Hullo there!

[003chan.livejournal.com]

Hullo, my jolly old chapesess (and possibly some chaps)!

I'm not at all new into the fandom but I'm brand new here. I returned to our good ol' Biggles this summer after a few years.
I decided to find out if there was some Biggles LJ community - and there is! So here you have me. The fact that it seems to be mostly female crew here is very refreshing (as well as it is a great cultivating medium for a great pile of slash).

I've been trying to work through all the posts here since yesterday and there really are many great works of fiction as well as some interesting discussions. This one particularly (community.livejournal.com/biggles_slash/5794.html) caught my interest.
So to my (boring) introduction post I decided to attach this kind of survey:

Post a photo of an actor/singer/some guy you know/anyone else, who looks similar as how you imagine any of the Biggles chaps!

You don't need to write their name and whereabouts. Let's just create our own imaginary cast of a "Biggles movie" and compare our  images of them!

As an example I will start:
                                  Ginger                              and                                      Algy


Ginger needs a lot of red dye into his hair (maybe that's why he looks so sad in here :D) and for some reason I always thought that Algy's eyes are blue but it might be probably due to an omission in Czech translation...?




I'm waiting for your (jolly!) comments! Let's have fun!

Comments

[calliope85.livejournal.com]

Hullo! Welcome to the comm., it's always lovely to see new people! And yeah, we do seem to have a *slight* female bias - gosh, anyone would think slash-oriented fandom was predictable ^_^

Awesome idea for a post, and great pictures - I'm especially struck by your Algy, somehow :D It's the expression of adoring resignation. For what it's worth, Algy's eyes are canonically brown (...well, on at least one occasion they're canonically brown, anyway - somewhere in 'Biggles & Co.', I think. Though since W.E. Johns tends to chop and change his canon on a weekly basis, I guess that doesn't mean much ^_^).

My visual imagination is frankly rubbish, so I'm always awful at fantasy-casting things. So long as none of them look like the cast of 'Biggles: Adventures In Time', I guess I'm fairly happy :D The only one which springs to mind is that I might rather like Bertie to be played by Edward Petherbridge in Lord-Peter-Wimsey-silly-ass mode, but I'm damned if I can find a decent picture. Something like this -

though with considerably more silly-assery involved, of course. (icons nabbed from here (http://community.livejournal.com/ogeecons/14635.html#cutid1).)

I'm cogitating on von Stalhein, but I've been watching Adam Adamant recently and my brain is stuck on Gerald Harper c.1965

which isn't quite right, somehow. Not enough irony and steely disregard, perhaps...

[003chan.livejournal.com]

Yay, first answer! Thank you :)

I don't recall reading anything about Algy's eyes in B&Co. It must have disappeared mysteriously of the translation :( I need the English originals, rawr!

The cast of Biggles Adventures in Time... Well :D Biggles wasn't that bad and Ginger was quite fine (could be slimmer though ^^;) but Algy and Bertie=NO!

Thanks for the pictures! I would take your Bertie for von Stalhein a bit ^^ he looks very strict, and the von Stalhein for... Marcel maybe. I have to search for some guy looking like "my" Bertie :D

[calliope85.livejournal.com]

*ponders* I'm pretty sure it's in '& Co.', because it's Algy and von Stalhein's first meeting and there's something about Algy's brown eyes meeting Erich's blue ones and it's all inappropriately romantic :D For some reason it stuck in my mind. For...some reason. um.

I must admit to a certain fondness for Biggles from 'Adventures In Time'. Because he's not really Biggles in any way shape or form, but he's clearly having an awesome time going 'DUDE I GET TO BE BIGGLES, AWESOME'. also because he's in the Petshop Boys video, wtf. Ginger, however, always amuses me greatly. Not just because he's psychotic (though he really really is - it's that bit where Algy and Bertie are storming the convent with revolvers and Ginger's there with, like, *a sub-machine gun* and being utterly terrifying.) It's the way he's ended up with this strange half-cockney accent because he's clearly The Designated Common One, though quite how he came by such an accent in the vicinity of Newcastle is anyone's guess...

Heh, I never thought of Edward Petherbridge as von Stalhein, though I can see what you mean in those pictures - WEJ makes such a point out of VS being dark in 'Flies East', I can't quite imagine him any other way ^_^ The strictness here is partly a side-effect of those pictures, he's eminently capable of upper-class slightly-effete silly-ass-ness when he has to be :D

I shan't get into my ramble here about how none of the illustrators seem to have ever read any of the descriptions of von Stalhein, as there are a sum total of two illustrations in the whole canon where he actually looks even the slightest little bit like his descriptions in the text. *le sigh* Poor Erich...

[003chan.livejournal.com]

I will make an "eye colour research" in B&Co. :D

Well, for me the movie was quite a good laugh. All the '80s stuff and the Biggles canon was so crippled that it couldn't be taken seriously. There were some good moments though. For example the first meeting of Biggles and a helicopter: "If you can fly Sopwith Camel..." :D
Right now I'm trying to make subtitles for the movie, so my friends could watch it as well. There's quite a big Biggles fanbase in Czech!

Some Czech books have quite nice illustrations but some are really horrible, I mean artistically horrible, bleh.
My favourite illustration of Ginger (from Biggles in the Jungle)

[003chan.livejournal.com]

I knew it! There is an omission in the translation.
The sentence from B&Co. goes "Algy's eyes met the cold glare of steely blue eyes (of vS)."
*cries* This is not fair! Such a fundamental information :D :D

[calliope85.livejournal.com]

That's so bizarre! The English has 'How long Algy stared he never knew. His brown eyes met the cold blue ones of his vis-a-vis unflinchingly...' What a random piece of information to leave out of the translation :S

[003chan.livejournal.com]

Whut O= it's so different! There is "Algy watched the man closely for a long while. His eyes met..."
I seriously need the English books!

[id-ten-it.livejournal.com]

g'day!

pleased to meet you- and a good, meaty comment to get me thinking as well!

The problem with Johns is he isn't consistant, and I'm sure Algy changes eye colour and also relative height. To begin, Biggles and he were about the same height, but Algy's been getting taller. I can't see his mother letting him leave too early, so I'd say he would have been at least 17 when he joined Biggles, not much time left for a late growth spurt.

Anyway. Algy's in my current icon, I hope, and I've appropriated Raymond, in his most grandfatherly figure for another, but when I get some decent ideas for the others I'll let you know.

[003chan.livejournal.com]

Hello!

As a proper female fan I've always searched for any lines about their looks but there isn't many and the translation complicates it all. These days my English is on a level, where I can read books without using a dictionary but I have only three of them in English (*now in a state of ebaying some cheaper ones*).

I think I tried to make up my mental images of them using the little I knew from the books - which means the mostly used characteristics (example: Biggles has hazel eyes (many times) + Biggles has grey eyes (two times) = Biggles has hazel eye, yeah!). I suppose most of you have read it in English, so you can correct me on this.

Looking forward to the pictures from you :)

[prudence-dearly.livejournal.com]

Hello and welcome!

I LOVE fantasy casting. I'm going to have to think hard about the characters -- I have a poor memory for details of appearance (apart from obvious things like Bertie's monocle), and tend to have an image in my mind that just sort of grows spontaneously.

However, I do think that Stephen Campbell Moore approaches something of how I imagine Biggles.


(crossing my fingers the picture posts correctly)

He's quite small and slim in stature... I'm not sure that he's quite "hard" enough for my image of an older Biggles. That's part of the problem -- apart from canonical chopping and changing of their appearance, there's guaging the boys' ages anytime after WWII.

I love your two pics! Ginger looking young and sullen (taking a break from being chirpy and enthusiastic; maybe Biggles has just scolded him for being silly), and Algy looking ever so dashing and handsome!

[003chan.livejournal.com]

That's a good Biggles! I like him!
It's tough to choose somebody for Biggles, that's why I only included Algy and Ginger for the start. I had them picked up for some years already. I'm glad you like them.
There's a lack of ginger-headed actors around, what a pity!
Algy has to be dashing and hand(awe)some :D I particularly like the picture I posted, because it gives the right mood of him.
I have quite a good mental image of Bertie but I don't know anybody, who would resemble him. Have to search...

[prudence-dearly.livejournal.com]

I'm trying really hard to resist the urge to spend HOURS on the internet right now finding pictures of my fantasy Biggles cast :) I'll mull it over at work tomorrow.

Algy has to be dashing and hand(awe)some
Heeee.

[003chan.livejournal.com]

:D oh, sorry. I didn't mean to steal those hours of your life! It's a good entertainment for hours at work though ;)

Older version of Ginger maybe?(be a good picture and post yourself finally!)


...and a random somebody, who could that be? (Pardon me ladies, I couldn't resist, it's my favourite photo.)

[003chan.livejournal.com]

Elenhein asked me to send her suggestion of Ginger, so here you go.