32. He's Being Ganged Up On By These Mean Little Jerks!

All about Sam Gamgee.

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Sam Gamgee. For
all that Frodo Baggins is the Ringbearer and makes something close to the
ultimate sacrifice for the fate of the world—at least right until the very
last moment—it’s Sam, son of Bag-End’s gardener who seems to only join Frodo
at first to help take care of a new house in Buckland, who ends up being the
key figure in The Lord of the Rings that helps Frodo on the quest and who
remains most grounded in the whirlwind of fates surrounding his steps, down to
having the book’s last words. Thanks to a variety of notable performance
interpretations over the years, especially and most indelibly Sean Astin’s
marvelous turn in the Peter Jackson films, he might just be the most warmly
regarded character as well even beyond the book readers. What is the full
meaning and understanding behind Tolkien’s well-known comment about Sam being
a tribute to his batmen during World War I, and who were the batmen and
private soldiers in general in that conflict? Does the understandable
characterization of Sam as ‘just’ a simple hobbit belie a notable depth
evident even from the start of the book, and how did Tolkien conceive of Sam
as distinct from hobbits in general? What fully went into Astin’s portrayal of
Sam in particular for the films, and how much of it was also something
provided by other key creative forces? And what was the American radio
production team from 1979 exactly thinking when they cast Lucille Bliss as
Sam?

Jared’s
doodle. What
can you see on the horizon, indeed.

Wanna be like Oriana? Here’s how to apply to the Warner Bros.’ Writers
Workshop.

A summary of the Lenny Henry radio
interview with some key quotes.

Willow does have its fanbase,
and this planned new
series could be good.

The Wheel of Time is coming and we await with
interest...

Dune, yes. We quite like it. (Tolkien himself
did not.)

Letter 246 to Eileen Elgar, which
has a lot of background information on Sam and other characters and their
motivations and personalities.

You can find plenty of Sean Astin clips of him portraying Sam out there. As
for the others? Some samples: Roddy
McDowall for Rankin-Bass, Bill
Nighy for the
BBC, Michael
Scholes for Ralph
Bakshi and Lucille
Bliss for NPR/The Mind’s
Eye
(skip ahead to 7:15 in that one).

The famed Tolkien/Sam Gamgee
correspondence. Who knew, indeed?

Shakespeare’s rustic characters were something stock, and indeed were often
termed ‘clowns’ rather than fools or jesters. Here’s a little more about
that.

The Marx quote was from the Communist Manifesto, and indeed, ‘the idiocy of
rural life.’

Our episode on friendship.

More on that hand-holding
moment.

John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great
War is well
worth a read.

Batmen are a thing, and
nothing to do with DC.

Sean Astin’s autobiography There And Back
Again
is a very key read for anyone interested in the Jackson films.

There’s RP, there’s
Cockney and there’s a
whole LOT
else.

You know the potatoes
meme.
And you know the Sean Bean meme too.

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