"The Cham-Cham" is the 25th episode of ''
Thunderbirds'', a British
Supermarionation television series created by
Gerry and
Sylvia Anderson
Sylvia Beatrice Anderson (; 25 March 1927 – 15 March 2016) was an English television and film producer, writer, voice actress and costume designer, best known for her collaborations with Gerry Anderson, her husband between 1960 and 1981. In a ...
and filmed by their production company
AP Films
AP Films or APF, later becoming Century 21 Productions, was a British independent film production company of the 1950s until the early 1970s. The company became internationally known for its imaginative children's action-adventure marionette tel ...
(APF). The penultimate episode of ''Thunderbirds'' Series One, it was written and directed by
Alan Pattillo
Alan Huchison Pattillo (17 July 1929 – 16 January 2020) was a British writer and director who worked on ''Supercar'', '' Fireball XL5'', ''Stingray'', and '' Thunderbirds'' television series. He won an Emmy in 1979 alongside Bill Blunden for ...
and first broadcast on 24 March 1966 on
ATV Midlands
Associated Television was the original name of the British broadcaster ATV, part of the Independent Television (ITV) network. It provided a service to London at weekends from 1955 to 1968, to the Midlands on weekdays from 1956 to 1968, and ...
.
Set in the 2060s, ''Thunderbirds'' follows the exploits of International Rescue, an organisation that uses technologically advanced rescue vehicles to save human life. The main characters are ex-astronaut
Jeff Tracy
Jeff Tracy is a fictional character from Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Supermarionation television show '' Thunderbirds'' and the subsequent films '' Thunderbirds Are GO'' and '' Thunderbird 6''. The voice for the character in these shows was sup ...
, founder of International Rescue, and his five adult sons, who pilot the organisation's main vehicles: the
''Thunderbird'' machines. "The Cham-Cham" opens with a
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...
plane being shot down during a radio broadcast of the
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
"Dangerous Game" by popular musical group the Cass Carnaby Five. International Rescue suspect sabotage, and
Lady Penelope
Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward is a fictional character introduced in the British 1960s Supermarionation television series '' Thunderbirds'', which was produced by AP Films (APF) for ITC Entertainment. The character also appears in the film seque ...
,
Tin-Tin and
Parker travel to the
Swiss Alps to investigate the band's current tour venue, the mountain resort Paradise Peaks. There, they discover that the RTL2 attacks are being co-ordinated with the aid of an advanced computer called a "Cham-Cham".
Filmed in late 1965, "The Cham-Cham" has a show business theme and was written in the style of classic
Hollywood musicals.
It features several innovations in APF's use of marionette puppets. One scene features the Penelope character performing a slow dance, which was a challenge to film due to the difficulty in moving Supermarionation puppets convincingly.
"The Cham-Cham" is also the first episode of any Supermarionation series to show characters skiing.
"Dangerous Game", the focus of the episode's soundtrack, was devised as a
Latin rhythm by series composer
Barry Gray
Barry Gray (born John Livesey Eccles; 18 July 1908 – 26 April 1984) was a British musician and composer best known for his collaborations with television and film producer Gerry Anderson.
Life and career
Born into a musical family in Blackburn ...
. Singer
Ken Barrie
Leslie Hulme (9 January 1933 – 29 July 2016), known professionally as Ken Barrie, was an English voice actor and singer. He was best known for singing the theme tune of the BBC television programmes ''Hi-de-Hi!'', ''Postman Pat'' and ''Charli ...
recorded a lyrical version but this is not heard in the finished episode.
"The Cham-Cham" has been well received by commentators, drawing particular praise for its production design and soundtrack. Sylvia Anderson considered the plot "far-fetched" but valued the episode for its "charm" and Swiss Alps setting.
An
audio adaptation of the episode, narrated by
David Graham as Parker, was released in March 1967 as the Century 21
mini-LP
A mini-LP or mini-album is a short vinyl record album or LP, usually retailing at a lower price than an album that would be considered full-length. It is distinct from an EP due to containing more tracks and a slightly longer running length. A ...
''Lady Penelope''.
Plot
USAF
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...
planes flying missile shipments out of Matthews Field air base have been shot down by enemy fighters shortly after take-off. On
Tracy Island
Tracy Island is the secret headquarters of the International Rescue organisation in the 1960s British Supermarionation television series '' Thunderbirds'' and its adaptations. In the original series, the heavily-camouflaged island is located in t ...
,
Alan (voiced by
Matt Zimmerman) notes that each attack has occurred while popular band the Cass Carnaby Five have been performing their hit
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
"Dangerous Game" on live radio. He and
Brains
A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a v ...
(voiced by
David Graham) examine a recording of the latest broadcast to determine whether the music contains a hidden code that is being used to co-ordinate the attacks.
Meanwhile,
Jeff
Jeff is a masculine name, often a short form (hypocorism) of the English given name Jefferson or Jeffrey, which comes from a medieval variant of Geoffrey.
Music
* DJ Jazzy Jeff, American DJ/turntablist record producer Jeffrey Allen Townes
* ...
(voiced by
Peter Dyneley
Peter Dyneley (13 April 1921 – 19 August 1977) was a British actor. Although he appeared in many smaller roles in both film and television, he is best remembered for supplying the voice of Jeff Tracy for the 1960s " Supermarionation" TV serie ...
) assigns
Lady Penelope
Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward is a fictional character introduced in the British 1960s Supermarionation television series '' Thunderbirds'', which was produced by AP Films (APF) for ITC Entertainment. The character also appears in the film seque ...
,
Tin-Tin and
Parker (voiced by
Sylvia Anderson
Sylvia Beatrice Anderson (; 25 March 1927 – 15 March 2016) was an English television and film producer, writer, voice actress and costume designer, best known for her collaborations with Gerry Anderson, her husband between 1960 and 1981. In a ...
,
Christine Finn
Christine L. T. Finn (1929 – 5 December 2007) was an English actress, known primarily for her role in the 1950s TV serial ''Quatermass and the Pit'', and, after that, her voice work for the 1960s '' Thunderbirds'' television series. She also ...
and David Graham) to investigate Paradise Peaks, a mountain-top hotel in the
Swiss Alps that is currently playing host to Cass Carnaby and his group. The agents go undercover, with Penelope posing as a singer called "Wanda Lamour" and Parker securing a job as a waiter. They learn that Carnaby's manager, the mysterious Mr Olsen, often alters the arrangement of "Dangerous Game" before each new broadcast and that he is expecting to receive a message the following day.
[Bentley 2005, p. 88.]
In the morning, Penelope and Tin-tin ski down the mountain to Olsen's chalet and film him operating a strange machine that is decoding musical sounds into text stating the time of the next missile shipment.
They deduce that he is issuing orders for the next attack and start back to Paradise Peaks to alert Jeff. Realising that he has been observed, Olsen telephones his associate Banino, a waiter at the hotel, with orders to kill Penelope and Tin-Tin. Banino goes outside with a
sniper rifle and prepares to shoot the women before they reach the hotel. However, he is thwarted by Parker, who overheard the phone conversation and grabs the rifle, upsetting Banino's aim. In their struggle, the men lose their balance and tumble down the mountain together, forming a giant snowball in the process. Banino is knocked out but Parker emerges unscathed.
On Tracy Island, Brains identifies Olsen's machine as a Cham-Cham, an
ultrasonically-sensitive computer that Olsen is using to send coded radio transmissions. Jeff relays this information to
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
, but the Matthews Field commander is sceptical and refuses to postpone the next shipment. That night, the Cass Carnaby Five begin performing Olsen's latest arrangement of "Dangerous Game". The shipment seems doomed until Penelope, in the guise of Wanda Lamour, appears on stage and sings a lyrical version, devised by Brains, containing a new set of coded instructions. Decoding the broadcast, the personnel at the enemy air base unwittingly direct their fighters to overfly Matthews Field. Arriving in ''
Thunderbird 1
The Thunderbird machines are a series of vehicles imagined for the mid-1960s film and television '' Thunderbirds'' series developed by Gerry Anderson. The released work began with the Supermarionation television series '' Thunderbirds'' and w ...
'',
Scott (voiced by
Shane Rimmer) alerts the commander and USAF fighters are launched to shoot down the hostiles.
Fearing Olsen's retribution, Jeff dispatches
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
(voiced by
David Holliday
David Holliday (August 4, 1937March 26, 1999) was an American Broadway actor and television voice actor. He is best known as the voice of Virgil Tracy, pilot of '' Thunderbird 2'', in the first series (26 episodes) of '' Thunderbirds'' (1965&n ...
) and Alan to Paradise Peaks in ''
Thunderbird 2
The Thunderbird machines are a series of vehicles imagined for the mid-1960s film and television ''Thunderbirds (TV series), Thunderbirds'' series developed by Gerry Anderson. The released work began with the Supermarionation television series ...
'' to bring Penelope, Tin-Tin and Parker home. As the trio leave the hotel in a
cable car, Olsen cuts the lines behind them, causing the car to speed out of control down the mountain. ''Thunderbird 2''s magnetic grabs cannot get a purchase on the car, so Virgil and Alan release a set of guide cables. Climbing onto the roof, Parker hooks the cables with the handle of Penelope's umbrella and attaches them to the car. Virgil and Alan fire ''Thunderbird 2''s
retro-rockets, bringing the car to a halt but also throwing Parker off the roof. He uses the umbrella to parachute safely to the ground. Penelope, Tin-Tin, Parker and the Tracys return to Paradise Peaks, where Cass treats them to a private piano recital of "Dangerous Game".
Production
Filmed in November and December 1965,
[La Rivière 2009, p. 128.] "The Cham-Cham" was the second-to-last episode of ''Thunderbirds'' Series One to be produced. Scriptwriter
Alan Pattillo
Alan Huchison Pattillo (17 July 1929 – 16 January 2020) was a British writer and director who worked on ''Supercar'', '' Fireball XL5'', ''Stingray'', and '' Thunderbirds'' television series. He won an Emmy in 1979 alongside Bill Blunden for ...
created its show business plot and the exotic setting of Paradise Peaks in an attempt to emulate classic Hollywood musicals.
[Bentley 2005, p. 30.] Penelope's alias, Wanda Lamour, was named after the actress and singer
Dorothy Lamour
Dorothy Lamour (born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton; December 10, 1914 – September 22, 1996) was an American actress and singer. She is best remembered for having appeared in the '' Road to...'' movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing ...
and Wanda Webb, one of APF's puppet operators.
APF had always found it difficult to make its puppets walk convincingly, so rarely showed this action openly on-screen. Instead, the puppet operators created an illusion of walking by holding the puppets' legs (which were kept out of shot) and moving the puppets up and down using a "bobbing" action.
For the scene in "The Cham-Cham" where Penelope glides across the Paradise Peaks ballroom while singing "Dangerous Game", Webb worked the puppet from the stage while fellow operator
Christine Glanville
Christine Glanville (born Nancy Christine Fletcher; 28 October 1924 – 1 March 1999) was an English puppeteer who spent much of her professional life contributing to television series produced by Gerry Anderson.
Career
Glanville became involv ...
controlled its wired top portion from an overhead gantry.
[Bentley 2005, p. 31.]
Gerry Anderson
Gerald Alexander Anderson (; 14 April 1929 – 26 December 2012) was an English television and film producer, director, writer and occasional voice artist. He remains famous for his futuristic television programmes, especially his 1960s produ ...
believed that Penelope and Tin-Tin's trip to Olsen's lodge looked suitably realistic, despite APF never having shown puppets skiing prior to this episode.
Anderson himself conceived the "ski thrusters" used by the characters to ascend the mountain during their journey back to Paradise Peaks, in part to remove the need for the puppets to walk.
Praising
Bob Bell's production design, Anderson commented that the episode "gave
PF'sart and design departments a chance to show what they could really do, and they didn't let us down."
Composer
Barry Gray
Barry Gray (born John Livesey Eccles; 18 July 1908 – 26 April 1984) was a British musician and composer best known for his collaborations with television and film producer Gerry Anderson.
Life and career
Born into a musical family in Blackburn ...
devised "Dangerous Game" as a Latin rhythm.
Originally all performances by the Cass Carnaby Five were to have been a lyrical version sung by
Ken Barrie
Leslie Hulme (9 January 1933 – 29 July 2016), known professionally as Ken Barrie, was an English voice actor and singer. He was best known for singing the theme tune of the BBC television programmes ''Hi-de-Hi!'', ''Postman Pat'' and ''Charli ...
, but for the finished episode this was replaced with a variety of instrumental versions.
Sylvia Anderson based her singing voice on that of
Marlene Dietrich
Marie Magdalene "Marlene" DietrichBorn as Maria Magdalena, not Marie Magdalene, according to Dietrich's biography by her daughter, Maria Riva ; however Dietrich's biography by Charlotte Chandler cites "Marie Magdalene" as her birth name . (, ; ...
.
The shots of Penelope and Tin-Tin skiing to Olsen's chalet are accompanied by an
incidental track called "Happy Flying" that was originally composed for the ''
Supercar
A supercar – also called exotic car – is a loosely defined description of street-legal, high-performance sports cars. Since the 2010s, the term hypercar has come into use for the highest performing supercars. Supercars commonly serve as t ...
'' episode "Amazonian Adventure".
As with "
Attack of the Alligators!", which had been filmed immediately prior, the technical complexity of "The Cham-Cham" caused production to finish behind schedule and considerably over-budget.
To make up for the lost time and extra costs, the scriptwriters turned the final episode of Series One into a
clip show
A clip show is an episode of a television series that consists primarily of excerpts from previous episodes. Most clip shows feature the format of a frame story in which cast members recall past events from past installments of the show, depicte ...
. That episode, "
Security Hazard", made extensive use of
flashbacks to earlier instalments to reduce the amount of new footage that needed to be filmed.
Reception
Sylvia Anderson considered "The Cham-Cham" one of the series' best episodes and a rival to "Attack of the Alligators!" in terms of quality. On her website, she commented: "Even though the plot is far-fetched, it has charm and, because of the lovely Swiss mountain setting, has credibility."
Gerry Anderson biographers
Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn describe "The Cham-Cham" as "perhaps the most lavish-looking episode of the series", calling the scenes of Penelope and Tin-Tin skiing and Penelope singing "unforgettable images".
Hearn, in his book ''Thunderbirds: The Vault'', calls the episode one of ''Thunderbirds'' "most entertaining" due to its focus on Penelope and Parker as well as its use of "one of the most exotic locations in the series".
[Hearn 2015, p. 167.] Tom Fox of ''
Starburst'' magazine rates the episode 4 out of 5, describing the plot as "tenuous" but believing this to be redeemed by the production design and the scenes of the cable car rescue. Like Archer and Hearn, he is entertained by Parker's umbrella descent.
Ian Fryer considers the premise to be inspired by the first episode of ''
The Sentimental Agent
''The Sentimental Agent'' is a television drama series spin-off from '' Man of the World.'' It was produced in the United Kingdom in 1963 by Associated Television and distributed by ITC Entertainment.
The series ran for 13 one-hour monochrome ...
'', "All That Jazz" (1963), in which a band are found to be sending information to spies. He praises the "confidence" of "The Cham-Cham", calling it a "triumph" for art director
Bob Bell and writing that although the story has "occasional moments of silliness", "everything about the production works perfectly." He believes that the episode is proof of Supermarionation's ability to "present glamour convincingly on-screen" and represents the "absolute pinnacle of what
he Andersonsachieved with puppetry". According to commentator Alistair McGown, the story was influenced by ''
Road to...'' comedy films and the spy series ''
The Avengers''. He writes that while the plot "may be flimsy in places", the overall episode is a "gorgeous confection" with the skiing and dancing sequences paying "impressive attention to detail". Both McGown and Hearn call the skiing scenes "charming".
Stephen La Rivière, author of ''Filmed in Supermarionation: A History of the Future'', praises the episode's technical standards, remarking that the skiing and dancing sequences "
lyin the face of what puppets can and can't do."
He sums up "The Cham-Cham" as a "glorious example of ''Thunderbirds'' at its best, combining all the elements that made the show so popular: the characters, the adventure, the rescues and, of course, the humour." He further argues that the humour has intergenerational appeal, stating that Parker's
double entendre
A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially ...
s are counterbalanced by overt
slapstick moments such as the character's "
Mary Poppins It may refer to:
* ''Mary Poppins'' (book series), the original 1934–1988 children's fantasy novels that introduced the character.
* Mary Poppins (character), the nanny with magical powers.
* ''Mary Poppins'' (film), a 1964 Disney film sta ...
"-style descent using Penelope's umbrella.
In a review of the CD release of the ''Thunderbirds'' soundtrack, Morag Reavley of
BBC Online
BBC Online, formerly known as BBCi, is the BBC's online service. It is a large network of websites including such high-profile sites as BBC News and BBC Sport, Sport, the on-demand video and radio services branded BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, t ...
describes Sylvia Anderson's singing as "slinky, sexy and slightly off-key, like a hung-over
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Zsa Zsa Gabor (, ; born Sári Gábor ; February 6, 1917 – December 18, 2016) was a Hungarian-American socialite and actress. Her sisters were actresses Eva and Magda Gabor.
Gabor competed in the 1933 Miss Hungary pageant, where she ...
". Heather Phares of
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...
considers "Dangerous Game" to be a highlight of the release, commenting that while the instrumental version "
eflectsthe Sixties' ongoing fascination with
exotica
Exotica is a musical genre, named after the 1957 Martin Denny Exotica (Martin Denny album), album of the same name that was popular during the 1950s to mid-1960s with Americans who came of age during World War II. The term was coined by Simon Wa ...
and
Latin pop", its lyrical counterpart "could be a kissing cousin to seductive spy themes like '
Goldfinger'."
McGown calls Anderson's conscious imitation of Marlene Dietrich her "campest moment" voicing Penelope.
Media historian
Nicholas J. Cull
Nicholas J. Cull (born 1964) is a historian and professor in the Master's in Public Diplomacy program at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He was the founding director of this pro ...
interprets "The Cham-Cham" as a piece of
Cold War-inspired fiction, noting the "Central/Eastern European accents" of the enemy airbase personnel.
References
Works cited
*
*
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cham-Cham, The
1966 British television episodes
Cryptography in fiction
Fictional computers
Television episodes set in Switzerland
Thunderbirds (TV series) episodes
United States Air Force in fiction
Television episodes set in hotels