Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Spotted: Joanna Cameron

She rushes onto her very fist scene in a white tennis dress. That may seem ironic now, but at the time the producers of the '70s "The Amazing Spider-Man" TV series knew exactly what they had: the beautiful Isis, just a couple years after the ground-breaking Filmation live-action series left the Saturday morning airwaves, a superhero whose costume had reportedly originally been fashioned from a white tennis dress.

The episode is the two-part "The Deadly Dust," sometimes referred to as "Spider-Man Strikes Back," debuting in April 1978 and starring Joanna Cameron as Gale Hoffman, a young journalist from a national newspaper. Gale is assigned the unenviable task of nabbing an interview with the famous Spider-Man, and she gets the tip that this Peter Parker fellow may be the key to connecting with the web-slinger. She attaches herself to Peter and follows him diligently through the two hours, amid the theft of some plutonium by Peter's fellow college students and the controversy of a bomb that endangers the President of the United States in his upcoming speech.

Cameron is sweet and wise in the role, so much like schoolteacher Andrea Thomas, reflecting her dignified demeanor at every turn as she tracks down the facts. She even forms the suspicion that Peter Parker and her building-climbing target are one and the same. Her wardrobe changes are many and are dominated by the white of Isis (coincidence? hmmm .... ). And that's right down to the white string bikini she so reluctantly wears (both character and actress, it seems) in one of the later scenes. In this one, the producers aren't afraid to show off the legs that made the actress so well-known when her former character righted wrongs on Saturday mornings.

The two-part series ran in what's considered the first season of "The Amazing Spider-Man," in the spring following the fall '77 pilot. Our thanks to James for this DVD!

No comments: