Need info . . . .

[lass]

I need statistical info on our guys.

Birthdate/height/weight/school background . . . . anything you can think of. I'd like show only info & any story info you may have "invented" (just be sure to let me know if it's "Invented")

Need some background stuff for a story I'm working on & don't have the time to watch all the episodes & take notes . . . . I tend to get lost in the story & just WATCH the action. ;D

Thanks all ~ Lass

[MissRedhead]

though an Artie's Angel, I can provide some Jim info

TNOT Lord of Limbo-Jim was aide-de-camp for General Grant at least during the Vicksburg campaign

TNOT Terror Stalked the Town- I believe has Jim's birth-date on the tombstone July 2, 1842

TNOT Amnesiac- you can sorta calculate the weight of both boys (& girl) when they are on the wagon scale

TNOT Double Edged Knife- reached rank of Captain

TNOT Druid's Blood- Jim has some higher education at some university cause he visits his old professor, but dunno what school

[MissRedhead]

As for Artie... *sigh*... oh sorry, where was I?

TNOT Glowing Corpse- well his chemical leeches won't hold over 200lbs... so he weighs less than me

TNOT Skulls- he's an only child

TNOT Lord of Limbo- possibly fought on the side of the Union cause he says to Vautrain "this time your side is going to win"

TNOT Pistoleros- he reached the rank of Captain at some point

TNOT Casual Killer- Jim comments on Artie thinking about returning to the stage actor & Artie plays violin

TNOT Cutthroats- Artie plays piano

that's just to start you off, someone else can pick up now!

[Double Take]

Robert Conrad is 5'9" and I think Ross was 5'11". If I remember correctly RC said his weight during the WWW years was around 164 lbs (pure muscle ;D).

We know that Artemus was an only child, but don't have much info on Jim other than he broke his arm at 10 yrs old.

Artemus had an early career on stage, while Jim was in the cavalry for 10 years. Artemus was also in the cavalry, but we don't know how many years he served or if it was just during the war. Jim did attend a university, but there is no indication that he earned a degree.

That's all I can think of right now.

[California gal]

I've made up "facts" for my stories, but I also try to adhere to what we know, what the others listed above, and...

We know also that Jim was named for his uncle (TNOT Terror Stalked the Town).

Jim appears to dislike rats (TNOT Man-Eating House and TNOT Bubbling Death).

Artie doesn't like to ride long distances. I believe this was mentioned in TNOT Red-eyed Madman and TNOT Poisonous Posey.

Artie also likes good food and wine! I watched Inferno the other day to do the screen caps and had not noticed before how he perused the wine shelves in the cellar where all the explosives were hidden.

Jim has a favorite wine, mentioned in Vicious Valentine--Chateau Rothschild 1846--properly chilled.

Jim is considered an expert with horses - TNOT Skulls - and has trained his horse, shown most vividly in TNOT Iron Fist, but the horse responds to whistles in other episodes.

The horses have no formal names but some of us have created or adopted certain names.

It's kind of amazing what we DO know when they get listed like this!

[California gal]

I'm certain Artie was in the Union Army, per Lord of Limbo, and as mentioned, like Jim, reached the rank of Captain. However, in TNOT Death-Maker, the bad guy refers to Jim as a former major. Don't know where that came from unless it was a brevet rank, which were honorary promotions that didn't mean much post-war.

I am not sure Artie was in the cavalry, given his apparent dislike of long rides. Unless of course his dislike of long rides arose from his time in the cavalry! I think that's something that is up to the fan fiction writer.

Another "disputed" fact is the color of Jim's eyes. If you watch closely (and what Jim's Jewel doesn't?) they vary from gray through blue to shades of green. It seems to depend on the lighting and/or what color outfit he is wearing. I choose to state they are green when it comes to writing about it, but it's something else that's open to preference.

[snish]

I think Cloris says that Jim's eyes are green in Amnesiac, when he wakes up. But someone who knew RC told me flatly that his eyes are blue. It seems that light eye colors don't pick up well on film and may seem to vary. And some people do have variable eye color (hazel).

An interesting fact about RC that applies well to Jim is that he's ambidextrous, can shoot, write, etc. with either hand.

Helpful dates: The TV series adventures take place during the Grant administration, 1869-77. The Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, so they can't cross the country on the train before that. So TNot Inferno isn't earlier than 1869, and it seems that Our Heroes already know each other, although this is the first time they use the train.

We know that the train is given specifically to Jim in Inferno. This is my speculation--It seems that he has the higher status (seniority?) as an agent, which suggests he's been an agent longer although Artie is obviously older. So Artie has done other things with his time, while Jim has probably been in continuous government service since the war.

I like to infer things about Our Heroes from the few facts that we have. For instance, Artie speaks multiple foreign languages like a native, which tells me he's spent time abroad. You just can't speak a language that well without living with it for a while. (Realistically, most people never do, but we don't have to be that realistic!) I can just see young Artemus wandering across Europe, no doubt getting scandalously caught up with a traveling troupe of French actors.

Jim has the typical manly Western skills: riding, shooting, tracking, and such. So I imagine him coming from the frontier. Artie is clearly a city boy.

[lass]

okay . . . on the eye debate ~ I think that RC/JW has blue-green eyes . . . . so it depends on what he is wearing what color they are.
Always thought that JW was ambidextrous . . . . but wondered why he only wore one gun instead of 2 when so many cowboys wore 2 holsters.
Guess i need to start a dossier on these 2 guys . . . . . to keep everything straight ~ lol

[California gal]

Jim displays his ambidexterity (if that's a word) in Human Trigger when he shoots the Cadwallader boys on either side of him at the same time, gun in each hand, with deadly accuracy.

[Artiespet]

Apr 29, 2011 5:30:08 GMT -8 @lass said:

okay . . . on the eye debate ~ I think that RC/JW has blue-green eyes . . . . so it depends on what he is wearing what color they are.
Always thought that JW was ambidextrous . . . . but wondered why he only wore one gun instead of 2 when so many cowboys wore 2 holsters.
Guess i need to start a dossier on these 2 guys . . . . . to keep everything straight ~ lol

Were you in the chatroom a couple of weeks ago when a caller asked Robert what color his eyes were? I thought his response was hilarious. "Why do people keep asking me that? Once and for all my eyes are the prettiest baby blue you'll ever see. There now you know!" I was ROTFL ;D

[rielle]

Okay, as some of you already know, I played around with canon quite a bit in my own stories.

But since the show doesn't tell us a whole lot of things about our agents, I figure there's a lot of leeway to be found. And besides, I was never one for 'canon'... not even canon mass as a child, LOL
What I supplied that I found missing in the series was some familial and some geographical items. Again, these only apply to my stories, in which, all deference to RC, Jim's eyes are still bright green, they only appear to be blue in certain lights and even grey sometimes.
;D

Okay, I basically turned Jim into a version of General George Thomas, commander of the ARmy of the Cumberland during the War. I set his birthplace as Frederick, Maryland and then had him being raised by his maternal grandparents for the most part near Norfolk, Virginia. General Thomas was a Virginian by birth who fought for the Union, and of course so did Jim West.

To provide some extra backstory angst, I also set it up that Jim's mother died when he was quite young, five or six years old, so his grandmother, his widowed father and his grandfather raised him.

I also made Jim a West Point graduate because I just like that idea better. LOL But in order to get him graduated in time to be in the thick of things when the War started, I had to move his birthdate. Actually, I decided the Great Dr. Loveless finally got something WRONG.
I set Jim's birth year in 1840, so he could graduate West Point in the May '61 class. I know we never see Jim wearing a West Point class ring... and he makes a point about the one the fake commander doesn't wear in Firebrand. Thing is in that period, West Pointers wore their class rings on their little fingers and used the design carved into the rings as a seal on their letters. Also, despite its importance, Jim could've lost his... right?

I know we see Jim having a geology professor, and talking about a college he went to, and all that in Druid's Blood, but thats an episode that as a whole imho is better forgotten!

The question of Jim being called a former major in Deathmakers... Actually I think I finally thought of the answer to that quandary... He could have had a 'brevet promotion' to major, meaning a temporary promotion given in the field of battle, for valorous actions, that sort of thing. There was no change of pay grade or anything pragmatic, it was an honor that usually didn't turn into the officer's permanent rank.

And even in the Regular Army there were promotions during the War that didn't stay in place. For whatever reasons George Custer was made a Brigadier General during the War, but went back to being a Colonel afterwards, for the rest of his life.

Artie I made the son of immigrants [as Ross was himself] and had them traveling from Eastern Europe to California, and thereby crossing the Isthmus of Panama, long before there was a canal. So I put Artie's birthplace as San Francisco, but it could have been New York or Chicago. I did this in honor of Ross' own background, as his parents immigrated from Poland when he was an infant. It just felt right to me.

I gave Artie Ross' birthdate, March 22cnd. I woulda given Jim the same day and month as RC but that was seen in 'Terror' as July 2cnd. So I decided against stretching a point any further.

[California gal]

In my stories I decided to cover the info in Druid's Blood by explaining that Jim DID go to college to study archeology with Prof. Robey, attended a year or two (youths often started college much earlier then than now), left to enlist with a number of his classmates, and then never returned--which also happened to many men, in that war and others.

[SpottedPony]

I agree that Artie must have taken the Grand Tour of Europe to have learned to speak the various languages as well as he did. I also think that somewhere in that time worked with a with a gem dealer to learn to identify and value gems and with wine makers to understand everything about wine.

Spotted Pony

[California gal]

Not to mention history and Egyptology and all manner of scientific knowledge.

I think Artie was just one of those guys with a brain that absorbed and retained information. He may not have had to travel or live in Europe to learn those languages. Don't forget, in those days, immigration from Europe was ongoing, and he could have had neighbors and friends who spoke those languages. Again, he might have just been one of those guys who retained what he read and heard.

After all, Ross knew those languages. I haven't read that he spent an inordinate time in Europe.

[snish]

To me, the business of Jim studying archaeology just doesn't fit with most of what we know about him, although we do get flashes of a liberal education from time to time. Like rielle, I see him in a military academy, preferably West Point, ring or no ring. But I think he would leave the academy as soon as war broke out, and get the rest of his education in the field, you might say.

It always surprises me that no one else picks the same hometown for Artie that I do. I think he's a New Yorker, because New York was the biggest, most cosmopolitan city, where he could have met immigrants from everywhere and heard numerous languages when he was a child. I like the idea of him going abroad because he could learn much more about language and culture that way than you can get from a textbook, and in my backstory he returns to the States when war breaks out because he wants to enlist. I imagine him working in a lab for much of the war, inventing new weapons and explosives, then being given a field commission late in the game when the Union was running short of officers. Working in a lab may not seem very exciting, but somewhere he learned a great deal about gadgets and explosives, and that seems to me like a good opportunity.

[California gal]

it is interesting how we each see our heroes, isn't it?

If you've read my stories, I have developed Jim's background much more than Artie's (strange, that! ), having him come from a small upstate NY town, with a fugitive father and a well-meaning but somewhat irresponsible older (half) brother whom Jim felt betrayed him. That was my way of explaining Jim's stoicism.

My explanation for Jim studying archeology was that Prof. Robey more or less "rescued" him from a young life of drifting and he thus admired the professor and wanted to follow in his footsteps. Had not the war interfered--who knows?

As for Artie, I also gave him a small town background, in Michigan. Because they were both Union men, they have to have been from northern states. I felt that had either been born southern, it would have been mentioned, even in a show that gives so little information about their backgrounds. (And of course, I'm a big stickler for canon--it's my raison d'être for even writing about a show!)

The scant background I've developed for Artie is that his grandmother was a famous Russian actress who emigrated to the US with her husband, and Artie got his love of theater from her--as well as her language. As i mentioned before, he would have had neighbors and friends from numerous European countries settling in the area and could have learned the languages from them. Children often pick up languages quickly anyway. His father was a pharmacist, thus his knowledge of chemistry and love of science.

I see Artie as a self-made, self-taught man, without any formal education beyond high school. His love of knowledge as well as his ability to retain that knowledge has given him a wide range of skills. He left home after school (and the loss of both his parents) to join a traveling show, which enhanced his experience and education, seeing the country and all the different ethnicities residing in cities and towns.

With the breakout of the war, he enlisted, eventually was teamed up with Jim West... and the rest is history! (The fact that Sgt. Charley Tobin knew Artie from the war indicates to me that they knew each other and possibly worked together as early as 1862, as I portrayed in my story TNOT Beginning.)

[conansf]

Quote: Were you in the chatroom a couple of weeks ago when a caller asked Robert what color is eyes were? I thought his response was hilarious. "Why do people keep asking me that? Once and for all my eyes are the prettiest baby blue you'll ever see. There now you know!"

Welcome to the wonderful world of NTSC, properly National Television System Committee; known to the rest of the world as Never Twice the Same Colour.
It's the analog television system that is used in most of North America.
The technical issues involved with why the colour is so variable with NTSC, especially in the 60's, is way above my technical expertise so I cribbed this off the net:
NTSC televisions were equipped with a tint control. PAL and SECAM televisions had no need of one. When RCA began commercial TV broadcasting in 1941, TV was strictly a black-and-white affair. Almost immediately, RCA, CBS, and others began working on ways to broadcast in color. The best way would have been to scrap the existing system and start over, but nobody wanted to tell the thousands of TV owners that their sets were suddenly obsolete. The result was a compromise: in 1953, the National Television Standards Committee proposed a standard by which color information could be added to the existing black-and-white broadcast signal. The advantage was that programs broadcast in color could still be seen on black-and-white TVs; the disadvantage was that the images on color TVs would be somewhat muddy and difficult to control.

So to cut a long exposition short, colour varience happened a lot and if you were like the rest of us, you just had to make a best guess. I'd love to get a proper look at some of the marvellously coloured suits the boys wore. What clothes horses, yum!

[Apple]

That is so interesting! Finally an explanation.

[artiesniecewannabe]

About Jim's eye color - I was working my way through the Eye Candy thread and run up on a wonderful close-up of James, very good shot of his eyes. Well worth a look at - page 3, 2nd from the bottom.

My kids have eyes that color; if you look very very closely, there are little flecks of yellow in the iris, which is what brings on the variableness.