The episode 'The Magic Camera' of the TV series, 'Fantasy Island' first went on air in January 1982. That magic camera, like a Polaroid instant camera, developed its own film but the photograph always showed what was going to happen before the event happened. Mr Roarke pointed out, "The camera doesn’t lie. Instead it may tell you something you rather not know."
In November 1985, Jon Mills of the House Speaker's Advisory Committee on the Future told a panel of over 50 people including lawmakers, industrialists, businessmen, futurists, economists, market researchers and technologists, "The most certain thing about the future is it's almost impossible to predict. (Florida) has a feeling of anticipation for the future but … we're very much in uncharted waters.
"I asked this group to be visionaries and to share with their subcommittees predictions of the unpredictable. A group like ours has a need to do more than 5-year projections and 20-year prognostications. We always seem to be working through our future and somebody does something like invent the wheel, … the wireless, … air-conditioning."
In 1941, Edward R. Dewey, the former economist with the U.S. Commerce Department founded the Foundation for the Study of Cycles. With a yearly budget of $200,000, the foundation tried to predict the future. Insisting the understanding of life cycles were as important as "the discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe," Edward Dewey made the point, "For if wars and depressions are not caused by generals, businessmen or politicians ... but are the results of – or at least triggered by – natural physical forces in our environment, we are on the threshold of a completely different and extraordinary way of life for all mankind."
Edward Dewey learnt about cycles in 1929, when he was assigned to find the cause of the stock market crash. As mentioned, cycles had been observed since biblical times.
Zoologist Dr John Burns became executive director of the foundation in 1980. He told Mary MacVean of the Associated Press, "We're interested in establishing the nature of cycles and how they behave and eventually finding the cause. Certainly, when one considers that all humans have these biological clocks and cycles, then you can get into the area of the treatment of diseases, the timing of development from infancy to death.
"We are enthusiastic and we are relentless but we try not to be blind in our recognition of everything alleged as being true. We work strictly empirically. We might look for a particular cycle. That doesn't mean it's going to be there. Whether or not people are interested in cyles, they can't escape the fact that they are ruled by cycles in their own biology. In biology they say one characteristic of living things is that they are made up of cells. There has been quite a movement lately to add to the basic characteristics that they have circadian clocks or cycles."
On 'Fantasy Island', Mr Rourke reminded, "Once a fantasy has begun it must be played out to its own inevitable conclusion." Ricardo Montalban had stated, "What is appealing is the idea of attaining the unattainable and learning from it. Once you obtain a fantasy, it becomes a reality, and that reality is not as exciting as your fantasy. Through the fantasies you learn to appreciate your own realities.
"Was he (Mr Roarke) a magician? A hypnotist? Did he use hallucinogenic drugs? I finally came across a character that works for me. He has the essence of mystery, but I need a point of view so that my performance is consistent. I now (in 1978) play him 95% believable and 5% mystery. He doesn't have to behave mysteriously; only what he does is mysterious."
Between 1985 and 1987, Ricardo Montalban could be seen on 'The Colbys' playing Sable Colby's confidant Zachary Powers. Reliable sources at the American Broadcasting Company told 'Soap Opera Digest' during a photo session in 1986, Ricardo and Stephanie Beacham "set off sparks without even touching one another!" At the time, Ricardo told David Church, "I don’t dare dream anymore. Hollywood made me become realistic. It killed the dreamer in me.
"But it didn’t kill my enthusiasm or my optimism. I’m always optimistic and what I want more than one great role is to keep working until the day I drop dead. I was born in a small town in northern Mexico. I was always raised on ranches, with horses, with my feet on the ground – a wonderful childhood. The greatest entertainment, however, were the movies. I visualized America as a land of long big houses and bright clean streets. I began to equate the idea of Hollywood with the Garden of Eden."
