Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 297: The Crooked Path of Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) [PART 4: THE CONCLUSION]

Doesn't he look like a Mario Puzo character here?

Edward D. Wood, Jr. was not in a good place—careerwise, healthwise, or otherwise—in 1975. He was still writing short stories and articles for various pornographic magazines, along with the occasional dirty paperback, but he wasn't nearly as productive as a writer as he'd been just a few years previously. (Ed was at his most prolific from 1968 to 1973.) Ed's film career by then consisted of making X-rated loops and writing screenplays for other directors. And, by my count, only one more of those scripts would actually be produced in Eddie's lifetime.

As poorly as Ed was doing back then, one of his old cronies from the 1950s, actor Timothy Farrell, was doing even worse. Under his real name, Timothy Sperl, he'd been tried and found guilty of misconduct in his role as a Los Angeles county marshal—illegally dispatching his subordinates to work at campaign events for a politician named Jim Hayes, then covering up the evidence of this. As with the Watergate scandal, which was raging at the same time, the Sperl case was as much about the coverup as the crime itself.

After two months of damning testimony by Sperl's coworkers, Judge Richard A. Gadbois determined that the star of Jail Bait (1954) and Glen or Glenda (1953) had falsified timesheets, misappropriated funds, destroyed radio logs, and interfered with civil service examinations. He was looking at a six-month prison sentence, a $500 fine (that's about $3,200 today), and four years of probation. In addition, he had been publicly humiliated, and his reputation was tarnished beyond repair.

But his story wasn't over. As we shall soon see, there were more twists in the Timothy Sperl saga.

Podcast Tuesday: "Blow Up Your TV"

Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke bicker on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Garry Marshall served a long and productive apprenticeship in show business before creating the megahit Happy Days in the 1970s. He wrote jokes for standup comedians and late night shows, then graduated to writing prime time sitcoms. One of the most famous shows he worked for in the mid-1960s was The Dick Van Dyke Show. Not only was this series a critically-acclaimed classic with very decent ratings, it also put Garry in contact with some people who were important figures in his life, such as creator Carl Reiner and director Jerry Paris.

I've been watching Dick Van Dyke reruns for decades now, but doing These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast has caused me to notice things in the show that I might have missed before. In particular, a 1966 episode called "Bad Reception in Albany" struck me as a precursor to Happy Days. The plot has comedy writer Rob Petrie (Van Dyke) trying and failing to watch a televised fashion show in an Albany, NY hotel overrun with rowdy, drunken conventioneers. It seems that a fraternal organization called the Seals have descended upon Albany the same weekend that Rob is there, causing him no end of trouble. Years later, Happy Days would have its own fraternal organization, the Leopards, and they would get into similar booze-fueled shenanigans.

This week on the podcast, we're talking about "Bad Reception" and the importance of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the history of Happy Days. As usual, this leads to us talking about a whole variety of subjects. If that interests you whatsoever, click the play button below.

Identifying the second-stringers from Little Golden Books

Not all of them are still superstars in 2026.

Like generations of American children since the 1940s, I grew up with Simon & Schuster's Little Golden Books. I was born in the mid-1970s, so my fondest memories of that venerable, much-loved literary franchise are of the titles released during that specific time period. From about 1973 to 1978, the standard back cover art for Little Golden Books featured a train populated by various licensed characters. Just seeing that familiar, friendly picture brings back a wave of nostalgia for me. I must have spent many accumulated hours studying it in my younger days, and I was glad to see it again on social media earlier today.

Upon closer inspection, though, I have a question: Who the hell are some of these characters?

The Beatles gave us a glimpse of their possible future... on their last song

No longer hungry: The Beatles as they appeared during their final photo shoot.

The future we didn't get.

To me, the breakup of The Beatles is no great mystery. It's simple math. When the group started in 1960, its members were about 20 years old and hungry for rock stardom and everything that went with it—women, money, houses, cars, publicity, screaming fans, etc. When the group ended in 1970, these men were about 30 years old and had had plenty of all that stuff. Too much, in fact. At every meal, no matter how delicious, there comes a point when you have to push your chair away from the table and declare that you've had enough. And so, they walked away under their own power while they still could.

I'm reminded of comedian Mitch Hedberg's description of pancakes: "All exciting at first, but then by the end, you're sick of 'em."

Many of The Beatles' contemporaries, like The Rolling Stones and The Who, decided to stay at the banquet for decades, even after the deaths of core members. Even the always-squabbling Kinks managed to outlast them. But the Fab Four remained stubbornly broken up, with each member of the quartet pursuing a solo career. Fans have naturally been curious about what kinds of albums John, Paul, George, and Ringo would have made if they had stayed together through the 1970s and beyond. Some fans have even created compilation albums and playlists with tracks taken from various Beatle solo LPs. 

But in 1970, just as they were disintegrating, The Beatles gave us a humorous glimpse into their own possible future as a band were they to remain together. Yes, I think there's a somewhat obscure Beatles B-side that demonstrates what would have happened to The Beatles if they hadn't broken up. And this song occupies a unique and important place in the group's discography.