Replica St. Eligius Snow Globe

The Queen Of Snow Globes has created a replica of the snow globe from the series finale.

The Queen of Snow Globes's
stunning replica of the
legendary series finale
artifact.

Thanks to Jim Mitchell for this tip... Leah Andrews, the Queen of Snow Globes, has described a custom snow globe project that was requested of her: a reproduction of the snow globe from the final scene of St. Elsewhere's series finale.

Follow the link above to read about her process for creating the snow globe. The video link in the article was to my YouTube video of the final scene, which perished along with the rest of the videos in my channel. As you may know, the final scene of St. Elsewhere depicts autistic child Tommy Westphall staring into a snow globe containing the St. Eligius hospital building, and it is suggested that the entire series was a figment of Tommy's imagination as he spent his days staring into the globe.

Want one for yourself? According to her comment at the bottom of the post, the Queen of Snow Globes can duplicate her work on this gem as a custom project for $1000 USD.

On Call, Vol. 1, No. 2 - From the Discharge Department: St. Elsewhere's Last Episode, or "Bobby Ewing Takes a Shower with Rosebud"

From On Call: The Official Newsletter of the St. Elsewhere Appreciation Club, July 1997, volume 1, number 2.

Tom Fontana
Photo courtesy Butler Library,
Buffalo St. College

In the annals of television there have been many memorable swan songs. M*A*S*H brought tears from viewers, while Mary Tyler Moore elicited watery eyes from the characters themselves. Newhart took us back to Bob Newhart's bed with Emily, and Dallas allowed two devils to meet in one room. But no series ending has touched off so much debate as did St. Elsewhere's Episode #137, "The Last One". In the series finale, the camera zooms in on a close-up of Tommy Westphall's snow globe, only to reveal a model of St. Eligius inside - implying that the entire six season run had been a figment of an autistic child's imagination. But creating the snow globe concept wasn't the writers' first option, nor did it come easily.

TOM FONTANA
"First of all you should know that we went through a whole series of alternative endings, and they were pretty crazy--the ones we came up with. Such as Auschlander and Westphall having a conversation in Daniel's office, like they've had so many times before. And outside the window there was suddenly a bright flash."

ON CALL
"Not a nuclear war?"

TOM FONTANA
"Yes (laughs) and Auschlander says to Westphall 'What the hell was that?' Then the screen goes black. So you can see how much better the snow globe was already (laughs). The second one I remember is we had a scene where Westphall called Morrison into his office and was kind of ruminating about his life, and he admitted to Morrison that he was the second gunman in the Kennedy assassination, and that his whole life had been about paying the world back for killing Kennedy. So anyway, we got to the snow globe idea."

JOHN TINKER (Writer/Producer, St. Elsewhere / Executive Producer, Chicago Hope)
"I was there when the idea was born. I know it was not my idea., but I know exactly where we were standing in the hallway -- and it's my recollection we thought about it about two years prior to actually doing it. It wasn't something that we sat around and said, 'How can we end it?' We had had that notion a couple of years before the show went off the air, and I'm not sure we were specifically banking it for the end of the show."

TOM FONTANA
"Now, for me, I don't know if it was because the character was named Tommy, but I always took it very personally, and I loved the face that the entire show had existed in the imnd of a little boy named Tommy (laughs)."

But not everyone loved the idea. NORMAN LLOYD, who is a good friend and admirer of Tom Fontana's, voiced his concern at the outset.

NORMAN LLOYD
"I said to Tom, 'You're out of your mind!' 'No, it's great!', Tom said. So that's it, I had a point of not interfering in these things, and there was no reason for me to, but on this I saw the whole Orson Welles imitation here, and it just didn't sit right. I didn't understand it. What we were saying to an audience was 'everything we've shown you for six years didn't exist; it was in the mind of an autistic child, so I felt bad. I felt it was a cheat. I'm sorry to say that, but my love for this show is unequaled... I really objected to that last episode."

BONNIE BARTLETT and BILL DANIELS agreed.

BONNIE BARTLETT
"To me I didn't like it because it made the whole thing so confusing... that the whole thing was a figment of this boy's imagination in his autistic mind, and that Norman and Eddie were suddenly different people - I mean, it was just weird. My feeling about the last show was the that the writers wanted to do it, and they deserved to be allowed to do it. I did not personally like it, but I didn't care. I mean they (the writers) had done so much for us, and so much for the show that I thought 'if this is what they want to do -- OK, they have a right'."

BILL DANIELS
"I didn't much care for it, except these people keep coming to me over the years and saying how much they like it. There were people who felt it was very original, and wasn't a put down... just a very original way of ending it a la Orson Welles. I didn't buy it myself. It seemed too engineered and too conceptual - but it was at the end an dyou have to accept that some people hated it and some people loved it."

Like Norman, Bonnie, and Bill, ED BEGLEY, Jr. also had great respect for the writing team, but Begley's critique was more positive.

ED BEGLEY, JR
"It was very interesting and offbeat, that's for sure, but I would expect no less from them. That's the way they conducted the show from the beginning."

MARK TINKER offered insight into Fontana's approach. "Tom's take on writing is never let anybody get comfortable, always keep them on their heels, and surprise people to the point of shocking them sometimes, just because the status quo bores him.

"Incidentally, I though that the last episode was terrific! I don't feel any lack of closure, I loved the little twist on it. I hated that we were compared to the 'shower' episode of Dallas, and some people felt cheated by that whole thing with the kid. But for a unique way to go out, that was pretty cool."

To this day, Tom Fontana openly accepts responsibility for series television's most controversial ending, which for him, represented a personal challenge.

TOM FONTANA
"Somehow in my mind, what I thought it did was it said to not only the audience, but it said to us as writers on the show, that this was only a fantasy. It wasn't real, and as much as it was a part of my life, I kind of needed to let it go, and put it in its proper perspective... which was, after all, that it was just a television series. It wasn't life, which was a very hard thing for me to do."

And so, in 1988, Tommy Westphall (and his alter ego Tommy Fontana) turned our world upside down by telling us that St. Elsewhere never really existed, but if that is so, then perhaps young Westphall didn't exist either. Perhaps Daniel Auschlander slumped over his desk, lapsed into a coma, and dreamed that Tommy had imagined everything. Perhaps Auschlander is now recovered and serving as CEO Emeritus at St. Eligius. Well, we can only hope. But what we do know is that Tom Fontana is much too modest about the show's impact. St. Elsewhere was NOT "just a television series"... It was and is an American institution that has helped to improve our quality of life, influence medical careers, and even save lives. And those are realities that can't be shaken away in any size globe.

Originally produced by Longworth Communications.

St. Elsewhere's Series Finale: The Legendary Snow Globe Ending

Video of St. Elsewhere's classic ending: the whole series was imagined by Tommy Westphall, Donald's autistic son.

Tommy Westphall (Chad Allen), the real creative force
behind St. Elsewhere.

It's been great to actually get some feedback from readers of this site! I can say that this post is here by popular demand (i.e. two requests).

This is the classic ending from the series finale, "The Last One", which originally aired May 25, 1988. I've posted the clip on YouTube. (May be blocked in some countries, particularly those that get Channel 4.)

Yes, they did the it-was-all-a-dream ending...sort of. During the finale, we get some emotional closure for most of the show's characters, including Dr. Wayne Fiscus (Howie Mandel), who has completed his residency, Dr. John Gideon (Ronny Cox), who has quit after a disastrous run as the CEO of St. Eligius, and Dr. Donald Westphall (Ed Flanders), who has returned to St. Eligius with his autistic son Tommy (Chad Allen) to reclaim his post as boss after spending most of season six in New Hampshire.

Donald is listening to opera music in the office of long-time colleague and opera buff Dr. Daniel Auschlander (Norman Lloyd), who had passed away earlier that day. (In "Time Heals", we see how they met. In 1945, an angry, teenaged Donald Westphall calls the hospital's new Jewish doctor a "kike," earning him a slap from Father McCabe.) Tommy is watching snow fall through the window.

Then we see an exterior shot of the hospital, and we get a new perspective. Tommy is sitting on the floor of an apartment, holding a snow globe in his hands. We learn that "Auschlander" is his grandfather, and his father, "Westphall", is a construction worker, whose crew just finished the twenty-second storey on a building. (This was the 22nd episode of the season.)

Turns out Tommy spends most of his time staring into the snow globe, which contains a miniature building inside that looks an awful lot like St. Eligius, and his father wonders what he sees in there all day. We viewers know the answer--he imagines his father and grandfather as the heads of the hospital in the snow globe, and he apparently dreamed up a fifty-two year history of the place.

I'll write more about the ending later, and another time, I'll share my thoughts on the implications of the "Tommy Westphall Universe", the intertextual phenomenon that logically follows from this scene's revelation. For now, enjoy the clip!

30 Rock Finale Includes St. Elsewhere Shout-Out

30 Rock finishes its run with a nod to St. Elsewhere's legendary snow globe ending.

St. Elsewhere has been getting some attention in the press again, this time courtesy of Tina Fey and 30 Rock. Apparently (I don't watch the show), 30 Rock wrapped up its run with a scene where Liz Lemon's granddaughter pitches a show based on her grandmother's crazy adventures to network president Kenneth (Jack McBrayer), as if the whole thing was a recollection. Kenneth holds a snow globe, a nod to St. Elsewhere's legendary ending which suggested the whole thing took place in the imagination of an autistic child staring into a snow globe.

This Newsday article is the most Elsewhere-centric one I could find out there:
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/tv-zone-1.811968/30-rock-finale-the-st-elsewhere-newhart-connection-1.4545777

St. Elsewhere in Entertainment Weekly, on Good Morning America

Entertainment Weekly's "Reunions" issue brings together twelve cast members for a group interview featured on Good Morning America.

Tommy Westphall (Chad Allen) dreams up another episode.

With the 30th anniversary of the debut of St. Elsewhere fast approaching, the show is in the news. Here's a link to Entertainment Weekly's feature on St. Elsewhere in their third annual "Reunions" issue, titled "'St. Elsewhere' cast reunion: 'It was a show that changed television'." That quote comes courtesy of David Morse, from the cast interview with Good Morning America's John Quinones, which you can watch here.

This article, "'St. Elsewhere' cast reunites, thanks to Entertainment Weekly", is a transcript of the group interview. This one, "'St. Elsewhere' cast reunion: Cast members reflect on that controversial snow-globe ending'," delivers exactly what the title says, with musings from Chad Allen, William Daniels, Bonnie Bartlett, David Morse, Eric Laneuville, Christina Pickles, Ed Begley Jr., Howie Mandel, Mark Harmon, Cynthia Sikes, Norman Lloyd, and Stephen Furst.

Update, November 7, 2012: Here's the video from ABC on YouTube:

The Pop Culture Game Show

St. Elsewhere... Where TV went to get pomo, meta, and intertextual.

I have to give credit for a lot of what I'm going to write in this blog (if I keep it up) to professor Robert Thompson, who, if you're going to judge based on who most often gets called to be the expert academic analyst on TV shows about TV, is a leading authority among academics who study television, or in particular, "quality television". Here's another scholar's take on term "quality television", and why he doesn't like it. My opinion is that the "quality television" label is historically situated, and is not just a relational term, but cannot be used as a category beyond the specific time period in which it originated. The TVscape continues to evolve, and old labels and approaches don't apply the way they used to.

After falling in love with St. Elsewhere when I was in high school, I ordered Robert Thompson's book Television's Second Golden Age from Amazon because, according to my web research, it was the only book out there with any significant information about the show. That's probably still the case, and it was published in 1996. The book has a whole chapter devoted to St. Elsewhere, and one to Hill Street Blues as well. What I learned about the show in this book has had a significant impact on how I've experienced the series.

Thompson makes a good case that St. Elsewhere was more than simply "Hill Street in a hospital." The thing that pushed it into a new realm was its writing. The writers took great pleasure in making references to pop culture, particularly television shows. Watching the show was like a dramatic pop-culture game show, and you played by spotting the puns and references. "Intertextuality", or making references to fiction outside of itself, had been around in stories for a long time, but St. Elsewhere took it to extremes never seen before in television, and it's unlikely that any show will attempt to do anything like that again, lest it be accused of trying to re-invent the wheel (a wheel that today's audiences would likely have no interest in).