Expert: Barbara L. Baker - 9/3/2006

Question
Dear Madam,

I miss those movies with a charcater named Norman. I remember great moments of fun when Norman was sleeping in bed with a horse, then the floor crashed  and  they fell down scarring the neighbors...In other sequences that I remember he was systematicaly interrupting  someone who was trying to play golf... in others he was running in small car (a toy) from an enemy... Could you please identify the actor? I was trying the internet but I couldn't find the real name or the movies. I think the pictures might be located somewhere in the 80's...
Thnak you!

Answer
Dear Gabriel:  I'm sorry to say that after searching for the past couple of days, I'm not sure what this movie series is.  At first I thought you might be referring to the British "Carry On" films of the 1960s and 1970s, except there was no recurring character named Norman (there only was a screenwriter for the films named Norman), nor was I able to find any with these particular events (and they are in the wrong time frame).

There was a British mini-series called "The Norman Conquests" (three short films from 1978), but the plot descriptions suggested more of a comedy of manners than the slapstick events you described.  There were a couple of TV comedy sitcoms with Norman characters, but otherwise I wasn't able to locate a recurring major character of any comedy film from the 1960s to the 1990s with this name.  Complicating matters, there are hundreds of single films with a character named Norman, so no wonder you weren't able to find the specific films on the internet.

Therefore, to answer this question I'm going to need more information.  How central was this character to the plot? If it is a minor character, I probably won't be able to locate the title nor the actor.  What other plot events can you recall--not just what happened to Norman, but anything that might have happened to the other characters. And can you think of any of the other characters' names?