Super Celebrities of Metropolis
Sunday, June 26th, 2011
I don’t need a whole lot of reasons to go on a road trip, but if I was a bit on the fence about attending the Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Illinois, over the weekend of June 11-12, 2011, it was the celebrities that were in attendance that pushed me to the side of going. It turns out that all of the parts of this whole made the entire experience a great one – but nonetheless, five of the highlights of the weekend were the five actors who had appeared in Superman related films or TV shows. I’ll cover the first three of them here. Read the rest of this entry »
My friend Bob – and many others – will tell you that it is my own, dumb fault. That if I wasn’t willing to pay it, I shouldn’t have. But the truth is that I grew up watching the TV show The Incredible Hulk– and I found the ugliness of this green monster both captivating and positively frightening. The actor who portrayed him, Lou Ferrigno, may not be as frightening, but I’m inclined to believe that he’s just as dumb. I already had the autographed photo at right in my collection. Bob had gotten it for me years ago. Ferrigno’s prices on signatures aren’t that outrageous and I have no objection there. It’s the picture with him, man…the picture with him. 
This guy – this Tracey Walter – is everywhere. My first recollection of him came from his role as Cookie in City Slickers. But I knew that he had been in other things that I couldn’t recall: for instance, as Balak in Conan the Destroyer, Bob the Goon in Batman, and Lamar the coronor in Silence of the Lambs. Oh, and there were over 100 others: Philadelphia, Duplex, Midnight Run, Wild at Heart, and Erin Brockovich, for example. Plus on TV: WKRP in Cincinnati, Taxi, Moonlighting, Wings, Monk, etcetera, etcetera. 
Having only recently getting into watching the TV classic Barney Miller, my exposure to the first three seasons has help me draw the conclusion that the special ingredient in the ensemble cast was the character of Barney Miller himself. Barney was portrayed by Hal Linden, and it was his subtle, sensitive handling of the role that gave the show the extra boost to make it the classic that it was. I can’t think of any other straight-man in the history of television who could be both such a respected and moral man, while having some of the funniest comic reactions to the crazy events going on around him in TV history. 
Meeting June Lockhart was a long time coming. After having met the bulk of her fellow cast members from the science fiction TV classic Lost in Space (see