Monday, January 25, 2021

Naked City Mongol

[Joe Silver as “Dean of Admissions.” From the Naked City episode “No Naked Ladies in Front of Giovanni’s House!” (April 17, 1963). Click for a larger view.]

I dunno. Maybe they used the same pencil from episode to episode. At any rate, there it is in the cup, a Mongol.

On the second shelf, the fourth book from the right looks like it might be a volume from the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books series. In a dean’s office?

Like every other Naked City episodes, this one is at YouTube. Not one of the best, but it does afford the chance to see Harry Guardino, Marisa Pavan, and Christopher Walken.

Venn reading
All OCA Mongol posts : Mongol and Naked City posts : Naked City posts (Pinboard)

comments: 2

ChasM said...

The more interesting question is whether anyone ever did B&W camera tests with various brands to see which looked best on film. The possibility exists that the Hollywood prop community collectively decided that the light yellow showed nice contrast and the definitive double banding added interesting detail and just bought up a couple of cases and that was that. I doubt that one is even sharpened.

Michael Leddy said...

Could be. It was a very popular pencil and would have been instantly recognizable. (Realism!)

The brand that shows up most often in the series is Viceroy. Everyone smokes Viceroys, and signage is prominent in street scenes and inside candy stores. Sometimes Viceroy signage is taped over signage advertising another cigarette brand, Detective Flint, the “college cop,” certainly fits the Viceroy “thinking man’s filter” baloney.