Fans discuss which actor originally played George's father Frank Costanza before Jerry Stiller took the role in syndication reruns.
The WNYW (Channel 5, NY) rerun airing at 7:30 tonight (9/19), the one where George claims to be an architect, showed Phil Bruns as the first appearance of Jerry's TV dad. I had always heard that his footage on this ep had been reshot for syndication with Bruns replaced. What gives?
V
"There is no such thing as accident. It is Fate--misnamed." --title card, Erich Von Stroheim's "The Wedding March," 1928
Close! Right story, wrong Seinfeld father. :-) It was the first appearance of Frank Costanza which was reshot for syndication with Jerry Stiller.
In article , "John Twernbold" wrote:
Right. For comparison, check out Ozmodiar's page at
http://www.springlake.net/ozmodiar/franks.html
Note the change in George's hairline in the bottom images.
On Thu, 20 Sep 2001 05:09:33 GMT, [email] (Mark Mellin) wrote:
But why did they reshoot that scene? Something happened with Georges 1st dad in real life so that it wouldn't be appropriate to show his image on TV or something...? (Just making something up here).
Bye, Mailman
I'm not sure, but I always assumed it for consistency, and for the ease of reshooting. Stiller was available, so they just brought back a couple other actors for the small parts and reshot it. I'm wondering if they didn't redo Jerry's dad in his first appearance because there would have been more scenes to do. This is all just a guess, of course. I'm not sure of the real details or motivation.
They didn't expect to have George's dad to be a regular character, PLUS I think that the original actor(well-known character actor) died or got sick. After introducing Stiller as Frank, things took off, and they decided to reshoot to avoid inconsistencies. However, I did get the original Dad on tape.
×××××××××××××××××××××××××××××× ````````````````````````````````````` WE MUST BE WILLING TO LET GO OF THE LIFE WE HAVE PLANNED,SO AS TO HAVE THE LIFE THAT IS WAITING FOR US.
On Thu, 20 Sep 2001 12:24:37 +0200, Mailman wrote:
My guess is that Jerry Stiller was so popular as Frank Costanza they felt having someone else in the scene would have been too jarring/confusing when people saw it in syndication. The same thing happened with Newman. The first episode with Newman only featured his voice which was done by Larry David. In the syndication version it was redone by Wayne Knight.
Scott
The scenes in which Jerry's original dad appeared occured in Jerry's apartment, which physically changed after the first few episodes (most obvious: the window next to Jerry's desk went from being floor-to-ceiling to a smaller type; also in those early days, Jerry had no bedroom, so there was no hallway to the left of the bathroom door). Reshooting those scenes with a new actor would have required changing the set back to its original appearance, and then changing it back again.
<<<The WNYW (Channel 5, NY) rerun airing at 7:30 tonight (9/19), the one where George claims to be an architect, showed Phil Bruns as the first appearance of Jerry's TV dad. I had always heard that his footage on this ep had been reshot for syndication with Bruns replaced. What gives?>>>
They reshot scenes (for syndication) when Jerry Stiller joined the cast as Frank Costanza, replacing___________________________. (...little help here....)
John Randolph. Art Vandelay wrote in message ...
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