"It is I, Digger O'Dell, your friendly undertaker. I got my picture in the paper! What you're looking at [in the case of someone being there during that time] is everything's in order. in Literary Quotes in Movie Quotes in TV Shows 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. 461. I mean, there are good funerals. It seems Digger ODell was a friendly undertaker character in The Life of Riley , a radio soap opera that aired back in the 1930s, but that still doesnt explain the curious popularity of the name, if you ask me. Chester A. Riley: You know, it's funny. Chester A. Riley: Hello, Digger. Cullen, Frank, Hackman, Florence and McNeilly, Donald Vaudeville Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America Vol. Peg Riley: All this plotting and scheming you remind me of a girl I once knew. Months after my father died, I can remember this wave of feelings that would come over me, catching me at the most unpredictable times, this wallop of him being dead, him being gone. But cremation has increased since then by about 10 percent in every decade. Digby 'Digger' O'Dell : Why, I was just taking a stroll around the pond. It's that time of year again when gardeners all over the world are planning what to grow in their gardens. We do have a charge for our caskets. Henry Morgan voiced Riley's father in one episode. Whether or not my family is involved with the care of my body, that's their business. Dear Vance:My parents remember a Memphian named Digger ODell who had himself buried alive here sometime in the 1960s as a promotional stunt. We bid you welcome. See production, box office & company info, Universal Studios - 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, California, USA. That's not what you don't want to see, because we can fix that all." 2023. Humiliated, Riley vows to Peg that he will become more successful, and after six weeks of working overtime, he volunteers to host the company's Labor Day beach picnic. I just read this card, and I just spoke to the Justice of the Peace! Yeah, it's a mystery. Chester A. Riley: So was I. Copyright 2022 Memphis Magazine. But there's no question that cremation has become normative in a way that it used to be exceptional. 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. Im five-foot-eleven. Digby 'Digger' O'Dell: It is I, Digby O'Dell, the friendly undertaker. John Brown returned as the morbid, counseling undertaker Digby (Digger) O'Dell. Dr. Beamish: Not now, I'm afraid. This is the edited transcript of interviews conducted with hin during the winter and spring of 2006-2007. Alan Lipscott and Reuben Ship wrote many of the radio series' early episodes, and Don Bernard was the show's initial director. But, you know, we used to say to my father, who directed a fair few funerals, "What do you want done with you when you're dead?," and he'd say, "Well, you'll know what to do." 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?" When his efforts to impress his boss, Carl Stevenson, apparently fail, Riley becomes incensed and finally works up the courage to confront him. Digby 'Digger' O'Dell: It is I, Digby O'Dell, the friendly undertaker. And I do think that while the dead don't care, the dead matter. Everything assumes its natural order. [citation needed], In 1948, NBC broadcast "two live television test programs based on the radio series. He would have figured that out, but I think for him the funeral, the procession, was part of the process. Gillis: I tried to help you, Riley, but I'm through. The Life of Riley was an American radio situation comedy series of the 1940s that was adapted into a 1949 feature film, a 1950s television series, and a 1958 comic book. UP AND UNDER ANNCR: Prell brings you "The Life of Riley"! Digger kept up his strange act for many years. I'll hug her and I'll kiss her. What we have missed, however, in cremation in this culture is all the powerful metaphoric values provided by fire, its elemental worth. Last updated Jun 12 2013. We'd just say, "Well, let's not think about that anymore." [1] (Marx would get his own series Blue Ribbon Town instead.) Chester A. Riley: Why should an old man married for years run away with a pretty blond? The only place your son will get his picture is in the post office. To Riley's amazement, Stevenson reveals that he had already planned to promote him to foreman, beginning in January. Unknown. So what you've seen is what I've seen: that people who deal with their dead deal with death better. Land of miracles, where dreams come true! STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Well, we wear black for funerals -- people have to know who the directors are, who to ask -- and white shirts and gray ties. The crematory we use is impeccably run by ethical people, people we inspect, unannounced, a couple times every year. What are you doin' here in the park?Digby 'Digger' O'Dell: Why, I was just taking a stroll around the pond. With William Bendix the protagonist, as Riley and among others John Brown, who portrayed the friendly undertaker "Digger" O'Dell. Even though we can plan it and pay for it and all that, we can't really get that wheel to turn for us until it turns itself. Jim Gillis: I know a lot about surgery. Even a criminal gets time off for good behavior. Everything is going on, and here we are. While readying for Monahan, Riley's daughter Babs, a serious-minded college student, catches the eye of Miss Bogle's handsome young nephew, Jeff Taylor. According to the obituary, Digger was born in Georgia in 1915. You had your tonsils out. Brecher then saw William Bendix as taxicab company owner Tim McGuerin in Hal Roach's The McGuerins from Brooklyn (1942). She must have money. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Brecher told Brown, "I want a very sepulchral voice, quavering, morbid," and he got it right away.[2]. 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. But more and more, when we say to them, "You may, and maybe you ought " or, "Maybe someone in your family should be designated, just to go in as your proxy, to say, 'Everything was done as it should be done,'" they do it. 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. 460 Tennessee Street #200, Memphis, TN 38103. Simon Vanderhopper: Yes sir, I don't let the grass grow under my feet! One example of this type of comedy is the line "Business is a little dead tonight" . Mail: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis magazine,
This is got to be one of the largest collection of a single classic show I have stumbled across. He noted that "the grave that he can't escape from" is located in Sawnee View Memorial Gardens, just outside of Cummings, Georgia. Riley could easily be described as the Archie Bunker of the 1940s. A great memorable quote from the The Life of Riley movie on Quotes.net - "It is I, Digger O'Dell, your friendly undertaker. Will that matter? Except I want to send out those circulars, so bring me some round paper. They come in to talk about what to do with a child who's grieving because a schoolmate died, to talk about what will happen in the event of their own death, how to handle a dying parent, nursing home arrangements, elder care. Digby 'Digger' O'Dell: No, only Latin and Greek. Chester A. Riley: I'll go home right now. And that's very seductive, because, I mean, it's human-to-human contact. Jim Gillis: Of course it's right. After 13 days in his coffin, Memphis police showed up with shovels to unearth Digger. 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. Chester A. Riley: I know what you did! Jim Gillis: So by her leavin', I'm getting away without goin' out of the house. Sign Up now to stay up to date with all of the latest news from TCM. Just as all appears lost, Riley learns from Burt that he has been promoted to a high-paying executive position. But he said, "When a death occurs, people feel so helpless, it's good to have some of these things already invented." This is the way I like to remember William Bendix - playing a family man doing the best he can in a world that tends to be a bit too much for him, with children that tend to be a bit too much for him too. Chester A. Riley: Their gonna slit my throat from ear to ear and rip out my tonsils, and she says there's nothing to 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. Peg Riley: Maybe he's sick or something. The Life of Riley (1949) co-starred Rosemary DeCamp, James Gleason, Beluah Bondi, Richard Long and John Brown as "Digger O'Dell" the friendly undertaker, a role that he also played on the radio program. By Lorraine LoBianco. With your own mother and father and their funerals, what were the moments that had meaning for you? Mar I cant find any record that Digger ever returned to Bluff City Buick, or to the Bluff City for that matter, to finish the job. Back in Atlanta, a judge allowed him to conduct his stunt for an Atlanta shopping center, but he had to turn the money he would be paid only $2,250 over to his family. Copyright 2022 Memphis Magazine. Do you hear that, Peg? to "what are we going to do?" After Riley overhears Burt discussing "business" with Norman, he beats up Norman and drags him before the wedding crowd. Opening credits conclude with the following written statement: "America! We'd be wise, as a culture, to examine some of these things. He also portrayed "the friendly undertaker" Digby "Digger" O'Dell on the same show. One of my favorite old time radio characters (other than Jack Benny) was Digger O'Dell "The Friendly Undertaker". But the strange case of Digby "Digger" O'Dell offers an elegant counterpoint. Digger O'Dell, the friendly undertaker ANNCR: It's new! I've sat with families who said, "Well, we want a closed casket," and I've often asked them, "Well, had they not died yesterday, would you not want to see them today?" 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. I like the connection, the sound of the word "process"; it suggests movement, a pilgrimage. He was Herbert ODell Smith, and he conducted this buried alive stunt, along with countless other feats of endurance, across the South. I know as a person who has grieved before, and I also know as a person who has been next to people in grief, that one of the awful messages on the day is "Life goes on." Everything seems to fall into place. Once Riley declares to Stevenson that he does not want the promotion, Babs realizes she is free and runs into Jeff's waiting arms. So it's interesting times we live in that way. 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. The Life of Riley, 1944 to 1951. Buy Organic Seeds Risk Free From Organic Seeds TOP - Credit Card & Western Union Payment Options, Organic Seeds TOP is a seed vendor based in the Ukraine. If you havent visited this area of the park, you should. Quotes.net. [5] Originally, William Bendix was to have appeared on both radio and TV, but Bendix's RKO Radio Pictures movie contract prevented him from appearing on the TV version. But you have to do that first, because people will sense if you're not willing to do that, if you're just sort of going through the motions. A comic book adaptation of the show was produced by Dell Comics in 1958 as part of their Four Color series of one-shots. 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]. So it's not like you do things for them as much as you do it with them and embolden them to do for themselves. Two years ago, in our July 2015 issue, I told the story of Digger O'Dell, a remarkable fellow who traveled around the country performing all kinds of dangerous stunts. "I play every chance I get music, that is!" Mounted on one of his five Harleys and racing most everywhere across the nation will be National Number 57; that's "Digger O'Dell," the friendly undertaker. However, it came to an end after 26 episodes because Irving Brecher and sponsor Pabst Brewing Company reached an impasse on extending the series for a full 39-week season. He liked the idea that the culture had sort of organized these wheels, in some way liturgically, in some ways socially. Rejected everywhere, Riley reluctantly asks Monahan for the money, but Monahan also refuses him. The till still rings. Burial was the norm in the Western world probably until the mid-60s. And so they'll know what to do. Punchy: Hey, why don't you get up, pal? A factory worker's family is thrown into an uproar when his teenage daughter starts to date his boss' son. And that is the cruel part, and that is the good news and the bad news all at once -- that things are happening even so. And the components of a funeral sometimes change. We get to say when people are dead to us, or dead enough, so that we can let them go. Jim Gillis: Sure! It was during this period that Gleason played Riley on one episode of the radio series. That's why I came over here tonight. Chester A. Riley: What do you mean the baby announcements? 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. Not a day went by that I wasn't kept in after school. For many people I know, when families are cremated, they feel as if they've in some sense kind of disappeared. "The Life of Riley Quotes." I want reports! I said NO! And oftentimes I'm impressed by how people will wrap their existential concerns about a dying parent in the prearrangement conference. While the ratio may not be ideal for tomatoes, it can still produce great results with some preparation and understanding of the plant's genetic potential. I do find this recent push for every funeral to be a celebration of life as, in a way, a kind of a cruel joke on people who are in acute grief. Chester A. Riley: Oh. there are very few hands raised in the room, because cremation is often shorthand for disappearance. Before going, Riley instructs his precocious son Junior to exchange his piggy bank coins into bills and meet him at the restaurant, assuming that Junior's savings combined with his five dollars will be enough to pay for the meal. 16 in its first season, with four of its six seasons in the top 30, and ran for a total of 217 episodes. Crowther concluded, "[W]e suppose there are millions who will like this sort of truck. Chester A. Riley: Yeah, but that ain't right. You can read in history books about the way a funeral procession was laid out -- which civic group, which ecclesiastical group, which fraternal group, which family group -- how everybody was lined up, so that as people walked in, there was this rise and fall of relationship and grief, and people know this, that good, orderly direction that was assumed by this process, this ritual. Later, while dropping off the rent to Miss Bogle, Babs receives her first kiss from Jeff. Not to worry, though. Everything seems to fall into place. He then is embarrassed in front of the Monahans when Junior appears with his full piggy bank, having been unable to open it, and during a struggle with the waiter, the bank falls to the ground and breaks. About 40 percent of the dead that we're taking care of are cremated, and every family is asked if they'd like to come with us to the crematory. But I remember coming home after the mass and the burial and the luncheon, getting back to her house -- it was about 3:00-ish in the afternoon -- and thinking, "The trick-or-treaters are coming." One day, after paying out all but five of his fifty-dollar-a-week paycheck, Riley has to sneak into his house to avoid his landlady, Miss Martha Bogle, to whom he owes money. It follows the changes in our species, certainly in our culture. But even people who do not believe or claim no religiosity or no particular faith, they are not without some text, some book they regard as, if not holy, it is the handle they're trying to hold onto to get through this. Not all of the radio cast made the transition to film; Paula Winslowe and Barbara Eiler were replaced with DeCamp and Meg Randall as Riley's . Peg Riley: Oh? His dramatic life story is so well-known that schoolchildren are taught to recite it for extra credit. Gillis then forgives Riley, and Riley is satisfied that his family is happy once more. During cocktails, a bill collector from the electric company shows up, and after Riley sends him on his way, he disconnects the Rileys' electricity. And there's somebody else doing this, that. 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. The Life of Riley starring William Bendix as lovable, blundering, Chester A. Riley, was a radio situation comedy broadcast during and after wartime 40s. Chester A. Riley: Do you need any help with the dishes? I always knew I'd bring up my daughter to be somebody someday. For more than 30 years he also has been the director of the Lynch & Sons funeral home in the small town of Milford, Mich. Some do. Let's see! Simon Vanderhopper: Mr. Riley, you're not angry? Digger O-Dell And The Friendly Undertakers. Riley's penchant for turning mere trouble into near-disaster through his well-intentioned bumbling was often aided or instigated by his arch best friend/next-door neighbor, Gillis. Junior will be glad to pitch in. When he heard the sad news about his wife, said a newspaper, Diggers own heart broke like a clod of dirt. I know his nickname was Digger, but thats just mean. All the same, 100 percent of the people that have gone with us are grateful that we invited them to go. He played "Al" on the radio series "My Friend Irma". He's a boy who Chester A. Riley: He's a boy! We can't prearrange that. You're sweet, though. Maybe bigger. Babs Riley: But Mother, this is the opportunity of my entire life! I enjoy listening to the frogs croak. So we weep and we laugh, we laugh and we sing, and we try to work our way around this changed reality in much the same way a death in the family articulates this changed reality. Chester A. Riley: I don't have to be fair - I'm your father. He'd made a few films, like Lifeboat, but he was not a name. Junior Riley: Why don't you wet a piece of confetti and drown your brain? 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. Chester A. Riley : Hello, Digger. It gives us a way to get some little mastery over these uncontrollable things by giving it a narrative thread. : 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. Peg Riley: Well, of all the revolting ideas! The year before he died, Digger told reporters that he had probably spent six years of his life underground, earning as much as $600 a week for his efforts. Whether a person is consigned to the earth or the fire is, at the end of the day, no difference. P-R-E-L-L! Chester A. Riley: No. Still, as every grieving person knows, we have to reinvent the wheel in which we are now orphaned. When families come in and have their loved one cremated, do you talk to them about going with you to the crematorium? Then, his wife Peg receives a phone call from Sidney Monahan, a former flame from Brooklyn, their home town, and Riley impulsively invites him to dinner. It is a sadness and a shame that cremation, the fire in this context, is seen as an industrial process instead of an elemental one, in the way that earth is elemental. In 1907, a penniless farmer named Ruben Shipp discovered gold while plowing his field. And a narrative is nothing other than a journey. It's amazing! We make appointments for cremations because we have to go and watch the placement of the body in the retort and the beginning of the process, the identification process that's part of that, and we retrieve the ashes. Do they get through it better? Digby 'Digger' O'Dell: Why, I was just taking a stroll around the pond. 2023. interview with the film's producers|credits|privacy policy|journalistic guidelines [after Riley discovers the man he accused of bank robbery is a policeman]. Not wanting to uproot his family, Riley determines to come up with the $1,500 down payment and goes from bank to bank searching for a loan. We're celebrating love, huh? All rights reserved. I guess he likes this blond's cooking. So for me, I can remember swinging the door all through my teen years, and I think it was 1973 -- I was probably 24 or 25 years old [when I decided]. 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. 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. I see my sons now working through this, and their generation. If you don't pay attention Peg Riley: Well, I'm trying to tell ya, he just moons around the house! 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. I was thrilled to find IA, where I can find some of those classics. Because of its overwhelming radio popularity, Riley graduated as easily to a 1949 feature film, as it did to 1950s television. Vance Lauderdale is the history columnist for Memphis magazine and Inside Memphis Business. 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! After roaming around the park a bit, I found the plaque has been carefully preserved and moved to a better (and more visible) location, bolted to a wall towards the rear of the new Veterans Plaza area of Overton Park. William Bendix is heard as Riley, along with co-stars Paula Winslowe, John Brown, Tommy Cook, and Barbara Eiler - plus series creator Irving Brecher . We already ordered the baby announcements. Also, in 1958, it hi The CBS program starred Lionel Stander as J. Riley Farnsworth and had no real connection with the more famous series that followed a few years later. Peg Riley: You know what they say - ignorance is bliss. Chester A. Riley: Yes. Jim Gillis: Are you kiddin'? 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.
His real name, it seems, was Herbert O'Dell Smith. home|introduction|watch online|stories & special video|to be an undertaker|join the discussion Many customers have had positive experiences ordering from them, and their customer service has been praised for keeping buyers updated on order status. Bendix was able to return to the role on NBC from 1953 to 1958, where the program was consistently in the top 25. When you grow up in funeral service, you always have a job. But I find that if you just show up, if you just walk in the door, people think you're a hero. It is that everything changes and nothing changes. "Life goes on!" Peg Riley: What's the matter? I figure once a year, every married man should get away from his wife for a few days. Well. "The Life of Riley" The Billboard Magazine Dec 6, 1947
During a burial in California, a sudden earthquake caved in the sides of his "apartment" and he had to be rescued. Buried alive? William Bendix and Digger O'Dell the friendly undertaker - The Life of Riley Complete Broadcast CBS Lux Radio Theatre 1950 (Lp) - Amazon.com Music Buy used: $198.00 $3.99 delivery January 26 - February 2. Its 32 inches across, 32 inches high, and six feet long. Peg Riley: Every day this week, he's been kept in after school. She means other kinds of trouble. There's this wonderful essay that was written -- I have it framed in the hallway there; the woman's name, I think, is Sullivan who wrote it. I've come to admire the earth, the wind and the fire. And yet you write that beautiful essay Tract in your book, The Undertaking, which is in some way a map, is it? After the boorish Monahan orders the most expensive items on the fancy French menu, however, Riley barely has enough to cover the check. They need to talk to someone. He was supported by Marjorie Reynolds, replacing both Paula Winslowe and Rosemary DeCamp, as wife Peg; Tom D'Andrea as schemer buddy Jim Gillis; Gloria Blondell (sister of Joan Blondell) as Gillis' wife, Honeybee, and Gregory Marshall as their son Egbert; Lugene Sanders was Babs and Wesley Morgan was Junior. Peg Riley: You certainly are, Dear. t.r., memphis. That they do it for themselves I think is very important. John Brown, Radio and TV Actor, Dies; Played Digger O'Dell in 'Life of Riley' Give this article May 18, 1957 The New York Times Archives See the article in its original context from May 18, 1957,. There are days I can get behind that theory and have. For years, it was propped against a rugged concrete base, in a cluster of crepe myrtles on the southern edge of the park, close to the intersection of Poplar and Cooper. And for those who are unchurched or unfamiliar in any tradition that gives them sort of the framework for this, a funeral home is still a safe place to talk about matters mortuary and matters of mortality. Simon Vanderhopper: Well, you can't call it off! So yes, I think all of these things help to sort of "fix" us in the firmament of where we are at any given time with our youth and our age, our well-being or our infirmity, our dying, our death and our remembrance. Bendix's delivery and the spin he put on his lines made it work. They can coexist. j.b., memphis. Despite Gillis' accusations and Peg's doubts, Riley goes along with the wedding plan until Junior uses the Stevensons' intercom to eavesdrop on Burt's room. The expression "life of Riley" or "living the life of Riley (Reilly)" emerged in the early 1920s, and was probably derived from turn-of-the-century Irish songs, such as "The Best in the House Is None Too Good for Reilly." "[2], The reworked script cast Bendix as blundering Chester A. Riley, a wing riveter at the fictional Cunningham Aircraft plant in California. This is a sign to me that they don't care, that heaven is not having to worry about these things, so I'm determined not to worry about them either. Chester A. Riley: I'll tell you what harm there is! Chester A. Riley: Well, that'll be it, Miss Millie. After all, the people whose names are on these markers dont have that luxury. 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. It was later reused by Benjamin J. Grimm of the Fantastic Four. 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. It has to do with the gift of language. "[6] The April 13 episode starred Herb Vigran as Riley, and the April 20 episode had Buddy Gray in the title role. 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 program was broadcast live with a studio audience, most of whom were not aware Brown played both characters. 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? I never felt better. Could have been man/wife or brother/sister.
Babs Riley: Guess what? Do you speak French? It's Prell! The radio program initially aired on the Blue Network (later known as ABC) from January 16, 1944, to July 8, 1945, it then moved to NBC, where it was broadcast from September 8, 1945, to June 29, 1951. People will know that. And particularly when you see the transaction which involves this rather impressive life-or-death event with the rather mundane mercantility of it all. So it's easy enough. He first started doing various stunts in 1932, a time when people were trying to make crazy money with dancing marathons, flagpole sitting, and other endurance feats. DIGGER, Digby O'Dell, the Friendly Undertaker MOTHER, Irish and obnoxious ANNOUNCER SINGERS MUSIC: THEME . Id like to think that the cemetery installed a periscope so visitors could see him, or at least a tube where they could drop coins and see if they could ring the bell but I doubt it.