Sunday in Valley Forge ’86: The Hawaiian Luau
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
I must confess that as I look at some of the photos from the 1986 Valley Forge Sons of the Desert convention, I get a little bit annoyed at myself for not spending more time with my family. As I was fourteen years old, it might be tempting for me to say that I thought I was a little too cool to hang out with them – but the fact is that they simply weren’t geeky enough for me. Whereas Mom, Dad, and Denise were hanging out together and snapping photos of Denise mingling with the celebrities (and the great family shot at left, which I missed out on), I was off alone hob-knobbing with the stars and club ‘bigwigs.’ So while my goal at that time didn’t involve getting pictures with any of them, Denise ended up with a whole slew of great shots. Dumb kid. Read the rest of this entry »
I posed this question in the last California posting: who would have thought that a visit to the Playboy Mansion would not be the big story of Monday morning, October 26, 2008? Jimmy had no sooner pulled out through the gates of the Playboy Mansion, that Dick Bann was making a startling exclamation from the front seat of the car: “Look…that’s Brian Wilson!” Now how Dick could pick out Brian freakin’ Wilson as we pulled up behind him as he was taking a walk (away from us) is beyond me. God Only Knows. I still have visions of Dick not spotting him, as Jimmy, Dick, and I obliviously drove past one of the most iconic figures in the history of pop music. 
Autographs…celebrity encounters…so where did it all begin for me? Sometime during the Summer of 1977, I met my first real celebrity and obtained my first real autograph (discounting two sports autographs that I already owned: the autographed baseball from Hall of Famer Bob Feller that I received when I was born from June Bolin, one of my Dad’s co-workers…and the signed paper photo of Bengal Isaac Curtis that I got when I was about two when he did a personal appearance at a local store). This mystery masked celebrity was none other than Clayton Moore, star of TV’s classic western The Lone Ranger. 
I won’t go so far as to say it was a dream come true to meet William Forsythe, but he had certainly been on my ‘want-list’ for many years. In fact, I sent him an autograph request way back in August of 1997 but I never got a response. As a huge Robert DeNiro fan, I took interest in the performance of William Forsythe when I saw him in the important role of Cockeye (as seen at right) in the Sergio Leone classic Once Upon a Time in America. This sealed him in my mind as a high caliber performer, especially having already enjoyed his role as Evelle Snoats in the Coen Brothers’ amazing film Raising Arizona. 
Although I had briefly met Frank “Junior” Coghlan twice during visits to California – the first at the Hollywood Collectors Show in 1995, and the second at the Way Out West Tent 30th Anniversary banquet in 1997, I had never really sat down to talk to him or gotten a photo with him. And to tell the truth, I had no intention of trying to look him up during any of my most recent visits. He had only appeared in one Our Gang film, the early silent Giants Vs. Yanks in 1923, and Bob had already gotten me a signed photo. But thankfully, Bob suggested that we stop by and pay him a visit – and as usual, I am all the better for it.