Press Release? By Walter Doherty

For those of you who missed this deathless prose the first time around. A “Press” release from an unnamed network:

Welcome to the Rex Stout Sunday Night Mystery Hour starring that fat, but lovable master Chef and Detective Claudius Wolfe, played by that Master of Comedy, Dom DeLouise (!!!!) assisted by his able side-kick and Henchman, Archibaldo McWoodwind. (played by Fabio in his first starring role!) Stay tuned as the dynamic duo of comic mystery leaves the Brownstone to vacation in the Bahamas. Find out how they rescue their kidnapped gardener, Francoise Brennaire. See the daring (and hilarious) rescue race with Archie driving the Motor Scooter with Claudius bellowing at him while seated on the back!

Production Notes – Minor Changes:

Claudius Wolfe – Nero is too unfamiliar, besides people whould think he was a noted piano player. And drop the Chef guy, there are too many regular characters and we’ve only got so much in the budget, so combine these two. Besides, I told Dom we’d push his cookbook.

Archibaldo – Make this Archie guy a foreigner so that 1/ we can play up Fabio’s role and not have to make him change his accent. Make it “Mc” so he’s Scottish, foreign, but not too much, as far as his accent is concerned, tell ’em his mother was Italian. Change Godwin to Woodwind, we don’t want to offend any church goers (n.b., it’s “Goodwin”. Response: too late, name’s already taken care of)

Leaves the Brownstone: Of course he leaves the mansion; nobody stays indoors all the time, besides L.A. can double for Bermuda and we don’t want to show palm trees in NYC (and why can’t change the location–say we Blow up the Brownstone and Wolfe and company move to balmier climes?)

Francoise Brennaire – Hey, he’s a Frenchie, right? So, how comes he’s
got a German name? Make it French. We want to concentrate on consistency! And, make *him* the gardner; Claude’s already the Chef in this series (Note to Dom: Hey, real cool on the Food Network, kiddo, maybe we can incorporate that into the series. Note to assistant: can we get the Food television people cheap?) Besides, I didn’t like the flower guy anyhow, and cut the damn orchids, as I said before we got a limited budget and can’t go around putting out orchids every day for every girl in the script. And, better yet, make him the butler, that way we can use him more, besides who has a gardner in NY. He lives in a Penthouse or something, what’s he gonna have? Three square feet of lawn to cut?

Motor Scooter – Hey, how’d’ja like that one! That I wrote myself. Should we use it in the opener or save it for the climax?