Separated at birth

[Lee Marvin and Jerome the Giraffe. Click either image for a larger view.]

Steven Hall suggested this frankly unsettling pairing. But who am I kidding? When I see these two side by side, I cannot help laughing.

Everyone knows Lee Marvin. Jerome the Giraffe appeared on the CBC children’s show The Friendly Giant (1958–1985). The show had some American distribution as well: Elaine watched on Boston’s WGBH. As Steven points out, YouTube has an episode from PBS Wisconsin.

The Lee Marvin connection is apparently not a coincidence. Man and puppet do sound similar. Steven suggests listening to this clip. And he mentions a “You Know You’re a Canadian When” list that included something like this: “you feel nostalgic for a man who hangs out with a hyper-kinetic rooster in a bag and a purple and orange giraffe with a sleepy-Lee-Marvin voice.”

I’ve drained the purple and orange and everything else from Jerome to make the photographs more uniform.

Thanks, Steven, for some unexpected amusement.

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