Yes, that made me laugh too. I'm back into Trekkie mode since the movie (sorry -
I know it's been discussed here before so I'll just say I finally saw it and I
thought it was brilliant!).

Anyone done similar Space:1999 videos? There must be potential there for
something amusing too.

   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Arlette Hunnakko
   To: OnlineAlpha@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 6:19 AM
   Subject: [OnlineAlpha] Hilarious Star Trek vid





   Another Alphan sent me this...you may have seen it, but it's worth a few more
looks. I have to say I almost peed my pants laughing, though, that doesn't
necessarily say it was REALLY funny, I pee my pants a lot when I laugh....ok,
here's the link anyway...hee hee

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luVjkTEIoJc&feature=email
   God Bless,
   Arlette & Cocoa in heaven

   Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name,
   he gave the right to become children of God
   -- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision
   or a husband's will, but born of God. John 1:12-13

   [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]






------------------------------------------------------------------------------



   No virus found in this incoming message.
   Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
   Version: 8.5.375 / Virus Database: 270.13.0/2210 - Release Date: 06/30/09
06:10:00


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Alphans

Okay here is one to set tha cat among the pidgeons. I am in a postion to now get
Space 1999 on DVD.......which set of of disks do people recomend? Living in the
UK so we are talking Region II(2)

I also can only currently log on for a limited amont of time now and again!

Kerry

The Network DVDs!!! But only Year 1 is available... :-(Who has informations
about the Year 2 release?
Best,Ekmar
--- Kerry (a bloke!) and Sharon <kerryendacotte@...> schrieb am Do,
2.7.2009:

Von: Kerry (a bloke!) and Sharon <kerryendacotte@...>
Betreff: [OnlineAlpha] 1999 DVD's
An: OnlineAlpha@yahoogroups.com
Datum: Donnerstag, 2. Juli 2009, 19:27
























       Alphans



Okay here is one to set tha cat among the pidgeons. I am in a postion to now get
Space 1999 on DVD.......which set of of disks do people recomend? Living in the
UK so we are talking Region II(2)



I also can only currently log on for a limited amont of time now and again!



Kerry




































[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

There is now an Abridged version of /Bridge Two/, available at the
same link as before.  The original version, released over the prior
three months, is now listed as the Unabridged version.  See the link
for more details on each.

http://www.space1999.net/~metaforms/b2/bridge2.htm

I wish I had found a way to do this earlier and be able to offer both
Abridged and Unabridged in parallel all along, and I apologize for any
confusion or inconvenience this may still cause; but hopefully
offering this choice is more of a benefit than an annoyance.

----David

 
Forwarding from Yahoo
 
On Wednesday, July 8th we will be performing scheduled maintenance on the Yahoo!
Groups databases. During this time, some of you may not be able to access your
groups, and group mail will be delayed.

Maintenance should take roughly two hours, and will begin at 1pm PT (8pm UTC- to
determine what time the outage will take place in your neighborhood, please
visit this link: http://www.timeandd ate.com/worldclo ck/converter. html).





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi, i'm selling my copy of the Year Two book on ebay if anyone is interested
here's the link...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=2\
30355378704

happy bidding.

I spoke to Network last year, they said they had plans to release Year 2 last in
the autumn, nothing happened, I spoke with them a few months ago, they said they
were still planning a release for later this year, but no details, who knows, I
dont think they started video transfer work on the restored Y2 film elements,
except a HD test transfer by Jonathan Wood for The Metamorph, screened in 2007
by Granada at Pinewood studios in association with Fanderson.  (The film
restoration work on Y2 was done a few years ago, continuing the work from Y1)
I am more excited about a potential Blu-ray release from either A&E (they have
re-negotiated the future rights for the ITC catalog and are releasing The
Prisoner as their first ITC title) or ITV DVD in the UK through Granada.

--- In OnlineAlpha@yahoogroups.com, Ekmar Brand <ekmar1999@...> wrote:
>
> The Network DVDs!!! But only Year 1 is available... :-(Who has informations
about the Year 2 release?
> Best,Ekmar
> --- Kerry (a bloke!) and Sharon <kerryendacotte@...> schrieb am Do, 2.7.2009:
>
> Von: Kerry (a bloke!) and Sharon <kerryendacotte@...>
> Betreff: [OnlineAlpha] 1999 DVD's
> An: OnlineAlpha@yahoogroups.com
> Datum: Donnerstag, 2. Juli 2009, 19:27
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>       Alphans
>
>
>
> Okay here is one to set tha cat among the pidgeons. I am in a postion to now
get Space 1999 on DVD.......which set of of disks do people recomend? Living in
the UK so we are talking Region II(2)
>
>
>
> I also can only currently log on for a limited amont of time now and again!
>
>
>
> Kerry
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Dave Prowse was the creature in the Space:1999 episode The Beta Cloud.
David
----- Original Message -----
From: michael pike
To: ITC_Series@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 1:41 AM
Subject: [ITC_Series] happy birthday





to david prowse 74 the green cross man and dark vader good health






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.13.1/2211 - Release Date: 06/30/09
11:37:00


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Forwarded message:

This week (July 14, 15, and 16), we'll be performing maintenance on the
remaining 75% of Yahoo! Groups that were not affected by last
Wednesday's outage.



This maintenance will take place over a three-day period (July 14, 15,
and 16), as we'll be working on 25% of Yahoo! Groups at a time. This
means you may be able to access some of your groups, but not all,
during the outages. For the affected groups, mail will be delayed, but
will return to normal once the outage is complete.



All of the outages will take place at 3pm PT (10pm UTC/GMT-to determine
what time the outage will take place in your neighborhood, please visit
this link: http://www.timeandd ate.com/worldclo ck/converter. html) on the 14th,
15th, and 16th.



While we know that outages sometimes seem to come at exactly the wrong
time, we again hope to have these next three done within 2 hours.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Everyone,

This is Nick's scene in "Cry Freedom". Read the interesting back story in the
info at right. Good on ya Nick! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uDNOLSMpDs

God Bless,
Arlette
Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name,
he gave the right to become children of God
-- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision
or a husband's will, but born of God.  John 1:12-13



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Guys,
You may already know about this link, but I've been watching the astronauts in
the space station via the NASA site...double click it for full screen, very
cool!
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

God Bless,
Arlette & Cocoa in heaven

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name,
he gave the right to become children of God
-- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision
or a husband's will, but born of God.  John 1:12-13



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi all,

DeepDiscount.com is having a sale - 25% off! Enter SUPERSALE as the promo
code.

As usual, only in stock items, no pre-orders, are discounted.

I'm not sure DeepDiscount.com is the cheapest any more but it's certainly
worth the time to compare pricing with the 25% discount.

Offer ends August 2, 2009.

Enjoy!

Anthony

Please let us know any you have come across that is cheaper...I haven't
compared in awhile.

On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Anthony D. <atd2003@...> wrote:

>
>
> Hi all,
>
> DeepDiscount.com is having a sale - 25% off! Enter SUPERSALE as the promo
> code.
>
> As usual, only in stock items, no pre-orders, are discounted.
>
> I'm not sure DeepDiscount.com is the cheapest any more but it's certainly
> worth the time to compare pricing with the 25% discount.
>
> Offer ends August 2, 2009.
>
> Enjoy!
>
> Anthony
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

...(minus 2 days, actually) of the moon landing.

Or, "Full Circle".



I was just watching "In the Shadow of the Moon" on Discovery Channel Canada.
We're up in the woods a couple hours drive from Vancouver, in a small rented
cabin. There's a small TV here, and although I normally prefer to "get away from
it all" while here, I couldn't resist a few of the shows about the moon landing.

As I stood in this tiny place watching the TV I was taken back 40 years, when I
was 7. Our family was in a very similar cabin to this one, one which my
great-grandfather built, in fact, not far from here. We had no phone or TV
there, but my parents brought up a TV for the occasion of the moon landing. They
and their friends waited for hours for the landing to take place, calling us in
every time it seemed it was about to happen. We kids were less patient ,
trotting in repeatedly, with sighs at being taken away from our pastimes.

Finally it happened.

It was very exciting and the first "I remember where I was when..." moment of my
life.

We might have at first been irritated kids but no doubt this moment stirred my
life-long love of astronomy.

40 years later, I stand once again in another small cabin, in front of another
small TV, and get choked up over the footage and interviews. I think back to the
virtually identical scene, but this time I’m alone at the moment and almost
all the adults of yesteryear long since passed. I wonder at how lucky I've been
to have been here and experienced such marvels, and to have been in such fine
company.

I have a good cry about all that.

I would have liked to have been an astronomer, but alas my skills weren't
sufficient. Happily my other love, music, has brought me great joy and a truly
satisfying career as a music therapist for Alzheimer patients.

Most satisfactorily, I can continue my amateur’s love for the wonderment above
us, which truly IS heaven.

Linda

Well said, Linda. Thank you for sharing that with us.

--- On Mon, 7/20/09, Linda <intothemist1999@...> wrote:


From: Linda <intothemist1999@...>
Subject: [OnlineAlpha] Lines Written Upon the 40th Anniversary...
To: "RECIPIENT LIST UNDISCLOSED" <intothemist1999@...>
Date: Monday, July 20, 2009, 6:23 PM


 




...(minus 2 days, actually) of the moon landing.

Or, "Full Circle".

I was just watching "In the Shadow of the Moon" on Discovery Channel Canada.
We're up in the woods a couple hours drive from Vancouver, in a small rented
cabin. There's a small TV here, and although I normally prefer to "get away from
it all" while here, I couldn't resist a few of the shows about the moon landing.

As I stood in this tiny place watching the TV I was taken back 40 years, when I
was 7. Our family was in a very similar cabin to this one, one which my
great-grandfather built, in fact, not far from here. We had no phone or TV
there, but my parents brought up a TV for the occasion of the moon landing. They
and their friends waited for hours for the landing to take place, calling us in
every time it seemed it was about to happen. We kids were less patient ,
trotting in repeatedly, with sighs at being taken away from our pastimes.

Finally it happened.

It was very exciting and the first "I remember where I was when..." moment of my
life.

We might have at first been irritated kids but no doubt this moment stirred my
life-long love of astronomy.

40 years later, I stand once again in another small cabin, in front of another
small TV, and get choked up over the footage and interviews. I think back to the
virtually identical scene, but this time I'm alone at the moment and almost all
the adults of yesteryear long since passed. I wonder at how lucky I've been to
have been here and experienced such marvels, and to have been in such fine
company.

I have a good cry about all that.

I would have liked to have been an astronomer, but alas my skills weren't
sufficient. Happily my other love, music, has brought me great joy and a truly
satisfying career as a music therapist for Alzheimer patients.

Most satisfactorily, I can continue my amateur's love for the wonderment above
us, which truly IS heaven.

Linda



















[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I have always said that they will one day get around to making a Space: 1999
movie.  If they can do Thunderbirds, UFO (which is in production), and GI JOE,
then they can surely do Space: 1999.



--- In OnlineAlpha@yahoogroups.com, "Michael Turner " <michael-turner@...>
wrote:
>
> Channel 4 news in the UK had a piece about this on their lunchtime
> bulletin on Thursday. They introduced it with a clip from Breakaway and
> said something like '30 years after a moon base predicted in the series
> Space 1999 NASA is taking the first steps towards a moon base.'
>
> I was well impressed - it made my lunchtime!
>
> Michael
>

Hello,

For any of you planning to attend the convention next year, or just thinking
about it, there is a great feature spread on the food, entertainment & culture
of Austin, TX in this months issue of Everyday with Rachel Ray. For those of you
who find her annoying, the nice thing about reading the magazine is you don't
have to listen to her talk. Worth checking out to learn more about the scene
here.

Lindsey

Linda

I too have been indulging in programmes on UK Discovery on the Moon Landings
and beyond but my memories are a little different......I asked my parents
could i say up and watch the landing...BUT fell asleep so it is Apollo 12
landing that i remember watching live. I remember in particular footage of
an image of the moon's surface and drawn on the screen was a white line with
the astronauts voice saying they had spotted three of the spots to
safely land the lunner module legs on but were having problems idenitfying
the spot that the 4th leg!

Kerry
On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 3:38 AM, Patrick Devaney <damien777@...>wrote:

> Well said, Linda. Thank you for sharing that with us.
>
> --- On Mon, 7/20/09, Linda <intothemist1999@...> wrote:
>
>
> From: Linda <intothemist1999@...>hey<intothemist1999@...%3Ehey>
> Subject: [OnlineAlpha] Lines Written Upon the 40th Anniversary...
> To: "RECIPIENT LIST UNDISCLOSED" <intothemist1999@...>
> Date: Monday, July 20, 2009, 6:23 PM
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ...(minus 2 days, actually) of the moon landing.
>
> Or, "Full Circle".
>
> I was just watching "In the Shadow of the Moon" on Discovery Channel
> Canada. We're up in the woods a couple hours drive from Vancouver, in a
> small rented cabin. There's a small TV here, and although I normally prefer
> to "get away from it all" while here, I couldn't resist a few of the shows
> about the moon landing.
>
> As I stood in this tiny place watching the TV I was taken back 40 years,
> when I was 7. Our family was in a very similar cabin to this one, one which
> my great-grandfather built, in fact, not far from here. We had no phone or
> TV there, but my parents brought up a TV for the occasion of the moon
> landing. They and their friends waited for hours for the landing to take
> place, calling us in every time it seemed it was about to happen. We kids
> were less patient , trotting in repeatedly, with sighs at being taken away
> from our pastimes.
>
> Finally it happened.
>
> It was very exciting and the first "I remember where I was when..." moment
> of my life.
>
> We might have at first been irritated kids but no doubt this moment stirred
> my life-long love of astronomy.
>
> 40 years later, I stand once again in another small cabin, in front of
> another small TV, and get choked up over the footage and interviews. I think
> back to the virtually identical scene, but this time I'm alone at the moment
> and almost all the adults of yesteryear long since passed. I wonder at how
> lucky I've been to have been here and experienced such marvels, and to have
> been in such fine company.
>
> I have a good cry about all that.
>
> I would have liked to have been an astronomer, but alas my skills weren't
> sufficient. Happily my other love, music, has brought me great joy and a
> truly satisfying career as a music therapist for Alzheimer patients.
>
> Most satisfactorily, I can continue my amateur's love for the wonderment
> above us, which truly IS heaven.
>
> Linda
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Tis the season for personalized Christmas stamps -
> http://www.zazzle.com/christmasstamps/favorites?238475275044710906Yahoo!
> Groups Links
>
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

That was a beautiful recollection Linda :) Choked me up too.

God Bless,
Arlette & Cocoa in heaven

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name,
he gave the right to become children of God
-- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision
or a husband's will, but born of God.  John 1:12-13



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Prentis posted this on Facebook...looks very cool! Check out the trailer.
Oh, now I know who that actor is...he was in Galaxy Quest! funny.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/moon/

It seems to be the year of the moon movies and shows...S99 just has to be around
the corner!!

God Bless,
Arlette & Cocoa in heaven

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name,
he gave the right to become children of God
-- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision
or a husband's will, but born of God.  John 1:12-13



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Ultra Probe-Disbelief, or cover-up?
====================================
    Okay, here's a question. After Cellini's return from Ultra, and the
blanked-out areas on the Probe ship's black box were found, he was
ridiculed by the space authoririties, as well as medical people and
Commissioner Dixon. But...
    Could they have in fact believed him, and covered up the truth?
    After Cellini seperated the command module, and headed home, once
Ultra was no longer blocking the way, did he try and communicate with
Earth? It would make sense, would it not? And, even if the black box was
blank, what about video records? Even our early space missions took
films. By this time, video would have been the method. In my opinion,
there is NO WAY the folks back home would not have had visible evidence
that there were indeed ships clustered about Ultra. Not just "contacts",
as Dixon insisted. Also, what about the ax? Remember, Cellini hacked at
the Dragon's tentacles, before he got the hatch shut, apparently causing
it to withdraw. If you look at the ax as he dropped it, there appears to
be traces of biological matter on the head. After the command module was
retrieved and examined, surely it would have been found. In light of his
story, it would make no sense for it not to have been examined.
    So, as I look at it, Commissioner Dixon had evidence that Cellinin was
telling the truth: a bizarre alien creature was let loose, and killed the
rest of the crew. Forensic evidence was there, but did the authorities
take note of it, or was something so hideous covered up, in order to "mot
alarm people", and Cellini made the sacrificial lamb?
    Y'all?
____________________________________________________________
Click here to find the perfect picture with our powerful photo search features.
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTEuJA3D5nGdXK5AvDKta4v83IBRdzj\
Ri0NvItZn2k4sZt3puWlnuI/

Slinter@...

What an interesting/fasinating idea. My, first thought was having 3 Tech's
work the consauls with Dixon over looking them all in an area simular in
design to
SHADO HQ Earth in UFO. Equally, in my head, since the sat channels here keep
showing the original film Blue Thunder I am remined of the Delete switch on
the video tape in that film........

However.....here come the BUTS......

It's been a while since i have watched 'Dragon's Domain' It's not my
favorate episode...(*nore is it the best ep of year one in my personal
opineon) *that i am left asking a couple of questions
1/How long did it take Cellini to get home? There is something i remember
about him being alone?
2/Forenisic Evidence what is the rate of decay?There would be a real danger
of cross contamination in such a small area....less Cellini stored it
somewhere
3/Finally most troubling of all is Ultra Probe:Mission Control was on
Moonbase Alpha and John Koernig was in charge.......so if anything was
altered deleted he would either know about it...or have to have things done
in such a way as to keep him ignorant of what was going on?

Kerry

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:25 AM, <slinter@...> wrote:

>
>
>   Ultra Probe-Disbelief, or cover-up?
> ====================================
>   Okay, here's a question. After Cellini's return from Ultra, and the
> blanked-out areas on the Probe ship's black box were found, he was
> ridiculed by the space authoririties, as well as medical people and
> Commissioner Dixon. But...
>   Could they have in fact believed him, and covered up the truth?
>   After Cellini seperated the command module, and headed home, once
> Ultra was no longer blocking the way, did he try and communicate with
> Earth? It would make sense, would it not? And, even if the black box was
> blank, what about video records? Even our early space missions took
> films. By this time, video would have been the method. In my opinion,
> there is NO WAY the folks back home would not have had visible evidence
> that there were indeed ships clustered about Ultra. Not just "contacts",
> as Dixon insisted. Also, what about the ax? Remember, Cellini hacked at
> the Dragon's tentacles, before he got the hatch shut, apparently causing
> it to withdraw. If you look at the ax as he dropped it, there appears to
> be traces of biological matter on the head. After the command module was
> retrieved and examined, surely it would have been found. In light of his
> story, it would make no sense for it not to have been examined.
>   So, as I look at it, Commissioner Dixon had evidence that Cellinin was
> telling the truth: a bizarre alien creature was let loose, and killed the
> rest of the crew. Forensic evidence was there, but did the authorities
> take note of it, or was something so hideous covered up, in order to "mot
> alarm people", and Cellini made the sacrificial lamb?
>   Y'all?
> ____________________________________________________________
> Click here to find the perfect picture with our powerful photo search
> features.
>
>
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTEuJA3D5nGdXK5AvDKta4v83IBRdzj\
Ri0NvItZn2k4sZt3puWlnuI/
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Tis the season for personalized Christmas stamps -
> http://www.zazzle.com/christmasstamps/favorites?238475275044710906Yahoo!
> Groups Links
>
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Are we proposing a Spacee:1999/CSI cross-over here?
 
    "CSI: Alpha"
 
Hmnn.... has potential!
 


--- On Thu, 7/30/09, Kerry Endacotte <kerryendacotte@...> wrote:


From: Kerry Endacotte <kerryendacotte@...>
Subject: Re: [OnlineAlpha] Ultra Probe-Disbelief, or cover-up?
To: OnlineAlpha@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, July 30, 2009, 5:18 AM


 



Slinter@juno. com

What an interesting/ fasinating idea. My, first thought was having 3 Tech's
work the consauls with Dixon over looking them all in an area simular in
design to
SHADO HQ Earth in UFO. Equally, in my head, since the sat channels here keep
showing the original film Blue Thunder I am remined of the Delete switch on
the video tape in that film........

However..... here come the BUTS......

It's been a while since i have watched 'Dragon's Domain' It's not my
favorate episode...(* nore is it the best ep of year one in my personal
opineon) *that i am left asking a couple of questions
1/How long did it take Cellini to get home? There is something i remember
about him being alone?
2/Forenisic Evidence what is the rate of decay?There would be a real danger
of cross contamination in such a small area....less Cellini stored it
somewhere
3/Finally most troubling of all is Ultra Probe:Mission Control was on
Moonbase Alpha and John Koernig was in charge...... .so if anything was
altered deleted he would either know about it...or have to have things done
in such a way as to keep him ignorant of what was going on?

Kerry

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:25 AM, <slinter@juno. com> wrote:

>
>
> Ultra Probe-Disbelief, or cover-up?
> ============ ========= ========= ======
> Okay, here's a question. After Cellini's return from Ultra, and the
> blanked-out areas on the Probe ship's black box were found, he was
> ridiculed by the space authoririties, as well as medical people and
> Commissioner Dixon. But...
> Could they have in fact believed him, and covered up the truth?
> After Cellini seperated the command module, and headed home, once
> Ultra was no longer blocking the way, did he try and communicate with
> Earth? It would make sense, would it not? And, even if the black box was
> blank, what about video records? Even our early space missions took
> films. By this time, video would have been the method. In my opinion,
> there is NO WAY the folks back home would not have had visible evidence
> that there were indeed ships clustered about Ultra. Not just "contacts",
> as Dixon insisted. Also, what about the ax? Remember, Cellini hacked at
> the Dragon's tentacles, before he got the hatch shut, apparently causing
> it to withdraw. If you look at the ax as he dropped it, there appears to
> be traces of biological matter on the head. After the command module was
> retrieved and examined, surely it would have been found. In light of his
> story, it would make no sense for it not to have been examined.
> So, as I look at it, Commissioner Dixon had evidence that Cellinin was
> telling the truth: a bizarre alien creature was let loose, and killed the
> rest of the crew. Forensic evidence was there, but did the authorities
> take note of it, or was something so hideous covered up, in order to "mot
> alarm people", and Cellini made the sacrificial lamb?
> Y'all?
> ____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _
> Click here to find the perfect picture with our powerful photo search
> features.
>
> http://thirdpartyof fers.juno. com/TGL2141/ fc/BLSrjpTEuJA3D 5nGdXK5AvDKta4v8
3IBRdzjRi0NvItZn 2k4sZt3puWlnuI/
>
>
> ------------ --------- --------- ------
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       Contact Opera News   CURRENT ISSUE: FEATURE  August 2009, vol 74, no. 2

       The Star and the Stalker
       Actress Nell Theobald had beauty, charm and talent — and an
all-consuming fascination with soprano Birgit Nilsson. KATHRYN LEIGH SCOTT
explores the tragic story of the mysterious fan referred to in Nilsson's memoirs
as "Miss N."




             Birgit Nilsson
             © Siegfried Lauterwasser 2009

            Nell knew all along that once her money ran out and her life
following Nilsson came to a stop, she would end it all.




                   Nell Theobald, photographed in Munich
                   Courtesy of Jerry Orecchia




                   Nilsson, always an indefatigable traveler
                   Photo by Scandinavian Air Systems






       It was the photograph in The New York Times that caught my eye that Sunday
morning in May 2006. In a startlingly familiar news image I hadn't seen in some
forty years, my old friend and former classmate, Nell Theobald, was wearing a
jaunty Tyrolean hat, her arm draped across a drowsy-looking lion wrapped in
satin ribbon like a Christmas toy.

       My friend's life had been newsworthy since a fateful afternoon in April
1966. Nell, then a twenty-one-year-old model and aspiring actress, had been
hired to pose with Ludwig the lion at a BMW exhibit during the preview of the
International Automobile Show in the New York Coliseum. With a BMW news release
trumpeting "A live lion and a living doll will add to the excitement at a press
preview April 8th," the stage was set for disaster.

       Press around the world carried model-mauled-by-lion stories, illustrated
with photographs of the attack itself and Nell's horrific wounds. Over the next
several years, newspapers reported on Nell's recovery and her drawn-out
personal-injury lawsuit. In 1971, when the court case was finally settled,
Walter Cronkite announced the outcome on his evening broadcast.

       Thirty-five years later, I was stunned to see that news photo again but
shocked to read the accompanying story tying my old friend to Birgit Nilsson,
the great Swedish soprano, who was to be memorialized that week in a
Metropolitan Opera Guild tribute. The singer had written in her autobiography,
La Nilsson (at that time still awaiting release in an English translation), that
Nell was a Marilyn Monroe look-alike who had obsessively stalked her for nine
years. While it may have been Birgit's story to tell, the Times photograph of
the opera star was perhaps a tenth the size of Nell's picture with the lion.
Once again, in her own macabre style, Nell was stealing the limelight.

       In La Nilsson, the Wagner singer, who died on Christmas Day 2005, at age
eighty-seven, devoted almost an entire chapter to Nell Theobald, referring to
her only as "Miss N." According to Nilsson, beginning in 1968, the beautiful
model traveled the world not only to attend the singer's performances but to
pursue her offstage as well. Nilsson claimed her reason for telling the story
was that it "illustrated so well how reality and imagination can melt together,
and the consequences of this for an artist." Nilsson's revelations were not
wholly surprising to me, but there was more I wanted to understand about my
enigmatic friend's short, colorful life and her obsession with the opera star.

       Nell was the prototypical "living doll," with China-blue eyes and rosebud
mouth, that Eleanor Ross, casting director at Grey Advertising, had sought for
the BMW publicity stunt. I first met Nell in the crush of admissions day at the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) in 1963. With chestnut hair to her
waist, sparkling eyes and a creamy complexion, Nell had the Southern-style charm
and grace associated with private schools and a privileged upbringing. I was in
awe when she wore cashmere twin sets and Pappagallo flats to rehearsals; the
best most of the rest of us could manage were Shetland sweaters and Capezios. I
was also impressed when Nell told me that she was a protégée of opera star
Risë Stevens, and that Risë and her husband, Walter Surovy, treated Nell "like
one of the family." By her account, she was friendly with Risë's son, Nicholas
Surovy.

       "Nell had great charm," Diana Stevenson, another AADA classmate,
remembers. "Men swarmed around her. She had a lot of brief affairs — she
called them flings — with people like Johnny Carson, Jack Carter, Sid Luft and
Jack Cassidy. But they were complicated, because they always seemed to involve
whole families — like Sid Luft. She seemed to be part of his entourage,
traveling around with Judy Garland and involved with his kids, but not like a
nanny. Same with Jack Cassidy."

       I also knew Nell from the Playboy Club on Fifty-ninth Street at Fifth
Avenue, where we both worked as bunnies while attending the Academy. I remember
her as effervescent, slightly scattered and always picture-perfect. On the day
she was attacked by the lion, Nell had been scheduled to work but called in sick
so she could accept the modeling assignment. After posing with Ludwig that
afternoon, Nell was supposed to meet with a producer about a Hollywood screen
test.



             Nell, just before the 1966 attack that would change
             her life

       Earlier in the week, Nell, Diana Stevenson and some thirty other young
actresses had been summoned for a casting call at Grey Advertising to pose with
a two-year-old lion named Larry in a BMW exhibit. Nell got the job. In keeping
with the Bavarian theme, Nell was costumed in lederhosen shorts, high heels and
a Tyrolean hat. Larry was dubbed "Ludwig" for the occasion and paid $400. Nell
got $200.

       By mid-morning on April 8, writer Cleveland Amory, who served as director
of the Humane Society, was racing to the Coliseum in response to reports that
handlers, accustomed to dealing only with domestic cats and dogs, were yanking
Larry's tail and using sticks to prod him out of his cage. Amory arrived to find
the 225-pound lion, tethered only by the dog leash Nell was holding,
"disgruntled" and "overwrought" by flash bulbs and jostling photographers. When
a late-arriving CBS news crew asked Nell to kneel next to Larry and put her arm
around him, Nell smilingly obliged. With cameras rolling, Larry turned his head
and sank his teeth into Nell's left thigh, gnawing her flesh to the bone.

       Neal Boenzi, a New York Times photographer, had stopped at the BMW display
because he was "attracted by Miss Theobald, who had a rather nice pair of legs."
Moments later, the lion attacked. "Her screams were terrifying…. She rolled
over ... got up and started to run, screaming all the time, holding her leg
together." It was Leonard Brook, the thirty-year-old handler who'd hired the
lion, who finally managed to pry Larry's jaws open to free Nell's leg. Walter
Winchell reported that Nell lay on the floor in close proximity to the lion for
forty minutes while waiting for an ambulance to take her to Roosevelt Hospital
only one block away. Dr. James MacDonald, a plastic surgeon who operated on
Nell's leg, said, "The whole lower third of that thigh was torn and ripped by
the bite. She also had a puncture wound on the right forearm." The gruesome
attack required four surgeries and kept twenty-one-year-old Nell hospitalized
for forty-seven days.

       William North of Grey Advertising had assured Nell that she could touch
the animal without risk, and Max Hoffman, president of Hoffman Motors, who
approved Nell as the model, had expressed no qualms about her safety. On June
13, 1966, after a brief visit to her family in Atlanta, Nell filed a $3-million
suit in State Supreme Court against six defendants — BMW, the Dawn Animal
Agency, Grey Public Relations, Inc., Hoffman Motors Corporation, the Coliseum
Exhibition Corporation and the animal's trainer, David Racz Sabo. In the
meantime, Grey Advertising sent Nell a Workmen's Comp check for $240, which she
returned on the advice of her attorney, Robert Conason.

       About a month after leaving the hospital, Nell performed in a sketch on
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. She'd done about six shows with Carson
in the two months before her accident. In September, she began rehearsals for a
Broadway show, Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water. She understudied the ingenue
role and played the small part of the Sultan's wife for union scale,
approximately $125 a week. Nell told a reporter that she'd gotten the job
because of her talent, not her notoriety.

       Shortly before the lion attack, Nell moved from her walkup at 1324 Second
Avenue into a new high-rise at 245 East Sixty-third Street, no doubt lured by
the building's name, The Regency Towers. Nell was passionate about the era of
the French Revolution, claiming that as a child, she would play only with Marie
Antoinette dolls — then laughing and saying hers came with a guillotine.

       On Sundays, Eric Hansen, another close Academy friend, would accompany
Nell, wearing a pink picture-hat with feathers, to an Episcopal church in the
neighborhood known as "Smoky Mary's" because of all the incense. Afterward,
they'd walk through Central Park and ride the carousel or go for a boat ride.
"But she'd never go anywhere without full makeup and eyelashes, her hair done,"
Hansen recalls. "She was fun, but there was always something hidden, mysterious
about her. You felt everything was a bit rehearsed, that underneath there was
something missing. She'd have these friends, and you wondered how she knew
them."

       One of "these friends" was Nancy Van Pelt (not her real name), the manager
of Nell's answering service, who had called the hospital every day to cheer her
up and pass along phone messages. "She changed my life," Van Pelt says. "All of
a sudden I'm exposed to glamour, gowns, opera and travel. I pinched myself, not
believing this was my life, that I was doing these things. Nell managed to get
not only the impossible tickets but entrée to receptions and private parties
— and took me with her."

       While the lion attack became Nell's calling card, garnering her the
attention she craved, it also took its toll on her nerves. She couldn't sleep
because of bad dreams, and she began gaining weight from compulsive eating. She
became a patient of psychologist Dr. James A. Spingarm, who treated her for
depression, with medication and hypnosis, for three or four months.

       Before the accident, Nell did commercials for Lustre-Creme and Reynolds
Wrap, making a living with modeling and bit parts. She also did a year's stint
on the soap opera The Doctors. But as time went on, work became scarce, and her
budding acting career virtually dried up.



             Nell Theobald, photographed in Munich during the
             height of her obsession with diva Birgit Nilsson
             Courtesy of Jerry Orecchia

       By 1967, Nell was focused on becoming an opera singer. She took voice
lessons four times a week with James Shomate, who also worked with Risë
Stevens, Anna Moffo and Lily Pons. Nell plunged into language lessons and
studied music for hours at a time, learning Mimì and Musetta in La Bohème and
LiĂą in Turandot. She described herself as a "lirico spinto" but longed
eventually to sing dramatic soprano roles such as Elektra and Salome. In an
eerily prophetic interview, Nell told a reporter, "The greatest dream of my life
is to sing Isolde. Then you can die!"

       Nell had already heard Birgit Nilsson sing Isolde at the Met and become an
ardent fan. She took every opportunity to meet her idol in person, cultivating
men in the opera world — among them OPERA NEWS associate editor Gerald
Fitzgerald—who were only too happy to escort her backstage and to private
receptions.

       In the summer of 1968, Nancy Van Pelt quit her job with the answering
service, drew funds from her Christmas Savings Club and flew to Europe with
Nell. The two friends traveled everywhere to hear Nilsson sing, staying in such
luxury hotels as the Imperial in Vienna and the Vier Jahreszeiten in Munich.
Nancy rented a car, and they drove to Salzburg, Innsbruck and all through the
Bavarian Alps. In Bayreuth, they exchanged their air tickets home to fly to
Stockholm to hear Nilsson sing Salome, then on to Copenhagen, where Nilsson was
to sing in the Tivoli Gardens. At Bayreuth, before a performance of Die
WalkĂĽre, Nell and Nancy met Jerry Orecchia, a handsome thirty-six-year-old
businessman from San Francisco. That encounter sparked a close friendship that,
years later, would result in Jerry's becoming Nell's confidant and the executor
of her estate.

       According to Nilsson, it was also during the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth
in 1968 that she first became aware of Nell's attentions. Every day, a bouquet
of red roses arrived with a note containing lines apparently chosen from a novel
and signed "L. Black." A friend of Nilsson's immediately surmised that her
secret admirer was female and identified the novel — Of Lena Geyer (published
in 1936), by Marcia Davenport, daughter of opera singer Alma Gluck.

       In the novel, Lena Geyer (a character based on two renowned opera singers,
Gluck and Lilli Lehmann) is worshipped by a young, orphaned American heiress,
who uses her wealth to travel the world indulging her passion for opera — and
to pursue her idol. Dressed in black, the young woman always sits in the same
front-row seat, and before every performance she sends the singer flowers with
notes signed "E. deH."

       The singer, behaving as obsessively as the young heiress, uncovers the
identity of Elsie deHaven, invites her for supper and eventually takes her on as
her lifelong companion. Despite Lena Geyer's tangled romantic affairs, uneasy
retirement and an accommodating late-in-life marriage, Elsie serves as the
diva's shadow presence and inseparable confidante until the opera star's death.

       Discovering this context for Miss N's flowers and notes was unsettling for
Nilsson, particularly when she returned to New York in the autumn of 1968 and
the ritual of red roses and notes signed "L. Black" resumed. Nancy Van Pelt
confirms that Nell used FTD to send a dozen red roses to Birgit before her
performances, and that Of Lena Geyer was her inspiration: "But she signed
everything J. Black, not L. Black. Nell often used the name Jennifer Black to
buy airplane tickets and check into hotels."

       Using charm and guile, obsessive fans are adept at attaching themselves to
opera stars, actors and other performing artists. These relationships are
generally innocuous enough, but there have also been tragic consequences when
deranged fans became dangerous stalkers. As one of the original actors in the
cult television soap Dark Shadows, I've dealt with my share of obsessive fans,
including one ingratiatingly obnoxious (and so far benign) admirer who has
dogged me for nearly eighteen years. While I've gained some instinctive
knowledge of what motivates this fanaticism, I am nevertheless shocked to
discover that a friend, someone I knew quite well, should have succumbed to such
obsession.



          Nilsson and tenor Franco Corelli during a personal appearance at E. J.
Korvette in New York, promoting their 1965 recording of Turandot
             Whitestone Photo/OPERA NEWS Archives


       Following Nilsson's first performance of Turandot at the Metropolitan
Opera that season, Nell wangled an invitation from Decca Records executive
Terence McEwen to accompany him backstage. Later in the week, Nilsson received
flowers and a note before a concert in Kansas City. After the performance, Nell
appeared backstage.

       A little over a month later, Nilsson and Nell were aboard the same flight
from New York to Vienna. When Nell sent a letter to Nilsson requesting
assistance getting tickets, Nilsson discovered they were both staying at the
same hotel, the Europa. Nilsson responded cordially.
         Dear Miss Theobald,

         Well, I must say that I was surprised to receive your letter saying that
you are here. The performance tomorrow is so hard sold out that it was
impossible to get anything good (as far as seats are concerned). The ticket is
in a box together with a couple from the Swedish government and the Ambassador
of Sweden... who is such fun and very charming…. We do not have guest lists
here in Europe and it is not permitted for the people to come backstage. I'll
however tell the porter at the stage entrance (Kärtnerstrasse) that he can let
you in.

         Hope you'll have a pleasant stay.

         Best regards
         Birgit Nilsson
       A second letter from Nilsson to Nell on Europa hotel stationery begins,
         Dear Nell .... 1/2 hour or 15 minutes before the performance, a man (his
name is Weigert) will be sitting in the room opposite the porter at the stage
entrance outside Kärtnerstrasse. It is in the same room where I write the
autographs. He has 2 tickets in my name, and if you ask for one ticket he'll
give it to you. If you give him 10 or 15 shillings he'll be very nice. Otherwise
he is sour as a lemon.

         Greetings, Birgit Nilsson
       When Nilsson boarded a flight from Vienna to Stockholm to perform at a
Nobel Prize event, Nell was seated next to her. During the roughly
two-and-a-half-hour flight, Nell confided that she was an actress and model
based in New York, taking time off to travel to opera festivals. She was
passionate about opera, was studying voice herself and aspired to be an opera
singer — and would be staying in the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, where Nilsson
was staying.

       A Swedish newspaper ran a photograph of Nilsson and Nell disembarking,
with Nell carrying one of Nilsson's small cases. Also, a Swedish film crew
happened to be covering Nilsson's flight to Stockholm. Nell appears to be seated
next to Nilsson and is later shown walking with Nilsson's entourage along the
streets of Stockholm. However, cordial relations between the two women soured
when Nell's check for her hotel bill bounced. Nilsson claims the hotel's general
manager confronted her, having been told that she would be picking up the
expenses for "Miss N."

       After Stockholm, Nilsson arrived in Munich to perform the Ring cycle, only
to discover that Nell had preceded her in checking into the renowned five-star
hotel Vier Jahreszeiten. If Nell had harbored any shred of hope that she would
be invited to assume an "Elsie deHaven" role in Birgit Nilsson's life, her
dreams were dashed during a confrontation the following day. Nell told Nilsson
she meant no harm and only wanted to be her friend. Nilsson responded that she
chose her own friends, and Nell didn't qualify to become one of them.

       This incident failed to mark the end to a troubling nuisance; Nell's
pursuit of her idol only escalated. John Wustman, the celebrated pianist who
often accompanied Nilsson on her concert tours, recalls, "Once when we were
flying to Orlando, Florida, Birgit said, 'Oh my God, there's Nell again.' We got
off the plane, and she followed us to the hotel. So I changed our reservations,
and we went to another hotel — and lo and behold, she followed us! After we
went to our rooms, Birgit called me, very upset, and said, 'You won't believe
it, but she's in the room next to mine. Can you do something?'

       "I called Nell's room and said, 'I need to talk to you. Please meet me in
the lobby.' She came down immediately. I told her she just had to stop following
Birgit, that it was upsetting her.

       "Nell said, 'But I adore her. I just want to hear her. I admire her so
much.' I said, 'Then admire her from a distance. Stop following so closely.'"

       One day Nell invited Diana Stevenson to her apartment in the Regency
Towers for what Diana describes as "an odd sort of confessional. She showed me
diamond earrings from Tiffany's and said, 'Guess who these are from?' She said
an admirer had sent the earrings with tickets to the opera. She was sort of coy,
asking me if the admirer might get the wrong idea if she accepted them. Then,
after a lot of cat and mouse, she told me they were from Birgit Nilsson. I was
stunned. Nell gave the impression that she'd become an assistant to Birgit and
that Birgit had escalated things." Nell told the same story to Eric Hansen, too.



          Nell (circled) walking with Nilsson's entourage in Stockholm, December
1968, shown here in a video capture from a news clip for Swedish television


       Meanwhile, Nell's court battle dragged on. In 1971, after a two-week trial
was completed, eleven men and one woman voted ten to two for a $500,000 award.
However, Justice Bernard Nadel ruled the initial award excessive, as it was
"predicated in large measure upon elements of natural pity and sympathy, and
such a verdict is equally as objectionable as one resulting from passion and
prejudice."

       On April 8, 1971, twenty-six-year-old Nell reluctantly accepted damages of
$250,000. That amount was still deemed excessive and further reduced by an
Appellate Court to a $200,000 settlement (equivalent to more than $1 million
today). "Nell didn't get that much money out of the lawsuit," Nancy Van Pelt
says, "but she spent it on furs, jewels and traveling around to see Birgit."

       Time and again, Birgit would spot Nell in the front row at a performance,
or attend a reception and find Nell waiting for her in the receiving line. In
the autumn of 1973, Nell managed to crash a top-drawer New York Philharmonic
reception in Melbourne, Australia. To Nilsson's chagrin, when she and her
husband, Bertil Niklasson, took an impromptu holiday in the Fiji Islands, Nell
popped up on the beach done up in native dress.

       Events took an even darker turn when Nilsson discovered that Nell was
somehow gaining entry to her hotel rooms. Over time, various items, such as
photographs, underwear, a gold bracelet and a diamond ring, went missing.
"Nell's trick would be to wedge a bit of paper in Birgit's hotel door," Nancy
Van Pelt says. "She would know Birgit had left when the paper was on the carpet.
Then she would bribe a chambermaid, tell her she worked for Birgit and had
forgotten something in the room. When she got inside, she would take things and
go through her appointment book. That's how she found out Birgit's travel plans
and managed to get the room next to Birgit and travel on the same flights."

       On a trip to San Francisco, Nancy watched Nell use this ploy to enter
Nilsson's room in the Huntington Hotel. "She pulled me in with her. I just stood
there shaking, watching her walk around as though she belonged there. Before
that I'd taken her relationship with Nilsson for granted. It scared me.

       "The funny thing is," Nancy notes, "when I'd go backstage with Nell after
a performance, she would point out these other women hanging around Birgit."
Nell would laugh and call attention to the way they jockeyed for position,
jealously trying to gain favor with Nilsson. While Nell referred to them as
obsessed fans, she never saw herself as one of them.

       After the incident at the Huntington Hotel, Nancy flew back to New York,
but Nell stayed on in San Francisco. Late one afternoon she invited Jerry
Orecchia and his long-time partner, Nathaniel Lopez, to her room for drinks.

       "When we arrived, Nell told us that Birgit had just left and gave the
impression that Birgit had spent considerable time with her. The room was
overflowing with bouquets of flowers that Nell said had come from Birgit. There
was a glass of beer on the coffee table and a pair of Birgit's shoes under a
chair. She made a point of showing us a picture of Birgit wearing those same
shoes in rehearsal."



             The 1975 photo that Nell sent to friends,
             inscribed "My last Christmas"
             Courtesy of Jerry Orecchia

       At age thirty, Nell was still a beautiful woman, with a stunning figure,
but the changes in her behavior were increasingly clear to her friends. After
parting in San Francisco, Nancy recalls, "I realized Nell was very, very
disturbed." Despite eviction notices stuck to her door month after month, Nell
still entertained in grand style, with the best French wines and champagne, her
table laid with fine china and crystal. On Christmas Eve, 1975, smiling brightly
and dressed in a glamorous red hostess gown, Nell was photographed in front of a
mound of gaily-wrapped packages. On the back of the photograph she sent to
friends, she wrote, "My last Christmas, 1975. My love to you."

       Nancy believes that Nell knew all along that once her money ran out, and
her life following Nilsson came to a stop, she would end it all. Nancy dealt
with several incidents when Nell overdosed on sleeping pills and one occasion
when she slashed her wrists. Then, in June 1976, Nell was taken by ambulance to
Roosevelt Hospital, again for an overdose, and remained there in a coma for two
weeks and spent another two weeks recovering in a psychiatric ward. Her doctors
prescribed Dilantin (anti-seizure medication) and told her not to drink. "But
Nell loved wine and champagne," Nancy says. "I tried to look after her, but she
didn't want me around."

       In February 1977, Nell gave Jerry $2,000 to deposit in his account, with
instructions to use the funds to look after her in the event of a "rainy day"
emergency. That June, Nell flew to Vienna and checked into the Sacher Hotel,
where Nilsson and her husband were staying. After hearing her idol in Tristan
und Isolde, Nell returned to her room and prepared to take her life. In her
suicide note to Nilsson, she wrote, "Seat number twelve in the first row will be
empty tomorrow. Isolde's potion means Tod! Tod uns beiden! (Death! Death to us
both!)"

       Nell left a thick envelope for Nilsson at the reception desk, but it
wasn't until the following morning that Bertil opened it. The envelope contained
Nell's will, which was signed and notarized, and a request that her ashes be
scattered on Nilsson's farm in Svenstad, Sweden. Bertil summoned hotel staff,
who broke into Nell's room. She was found unconscious on the floor and taken to
the hospital.

       Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Jerry Orecchia received a telegram from Nell
telling him to go to Vienna immediately, because she was "in a desperate
crisis." When he checked into Vienna's Sacher Hotel, Jerry was given an envelope
Nell had left for him containing a suicide note, instructions, her will — and
an opera ticket for Nilsson's performance in Elektra. Eventually Jerry was taken
to a sanitarium to see Nell. "She was all dressed up, wearing a pink turban and
matching silk suit. All she told me was that she had a ticket to Elektra and
wasn't allowed to go. 'Please use my ticket,' she said. She was clearly in a
very fragile state."

       That night, at the opera, Jerry "looked to the stage and saw Birgit in the
wings, peeking out from the curtains to see who was in Nell's front row seat."
Nell had left a sealed letter for him to hand deliver to Birgit, but Jerry chose
not to do it.

       Nell's suicide note to Jerry read, in part:
         Dearest Jerry —

         .… That "rainy" day I always intended [has] come, and those funds I
sent you I always intended to be used by you to see to my cremation ... and to
deliver, hand to hand, 1) my ashes 2) my sealed letter and 3) my gold "pinkie"
ring (Tiffany one I always wear) to Madame. At the present, until Wednesday A.M.
at least, she is in Room #447 — you must arrive and speak to her personally,
face to face, before then!... She may refuse — but you must stress that it is
my last wish, and that if she doesn't accept scattering my ashes over her farm
in Sweden, — she may throw my ashes, my ring and my letter — everything,
into the nearest ash can.

         Ironic, isn't it? That it's June again, that it's Vienna again, my city
of dreams, Tristan, my opera of operas.... It was a decision I myself made —
not being able to live without her, and not being able to live with her.... But
it was never meant. I loved her so, I love her still — and will through
eternity.
       While Nell remained hospitalized for several days, recovering from the
overdose, Nilsson went on to an engagement in Savonlinna, Finland. While there,
Nilsson received word that Nell had once again been found unconscious — this
time in Finland — and taken to the hospital.

       On August 16, 1977, a physician with offices on Central Park South, who
had been treating Nell for more than a year, gave her three prescriptions for
pills. He later told investigators that she'd been bitten by a lion years before
and had had extensive surgery that still caused her pain and sleepless nights.
At 4:30 A.M. on August 19, Nell checked into the Skyways Motel across from La
Guardia Airport. The night clerk reported that Nell had been referred from the
Travelers Motel, which had no vacancies. She requested not to be disturbed, not
even for a phone call.

       That night, at 11:30 P.M., the hotel clerk at the Skyways Motel called the
police because there'd been no communication from the occupant in room 229.
Officers from the 114th Precinct broke down the door and found Nell, wearing a
white and pink dressing gown and a red ribbon in her dark brown hair, lying on
the floor. Her handbag contained I.D. and $74.25 in cash. Pill bottles and pills
littered the floor of the room.

       Nell Theobald was pronounced dead by Medical Examiner Dr. Lin in the early
hours of August 20, 1977. An autopsy revealed acute mixed Amobarbital,
Secobarbital and Flurazepam intoxication. Her death was ruled a suicide.

       When Nancy emptied Nell's apartment, she found lingerie and other personal
effects that presumably belonged to Nilsson. There were also hundreds of
letters, purportedly from Nilsson to Nell, all handwritten on Nilsson's
distinctive blue letterhead, stationery that Nell had apparently stolen from
Nilsson's room. Nancy says Nell had learned to forge Nilsson's handwriting and
written letters to herself, even incorporating grammatical errors only a
foreigner would make.

       According to a suicide letter Nancy found in Nell's apartment, she had
requested that her ashes be scattered over Vienna. "I spoke to a woman at the
Austrian Consulate, whose nephew was going to Vienna, and arranged for him to
scatter them," says Nancy. "Looking back, I'm sure Birgit quickly realized that
Nell was trouble, a fantasist who could be a liability, and tried to get rid of
her. The more she pushed Nell away, the more Nell clung."

       When Nell died, there was no funeral and no mention of her passing in any
newspaper. It was left to her idol to resurrect her in her memoir.

       KATHRYN LEIGH SCOTT is an actress whose credits include the long-running
television series Dark Shadows and the motion pictures The Great Gatsby and
Providence. She is also the author of several books, including The Bunny Years
and Dark Shadows Memories.

       Send feedback to OPERA NEWS.



      Copyright © OPERA NEWS 2009






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How does this relate to Space: 1999, its situations and characters?
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   Contact Opera News CURRENT ISSUE: FEATURE August 2009, vol 74, no. 2

   The Star and the Stalker
   Actress Nell Theobald had beauty, charm and talent — and an all-consuming
fascination with soprano Birgit Nilsson. KATHRYN LEIGH SCOTT explores the tragic
story of the mysterious fan referred to in Nilsson's memoirs as "Miss N."




   Birgit Nilsson
   © Siegfried Lauterwasser 2009

   Nell knew all along that once her money ran out and her life following Nilsson
came to a stop, she would end it all.

   Nell Theobald, photographed in Munich
   Courtesy of Jerry Orecchia




   Nilsson, always an indefatigable traveler
   Photo by Scandinavian Air Systems






   It was the photograph in The New York Times that caught my eye that Sunday
morning in May 2006. In a startlingly familiar news image I hadn't seen in some
forty years, my old friend and former classmate, Nell Theobald, was wearing a
jaunty Tyrolean hat, her arm draped across a drowsy-looking lion wrapped in
satin ribbon like a Christmas toy.

   My friend's life had been newsworthy since a fateful afternoon in April 1966.
Nell, then a twenty-one-year-old model and aspiring actress, had been hired to
pose with Ludwig the lion at a BMW exhibit during the preview of the
International Automobile Show in the New York Coliseum. With a BMW news release
trumpeting "A live lion and a living doll will add to the excitement at a press
preview April 8th," the stage was set for disaster.

   Press around the world carried model-mauled-by-lion stories, illustrated with
photographs of the attack itself and Nell's horrific wounds. Over the next
several years, newspapers reported on Nell's recovery and her drawn-out
personal-injury lawsuit. In 1971, when the court case was finally settled,
Walter Cronkite announced the outcome on his evening broadcast.

   Thirty-five years later, I was stunned to see that news photo again but
shocked to read the accompanying story tying my old friend to Birgit Nilsson,
the great Swedish soprano, who was to be memorialized that week in a
Metropolitan Opera Guild tribute. The singer had written in her autobiography,
La Nilsson (at that time still awaiting release in an English translation), that
Nell was a Marilyn Monroe look-alike who had obsessively stalked her for nine
years. While it may have been Birgit's story to tell, the Times photograph of
the opera star was perhaps a tenth the size of Nell's picture with the lion.
Once again, in her own macabre style, Nell was stealing the limelight.

   In La Nilsson, the Wagner singer, who died on Christmas Day 2005, at age
eighty-seven, devoted almost an entire chapter to Nell Theobald, referring to
her only as "Miss N." According to Nilsson, beginning in 1968, the beautiful
model traveled the world not only to attend the singer's performances but to
pursue her offstage as well. Nilsson claimed her reason for telling the story
was that it "illustrated so well how reality and imagination can melt together,
and the consequences of this for an artist." Nilsson's revelations were not
wholly surprising to me, but there was more I wanted to understand about my
enigmatic friend's short, colorful life and her obsession with the opera star.

   Nell was the prototypical "living doll," with China-blue eyes and rosebud
mouth, that Eleanor Ross, casting director at Grey Advertising, had sought for
the BMW publicity stunt. I first met Nell in the crush of admissions day at the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) in 1963. With chestnut hair to her
waist, sparkling eyes and a creamy complexion, Nell had the Southern-style charm
and grace associated with private schools and a privileged upbringing. I was in
awe when she wore cashmere twin sets and Pappagallo flats to rehearsals; the
best most of the rest of us could manage were Shetland sweaters and Capezios. I
was also impressed when Nell told me that she was a protégée of opera star
Risë Stevens, and that Risë and her husband, Walter Surovy, treated Nell "like
one of the family." By her account, she was friendly with Risë's son, Nicholas
Surovy.

   "Nell had great charm," Diana Stevenson, another AADA classmate, remembers.
"Men swarmed around her. She had a lot of brief affairs — she called them
flings — with people like Johnny Carson, Jack Carter, Sid Luft and Jack
Cassidy. But they were complicated, because they always seemed to involve whole
families — like Sid Luft. She seemed to be part of his entourage, traveling
around with Judy Garland and involved with his kids, but not like a nanny. Same
with Jack Cassidy."

   I also knew Nell from the Playboy Club on Fifty-ninth Street at Fifth Avenue,
where we both worked as bunnies while attending the Academy. I remember her as
effervescent, slightly scattered and always picture-perfect. On the day she was
attacked by the lion, Nell had been scheduled to work but called in sick so she
could accept the modeling assignment. After posing with Ludwig that afternoon,
Nell was supposed to meet with a producer about a Hollywood screen test.

   Nell, just before the 1966 attack that would change
   her life

   Earlier in the week, Nell, Diana Stevenson and some thirty other young
actresses had been summoned for a casting call at Grey Advertising to pose with
a two-year-old lion named Larry in a BMW exhibit. Nell got the job. In keeping
with the Bavarian theme, Nell was costumed in lederhosen shorts, high heels and
a Tyrolean hat. Larry was dubbed "Ludwig" for the occasion and paid $400. Nell
got $200.

   By mid-morning on April 8, writer Cleveland Amory, who served as director of
the Humane Society, was racing to the Coliseum in response to reports that
handlers, accustomed to dealing only with domestic cats and dogs, were yanking
Larry's tail and using sticks to prod him out of his cage. Amory arrived to find
the 225-pound lion, tethered only by the dog leash Nell was holding,
"disgruntled" and "overwrought" by flash bulbs and jostling photographers. When
a late-arriving CBS news crew asked Nell to kneel next to Larry and put her arm
around him, Nell smilingly obliged. With cameras rolling, Larry turned his head
and sank his teeth into Nell's left thigh, gnawing her flesh to the bone.

   Neal Boenzi, a New York Times photographer, had stopped at the BMW display
because he was "attracted by Miss Theobald, who had a rather nice pair of legs."
Moments later, the lion attacked. "Her screams were terrifying…. She rolled
over ... got up and started to run, screaming all the time, holding her leg
together." It was Leonard Brook, the thirty-year-old handler who'd hired the
lion, who finally managed to pry Larry's jaws open to free Nell's leg. Walter
Winchell reported that Nell lay on the floor in close proximity to the lion for
forty minutes while waiting for an ambulance to take her to Roosevelt Hospital
only one block away. Dr. James MacDonald, a plastic surgeon who operated on
Nell's leg, said, "The whole lower third of that thigh was torn and ripped by
the bite. She also had a puncture wound on the right forearm." The gruesome
attack required four surgeries and kept twenty-one-year-old Nell hospitalized
for forty-seven days.

   William North of Grey Advertising had assured Nell that she could touch the
animal without risk, and Max Hoffman, president of Hoffman Motors, who approved
Nell as the model, had expressed no qualms about her safety. On June 13, 1966,
after a brief visit to her family in Atlanta, Nell filed a $3-million suit in
State Supreme Court against six defendants — BMW, the Dawn Animal Agency, Grey
Public Relations, Inc., Hoffman Motors Corporation, the Coliseum Exhibition
Corporation and the animal's trainer, David Racz Sabo. In the meantime, Grey
Advertising sent Nell a Workmen's Comp check for $240, which she returned on the
advice of her attorney, Robert Conason.

   About a month after leaving the hospital, Nell performed in a sketch on The
Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. She'd done about six shows with Carson in
the two months before her accident. In September, she began rehearsals for a
Broadway show, Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water. She understudied the ingenue
role and played the small part of the Sultan's wife for union scale,
approximately $125 a week. Nell told a reporter that she'd gotten the job
because of her talent, not her notoriety.

   Shortly before the lion attack, Nell moved from her walkup at 1324 Second
Avenue into a new high-rise at 245 East Sixty-third Street, no doubt lured by
the building's name, The Regency Towers. Nell was passionate about the era of
the French Revolution, claiming that as a child, she would play only with Marie
Antoinette dolls — then laughing and saying hers came with a guillotine.

   On Sundays, Eric Hansen, another close Academy friend, would accompany Nell,
wearing a pink picture-hat with feathers, to an Episcopal church in the
neighborhood known as "Smoky Mary's" because of all the incense. Afterward,
they'd walk through Central Park and ride the carousel or go for a boat ride.
"But she'd never go anywhere without full makeup and eyelashes, her hair done,"
Hansen recalls. "She was fun, but there was always something hidden, mysterious
about her. You felt everything was a bit rehearsed, that underneath there was
something missing. She'd have these friends, and you wondered how she knew
them."

   One of "these friends" was Nancy Van Pelt (not her real name), the manager of
Nell's answering service, who had called the hospital every day to cheer her up
and pass along phone messages. "She changed my life," Van Pelt says. "All of a
sudden I'm exposed to glamour, gowns, opera and travel. I pinched myself, not
believing this was my life, that I was doing these things. Nell managed to get
not only the impossible tickets but entrée to receptions and private parties
— and took me with her."

   While the lion attack became Nell's calling card, garnering her the attention
she craved, it also took its toll on her nerves. She couldn't sleep because of
bad dreams, and she began gaining weight from compulsive eating. She became a
patient of psychologist Dr. James A. Spingarm, who treated her for depression,
with medication and hypnosis, for three or four months.

   Before the accident, Nell did commercials for Lustre-Creme and Reynolds Wrap,
making a living with modeling and bit parts. She also did a year's stint on the
soap opera The Doctors. But as time went on, work became scarce, and her budding
acting career virtually dried up.

   Nell Theobald, photographed in Munich during the
   height of her obsession with diva Birgit Nilsson
   Courtesy of Jerry Orecchia

   By 1967, Nell was focused on becoming an opera singer. She took voice lessons
four times a week with James Shomate, who also worked with Risë Stevens, Anna
Moffo and Lily Pons. Nell plunged into language lessons and studied music for
hours at a time, learning Mimì and Musetta in La Bohème and Liù in Turandot.
She described herself as a "lirico spinto" but longed eventually to sing
dramatic soprano roles such as Elektra and Salome. In an eerily prophetic
interview, Nell told a reporter, "The greatest dream of my life is to sing
Isolde. Then you can die!"

   Nell had already heard Birgit Nilsson sing Isolde at the Met and become an
ardent fan. She took every opportunity to meet her idol in person, cultivating
men in the opera world — among them OPERA NEWS associate editor Gerald
Fitzgerald—who were only too happy to escort her backstage and to private
receptions.

   In the summer of 1968, Nancy Van Pelt quit her job with the answering service,
drew funds from her Christmas Savings Club and flew to Europe with Nell. The two
friends traveled everywhere to hear Nilsson sing, staying in such luxury hotels
as the Imperial in Vienna and the Vier Jahreszeiten in Munich. Nancy rented a
car, and they drove to Salzburg, Innsbruck and all through the Bavarian Alps. In
Bayreuth, they exchanged their air tickets home to fly to Stockholm to hear
Nilsson sing Salome, then on to Copenhagen, where Nilsson was to sing in the
Tivoli Gardens. At Bayreuth, before a performance of Die WalkĂĽre, Nell and
Nancy met Jerry Orecchia, a handsome thirty-six-year-old businessman from San
Francisco. That encounter sparked a close friendship that, years later, would
result in Jerry's becoming Nell's confidant and the executor of her estate.

   According to Nilsson, it was also during the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth in
1968 that she first became aware of Nell's attentions. Every day, a bouquet of
red roses arrived with a note containing lines apparently chosen from a novel
and signed "L. Black." A friend of Nilsson's immediately surmised that her
secret admirer was female and identified the novel — Of Lena Geyer (published
in 1936), by Marcia Davenport, daughter of opera singer Alma Gluck.

   In the novel, Lena Geyer (a character based on two renowned opera singers,
Gluck and Lilli Lehmann) is worshipped by a young, orphaned American heiress,
who uses her wealth to travel the world indulging her passion for opera — and
to pursue her idol. Dressed in black, the young woman always sits in the same
front-row seat, and before every performance she sends the singer flowers with
notes signed "E. deH."

   The singer, behaving as obsessively as the young heiress, uncovers the
identity of Elsie deHaven, invites her for supper and eventually takes her on as
her lifelong companion. Despite Lena Geyer's tangled romantic affairs, uneasy
retirement and an accommodating late-in-life marriage, Elsie serves as the
diva's shadow presence and inseparable confidante until the opera star's death.

   Discovering this context for Miss N's flowers and notes was unsettling for
Nilsson, particularly when she returned to New York in the autumn of 1968 and
the ritual of red roses and notes signed "L. Black" resumed. Nancy Van Pelt
confirms that Nell used FTD to send a dozen red roses to Birgit before her
performances, and that Of Lena Geyer was her inspiration: "But she signed
everything J. Black, not L. Black. Nell often used the name Jennifer Black to
buy airplane tickets and check into hotels."

   Using charm and guile, obsessive fans are adept at attaching themselves to
opera stars, actors and other performing artists. These relationships are
generally innocuous enough, but there have also been tragic consequences when
deranged fans became dangerous stalkers. As one of the original actors in the
cult television soap Dark Shadows, I've dealt with my share of obsessive fans,
including one ingratiatingly obnoxious (and so far benign) admirer who has
dogged me for nearly eighteen years. While I've gained some instinctive
knowledge of what motivates this fanaticism, I am nevertheless shocked to
discover that a friend, someone I knew quite well, should have succumbed to such
obsession.

   Nilsson and tenor Franco Corelli during a personal appearance at E. J.
Korvette in New York, promoting their 1965 recording of Turandot
   Whitestone Photo/OPERA NEWS Archives

   Following Nilsson's first performance of Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera
that season, Nell wangled an invitation from Decca Records executive Terence
McEwen to accompany him backstage. Later in the week, Nilsson received flowers
and a note before a concert in Kansas City. After the performance, Nell appeared
backstage.

   A little over a month later, Nilsson and Nell were aboard the same flight from
New York to Vienna. When Nell sent a letter to Nilsson requesting assistance
getting tickets, Nilsson discovered they were both staying at the same hotel,
the Europa. Nilsson responded cordially.
   Dear Miss Theobald,

   Well, I must say that I was surprised to receive your letter saying that you
are here. The performance tomorrow is so hard sold out that it was impossible to
get anything good (as far as seats are concerned). The ticket is in a box
together with a couple from the Swedish government and the Ambassador of
Sweden... who is such fun and very charming…. We do not have guest lists here
in Europe and it is not permitted for the people to come backstage. I'll however
tell the porter at the stage entrance (Kärtnerstrasse) that he can let you in.

   Hope you'll have a pleasant stay.

   Best regards
   Birgit Nilsson
   A second letter from Nilsson to Nell on Europa hotel stationery begins,
   Dear Nell .... 1/2 hour or 15 minutes before the performance, a man (his name
is Weigert) will be sitting in the room opposite the porter at the stage
entrance outside Kärtnerstrasse. It is in the same room where I write the
autographs. He has 2 tickets in my name, and if you ask for one ticket he'll
give it to you. If you give him 10 or 15 shillings he'll be very nice. Otherwise
he is sour as a lemon.

   Greetings, Birgit Nilsson
   When Nilsson boarded a flight from Vienna to Stockholm to perform at a Nobel
Prize event, Nell was seated next to her. During the roughly two-and-a-half-hour
flight, Nell confided that she was an actress and model based in New York,
taking time off to travel to opera festivals. She was passionate about opera,
was studying voice herself and aspired to be an opera singer — and would be
staying in the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, where Nilsson was staying.

   A Swedish newspaper ran a photograph of Nilsson and Nell disembarking, with
Nell carrying one of Nilsson's small cases. Also, a Swedish film crew happened
to be covering Nilsson's flight to Stockholm. Nell appears to be seated next to
Nilsson and is later shown walking with Nilsson's entourage along the streets of
Stockholm. However, cordial relations between the two women soured when Nell's
check for her hotel bill bounced. Nilsson claims the hotel's general manager
confronted her, having been told that she would be picking up the expenses for
"Miss N."

   After Stockholm, Nilsson arrived in Munich to perform the Ring cycle, only to
discover that Nell had preceded her in checking into the renowned five-star
hotel Vier Jahreszeiten. If Nell had harbored any shred of hope that she would
be invited to assume an "Elsie deHaven" role in Birgit Nilsson's life, her
dreams were dashed during a confrontation the following day. Nell told Nilsson
she meant no harm and only wanted to be her friend. Nilsson responded that she
chose her own friends, and Nell didn't qualify to become one of them.

   This incident failed to mark the end to a troubling nuisance; Nell's pursuit
of her idol only escalated. John Wustman, the celebrated pianist who often
accompanied Nilsson on her concert tours, recalls, "Once when we were flying to
Orlando, Florida, Birgit said, 'Oh my God, there's Nell again.' We got off the
plane, and she followed us to the hotel. So I changed our reservations, and we
went to another hotel — and lo and behold, she followed us! After we went to
our rooms, Birgit called me, very upset, and said, 'You won't believe it, but
she's in the room next to mine. Can you do something?'

   "I called Nell's room and said, 'I need to talk to you. Please meet me in the
lobby.' She came down immediately. I told her she just had to stop following
Birgit, that it was upsetting her.

   "Nell said, 'But I adore her. I just want to hear her. I admire her so much.'
I said, 'Then admire her from a distance. Stop following so closely.'"

   One day Nell invited Diana Stevenson to her apartment in the Regency Towers
for what Diana describes as "an odd sort of confessional. She showed me diamond
earrings from Tiffany's and said, 'Guess who these are from?' She said an
admirer had sent the earrings with tickets to the opera. She was sort of coy,
asking me if the admirer might get the wrong idea if she accepted them. Then,
after a lot of cat and mouse, she told me they were from Birgit Nilsson. I was
stunned. Nell gave the impression that she'd become an assistant to Birgit and
that Birgit had escalated things." Nell told the same story to Eric Hansen, too.

   Nell (circled) walking with Nilsson's entourage in Stockholm, December 1968,
shown here in a video capture from a news clip for Swedish television

   Meanwhile, Nell's court battle dragged on. In 1971, after a two-week trial was
completed, eleven men and one woman voted ten to two for a $500,000 award.
However, Justice Bernard Nadel ruled the initial award excessive, as it was
"predicated in large measure upon elements of natural pity and sympathy, and
such a verdict is equally as objectionable as one resulting from passion and
prejudice."

   On April 8, 1971, twenty-six-year-old Nell reluctantly accepted damages of
$250,000. That amount was still deemed excessive and further reduced by an
Appellate Court to a $200,000 settlement (equivalent to more than $1 million
today). "Nell didn't get that much money out of the lawsuit," Nancy Van Pelt
says, "but she spent it on furs, jewels and traveling around to see Birgit."

   Time and again, Birgit would spot Nell in the front row at a performance, or
attend a reception and find Nell waiting for her in the receiving line. In the
autumn of 1973, Nell managed to crash a top-drawer New York Philharmonic
reception in Melbourne, Australia. To Nilsson's chagrin, when she and her
husband, Bertil Niklasson, took an impromptu holiday in the Fiji Islands, Nell
popped up on the beach done up in native dress.

   Events took an even darker turn when Nilsson discovered that Nell was somehow
gaining entry to her hotel rooms. Over time, various items, such as photographs,
underwear, a gold bracelet and a diamond ring, went missing. "Nell's trick would
be to wedge a bit of paper in Birgit's hotel door," Nancy Van Pelt says. "She
would know Birgit had left when the paper was on the carpet. Then she would
bribe a chambermaid, tell her she worked for Birgit and had forgotten something
in the room. When she got inside, she would take things and go through her
appointment book. That's how she found out Birgit's travel plans and managed to
get the room next to Birgit and travel on the same flights."

   On a trip to San Francisco, Nancy watched Nell use this ploy to enter
Nilsson's room in the Huntington Hotel. "She pulled me in with her. I just stood
there shaking, watching her walk around as though she belonged there. Before
that I'd taken her relationship with Nilsson for granted. It scared me.

   "The funny thing is," Nancy notes, "when I'd go backstage with Nell after a
performance, she would point out these other women hanging around Birgit." Nell
would laugh and call attention to the way they jockeyed for position, jealously
trying to gain favor with Nilsson. While Nell referred to them as obsessed fans,
she never saw herself as one of them.

   After the incident at the Huntington Hotel, Nancy flew back to New York, but
Nell stayed on in San Francisco. Late one afternoon she invited Jerry Orecchia
and his long-time partner, Nathaniel Lopez, to her room for drinks.

   "When we arrived, Nell told us that Birgit had just left and gave the
impression that Birgit had spent considerable time with her. The room was
overflowing with bouquets of flowers that Nell said had come from Birgit. There
was a glass of beer on the coffee table and a pair of Birgit's shoes under a
chair. She made a point of showing us a picture of Birgit wearing those same
shoes in rehearsal."

   The 1975 photo that Nell sent to friends,
   inscribed "My last Christmas"
   Courtesy of Jerry Orecchia

   At age thirty, Nell was still a beautiful woman, with a stunning figure, but
the changes in her behavior were increasingly clear to her friends. After
parting in San Francisco, Nancy recalls, "I realized Nell was very, very
disturbed." Despite eviction notices stuck to her door month after month, Nell
still entertained in grand style, with the best French wines and champagne, her
table laid with fine china and crystal. On Christmas Eve, 1975, smiling brightly
and dressed in a glamorous red hostess gown, Nell was photographed in front of a
mound of gaily-wrapped packages. On the back of the photograph she sent to
friends, she wrote, "My last Christmas, 1975. My love to you."

   Nancy believes that Nell knew all along that once her money ran out, and her
life following Nilsson came to a stop, she would end it all. Nancy dealt with
several incidents when Nell overdosed on sleeping pills and one occasion when
she slashed her wrists. Then, in June 1976, Nell was taken by ambulance to
Roosevelt Hospital, again for an overdose, and remained there in a coma for two
weeks and spent another two weeks recovering in a psychiatric ward. Her doctors
prescribed Dilantin (anti-seizure medication) and told her not to drink. "But
Nell loved wine and champagne," Nancy says. "I tried to look after her, but she
didn't want me around."

   In February 1977, Nell gave Jerry $2,000 to deposit in his account, with
instructions to use the funds to look after her in the event of a "rainy day"
emergency. That June, Nell flew to Vienna and checked into the Sacher Hotel,
where Nilsson and her husband were staying. After hearing her idol in Tristan
und Isolde, Nell returned to her room and prepared to take her life. In her
suicide note to Nilsson, she wrote, "Seat number twelve in the first row will be
empty tomorrow. Isolde's potion means Tod! Tod uns beiden! (Death! Death to us
both!)"

   Nell left a thick envelope for Nilsson at the reception desk, but it wasn't
until the following morning that Bertil opened it. The envelope contained Nell's
will, which was signed and notarized, and a request that her ashes be scattered
on Nilsson's farm in Svenstad, Sweden. Bertil summoned hotel staff, who broke
into Nell's room. She was found unconscious on the floor and taken to the
hospital.

   Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Jerry Orecchia received a telegram from Nell
telling him to go to Vienna immediately, because she was "in a desperate
crisis." When he checked into Vienna's Sacher Hotel, Jerry was given an envelope
Nell had left for him containing a suicide note, instructions, her will — and
an opera ticket for Nilsson's performance in Elektra. Eventually Jerry was taken
to a sanitarium to see Nell. "She was all dressed up, wearing a pink turban and
matching silk suit. All she told me was that she had a ticket to Elektra and
wasn't allowed to go. 'Please use my ticket,' she said. She was clearly in a
very fragile state."

   That night, at the opera, Jerry "looked to the stage and saw Birgit in the
wings, peeking out from the curtains to see who was in Nell's front row seat."
Nell had left a sealed letter for him to hand deliver to Birgit, but Jerry chose
not to do it.

   Nell's suicide note to Jerry read, in part:
   Dearest Jerry —

   .… That "rainy" day I always intended [has] come, and those funds I sent you
I always intended to be used by you to see to my cremation ... and to deliver,
hand to hand, 1) my ashes 2) my sealed letter and 3) my gold "pinkie" ring
(Tiffany one I always wear) to Madame. At the present, until Wednesday A.M. at
least, she is in Room #447 — you must arrive and speak to her personally, face
to face, before then!... She may refuse — but you must stress that it is my
last wish, and that if she doesn't accept scattering my ashes over her farm in
Sweden, — she may throw my ashes, my ring and my letter — everything, into
the nearest ash can.

   Ironic, isn't it? That it's June again, that it's Vienna again, my city of
dreams, Tristan, my opera of operas.... It was a decision I myself made — not
being able to live without her, and not being able to live with her.... But it
was never meant. I loved her so, I love her still — and will through eternity.
   While Nell remained hospitalized for several days, recovering from the
overdose, Nilsson went on to an engagement in Savonlinna, Finland. While there,
Nilsson received word that Nell had once again been found unconscious — this
time in Finland — and taken to the hospital.

   On August 16, 1977, a physician with offices on Central Park South, who had
been treating Nell for more than a year, gave her three prescriptions for pills.
He later told investigators that she'd been bitten by a lion years before and
had had extensive surgery that still caused her pain and sleepless nights. At
4:30 A.M. on August 19, Nell checked into the Skyways Motel across from La
Guardia Airport. The night clerk reported that Nell had been referred from the
Travelers Motel, which had no vacancies. She requested not to be disturbed, not
even for a phone call.

   That night, at 11:30 P.M., the hotel clerk at the Skyways Motel called the
police because there'd been no communication from the occupant in room 229.
Officers from the 114th Precinct broke down the door and found Nell, wearing a
white and pink dressing gown and a red ribbon in her dark brown hair, lying on
the floor. Her handbag contained I.D. and $74.25 in cash. Pill bottles and pills
littered the floor of the room.

   Nell Theobald was pronounced dead by Medical Examiner Dr. Lin in the early
hours of August 20, 1977. An autopsy revealed acute mixed Amobarbital,
Secobarbital and Flurazepam intoxication. Her death was ruled a suicide.

   When Nancy emptied Nell's apartment, she found lingerie and other personal
effects that presumably belonged to Nilsson. There were also hundreds of
letters, purportedly from Nilsson to Nell, all handwritten on Nilsson's
distinctive blue letterhead, stationery that Nell had apparently stolen from
Nilsson's room. Nancy says Nell had learned to forge Nilsson's handwriting and
written letters to herself, even incorporating grammatical errors only a
foreigner would make.

   According to a suicide letter Nancy found in Nell's apartment, she had
requested that her ashes be scattered over Vienna. "I spoke to a woman at the
Austrian Consulate, whose nephew was going to Vienna, and arranged for him to
scatter them," says Nancy. "Looking back, I'm sure Birgit quickly realized that
Nell was trouble, a fantasist who could be a liability, and tried to get rid of
her. The more she pushed Nell away, the more Nell clung."

   When Nell died, there was no funeral and no mention of her passing in any
newspaper. It was left to her idol to resurrect her in her memoir.

   KATHRYN LEIGH SCOTT is an actress whose credits include the long-running
television series Dark Shadows and the motion pictures The Great Gatsby and
Providence. She is also the author of several books, including The Bunny Years
and Dark Shadows Memories.

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   [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sounds like it...
Jonathan Michael Reiter
jmr
   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Patrick Devaney
   To: OnlineAlpha@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2009 6:16 AM
   Subject: Re: [OnlineAlpha] Ultra Probe-Disbelief, or cover-up?


     Are we proposing a Spacee:1999/CSI cross-over here?

       "CSI: Alpha"

   Hmnn.... has potential!


   --- On Thu, 7/30/09, Kerry Endacotte <kerryendacotte@...> wrote:

   From: Kerry Endacotte <kerryendacotte@...>
   Subject: Re: [OnlineAlpha] Ultra Probe-Disbelief, or cover-up?
   To: OnlineAlpha@yahoogroups.com
   Date: Thursday, July 30, 2009, 5:18 AM



   Slinter@juno. com

   What an interesting/ fasinating idea. My, first thought was having 3 Tech's
   work the consauls with Dixon over looking them all in an area simular in
   design to
   SHADO HQ Earth in UFO. Equally, in my head, since the sat channels here keep
   showing the original film Blue Thunder I am remined of the Delete switch on
   the video tape in that film........

   However..... here come the BUTS......

   It's been a while since i have watched 'Dragon's Domain' It's not my
   favorate episode...(* nore is it the best ep of year one in my personal
   opineon) *that i am left asking a couple of questions
   1/How long did it take Cellini to get home? There is something i remember
   about him being alone?
   2/Forenisic Evidence what is the rate of decay?There would be a real danger
   of cross contamination in such a small area....less Cellini stored it
   somewhere
   3/Finally most troubling of all is Ultra Probe:Mission Control was on
   Moonbase Alpha and John Koernig was in charge...... .so if anything was
   altered deleted he would either know about it...or have to have things done
   in such a way as to keep him ignorant of what was going on?

   Kerry

   On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:25 AM, <slinter@juno. com> wrote:

   >
   >
   > Ultra Probe-Disbelief, or cover-up?
   > ============ ========= ========= ======
   > Okay, here's a question. After Cellini's return from Ultra, and the
   > blanked-out areas on the Probe ship's black box were found, he was
   > ridiculed by the space authoririties, as well as medical people and
   > Commissioner Dixon. But...
   > Could they have in fact believed him, and covered up the truth?
   > After Cellini seperated the command module, and headed home, once
   > Ultra was no longer blocking the way, did he try and communicate with
   > Earth? It would make sense, would it not? And, even if the black box was
   > blank, what about video records? Even our early space missions took
   > films. By this time, video would have been the method. In my opinion,
   > there is NO WAY the folks back home would not have had visible evidence
   > that there were indeed ships clustered about Ultra. Not just "contacts",
   > as Dixon insisted. Also, what about the ax? Remember, Cellini hacked at
   > the Dragon's tentacles, before he got the hatch shut, apparently causing
   > it to withdraw. If you look at the ax as he dropped it, there appears to
   > be traces of biological matter on the head. After the command module was
   > retrieved and examined, surely it would have been found. In light of his
   > story, it would make no sense for it not to have been examined.
   > So, as I look at it, Commissioner Dixon had evidence that Cellinin was
   > telling the truth: a bizarre alien creature was let loose, and killed the
   > rest of the crew. Forensic evidence was there, but did the authorities
   > take note of it, or was something so hideous covered up, in order to "mot
   > alarm people", and Cellini made the sacrificial lamb?
   > Y'all?
   > ____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _
   > Click here to find the perfect picture with our powerful photo search
   > features.
   >
   > http://thirdpartyof fers.juno. com/TGL2141/ fc/BLSrjpTEuJA3D
5nGdXK5AvDKta4v8 3IBRdzjRi0NvItZn 2k4sZt3puWlnuI/
   >
   >
   > ------------ --------- --------- ------
   >
   > Tis the season for personalized Christmas stamps -
   > http://www.zazzle. com/christmassta mps/favorites? 2384752750447109 06Yahoo!
   > Groups Links
   >
   >
   >
   >

   [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

   [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

At 7/29/09 7:25 PM -0700, slinter@... wrote:
>    So, as I look at it, Commissioner Dixon had evidence that Cellinin was
>telling the truth: a bizarre alien creature was let loose, and killed the
>rest of the crew. Forensic evidence was there, but did the authorities
>take note of it, or was something so hideous covered up, in order to "mot
>alarm people", and Cellini made the sacrificial lamb?
>    Y'all?

Problem with all this lies in the time period(s), the time it was
made in 1973-74 versus the depicted time of post-1999. Think back to
the cop shows of that time period, forensics were non-existent for
the most part and I don't believe that reality was that different
from TV of the time period.

So, from the 1973-74 perspective there probably wasn't anything
significant to attract their attention to the axe. The creature
didn't bleed as we know it. Even if there was something noticeable
they probably would have just discounted it as being something that
Cellini got on it in his delirium. Actually, I'm kind of surprised
that he wasn't charged and tried for the death of his crewmates.

--
Fly Like An Eagle,

Allen
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Space: 1999 Online"                             "Online Alpha Archive"
<http://www.space1999.net/~online/> <http://www.space1999.net/~archive/>
------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's amazing what boring train journey can do that i was left wondering
maybe Koenig knew what was going on and play'd it close to his chest
believing an impassioned speach to Dixon would keep the deep space missions
going......instead the oppersite happened

kerry



On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 1:16 PM, Patrick Devaney <damien777@...> Are
we proposing a Spacee:1999/CSI cross-over here?

     "CSI: Alpha"

Hmnn.... has potential!



--- On Thu, 7/30/09, Kerry Endacotte <kerryendacotte@...> wrote:


From: Kerry Endacotte <kerryendacotte@...>
Subject: Re: [OnlineAlpha] Ultra Probe-Disbelief, or cover-up?
To: OnlineAlpha@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, July 30, 2009, 5:18 AM

>
>
>
>
>
>
> Slinter@juno. com
>
> What an interesting/ fasinating idea. My, first thought was having 3 Tech's
> work the consauls with Dixon over looking them all in an area simular in
> design to
> SHADO HQ Earth in UFO. Equally, in my head, since the sat channels here
> keep
> showing the original film Blue Thunder I am remined of the Delete switch on
> the video tape in that film........
>
> However..... here come the BUTS......
>
> It's been a while since i have watched 'Dragon's Domain' It's not my
> favorate episode...(* nore is it the best ep of year one in my personal
> opineon) *that i am left asking a couple of questions
> 1/How long did it take Cellini to get home? There is something i remember
> about him being alone?
> 2/Forenisic Evidence what is the rate of decay?There would be a real danger
> of cross contamination in such a small area....less Cellini stored it
> somewhere
> 3/Finally most troubling of all is Ultra Probe:Mission Control was on
> Moonbase Alpha and John Koernig was in charge...... .so if anything was
> altered deleted he would either know about it...or have to have things done
> in such a way as to keep him ignorant of what was going on?
>
> Kerry
>
> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:25 AM, <slinter@juno. com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Ultra Probe-Disbelief, or cover-up?
> > ============ ========= ========= ======
> > Okay, here's a question. After Cellini's return from Ultra, and the
> > blanked-out areas on the Probe ship's black box were found, he was
> > ridiculed by the space authoririties, as well as medical people and
> > Commissioner Dixon. But...
> > Could they have in fact believed him, and covered up the truth?
> > After Cellini seperated the command module, and headed home, once
> > Ultra was no longer blocking the way, did he try and communicate with
> > Earth? It would make sense, would it not? And, even if the black box was
> > blank, what about video records? Even our early space missions took
> > films. By this time, video would have been the method. In my opinion,
> > there is NO WAY the folks back home would not have had visible evidence
> > that there were indeed ships clustered about Ultra. Not just "contacts",
> > as Dixon insisted. Also, what about the ax? Remember, Cellini hacked at
> > the Dragon's tentacles, before he got the hatch shut, apparently causing
> > it to withdraw. If you look at the ax as he dropped it, there appears to
> > be traces of biological matter on the head. After the command module was
> > retrieved and examined, surely it would have been found. In light of his
> > story, it would make no sense for it not to have been examined.
> > So, as I look at it, Commissioner Dixon had evidence that Cellinin was
> > telling the truth: a bizarre alien creature was let loose, and killed the
> > rest of the crew. Forensic evidence was there, but did the authorities
> > take note of it, or was something so hideous covered up, in order to "mot
> > alarm people", and Cellini made the sacrificial lamb?
> > Y'all?
> > ____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _
> > Click here to find the perfect picture with our powerful photo search
> > features.
> >
> > http://thirdpartyof fers.juno. com/TGL2141/ fc/BLSrjpTEuJA3D
> 5nGdXK5AvDKta4v8 3IBRdzjRi0NvItZn 2k4sZt3puWlnuI/
> >
> >
> > ------------ --------- --------- ------
> >
> > Tis the season for personalized Christmas stamps -
> > http://www.zazzle. com/christmassta mps/favorites? 2384752750447109
> 06Yahoo!
> > Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Tis the season for personalized Christmas stamps -
> http://www.zazzle.com/christmasstamps/favorites?238475275044710906Yahoo!
> Groups Links
>
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:36:01 -0400 Allen Barnella <arbarnella@...>
writes:

  Problem with all this lies in the time period(s), the time it was
  made in 1973-74 versus the depicted time of post-1999. Think back to
  the cop shows of that time period, forensics were non-existent for
  the most part and I don't believe that reality was that different
  from TV of the time period.
=============================
Yes, but if other technologies had advanced, in the '99 universe, than
one might expect forensics to have, as well.
Cellini would certainly have mentioned his fighting the thing, and the ax
was there.

  So, from the 1973-74 perspective there probably wasn't anything
  significant to attract their attention to the axe. The creature
  didn't bleed as we know it. Even if there was something noticeable
  they probably would have just discounted it as being something that
  Cellini got on it in his delirium.
=======================
Something Cellini would have denied, and able to be settled with a test.


  Actually, I'm kind of surprised
  that he wasn't charged and tried for the death of his crewmates.
============================
As Dixon put it, "There's nothing like failure for drying up the money
supply." A blown mission was bad PR enough. Putting the survivng
astronaut on trial would have focused even more unfavorable media
attention on the space program. Plus, with Cellini on the stand, telling
his story to the world, pressure for a more thorough investigation, even
a possible return to Ultra, might have forced Dixon's hand. Lesser of two
evils to just say Cellini botched it (or perhaps the press was fed a lie?
Malfunction of the docking cowl?), and assign him to checking Alpha's
parking meters.
____________________________________________________________
Protect your investment. Click here to find the homeowner insurance policy that
you need.
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTIoQGrofarZrIn8IIKr0E7xU9QyBEU\
xJhJfK9WqqZVftYdK0mK5jS/

My thought about contacting Earth/Alpha after separation is, if I remember
correctly, a "satellite dish" was mounted on the main body of the ship, and
the command module probably did not have the necessary equipment for long
range transmission as it was not designed that way.

I really like the thoughts you have, except we didn't see the crew take any
video/photos/etc.

The hatchett with blood is a good idea, and I wonder if it truly was in the
command module, or in a connecting section like the compartment by the
command module in the Eagles that was eliminated in year 2?

I had always wondered why Cellini didn't try to go back with the ship after
sealing the "dragon" in the back compartment, and jettison later if it tried
to get through.  (Other than it was a split second decision.)

In any event, if there had been video/photos/blood on the hatchet,  that
wouldn't have been as good a of a story then, would it?

Jim



On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 8:16 AM, Patrick Devaney <damien777@...>wrote:

>
>
> Are we proposing a Spacee:1999/CSI cross-over here?
>
>     "CSI: Alpha"
>
> Hmnn.... has potential!
>
>
> --- On Thu, 7/30/09, Kerry Endacotte
<kerryendacotte@...<kerryendacotte%40googlemail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> From: Kerry Endacotte
<kerryendacotte@...<kerryendacotte%40googlemail.com>
> >
> Subject: Re: [OnlineAlpha] Ultra Probe-Disbelief, or cover-up?
> To: OnlineAlpha@yahoogroups.com <OnlineAlpha%40yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Thursday, July 30, 2009, 5:18 AM
>
>
>
>
> Slinter@juno. com
>
> What an interesting/ fasinating idea. My, first thought was having 3 Tech's
> work the consauls with Dixon over looking them all in an area simular in
> design to
> SHADO HQ Earth in UFO. Equally, in my head, since the sat channels here
> keep
> showing the original film Blue Thunder I am remined of the Delete switch on
> the video tape in that film........
>
> However..... here come the BUTS......
>
> It's been a while since i have watched 'Dragon's Domain' It's not my
> favorate episode...(* nore is it the best ep of year one in my personal
> opineon) *that i am left asking a couple of questions
> 1/How long did it take Cellini to get home? There is something i remember
> about him being alone?
> 2/Forenisic Evidence what is the rate of decay?There would be a real danger
> of cross contamination in such a small area....less Cellini stored it
> somewhere
> 3/Finally most troubling of all is Ultra Probe:Mission Control was on
> Moonbase Alpha and John Koernig was in charge...... .so if anything was
> altered deleted he would either know about it...or have to have things done
> in such a way as to keep him ignorant of what was going on?
>
> Kerry
>
> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:25 AM, <slinter@juno. com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Ultra Probe-Disbelief, or cover-up?
> > ============ ========= ========= ======
> > Okay, here's a question. After Cellini's return from Ultra, and the
> > blanked-out areas on the Probe ship's black box were found, he was
> > ridiculed by the space authoririties, as well as medical people and
> > Commissioner Dixon. But...
> > Could they have in fact believed him, and covered up the truth?
> > After Cellini seperated the command module, and headed home, once
> > Ultra was no longer blocking the way, did he try and communicate with
> > Earth? It would make sense, would it not? And, even if the black box was
> > blank, what about video records? Even our early space missions took
> > films. By this time, video would have been the method. In my opinion,
> > there is NO WAY the folks back home would not have had visible evidence
> > that there were indeed ships clustered about Ultra. Not just "contacts",
> > as Dixon insisted. Also, what about the ax? Remember, Cellini hacked at
> > the Dragon's tentacles, before he got the hatch shut, apparently causing
> > it to withdraw. If you look at the ax as he dropped it, there appears to
> > be traces of biological matter on the head. After the command module was
> > retrieved and examined, surely it would have been found. In light of his
> > story, it would make no sense for it not to have been examined.
> > So, as I look at it, Commissioner Dixon had evidence that Cellinin was
> > telling the truth: a bizarre alien creature was let loose, and killed the
> > rest of the crew. Forensic evidence was there, but did the authorities
> > take note of it, or was something so hideous covered up, in order to "mot
> > alarm people", and Cellini made the sacrificial lamb?
> > Y'all?
> > ____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _
> > Click here to find the perfect picture with our powerful photo search
> > features.
> >
> > http://thirdpartyof fers.juno. com/TGL2141/ fc/BLSrjpTEuJA3D
> 5nGdXK5AvDKta4v8 3IBRdzjRi0NvItZn 2k4sZt3puWlnuI/
> >
> >
> > ------------ --------- --------- ------
> >
> > Tis the season for personalized Christmas stamps -
> > http://www.zazzle. com/christmassta mps/favorites? 2384752750447109
> 06Yahoo!
> > Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]