Jackie Davis 1980
Friday, September 28th, 2007
Jackie Davis was another one of the original members of the silent Our Gang. Appearing in nineteen of the movies as the first tough kid of the Rascals, Jack’s older sister Mildred eventually would marry silent screen legend Harold Lloyd. Lloyd thought that it would better for Jack to get a good education and sent him off to military school. The education paid off and Jack Davis, known as John H. Davis, M.D. at the time that he made an appearance at the Our Gang reunion in 1980, became quite a success. Read the rest of this entry »
I seemed to build my collection of John Voldstad autographs in small steps. John Voldstad portrayed the second silent Daryl in one of my all-time favorite television series Newhart. When he first made his appearance at a Hollywood Collectors Show, all he had for sale were some small 4″ x 5″ portraits. So that was what I was stuck with adding to my collection. But for $5.00, it wasn’t a bad deal. Later on, he returned along with his Larry, Daryl, and Daryl cohort William Sanderson and Tony Papenfuss and I was able to get the complete signed cast shot as shown 
The date was December 17, 1985. Christmas break had begun and I was dropping yet another four autograph requests in the mail, hoping to cash in on some last-minute Christmas spirit of the stars. I had spent the week before mailing out 15 requests and these would be my final four before the holiday came. Two of the victims I chose would be a bust: I had the wrong address on Michael Landon and the Sammy Davis Jr. that I received was clearly a secretarial (although I didn’t realize that secretarials were one of the big pitfalls of autograph collecting until later on in life). 
Even if I had never seen a silent Our Gang film at that point, I could never forget the infectious smile and genuine friendliness that radiated from Ernest “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison when I first encountered him at the Our Gang reunion autograph session at Hollywood ’80. One of the kindest and most sincere men who I have ever met, Sunshine Sammy holds the distinction of being the first black actor ever signed to a long-term movie contract. His producer Hal Roach signed him to his own comedy series in 1919, which led to his eventual starring in the Our Gang series. 
I could go on lamenting from now until doomsday about how few photos I had taken of me with various celebrities who attended the same Hollywood Collectors Shows as I did in both 1995 and 1997 – but it wouldn’t change the fact that it remains exceptionally difficult to conjure up the facts of exactly who I met and when. Especially considering that I had obtained so many of their autographs before the shows that I often I would simply walk by them without acknowledging them, lest they attempt to sell me an autograph that I already owned. When it comes to some of the cast members from the TV show My Three Sons, I’m fairly certain that it went down like this: