Another Bizarre Moment in Pop Culture History

I always thought that time I saw Mickey Rourke turn up a guest on the Italian Saturday night variety-cum-gameshow Torno Sabato represented just about the most bizarre pop culture moment I had experienced.  (The matter of how and why I was watching the Italian channel RAI Uno is another story entirely).  I mean, it was sort of the equivalent of seeing Orson Welles doing a guest spot on the Generation Game, (which obviously he never did), or Charlton Heston appearing in one Ernie's plays ('wot he wrote;) at the end of a Morecombe and Wise Christmas show, (which again, never happened).  .The point being that, back in the seventies, when I was growing up, it was unthinkable that international film stars would stoop to do doing TV which, back then, was very much considered the poor cousin to theatre and cinema by the acting profession.  Sure, there were instances, mainly in the US, of movie stars doing TV: James Stewart, Dick van Dyke, Doris Day and even Henry Fonda had their own TV series.  But that was the key - they had shows built around them, over which they had a degree of artistic control.  The idea of one of them randomly turning up on a light entertainment show seemed highly unlikely, (unless said show was fronted by another star or pal of theirs).  The only movie stars who appeared on TV, it seemed, were those whose careers were on the skids.  The natural progression was to move from TV to films, it was accepted.

Getting back to my original point - Mickey Rourke on that Italian TV show.  Well, today I encountered a bizarre moment in pop culture history that topped that: Andy Warhol guest starring as himself on an episode of The Love Boat.  Yeah, you read that right: Andy Warhol on The Love Boat, possibly the cheesiest of all seventies and eighties prime time US TV series.  The show was, of course, famous (or infamous, even), for its guest stars, (who, uniquely for a US TV show I think, were listed before the regular cast on the opening titles), usually familiar TV faces of the era, with the odd faded film star everyone thought was dead - Cornel Wilde, Donald O'Connor and Stewart Granger for instance - thrown in for good measure.  (Even Trevor Howard eventually got hard up enough to put in an appearance).  But seeing pop art icon Warhol turn up on those credits was a real shocker.  I mean, we'd already had Mr and Mrs Cunningham from Happy Days listed, not to mention Andy Griffith and Cloris Leachman and the regular audience was doubtless thinking it couldn't get any better, then up pops Warhol.  It isn't just a fleeting appearance either - he plays an integral part of the Cunningham's storyline, (OK, Tom Bosley and Marion Ross aren't playing the Cunninghams, but they might as well have been) - it turns out that in her youth Mrs C had been part of Warhol's crew and was photographed by him.  Obviously, Mr C isn't impressed, (perhaps Fonzie would have been broader minded).  Anyway, Warhol as Warhol has a fair amount of dialogue, which he delivers badly and is clearly uncomfortable playing himself.  Still, when you think about it, Warhol appearing on The Love Boat makes perfect sense - as a product of the US networks, the show was a prime example of the sort of crass commercialism that his art revelled in - truly a match made in heaven.