" Here it is: of or relating to male sexuality and sexual activity

I get you. It's like the common or colloquial use of the word gives rise to the medical term to describe a particular condition. When using priapic to refer to male sexuality and lots of sexual activity, it's not necessarily or particularly alluding, like the medical condition, to four hour erections from which there is never any relief or a return to the flacid state, even after orgasm.
It makes sense that the original Latin word would mean a lecher ! Kind of like the way 'frigid' comes from the Latin word 'frigus' which means 'cold' and from which we get 'fridge.'
I find the origin of words and phrases in various languages, fascinating. This guy called Melvyn Bragg once did this fantastic TV series on the origins of words in the English language. It was eye opening and some of it was really quite funny.

Chris B said...

On the strength of this thread I have just purchased a copy of a book Columbo and the Helter Skelter Murders.

Supposedly not up to much but cool illustration of Manson and Tate and Columbo on cover.