miscellanium (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
miscellanium) wrote2023-06-01 08:29 am
miscellanium) wrote2023-06-01 08:29 am
Entry tags:
website excavation!
huge huge HUGE thanks to tempural for helping me troubleshoot the video embed coding in this!
(happy pride demon month, here's a new round of homosexuality from yours truly. i even made a new icon for the occasion <3)
the other day i had the bright idea of searching the wayback machine for "lawrence dane" - i've searched the internet archive's website on a regular basis but never thought to do a text search in the wayback machine itself, and was curious whether i might be able to find anyone else talking about him on old sites. (when i explained this to my partner they laughed and were like "no, i think you're the only one who's ever cared this much" lol.)
the first result for my search was lawrencedane.com which would have been quite the coincidence if it wasn't him - going through the site captures it became clear the domain had been taken over by spam squatters before going down entirely, so i went back to the beginning. the domain was registered in 2002, and an early crawl revealed that it had indeed likely been his personal website. but it was mainly based on flash, so i couldn't view it on a regular browser - my only confirmation was a string of text at the bottom of the broken content that read "photo gallery / credits / biography / contacts / what's new".
after some trial and error that night i got the archived captures to be functional! i tried the ruffle extension and it worked long enough to load the home page and verify it as dane's site, but refreshing the page somehow broke the extension so i had to use a portable flash-friendly version of firefox kindly shared via reddit here. that worked much more reliably and i was able to take screenshots of a 2003 crawl - and record the flash animations, lol.
this site interface is SO dated and so charming to me. the central photo is a then-recent headshot portrait, not from any of his roles. clockwise from bottom left the other images are from "the saint: teresa" (1963), "bear island" (1979), "the virginian: the wind of outrage" (1968), and possibly a cropped-out still from "running" (1979) or "a question of the sixth" (1980), since he wears a baseball cap in those. the quote is ecclesiastes 9:11 from the king james version, which speaks to his christian upbringing - though he most likely would have been familiar with the douay-rheims version growing up as a catholic, not the kjv. i already knew he wasn't a terribly strict catholic as an adult, based on anecdotes from gordon pinsent and other evidence here and there, so this isn't surprising but still interesting to me. that isn't his signature, btw, that's just a font.
the only pages i could successfully access with the portable browser were the home page, photo gallery, biography, and contacts. none of the crawls before the domain expired in 2004 returned working versions of the updates page or credits page. most of the photos in the gallery were broken in every crawl - i could only locate three functional thumbnails and only one of those could actually be used to access a larger image. the gallery page did not have any animations.
as fate would have it, the sole working image was for his breakout role in "shadow of a pale horse". i'll reproduce it below (for some reason it was saved as a gif on his site??) but you'll def see it again when i write about that production in depth.
either he got the date wrong, since pale horse didn't air until january 1960, or filming was done two years before it aired! either way it's such an endearing caption.... and of course the image is of the moment before he gets hanged lol.
the headshot thumbnail is publicity for an episode of "for the record" in 1981 where he played a cop; i've seen it in newspapers. the last thumbnail.... i truly have no idea. the url for it is women2.html which is not helpful lol (all the other images used numbers like 26 or 12). it doesn't look like a movie poster, though it might be for the female-directed anthology that "julia" was in? my other best guess at the moment is that it's some art he made??
i'd like to think he wrote the biography himself, since he wrote his own obituary and the inconsistent capitalization/punctuation doesn't feel like an agent handled it lol. it's sweet and has some interesting details in its phrasing.
he describes his early roles as "introverted and intense", but in a 1965 interview it was said that he "very nearly became typecast in his native land in low mentality parts" - whether that was the reporter paraphrasing him or making an editorial comment is difficult to say. an interesting divergence in perspectives here either way.
"legend of lovers" is another name for "point of departure" - i was so shocked for a moment since the alternative title made me think he'd been cast as some kind of casanova! but i found this listing for the source play that gives both titles and cleared that up pretty quickly. a little disappointing but oh well.
the phrasing with "rituals" makes it sound like he hadn't produced and acted in the same film before, which isn't true - "only god knows" saw him both producing and acting in 1974. but that film was a box office bomb and in the 1976 macleans profile he said that the failure sent him into a depression, so that might be at least part of why he doesn't mention it in the biography. then again, "nothing personal" seems to have also been a bomb from what i've read but he includes it in his highlights list. maybe that one was less, well, personal? he doesn't name the film he directed either, and i haven't watched "heavenly bodies" all the way through yet since there's no captions but it doesn't seem as though it was well-received at the time so that's probably why it's not named lol. i do like that he still valued the experience enough to list it in his biography.
if he means the "more than 100 television shows" were between 1958 and 1960 alone then that would mean he has a ton of uncredited/background appearances out there - even if we extend that time frame up to 1963 his filmographies that i've been able to find certainly is not over a hundred items long by then. i wonder what he might have been extras in.... it's a shame the credits page isn't recoverable because i'd love to compare it to the ones currently out there.
the last working page is contact information - his agents at the time, and...his PERSONAL EMAIL. I'M SO SAD THE DOMAIN HAS BEEN DEAD FOR SO LONG BECAUSE WHAT IF THE EMAIL WORKED..... WHAT IF SOMEONE STILL CHECKED IT.... WHAT IF I'D BEEN INTO HIM WHEN I WAS 13 OR 14................ actually it's probably for the best i wasn't but anyway.
i did try emailing the vancouver agency office with a research request, since i found their website, but i don't expect a response. still, it'll be cool if i can talk to anyone there about him. i would have started with the toronto agent, but when i was looking her up it seems as though she and her brother are embroiled in some kind of criminal investigation that started last year.... no idea if she was still representing dane after he retired from acting in 2017 or so, and she's disavowed involvement in whatever financial misdoings her brother is accused of. sooo it's probably safe to say she's going to be hard to get ahold of lmfao. i might try in the near future, though, since i did locate a linkedin page for her and a couple other possible avenues of contact.
i'm most disappointed by the broken gallery but also by how the "what's new" section can't be retrieved - what if he'd written it himself? how professional were the updates? we'll never know now, i guess, but i'm still glad i was able to view working pages at all. and the pale horse photo is a terrific find - i haven't yet seen any promotional images for it even with all the articles about it i've located. this site is a real time capsule with how reliant on flash it is; i don't think that made a significant difference with what could and couldn't be retrieved, but i could be wrong.
i'm very grateful that tools like the wayback machine exist. the work that the internet archive does is vital; you never know what might be important to preserve down the line. within the past century there's been a shift in realizing the value of seemingly mundane source material (laurel thatcher ulrich's "a midwife's tale" is only one of the more notable examples, and that's as recent as 1990!) and i hope that this increased awareness will continue to apply to work in the field of digital history as well as cultural studies on a broader scale.
a side note: recently someone on tumblr found a post i made collecting some favorite screenshots of him and reblogged it with the following comments as tags: "the fun part of looking up obscure movies is that I'll find out what random actors are peoples blorbos" "like yes good for you lawrence dane lover" LMAO on the one hand i felt very much like someone had picked up a rock and exposed my bug self to the light jhdskfsdg but on the other this is a good reminder to me of the material value to this little project of mine. dane was very involved in the english-speaking canadian film industry at a pivotal time in its history, and to discount his contributions in favor of the people who were more financially or internationally successful is to do a disservice to the cultural history of the toronto arts scene.
(and also i have less noble intentions but y'know. having a respectable justification for my actions doesn't hurt.)
tempural for helping me troubleshoot the video embed coding in this!
(happy pride demon month, here's a new round of homosexuality from yours truly. i even made a new icon for the occasion <3)
the other day i had the bright idea of searching the wayback machine for "lawrence dane" - i've searched the internet archive's website on a regular basis but never thought to do a text search in the wayback machine itself, and was curious whether i might be able to find anyone else talking about him on old sites. (when i explained this to my partner they laughed and were like "no, i think you're the only one who's ever cared this much" lol.)
the first result for my search was lawrencedane.com which would have been quite the coincidence if it wasn't him - going through the site captures it became clear the domain had been taken over by spam squatters before going down entirely, so i went back to the beginning. the domain was registered in 2002, and an early crawl revealed that it had indeed likely been his personal website. but it was mainly based on flash, so i couldn't view it on a regular browser - my only confirmation was a string of text at the bottom of the broken content that read "photo gallery / credits / biography / contacts / what's new".
after some trial and error that night i got the archived captures to be functional! i tried the ruffle extension and it worked long enough to load the home page and verify it as dane's site, but refreshing the page somehow broke the extension so i had to use a portable flash-friendly version of firefox kindly shared via reddit here. that worked much more reliably and i was able to take screenshots of a 2003 crawl - and record the flash animations, lol.
this site interface is SO dated and so charming to me. the central photo is a then-recent headshot portrait, not from any of his roles. clockwise from bottom left the other images are from "the saint: teresa" (1963), "bear island" (1979), "the virginian: the wind of outrage" (1968), and possibly a cropped-out still from "running" (1979) or "a question of the sixth" (1980), since he wears a baseball cap in those. the quote is ecclesiastes 9:11 from the king james version, which speaks to his christian upbringing - though he most likely would have been familiar with the douay-rheims version growing up as a catholic, not the kjv. i already knew he wasn't a terribly strict catholic as an adult, based on anecdotes from gordon pinsent and other evidence here and there, so this isn't surprising but still interesting to me. that isn't his signature, btw, that's just a font.
the only pages i could successfully access with the portable browser were the home page, photo gallery, biography, and contacts. none of the crawls before the domain expired in 2004 returned working versions of the updates page or credits page. most of the photos in the gallery were broken in every crawl - i could only locate three functional thumbnails and only one of those could actually be used to access a larger image. the gallery page did not have any animations.
as fate would have it, the sole working image was for his breakout role in "shadow of a pale horse". i'll reproduce it below (for some reason it was saved as a gif on his site??) but you'll def see it again when i write about that production in depth.
either he got the date wrong, since pale horse didn't air until january 1960, or filming was done two years before it aired! either way it's such an endearing caption.... and of course the image is of the moment before he gets hanged lol.
the headshot thumbnail is publicity for an episode of "for the record" in 1981 where he played a cop; i've seen it in newspapers. the last thumbnail.... i truly have no idea. the url for it is women2.html which is not helpful lol (all the other images used numbers like 26 or 12). it doesn't look like a movie poster, though it might be for the female-directed anthology that "julia" was in? my other best guess at the moment is that it's some art he made??
i'd like to think he wrote the biography himself, since he wrote his own obituary and the inconsistent capitalization/punctuation doesn't feel like an agent handled it lol. it's sweet and has some interesting details in its phrasing.
Lawrence Dane was born in Masson, Quebec and was raised in Ottawa, Ontario. Painfully shy as a child, he took acting lessons to help overcome his shyness. The lessons quickly led to his first professional role, at the age of 18, in the CBC series "The Royal Canadian Mounted Police". He so impressed the director, Paul Almond, that he moved to Toronto where his career blossomed. He appeared in more than 100 television shows, numerous stage plays and added lead roles in "Shadow of a Pale Horse" and "Legend of Lovers" to his growing list of credits. At this point in his career his roles had always mirrored his own character, introverted and intense. This changed when he moved to England in 1963, he began to play the sophisticate. His roles included the lead in the Granada TV film "The Fixers" and parts in the BBC series "Mask of Janus", plus a variety of parts in series like "The Saint", "Sullivan Brothers", and the "Detective". During this time Dane co-wrote a CBC 5-part series titled "The Reluctant Agent".
From England, Dane emigrated to Hollywood where he adopted the persona of the "heavy" for such series as "I Spy", "Mission Impossible", "Felony Squad", "It takes a thief", "FBI" to name a few.
In 1971 Dane returned to Canada to produce the feature film "The Rowdyman" which won much critical acclaim. Acting however, was still his first love and he went on to co-star in the ABC Mystery Theatre production "Dead On Target" and the National Film Board film "The Heat Wave Lasted Four Days". During this time he co-starred in roles in "The Clown Murders", "It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time" and "Find The Lady" starring with actors like John Candy, Anthony Newley, and Mickey Rooney.
In 1976 Dane took on the dual role of producer and actor in the movie "Rituals" co-starring Hal Holbrook.
His long list of acting credits include major motion picture like:
"Running" - with Michael Douglas and Susan Anspach
"Nothing Personal" - with Donald Sutherland and Suzanne Somers
"Bear Island" - with Donald Sutherland and Vanessa Redgrave
"Scanners" - with Jennifer O’Neill and Patrick McGoohan
Lawrence Dane is not only a versatile and talented actor, but has added the roles of writer, producer and director to his list of accomplishments.
he describes his early roles as "introverted and intense", but in a 1965 interview it was said that he "very nearly became typecast in his native land in low mentality parts" - whether that was the reporter paraphrasing him or making an editorial comment is difficult to say. an interesting divergence in perspectives here either way.
"legend of lovers" is another name for "point of departure" - i was so shocked for a moment since the alternative title made me think he'd been cast as some kind of casanova! but i found this listing for the source play that gives both titles and cleared that up pretty quickly. a little disappointing but oh well.
the phrasing with "rituals" makes it sound like he hadn't produced and acted in the same film before, which isn't true - "only god knows" saw him both producing and acting in 1974. but that film was a box office bomb and in the 1976 macleans profile he said that the failure sent him into a depression, so that might be at least part of why he doesn't mention it in the biography. then again, "nothing personal" seems to have also been a bomb from what i've read but he includes it in his highlights list. maybe that one was less, well, personal? he doesn't name the film he directed either, and i haven't watched "heavenly bodies" all the way through yet since there's no captions but it doesn't seem as though it was well-received at the time so that's probably why it's not named lol. i do like that he still valued the experience enough to list it in his biography.
if he means the "more than 100 television shows" were between 1958 and 1960 alone then that would mean he has a ton of uncredited/background appearances out there - even if we extend that time frame up to 1963 his filmographies that i've been able to find certainly is not over a hundred items long by then. i wonder what he might have been extras in.... it's a shame the credits page isn't recoverable because i'd love to compare it to the ones currently out there.
the last working page is contact information - his agents at the time, and...his PERSONAL EMAIL. I'M SO SAD THE DOMAIN HAS BEEN DEAD FOR SO LONG BECAUSE WHAT IF THE EMAIL WORKED..... WHAT IF SOMEONE STILL CHECKED IT.... WHAT IF I'D BEEN INTO HIM WHEN I WAS 13 OR 14................ actually it's probably for the best i wasn't but anyway.
i did try emailing the vancouver agency office with a research request, since i found their website, but i don't expect a response. still, it'll be cool if i can talk to anyone there about him. i would have started with the toronto agent, but when i was looking her up it seems as though she and her brother are embroiled in some kind of criminal investigation that started last year.... no idea if she was still representing dane after he retired from acting in 2017 or so, and she's disavowed involvement in whatever financial misdoings her brother is accused of. sooo it's probably safe to say she's going to be hard to get ahold of lmfao. i might try in the near future, though, since i did locate a linkedin page for her and a couple other possible avenues of contact.
i'm most disappointed by the broken gallery but also by how the "what's new" section can't be retrieved - what if he'd written it himself? how professional were the updates? we'll never know now, i guess, but i'm still glad i was able to view working pages at all. and the pale horse photo is a terrific find - i haven't yet seen any promotional images for it even with all the articles about it i've located. this site is a real time capsule with how reliant on flash it is; i don't think that made a significant difference with what could and couldn't be retrieved, but i could be wrong.
i'm very grateful that tools like the wayback machine exist. the work that the internet archive does is vital; you never know what might be important to preserve down the line. within the past century there's been a shift in realizing the value of seemingly mundane source material (laurel thatcher ulrich's "a midwife's tale" is only one of the more notable examples, and that's as recent as 1990!) and i hope that this increased awareness will continue to apply to work in the field of digital history as well as cultural studies on a broader scale.
a side note: recently someone on tumblr found a post i made collecting some favorite screenshots of him and reblogged it with the following comments as tags: "the fun part of looking up obscure movies is that I'll find out what random actors are peoples blorbos" "like yes good for you lawrence dane lover" LMAO on the one hand i felt very much like someone had picked up a rock and exposed my bug self to the light jhdskfsdg but on the other this is a good reminder to me of the material value to this little project of mine. dane was very involved in the english-speaking canadian film industry at a pivotal time in its history, and to discount his contributions in favor of the people who were more financially or internationally successful is to do a disservice to the cultural history of the toronto arts scene.
(and also i have less noble intentions but y'know. having a respectable justification for my actions doesn't hurt.)
no subject
Wayback machine is great, I didn't even know you could just do a plain text search? I'd just been using it to pop in URLS i already knew... good to know from your post! Maybe I'll do my own ancient cyberstalking on my own time with the resources you've provided to view old flash >:)
no subject