Raquel Welch’s Perfect Entrance

As we’ve often discussed here over the years, the problem with stories and anecdotes about old TV shows is that as soon as you prod them, they can start to disintegrate. This can happen with articles initially look about as trustworthy as you can get, and have contributions from all the right people.

Take that oral history of Mork & Mindy on Gizmodo. I didn’t quote this section of the piece last time, but it actually has a whole section on the episode “Mork vs the Necrotons”.¹ Story editor David Misch:

“There was a scene which was incorporated into the original script, where Raquel Welch was to torture Mr. Williams. But the “joke” was that all her tortures were sexy. So the idea was that there was going to be a hot tub, and she was going to torture him by rubbing him. […]

But my main memory of that scene was not our hilarious lines, but that after the scene was over, everyone was [supposed] to get out of the hot tub and to move on to the next scene. And Robin said, “I’m afraid I’m not going to be getting out of the hot tub.” Because he had, uh, a piece of physical anatomy that had gotten not appropriate for the audience to see at that point. Raquel Welch had been rubbing him all over.

That was an anatomical issue with Robin in general. Robin was always “primed,” let’s just say that.”

Which is a very funny story. The only problem is: it doesn’t really match what actually happens in the episode as broadcast, or indeed in the script. Sure, Raquel does touch Robin outside the hot tub, but it’s actually her two lackeys Kama and Sutra who touch him once inside the tub.² The anecdote makes it sound like Robin is still in the hot tub at the end of the scene, but in fact he escapes halfway through, still pursued by the two young lovelies. And besides, he actually spends the second half of his time in the hot tub standing up, where he didn’t have much of a chance of being able to hide anything anyway.

Do I think Robin Williams had a problem with a great big throbbing erection during the shooting of that scene? Probably. But it can’t have happened quite as described. Unfortunately, “Raquel Welch gave Robin Williams an erection in the hot tub” is just too delicious a story to resist.

With this in mind, it does start making you suspicious of other anecdotes in that piece. So when director Howard Storm mentions Welch arguing about her first appearance near the start of the show, you do begin to wonder how true it is:

“Then she said she had a problem with her entrance. Robin comes running into the apartment, says to Pam [that] the Nekrons³, or whoever they were, are coming to kidnap him. And she says, “When are they coming?” He says, “They could be here any second!” And there’s an explosion. The doors to the apartment fly off, onto the couch. And in walks the first girl. Vicki Fredericks walks down stage left. The other girl comes down, walks down stage right, and they both pose with their hands on their hips. And then Raquel enters.

Raquel said, “You can’t have them come in before me.”

And we said to Raquel, “If they come in after you, they’re gonna distract. They’re going to pull the eye. What we’re doing here is, we’re setting it up. The audience sees this woman come down, ‘No, that’s not her.’ Then the next one, ‘No, that’s not her’ — and then you enter! You know? And they frame you! It’s the perfect entrance.” But if someone comes in after her, the audience looks at the person coming in that’s moving.

She said, “I have an idea. Supposing they wear dog masks, and I lead them in on leashes.” So I knew immediately that she did not want to compete with these two very lovely women. And that never happened — we would not allow that, the dog masks.

What I said to her was, “Raquel, your character is too strong. You don’t need to have them in dog masks or leashes. All you need to do is snap your fingers. Those girls will drop to their knees.” And she said, “Oh, I like that.”

It’s a very funny story. It’s also worth at the very least some mild fact-checking. So firstly, here is how Raquel Welch actually appears near the start of “Mork vs the Necrotons”:

This matches what Howard says almost exactly – not only does Raquel end up entering first, but Kama and Sutra literally do fall in at the snap of her fingers.

So the next question is: what does the shooting script say? Does it have Kama and Sutra entering first, as objected to by Raquel?

MINDY: Look, there are over seventy thousand people in Boulder. They’ll never find you if you just stay here.
MORK: Maybe you’re right. The odds of them finding me in this apartment in the next twenty-four hours are approximately 362 million to one.

JUST THEN, THE FRONT DOOR BLOWS OFF ITS HINGES AND FLIES ACROSS THE ROOM.

MORK: Must be my lucky day.

AFTER A BEAT, PVT. SUTRA, THE GIRL THAT REMO INTRODUCED TO THEM, WALKS IN AND STANDS BESIDE THE DOOR LIKE A GUARD. SHE’S WEARING A FUTURISTIC SPACE OUTFIT.

MORK: Sutra. (TO MINDY) Pray she’s a punk Avon lady.

AFTER A BEAT, ANOTHER GIRL, PVT. KAMA, WALKS IN AND STANDS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR LIKE A GUARD. SHE IS DRESSED LIKE THE FIRST. AFTER ANOTHER BEAT, A BEAUTIFUL, SHAPELY WOMAN, CAPTAIN NIRVANA, FRAMES HERSELF IN THE DOORWAY. HER FUTURISTIC CLOTHING IS OBVIOUSLY OF THE ELITE. AFTER APPLAUSE, MORK SAYS:

MORK: Einstein was right. Space is curved.

So yes: Kama and Sutra really were originally scripted to enter the scene first.⁴ While we can’t be sure that everything in the discussion between the director and Raquel happened exactly as reported, the broad strokes are surely correct.

But all this talk of erections and divas can only get you so far. Instead, I want to concentrate on something far more interesting: how the show actually manages to tell the story. Did you notice something odd about the script excerpt above?

AFTER A BEAT, PVT. SUTRA, THE GIRL THAT REMO INTRODUCED TO THEM, WALKS IN AND STANDS BESIDE THE DOOR LIKE A GUARD. SHE’S WEARING A FUTURISTIC SPACE OUTFIT.

What’s all this about Sutra being “the girl that Remo introduced to them”? As far as the broadcast episode is concerned, we’ve never met Sutra before we see her appear in Mork and Mindy’s apartment.

*   *   *

The answer lies at the beginning of the show, with Nelson Flavor’s political luncheon at the deli.⁵ The two scenes set here, broken up with an unusual phone call from Orson to Mork, have a fair number of changes between script and screen.

One big example is Mork’s introduction of Nelson. As broadcast, it goes as follows:

MORK: Ladies and gentlemen please. Can you put down the celery a moment here for your attention? Thank you. I’d like to introduce a man that flattened me in my dreams, and a man that’ll flatten your dreams too. Let’s bring him up here. Nelson Flavor, the albino wonder. Come on, bring him up here. Thank you, thank you. Come on now. Here we go. No pictures please, it hurts his little pink eyes.”

But as scripted, it seems to be designed to be more of a scene-stealing moment for Williams:

MORK HOLDS UP HIS ARMS TO GET THE PEOPLE’S ATTENTION.

MORK: Ladies and gentlemen. May I have your attention.

THE CUSTOMERS FOCUS ON MORK. MORK SUDDENLY BECOMES AN ORATOR.

MORK: I have a dream! I have it every night. (AS CROWD VOICES:) “Tell it to us, brother”. “Right on”. (THE ORATOR:) I see black people… I see white people… riding together on this big, purple giraffe. (AS CROWD VOICES:) “Yeah, purple!” “Tell it, Bro”. “Testify”! (THE ORATOR:) Suddenly, I see Nelson Flavor. He’s driving a big eighteen wheeler… right at us. (CROWD NOISES:)⁶ “Is it a Peterbilt?” (THE ORATOR:) We floored the giraffe to make his little hooves go faster but it’s no use. He ran right over us. And now I’d like to introduce the man that flattened me and all those innocent people. The Albino candidate, Nelson Flavor! No flashes. It hurts his little pink eyes.

As the “big eighteen wheeler” material is gone in the final show, Mork’s idea that Nelson “flattened me in my dreams” doesn’t really work as broadcast.⁷

But the largest piece of removed material is at the end of the second scene in the deli; you can even see Nelson approaching the gang at this point in the finished episode, ready to deliver his cut lines. This is the material which explains why the script thinks we already know Sutra later on:

NELSON COMES OVER BEAMING.

NELSON: Ah, Mindy, that little speech of mine will go down in history. Did you see the look on their faces when I came out against slavery? What a rush.
MINDY: Well, at least no one else has that issue right now.
NELSON: (SUDDENLY PANICKED) Excuse me, I think I see someone eating who’s not old enough to vote. Hey, little girl, put down that anchovy.

HE DASHES OFF IN ONE DIRECTION, REMO AND A BEAUTIFUL GIRL APPROACH FROM ANOTHER.

REMO: Hey, Mork. Hey, Mindy. I’d like you to meet my girlfriend. (TO THE GIRL) What’s your name?
SUTRA: Sutra.
REMO: Mork, Mindy, I’d like you to meet Sutra… (HE STARES AT HER BLANKLY)
SUTRA: Lipsky.
REMO: We just met.
MINDY: No kidding.

A BIG MENACING GUY ENTERS THE DELI AND CROSSES BETWEEN MORK AND REMO.

MORK: Mindy, he’s here! In this room! I can sense him. This is it. Big Blotto.

HE TURNS AND STARTS RACING TO THE DOOR, JUST AS JEANIE EMERGES WITH A FRESH TRAY OF HORS D’OEUVES.

JEANIE: Care for a hors d’oeuvre?

MORK RUNS RIGHT INTO HER, AND SENDS THE TRAY AND HORS D’OEUVES FLYING.

MORK: Run for your life!

MORK RUNS OUT PANICKED.

JEANIE: (EXASPERATED) Couldn’t he just say no, thank you?

MINDY SMILES WEAKLY AT THE ASTONISHED REMO, JEANIE AND SUTRA, THEN RUNS OUT AFTER HIM.

The big question: what the hell is all this material for? Most of it is not especially amusing, the brilliant slavery joke aside; they clearly wanted to introduce Sutra into the episode early. Why? What purpose does it serve?

I believe the answer is in this piece of dialogue in the script, which survives (with minor changes) to the broadcast episode:

MINDY: Look, there are over seventy thousand people in Boulder. They’ll never find you if you just stay here.
MORK: Maybe you’re right. The odds of them finding me in this apartment in the next twenty-four hours are approximately 362 million to one.

Surely the reason they brought in Sutra early is because they wanted to give an explanation for how Captain Nirvana found Mork in Mindy’s apartment. With Sutra undercover in the community – and presumably Kama too – the idea is that she was searching for Mork, and reported his location to Nirvana.

It sort-of works. But the likelihood of Sutra finding Mork so quickly by doing a manual sweep of Colorado is not especially great. And the more you think about it, the less likely it feels. It’s far better to just not really deal with the issue at all, and have Nirvana miraculously find Mork without the aid of her scouts. All bringing Sutra in earlier really does is give the audience more time to think about the same essential problem of Mork’s location. It’s more convincing – and funnier – to assume that Nirvana used some special off-screen space doohickey, and just immediately finds him anyway.

Lacklustre material which doesn’t even solve the issue they intended it to solve? That’s the very first thing to get rid of. And it’s always fun to see a production grapple with what they think is an problem with the plot… and then realise it’s not really a problem at all, and they can just leap to the end.

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1. Not that the Gizmodo article actually mentions the episode title itself anywhere, which is mildly weird, but whatever. ↩

2. The script suggests Kama and Sutra are wearing “futuristic bikinis”. The actual programme takes this to mean “silver”, in grand TV science fiction tradition. ↩

3. Necrotons. ↩

4. The scene works fine as broadcast, but I have to say that I prefer the scripted version, and Raquel did herself out of a more effective scene than she ended up getting. ↩

5. Weird fact: Jim Staahl, who plays Nelson, doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. Which is very odd for someone who had a credit as a regular on a network TV show. ↩

6. Yes, it changes here from “crowd voices” to “crowd noises”. Annoying. ↩

7. Although to be fair, the addition of “he’ll flatten your dreams too” is probably better than what’s in the original script. Sometimes you don’t want the metaphor, you just want the straight gag. ↩

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