RENDEZVOUS

Full Name:	Nikki Angell
Nationality:	French
Organization:	None
Occupation	Other - Nightclub Owner

Creator:	Unknown
Time Span:	1952 - 1952

ABOUT THE SERIES

Nikki Angell is a nightclub owner and singer.

She is not officially an operative for anyone but she once was and now when trouble walks through her doors into her place of business, the apparently quite popular nightclub in Paris known as Chez Nikki, she does not hesitate to get involved. This club of hers must be an interesting place to visit because it seems to be filled with Angell devotees, as one reviewer at the time put it: international thugs and thugees hover about her like moths around a candle, and eventually get their little wings singed".

Angell has quite a history in the trouble field, from what we are told [and while we are not told much, exactly, it does apparently speak volumes]. The activities take place in the early days of the 1950s and memories of the hardships and dangers faced by the former members of the Underground, of which Angell was a starring player, remain vivid. Angell is in her early 30s when we meet her which makes her in the early 20s when the War started and she began her dangerous clandestine activities.

She is interesting in that she is very well known due to her place of entertainment and her skills as a sultry singer of love songs at that establishment - and at the same time she is a woman of mystery because most of what she did during the War with in the Resistance is unspoken. A knowing look and perhaps a wry, sad smile at a comment said a lot without saying anything. She has made Paris, France her home now but her accent tags her as Eastern European. [Note: while the actress was born and raised in Hungary and her accent was definitely Hungarian, the character of Nikki was apparently not pinned down.]

When she is not running the nightclub or, as one reviewer put it, offering it "as a place of refuge [for] those who have run out of hope", she likes to spend time with a handsome American foreign correspondent (name unknown). Considering how beautiful Angell is and how seductive her nature and her experiences make her, throwing in the seductive voice when she sings or whispers in one's ear, it is no wonder that newsman, and lots of other men, keep coming back to Chez Nikki.

TELEVISION


Number of Episodes:	4
First Appearance:	1952
Last Appearance:	1952
Network:	ABC

REGULAR CAST
Ilona Massey	Nikki Angell [ 1 ]
David McKay	Reporter Boyfriend [ 1 ]

So little is known about the adventures in this series largely because, IMHO, the network it was on, ABC, was still very much a "hey, me too!" entity. It had been doing alright on radio for a time but television was a hard nut to crack. It was expensive to set up stations around the country to be able to broadcast in the medium and the number of households actually having a television set was still small. Since it was advertising dollars which paid for, everything, if not enough ears and/or eyes were out there to be tempted by those ads, smart and penny-wise sponsors used their dollars elsewhere.

Also a major factor was that the company was also in constant ownership turmoil. Who owned what stations, either financially or with the approval of the fairly new FCC, was monthly in flux.

So, when a "small" television network with boss issues tried to get not too many people to watch a show, the odds were not very good. That resulted in not many episodes made and not very much reason to keep available for future audiences any of those episodes.

For research into this almost unheard of series, I scoured dozens and dozens of newspapers from that period (thanks to newspapers.com) and the amount of data I was able to find was paltry at best.

I did find one snippet announcing the end of the series saying that it "has closed after only four weeks. A sponsor did not materialize during the tryont".


1	The Blue Express Episode 1-1, first aired 02/13/1952 Director: Unknown Writer: Unknown Nikki Angell finds herself involved in a case dealing with atomic secrets. "A British atom scientist was escaping with a Russian spy to the Iron Curtain via the Blue Express to Switzerland. Ilona naturally got aboard in time to disarm the two."

2	"Heroin Smuggling" Episode 1-2, first aired 02/20/1952 Director: Unknown Writer: Unknown Nikki Angell has nothing but contempt for a large-scale heroin smuggler and decides it falls to her to bring him down. She does this through seduction though the most the man gets for his infatuation is to kiss her shoulders.

3	Unknown Title Episode 1-3, first aired 02/27/1952 Director: Unknown Writer: Unknown [plot unknown[

4	"Death of an Agent" Episode 1-5, first aired 03/05/1952 Director: Unknown Writer: Unknown "A British intelligence agent is liquidated and Nikki walks into a trap while trying to avenge his death."

MY COMMENTS

GRADE

My Grade: -

YOUR OPINIONS

Be the first to leave your own comments about this series.

Tell us what you think of the series. Give your grade and comments.

Your Grade:
Your Comments:

To give your opinion, you must be logged in.