Sunday, December 1, 2013

St. Elsewhere Emmy Winners - Ed Flanders, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, 1983

A video clip featuring Ed Flanders' Emmy-winning performance from St. Elsewhere's first season.

I'll be getting back to the St. Elsewhere Appreciation Club newsletters soon, but I'm inspired to edit together clips again, and this time around we feature St. Elsewhere's other Emmy winner from the show's inaugural season--the late, great Ed Flanders, who received his third Emmy for his portrayal of hospital administrator Dr. Donald Westphall.

Dr. Westphall (Ed Flanders) stands up to Mr. O'Connor
(Dick O'Neill), local violent bigot.
I don't actually know for sure that this is the episode for which he was nominated; I'm actually judging by the selection of clips they chose for the fifth-season clip show, "Good Vibrations", which seemed to pay particular attention to the Emmy-winning episodes. Regardless, this episode always stands out to me as one of my favorite Westphall moments--where Donald really kicks some ass. Not literally, but he certainly would have...

These scenes are from the episode, "Monday, Tuesday, Sven's Day", which concluded a two-episode story arc about patient Kevin O'Connor (David Elliott), a high-school student who is admitted to the hospital with severe injuries from a beating. He and his older brother (Michael Madsen), claim that they were beaten by a group of black teens, and the incident touches off a wave of racial violence between local black and white youths.

However, guilt overwhelms the young O'Connor, who confesses that the story had been fabricated to protect their father (Dick O'Neill), a bigot who beat his son after learning that his progeny had befriended a young black girl at his integrated high school. When Westphall learns what happened, he knows he has no legal recourse to prevent the teenager from remaining under his father's care.

So when the elder O'Connor confronts Westphall about interfering in his family's business, Donald doesn't hold back. Here's Emmy-winner Ed Flanders, David Morse, David Elliott, Christina Pickles, William Daniels, Michael Madsen and Dick O'Neill in "Monday, Tuesday, Sven's Day".

2 comments:

  1. Unfortunately, the video in this post as well as the others in the previous post about Emmy-winners has been blocked by Fox due to copyright issues.
    In spite of that, I always enjoy reading these posts about one of my favorite television shows of all time. Keep up the great work Daniel.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've reposted it elsewhere... We'll see how long it lasts.

      Delete

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