More From the Stooges
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
Having had great success with previous attemps at getting autographs from the two surviving members of the Three Stooges (seen here, with additional signed comic books from Curly-Joe seen here), I made yet another stab at amassing more for my growing Stooges collection. On May 27, I sent my last autograph request before the Summer came to stay for a while and set my mind reeling in other directions. This letter went to Joe Besser, of whom I had gotten an additional portrait photo (probably from Carl Ahlm). Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve never quite jumped on The Simpsons bandwagon yet. Sometimes I travel in the sidecar…having purchased the first nine seasons of it on DVD, but not quite being done watching the first one. As a Disneyphile, I find the chintzy animation a little disconcerting – while being fully aware that the second-to-none writing more than makes up for it. I know one day I’ll really dive into them and then there will be no going back. In fact, I got into Matt Groening’s Life in Hell comic strips way back before anyone had ever heard of The Simpsons. 
Thomas Benton Roberts was the only celebrity at the Hollywood ’80 Sons of the Desert convention who signed my autograph book twice. I reckon that I had him do this because I really had no idea who he was at the time. Later on I realized that he appeared in the classic Laurel and Hardy silent film Two Tars as the hapless victim of Stan’s gushy tomato. Still later, I found out that Thomas Benton Roberts actually meant much more to the production of the L&H films. He was what was referred-to-as a ‘stand-by carpenter’ – a less-than-glamourous term for a special effects artist. 
The name Roy Seawright probably doesn’t mean much to the average Joe. But to me in 1986, he was a super-celebrity, having worked with Laurel and Hardy at the Hal Roach Studios as a special effects man. He was responsible for aiding Stan Laurel in igniting his thumb in Way Out West, smoking his thumb in Block-Heads, and wiggling his ears in Blotto. He helped design the special effects so that Laurel and Hardy could play their own sons in the film Brats and appear to be one-third the size of their parental counterparts. Since these films meant so much in my life, this made Mr. Seawright a huge celebrity and a highly desirable autograph in my eyes. 
Eddie Quillan (seen at right with comedy producer Mack Sennett) had a long and distinguished film and TV career, playing more than 200 roles from the golden age of slapstick to the late 1980’s. My interest in Mr. Quillan – as you might suspect – was due to the role he played in the 1934 all-star feature Hollywood Party. You might even say he was the ‘leading man’ among the sea of comedians, including Laurel and Hardy, Jimmy Durante, and the Three Stooges among others.