Richard Kiel died today at the age of 74. Having a few years, and perhaps a taste for morbidity,
on me, I instantly recognized the name and the face, and felt the loss, of this
perhaps not great but clearly entertaining actor. So I combed the internet stories of Mr.
Kiel’s death. I read of “The Spy Who
Loved Me” and the Kiel character
Jaws. Not being much of a James Bond
fan, they meant little to me. But I
continued reading. Nothing on Mr. Kiel’s
most memorable character. I went to
other stories…still nothing on the role that gave Mr. Kiel his big break.
Perhaps yours truly is irredeemably old and out of touch,
but I simply can’t understand why there were no, at least as far as I saw,
references to Mr. Kiel’s seminal role as the Kanamit in perhaps the most famous
Twilight Zone episode of all… 1962’s
“To Serve Man.” Even those who don’t
share my ardent enthusiasm for this greatest TV series of all time know the
episode. If I need to jog your memory…
“It was a cookbook!”
Now you know the episode.
Richard Kiel was the Kanamit, the representative of the big
aliens who had come, presumably, to heal all the earth’s ills. Before he was Jaws or anything else, Mr.
Kiel played earth’s alien benefactor.
If you still don’t remember this episode, or even if you do,
the occasion of Richard Kiel’s death should prompt you to watch this episode
that many consider the best Twilight Zone had to offer. Yours truly would not agree with that
assessment; while “To Serve Man” was great, there were several (“Walking
Distance” comes immediately to mind, but “The Obsolete Man,” “Time Enough at
Last,” “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” and “One for the Angels” are right up there as
well.) that were at least its equal. But
I digress.
If the Kanamits remind you of Chicago
politicians, and they should, see my two books
The Chairman, A Novel of
Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge,
A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics
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