Stamps On Television

Hi All

I didn't know what topic to put this under, so, I chose the "Philatelic News" section.

This is posted just for fun actually. What I wanted t mention was that I watched a British mystery series last Sunday night called "Foyle's War".

In it was a person DCI Foyle was investigating and, he was a stamp collector. Usually you will see fake or stamp facsimiles, but here, it showed this man's album page that had old German stamps with fairly clear cancellations. However, on another page, the man had a prize collector's item, which was a mint "Inverted Jenny".

What got me was that it was a mint copy and hinged on his page. We do have to know though that this was set in 1945, just a month or so after the war had ended.

Let's face it, back in those days, they didn't have the mounting supplies we do today.

Let me know if you saw any stamps on a regular series program or in a movie.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Ever watch this Season 2 episode of the 1970s crime drama "Kojak" entitled "Night of the Piraeus"? The main subject was a philatelist that cared more about stamps than people:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0621353/

Does anyone remember the law and order SVU episode in season 3 with the vacuum cleaner copy of the inverted air mail stamp C3a

I'm a big fan of Foyle's War. I've seen the entire series. And I know they recently made 3 or 4 more episodes. Not sure when they'll air in the USA, but I'm anxiously awaiting them..

I remember "Kojac" very well and watched those regularly when they were airing.

Good old Telly Sevalas the lollypop sucking detective.

Kirk, as far as I know there are more newer episodes. You can Google the series or the IMDB should have them listed.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Season 7 of Foyle's War airs on PBS in the States in Sept..It just came out on DVD in the U.K...and they're working on Season 8.

Also the Richard Pryor movie "Brewter's Millions" Had a good C3a story in it. Pryor goes in to NY shop to buy the most expensive stamp. He then uses it on a postcard to the bankers who are working against him!

Thanks for all the postings in here.

Over the years, I have seen a few movies here and there where there is a stamp collector involved. Sometime the stamps are referred to as they actually are and sometimes they are given factitious names. The one factitious name I remember well was the "Wellington Black". I can't remember which movie that was in though.

Chimo

Bujutsu

I once saw a British movie titled "Penny Gold" on an Air Canada flight. Another fictional stamp name - as I recall, it was a gold-coloured Queen Victoria stamp.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070524/

Ryan

"Charade" of course with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

Some years back there was an episode of 'Law and order' depicting a stamp collector who used stamps to bait kids he would molest. There were lots of negative comments, most of them unnecessary to the plot, about the hobby in general in the script. I think the APS wrote the network a letter but I never heard what came of it.

If one still has not seen it "Hyde Park on Hudson" about FDR and includes mentions of his stamps!

Here's an "oldie", but I saw it in a rerun recently on METV:

Remember the old crime drama "The Streets of San Francisco" with Karl Malden and Michael Douglas? Well, there was an episode entitled "The Stamp of Death" and the plot was:





http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0711587/

In fact, if you're interested, I believe the hour long episode (52 minutes, actually) is available to watch on YouTube.

What makes the story all that more interesting is that the late Karl Malden was not only an actor, but a stamp collector in real life and, in fact, was at one time a member of the Citizen's Stamp Advisory Committee.

This was the best show on TV in the previous decade in my opinion. I'm glad they are continuing it. I admit I'm old fashioned so I won't say what I think of the other stuff they put on TV.

But I saw that episode with the Inverted Jenny (or Inverted border, whatever). It hit really close to home to see a serious collector like that on television.

I wish I could remember the title of that particular episode. It was "The Eternity Ring".

-IBFS

In the film "Chinatown" (or it might have been "The Two Jakes") private eye Jake Gittes is shown skimming through some letters bearing stamps of the period.1937 and 1948 respectively. "Chinatown", set in Los Angeles, is probably the best private eye film ever made. A great story and a visual delight. Watch both - they work together well.

Terry

I was very disappointed in the "philatelist" depicted in Foyle's war (just shown here).
He appeared to have basically a kid's album of the time, and the extremely rare and expensive "inverted Jenny" was just stuck haphazardly onto a page, like some kid would do. I suspect the props dept just sent out for "an old stamp album" and then stuck a facsimile of the Jenny on the page preceding some old German stamps. Not even in a coherent alphabetical order, let alone a "philatelic" approach. I don't know if it was shown outside Australia, but there was a good short film made here called "The Himmler Stamp" which was about a philatelist's fatal obsession to obtain a rare propaganda forgery of the 6Rpf Hitler stamp with Himmler's portrait.
Another screen appearance of our hobby is in "I Served the King of England", where the "hero" of the film buys his hotel by the sale of
rare stamps which must be presumed looted from Jewish families.