Jonathan Winters: Fellow Buckeye
Thursday, March 15th, 2007
I continued down my It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World autograph collecting path by sending a request to Jonathan Winters on August 14, 1985. I had a sneaking suspicion that I would have success with Mr. Winters, as he had replied to Carl Ahlm with a signed photo and actually agreed to be an honorary member of our Sons of the Desert tent in Springfield. The attraction of having him as a member was that he was originally from Springfield, Ohio. In fact, the funeral service for George’s Dad was actually held in a former home of Jonathan Winters. Read the rest of this entry »
As I mentioned, I was attempting to collect the autographs of the stars of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World during the Summer of 1985, so the next logical person to write to on August 13 (the day after I wrote to Hank Aaron, Jim Backus, Dom DeLuise, and Milton Berle) was Buddy Hackett. He played the character of Benjy Benjamin, who was described in the film as the gut with the “marbles in his mouth.” I always remembered that. 
I was starting to amass quite a bit of material for my Sons of the Desert Tent’s quarterly newsletter Dante’s Info in the early part of 1995. Doing research and collecting was certainly a high priority in my life at this juncture. Bill Cappello, who I had become friends with after we met at the 1994 New York convention was assisting in any way he could. He had done a remarkable job at locating ‘missing’ celebrities. One such find was Bill Wolfstone, who had portrayed “Little Curly” in the the Three Stooges film Three Little Pigskins in 1934 (see photo at left). 
I only jest with the title. I liked the sound of poking fun at Dom DeLuise since he did such a lousy job in the Laurel and Hardy tribute ‘documentary’ Laurel and Hardy – A Tribute to the Boys. But the truth is that Mr. Dom (pictured at left portraying Oliver Hardy, opposite Jim MacGeorge’s Stan Laurel) must be a fairly nice guy since he was kind enough to send me the legitimately autographed and inscribed glossy photo seen below. I received this on August 31, 1985, as a result of the letter I sent out on August 12, so it was a speedy response as well. This came along with a single signed notecard that also featured his little illustration as part of signature.
During the midst of my autograph collection spree in the Summer of 1985, I went through a phase of trying my hand at stars of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World – no doubt inspired by a recent viewing of the film. Milton Berle and Jim Backus were my first attempts at collecting the co-stars. I sent them each a letter on August 12 along with an S.A.S.E. and two notecards. Milton Berle never sent me anything, but Jim Backus – best known, of course, for his role in Gilligan’s Island as millionaire Thurston Howell III – answered my letter with the swell, signed and inscribed 8×10 below.