I was a little bit out of the loop from the Sons of the Desert in 1992, as the Towed in a Hole Tent, of which I was a 12-year member, had become inactive and I wasn’t even getting the official publication any longer. I had to rely on my friend Bob to get me the convention registration materials and pass on pertinent info. A few weeks before the convention, he did just that. It seems that Jacquie Lyn’s son had bought her a copy of the VHS tape for Pack Up Your Troubles and on that video included some home movies of Jacquie Lyn playing with Stan’s daughter Lois. Lois had narrated the video and had mentioned that we were looking to find out whatever became of her. She had proven most difficult to locate, as her actual name of Jacquelyn Dufton was unknown at the time.

Jacquie, who was now married and going by the name Jacquelyn Woll responded by sending a note to the address provided. This belonged to my friend Dwain Smith, Corresponding Secretary of the Sons. An invitation was extended to have Jacquie as a guest at the convention and she accepted.

I couldn’t wait to have the photo from Pack Up Your Troubles, which had long hung on our wall, autographed by the one and only Jacquie Lyn. I met up with her the first night of the convention, Sunday, July 12. I found her to be completely down-to-earth and friendly. She didn’t have any airs about her. And why should she? She had retired from the movie business at the age of four. I asked her to become an honorary member of my new tent and she accepted… and remained until her death in 2002.

This photo hung on our wall for years, and I was pleased to finally get it signed

She also signed this photo that Bob had previously gotten signed by Grady Sutton for me

A greeting that came out of our first meeting, This one currently hangs on my basement wall.

More troubles from Pack Up Your Troubles

Mary Gorden joins Jacquie, Babe, and Stan

A brutal scene with Rychard Cramer

Nice publicity still of a scene that never appeared in the film

Jacquie as she appeared in the Our Gang, along with Dick Moore (who has also signed the photo), Kendall McComas, Stymie Beard, and Spanky McFarland

Jacquie Lyn and Jerry Tucker signed this great photo from Prosperity with Marie Dressler and Polly Moran for me in 1994

In the intervening years, we exchanged a few letters, one of which was a through-the-mail interview – which I would print in issue #4 of  my newsletter Dante’s Info (to be seen later). She also signed several additional photos for me through the mail. Despite the fact that subsequently was a special guest at the 1994 Sons convention as well, I only ever got one photo with her. This was taken during our first meeting on July 12. Since the photo was obviously rather blurry, I’m still kicking myself for not getting a better photo when we met again that year.

The first time I met Jacquie Lyn in Las Vegas on Sunday, July 12, 1992

But overall, I feel extremely blessed to have gotten the chance to meet Jacquie Lyn. There was a day when we had no idea where she was, or if I’d ever get such an opportunity to meet her, but I had already repeatedly enjoyed her performance in the films. And once again, that’s all we can do now.

Celebrities of the 1992 Las Vegas Sons of the Desert convention will continue…

Mostly what we came to know about the cat that Denise and the Tange-kids named Niki, was that she was unfailingly sweet. I personally wasn’t all that keen on adding her to our household at the time. I was too partial to my cat Jet, who was nearing the age of two. Nikki appeared to be even younger, although she wasn’t a kitten by any means. But I was protective of Jet’s turf. When my parents agreed to let Denise keep her, it was with the understanding that she would be an outdoor cat, while Jet would remain indoors.

Probably the only picture of Niki and me

Soon enough though, Niki charmed her way into the house. Jet was less than happy, and although he tried to pick on her now and then, there wasn’t much he could do since he didn’t have claws. Niki, to her credit, understood that she was on Jet’s turf and always tolerated his antics – even though she could have gashed him bad at any time. She never once did.

Jet and Niki drawing a Christmas truce in 1985

Eventually she became well-loved by all of us. She meandered in and out of the house at her will and was generally always finding her way onto someone’s lap. I think she sensed the fact that Jet was my cat and she belonged to Denise, but as she and I got older, we warmed up to each other more and more.

Niki passed away on a hot summer day around the Summer of 1993. We found her just outside our front door, lying under a bush. We pegged her age at death at about nine years old. She had been a great pet and I really miss seeing her sweet eyes and gentle disposition.

Sweet Niki

Below is a video I took of Niki trying to catch a bug during the Spring of 1987. She was okay when the camera was on the other side of the fence, but as soon as it crossed over the top, it spooked her and she took off.

Return to the Summer of 1985…

That’s the subplot of the story. Jon was there, but it really made no difference to me. I was there to celebrate the magic of Stan and Babe once again. This was my sixth convention, and it ranks right near the top in my book. Joining Jon and me were my Dad and my sister Denise. We all stayed in the same room and there was a bit of contention on whether to split the room bill three ways or four, but other then that, we all got along swellishly.

The event began on Sunday, July 12, 1992 at the Palace Station Hotel and Casino – where I would spend my first time ever in fabulous Las Vegas. We flew out that morning and arrived in Las Vegas that afternoon. Registration was conducted in a central meeting area just up a set of escalators that I would re-visit in 2009. Whilst waiting to make my presence known, I was tapped on the shoulder and turned around to see my pal Bob Satterfield, looking decidedly thinner and with longer hair – which he later attributed to his mid-life crisis. Visiting Bob back in his room, he presented me with a somewhat late graduation present, which was well worth the wait: an amazing photo album full of autographed photos with graduation wishes from about 25 L&H and Our Gang co-stars. Someday, I’ll post the album in its entirety.

That evening we had a fun cocktail reception (where Bob received a Stan Laurel check endorsed by Stanley “Tiny” Sandford, which I carried around with me and showed off). Then we had a “Salute to Hal Roach Dinner”. Mostly what I remember about this was that Dick Bann had accompanied Hal Roach himself to the event. At this point, Hal Roach was 100 years old. This ended up being the third and final time that I saw Mr. Roach in person. Following the dinner, The Parade of Tents was presented via video presentation. The evening culminated with the opening of the cinema and the Dealers Room. I made a couple of significant purchases at some point during the week – framed and matted autographed photos of Oliver Hardy and Edgar Kennedy. I was up exceptionally late reading my new copies of The Laurel and Hardy Magazine in the bathroom in our room while everyone else slept.

Having Tommy “Butch” Bond, now sporting red hair, sign a photo for me at the cocktail mixer

I think Jon and I tried our hand at the slot machines that night. Not being a big gambler, I’d be surprised if I spent more than $20 in quarters throughout the week. I remember that night watching Sherry Han, the host of the convention and Grand Sheik of the Jitterbugs tent, playing slots with silver dollars and quickly going through 100 bucks. How I cringed!

Monday, July 13, saw a lot of standard Sons fare: the Grand Council meeting, the Dealer’s Room and Cinema, a seminar on How to Start and Maintain a Sons Tent (which interested me greatly at the time), the Trivia Contest and Tournament of Champions Trivia Contest (of which I didn’t participate), the Hal Roach All-Stars Look-a-Like & Sound-a-Like Contest, and the Pee-Wee Contest. I can’t recall if I participated in the latter – but it was something I would typcially do. All of this provided plent of time for Jon to sit back in the room.

I also brought along a ridiculous amount of copies of my new tent newsletter (for the tent that didn’t quite yet exist) Dante’s Info. I was proud of that darn thing and periodically laid numerous copies around the convention and watched people pick them up, hoping that they would gawk and think it was a literary masterpiece.

That night saw a great event at a local waterpark Wet ‘N Wild, called the Honolulu Baby Luau. A lot of folks – and I’m not honestly sure if I was one of them – participated in the waterslides, with special focus going to Bob Satterfield and Tracy Tolzmann, both of whose girth made for some very impressive splashes as they went down the speed slides.

After swimming, we had a great dinner with background music provided by Ronnie Hazelhurst and his Orchestra, playing the tunes of the Hal Roach Studios. I recall standing in line for food with Bob and celebrity guest Vera Ralston and her husband. Dwain Smith noted that Larry Semon’s cousin was also present at the event and could be recognized by the stain on his pants. It was a fine, warm evening in the 100-plus degree weather, which was almost bearable with the low humidity.

 Tuesday the 14th saw the Celebrity Panel & Autograph session at 10am that morning. This convention had more celebrity guests than any other convention other than Hollywood ’80. Participating in the Q&A were Tommy “Butch” Bond, Lois Laurel Hawes, Jerry Tucker, Jacquie Lyn, Anthony Caruso, Jay R. Smith, Trudy Marshall, Eugene “Pineapple” Jackson, and Dorothy deBorba. Other celebs that were not present at the Q&A were Diosa Costello, Vera Ralston, and Della Lind. Two guests had been slated to attend but did not end up coming: Felix Knight and Vivian Blaine. Postings regarding encounters with some of the celebrities begin here.

Jay R. Smith, Jacquie Lyn, and Dorothy deBorba during the Q&A session

Jerry Tucker, Pineapple Jackson, and Tommy Bond

Trudy Marshall and Lois Laurel

There was a Laurel and Hardy Olympics in Toyland event that afternoon, but I don’t think I participated. This might have been when Jon and I spent a very brief time at the slots. There was also a screening of going on, and although I didn’t watch it, I was able to meet celebrity Diosa Costello my one and only time after the screening. I never saw her again at the convention or any other time.

We went directly from the theatre area to the banquet room, where there was some bizarre Murder Case Crime Scene, where one was to guess who the killer of ‘Bozo’ was. I really had no idea what was going on, but it was fun to see various Sons, Tony Hawes in particular, play characters who were suspects of the ‘murder’. I think Bob, also not knowing what was going on, took part in this also.

Bob in costume with Kathy Luhman, following the Crime Scene event. Randy Skretvedt and I are in the background.

The banquet that night was hosted by Bill Cassera’s The Midnight Patrol tent had a cops and robbers theme and everyone came dressed accordingly – but not me as per usual. After the banquet, Bob drove my Dad, Denise, Jon, Jimmy, and me into Vegas and we visited a couple of the casinos. It was a nice chance to look around although none of us gambled. Jon kept his ideas peeled for legal prostitutes. As we weaved our way through the blaring neon, my Dad jokingly asked Bob, “Yeah, but where do people go to gamble?”

With the display of one million dollars at the Binion’s Horseshoe Casino

Thank goodness we had at least one group shot: Dad, me, Jon, Denise, and Jimmy with the million bucks

Bob working his way though the lights of Vegas

Denise participates in some late night antics with paper cups

The final full day of the convention came on Wednesday, July 15. The first activity I can recall was the screening of Pack Up Your Troubles, which included a talk from Jacquie Lyn and featured a print that included footage that I had never seen before. This was about the only Laurel and Hardy film I actually watched during this convention. There was an auction that afternoon, and I purchased an original lobby card from The Dancing Masters and had Trudy Marshall sign in that evening at the Jitterbugs banquet, which featured live big band music.

In between the auction and the banquet was the final Grand Council meeting where we voted for the next convention. I declared my soveriegty by voting on behalf of my own tent instead of the Towed in a Hole Tent. Although I actually voted for Harlem, Georgia, the convention bid for 1994 was won by Tarrytown, New York and the Founding Tent.

The standard Farewell Brunch and Passing of the Pineapple was held on Thursday morning. My Dad, Denise, and Jon departed for the airport and took along the long piece of artwork that I had brought to exhibit in the Al Kilgore art gallery. I, however, didn’t leave from Vegas. I was continuing my vacation by participating in some of the post-trips and celebrations in California. So I loaded up my loot in Bob’s car and we began our drive back to his place in San Bernardino.

Jimmy and Denise at the Farewell Brunch, with standard foliage head garb. My pal David Rodriguez is behind Jimmy.

Denise gets around with her plant heads. Here is John Duff sprouting something besides hair on his head.

With my artwork contribution and the world’s worst mullet

It had been a fabulous convention and I so wish that I had captured more photos. I had also recently begun a journal, which was mostly so that I could journal my experiences on this trip – but alas, that invaluable book no longer exists.

The 1992 trip will continue in California…

Follow the trail of celebrities from this convention here…

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I had created four issues of the newsletter titled Told in the Whole, the publication for the Springfield Towed in a Hole tent of the Sons of the Desert, between 1986 and 1987. My momentum only stopped because the tent stopped actually having any meetings. Of course, many things in my life happened that would have precluded me from putting too much emphasis on this aspect of my life anyway – namely spending lots of time with my first girlfriend Christi and the birth of my daughter Ashleigh. Nevertheless, by Fall of 1990, I was hoping to resume publication of this fine newsletter. In fact, I even wrote a tribute to my friend, actress Virginia Karns who had starred with Laurel and Hardy in Babes in Toyland.

But it didn’t happen. There were still no meetings being scheduled and I was finally faced with the fact that as far as meetings went, the Towed in the Hole tent had become defunct. In fact, I had to rely on my friend Bob Satterfield to even get the information regarding the upcoming Sons of the Desert convention that was going to held in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1992. It was then that I decided that I was going to not only re-start the publication under a different title, but that I was going to start my own tent as well.

Since portions of Laurel and Hardy’s 1942 feature A-Haunting We Will Go took place in Dayton, Ohio, I opted to utilize this film title as the name of my tent. One of the main characters in this film was Dante the Magician, so I made a wordplay on his name and titled the newsletter Dante’s Info – an obvious play on Dante’s Inferno.

In the early Summer of 1992, I went to work on assembling my very first issue. I used same layout as I had used on Told in the Whole, in essence just sticking the new title directly on top of the old on my front cover template. (This was achieved by cutting and pasting in the literal sense in those days). I had already chosen the cover, had this ended up being issue #5 of TITH, and also had the Virginia Karns tribute fully written.

Filling in the blank pages (which totaled 16 pages, doubling the size of each issue of TITH) was a lot of fun. I wanted to make the information meaningful and fun to read, and would concentrate on comminicating a blend of both ‘national’ Laurel and Hardy news and research, with local tent coverage. What I came up with – the issue in its entirety – is displayed below.

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I printed up about 150 issues – which was quite ludicrous. The goal was to bring them along to the convention and to give them to about half of the delegates, naturally hoping to pick up some subscriptions to my new masterpiece. I also sent Dwain Smith a letter, requesting any info on fans from the Dayton area who may have requested information about the Sons of the Desert. Yes, you could say that I was very committed to the cause and well-poised to head-up a successful tent in Dayton, Ohio.

Although I don’t think that I quite got the reaction and fanfare that I had hoped for, eventually responses and a small handful of subscriptions did trickle in. I scheduled my first meeting to be held on August 30, which would be about six weeks after the conclusion of the Las Vegas convention…

…which will be coming up next…

Signed article about Margaret Kerry and Tinkerbell

That’s because to me Margaret Kerry was better known by her original name, Peggy Lynch. As Peggy, she had appeared in three of the Our Gang shorts, two (Teacher’s Beau and The Pinch Singer) at the Hal Roach Studios, and one (Aladdin’s Lantern) at M-G-M.

The Our Gang in 1934. Peggy is on the right. The photo is also signed by Jackie Lynn Taylor, the tall girl in the back.

Peggy in a solo photo from the same shoot as above

My friend Bob first introduced me to Margaret when he took me to her home during my first visit to California in 1988. He had waited for my visit to make some key home-visits to a handful of celebrites whom he was trying to obtain signatures from on a tent banquet group photo of 25 Roach/Our Gang/Laurel & Hardy celebs (including Hal Roach himself). This provided a great opportunity for me to tag along and get to meet several celebs up-close and in-person.

Margaret and me in 1988

Above is the photo from our first meeting. Over the years, I ran into Margaret a few more times. For starters, she was present at the 1992 Way Out West Tent banquet that I attended and I got her to sign my program on July 17, 1992. She was also a guest at the WOW banquet on June 28, 1997, and I attended that one as well.

My encounter with her was a little more intimate when I attended the Hollywood Collectors Show on October 4, 2008. After greeting her in the main area where she was selling signed photos, Bob arranged for us to have breakfast with her the next morning in the hotel restaurant.  Margaret ate her tiny meal and regaled us with tales from her movie days, how she settled on her stage name (given to her by Eddie Cantor, her co-star in the 1948 film If You Knew Susie), the book and blog she is working on, and various other tales, jokes, and anecdotes from her life.

Bob and I enjoy breakfast with Margaret in 2008

Margaret, the jokester, is holding up a picture of her and Bob

Since then, I’ve only seen her one additional time - Bob and I ran into her as she visited the Hollywood Show on July 18, 2009. She wasn’t a guest this time, but just visiting the show. Although I can’t say that I actually know Margaret Kerry (even though we are friends on Facebook!), I can say that she has always been one of the kindest and friendliest of any of the celebrities with whom I’ve had the pleasure of spending time.

Celebrity encounters from my 1988 California trip will continue… (under construction)

Celebrities of the 2008 Hollywood Collectors Show will conclude in the next posting…

Return to the 2008 Hollywood Collectors Show…