Tommy “Butch” Bond 1980
Thursday, October 18th, 2007
“Butch” Bond was certainly the most memorable of the Our Gang ‘tough guys’. He and his partner Woim could often be found menacing Spanky and Alfalfa and Co. in the more-than dozen films that he appeared in as “Butch” at both the Hal Roach Studios and M-G-M. Three years prior to his stint as “Butch,” he had made another dozen films with the Our Gang, simply playing “Tommy” who wasn’t so tough – but an ally to our heroes. This made him effectively the only Little Rascal to return for two distinct roles and two distinct runs with Our Gang. Read the rest of this entry »
I was initially interested at the prospect of getting a signed photo of Stella Stevens because she was the January 1960 Playboy Playmate of the Month. So during my Playboy fixation of the late 1990’s, I had Bob snag me the signed photo seen below from one of the Hollywood Collectors Shows. Of course, this did not show her as she looked in those days, but oh well. Later I realized that Ms. Stevens also had a rather lucrative career starring in such gems as Girls, Girls, Girls opposite Elvis Presley, The Poseidon Adventure, and most memorably in the pivotal role as Stella Purdy in Jerry Lewis’ The Nutty Professor. Therefore, I asked Bob to pick me an additional shot of Stella (as seen above) from that particular film – which was also signed by Miss Purdy’s classmate Julie Parrish. 
Every once in a while, I came up with a swell idea. Here’s one of them: I had purchased a half-dozen Three Stooges comic books that were distributed by Gold Key in the mid-to-late 1960’s. I’m not sure where exactly I picked them up, but if I had to guess, I’d say I found them at a memorabilia show at the Dayton Mall. So I decided to marry my comic book fascination with my autograph collecting habit and thereby shipped off four of these colorful Three Stooges comic books to Curly-Joe DeRita, one of only two of the then-surviving members of the classic comedy team. 
After our visit with