The Terrible Catsafterme

William Janney was the dramatic leading man in Laurel and Hardy’s 1934 feature film Bonnie Scotland. Never mind that his scenes as the romatic interest to starlet June Lang were more-or-less distractions to the boys’ comedy in the picture – that’s not his fault. He was there working alongside the boys and that’s enough to thrill any film buff including me. Other than his work with Laurel and Hardy, his film career mostly entailed bit parts and b-pictures, but I am still thrilled to say that I once was able to meet William Janney. Read the rest of this entry »

The Fall 1995 issue of Dante’s Info was yet another attempt at producing the ultimate in Laurel and Hardy research and entertainment. Like its predecessor, this issue ran an incredible 28 pages in length as well. Also like the previous issue, it was plagued with inferior looking photos when photocopied, giving it what I consider to be a ‘dirty’ appearance.This was the only issue that included one of these ‘dirty’ looking photos on the cover (the others were all printed directly from the printer). The reason for this was to showcase a rare photo from Block-Heads that I had found. In fact, the whole issue was themed as Block-Heads and showcased various photos that I had been loaned by my friends Bob Satterfield and Randy Skretvedt. Read the rest of this entry »

I wasn’t particularly busy with autograph collecting in March of 1986, but I did manage to send out three requests on March 10. One (of several) to Ray Bolger, which was returned on May 21, one to Shirley Temple who returned her second batch of photos on March 17, and one to Noel Neill who returned a signed photo on March 29. All of these autographs can seen in previous postings by clicking on the celeb’s name. Read the rest of this entry »

Rolfe Sedan had an extremely distiguished career as a character actor playing more than 250 different roles from the early 1920’s to the late 1970’s in both film and telelvision. Among his most notable roles was his role as Mr. Beasley the postman on The George Burns – Gracie Allen Show, but what really piqued my interest was his role as a hotel desk clerk in the Laurel and Hardy classic Double Whoopee in 1929. Read the rest of this entry »

At left is a photo that I snapped (instead of having the good sense to actually get into) of several members of the Springfield Towed in a Hole Tent of the Sons of the Desert surrounding Laurel and Hardy co-star Virginia Karns Patterson in the Fall of 1986. Clockwise from the kneeling girl, we see Carla Degar, Ron Weber, George Willeman, Larry Smith, Virginia, and finally Jim Harwood. These guys sort of represented the new generation of tent members as literally all of them began coming to the meetings in 1986, just as I was coming out of my shell and breaking forth into the ‘world’ of Laurel and Hardy. Read the rest of this entry »