CBSRMT Episode Information Next Episode

Title

The Further You Go, the Less You Know

Plot

A spiritual guru persuades a professional deceiver to believe that he really is the reborn DaVinci and gets him to paint a modern Mona Lisa.

Episode

0867

Air Dates

  • First Run - July 20, 1978
  • Repeat - January 16, 1979

Actors

Writer

Listen

Rating

53
43     10


2 Responses to Episode 0867

Mandel Kramer plays a flim flam artist named "Bridges" Barzel. (In one of a few unusual elements for an episode, E.G. directly asks the main character "Why do they call you 'Bridges'?", to which Kramer replies that he would wait by the Brooklyn (or some such NYC) bridge until some unsuspecting "rube" would come by, then offer it to the pigeon for sale.) Kramer's got a former girlfriend "Bubbles" who was a nightclub dancer played by Evie Juster. (She's gotten those "criminal's girlfriend" roles more than once.) He introduced her to another con man friend played by Ian Martin, and soon afterward she was Martin's character's girlfriend. Anywho, Bubbles approaches Bridges and is uneasy. She relates how she and the other guy were walking down the street when they saw some weird-looking Indian guru. Martin's character was going to give him a hard time, but the guru, as she tells it, gave him some words of wisdom that changed him. And how. She convinces Bridges to visit her squeeze, and warns the former to expect anything on the visit. What Bridges doesn't expect is that Martin's character drifts in and out of thinking that he's Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, he thinks Bubbles is the woman who the world's come to know as "Mona Lisa", and is creating a very intricate painting of her. He also thinks Bridges is an old Italian compatriate from hundreds of years ago. Bridges isn't so sure, and goes to have a loooong talk with the "guru" himself. Despite being a Sam Dann play it moved just slowly enough that the audio made it hard to concentrate. There's something else also strange about this...the intro clip introduced by E.G. prior to the first act, coupled with his own spoken introduction, seemed to lead me to believe this would be a murder mystery. I may have missed someone getting killed (if so I'll correct this later), but I don't think it ended up being so. I'll have to listen again, but if I'm correct I've never heard an intro on an RMT that veered in such a different direction from the actual plot. Then again, with a title like this maybe that was an appropriate tact for this episode.

Cefring Jones

Bridges Barzell, a hustler downcast because the gullible population is rapidly decreasing, meets up with an old girlfriend, Dimples Kovacs, who’s worried about her husband, Leonard. Also a veteran hustler, Leonard has been conned by a guru into believing he is the reincarnation of Leonardo da Vinci. Under the guru’s influence, Leonard is painting a second portrait of Mona Lisa, which the conniving guru figures will put millions into his pocket.

Jack


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