The Tan Man and the Gay Blade
Sunday, August 28th, 2011
If you were to go to Google.com and type in “Tan Actor”, who do you supposed would be the number one response both in the Images or the Web entries? If you guessed George Hamilton, then you are as sharp as a gay blade. Mostly that is all the average Joe knows about George Hamilton. I knew just slightly more. I knew that he had portrayed Zorro (and his gay twin brother) in the 1981 comedy Zorro, the Gay Blade. I chose to focus more on the Zorro connection than the tan. Read the rest of this entry »
With his commanding deep voice, actor Lance Henriksen and has a very wide and varied filmography that began with small roles in such classic films as Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Right Stuff, in which he portrayed astronaut Wally Schirra. The Terminator was originally written with Henriksen in mind to play the lead that eventually went to Arnold Schwartzenegger. He was still used in the film as one of the detectives. But Lance Henriksen is perhaps best known for his role as Bishop in the Aliens and Alien 3. His list of roles go on and on and if you can’t quite place him, you might be surprised at his impressive list of films. 
Lee Arenberg was at the Hollywood Show on Saturday, October 9, 2010, as part of a reunion of actors from the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. I didn’t care about that. Lee Arenberg had also guest-starred in all four of the Star Trek spin-off series: The Next Generations, Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, and Voyager. I didn’t care about that either. But I’m guess that it was those qualifications that led him to charge $20 for a signed photo and an additional $20 for a photo op. But it turns out, those prices proved to be phony. 
Apparently, having millions of dollars to flash around in the wrestling ring doesn’t translate to not charging to sign autographs and pose for pictures for free in real life. But in all honesty, that was ok with me, because it was so fun to meet retired wrestlers Ted DiBiase (who was known in the WWF as “The Million Dollar Man” and in the WCW as “Billionaire Ted” and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2010) and Mike Jones (who was knownalternately as Virgil and Vincent, often acting as valet to DiBiase). 
…So I made no qualms about tricking him back. How did he trick us, you ask? If you were a fan of the TV series Dallas during the 1980’s, you might recall an entire season of the show that in essence ‘never was’. This was because Patrick Duffy who was portraying Bobby Ewing had decided to leave the series and so the producers killed him off in a car accident. The next year he decided to return, so in a season cliffhanger, it was revealed that his death – along with the entire season – had been a lengthy dream sequence. Longest damn dream until Bob Newhart would have one that lasted for an entire series.